“That’s bullshit Bill” A.J.’s reply was not altogether unexpected.
“Listen A.J., our people are running the show out here, don’t worry. If he’s out there, we’ll find him – trust me. You’re not the only injured man on this ship right now.”
“Then get me off this ship”, A.J. demanded.
“A.J., you know the drill. We’ve got more to gain by going over what happened out there. We need to get to the bottom of this mess, and that means everyone involved needs to be present and debriefed. I’m not gonna force your hand, but you’ve got to understand - there’s nothing more you can do out here.”
This was perhaps the most difficult part of the job, Kelly thought as he left the wounded man alone. The Muzzonigro family would need to be informed of C.J.’s status as well – a confrontation Kelly neither relished nor one he delegated. Officially, for now at least, C.J. was considered MIA, but they all knew the realities involved; as far as Kelly was concerned, there was virtually no way the youngster was alive. For how could anyone still missing possibly have survived? That C.J. was now a captive, a POW in the war on terror, never entered his mind.
“Yes, I told you …yes”. C.J. could only pick up pieces of the conversation, his Arabic far from fluent. The voice belonged to someone new. C.J. had been cataloguing the men one by one. He never saw some of his captors, and others he caught barely a glimpse, but he could hear everything. That was a mistake. He made sure to keep an acoustical tabulation of who they were, how many, who the leader was. He was keeping a mental note for when – if - an opportunity presented itself. The goal was to optimize any future opportunity; to prioritize a first strike, determine who might be used effectively as a hostage, who was important, and who was expendable. The processing was automatic, ingrained from his training at Fort Bragg. During the grueling simulations he never once imagined he might really be faced with such a real life scenario. Given his predicament, C.J. was as prepared as could be. He now only needed an opening…and a hefty dose of luck.
“Do it, Now”. It was the voice of a new man, the fifth he had encountered since his capture. The man now walked around to face him. He had a thin face that seemed overwhelmed by a thick black beard. His frame was narrow and short, unexpectedly feminine given the depth of voice and commanding air.
Do what now?, C.J. thought. He couldn’t see the other captor, but had a pretty good sense of where he was positioned.
“No fucking way I go down easy”, C.J. said to himself. The chair to which he was bound could be used as a weapon, whipping the legs if anyone came near. But then what? His feet were bound, which severely limited his mobility. He had to let this scene play out. His one bargaining chip was intelligence. Every CTG member had a predetermined set of data they could divulge under such circumstances. They were all at risk of capture, and could recite a set of falsified intelligence that could withstand a modest dose of scrutiny. But it wasn’t necessary, for C.J. soon realized with frightening brutality what they were talking about. They were softening him up for an interrogation; and the first step in doing so was to make a demonstration, a show of intent and force. Now he knew what the man across from him was still doing alive.
Both terrorists had moved into position before him and behind his fellow captive. The leader held a gun as the second, much larger man, raised his arms, revealing a large curved knife much like an old scythe from medieval times. The man brandishing the knife grabbed the hostage across from him by the hair and nicked his face with the point of the blade, drawing a slow streak of blood. The captive was now awake and alert, his eyes wide with terror. The gag in his mouth muffled his screams as he fought to reason with his assailants. His muzzle was removed, but the cries went ignored as the scythe was placed across the front of his throat. C.J. turned away, but was immediately struck by a blow to the face.
“You will watch, you filthy American pig”. These were the first words directed explicitly at him since his capture. What a bunch of animals, C.J. thought. He felt like spitting in the man’s face, telling him off, but fought the urge. There was no sense in inviting any more punishment. If he was to make his eventual escape, he must conserve as much strength as possible.
C.J. turned his head around as commanded, opened his eyes and stared impassively at the events unfolding across from him. His breathing was now measured, pulse normalized. He was prepared for moments like this. He tuned everything about him out. C.J. may have been looking at Russell Bellow, but he didn’t really see anything. Equally as important, the noise didn’t really register, which was indeed impressive. For the screams reached a feverish pitch as the blade slowly sank into the lateral portion of Russell Bellow’s neck. Blood spewed forth as the jugular vessels were lacerated, and still the screaming continued. It wasn’t until the blade was turned medially, in a wide arc crossing the midline, that the sound became muffled. The laceration had by now penetrated the man’s trachea. Blood rushed into the windpipe, eliciting a dreadful, gurgling, mind-curdling acoustic. Russell Bellow was drowning in his own blood. Mercifully, he lost consciousness as his brain was deprived of any bodily support.
Throughout the massacre, C.J. sat impassively, without the slightest hint of emotion. He simply didn’t feel anything. He was in a world of his own, just tuned out. His perception was still focused, able to react to any opening, any chance of escape. But none came. Thankfully his mind didn’t register the gruesome atrocity being committed before him. It was as if his eyes could see, perhaps even relay the information to his brain, but then the recording just stopped. The action never registered in any of the higher cortical centers. In a similar fashion, he was taught to – and could - disregard other sensations, pain or otherwise, while undergoing stress of any kind. The mental barriers operatives like C.J. maintained would not easily be broken.
