by Fritz Galt
He had reached a dead end. He didn’t even know that the American government had diplomats living on that speck of land. And now that he needed them, they weren’t there.
He clicked off the phone and shook his head at the others whose eyes were fixed on him. He may have accepted their challenge, but he was damned if he would bilk the Navy another $24.55 by placing another call.
The Secretary of Defense had long since put his Pentagon office far behind him for the infinitely greater tranquility of dinner and a good night’s sleep at his residence in McLean, Virginia. But it only took the Ops Center a matter of seconds to catch up with him.
Kenneth Spaulding was accustomed to receiving calls in the middle of the night. He shook off the cobwebs and reached for the secure phone installed beside his bed.
It was Lieutenant Terrence Whitcomb of the USS Endorse. “Yes, Lieutenant. Did you sink the ship?”
“Not yet, sir. We’re only now confirming its identity.”
“What? I thought you had it nailed.”
“It’s a big ocean, Mr. Secretary. We’re flying Marines over to Purang right now to check it out.”
“Purang? Don’t we have an Embassy there?”
“I’m not aware of that, Mr. Secretary.”
“Okay, I’ll get the Ops Center to track down our ambassador and have him check out the ship. Anything else?”
“Uh, no, Mr. Secretary.”
“Okay, then stick with the mission.”
Kenneth sat up beside the bed and turned on his dimmer switch to see the keypad. He pressed the Ops Center button and waited.
After identifying himself to the operator, he asked to be patched through to the Secretary of State. That took a full minute.
The wheels of government turned slowly after midnight.
Eventually, he had Secretary of State Lyle Hamilton on the horn. He explained the problem and asked the secretary to ask the embassy in Purang to check out the suspected terrorist ship and inform his point man, Whitcomb on the USS Endorse.
The moment his head hit the pillow, Kenneth fell asleep again, fully assured that the State Department wouldn’t fumble the ball.
The State Department Ops center had no more luck reaching the tiny embassy in Purang than did Seaman Anthony Carlson.
A quick check of holidays around the world revealed, however, that it was Purangian Independence Day, surely a day of celebration on the tiny island nation.
The Pacific Island Desk at the Department pulled up a cable from two days before stating the officially filed travel plans of the Embassy staff during the holiday.
According to the cable, it appeared that the ambassador and his Deputy were deep-sea fishing at the moment.
Hiram had spent many a July 4th watching the Plainfield Independence Day Parade.
He had cheered on many fire trucks polished like a new penny, balloon men pushing their carts along the curb, religious dance troupes strutting their stuff, soccer league teams dribbling down the street, flags twirling, souped-up cars flashing their lights, policemen performing figure-eights with their motorcycles, and juggling clowns on stilts. But Independence Day in Purang was a completely different thing.
First, there was the celebration of the harvest. And, as sugar cane was the primary crop, rum was the primary libation.
Rum and coke, corkscrews, daiquiris, piña coladas, rum on ice cream, pure Bacardi from the bottle.
Next came the roast boar, turning slowly on the hotel’s spit. Along with that came native Polynesian women in grass skirts swaying their hips to and fro. It made his eyes swim trying to keep up with their gyrations.
The entire island was celebrating.
Down the shore, another resort was setting off strings of firecrackers. All the fishing boats were pulled up on shore. Even the fish got a break that day.
Tiffany was dancing with the hotel staff, which seemed to have totally abandoned the restrictions of the social hierarchy. The chef was a Frenchman, and he stood out among the guests whirling around in his tall white hat.
Hiram was holding a clipboard, judging limbo contestants on the beach. Most fell flat on their backs in drunken laughter. He gave them a second chance.
Steel drums throbbed over the speakers, encouraging the dancing and limbo and general spirit of wild celebration.
A pair of guards stood stiffly at the edge of the property with flower necklaces framing their berets, shoulder boards, and frowns. Their stiff demeanor seemed at odds with the carefree atmosphere.
“Come on,” Hiram told one guard. “Lighten up. What you got heah is South Pacific!”
Then he looked up and saw what the men were watching. A cargo ship had anchored half a mile out to sea, and tiny skiffs were making their way to the island.
“Rumba!” Hiram cried, offering a bottle of rum to the approaching visitors.
Chapter 19
Sean Cooper was certainly no terrorist, but he looked the part.
Their faces grim, his shipmates were focused on the task at hand. They had the government of an island nation to overthrow in the name of Allah.
Their intensity was impressive, the muscles of their forearms twitching, their combat boots squared and ready to pounce from the ship.
As they drew near to shore, their plan of attack became more apparent to Sean. An accomplice onshore had lined up three vans to transport the invaders across the island to the capital.
But why the music? Why all the blaring loudspeakers along the shore? Perhaps the plan was to distract the unsuspecting natives.
Within a hundred yards of shore, he made out fleshy white tourists in Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts, native girls in grass skirts, and some middle-aged women trying to bend under a limbo pole. It seemed like a drunken orgy, and his fellow terrorists looked on with interest.
