Allah's Scorpion

by David Hagberg

  “Sometime this morning, I think.”

  “Okay, sit tight, I’ll get back to you.”

  Gloria broke the connection, laid the phone on the bedside table, and looked out the window toward the bay and the ferry landing. One of her senior instructors at the Farm had told the small graduating class that sooner or later every field officer comes to the point in their career when they question their validity. The good ones keep asking, “Am I making a difference?” but the bad ones stop caring. In reality, the really bad ones sold out—like Aldrich Ames had to the Russians for nearly five million dollars. Or they ate the bullet. Suicide was more of an occupational hazard in the intelligence community than death at the hands of your enemy. Bob had been one of the exceptions.

  The CIA had been on a quiet but intense worldwide hunt for Osama bin Laden for sixteen months, ever since Don Hamel had been appointed the new director of National Intelligence. Bin Laden’s capture or assassination would serve as a showpiece for the supposedly overhauled U.S. intelligence system. All fifteen intel agencies, including Homeland Security, the FBI, and the military units, were in on the hunt. But the CIA had taken the lead.

  There were more than one thousand al-Quaida fighters in U.S. custody, some of them in Afghanistan and Iraq, but many of them here in Camp Delta. Gloria and Talarico had been sent down to chase a few leads they’d unearthed last month in Afghanistan. Three al-Quaida messengers, who might have clues to bin Laden’s whereabouts, had supposedly been arrested last year, and were being held here. But the three had come in as Unidentified Alien Combatants along with several hundred other UACs.

  Gloria had a hunch that they’d somehow been tipped off that the CIA was closing in on them, their transfer to Echo along with two others had been arranged, and an al-Quaida incursion squad had been sent to get them out or kill them.

  It was a pretty morning outside. Just across the bay, past the airfield, the western fence separated this base from her homeland. There were times when she missed her childhood with her mother and father. She’d been an only child, and doted upon. But that was dead and buried forever. There was no peace here now. The tropical sun was shining, the trade wind breezes were blowing just as they had yesterday, only this morning her partner was dead, and his blood was on her hands.

  She closed her eyes and began to cry silently, something she hadn’t done since her mother’s death.

  In addition to the five hundred prisoners, nearly three thousand military personnel, dependents, and civilian contractors were housed on the base. The navy hospital, which served them, was very much like a small county general medical center, taking care of everything from sprained ankles to birthing babies. It was noisy around the clock; nurses checking on their patients, televisions and radios playing, and announcements coming over the PA system.

  A few minutes after eleven, Lieutenant Commander Weiss, looking sharp in his summer undress whites, showed up at Gloria’s door, his hat in hand. He was angry. “Nice night of work, Ms. Ibenez. The body count was sure as hell impressive.”

  “I think you guys call operations like that a cluster fuck,” Gloria said. She was done crying for now. But there’d be more when she spoke to Bob’s widow, Toni, and saw the kids.

  “That’s about what General Maddox said to me this morning,” Weiss said. He came the rest of the way in the room and closed the door, but didn’t come closer than the end of the bed. He didn’t want to get contaminated. “What were you thinking?”

  “We stumbled into the middle of a prison break, I called it in, and we went after them,” Gloria said. “Anyway, who were those guys?”

  “Suspected al-Quaida,” Weiss replied tightly. It was obvious he was holding his temper in check.

  “Was that why they were being held in Echo?” Gloria shot back. She knew why Weiss had come to see her, and it wasn’t to find out how she was faring.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “That’s exactly my business, Commander.”

  “Cuban television is all over this deal of yours like stink on shit,” Weiss said. “They’re reporting that our people opened fire on nine unarmed prisoners. They’re calling it a massacre, and The New York Times, The Washington Post, and just about every other fucking news organization in the world has shown up in San Juan wanting permission to come here.”

  “They must have had help,” Gloria said.

