The Zombie Game

by Glenn Shepard

  Overhearing us, Jakjak sat up and spoke. “Wi! It’s the money they’re accusing Minis Duran of stealing. He’s in control of the earthquake relief fund, and it’s three billion dollars.”

  “There’s more,” Keys said. “The Turkish account then paid three billion to accounts in the name of Sattar Aslanov in Astana, Kazakhstan.

  “What do the Kazakhs have that Farok would want?” I asked.

  “The Aslanov family owns most of the uranium mines in Kazakhstan,” Keyes said. “They also control all uranium commerce in Russia and all the other former Soviet Bloc countries.”

  “If he’s buying uranium, what’s ISIS going to do with it? Make a bomb?”

  “No, they don’t have the network to build anything. They’re horse traders,” she said. “But Russia built nuclear weapons in Kazakhstan before the break-up of the Soviet Union, and the Aslanov family was a big part of that.”

  Keyes took a deep breath. “I think that he’s buying a nuclear bomb to launch from the Ana Brigette.”

  Mehrabad Airport

  Tehran, Iran

  3:00 p.m.

  The camouflage-painted Piaggio Avanti landed and taxied slowly behind a Jeep guiding it into a military hangar apart from the passenger terminal. As the Piaggio came to a stop, one hundred Iranian soldiers surrounded the plane.

  The four flight captains disembarked and were escorted to the officers’ mess hall, where they were greeted by a cheering group of thirty military officers. An elaborate banquet was laid out for them. While the flight captains and other officers enjoyed the feast, the military brass heralded the success of Iran’s military might and how it would be greatly augmented by today’s shipment.

  In the hangar, scientists in hooded white uniforms directed the loading of the six-by-six-foot package onto an unmarked van. An escort of forty military vehicles filled with hundreds of soldiers surrounded the van as it began its trek to the nuclear facility at Fordow. Ten helicopters and six MIG fighter planes circled the airspace around the convoy.

  The Iranian Minister of Defense sent a message to Farok:

  Package delivery and inspection complete.

  Final payment sent to your bank. This is an immense step for all of us. This display of unity between brothers is a new beginning, and an end of hostilities between Iran and ISIS. Great Emir, you have our support in your global jihad.

  Farok’s Penthouse Apartment

  Movenpick Hotel

  Aden, Yemen

  5:00 p.m.

  Farok smiled as the confirmation came from the Habib Bankasi Internacionalé in Turkey. The final $5 billion of Iran’s $10 billion contribution to his mission was safely in ISIS coffers. It was the deal of the century: Enough enriched uranium for the Iranians to build a nuclear warhead, an end to the fighting with Iran’s Shia allies, and money to finance his operation.

  He quickly transferred $300 million to a bank account belonging to the beleaguered and nearly bankrupt Syrian government—as payment for the material he needed to finish preparations for his lifelong dream.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Oval Cave

  Port-au-Prince, Haiti

  5:00 p.m.

  KEYES RETURNED TO HER crow’s nest and had been working for more than an hour when I heard a “Whoop!” echoing through the tunnel. I ran to the small cave and climbed up the rope to the ledge. Her face shone with excitement.

  “This morning, the Turkish account sent 500 million dollars to Muhammad Junco, the leader of a rogue cell in Yemen.”

  “So what does that have to do with the nuclear warhead?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know—yet. I’ll keep searching.”

  “They obviously plan to attack somewhere soon. The bomb will probably be launched from somewhere in Yemen. But what is the destination?”

  Keyes fingers flew over the keyboard as she sought more answers. Suddenly, she stopped and leaned close to the screen. “Oh my God! Here’s the kicker: A package from Kazakhstan was delivered to Aden, Yemen, twelve hours ago.”

  “What’s in Aden?”

  She looked at me and swallowed. “Omar Farok’s personal air force.”

  Seeing the look on her face, I reached over and hugged her. I knew how frightened she was of Farok, especially since she’d betrayed him two months earlier. She knew if he ever got his hands on her again, he’d torture her cruelly.

