Allah's Scorpion

by David Hagberg

  Nothing unusual. The terrorists had either come aboard dressed as crew or officers, or, after they’d killed the real crew and officers, had switched clothes.

  Herring pulled up short at the hatch to the open deck, and keyed his lapel mike. “Baker leader at the hatch.” He waited a moment, then helped the wounded pilot out of the superstructure.

  McGarvey stopped again for a moment to listen to the sounds of the ship, although it was difficult to hear much of anything over the roar of the helicopter’s engines and rotors. But he could feel in the soles of his shoes that the Apurto Devlán’s engines were not running. There was no vibration in the deck plating that was always present when a large vessel’s power plant was up and running.

  The terrorists had meant for the ship never to leave this lock. The explosion of the twelve oil tanks would have taken out not only all the locks, but probably would have destroyed the cruise ship in the front lock, with a major loss of life.

  It would have been another 9/11; a spectacular blow not only against the United States, but this time against the entire world.

  Again he looked up the stairs he’d just come down. Graham’s plan was to destroy this ship and the Gatun locks. But he’d not been the kind of man to commit suicide for the cause. According to Otto’s research, the ex–British Royal Navy officer had had plenty of opportunities to do so over the past years. This time was to have unfolded in the same way for Graham as had so many of his other operations; he would walk away moments before the killing and destruction so that he could live to fight another day.

  What had happened in the last moments up on the bridge? Why had the terrorists apparently gone berserk and shot one another to death?

  He could think of any number of possible reasons—maybe Graham had a last-minute change of heart, maybe one of his people somehow found out that Graham had no intention of staying aboard—but none of them struck the right note for McGarvey. His intuition was telling him that there was another explanation.

  He stepped outside. The main deck was awash in lights from the ship as well as from stanchions along either side of the lock.

  Marchetti and the other SEALs who’d helped secure the engineering spaces and sweep the ship were on deck, but Kulbacki and his team that had disarmed the explosives had apparently shifted their search to the bilges.

  Herring was leading the wounded pilot across to the helicopter, which had touched down one-third of the way forward from the superstructure.

  McGarvey’s eyes were momentarily drawn to the stern of the cruise ship looming twenty-five feet above the bow of the Apurto Devlán. It was moving away. Camera flashes were still coming almost continuously. None of the passengers, however, could realize how close they had come to being incinerated.

  Herring had reached the helicopter. A crewman jumped down from the open hatch and helped the canal pilot up into the machine. They didn’t have a medic aboard, though all the Rapid Response Team operators, including the helicopter crew, were trained in battlefield first aid. But it would be only a matter of a few minutes before the pilot reached the hospital in nearby Colón.

  The man had been understandably confused on the bridge. He’d nearly lost his life, he knew that much, but it might be until tomorrow before he came out of shock and could talk about what happened.

  The pilot had walked awkwardly. Probably because he was hurting.

  Climbing up into the helicopter he’d moved stiffly, almost as if his trousers were too tight, restricting his movements.

  McGarvey stared at him.

  The ship’s engines had been shut down. Graham had been finished with them because the Apurto Devlán wasn’t supposed to move out of the center lock. Then why hadn’t he killed the pilot, whose services were no longer needed?

  Herring said something to the crewman, then stepped back. A moment later the helicopter roared into the sky, banked to the right, and took off toward the northwest to Colón.

  The answer was up on the bridge. Rupert Graham’s body.

  McGarvey ducked back through the hatch and sprinted up the stairs, careful to avoid the pools of blood where the terrorists had gone down. The SEALs were mopping up the last of the terrorists as well as searching for and disarming any other explosives. The ship was all but secure. Nevertheless McGarvey had his pistol out, the safety catch off. He did not want to be caught flat-footed by one of the bad guys who might have been hiding.

  On the top deck he held up at the door to the bridge and listened for several seconds. Now that the helicopter was gone, the ship was ultra-quiet.

