Stabenow, Dana - Prepared For Rage

by Prepared For Rage(lit)

  AKIL GAINED THE BRIDGE TO FIND ALL QUIET UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE of Yussuf, who greeted him with a triumphant smile. On the gun deck forward, the barrel of the 76mm had been trained on the sky over the shuttle.

  They could have destroyed it on the ground, but Akil wanted to hit it in flight. According to Bayzani and to Riley, with the automated tracking gear installed during the ship's last refit, it shouldn't be a problem.

  The shuttle's destruction would produce the maximum amount of shock and horror in the viewers. Millions would be watching; online, on television, later on the news channels over and over and over again.

  When they were done they would know two things they hadn't known before.

  One, that no one was safe from him and his forces. No one was beyond his reach.

  And two, that henceforward Isa and Abdullah were names of respect, of awe and admiration, names to be taken seriously by every Western nation in the world.

  NO ONE ON THE HANGAR DECK WAS AWARE ANYTHING UNTOWARD WAS happening elsewhere on the cutter because no one on the hangar deck could hear anything over the multiple boom boxes playing everything from Dave Matthews to the White Stripes. The 76mm was forward, that was where the attention of the terrorists would be concentrated. The hangar deck and his people were aft. For the moment, Cal wanted it kept that way. He didn't think his crew would panic but he didn't want to test the thesis, either.

  He and Noyes walked to the helo at a casual pace, Cal unable to refrain from taking a look over the port side at the shuttle gleaming white and brave under the lights.

  Noyes opened the door of the helo and slid inside. "Shit," he said a few minutes later. "The radios are dead. They've already been here. Somebody had some good intel, Captain."

  "Yes, they did," Cal said. He scanned the crowd, a few of whom were giving them curious looks.

  He looked at his watch.

  "There can't be that many of them, Captain," Noyes said urgently. "We can rush them."

  "They've got hostages," Cal said, "the Munros, BMC, the XO on the bridge. The watch standers in Main Control and CIC. They've killed Myers and I think everyone on the boat crew and they're not out of ammunition."

  "They'd rush the bridge."

  "I know they would. I don't want them to."

  "How about rushing the 76mm?"

  "They've got people on the doors leading to the gun deck."

  "But we can't let them take out the shuttle."

  "Did they just take out communications, or can you still get this bird in the air?" Cal scanned the crowd and didn't see the other aviator. "And can you do it alone?"

  Noyes flicked a few switches. His frown cleared. "I think she'll fly, sir." He looked at Cal. "But sir, there isn't enough time to fly to shore and get help. The shuttle launches any second now."

  "I know."

  Noyes looked confused at first, and then he understood. His face changed in the reflected glow of the lights on land. "Oh. Shit. You want me to be a hero."

  "If I knew how to fly it, I'd fly it," Cal said.

  Noyes, amazingly, grinned. "Can you shoot the M-240?"

  "Will it do enough damage to get the job done?"

  "You said you think they're not going to start shooting until after the shuttle launches. Do you know what spiking a gun means?"

  "Yes," Cal said, and realized what Noyes meant. "Yes!" There was another way, a better way, and maybe no one else would die.

  They conferred hurriedly and came up with a plan.

  "There's only"

  "What?"

  "They could shoot us down."

  "I haven't seen anything bigger than a .22 pistol. They're traveling light. If you can stay out of range until the last minute, and if you're willing to take the risk"

  "Let's do it," Noyes said.

  Cal looked at the crowd, and then at his watch. Six minutes. "We have to clear the hangar deck. Oh, Jesus. And we have to get rid of them."

  "Them" was the CNN crew, now snaking its way through the crowd on a dead reckoning for the helo. "Start the engine, that'll get all the bright ones moving," Cal said, and slammed the door shut. He grabbed the first crewman he saw, which turned out to be FS2 Mellot. "FS2."

  Startled, she said, "Captain?"

  He looked past her. "SKC? YNC? Come here a minute." He led the food service officer and the two chiefs away from the helo, along the way collecting MK3 Ochiai and DC2 Milton, all reliably levelheaded crew members. "We need to launch the helo. Never mind why, it's an emergency, just help me clear the hangar deck. And folks? We have armed hostiles on board. Let's not attract any attention. As quietly as possible, please, get everyone down on the fantail. Now!"

