by Joseph Badal
Michael waited for the bow and stern teams to arrive and for Winfield to position three of the men. Then he led the way up the superstructure ladder. Winfield and three men peeled off at the cabin level. Michael waited thirty seconds, in case Winfield needed support, and then said, “Let’s go,” to Salazar. The pilot house sat three stories above the main deck and two stories above the cabin level. They were halfway to the pilot house when Michael heard Winfield say over the comnet, “We’ve got eight bodies in the galley. All shot.”
“Check the cabins, then report back.”
The last flight of steps to the pilot house turned toward the ship’s bow and ended at a walkway that appeared to circle the pilot house. Michael knew he and Salazar could be seen by anyone in the pilot house. He rushed to the top of the ladder and then to the pilot house door. Salazar threw the door open as Michael moved through it, rifle raised. He swept the room with the automatic weapon and was surprised to see only one man. The guy looked to be at least sixty years old, was slightly built, stooped, with a face that was pale, almost gray. Sickly.
“Hands over your head,” Michael ordered the man, while Salazar moved left to come up behind him.
“I am unarmed,” the man replied in Arabic-accented English.
Salazar pulled the man away from the wheel, pushed him against the console next to the wheel and frisked him.
“Where are your men?” Michael demanded.
“It is only me here,” the man said.
Then Winfield’s voice came over the comnet. “Nothing but the eight dead bodies down here.”
Then Campbell reported in, “No one down in the mechanical area.”
“Check every inch of the vessel,” Michael ordered.
Michael stood in front of the man in the pilot house. “What happened to your men?”
The man smiled. “A hijacker forced them off the boat at gunpoint.”
“What hijacker?”
The guy’s eyes shifted back and forth for a few seconds and then he just shrugged.
“So, if your men left the ship, who are the dead men in the galley?”
The man seemed suddenly confused. His eyes showed wide-eyed desperation. “What?”
“There are eight dead men in the galley. All of them shot.”
The man seemed to sag as though his skeleton had turned to powder. He slumped onto the floor. “That bastard,” he cried out. “That godless bastard.”
“What bastard would that be?” Michael asked.
Before the man could respond, Salazar said, “General, the ship’s changing course.”
Michael grabbed the man and pulled him up. “Put the boat back on course.”
“What difference does it make?” the man wailed and slid back to the floor.
“Salazar, see if you can steer this thing. And slow it down.”
As Salazar stepped to the wheel, Lieutenant Campbell spoke over the comnet: “We’ve got a room down here, in the ship’s bow, sealed with a large lock and heavy chain. We’ll need an awfully big set of bolt cutters or an acetylene torch to bust the lock. We could probably blow it, but who the hell knows what’s behind the door?”
Michael bent down and grabbed the front of the old man’s shirt. “Tell me about the room down in the bow.”
“We found one man alive on the tanker and eight dead bodies,” Michael told Admiral Wyncourt by satellite phone. “We’re working on breaking into a room below decks.”
“Mike, you’re about ninety minutes away from where I’ll need to pull you and your people off that ship. 2230 hours. You’ll be outside the bay by then and still far enough away from the fleet. I plan to destroy the ship no later than 2300 hours.”
“Can’t you cruise away from the tanker?”
“Yeah, we can. As can all of the other ships in the fleet. The problem is that there are a hundred or more cruise, cargo, and tankers anchored within a ten mile radius of Piraeus Bay. We can get away, but they can’t. At least, many of them can’t.”
“I understand. Have you been able to track down the man or men who escaped from the tanker?”
“Not yet. The Greek Coast Guard notified us that the bodies of a tug boat crew were discovered near the Akti Miaouli docks, on the eastern side of the Bay. The tug boat has disappeared. We presume whoever stole it used it to rendezvous with the tanker and helped offload someone.”
“Silas, there was a line hanging from the starboard side ladder of the tanker. There is a ladder on the port side, as well. But no line there. I suspect whoever left the tanker did so using that line. We know about where it happened. If the tug was used to carry one or more people from the tanker, I’ll bet it turned toward the western side of the bay.”