  He looked over his shoulder, the way he had come up, then slipped through the door, sweeping his pistol left to right.

  Nothing had changed. The three bodies lay where they had fallen.

  Once again he was struck by an odd feeling between his shoulder blades, as if someone were aiming a laser sight on his back.

  Rupert Graham’s trousers were too long.

  McGarvey holstered his pistol and carefully eased the body over on its back. The man’s eyes were dark, as was his hair and his complexion.

  But Graham was an Englishman. Not dark.

  There was a look of surprise and perhaps fear on his features. He hadn’t been expecting this to happen to him.

  When the U.S. Navy helicopter had suddenly roared over the Apurto Devlán’s bows it must have been a shock. But Graham was a professional killer. He’d known the risks. He would have known how to instantly improvise when something went wrong in mid-mission.

  It suddenly came together.

  The man lying on the deck was the canal pilot, and Rupert Graham was making his escape off the ship courtesy of the SEAL team that had come to arrest or kill him.

  McGarvey pulled out his pistol and went to the door, where he held up for a brief moment, then raced to the end of the corridor and took the stairs two at a time down to the main deck, where he held up again at the hatch.

  “McGarvey at the main hatch!” he shouted.

  “Come,” one of Herring’s men replied from a few feet around the corner.

  McGarvey stepped outside.

  The SEAL had his M8 at the ready, the butt just above his right shoulder, his shooting finger along the trigger guard. He hesitated for just a split second to make certain that he’d correctly ID’d McGarvey, then lowered the carbine. “We wondered where you went, sir.”

  “Where’s Herring? We need to warn the chopper crew.”

  “The boss is on his way to the engine room,” the SEAL said. “Warn the crew about what?”

  “That wasn’t the canal pilot. It was the terrorist leader.”

  “Are you sure, sir?” the SEAL asked.

  “Just do it,” McGarvey told the young man, but it was probably too late already.

  As the SEAL spoke into his lapel mike, McGarvey turned and looked in the direction the helicopter had gone. They hadn’t even thought to search the imposter.

  This attack had been stopped. But there would be others if Graham and bin Laden were allowed to live.

  This time, McGarvey vowed, he would finish the job.

  TWENTY-TWO

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  Riding over to the White House from Langley in his limousine, Dick Adkins decided that he didn’t like being the director of Central Intelligence. In fact, he’d never liked the Washington power-broker game in which each White House administration wanted only the intel to support its agendas, and nothing else.

  But ever since the creation of the director of National Intelligence, who was supposed to oversee all intelligence activities, the game had shifted into high gear. It was what the Company’s general counsel Carleton Patterson called the “9/11 syndrome.” No one wanted to be wrong, which meant that facts were bent and sometimes altered to fit the prevailing opinion.

  Nuclear weapons in Iraq had been one of the prime examples. Another had come last year when McGarvey had been forced to resign from the CIA when he and the president had a falling out. McGarvey had wanted to go after a wea
lthy Saudi playboy who he thought was a top bin Laden killer. The administration wanted to protect its oil relationship with the Saudis, so the president would not believe McGarvey.

  As it turned out, Mac and the president had both been right, after a fashion, but by then Mac was no longer welcome at Langley, or anywhere else in or around Washington. Going against a sitting president was not the thing to do and still expect to be welcome at the table.

  And now this morning Adkins was bringing the president news that once again McGarvey had saved their asses. Coming down Constitution Avenue to 17th Street and the Ellipse, minutes away from the White House, he girded himself for what he expected would be a confrontational briefing.

  Telling the truth, no matter how unpopular it was in Washington, was an ethic that Mac had instilled at the CIA.

  For better or worse, tell it like it is. But whatever you do, don’t blow smoke up my ass. Don’t lie to me.

  Those were McGarvey’s words, practically etched in marble over at the Building in Langley. And, for better or worse, Adkins had decided that he would tell the president the truth; the whole, unvarnished truth.

