“May Allah guide us. How will we stay in touch?” asked a bald-headed fat guy.
“That’s Galen Hakimi, captain of the Profit,” Sophia said.
“We won’t,” Roxanna said. “That’s one thing Cyclops did right. We must stay compartmentalized, separate from one another. That is why this is the biggest meeting we’ll ever have. When too many of us come together at one time, it’s too dangerous. We create too big a target.”
“But none of us knows the whole picture.” It was Galen again. “None of us knows the location of all of the nukes, of all of the money, or all of the weapons or boats.”
“That’s how it has to be,” Roxanna said. “Except for Cyclops, no one, not even me, knows the whole picture. Each of us will continue to have only one or two contacts outside our immediate cell. That way, if we get captured or compromised, we can’t reveal what we don’t know.”
Dogu said, “I would never give up sensitive information.”
“Believe me,” said a small, bald man with large eyes and ears, “no one can stand up to serious, prolonged torture. You will talk. Interpol, and the Americans especially, are diabolical devils. They’ll stop at nothing to thwart the will of Allah. Peace be upon him.”
Pausing the tape, Sophia said, “That’s Abdul Kareem Aziz. I haven’t figured out if he captains a boat or what. But he’s some kind of Cyclops honcho.” Then the tape resumed.
“Reminds me of Yoda,” Tripnee said.
“Make no mistake,” said the portly Galen, “Cyclops has ears everywhere. Cyclops set all this in motion and will always be many steps ahead of everyone. Mark my words, going ahead without Cyclops will not turn out well.”
“Cyclops has failed us,” Roxanna said. “In the name of Allah, we cannot worry about Cyclops. We are moving forward on our own.”
“Allahu Akbar!” many voices agreed.
“Don’t worry,” said a scowling, bearded, dark-skinned man with straight black hair as he rose up and spread his arms wide, “Brothers and sisters. Go forth into Europe and America and wreak havoc. Remember, be selfless and relentless. Adapt. Innovate. Create chaos. May it please Allah. Peace be upon him.”
“I remember that guy,” Adam said. “In Finikas Harbor, I saw him through the porthole of that eighty-foot karavoskara, the Al-Gazi.”
“Yes, very good,” Sophia said, “That’s Basham Bilel, captain of the Al-Gazi.”
Tripnee, standing up, closed her hands into fists. “I’d like to take my rifle up onto a roof top and start picking off these sons-a-bitches.”
Sophia rose to square off against her. “There’re just too many of these fools mixed in with too many civilians to even think about a fire fight.”
Adam said, “Even if we could snap our fingers and capture them all right here, that wouldn’t secure the nukes. Cyclops, whoever that is, is damned clever. With information so dispersed, not even all these guys put together know the location of all the nukes.”
“The only way to get every bomb,” Sophia said, “is to keep tracking these guys as they spread out to pick up the nukes. We’ll have to catch ’em and collect the nukes one at a time.”
Adam looked at Sophia admiringly. “Jeppesen knew what he was doing, adding you to our team. Who else could surveil, plant tracker bugs and drones, and have any realistic chance to round up so many nukes?”
“It’s still a fucking long shot,” Tripnee moaned. “The consequences of missing even one are unthinkable. And we’ve got twelve to go.”
The plotters plunged into prolonged prayer aboard Deniz.
Out on the quay, the Zorba dance-off was going stronger than ever, and felt like it might go on all night. As the two factions took turns outdoing one another on the tabletops, the shindig reverberated far and wide—including through every inch of Dream Voyager. Only in Greece. What a people.
Chapter 11
Aboard Deniz
S ophia woke Adam and Tripnee at three in the morning. The two had only gotten a couple hours of fitful sleep and that with the aid of earplugs.
Sophia herself had stayed up the whole night, monitoring and recording every minute of the terrorist’s gathering, no doubt hoping for clues that would locate the nukes.
“The dance off on the quay and the praying aboard Deniz are winding down. We’ve got to decide what to do. The boats around us left, leaving Deniz and Dream Voyager alone on the quay.” Sophia was bone weary but carried on. “Any minute now the terrorists will scatter in every direction. I can follow only one at a time. What do you want me to do?”
“Deniz is exactly one foot away,” Tripnee said. “After the other terrorists leave, I say we take Roxanna and her crew off the chessboard.”