  Weiss’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “They knew that the Frontier Brigade would be on the opposite side of the base making a racket, which gave them a clear shot at coming ashore, which means at the very least they had the Cubans on their side. But how’d they get past the tower guard?”

  “They took him out. One shot to the head.”

  “No one heard anything?”

  “There was a lot of noise,” Weiss replied, his lips compressed.

  Gloria felt a bit of compassion for him. Although the Army MPs ran Delta and the other detention centers, the overall security and intelligence mission belonged to the Office of Naval Intelligence, and Weiss was the officer in charge. Last night’s fiasco had definitely landed on his lap, and he’d already felt a lot of heat, with a whole bunch more to come. “I’m sorry, Commander, but I didn’t make last night happen. Bob and I just stumbled into it.”

  “And you got him killed, Ibenez,” Weiss said. “What the hell were you doing up there at that hour of the night? There weren’t any interrogations on the schedule.”

  Gloria refused to look away, even though her innards were roiling, and she kept seeing Bob’s face in death. “I had a hunch.”

  “About what?”

  “The Cuban probe on the perimeter went on longer than normal, it was way up north, well away from Delta, and it was happening in the middle of the night.”

  Weiss was looking at her as if he was watching a lunatic who was babbling nonsense and didn’t know any better.

  “I think that Bob and I might have been made, our mission compromised.”

  Weiss nodded as if he’d come to a conclusion. “One of the prisoners realized that you were CIA, made a quick phone call to bin Laden himself, and in just ten days arranged an attack on the base so that you and your partner could get in the middle of it and be taken out.” He smiled. “Have I covered everything?”

  “Don’t be an asshole,” Gloria flared. “You know goddamned well that there’ve been unauthorized sat phone emissions out of here.”

  “Not for the last ninety days.”

  She reached for her satellite phone on the nightstand. “Maybe you missed one.”

  “No,” Weiss said flatly. “We picked up your encrypted transmission a couple hours ago. I just came over to tell you that you’ll be leaving on the first available transport.”

  “You don’t have that authority.”

  “General Maddox does,” Weiss said. “I’ll talk to your doctor about releasing you this morning. Short of that I can arrange a medevac back to Washington. But you’re out of here today. Get back to the BOQ, pack your things, and go home, and let us do our job.”

  Weiss turned to go, but Gloria sat up. “Why those specific prisoners? And why were they killed?”

  “I don’t know yet, but we’re looking into it,” Weiss said. He shrugged. “Who the fuck knows what those people are thinking?” He gave her a baleful look. “While you’re at it, you’d best pack Talarico’s things as well. His widow will probably want them.”

  After Weiss left, Gloria telephoned Rencke again, to tell him that she would be ordered out of Gitmo sometime today.

  “Adkins thinks it’s for the best,” Rencke agreed. “I’m going to take a quick peek into ONI’s system to see what shakes loose.”

  “See if you can find out who the five prisoners were in Echo, and why they’d been transferred out of Delta, if that’s where they came from. Al-Quaida was concerned enough to spring them, and yet they didn’t want those guys recaptured.”

  “Interesting question.”

&nb
sp; “Yeah,” Gloria said. “Maybe we were closer than we thought.”

  FOUR

  APURTO DEVLÁN, MARACAIBO VENSPORT PETROLEUM LOADING FACILITY 39A

  Graham stepped down from the helicopter onto the loading deck amidships well forward of the aft superstructure. This was the only place anywhere aboard ship that was clear of the maze of cargo transfer and management piping for a helicopter to land. A young Filipino AB in dark blue coveralls was standing by to help with the captain’s luggage. He handed Graham a hard hat, which everyone wore on deck while in port.

  As the crewman was pulling Graham’s things from the storage compartment, a slightly built man, his head shaved, his features dark, came out of the superstructure and quickly made his way forward. He was dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt and blue jeans.

  “Mr. Slavin?” he shouted over the noise of the helicopter’s rotors. His Hispanic accent, which Graham could not place, was very strong.

  “That’s correct.”