“I’ll pass on your theory to the Greeks.”
After his XO hung up with the Greek Coast Guard, Wyncourt called Angus Wallace on the Jackson’s launch’s radio. “Who’s with you?” he asked.
“Mister Danforth, Mister Vangelos, and some old guy named Stiletto, or something like that.”
Wyncourt felt a flutter in his stomach. Maybe he’d get away with repositioning the carrier group against POTUS’s order, but getting an American civilian and two Greek Nationals involved with terrorist hunting could surely do him in. He thought for a moment, and then told Wallace, “Put Mister Danforth on the radio.”
“Yeah, Silas,” Bob said.
“How would you feel about going along with Wallace toward the western side of the bay? See if you can spot a docked tug boat named Soula. Skirt the shore from north to south. It’s unlikely the boat will have moved deeper into the bay. Don’t go near the boat if you spot it. Just call me back and let me know.”
“What’s with the tug boat?”
“It might be the way someone escaped the tanker. That someone may be a very big player in the series of events over the last few days.”
The tug boat Soula finally docked at 9:45 p.m. at a decrepit wooden pier that looked to Ahmed Boukali as though it would collapse with very little encouragement. He was exasperated as he gingerly climbed out of the boat and onto the pier. The four-man team that had stolen the tug and brought him to shore were Albanian Muslims who, other than one man, spoke no Arabic, no English, and no French. That one man knew enough Arabic to barely converse with Boukali. The other three spoke only Albanian. The men had been recruited by the Islamic State, trained in Raqqa, Syria, and then infiltrated to Greece as a sleeper cell. It amazed Boukali that any of them had the smarts to understand the concept of coordinates, let alone locate the spot in Piraeus Bay where they rendezvoused with the tanker.
The trip from the tanker had gone relatively well until they became confused in the dark and couldn’t find the location where one of their compatriots supposedly waited with an SUV. It had taken twice the time it should have taken to locate the pier.
“Where’s the car?” Boukali asked the team leader.
“On road,” the man said. “Beyond reeds. About one kilometer.”
Wonderful, thought Boukali. He was about to curse the man when a boat motor sounded. He turned to look when a beam of light stabbed the night and settled on the tug boat. Boukali dropped to the pier. The old wooden structure creaked loudly and swayed. The light beam meandered from Boukali’s left to his right as it played on the tug and then searched beyond it.
“Please Allah,” he whispered to himself, “don’t let it be the police or the coast guard.”
From behind him, Boukali heard the all too familiar sound of a bolt on an automatic rifle being pulled. “No,” he rasped. Then the booming sounds of an AK-47 filled the night. He couldn’t stand for fear of being shot by the Albanians behind him. He couldn’t crawl forward; there was only water ahead. He pushed with his hands and arms against the rough surface of the pier and felt the sharp pain of wood splinters as they penetrated his skin. He crawled backward twenty yards until he came abreast of one of the Albanians. At least two more of the men were further back and now fired at whatever and whoever was out on the water. Boukali
then heard the roar of a powerful motor and shouting. The boat and its occupants had escaped. Now all they had to do was radio or telephone for help.
He sloughed the pack off his back, removed the parts of his own AK-47, assembled the weapon, inserted a magazine, and shouted, “Let’s get out of here.”
The Albanians stopped shooting. The team leader shouted something in Albanian and they all ran into the reeds.
Boukali slipped his pack straps back onto his shoulders, cinched the chest strap, and ran after the Albanians. He overtook two of the men almost immediately and shot them both in the back. He ran on until he found another one and dispatched him in the same way.
“Hold up,” Bob told Angus Wallace.
“Are you crazy, sir? They’re shooting at us.”
“Not anymore,” Bob said. “Stop the boat and listen.”