“Easier said than done,” Adam said, looking out a porthole at their next-door neighbor. “But we would have the element of surprise.”
Tripnee climbed the companionway stairs, poked her head up for a look around and came back down. “We’ve gotta be quick and decisive. None of this tying-people-up stuff.”
Looking at Sophia, Adam asked, “Can you tell us the exact location of everyone aboard Deniz, and at the same time track Dogu Kubilay?”
“I’ll do my best,” Sophia said. “Why Dogu?”
“They’re all bad news,” Adam said, “but I’ve got the feeling Dogu’s the most gung-ho, the most dangerous.”
Sure enough, in the next half hour, the terrorist ring leaders filed off Deniz. The leaders, their lieutenants and bodyguards, and the last of the Zorba dancers and hangers on, filtered away in different directions, leaving Deniz and the quay quiet. Soon, the drone video feeds from aboard Deniz showed Roxanna Tehranni and her crew bedding down, probably exhausted.
Adam selected two Glock 19s with silencers. He made sure the clips were fully loaded and both had bullets in firing position. Through long practice he had taught himself to be ambidextrous and could shoot with either hand, though at long range he was slightly more accurate with his right. At close range, he was equally deadly with either. Tripnee went with two Beretta Picos with built-in lasers and screw-on silencers. Small, light, lethal weapons perfect for the job at hand. Both carried extra ammo clips, and wore body armor, dark clothing, earpieces, and night-vision goggles.
They went into Dream Voyager’s main salon, and on the big table saw that four laptops displayed split screen video feeds from eight tiny drones spread through Deniz and out on the quay.
Sophia spoke to them through their earpieces to describe the situation on the boat next door: “They’ve got a big guy guarding their gangplank. Roxanna and her first mate, in more ways than one, Majid Hakami, seem to be asleep in the stern captain’s cabin. Another guy is sleeping alone in the first cabin forward of the salon. Two women are snoring in separate bunks in the crew cabin forward of the galley.”
Adam whispered into his mic, “Does the sentry seem alert? Which way is he facing?”
“He’s awake, but I don’t see him turning or looking around much,” Sophia said. “He’s facing the quay.”
“I like it,” Adam said. “Probably assumes any threats will come from that direction.”
Adam and Tripnee were poised, ready to move, awaiting Sophia’s go ahead. Adam would start at the stern, Tripnee at the bow. The quay was empty as far as the eye could see. The people aboard Deniz were asleep, and their sentry had his back to the boat.
Everything looked like a go. Sophia took in a breath, ready to give the signal. But something made her hesitate—and thank God she did. “Oh-oh. A couple is coming.”
The couple, strolling arm-in-arm, took forever to pass and move off into the distance. Finally, the coast looked clear, when Sophia again drew in a breath to say go. But instead blurted out, “Wait. A policeman.”
The Greek cop came sauntering along and paused to light a cigarette. After an eternity, he moved off and turned a corner some ways off.
Finally, Sophia gave the signal. Adam had one flash-bang grenade and Tripnee had two. They pulled all the pins simultaneously, so all three
would go off at the same instant. Adam dropped his through the hatch over Roxanna’s captain’s cabin, and an instant later took aim at the back of the head of the sentry on the gangplank. Psst, psst. A nice double-tap and the guy dropped dead face down on the plank.
Tripnee tossed her first flash grenade in through the porthole where the guy was sleeping alone, then she moved quickly and silently forward along Dream Voyager’s deck to toss her second flash-banger through a porthole of the cabin of the two women. She yanked off her night-vision goggles, and covered her eyes and ears just in time for the muffled explosions inside Deniz.
Immediately after the explosions, Tripnee pulled her night goggles back on, whipped out her pistols, stepped onto Deniz, and dropped prone onto the forward deck. She looked down into the crew cabin at the two women. Psst, psst. A bullet into each noggin. Psst, psst. Then a second round into each head to be sure.
She then dove head-first down the hatch, rolled off a bunk, and came up on her feet already moving toward the cabin where the male terrorist had just been rudely awakened, doing her best to get there before he recovered from the flash.