  His limo was passed through the West Gate, and after he signed in and his attaché case was scanned, the president’s chief of staff Calvin Beckett was there to bring him over to the Oval Office. The former CEO of IBM seemed tense.

  “He’s going to ask why you didn’t hand this to Hamel—whatever it is—instead of bringing it directly here.”

  “It’s a little delicate,” Adkins said. “I didn’t want anything lost in the translation.”

  Beckett smiled nervously. “You want to take the heat yourself,” he said. “Admirable, but your timing stinks. The man’s in a bad mood. He just got off the phone with Crown Prince Abdullah. The Saudis are cutting production by three percent. Oil prices are sagging, and OPEC is raising hell.”

  “Four bucks a gallon for regular in L.A., and prices are sagging?”

  “The United States should get in line with the rest of the world, where gas prices have always been four or five dollars a gallon,” Beckett said. “You know how it is. We’re one year out from Senate elections, and this time it’s going to be tough to hold the majority.”

  “Yeah,” Adkins replied, he did know how the game was played. The Democrats were going to love this latest move by the Saudis. “He’s going to like what I’m going to tell him even less.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  President Lawrence Haynes, his jacket off, his tie loose, and his shirtsleeves rolled up, stood looking out the thick Lexan windows at the Rose Garden in full bloom when Beckett rapped on the door frame. He was alone in the Oval Office, and it seemed to Adkins that he was a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and even though he could have been a lineman for the Green Bay Packers, the burden seemed too heavy.

  “Mr. President, Dick is here.”

  Haynes turned, and smiled the famous Haynes smile that had won him every office he’d ever campaigned for. “Good morning, Dick. I’m a little surprised to see you here this morning.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I felt that the issue was too important and the timing too tight to pass it through Don Hamel’s shop,” Adkins said. “And too delicate.”

  “I see,” Haynes said. He motioned for Beckett to close the door, then called his secretary to ask Dennis Berndt, his national security adviser, to join them. “Coffee?” he asked Adkins.

  “No, sir. My initial brief won’t take long, but I’ve brought over the book, which gives more details. It’s al-Quaida again.”

  The president’s expression immediately darkened. “Christ,” he said softly. “Is there anything new in the search for bin Laden?”

  “Nothing yet, sir,” Adkins said. “But we’ve committed considerable resources to the job.” He laid his attaché case on the coffee table, took the leatherette-bound briefing book out, and handed it across the desk to Haynes.

  “What is it this time?” Beckett asked.

  “They’re calling it Allah’s Scorpion—” Adkins said as Dennis Berndt walked in.

  “Who are the they?” Berndt asked. He was a rumpled, tweedy man with a kind face. For the last year he had been trying to get back to academia to teach history, but the president wouldn’t let him go.

  “Al-Quaida,” Adkins said. He handed a second briefing book to the national security adviser.

  Like the president, Berndt’s mood instantly darkened. “Has Don Hamel seen this yet?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “He was just getting to that,” Beckett said.

  None of them had taken a seat, nor did the president motion for them to do so. “You have my attention,” Haynes said. “Give me the highlights.”

  “Al-Quaida has planned another big attack. This time by sea again, what they called Allah’s Scorpion.”

  “Called?” Berndt asked. “As in past tense?”

  Adkins nodded. “For the moment. But we’re confident it’s not over. They’ll try again, in part because the kingpin of the attack we stopped managed to get away.”

  The morning was nice: clear blue sky, very little haze, but the sunlight didn’t seem able to penetrate into the Oval Office.

  “Continue,” Haynes prompted.

  “We started getting indications several months ago on a number of al-Quaida Web sites that something big might be in the works. Homeland Security took us to orange in mid-April, as you remember. But after ten days when nothing happened, we dropped back to normal.”

  “The American public is sick of holding its breath,” Beckett said.