Apparently, the fourth Albanian had figured out what was happening and now fired wildly into the reeds. Boukali dropped to a prone position until he heard the man’s rifle eject an empty clip. Then he rose to a kneeling position and sprayed the reeds. He heard the fourth man scream. He found him and placed the hot muzzle of his rifle against the man’s forehead. “This is the price you pay for stupidity,” he said in Arabic. He guessed the man probably didn’t understand him and probably didn’t feel the bullet penetrate his brain. Either way, Boukali couldn’t have cared less.
He ejected his spent clip and inserted a fresh one while he ran in the direction where the SUV was supposed to be. When he cleared the reeds, he saw it fifty yards ahead. A ribbon of concrete extended to either side of the vehicle. A man standing on the far side of the vehicle, ran around to the rear of the SUV and waved and danced around as though he were attached to an electric generator. Boukali raised his weapon, waited for the man to stay still, and then hit him with a burst from his AK-47. He ran the rest of the way to the SUV, which already ran with the driver side door open, tossed his pack over onto the front passenger seat, and got behind the wheel.
Bob stood in the launch and listened. After a minute, he grabbed the radio mic and transmitted a call to the Andrew Jackson.
“I suggest you send a chopper to the coordinates I’m going to have Bosun’s Mate Wallace give you,” Bob told Admiral Wyncourt. “A firefight took place just west of those coordinates, maybe a couple hundred yards from the water. I suspect the guy off the Kerkira is now either dead or wounded, hiding out in the reeds, or on the run.”
CHAPTER 80
Lieutenant Campbell ran up to the men congregated outside the padlocked and chained metal door in the Kerkira’s bow. He was out of breath as he handed a pair of bolt cutters to Sergeant Morrell, who immediately attacked the padlock with the tool. “Sorry, General,” Campbell said to Michael, “it took forever to find the cutters. We tried to get the captain to help us, but the guy is completely uncooperative.”
Michael looked at his watch and saw that nearly half of the ninety minutes Admiral Wyncourt had given him were about up. “I’ll stay here with Sergeant Morrell,” he told Campbell. “You take the rest of the team up on deck and board the chopper when it arrives. Leave Salazar at the helm and tell him to take us out to sea. And try to get Admiral Wyncourt to hold off bombing the crap out of this tanker until I call him.” He purposefully stared into Campbell’s eyes and added, “You will take off in that chopper. You will not wait for Morrell, Salazar, and me. Is that understood?”
Michael could tell from the angry look on Campbell’s face that the lieutenant didn’t like the order. It took him several seconds to say, “I understand, sir.”
“Good, now all of you get out of here.”
The heavy tramping of boots on metal steps accompanied Morrell’s grunts as he attempted to cut open the padlock. “Jeez,” he said, “this thing must be made of titanium, or something.”
“Here, let me help,” Michael said.
The two men stood on opposite sides of the three-foot-long bolt cutters and applied as much pressure as possible; to no avail.
Michael looked closely at the two metal handles through which the chain was snaked. One handle had been welded to the door; another had been welded to the metal frame around the door. The padlock was secured to the links at either end of the chain. There were no hinges on the outside of the door.
“Looks to me like the weakest part of all of this might be the handles that hold the chain,” Michael told Morrell. “Give me the bolt cutters. I’ll work on one of the handles while you try to find a sledgehammer.”
Morrell took off at a run toward the mechanical room while Michael hammered with the bolt cutters at the handle welded to the door. Every blow he struck against it sent painful shivers all the way to his shoulders. He smashed the cutters at the door for two minutes straight, but couldn’t break the weld. He had just taken a break to catch his breath when Morrell returned with a sledgehammer the size of a Viking war club.
“Your turn, Sergeant,” Michael said.
“Stand back, General,” Morrell said. As Michael stepped out of the way, Morrell swung the hammer back and brought it forward with amazing speed and force. The head of the tool hit the bottom part of the door handle and bounced back, nearly striking Morrell’s head.
“You want me to take a try?” Michael asked.
Morrell looked pissed off. “No disrespect, General, but if I can’t break this thing, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to.”