  ON BOARD SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR

  "T minus thirty-one seconds. Go for auto-sequence start."

  Her mouth was dry and her heart was racing. Cal, Mom, Dad, she thought, watch me fly.

  ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO

  The rotors were beginning to turn and the noise of the engines increased. The hangar deck was deserted. Cal's picked band of crew members had shoved, muscled, and strong-armed everyone down onto the fantail or into the hangar, the CNN crew protesting all the way.

  He fought with an intransigent buckle on one of the tiedowns and swore out loud. The buckle came free and he threw the tiedown over the side to follow the first three. The last thing they needed was some piece of debris getting caught up in the rotors' backwash and he didn't have time to run anything back to the hangar.

  Onshore, clouds of steam were beginning to boil up from beneath the shuttle's tail. Kenai, he thought, it'll be all right, I promise, go, go, go!

  Camera lights went off like popcorn all along the main deck. He risked a look around the corner of the hangar. Was that a dark figure he saw slipping from shadow to shadow? They couldn't all hit the Darwin sorter, worse luck.

  He duckwalked beneath the rotors and climbed in the back of the helo. Noyes was taking off as Cal's foot left the deck.

  Munro fell away beneath him.

  ON BOARD SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR

  "T minus ten seconds. Go for main engine start."

  "Five .. . four .. . three . . . two .. . one .. ."

  The hold-down bolts blew and they were hit with seven million pounds of thrust from two solid rocket boosters and three main engines.

  The noise was deafening, the vibration threatened to shake her hair loose from her head, and the G-force flattened her against her chair like a steamroller.

  Her teeth were rattling so loudly in her head that she almost couldn't understand Rick when he said, "What the hell was that?"

  ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO

  The boom of the 76mm firing was loud even over the noise of the engine. Cal yelled something, he didn't know what, and looked over his shoulder to see the shuttle was off its pad, rising slowly into the air, straining bravely for the stars. He knew a wave of relief so strong it was dizzying.

  "Get ready!" Noyes yelled, and the sound of his voice steadied Cal. The aviator had already unlimbered and loaded the M-240. Its barrel pointed out of the left side of the helo and Cal's hands were tight on the grip. Noyes maneuvered the aircraft until it faced Munro port side to port side.

  Cal's finger tightened on the trigger and the M-240 chattered, spraying the hatchway leading to the gun deck where he was certain one of the terrorists was on guard. It's where he'd have stationed a man if he'd been running this op, it was a chokepoint in case anyone decided to rush the 76mm. He couldn't get a direct shot but with all the metal the ricochet was bound to hit something. He prayed it wouldn't be a member of the crew.

  "All right!" he yelled, and Noyes crabwalked the helo in closer, so close it seemed to Cal as if the rotors were going to slice into the bridge. "Jesus, Noyes, be careful!" he yelled. He wondered for a wild moment if Noyes could even hear him over the engines. They hadn't had time to don helmets. He crouched next to the M-240 in the door of the helo.

  There was a muzzle flash from the bridge, and the helo jolted hard.

  "
Fuck that," Noyes roared, "jump, goddammit, jump!"

  Cal jumped, pushing against the doorframe of the helo with his feet, launching himself in a shallow dive for the gun deck. Behind him he heard the helo roar off, and more gunfire, and more impacts.

  It was the longest two seconds of his life.

  He hit hard, just forward of the gun deck port hatch. He actually remembered to tuck and roll, and by a miracle came up on his feet.

  Nobody shot him. That was a good thing because for just one moment he was frozen in disbelief that it had been that easy.

  In the next he broke and ran for the side of the house. His right foot stepped in something slippery and he went down to one knee. He was up again almost immediately. The slippery something was blood. Yes, man

  down, one of them, groaning, pistol on the deck just beyond his outstretched hand. Cal scooped it up and ran back out onto the gun deck, for the exterior of the 76mm. He paused for one moment to try the hatch in the deck aft of the gun, just on the off-chance the men inside had forgotten to lock it. No, locked, and then someone shot at him from the starboard side of the gun deck, the shot clanging into the deck two feet away and whining off to port.

