Allah's Scorpion

by David Hagberg

  Ramati staggered backwards, but he was still alive. He desperately clawed for his pistol in his pocket, when Graham fired again, hitting him in the right eye, the back of his skull disintegrating.

  Graham turned and fired almost at point-blank range into the side of al-Tashkiri’s head as the kid opened his eyes and started to step away.

  For several long seconds Graham listened to the sudden silence, as the Apurto Devlán continued to rise. But then he got his cell phone and hit a speed-dial button. When the call went through to the operative standing by on the Nueva Cruz, it was answered on the first ring.

  “Sí.”

  “¡Ahora!” Graham said. Now! “¡Ahora!”

  “Sí,” the man responded, and the connection was broken. Within minutes a small speedboat would be launched from the mother ship and come ashore.

  Graham pocketed his cell phone and pistol, and went to the port wing as the ship continued to rise to the level of the mule tracks. The only people around were the canal operators in the control room, the mule drivers, and the canal workers who handled the lines.

  No one would notice a lone man stepping ashore and disappearing into the darkness. And even if they did, by the time they reacted the ship would be gone in a brilliant flash of searing heat, and they would be dead.

  NINETEEN

  RAPID RESPONSE TEAM BAKER

  McGarvey and Herring had donned headsets so they could communicate with the flight crew. They’d flown low and fast straight south along the route of the canal, coming across Gatun Lake no more than twenty-five feet above the water, in excess of 140 knots. They were at hover two hundred meters out from the locks.

  The side hatch was wide open, and Herring’s operators were ready to deploy. Two chopper crewmen manned the 7.62mm machine guns. There was no way Graham or anyone else was getting off the ship alive.

  A cruise ship, all her lights ablaze, was in the forward lock, the Apurto Devlán right behind her in the middle lock.

  “Do you see any activity on deck?” McGarvey radioed the pilot. The flight crew was wearing night-vision equipment.

  “Two bad guys on deck, at the bow,” the pilot radioed back. “Look like line handlers.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “One of them is on his knees,” the pilot came back. He hesitated. “Almost looks as if he’s praying.”

  “He is,” McGarvey told Herring. “It means they’re ready to pull the trigger. We have to take them down now.”

  Herring motioned for his operators to lock and load. He radioed the pilot. “Take out the two bad guys on the bow as we pass over them. Set us down in front of the superstructure. Soon as we’re feet dry, I want you to dust off and stand by off the starboard midships. Anybody tries to jump ship, take them down. But watch out for the canal workmen ashore.”

  “Wilco,” the pilot responded crisply.

  Kulbacki had produced a ship’s diagram of the Apurto Devlán, and on the short flight down from Panama City he’d gone over the deployment orders with the team. The drill was a standard one that they’d practiced countless times on ship mock-ups in San Diego.

  It was assumed that the Panamanian pilot would be topside on the bridge, so everyone on deck would be considered hostile and would be taken down.

  A three-man team would head to the engine room, taking out anyone they encountered; their objective was to secure the engineering spaces from any kind of sabotage, including disabling the engines and/or the steering controls, before they swept the rest of the ship for terrorists.

  Kulbacki would lead his team of three operators on a lightning-fast sweep, first to the twelve oil tanks to find and disable any explosive devices, and then into the bilges to look for kickers that might have been placed to take out the ship’s bottom and sink her in the middle of the lock. Their orders were to take down any and all hostiles they might encounter.

  Herring would accompany McGarvey up to the bridge, taking down any bad guys they ran into, securing the Panamanian pilot, and subduing Graham without killing him, if at all possible.

  “The knees, hips, shoulders, elbows, or wrists,” McGarvey said. “Anywhere but the head or torso.”

  “That’ll be tough if he’s shooting at us,” Herring said. “You sure you don’t want to wear a vest? We brought one for you.”

  McGarvey shook his head. “When he shoots it’ll be a headshot.”

  The big helicopter suddenly banked hard to the left, the open hatch on the low side, and roared along the length of the cruise ship, the tips of its rotors clearing the ship’s gigs by less than ten meters.