Michael nodded. “You’re probably right. I just don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Now Morrell looked absolutely livid; his face beet-red. He lifted the hammer again and swung it, this time striking the top part of the handle. A sharp “crack” reverberated in the space as the top weld broke. Morrell dropped the sledgehammer and gripped the top of the handle, hanging all his weight on it until it moved about three inches.
Michael quickly slipped the chain through the space Morrell had created and let it and the padlock hang from the handle welded to the door frame.
“Let’s take it easy opening the door,” Michael suggested. “Check for booby traps.”
Morrell tugged on the broken handle and slowly opened the door. Michael knelt and shined a flashlight into the room when there were about six inches of space to see through. The horrible stench of human waste assaulted him as the flashlight beam spotlighted a man hanging from a rack.
“My God,” Michael murmured. He rotated the flashlight beam around the room, which appeared to be about ten feet by ten feet. There appeared to be a long metal cylinder on the rack. He stood up, pushed the door all the way open, and stepped into the room. A light bulb with a pull chain hung from the overhead. He switched on the light and moved to the manacled man. He felt for a pulse at the man’s neck and was surprised to find him alive. The man had obviously soiled himself.
“Bring those bolt cutters in here,” Michael told Morrell, who had followed him into the room. After Morrell handed the cutters to Michael, he told the NCO to give the man some water. Morrell opened his water bottle while Michael used the bolt cutters to sever the handcuffs that secured the man’s wrists and ankles to the metal rack. He dropped the cutters as soon as he released the man’s second arm and caught him before he fell to the floor. The man was short and slight and easy to manage.
Morrell dribbled water into the man’s mouth while Michael propped up his head. The little man coughed and spat out most of the water. His eyes popped open and he attempted to sit up. But he collapsed back.
“Who . . . who are you?” he said in Farsi.
Michael had attended the Farsi Language Course at the Defense Language Institute, West Coast, but was surprised to hear the language under the circumstances. During this entire mission he’d been confronted by people who spoke Arabic. Now a Farsi speaker had been thrown into the mix. It took a second for his brain to switch over to Farsi. He answered the man: “I am a United States Army Officer. My name is Danforth.” He pointed at Morrell. “That’s Morrell. My men and I have commandeered this vessel.” Michael let the man di
gest the information and then asked, “What’s your name?”
“Feramarz Alizadeh.”
“You’re from Iran?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you here?”
The guy’s eyes darted wildly. For a moment, Michael thought he might clam up or just lie. But then he said, “I am a nuclear engineer. I was hired to arm and maintain a nuclear weapon.”
The man looked around and seemed to focus on the room, as though for the first time, and said, “Oh.” His expression turned maniacal, with wide-open eyes and mouth. “We have to get away from here. The bomb is set to go off.” Then he tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t support him. He pointed a hand toward the rack behind them and said, “Help me up. I need to look at the timer.”
Michael lifted the man and supported him while he gazed at a timer device. “11 p.m.,” the man said. “What time is it now?”
Michael answered, “2145 hours. 9:45 p.m. What about eleven?”
“The detonator is set to ignite the explosives at eleven.” The maniacal look returned. “We must get away from here.”
“Can you disable the detonator?”
“No. If they are tampered with, electrical charges will immediately trigger them.”
“What about the timer? Can you advance it?”
“That can only be done once. That bastard Boukali already advanced it to eleven.”
“What about disassembling the weapon?”
“Yes, yes, that could be done. But it would take me at least an hour. We don’t have the time. We must leave now.” His last four words were wailed rather than spoken.
“Sergeant Morrell and I will help you.”
The man now leaned against the bulkhead, apparently barely able to stand on his own, an incredulous look on his face. “Impossible,” he said. “I’m leaving.” He moved toward the door, but Morrell stepped in his way.
Morrell said, “You won’t leave this room until the job is done.”
The man flapped his arms at his sides. “Look, I can hardly raise my arms from hanging on the rack. This is folly.”
