Cyclops Conspiracy: An Adam Weldon Thriller

by William McGinnis

  As Helios pulled away, the fastest terrorist runner leapt from the quay and caught the stern rail. Adam grabbed a winch lever. Taking aim, he sent the heavy, two-foot metal bar flying at the guy’s head, clobbering him in the temple, toppling him into the bay.

  Bullets continued to fly. Jihadis scrambled over the two neighboring boats, racing to catch up as Helios surged out from between them. One man with the agility of an NFL broken field runner darted along the deck of the boat on Helios’ port side, caught up, jumped, hoisted himself up over the portside stern, and pulled out a pistol. As the boarder swung the gun up, Adam sent a six-foot wooden boat hook deep into his left eye, tipping him back into the water, screaming.

  Two hundred yards out, the caique slowed and spun 180 degrees. Of course; the anchor was forcing the boat to rotate. The good thing was, as the ship turned, Adam’s position in the stern became less exposed. With the bow pointed toward the quay and the cabin between him and the terrorist’s guns, he rose up enough to reverse the engine and activate the windlass to bring up the anchor. As soon as the hook came off the bottom, the ship raced backward, accelerating away from the quay.

  But the terrorists swarmed aboard the two neighboring boats, cast off lines, and came after him, guns blazing. So much for being covert. Where the hell were the Greek police and coast guard? Clearly, the Greek authorities weren’t going to be any help. At least in the short run.

  Not wanting to slow down to turn around while in gun range, Adam continued flooring it in reverse. He had never experienced anything like the power of the Helios engine, especially on a sailboat. Roxanna and the Cyclops crew had transformed the old caique into something akin to a super-fast cigarette boat. Ha. They had to be pissed now, as they watched Adam spin the stern to starboard, throw the throttle full forward, and race bow-first from Ormos Milou out onto the windswept Aegean.

  Uh-oh. Instead of being left in the dust and disappearing in the distance, the two jihadi boats gave chase with a vengeance. Adam had the engine thundering, pushed to its max with throttle wide open, but the terrorists were keeping up. Can’t lead them back to Dream Voyager. So, he turned in the opposite direction, heading west. Milos was the southwestern-most island of the Cyclades. Ahead, to the west, was wide open sea. Nothing for eighty miles until you came to the Peloponnesian Peninsula.

  He found a pair of range-finder binoculars and studied his pursuers. Helios had incredible speed, but so did they. As he scanned the scene behind him, his heart sank even further. A third boat had joined the other two. Then he saw a fourth. All moving with amazing speed. All slowly gaining on him.

  Not good. Not good at all. Adam turned on Helios’ VHF marine radio and sent out an SOS. Over and over. “Mayday. Mayday. I’m under attack. I repeat, I’m under attack.” He repeated Helios’ description, location, direction, and speed. Pled over and over for emergency help. But there was no response. Where was the Greek Coast Guard? Where was anybody? This was modern day Greece. How could this be?

  Well, if he couldn’t get help, and he couldn’t outrun his pursuers, he’d have to figure out some other way to survive.

  First, he activated the autopilot on a heading of due west, with the engine cranked wide open to the max. Next, he pulled line from a deck locker and secured the three unconscious terrorists, binding their hands and feet behind their backs and locking them in separate cabins. Helios, he found, had an abundance of below-the-waterline cabins well-suited to locking people up.

  Then, in between frequent dashes up to the wheel to keep tabs on his pursuers, he searched the ship from main deck to bilges, from stem to stern. He had to take stock of his situation, see what he had to work with.

  Helios was an oddball combination of old and new. Its two masts and long, but narrow hull, were crafted of fine hardwood using centuries-old methods. Yet its electronics and engine were state-of-the-art. The Raymarine radar screen—when he switched it on—showed his pursuers slowly closing in with terrible clarity.

  The ship’s power plant was out of this world. A Vericor TS50 gas turbine 36,000-horsepower Rolls Royce engine fed enormous Kamiwa water jets, essentially turning Helios into a giant jet ski. Unfortunately, the terrorist’s boats hot on his tail apparently had something even better.

  He found three cabins filled to their ceilings with weapons and cash galore. Enough to execute and finance a small war. One cabin was crammed full of what appeared to be ancient Greek art and antiquities.