Russell Bellow’s head now dangled limply forward, connected to his torso by those remaining strands of muscle fibers and skin at the back of the neck that were spared from the wrath of the vicious weapon. The perpetrators were gone. Again not a single word, not a single question posed in C.J.’s direction. He was left in silence, without the slightest clue of what was to befall him. His mind began to stray…If they did just stumble upon him, perhaps they didn’t intend to interrogate him after all? Perhaps the entire stunt was performed just to be cruel? C.J. again required meditative techniques to calm his mind and body. He would just have to wait and find out.
Kelly had already begun interviewing the men, but he needed to sit with the entire team and recreate the events of the night, step by step, minute by minute. The data from Langely had been sent to the Primo for analysis. He would need some help on this one, only Kelly didn’t know where to start. Salaam had been tipped off, that much was certain. Kelly had mentally poured through each and every member of the team, their actions, their background, every possible related fact or event, to try and establish any possible weaknesses in security, any possible signs that might point the finger at one of the operatives. Who alerted Salaam? Each and every member was thoroughly screened. Each man hand-picked among the nation’s elite. How could any traitor have gone unnoticed in their midst? Could any of the coast guard crew have been tipped off? Perhaps Mack was right - perhaps involving outsiders in the operation was a tragic mistake.
Kelly’s concentration was interrupted by a radio call from Mack.
“Hi Bill. Listen, Stevie’s got something for us. Wants to talk in private”
“Bring him down”. Kelly was resting in Hillebrand’s quarters on the ride home. They expected to arrive at the waiting Primo momentarily.
“Stevie, what’s up?”
“Hi Bill. As I was telling Mack, immediately after I jumped ship, I noticed a container sinking to the seabottom – and I mean sink, straight down, no buoyancy whatsoever”
Kelly looked at Stevie, then at Mack, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Bill”, Mack interjected, ”this happened before the ship exploded. Someone threw that container off that s
hip. It wasn’t any of our men.”
“Did you check it out?” Kelly asked Stevie.
“I tried, but couldn’t. When the ship blew, well – there was shit everywhere. I couldn’t see well. But I made a mental note because whatever was in that thing – and it wasn’t very large – was dense as hell”
“Try and remember; what did it look like Stevie? Any markings, any distinguishing features, writing, anything?”
“Sorry Bill, nothing distinct. The infrareds weren’t much help out there.” It came as no surprise that visibility even with infrared detection was limited. The technology amplified existing light, particularly in the long-wave range of the electromagnetic spectrum that was typically invisible to the naked eye. But one still needed a light source of some kind to be amplified – and in the ocean depths, any such emission was in limited supply.
“Do we have our divers on the scene yet?” Kelly asked.
“We will soon Bill, but it will take a while to sift through the debris.”
“Mack, I know. I don’t care how long it takes or how many men we’ve got to get out there - you just find that container.” That was what Salaam was up to – it had to be, thought Kelly. The son-of-a-bitch was smuggling something – but what the hell was it? And rather than let it fall into their hands, he just threw it overboard and blew himself up..god damn martyrs.
As Mack and Stevie started to exit the cabin, Kelly added “Oh, Stevie – do me a favor. Keep this one to yourself, okay.”
“Sure thing Bill”, the operative answered.
Kelly didn’t know which of his men to trust anymore, and wanted as much kept quiet as he could. He still didn’t know who could be trusted, but the information Stevie just related could be crucial. If Salaam did go to great lengths to protect some material, then it was incumbent upon them to find out just what it was. And Kelly was certain of one thing – whatever it was being smuggled to their shores, there was sure to be more on its way soon.
Chapter 4
Back at CIA headquarters in Langely,Va., Ben Goldberg was up late trying to piece together the events of the past 24 hours. No communications had been intercepted, warning anyone on board the target of the impending assault. The satellite photos would be available momentarily, so Ben decided to take some measure of what they might know from the scraps of data now in his possession. Kelly had already provided the analyst with a summary of the events of the mission. The operative question facing the Agency was how Salaam was forewarned of their assault? But was he?
As an analyst, Ben had to carefully take measure of the cold hard facts before postulating hypotheses. So what did they know for sure; what was truly fact and what was speculative? It was no secret to the analyst community that sometimes the line between the two could be blurred. They knew the ship was rigged to blow up, so someone on the other side was forewarned. That was fairly certain, the timing too uncanny to have been coincidental. But was it in fact Salaam who detonated the ship? None of the operatives actually found the man, and it was just assumed he had blown himself up in a homicidal and suicidal act of zealous fervor. But what if it wasn’t Salaam? Had this possibility been considered?
Ben stared down at a schematic of the ship unfurled across his desk. The investigators had determined the rough location of the two charges. He looked intently at a time line of the events on his computer screen, digesting the flow of the operation, recreating events as best he could. If Ben could not confirm Salaam had detonated the ship, then perhaps he might be able to at least exclude one of their own from having done so. Based on the information before him, could any member of the amphibious team have planted those two charges in time? Not likely, he surmised. For starters, none of them carried such explosives, so the materials must have already been stored aboard the ship. That meant someone would have to retrieve the explosives and cover the entire length of the ship, set the timers…no, Ben reassured himself, it would have been impossible. Of course this did not exclude any of them from complicity in the plot, but it was a start.