  Kulbacki and another man positioned in the hatch would be the first to hit the deck.

  There were passengers on the promenade deck of the cruise ship. Some of them waved as the helicopter passed.

  “Take out the two on the bow,” Herring radioed to the gun crew.

  “Wilco,” someone responded.

  A second later the pilot swung the tail around so that the nose gun was pointing at the men on the Apurto Devlán’s bow, and started to sideslip along the length of the open deck. Both machine guns opened fire at the same moment, and stopped almost immediately.

  “Scratch two,” one of the gunners radioed.

  The operator crouching next to Kulbacki in the open door suddenly lurched backwards.

  “Incoming fire,” Kulbacki shouted, and he sprayed a deck hatch that was open amidships.

  The helicopter set down hard just forward of the superstructure and immediately came under intense small-arms fire from somewhere aft. Small-caliber bullets pinged into the fuselage, and ricocheted off the ship’s deck.

  Herring and another of the operators shoved McGarvey aside and hauled the downed man to his feet, as Kulbacki and the other SEALs exploded from the open hatch and laid down a heavy line of fire toward the port and starboard passageways.

  The operator who’d taken a round in his chest armor would have a hell of a bruise by morning, but otherwise he was still good to go.

  “Clear!” Kulbacki shouted.

  McGarvey was next out of the chopper, rolling to the right so that he would be out of the way and in the shadows of the towering seven-story superstructure. He noticed out of the corner of his eye that the mule driver on the starboard bow had jumped out of his locomotive and was heading across the access road in a dead run.

  Herring and the last operator jumped down on deck, and as soon as they were clear, the helicopter lifted off with a tremendous roar, banked almost over on its side, its rotors barely clearing the deck, and accelerated over the mule, while turning its nose gun back toward the ship.

  Camera flashes were coming in a nearly continuous stream from the stern of the cruise ship twenty-five feet above them.

  “Marchetti, go.” Herring pumped his left fist, and the three operators who would take care of the engineering spaces headed aft. They would leapfrog along the portside passageway, and thence into the ship and down the ladder, clearing the way ahead with flash-bang grenades, and then shooting anything that moved.

  Kulbacki and his three men had already started forward to the product tank access hatches, to find and disarm the explosive charges. Each of them would take one tank, and with any luck they would run into light or no resistance and the job could be done in a few minutes.

  If they did have to fire they would need even more luck that they wouldn’t inadvertently touch off an explosion in one of the tanks, which would set the others off like a string of firecrackers.

  But, as Kulbacki had explained with a sardonic grin on the way down here, “That’s the chance we signed on for when we put on the uniform, sir.”

  At that moment a light breeze sprang up, blowing the sounds of the chopper’s exhaust and rotor noise away, and the Apurto Devlán became as quiet as a ghost ship. The hairs at the nape of McGarvey’s neck stood on end.

  It wasn’t this simple. They were forgetting something. He was forgetting something. Something in Graham’s file that the Brits had not yet sent
to Otto. Something they were hiding?

  “The next part is your show, Mr. McGarvey!” Herring shouted.

  “Right,” McGarvey said. “The bridge.” He sprinted to the portside passageway, then aft to the first doorway. The hatch was open.

  Two men dressed in dark blue coveralls, APURTO DEVLÁN stenciled on the backs, were down with headshots, blood spreading on the steel deck. Marchetti and the other SEALs heading down to the engine room had taken them down.

  McGarvey hesitated only a moment to make sure they were dead. He didn’t want some fanatic filled with religious zeal coming up from behind. A tight-lipped Herring nodded his approval.

  A stairway led six decks up to the bridge. McGarvey stopped at the first turn and motioned for Herring to hold up. He cocked an ear to listen for sounds from above. For a moment the ship was silent, but then he thought he heard someone talking.

  Herring heard it too.

  “Radio,” McGarvey mouthed the word. Probably from the bridge, which meant the door up there was open.