  Keyes pulled herself together and returned to her computer.

  I went back to check on Jakjak.

  After only a few minutes, Keyes repelled down the rope and ran to the oval cave.

  “Something’s happening, and it’s happening fast! A message was just sent to the leader of the splinter cell that Farok is trying to recruit, Muhammad Junco. He’s now in Haiti. Saint-Marc, to be exact. That means he’s doing something with ISIS. Whatever they’re planning, they’ll begin tomorrow. And I think their target is Miami.”

  “Miami?”

  “On a hunch, I Googled the distance between Saint-Marc and Miami. It’s exactly six hundred sixty-six miles.”

  “So?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s well within striking range of an ICBM. For another, the number 666 is also the mark of Satan.”

  How does she come up with this stuff?

  She continued. “Muslims are very superstitious. The hand, mensa in Arabic, is a sign of good luck. The amulet Farok usually wears around his neck is a gold hand with a blue star sapphire. The mensa keeps evil spirits away. And the blue star sapphire represents a blue eye. Blue eyes are hated in the Arabic world. They send envy into the person they look upon.”

  “Then why does he wear a blue eye?”

  “To send the gaze of envy back to those who gaze at him.”

  I shook my head. “He’s so insane that he might actually be thinking of sending an atomic weapon to US soil.”

  “And we might be the only ones in a position to stop him,” she said. “Saint-Marc is about forty miles from Port-au-Prince, as the crow flies. But it’s at least a sixty-mile drive. And we need to act quickly.”

  “Let’s start by checking out the fishing fleet where Jakjak saw the bodies taken. They probably took the bodies out to sea to be dumped, but I’d like to see the harbor and find who owns that boat. Maybe somebody there knows something about Farok or Saint-Marc or the shipment and what’s going to happen. It’ll be dark soon, so we should leave in thirty minutes.” I turned to Jakjak. “Can you tell us how to get there and what to look for?”

  “Yes. I’ll show you.”

  “You’re in no condition to ride over bumpy roads,” I reminded him.

  “O wi, I am. Since my surgery, I’m all well now.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “See there? I couldn’t do that before you operated on me. And you need a bodyguard to cover your back like I did for Mr. Duran. I’m the man.”

  Emmanuel entered the conversation. “I’m driving. Jakjak can rest on the backseat.”

  I turned to Keyes. “You stay here and keep searching online for more information.”

  “Not on your life! I’ll take my Mac and iPhone with me.”

  Keyes ran into the tunnel and returned a few minutes later with

  her equipment.

  All four of us packed into the Fiat.

  Beach at Port-au-Prince

  Haiti

  6:30 p.m.

  It was dusk when Emmanuel stopped the car. Twenty boats were beached near a 200-foot-long wooden pier. Another boat was in the water thirty feet from the shore. Pointing to it, I whispered, “Is that boat coming or going?”

  Emmanuel replied, “Neither. Yon moun sòt. Some idiot from the city tried to steal the boat yesterday and hit the sandbar.”

  We crept along the beach, hunched over. We didn’t see anyone on the shore or dock, and the first row of buildings was over 200
yards from the water’s edge. With the power shortage in Haiti, few lights were visible in Port-au-Prince.

  The boats were all wooden, similarly constructed, small lateen sailboats, originally developed by the ancient Romans, powered by a triangular sail with the two spars attached to the mast by a swivel hinge.

  I turned to Jakjak. “The boats are all alike. How can you tell which one the bodies were put in?”

  “By the smell. Those dead people stunk so bad, we can sniff them out.”

  We sniffed as we walked slowly past the row of lateens.

  Jakjak was three boats ahead of me when I called softly, “Jakjak, you missed the boat.”

  He came back and smelled the boat I was standing beside. “This boat has no odor of dead people.”

  “No, but it does smell of bleach.”

  Jakjak sniffed again. “You’re right. It’s faint, so they must have hosed down the boat afterward.”