  He shot back with the terrorist's pistol and they ducked back out of sight. Someone shot at him from the bridge wing. He ran around to the front of the 76mm.

  The casing of the big gun was a smooth, slippery white surface. He stuck the pistol in the back of his pants and climbed on the railing in front of it. He put both hands on the casing and jumped up, grabbing, clutching, clinging to the casing, pulling himself up, his muscles straining, his teeth bared in a snarl of determination.

  He heard excited voices coming from the gun room below the deck, voices speaking what he supposed was Arabic. The big gun moved on its mounting, tracking the shuttle as it rose into the sky. "No," he said through his teeth, "no, goddammit, not on my watch you don't!"

  He pulled himself from the casing to the barrel, a snout longer than he was and a mouth large enough for the job. Clinging to the barrel like a leech, by an act of will not sliding off, he freed one hand, reached around for the pistol, and dropped it into the open muzzle of the gun.

  He let go and fell to the deck, falling awkwardly this time. He limped around to the back of the gun. A bullet whined off the deck next to his left foot, spurring him into a shambling run.

  He'd just reached the hatch behind the wounded terrorist when the 76mm fired for the second time. The round hit the pistol, lodged halfway down the barrel.

  The barrel of the 76mm exploded, shredding into threads of twisted metal, some of it severed into shrapnel. Most of it went overboard. Some of it hit the forward part of the bow and the front of the house.

  A dark, hot force caught Cal in the small of the back in mid-stride and lifted him up. He literally flew down the deck and hit the bow of Mun 2, sitting in its cradle.

  He hung there for a painful second, watching the shuttle climbing slowly, steadily, and most beautifully higher and higher into the sky. He slid to the deck and knew no more.

  WHEN THE 76MM BLEW, THE NOISE AND THE SHRAPNEL BLINDED AND frightened everyone. All the window on the bridge shattered. A moment later, the man Akil thought was the captain went for Yussuf, slamming him into the bulkhead and sending his guns skittering across the floor. Two others went scrambling after them. The woman must have ducked down behind one of the consoles because she was suddenly nowhere to be seen, or acquired for use as a hostage.

  For a frozen moment Akil, ears ringing, was aware only of the bent and broken fragments of his dream, buried beneath alarms and smoke and flying metal. There were screams of fear and bellowed orders. On his left the space shuttle climbed into the sky on a column of molten gold.

  The wreckage of the big gun caught fire, first a flicker, then a glow. An instant later a siren went off, almost painfully loud, impossible to ignore. Crew members began pouring up into the bridge. The man he thought of as captain began shouting orders.

  He walked to the door with no outward sense of haste. On the bridge wing, he tossed his gun into the water and climbed over the railing. He kicked away from the side of the ship, falling feetfirst into the water, and struck out for shore.

  25

  WASHINGTON, D.C., AUGUST 2008

  "Isa got clean away?" Kallendorf was not pleased.

  Neither was Patrick. "Unfortunately, sir, yes."

  "Very unsatisfactory."

  Patrick tidied his file together. "Not entirely, sir," he said mildly. "The attack was foiled. The shuttle and its crew made it safely into orbit, and they are now safely back. I understand the first round fired from the cutter's cannon got close enough for them to see. It gave them a few bad moments, but all in all, a happy ending, I would think.

  "The helicopter, though damaged in the firefight, landed safely onshore at the Cape, although I understand the pilot was taken into custody by NASA security for a few hours until everything was sorted out. The cutter suffered severe damage when the gun exploded, but the hull remained intact and the cutter made it into port."

  "How did they get control of the engine room?" Kallendorf asked idly. He wasn't all that interested.

  Patrick allowed himself a prim smile. "Akil's people didn't know much about ships, sir. All the compartments are watertight, but there are many different entrances. The executive officer and the, what I believe is called the health services chief, or corpsman, colluded on a gas of some kind to introduce into the engine room. I believe the chief component was ammonia. When the terrorists became incapacitated, a welder cut through one of the doors and the terrorists were, uh, overpowered by the crew."