  “I’m Jaime Vasquez, I’m your first officer.” They shook hands. “Welcome aboard, sir.”

  The crewman headed aft with the bags, and Graham led Vasquez away from the helicopter, which immediately took off with a loud roar and strong downdraft. Graham had to hold on to his hard hat so it wouldn’t blow away.

  “Where is your hard hat, Mr. Vasquez?” he asked in neutral tone once the helicopter was gone.

  “We finished our loading procedures last night, and the ship is ready for sea, sir. I didn’t think it was necessary.”

  “The AB who came to get my luggage brought me a hard hat. Apparently he’s more mindful of company regulations than you are.” Graham’s Russian accent was credible. He’d practiced for the past few months with a mujahideen from Tajikistan, and he could speak a few phrases. But the lingua franca aboard was English, because the Apurto Devlán, like most oceangoing cargo ships, employed many different nationalities. As long as there were no real Russians among the officers or crewmen he’d have to interact with, he would pass.

  “Would you like me to return to my quarters to get mine, sir?” Vasquez asked. He was wary, but the corners of his narrow mouth wanted to turn up in a smile, as if he thought the new captain might be pulling his leg.

  Graham fixed him with a penetrating gaze for several beats, but then shook his head. “In the future I expect my officers to set an example for the rest of the crew. At all times. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly. Won’t happen again.”

  “See that it does not,” Graham said. He glanced at his watch. It was just eight thirty. “I’ll have my things stowed in twenty minutes. I want you and my officers, including my chief engineer, in my sitting room at oh-eight-fifty. I’ll brief you and then we’ll make an inspection tour. I would like to be under way at ten hundred hours. Precisely. Vy pahnemayeteh myenyah? Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Vasquez said. “May I show you to your quarters?”

  “Nyet, it’s not necessary,” Graham said. “Oh, and bring the crew’s personnel records, if you please. All the records, including yours.”

  The Apurto Devlán was 900 feet long at the loaded waterline with a beam of 110 feet. She was rated Panamax, the largest class of ships that could transit the Panama Canal, the limiting factor in her case being her width. Under extreme circumstances, her highly automated systems would allow her to be maneuvered by as few as five seamen plus the skipper. Normally her complement was twenty-four officers and crew, but for this trip she was shorthanded with nineteen crew and officers, which included a cook, a cook’s assistant, and two female stewards, plus the captain.

  All the way aft was the superstructure, which rose sixty feet above the main deck, and housed the crew’s living quarters and recreation dayroom, the galley, mess, and pantries, and the small first-aid station. The uppermost decks housed the quarters for the ship’s first, second, and third officers, the chief engineer and his assistant, and the officers’ combined mess and wardroom. The uppermost deck contained the bridge; wing lookouts; a combined chart room and radio room, which contained the ship’s gyros and repeaters for all the electronic instruments used for navigation; and the captain’s relatively luxurious quarters, which consisted of a bedroom, a large bathroom, and separate sitting room. Just behind the bridge were the captain’s sea quarters where he bunked in emergencies when his presence was required around the clock, and which doubled as the ship’s office when customs and immigration officials came to inspect the ship’s papers and issue sailing clearances.

  Directly below the superstructure were the engineering spaces where the ship’s two gas turbine engines were housed. The Apurto Devlán was less than five years old. She had been constructed in Cherbourg, France, and outfitted with the latest machinery and electronics, which not only took up less space, leaving more room for product, but which allowed the ship to make very fast, very safe transits with less crew, thus maximizing profit for GAC.

  “My engines are in top form,” Chief Engineer Hiboshi Kiosawa told Graham. He was a very small, slightly built man, dressed this morning in spotless white coveralls, a very large smile on his narrow face. The ship’s gas turbines had been built by Mitsubishi, the first marine engines the Japanese corporation had ever designed, and Kiosawa was justifiably proud. Most oil tankers were powered by single slow-turning diesels.