  I searched the bleached lateen sailboat for any clues. In a crevice under the seat, I found one gold cuff link with a mother-of-pearl inlay in the shape of a flag, the rectangular flag of Haiti.

  “That is from Minister Duran’s suit,” Jakjak said. “They made him take it off for some reason.”

  I tossed it in my hand a moment before putting it in my pocket. “How can we tell who owns this boat?”

  “I can ask tomorrow.”

  “But we don’t have until tomorrow. We have to act tonight. Show me which way the boat sailed with the bodies.”

  Jakjak pointed out to sea.

  I looked where he pointed. “There’s a ship out there. A big one.”

  Jakjak looked for a long time at the vessel. “O wi. I see it, Doktè. And look at the side of the ship—the white cross on a red background, the flag of Denmark. That’s the Ana Brigette. It’s the first time I’ve seen it anywhere other than the Léogâne harbor.”

  Keyes moved to my side. “Don’t those hospital ships have big freezer lockers? If they dumped the bodies here in the harbor, the floating corpses would stir up a lot of attention. It makes sense that they’d dump them overboard when the ship is far out to sea.”

  “The Ana Brigette is the key to the operation,” I said. “Lars Paulissen is still there. He’s a good man who has done a lot of good with his charitable medical care in Haiti. We need to save him before they kill him.”

  I scratched my chin as I thought for a moment. Then, I turned to Emmanuel. “I’m going to have to make some anonymous phone calls. Drive into town and borrow someone’s cell phone, someone you don’t know but who looks like they need money.” I gave him two one-hundred-dollar bills. “Offer them a hundred, but give them two hundred if necessary.”

  Emmanuel’s eyes lit up as he looked at the money.

  Jakjak insisted on going with Emmanuel, assuring me he was fine, just a little winded but much better.

  Less than twenty minutes later, Jakjak returned with a phone. “O wi. The hundred dollars made a teenage girl very happy. She says to keep the phone. She can get herself another one for twenty-five dollars.”

  “And the other hundred?”

  Emmanuel smiled as he patted his wallet. “Sanfia will want this.”

  “How do these people buy phones that cost a couple hundred in the US and sell them for so little?”

  Jakjak answered quickly. “Doktè, the phones are stolen from the US and sold here for whatever they can get. A hundred dollars is a lot of money in Haiti.”

  “But how do they get telephone service?” Keyes asked.

  “All over town there are kids who know how to connect the phones to the cell phone towers,” Jakjak explained. “Twenty dollars will get you plugged into the system.”

  I called the police station and asked to speak to Dr. Tomas Duran, saying I was his attorney. I could hear shuffling and muffled voices in the background. It took several minutes before my friend came on the line.

  “Hello, Tomas.” He recognized my voice immediately but, thankfully, did not say my name.

  “Where have you been? They’re accusing us of stealing money from the National Treasury! I thought you’d come and bail me out.”

  I wanted to tell him that Keyes had discovered that the relief aid money had been used to make purchases from the Kazakhs, but I couldn’t because I knew the call was being monitored and probably recorded.

  “I can’t come bail you out, but I’m trying to get you freed, somehow,” I said. “You’re going to have to trust me on this, Tomas.” He did not respond, so I continued. “I think the hijacking of the hospital ship might be related to your problem. And I’m working on that. That’s why I called. Do you know the phone number of the Ana Brigette’s captain?”

  I quickly wrote down the number he gave me.

  I had one more question. “I found a cuff link in a boat on the beach. Apparently it’s like the kind your father wears. Is he alright?”

  Tomas whispered, “He’s with me here in jail. Cheval was killed. He was dressed in my father’s clothes. Only one of my father’s cuff links was on the shirt.”

  Without saying another word, I hung up.

  I started dialing again.

  Just get it over with.

  I looked at Keyes and said, “I have to go out on a limb and trust the US Embassy. Maybe they’ll give us the benefit of the doubt.”

  She shook her head. “We’re both on the lam, Scott. After what happened in North Carolina, the CIA thinks you’re a cowboy. And believe me, the Haitians are pissed about us giving them the slip at the airport. They’ll throw us in jail. Let’s go it alone for a while, at least until we know what’s going on.”