  “Yeah, but then in the past couple of weeks the chatter started again, and earlier this week there was an attempted prison break at Guantanamo Bay.”

  “I saw the report,” Haynes said. “It was incredible. They committed suicide rather than allow themselves to be recaptured. But there is no concrete proof that the Cubans were helping them.”

  “No, sir,” Adkins said. “But the five men who broke out were all Iranian naval ratings. Which got us to thinking that al-Quaida was trying to raise a ship’s crew. And if that were the case, they would need to hire a captain, someone to run the ship. So we went looking for just such a man.”

  Berndt and the president exchanged a look. “And?” Berndt asked.

  “We got lucky,” Adkins replied. “The guy is a former British naval officer by the name of Rupert Graham. He was kicked out of the service five years ago, and for a couple of years he operated as a pirate in the South China Sea. And a damned good one from what we’ve learned. About two years ago he apparently came to the attention of bin Laden and he may have started working for al-Quaida, funneling money and material into the cause.”

  “Why?” Berndt asked.

  “I’m not sure of all the details, but apparently his wife died while he was at sea and the navy never notified him.” Adkins shrugged. “The man is nursing a grudge.”

  “What about him?” the president asked.

  “Three days ago he hijacked a fully ladened oil tanker in Maracaibo, Venezuela. He killed the entire crew, apparently took on a new crew somewhere in the western Caribbean, and this morning, less than six hours ago, he managed to get the ship as far as the center lock at Gatun, where he’d planned on blowing it up.”

  Berndt whistled softly. “Would have shut down the canal for years,” he said.

  “The engineers we talked to thought there would have been a good chance that the canal might never have reopened.”

  The president nodded with satisfaction. “The Rapid Response Teams we put down there did the job,” he said, a glimmering of his smile returning. “Well done.”

  “There’s more, Mr. President,” Adkins said. “Four days ago we’d traced Graham to Caracas, but then lost him. We—I—felt that the man was enough of a credible threat that we needed to go after him to find out what he was up to. But quietly because of our … somewhat strained relations with the Venezuelan government.”


  The president, Berndt, and Beckett all had the same expectant look on their faces.

  “Let me guess,” Berndt said. “You recruited Kirk McGarvey, and he did the job for us.”

  Adkins nodded, his eyes never leaving the president’s. “We have assets in Caracas, but they’re under deep cover at the embassy. It would have been next to impossible to get one of them up to Maracaibo in time.”

  “Where is he now?” Haynes asked quietly.

  “On his way back here.”

  Haynes nodded. “I thought that he and his wife were moving to Florida. He was taking a teaching position.”

  “Yes, sir,” Adkins said. This would be the tough part. “But there’s more. Graham managed to escape in the confusion, while the explosive devices on the ship were found and disconnected. He’s still out there, and our analysts think that al-Quaida will try again. They still have their very capable and extremely motivated captain.”

  “What is the CIA recommending?” Haynes asked, point-blank.

  “I want to hire McGarvey to find Graham before he mounts another operation against us.”

  “Yes?” Haynes said.

  “Then I want to send McGarvey to find bin Laden.”

  “And?”

  “Mac’s brief will be to assassinate both men as soon as possible,” Adkins said. He pursed his lips. “Let’s end this once and for all, Mr. President. For this kind of operation McGarvey is our best asset—”

  “Our only asset,” the president said. He was troubled. He turned away and looked out at the Rose Garden again. “After I’d won the first election, but before my inauguration, I came here so that the president could brief me. Just the two of us, in this room, discussing things and options that only the president is allowed to know. Frightening things. Impossible things. Unreasonable things. Enough so that I had to seriously doubt my sanity for ever wanting this job.” His shoulders seemed to slump. “It’s the moment of truth for every incoming president.” He shook his head. “You can see it in their eyes. They’re one person going into the meeting, full of confidence and expectations, and another completely different person coming out, worried, stunned.”