  Herring nodded again, and McGarvey continued up, pausing for a moment at each turn, until they reached the third deck where someone from above opened fire, bullets ricocheting off the bulkheads, shrapnel flying everywhere.

  McGarvey fell back and fired three shots up the stairs, aiming for the door frame to carom his shots off the steel plating into the corridor.

  Someone cried out, and fired another burst from what sounded like an M8.

  “Stay here,” McGarvey whispered to Herring. “I’m going to take the passageway one deck down across to the starboard side and see if I can get behind whoever’s shooting at us.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Herring whispered.

  “Keep them busy,” McGarvey said, and he turned and hurried down to the next deck, while above, Herring opened fire again.

  TWENTY

  APURTO DEVLÁN, ON THE BRIDGE

  The gunfire was coming from two decks below.

  The big helicopter had come as a total surprise. But from the moment it had appeared from the north, Graham had known it was just a matter of minutes before he’d be cornered up here with nowhere to run. There was no time to be angry, or to try to reason how the authorities had uncovered the plan. There was only time to act.

  He’d seriously considered punching the 9 # 11 detonator code on his cell phone, and ending everything in one brilliant flash of light. There would be absolutely no pain, and the deep ache inside his soul for Jillian would finally come to an end.

  But there was more to be done. More blood to be shed, not for the cause the nutcases who surrounded bin Laden believed in, but for the pure sweet joy of the battle. Revenge by any other name became tactics. Outwit your enemy, kill him on the battlefield, and live to fight another day.

  The helicopter had American navy markings. It hovered on station just across the road, waiting for someone to try to get off the ship.

  The troops that had deployed were dressed all in black and apparently knew what they were doing. By now they would be finding and disabling the explosives, though there was still time to enter the code. If only one of the tanks went up, the rest would explode too.

  But how had the Americans found out so soon? No one at the Syrian training camp knew the target, nor had any of his crew been told until they were already en route. Which left only a handful of bin Laden’s inner circle who knew all the details.

  The first glimmerings of rage began to fill him with the determination to get out of here alive, so that he could make it back to Karachi and take his revenge on whoever had sold them out.

  He wouldn’t be able to shoot his way out, and even if he was successful, and managed to slip over the side, the helicopter was standing by, probably with orders to kill anything that moved.

  Nor could he hide aboard for very long. If this were his operation he’d order a thorough search of the ship for just that possibility.

  The VHF radio was alive with chatter, most of it in Spanish, from Gatun Control, demanding to know what was going on. Graham caught the pilot’s name, and the solution came to him all at once. The Americans were going to give him a ride to the hospital, and from there, freedom.

  Hurrying now lest he get caught, Graham put down his weapon and cell phone, and stripped the shirt and trousers from the pilot’s body.

  There was a sudden burst of pistol fire one deck down, and someone cried out in Arabic.

  Graham pulled off his shirt and trousers, and hurriedly put them on the dead pilot’s body, getting blood all over himself in the process.

  “Now,” someone called softly. In English.

  Graham donned the pilot’s trousers, which were slightly too small for him, and the light blue shirt, the front of which was covered in blood.

  Someone was coming up the stairs, he could hear their footfalls.

  Moving swiftly but silently, he laid his cell phone next to the pilot, then placed his pistol in the dead man’s hand.

  Whoever was coming was just outside the door now.

  Graham smeared blood all over his neck and face and in his mouth, then staggered back across the bridge where he fell to one knee next to the helm station and al-Tashkiri’s body. He was unarmed, and he no longer had the means to trigger the explosives. But as his operators would say, Insh’allah. If God wills it.

  A tall, stocky man dressed in civilian clothes appeared in the doorway. He was armed with a pistol, which he swung left to right, centering on Graham.

  “No, por favor, señor,” Graham shouted, holding up a hand as if in supplication.

  The civilian moved aside, his pistol never wavering, to allow a much younger man dressed all in black, a black bandana on his head, a Heckler & Koch M8 in his hands, and a pistol strapped to his chest, to enter the bridge.