  He discovered and put on long pants and a jacket that fit him in another cabin, but no shoes. He also found his earpiece headset. Pulling it on, he tried calling Tripnee and Sophia, but got no answer.

  In a crawl space on the ship’s lowest level, he almost overlooked a cleverly concealed compartment built into the ship’s massive keel. Using a pry bar, and a hammer and chisel from a workbench in the engine room, he forced it open and voila! Amazing: three suitcase nuclear weapons.

  Talk about overconfidence. The Cyclopeans had been stupid to keep three nukes on the boat they were using as bait. So now he had them. But for how long? Ever the optimist—after all, what was the alternative? Give up?—he jammed the bombs into a big duffle bag, which he lugged up into the ship’s main salon. He resolved not to let the devices fall back into the clutches of the terrorists. No matter what.

  Up on deck, he frowned. The meltemi was blasting at 30 knots and rising. Big, steep, wind-driven rollers marched down out of the north. The four Cyclopean boats pounded through the rough sea, drawing closer and closer. Try as he might, Adam couldn’t outrun them. What was he going to do?

  Suddenly, without warning, a rogue wave six or seven times the size of those around it rose up and slammed his starboard side, inundating the entire deck, rolling Helios onto its beam ends, flat on its side. Immersed in flying spume, Adam fell down and down through the foam. The ship’s wheel, instruments, winches and cockpit flew by—until he slammed into the far portside railing. Underwater, he seized the lifeline and held on for dear life. Would the boat right itself? At last, yes, the long, narrow hull rolled right-side up. Stunned and bruised, but okay, he gave thanks he had not gone overboard. Was he lucky or what?

  Helios was a mess. Everything not tied down throughout the ship had gone flying. Chagrined that he had not done so earlier, Adam dug through lockers until he found a life jacket, harness, and tether. Putting these on and clipping himself to the binnacle, he breathed easier.

  Helios continued to crash forward toward the western horizon. Riding his bucking, stolen ship, he braced himself and clung to the binnacle as, like a living beast, it jumped and dove, now half submerged, now leaping skyward. He looked out across marching, cresting, relentlessly oncoming rollers stretching to the horizon. With heart pounding and fear dancing up his spine, he was—amazingly yet undeniably—thrilled to be there, elated to be alive.

  Hey, did that wave capsize or at least slow his pursuers? He looked back through the spray-filled sea scape. There they were, still right-side up, still racing toward him, getting ever closer.

  He forged on, desperately casting about for some way to survive. The boat stayed upright, bucking through the waves. But the terrorists kept closing the distance, until they breathed down his neck just a quarter mile back.

  It was then that Adam glimpsed the hazy outline of land ahead. Coming into view in the distance was the fortified medieval city of Monemvasia. He’d read about the place. Fascinated, he studied it through powerful binoculars. Ah-ha! The seed of an idea came to him. At first it scratched hesitantly at the back of his mind, then popped up fully planned.

  At that moment his headset came to life. It was Tripnee and Sophia.

  “We saw you tear out of Milos on Helios. Are you okay?”

  “What about you? Are you okay?”

  The women told him how they’d created the diversion that had enabled Adam to get loose and steal away on Helios. After explaining his situation, he told them about his idea and they made a plan. Desperate, crazy, and for him probably suicidal. But he gri
nned. At least he’d go down fighting.

  Monemvasia was a towering island mountain fortress connected to the Peloponnesian mainland by a single narrow half-mile-long causeway. The very name said it all—and had given him his idea: monem meant single, and vasia meant entry. Single entry. The ancient city was built up the side and on top of a massive steep-sided mountain that jabbed up like a great thumb out of the Aegean. Once the westernmost outpost of the Byzantine Empire, the fortress could be approached only one way: via the narrow causeway and through a single gate. He remembered reading that nine hundred years earlier the causeway had had a drawbridge. Now the drawbridge was no more, but the gate remained.

  The crucial, amazing thing was, in ancient times a handful of monks had been able to hold off whole attacking armies in Monemvasia. He just might have a chance to do the same, if he could close that gate in time.