However, the moment their boats’ hulls struck dry sand, the terrorists were all business. They piled out in formation. Thrust forward, Sean crawled awkwardly to the front of the boat.
As soon as his bare feet struck sand, he felt a whirling sensation and almost fell backward. It was the first time he’d stood on firm ground in days. He wanted to sink to his knees and embrace the earth.
But war drums were throbbing, and like the coordinated mechanism of a clock, the terrorists divided into groups and boarded the windowless minivans. Sean looked wildly about for an avenue of escape.
“You stay with me,” the skipper told him and squeezed him into the middle of the front seat of a van. The skipper jumped behind the wheel and they peeled off down the road.
It was a left-hand drive, American model van, but the road signs faced backwards. The stop sign was on the left side of the road.
Leaving their landing crafts far behind, the terrorists zoomed past cane fields and eventually reached a two-lane road. One vehicle split off to the right, while the skipper’s van led the other van to the left into what looked like a sleepy hamlet.
They paused at a building that looked much like a mosque. It had a crescent on the dome, but none of the merrymakers out front wore religious headgear. Rather, they were dressed in party clothes. Some even toted bottles of alcohol.
Three terrorists jumped out of the rear van and scrambled, weapons pointed upward toward the building.
As the skipper pulled away, bursts of automatic gunfire ripped through the air. Crowds of people cheered along the side of the road. Perhaps they thought it was firecrackers.
You poor sops, Sean thought soberly. You don’t know what’s going down.
Hiram only realized that something was truly amiss when he made out the guns on the landing crafts.
The three groups of men poised to spring from the boats were armed to the teeth. Their battle fatigues, ammo belts, helmets and AK-47s were like a scene out of a war movie, completely out of context during Purang’s Independence Day celebrations.
At first he thought they might be part of a reenactment of the liberation of Purang. He checked the shoreline. He would have expected onlook
ers to line the shore in order to witness the event, perhaps taking a snapshot or two.
Instead, only three white vans with no markings were waiting for the soldiers.
“Is that your army?” he asked one of the guards, whose large eyes were following the scene.
“No. We don’t have an army,” he said.
Then abruptly, the two guards ducked and ran to the edge of the beachfront property and took up defensive positions along a property line, defined only by hedges. They held up wooden sticks in self-defense.
“Tiffany!” Hiram shouted to his wife.
She couldn’t hear him over all the noise and dance music. He watched her shake her booty with the hotel staff. Let her enjoy herself until he had a chance to check things out.
He raced back to their hotel room, which they customarily left unlocked in the informal atmosphere of island life. There he found the number of the local police in the phone book and dialed them.
“Hello,” a cheery voice responded. There was music in the background.
“Yeah, is this the Purang police department?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m calling from the Sandalwood Resort. I just sawr several motorboats, you know, land on the island from a freightah off shore. The men were all packing machine guns.”
“I don’t believe that’s possible, sir.”
“No, I just sawr them with my own eyes. They landed and drove away in three white vans. Were you expecting them guys?”
“Not to my knowledge. Sir, have you been drinking?”
“Of course. But I’m telling you, I saw it for real. And they looked like mercenaries. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Well, we’ll check it out. Thanks for ringing.”
Hiram hung up the phone, unconvinced that the man had any intention of checking it out. And given the diminutive size of the island, he might have been speaking with the entire police force.
Suddenly, the island getaway seemed frighteningly vulnerable. He checked the zippered compartment of his suitcase. His airplane tickets were still there. Given the price he paid for them, surely they were not restricted by date. Perhaps he and Tiffany could make a break for the airport and catch an earlier flight.
Their three-week vacation would be cut short to a mere three days.
As he sat on the edge of his bed in the darkened room, his mind roamed over the various facilities in town. What were the mercenaries going after?
The American Embassy? That would be an easy target if they were terrorists.
He fumbled through the telephone directory and found the number for the American Embassy.
He dialed them at once.
The phone rang for a full minute and nobody answered. Of course, it was a national holiday. Nobody was at work!
He had to get Tiffany to the airport.
Throwing every loose scrap of clothing and their toiletries into their suitcases, he cleared out their hotel room.
It was a struggle to zip the luggage closed.
“Tiffany!” he called out the open door. Of course she couldn’t hear him.
He lugged the two enormous suitcases out onto the patio. He couldn’t see his wife from there. Struggling, he entered a narrow pathway that cut through bushes, hiked over an arched bridge, and stumbled through some fan palms to the dance area.
He dropped the suitcases and called again. “Tiffany, come heah. We gotta leave!”
She turned and spotted him. Her jaw fell open. “Rammy, what are you doing?”
He motioned for her to follow him, and he wheeled around and began hauling the suitcases back to the lobby.
She caught up with him in a matter of seconds.
“Hiram. What on God’s green earth are you trying to do? Have you completely lost your mind?”
“Sweetie, we got ourselves terrorists on this heah island. We gotta get to the airport right away.”
“Are you hallucinating? I don’t see any terrorists.”
“I sawr them there on the beach. I tell you, they’re invading the island.”