  The phone was already ringing. “This is Dr. Scott James. I need to speak to someone about a matter of national security.”

  “Did you say your name was Scott James?”

  “Uhm ... Yes.”

  “Hold for the Cultural Attache.”

  I put my hand over the phone and said, “She’s sending me over to the ‘Cultural Attache,’ for some reason.”

  Keyes’ mouth dropped. “Oh my God.”

  The phone cut out for a moment, then clicked back on, then repeated the cycle. Keyes started waving her hand frantically at her neck, signaling me to cut the connection.

  In a low, barely audible voice that sounded like it came from the grave, a man on the line said, “Hendricks.”

  “Yes. I was trying to reach someone at The Department of Defense.”

  “You’re from the boat.”

  “Uhm. Well, yes.”

  “You need to turn yourself over to the Haitian authorities right now or we’re going to come get you, and your illegal, unwanted, operative friend.”

  Keyes, seeing the look on my face, lunged at the phone and turned it off. “Scott! Are you crazy?”

  “We have to get the US Navy involved! The Coast Guard! Somebody! Anybody!”

  “Scott, I’ve been in the spy business for a long time. The guys at the American Embassy with the bullshit titles, ‘Cultural Attache’ or ‘Special Agricultural Assistant,’ or whatever, are CIA. It’s an open secret. That way if anybody wants to sell information, they know which guy to go to. You were just connected to the top one or two CIA guys in the whole country. That means they’re looking for you. And me. They mean business. You want to stop this thing? Get on the Ana Brigette and tell them to come out there to get you. Then they’ll see what’s going on. But if you keep being naive about this, you’re just going to end up in a Haitian prison.”

  I thought for a moment. “If we could somehow get aboard the Ana Brigette tonight, we could free Lars.”

  “Get me aboard the Ana Brigette tonight and I’ll disarm whatever kind of hardware they’ve got out there,” Keyes added.

  “You mean like missiles? What do you know about disarming missiles?”

  She batted her eyes at me.
“I didn’t tell you about my six months working with Israeli intelligence?”

  “Jesus! I shouldn’t have asked! Okay. Fine. We’ve got to get aboard tonight, but it won’t be easy.”

  “If anyone can do it, it’s you, Scott. You know the layout of the ship, where the terrorists are, how their armed, who their leader is, everything.”

  “We need to look for Minister Duran’s assistants, too—and any other bodies that could be in the ship’s freezer,” Jakjak added.

  “I completely agree,” I said.

  I turned to Emmanuel. “Go recruit some help.” I took out the last of my one-hundred-dollar bills and handed it to Emmanuel. “We need about a dozen people with no known loyalty to the National Police. And some fishermen who can sail two of these boats. Any more than that will work against us.”

  “This is for greater incentive,” Keyes said as she reached into her bra and pulled out a fistful of euros.

  I raised my eyebrows. The woman never ceased to amaze me.

  “Guns?” he asked.

  I knew guns were hard to find in private ownership in Haiti, but we needed them. “Yes, if you can find any kind of firearm, please bring it back.”

  “I can get them from Sanfia’s followers. They are faithful to her and Bondye. They won’t tell anyone and they won’t charge us a dime.”

  “Superb.” With that, I abruptly handed the phone to Emmanuel. “Before you start talking to anybody, take this a couple miles from here. Run. Don’t do it in the car. Give it to some old lady or little kid. Then get as far away from the phone as you can.”

  Emmanuel set off into the darkness, jogging.

  I turned and said to Keyes, “I have a plan. Give me your phone.”

  A man answered the ship’s phone after six rings. I didn’t recognize his voice but knew it wasn’t Lars.

  “Give me Captain Paulissen. I have a medical emergency.”

  I could hear a conversation going on between several men before I got a response. “He’s up on deck. Hold on. He’ll be here in a couple minutes.”

  Finally, a man came on the line and identified himself as Captain Paulissen. This time, I recognized the voice.