  Keeping the engines at full throttle, he adjusted the auto pilot to send Helios in an arc around to the south. Then he raced below on bare feet to frantically fill duffle bags with a few select weapons, a whole lot of ammo and a laptop with who-knew-what crucial intel. Returning to the wheel, he made one final adjustment to the auto pilot, then he plopped down on the deck with his back to the cabin bulkhead, bracing for impact, the nukes, weapons, and ammo beside him.

  Chapter 24

  The Standoff

  T he hundred-eighteen-foot ship slammed into the rocky shore—and kept going. In a cacophony of crashing and splintering, the ship’s underbelly stove in, grinding into debris, while the high bow, upper hull, deck, masts, and superstructure clung together and, shrieking in a death scream, thundered up the slope onto the causeway. Finally, its tremendous momentum spent, the hulk came to rest astride the narrow spit of land halfway between the Peloponnese mainland and the island mountain fortress.

  One thing for sure: This boat wouldn’t be going on any more terrorist missions.

  The moment Helios came to rest, Adam strapped the bag of nukes on his back, grabbed the duffle bags crammed with weapons, tools, and ammo, and jumped off the broken hulk. Sharp, loose stones covering the roadway cut into his bare feet. Ignoring the pain, he ran as fast as he could toward Monemvasia.

  The final hundred yards of the approach road squeezed between surging waves on one side and a towering vertical cliff on the other. Then it came to a stone archway and entry tunnel with a massive open iron gate. The ancient door looked like it hadn’t been closed in centuries, its colossal hinges frozen solid. Fortunately, he had tools: the pry bar, and a hammer and chisel off Helios. It was also lucky that the terrorists pursuing him would be slowed by having to circle clear around to the quay on the north side of the causeway in Monemvasia Bay, the nearest mooring. But that wouldn’t delay them for long.

  He set to work with the pry bar, which was long and stout. Give me a big enough lever and I’ll move the earth. He pried at the gate by wedging in the tip of the bar, feet planted on the wall, hands gripping the bar, and his body horizontal, he strained until the veins popped out of his arms, back and legs, until his muscles quivered with effort. But the gate didn’t budge. Then he banged away with sledge hammer and chisel. Huge, powerful blows. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Nothing. With time running out, his shaky plan seemed doomed. If he couldn’t close this rusty old portal, both he and his plan were kaput. Sweat poured off his face and torso, while cold spread through his gut.

  Then an idea came to him. He dug into a duffle and pulled out two grenades. He jammed one high and one low between the colossal door and the rock wall behind it, and pulled the pins—making sure to do so simultaneously—and quickly ducked around a corner out of blast range. Ka-blam! Voilà. The gate swung free. Adam pushed it closed and dropped an ancient crossbar in place to hold it shut.

  Gathering up the duffles, he hastened on into the Byzantine city, which seemed eerily deserted. Just like with the gunfights at Kalamaki and Milos, people here were quick to disappear. Was it his imagination or was there an underlying tension in the air? An awareness the world had become a dangerous powder keg. An ever-present fear that any place, at any time, could suddenly be transformed into a war zone—by an explosion, a truck slamming into a crowd, or a ship crashing ashore with terrorists in hot pursuit. And where the hell were the Greek authorities? Hiding like everyone else? Maybe somehow in on it?

  Adam ran up a narrow, meandering street of time-polished marble. At last, something that felt good on his tender feet. Empty cafés, hotels, tavernas, and curio shops occupied ancient cave-like spaces carved into the mountain. He ran on, struggling under his load. Time was running out.

  Then: Holy Byzantine mackerel! Just what he needed: a four-wheeled motorcycle with a luggage rack. A game-changer. No ignition key. But he hadn’t gone through black ops training for nothing. He threw his gear on the rack and set to work hot-wiring the ignition. In two minutes, the quad bike roared to life, and he was off, rolling past Byzantine churches, climbing meandering streets, working his way up the mountain. As he went, he keyed his radio, trying to reach Tripnee and Sophia, with no luck.

  In minutes, he peered down from the mountaintop overlooking the causeway and approach road. Three of the boats had already docked at the quay jutting north from the causeway, their crews even then swarming over the hulk of Helios and headed for the iron gate.