  "Knacky people, those Coasties," Kallendorf said.

  "Yes, sir. Always prepared is, I believe, their motto."

  "Still. Isa escaped." Kallendorf sighed. "Not good, Patrick, not good."

  "We now know who Isa is, sir, and where he comes from. This will, I believe, be a great help in predicting his future actions.

  "And lastly, this attack underlined something the agency has been trying to get across to Congress for years."

  "Oh? What's that?"

  "That our nation is immensely vulnerable to attack by sea. This time it was a hijacked Haitian freighter. Next time? It might be a hijacked oil tanker, mined to explode as it runs aground .. ." Patrick shrugged. "Well. Pick a target, sir. Maybe, just maybe because of this action, Congress will listen the next time." He stood up. "Anything else, sir?"

  Kallendorf looked at him broodingly. "You swore at me, Patrick."

  "Yes, sir, I did." Patrick made a superhuman effort and didn't apologize.

  Kallendorf grinned. "Get out of here."

  "Certainly, sir."

  Patrick went on his way rejoicing. When he reached his office, he paused with his hand on the door for a moment, and then went in. "Hello, Melanie."

  "Hello, sir." There was a smile in her eyes.

  "Any messages?"

  "Just one." She handed him a slip of paper.

  "Ah. Get Mr. Rincon on the phone for me, will you?"

  THE CURRENT CARRIED AKIL SOME MILES NORTH OF CAPE CANAVERAL, where he managed to thrash his way to shore on a sandy beach that lined the edge of a swamp. He slogged through the swamp to a road, which he followed until he came to a town. On a clothesline in someone's backyard he found dry pants and a shirt. He walked to the next town where he caught a bus to Jacksonville. The woman across the aisle was reading the Miami Herald, which had a large, grainy picture of Adam Bayzani's doctored passport photo on the front page, but she never looked at him twice. Talk on the bus was all about the attempt to bring down the space shuttle. "We ought to just nuke the whole Middle East and be done with it," one old man said, and there were nods all around.

  The story was running on all the televisions in the Jacksonville airport. He looked at the flight board, identified several possibilities, got cash from an ATM, and took a cab to a local mall, where he bought a new wardrobe and a carry-on suitcase to put it in. He found a small
motel nearby and checked in. He used the motel's business center to buy his tickets.

  That night he dreamt again of Zahirah, and woke in a sweat-soaked panic.

  Once, all his dreams had been of Adara.

  The next morning he showered, packed, and went to the airport. The passport he had with him was in the name of Suud Bathinda, an Indian national, a computer programmer from Mumbai.- He offered the TSA official grave apologies on behalf of all Asians for this latest attempt on America's might and substance. He had no trouble getting through security.

  In Atlanta he boarded a flight for Paris, in Paris another for Barcelona, not going to the Hotel Arc de Triomphe as he had planned.

  He'd always liked Barcelona. The second day he even went back to the Maritime Museum, and stood in long contemplation of the Royal Galley that had fought at the Battle of Lepanto.

  He never once thought of Adam Bayzani.

  That evening he strolled down to the waterfront and dined well on fresh seafood at an open-air cafe. On the way back to his hotel, he became aware that he was being followed. He took no notice, continuing his placid pace.

  When he opened the door to his room, Ansar was sitting in a chair, watching Baywatch on television. "Ah, Isa, I was wondering what was keeping you." He smiled. "The old man wants to talk to you."

  Akil knew a sudden and a great weariness. "Certainly," he said. "I am at his disposal."

  "YOU'RE SURE?" PATRICK SAID.

  "He was seen, and identified. Besides, it's all over the net. Irhabi's blog has the story, almost the real one. I think someone in the al Qaeda organization doesn't like our Isa."

  "Will bin Laden have him killed, do you think?"

  "I don't know," Hugh said thoughtfully. "We've been talking that over ourselves. The whole attack on the space shuttle was pretty gutsy. A lot like 9/11, it was simple, and pretty cheap. His guys talking yet?"