The analyst decided to backtrack in his thought process and rehash the facts once more. Ben knew he needed a set of viable, practicable, working hypotheses which could then be subjected to further scrutiny. As the evidence mounted, they would then be able to reject or accept hypotheses, much like a researcher applying the scientific method to a series of experiments. The plastique was already aboard, and Salaam must have been responsible for at least bringing the charges on board - fact. He must have known from the outset the ship might come under scrutiny, or else why carry the C-4 to begin with – highly probable. Similar explosives could easily be procured once inside the U.S., so it just didn’t make sense to risk bringing such an incriminating ingredient through customs otherwise. Ben made a note to file this bit of analysis for future reference – whoever masterminded this operation recognized the calculated risk of detection and had gone to exhaustive lengths to hatch a contingency plan. Ben started to suspect the plotters had more than a circumspect understanding of their highly classified schemes for detecting radioactive material, and were putting the technology to the test. That was one hell of a scary thought.
Ben decided to put the theory on the backburner for the moment and move on. He trained his focus now on Salaam. Supposing the man had detonated the bombs, then he must have been able to evade the gas attack, and that meant he must have been alerted prior to the assault on the ship. Alternatively, the bombs may have been planted well before the assault, and a traitor amongst them might have detonated the explosives. But this latter possibility would have required some remote device; their electronic surveillance should have detected such a signal. So again Ben arrived at a similar conclusion – Salaam must have been forewarned, and either planted and set the explosives, or else evaded the gas and set the explosives. The latter possibility of course begged the question how did he know of the gas attack? If he did have knowledge of the nature of the attack, then the list of possible intelligence leaks just narrowed significantly, for that immediately excluded the coast guard crew in its entirety, who had no idea of the “atypical” nature of the offensive. So did Salaam plant the explosives before the attack, and was then rendered unconscious by the gas and a second man – an accomplice– detonate the explosives, or was Salaam forewarned of the gas and completed the mission in its entirety himself? Ben had no way to determine which hypothesis was correct.
The truth, of course, lay somewhere in between.
Ben was now fairly certain, at a minimum, that Salaam was somehow warned in advance of the assault. This, of course, concurred with Kelly’s analysis. He examined a list of all those with foreknowledge of the raid. The list was disturbingly long, including all personnel at the scene, to those at headquarters controlling the flow of information to the Seafin from intelligence satellites and aircraft. So who delivered the message? Ben pondered again. Kelly knew the men best, and was trying to formulate some rational probability as to who might have engaged in such anti-American behavior. Any such analysis was highly subjective; perhaps Ben might be able to lend some additional insight to help narrow down the possibilities. So what did they know about the how and when of the warning? If he could conclude with a high degree of probability this key bit of information, it might go a long way towards implicating (or excluding for that matter) certain individuals.
There was still much on site investigating to be done, but information was coming in at a relatively brisk pace. Ben checked the latest electronic eavesdropping data from the window of time covering the assault. As he scrolled through the menu, he happened upon a transmission of interest.
“There”, he said to himself. It was a scrambled signal originating in Geneva, Switzerland just prior to the encounter. The agency was still in the process of deciphering the communication itself, but there was little doubt in Ben’s mind what that communication represented – the warning issued to Salaam of the upcoming operation. It had to be. The transmission had probably been scranbled and routed several times -
the location of origin would not be reliable. While Ben would not have the translation of the coded message for some time, confirming his hunch, he did note the timing of the warning, occurring roughly fifteen minutes prior to the assault on the ship. In that window, Salaam might have been able to plant both devices in time, but that was before Ben was told of the scuttled container. Had there been enough time to do both? A cursory inspection of the freighter’s blueprints suggested no – there simply wasn’t time to detonate the ship and salvage the cargo in under fifteen minutes.
The picture was becoming clearer – Salaam had either been warned of the gas attack and finished his assignment after the ship was penetrated, incriminating only those with knowledge of the impending use of the aerosolized sedative, or else one of the operatives directly lent Salaam crucial assistance. In either instance, Ben had effectively excluded all tactical assist members at Langley and the entire coast guard crew. An operative at the scene must have been responsible for the leak. Moreover, Ben had excluded with reasonable certainty one important member of the team – Mack Sullivan. Save for Kelly, he was the only person with both knowledge of the gas used and greater than 15 minutes notice in which to alert Salaam. If he were involved, why wouldn’t the warning have been issued sooner? Ben concluded that the big operations chief was probably in the clear.
Ben still needed to evaluate the overhead imaging data as well as the recording of all transmissions during the operation. An analysis of both, together with the detailed account of each member’s recollection of events could then be synthesized to recreate the series of events that culminated in the disaster. Ben got up, walked to the coffee machine, and loaded up on the stimulant before poring over the information. Kelly wanted his interpretation ASAP – and that meant a long night ahead for the determined analyst.
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