“Oh, Rammy,” she said, her face suddenly transformed with compassion. She wiped the sweat from his forehead. “You’ve been worrying too much. There are no terrorists here. That was in New York.”
He wasn’t getting through to her. Much as he had resisted the inclination all his life, it was time to play the dominant male.
“I’m leaving, and you’re coming with me.”
Horror seemed to grip her. Then tears. He was going to ruin their vacation!
For a moment, he saw the folly in that. Hell, even if there were terrorists, it was happening all over the world, right? What was wrong with a little terrorism on Purang? The hotel had its own guards.
Then the instinct for flight took over again.
“Sweetie, they snatch average people off the beach. They lop off their heads and leave them for dead in the jungle. That’s what we’re looking at.”
Sobbing, she fell against him. She beat against his large chest with her tiny fists. “I don’t want this. I can’t take this anymore.”
He looked around frantically. He seemed to be the only one who was panicking. Maybe it was better not to fly off the handle.
“Okay look, Sweetie,” he said, finally relenting. He spaced out his words as if talking to a child. “Let me take you back to the bar. There you can be happy, listen to the music, and let me just check things out a little.”
She looked yearningly at the pool bar alongside the beach.
“Okay,” she said in a small voice.
He grasped her by her shaking shoulders and guided her past the pool to a barstool. “Now, what will you have?”
Her eyes were wide open, but she didn’t seem to be seeing anything.
“She’ll have one of those coconut drinks with seltzer,” he told the bartender. “And talk to her, will you?”
He felt bad about leaving her, but a quick scan of the beach told him that the soldiers were no longer marauding along the sands.
He hustled the suitcases back into his room and made for the front desk.
“So what have you heard about the attack?” he asked the young Purangian woman behind the desk.
She looked thrown by the question.
“What, don’t you have radios?” he asked.
She pointed to a portable radio behind her.
“Good. Now tune in the local news report and tell the guards what you heah. I’m telling you, there are soldiers on this heah island.”
She stared at him, her eyes wide.
“Will you do it?” he thundered, then hurried for the doorman. “Go scrounge up a bunch of guards,” he told the man.
The man went away, and Hiram jumped behind the wheel of the hotel’s official car. He stared at the steering wheel. Everything was backward. Even the keys dangling from the ignition were on the left side of the steering column. What about all those who were right-handed? And who left their keys in the car anyway? Suddenly, the lax security of the island had a disturbing effect on him. The island was wide open for attack.
The two guards from the beach rushed up. “Jump in heah,” Hiram yelled. “We gotta wake up the cops.”
He scooted over and let one of the guards take the wheel.
Shortly, they were off, weaving through a cane field. Then Hiram gritted his teeth. A white van was careening down the middle of the road right at them.
Lieutenant Terry Whitcomb felt like he was in the hot seat, wedged between the Secretary of Defense, the State Department and the USS Stuart. He was the pivot man in the operation to take out the terrorists. He hadn’t heard back from the Secretary of Defense in half an hour and was nervously picking at his nails. The operation wasn’t moving ahead, and he felt responsible. What was he to do?
He phoned the USS Stuart to see if they had received any instructions from Washington.
Like him, they had heard nothing from the Pentagon. But the chopper full of Marines had arrived on the Stuart, and the Marines were stand
ing by while the helicopter underwent weapons checks and refueling.
Just then, Terry heard a beep on the line from another call. “Can you hold on?”
He switched from the USS Stuart to the other line.
“This is the State Department Ops Center,” a man said. “We are unable to contact our Embassy in Purang. I’m afraid nobody’s answering the phone over there. We’ll have to rely on you to send over a plane and make visual contact with the ship. I’m sorry that we can’t be of any help.”
“Thanks anyway.” Terry managed to say. Useless pinstriped twerps. He switched back to the USS Stuart.
“Nobody in Washington can identify the ship,” he said. “You’re gonna have to go in and investigate. Apparently Sean Cooper is among the terrorists, and we have permission to take him out. In fact it sounded more like an order.”
“Roger that.”
And that was the last Terry Whitcomb heard from the Stuart.
He sat back and caught his breath. Had he just given the Marines the go-ahead to kill Cooper?
Hiram stared at the white van bearing down on their hotel car. Couldn’t the van stay on its own side of the road?
For his part, the guard at the wheel wasn’t doing much to avoid the impending collision. If anything, he was ensuring their demise by frantically weaving all over the road.
The white van had no way to avoid them.
“Don’t you know how to drive?” Hiram yelled. “Stay left.”
“I’ve never driven before,” the guard confessed, gunning the engine when he should have been hitting the brakes.
The van had no way to squeak through. Both drivers jerked their steering wheels too hard and too late, and they rammed broadside into each other. The result was catastrophic.
Metal slammed against metal in a thunderous impact that ripped Hiram’s seatbelt clear out of the seat.
He was aware of sliding across asphalt on a sheet of metal that created a shower of sparks. Behind him, debris from the vehicles scattered in all directions, squealing and rubbing auto parts, tumbling bodies and exploding shards of glass.