A moment after the flash-bangers went off, Adam redonned his night scope, pulled out his silenced Glocks, and ripped open the hatch over the stern master cabin. There was Majid stretched out on a double bed, just now reacting to the flash bangs. Psst, psst. Two bullets penetrated the guy’s broad forehead.
But where was Roxanna? The other side of the double bed was empty. Ah ha: Movement off in a corner. Then Roxanna darted into the head, and the door slammed shut. Adam dropped through the hatch and sent a pattern of slugs through the thin door. Anyone in there had to at least be wounded. And very likely dead.
Uh-oh. On this boat, the master head probably had a door into the engine room, which no doubt had a hatch up into the cockpit. Adam bounded from the cabin, along the passageway, and up Deniz’s companionway, headed for the cockpit.
Splash. Damn. Too late. The engine room hatch stood open and Roxanna was overboard. Adam searched around the boat but she was nowhere to be found. The intrepid little jihadi was no doubt at that moment swimming away underwater, escaping into the night.
Tripnee got to the remaining male’s cabin door. Locked. With no time for anything else, she put two bullets into the mechanism, shattering it. She kicked the door in. The guy was dazed but moving, reaching for his AK47. Psst, psst. Two slugs entered the man’s temple. His sinewy body collapsed like a marionette with the strings cut.
Immediately after giving up the search for Roxanna, Adam checked to make sure the coast was clear, went to the gangplank, carried the sentry’s limp body back along it and down into the main salon. As he lowered the corpse onto a couch, Tripnee also entered the salon and the two exchanged glances. Thank God, she was okay. What a woman.
“Roxanna got away.”
“Well, we got the rest of them. Thank God, you’re okay.”
There was no time to spare. Adam blasted open the padlocked closet he’d seen earlier. Sure enough, inside there it was: another suitcase nuke. He also found four duffle bags stuffed with bundled US and Euro currency, and a substantial armory of weapons, munitions, and explosives.
Next, they searched Deniz from bow to stern, checking every compartment and nook and cranny. They uncovered three more weapons caches, but no more nukes. They also discovered and bagged a cell phone and a laptop, key material that might help roll up the Cyclopean terrorist group.
Grabbing the nuke, money, cell phone, laptop, and a few choice items from the weapons caches, they climbed the companionway, jumped back across to Dream Voyager and went below. Amazingly, the whole operation had taken less than fifteen minutes, though it seemed much longer.
“I’m so glad you’re all right.” Sophia jumped up, gave Adam a big full-bodied hug, and planted a huge kiss square on his mouth. “We’re in luck, I tracked Dogu Kubilay’s boat, Bora, a little while ago headed south like a bat out of hell. He’s got one fast boat.”
Sophia flew her swarm of drones back aboard. Adam brought in the stern mooring lines. Tripnee, smoldering, started the engines, powered forward and activated the windlass to bring up the anchor. As Dream Voyager slid out of its spot at the quay, Adam pulled the pin of an incendiary grenade with a time delay fuse and dropped it through an open porthole on Deniz. When they were two hundred yards away and picking up speed headed out of Ermoupolis Harbor, Deniz burst into flames, lighting up an early dawn.
Chapter 12
Paros
F ollowing the last known path of Dogu Kubilay’s 70-foot Catana catamaran, Bora, Adam, Tripnee, and Sophia pressed south toward the island of Paros across a roiling, foam-strewn Aegean. Dream Voyager overtook tightly spaced, twelve-foot rollers one after another. Its sleek hull slowed slightly as it climbed the crests and accelerated as it slid down each face. They moved as though one with the wind, sailing straight downwind wing-on-wing, making their cockpit an oasis of calm, while all around the meltemi whipped the sea white.
“Damn.” Sophia slammed her fist on the table. “The drone signal from Dogu’s boat has vanished.”
“Little piece of junk,” Tripnee said without looking up from her rifle ablutions, the muzzle of which was angled in Sophia’s direction.
Sophia, for her part, arched her back and pointedly spoke only to Adam. “I’m picking up chatter about some kind of mujahideen rendezvous in Naousa Bay on Paros. We’ll find Cyclops jihadis there, and probably Dogu, too, since I’m sure he was headed that way.”
“Sounds good.”
Adam tuned out the tension between his boatmates, ignored his wounds, which still hurt like hell, and attempted over and over and over to unlock the Deniz’s laptop and cell phone. Every password, every PIN flopped.