  Graham didn’t know about the civilian, but the other man was definitely a U.S. Navy SEAL, almost certainly part of the Americans’ Rapid Response presence here in the Canal Zone. They were almost as good as the British Special Air Service paratroopers; highly trained to take down any force they encountered with a very high degree of accuracy and lightning speed.

  “Por favor, senõr. ¡Ayúdame!”

  “Do you speak English?” Herring asked.

  “Sí,” Graham said. “I mean, yes.”

  McGarvey had moved over to the dead pilot, and keeping one eye on Graham, kicked the pistol away, then bent down to check for a pulse in the man’s neck. He glanced at Herring and shook his head.

  “What happened here?” Herring asked.

  “The crazy bastardos killed each other!” Graham shouted desperately. “They tried to kill me, but this one interfered. They have bombs.”

  Herring said something into the small mike at his lapel.

  McGarvey checked for a pulse in Ramati’s body and then came to where Graham was kneeling and checked for al-Tashkiri’s pulse.

  “What’s your name?” he asked Graham.

  “Sanchez. I am the piloto, the pilot.” He looked up into McGarvey’s gray-green eyes and he could see wariness and skepticism. But the SEAL had lowered his weapon.

  “The ship is secure,” Herring told McGarvey. “I’ve called the chopper back, they’ll take Mr. Sanchez to the hospital.”

  “Por favor, we have to leave now,” Graham pleaded. “The dynamite will kill us all.”

  “It’s all right, sir,” Herring said. “They didn’t use dynamite, and my people have disarmed the charges.”

  “Can you walk?” McGarvey asked.

  “I think so,” Graham said weakly. He held up a hand, but McGarvey stepped back, his pistol still pointed more or less in Graham’s direction.

  Herring slung his carbine, came over, and helped Graham to his feet. “Where are you shot?”

  “I don’t know. They hit me on the head, and then there was a lot of shooting.”

  Herring keyed his radio. “This is Baker leader, we’re coming out.”

  “Have your people found any of the real crew?” McGarvey asked.


  “Fifteen of them so far,” Herring said, grim-lipped. “All shot to death.”

  “We’ll need a new crew then,” McGarvey said. He went back to the body, dressed in the captain’s clothing. Something was wrong.

  “Not until we make damned sure that none of the bastards is holed up somewhere,” Herring said.

  McGarvey picked up the cell phone and removed its battery. “I’m taking this with me. It’s probably the detonator, and there might be some numbers in its memory.”

  The helicopter came into view in the bridge’s windows with a tremendous roar and settled on the deck just forward of the superstructure.

  “Whatever you want,” Herring said. “I’m going to take the pilot down to the chopper. Are you staying here?”

  “I’ll be right behind you,” McGarvey said.

  It was obvious to Graham that something was bothering the civilian; the man knew that everything wasn’t as it seemed to be.

  McGarvey used the cell phone’s battery cover to scoop up some of the dead man’s blood, and then replaced the cover on back of the phone.

  Herring stopped and looked at him.

  McGarvey glanced up. “I want his DNA.”

  “Good idea,” Herring said. He held on to Graham. “We’ll take it nice and easy,” he said.

  Graham thought that the young man’s death would be eminently satisfying. But the civilian’s death would be more important.

  TWENTY-ONE

  APURTO DEVLÁN, ON THE BRIDGE

  McGarvey pocketed the cell phone and battery, and holstered his pistol as he followed Herring and the Panamanian pilot from the bridge. He stopped for a moment one deck down and looked back the way he’d come, his gray-green eyes narrowed in thought.

  Maybe he was getting old, but he knew damn well that something hadn’t been right up there. Some little thing had been out of place. But for the life of him he couldn’t put his finger on what was bothering him.

  Besides the two terrorists he’d taken down on deck four, and the two just inside the companionway on deck one, there would be bodies scattered throughout the ship. The ones he’d seen so far were dressed either in deck crew coveralls, or in civilian clothes that most merchant marine officers wore.