  It must have been at this very spot in centuries past that stalwart monks had successfully defended Monemvasia against entire armies, shooting crossbows, pouring caldrons of boiling oil, hurling rocks, rolling down boulders. They’d been so successful the stronghold had never been taken in battle. Adam, of course, was just one man. But he had some duffle bags.

  He activated his radio again and tried to contact Tripnee and Sophia, but still got no answer. Without them, he—and his plan—were doomed. But he could at least take a whole lot of terrorists down with him. Ignoring the pain of his now bloody feet on the craggy mountaintop, he crept to a place of concealment that had good visibility, where he laid out weapons, clips of ammo, and grenades.

  Jihadis ran toward the gate far below, several yelling Allahu Akbar! Seeing about a half dozen bunch up in front of the gate, he lobbed a grenade straight down into their midst. Ka-blam. Peering down, he saw torn bodies strewn about, some screaming, others dead as doornails.

  Attackers farther back took cover, ducking behind rocks and a concrete block structure at water’s edge. Adam picked up an AK-47. With single, careful shots, he picked off first one, then another, then a third.

  Jihadis took aim and fired up at him, their bullets missing by inches, one parting his hair. But he persisted. Keeping low, using the cover of the rocks, shooting carefully, he kept the attackers pinned down and stopped their advance.

  It was a Mexican standoff for several hours, but the sun was sinking fast. Once darkness fell, how was he going to hold them off? One of the items he had grabbed on Helios was an old, rather crummy night-vision monocle, which was better than nothing, but not by much. Very likely, unless the Greek police or military showed up, it was only a matter of time before he was overrun.

  Speaking of Greek authorities, where the hell were they? Hey, a line of vehicles was rolling along the causeway, coming out from the distant mainland. Four big, serious-looking SUVs. Adam’s spirits lifted. Help had arrived. Although the cars had no official markings, they had an air of, what? Authority, organization, and purpose. The official-looking caravan stopped at the quay, just out of AK-47 range, and disgorged, uh-oh, twenty or so more terrorists.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, right then, in the darkening twilight, a fourth boat—and soon a fifth, and then a sixth—docked at the quay, all loaded with armed fighters, clearly not friendlies. An opaque darkness descended. Squinting through the low-budget night-vision monocle, he made out vague shapes moving about, getting ready.

  Testing the range of the AK-47, Adam let loose a fierce barrage at the quay, the boats, the vehicles. As he burned through clip after clip, most of his bullets fell short, but a few of his rounds found targ
ets, which seemed to slow the activity on the quay and around the cars. Or had they just become more stealthy?

  Movement. Down on the road approaching the gate. Adam moved to a place where he could peer straight down on the road. No sooner had he changed locations, than a small rocket, probably a rocket-propelled grenade, streaked up and exploded in the spot where he’d been moments before.

  Adam emptied three clips of ammo into the spot from which the rocket had been launched. Then, quickly, he moved a second time. And thank God. Three RPG rockets, coming from three different launch points, shot up and exploded where he’d been seconds before.

  Then three rockets hit the gate. The fiery explosions lit up the scene far below and rattled the base of the mountain. But the mammoth old gate held.

  Adam let loose several full clips down at the rocket launch points and then jumped to a new location on the clifftop. The reply was swift. More rockets blasted his previous location, engulfing it in flames.

  More rockets hit the gate. One, two, three, four. But, by the light of the flames, he saw it was still there. They sure don’t make gates like that anymore. Adam’s gaze hardened and his heart sank. As more and more rockets streaked in to pound the ancient portal, inevitably, eventually, something had to give. It was the hinges. First the top one gave way, then the bottom, then the middle.

  Fighters swarmed forward, charging the gate. Adam threw his last remaining grenades and risked a quick burst from his AK-47 to slow them down, but soon two missiles shot toward him. He jumped right and they went wide to his left. But he knew he was done for. The RPG launchers had figured out their timing. Now that the entry was breached, they sat there ready, poised but holding their fire, just waiting for him to reveal his location. Without doubt, his next blast from the AK-47 would be his last. Well, so be it. Go down fighting. In preparation for the end, for his final battle, he opened the cases of the three nukes next to him, so any blast that killed him would render them inoperable.