  Vasquez had brought the personnel files, which he laid on the table in Graham’s sitting room, and then had introduced the chief engineer; First Engineering Officer Peter Weizenegger; Second Officer William Sozansky; and Third Officer George Novak.

  “Gentlemen, I expect a quick, trouble-free passage,” Graham said. “What about our product load?”

  “We have aboard fifty-two thousand long tons as of midnight that gives us a draft of thirty-seven feet, maximum for the canal,” Kiosawa said. His assistant engineer doubled as loadmaster while in port, but the ultimate responsibility lay with the chief engineer, who answered directly to the captain.

  “Fire suppression?”

  “All tanks have been topped and capped.”

  They were carrying light sweet crude that constantly evaporated a host of complex hydrocarbons, all of which were extremely flammable or even explosive. Once the product had been loaded into the ship’s twelve separate cargo oil tanks, inert nitrogen gas was pumped in to replace the air in any free spaces, and the compartments were sealed. Even if a blowtorch were to be lit inside one of the tanks, nothing would happen. There was no oxygen to support a fire or explosion.

  “All notices to mariners have been noted and logged?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sozansky said. His primary duty was navigation officer.

  “Diagnostics have been conducted on all our electronic equipment, including radar?”

  “Yes, sir,” Kiosawa said. “We are ready in all respects for sea.”

  “Very well,” Graham said. Oil tankers were infinitely less complex than the Trafalgar Class nuclear-powered submarines he had commanded in the Royal Navy. And with a crew of only nineteen aboard versus seven times as many to operate a submarine, personnel problems would be infinitely less complex.

  In any event, before the Apurto Devlán left the second Gatun lock she would be a ghost ship, with a dead crew and no skipper. The ultimate solution to insubordination and dissention.

  Graham smiled, and his officers visibly relaxed. “I would like to see my ship.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vasquez said. “Would you like to start with the product spaces, or the engines?”

  “First I want to meet the rest of my crew, and inspect their quarters and workstations.”

  “Sir?”

  “Without them, Mr. Vasquez, we’d never leave the dock,” Graham said. He glanced at his chief engineer and other officers. “The heart of any ship is her people, not her engines, don’t you agree?”

  “Naturally,” Vasquez agreed.

  “Very well, everyone but Mr. Vasquez will return to work, we get under way at ten hundred.”

 
His officers nodded and left.

  Starting three decks down, Vasquez led Graham on a quick tour of the crew’s quarters and mess. None of the twelve men and two women would be off duty now until they got under way, and started ship’s-at-sea routine of six hours on, four hours off, six hours on, and eight hours off.

  In addition to the five officers, there were fourteen in the crew: three in engineering under Kiosawa, and the rest, seven able-bodied seamen, the cook and his assistant, and two stewards under Vasquez. Their sleeping quarters were grouped together down the main athwartships alleyway on B deck, with direct access to the stairways and the port and starboard deck hatches. They were unoccupied for the moment, but Graham insisted on inspecting each.

  One deck down he was introduced to Bjorn Rassmussen, their cook from Oslo. He was a giant of a man with an infectious smile, a massive belly, a filthy bloodstained apron, and long blond hair covered by a hairnet. “Son of a bitch, Captain,” he boomed. “You’re going to like my cooking for sure.”

  Graham considered for a moment reprimanding the man, and ordering him to cut his hair and get a clean apron before they got under way, but it didn’t matter. One hundred hours from the time they slipped their loading dock lines, they would arrive at the Panama Canal. It would not be long before the cook would be dead, the blood on his apron his own.

  A woman came up behind them and said something in Russian that Graham could not understand. He turned around.

  “Irina Karpov, assistant steward,” Vasquez said.

  Graham stared at her for a long moment. “The language aboard this vessel is English, Ms. Karpov,” he said sharply. “Is that clear to you?”

  She nodded uncertainly. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry—”

  Graham held up a hand to silence her. She knew something was wrong, he could see it in her eyes. But she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t be sure. But if need be she would have an unfortunate accident.