After hours of frustration, he endeavored to treat himself to a moment of uplift: They had found another nuke. But the formidable Roxanna had gotten away, and their ordeal had only just begun. Without a doubt the worst was yet to come.
So much for the uplift. He went back to code-breaking.
* * *
Adam knew from Heikell’s Greek Waters Pilot that numerous treacherous rocks and reefs surround Paros, one of which, Portes Rock, sank a ferry in the year 2000, drowning 80 souls. As the mountainous 9- by 13-mile shape of Paros grew from a faint blur on the horizon into a distinct landscape, Adam made out key landmarks and steered a course for Naousa Bay, on the northeastern corner of the island. At the bay’s mile-wide, north-facing entrance, they lowered the mainsail, furled the foresail, and continued under motor power.
As they crossed the broad, emerald-green bay, they watched for and carefully avoided navigation hazards. Also, they kept an eye peeled for any sign of Dogu Kubilay’s distinctive Bora, or any other terrorist boat, but saw none. Instead, luxury resorts, Greek Othodox chapels, and the picturesque ancient Greek town of Naousa lined the bay. And Sophia pointed out three sheltered nude beaches while flashing big smiles at Adam.
Adam maneuvered into the quaint, tiny, Naousa marina. Low break waters, which included the ruins of an ancient Venetian fort, protected the small harbor from large swells, but left it exposed to the fierce meltemi blasting down through the broad mouth of the bay. It being early in the day, there was lots of space at the quay. Adam turned stern-to, dropped anchor, and backed to within three feet of the stone dock and this time Sophia did the mooring lines.
Where were Dogu Kubilay and his fighters? Adam suggested Sophia send out drones to run a search, while he and Tripnee climb the mountain behind the town to scan the bay with binoculars.
“We’ll stay in touch via our earpiece radios,” he concluded. “If we see something, the drones can check it out close up.”
Sophia frowned, but said, “Sounds good.”
Adam and Tripnee packed powerful binoculars. He put his with a Glock in a day pack, while she put hers, plus her two Beretta Picos, in a fanny pack. Even though it was early morning, the rustic beach resort town of Naousa already thronged with lithe, tan Europeans.
> At an open-air restaurant on the waterfront, Adam picked up dolmas, falafel, gyro sandwiches, and a bottle of local wine. Their mission was of overarching importance, of course, but maybe with a little luck he and Tripnee could carve out some time just for themselves. An interlude to clear the air, reconnect, recharge, rekindle the fire, the magic between them. He sure needed it, and he sensed she did, as well.
Case in point: Tripnee seemed increasingly remote as they walked up through the town. Instead of feeling enchanted by the steep, narrow, marble-cobbled streets and timeless, white-walled, blue-trimmed houses, the place, the whole world felt flat and empty. As the town fell away behind them and they climbed higher and higher up the mountain, his heart just got heavier.
He said, “Let’s talk.”
“Don’t you see what’s going on?”
“Help me understand. See what?”
“We can’t trust that bitch. There’s something about her. She’s up to no good.”
“I don’t see it. Where’s the evidence?”
“I’m telling you she’s toxic, she’s covert, she’s devious.”
“How so?”
“I’ll tell you a dirty little secret: Women are just as capable of evil as men, but women are much, much better at getting away with it.”
“Can you give me specifics? Spell it out?”
“Well, for one thing, she’s playing you. Whenever you’re around, she shakes her bottom. Whenever you look her way, she arches her back to thrust out her boobs. And that damned near transparent pareo. And you eat it up.”
At that moment Adam noticed a tiny drone hovering ten feet off the ground fifteen feet away, close enough to see and hear everything. Turning so the drone couldn’t see his gestures, he put a finger to his lips and stabbed a finger toward the robo bee.
He whispered, “To be continued.”
Then something caught his attention. Off to the east, about a mile away, deep in a sheltered wing of the bay, a catamaran with the sleek lines of a Catana—a drop-dead magnificent boat—was just then gliding toward a sloop at anchor. He whipped out his binoculars. Yes. That was Dogu’s catamaran Bora, and the sloop was named the Profit. Who did Sophia say was the captain? Abdul. Abdul Husseini.
Cyclops Conspiracy: An Adam Weldon Thriller Page 6
