The Inside Passage (Ted Higuera Series Book 1)

by Pendelton Wallace

  “Why don’t we just go in and eat their porridge?” Ted tried to cover up the uneasiness he felt in the pit of his stomach. “Maybe we could take a nap in their beds too. This one looks juuuuust right.”

  “Oh, cut it out.” Meagan shoved Ted’s shoulder. “There’s no one around. I could go running through the camp naked and no one would see.”

  “I’m just saying. . . “

  “Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy.”

  “Okay, you two. Knock it off.” Chris took charge. “Let’s sneak up there, but if we see or hear anyone, we’re out of here.”

  They crept up to the truck. Ted listened intently for any signs of habitation. Nothing stirred. A heavy silence hung in the air.

  “Look inside the shed.” Meagan gave Ted a shove from her position next to the truck’s big rear tire.

  Chris and Ted exchanged a glance. They always seemed to be able to read each other’s thoughts. Crouching down, Chris ran across the clearing to the wooden building with Ted on his heels. Still no sound. It was late enough in the day that someone should have been up. Chris poked his head around the open double door.

  “Shit, there they are. Those are the crates they unloaded.”

  “This writing looks like Arabic.” Ted ran his hand over the rough surface of one of the smaller crates.

  “Not this big one,” Chris said. “This is French. I can’t understand it, but I know French when I see it.”

  “Madre de Dios. It says ‘Exocet’. You know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a missile, dude. An anti-ship missile. I remember reading about them in history class. The Argentines used them in the Falklands war. One of those babies will take out an aircraft carrier from fifty miles out.”

  “Let’s see what’s in these other boxes.” Chris used his rigging knife to pry the lid off of one of the smaller boxes.

  “Jesus, Chris.” Ted’s breathing rapidly accelerated. “Don’t mess with ‘em. They’ll notice.”

  “Too late.” Chris lifted the lid off of the crate. “They look like some kind of bazooka.”

  “Shoulder launched missiles.” Ted lifted the long, pipe-shaped weapon from the box. “This is what the Sunnis and Shiites use to shoot down American helicopters. What’re these guys up to?”

  Chris took the launcher from Ted and returned it to the crate. “Let’s get out of here.” Chris lowered the lid onto the box.

  To their left and down the hill Ted heard a gunshot, then a burst of automatic weapon fire.

  Chapter 38

  Ottawa, Canada

  Jean Broussard walked quickly down the hallway and into the refuge of her office. She hated Cabinet briefings. The new Prime Minister, less liberal than his predecessor and friendlier to the United States, still didn’t take the Islamic extremist threat against Canada seriously.

  Entering her office, Jean kicked her shoes under her desk. At five-foot one, she never appeared in public without high-heels. Walking over to her credenza she grabbed a cup and reached for the carafe of coffee.

  “I got you fresh coffee.” Jeremy Browne, her all too perfect assistant, materialized in the doorway. Ten years her junior and over a foot taller, she wasn’t sure how to handle him. His clipped accent spoke of upper class breeding. “Copenhagens, too.”

  Jean eyed the almond-flavored pastries hungrily. “Many more of those and I’ll be as wide as I am tall, eh?”

  “I know how tough cabinet meeting days are.” Jeremy poured himself a cup of coffee, then added cream and sugar. “You need a little reward for subjecting yourself to it.”

  “Thanks, Jeremy. It’s been a tough day and it’s only nine o’clock.” Smoothing down her white linen suit, she settled in behind her desk.

  “Those chaps don’t get it, do they, mum?”

  “Stop calling me that. I’m not your mum. You make me feel a thousand years old.” Jean lifted her cup to her lips, then paused in mid-sip. “And, no, they don’t get it. Half of them refuse to believe that there’s any threat to Canada. The other half thinks that we can protect them against anything. It’s just a matter of time. We’ve been lucky so far, but one of these days we’ll slip up. We can’t possibly stop every threat that comes against us.”

  “We did pretty well with Toronto, didn’t we?” Jeremy waved his spoon in the air, then casually draped himself over a chair.

  “We rounded most of ‘em up. There are a few higher-ups we didn’t nab. That concerns me. They set these things up, then disappear to create more mischief.” Finally, craving got the better of discretion and Jean lifted a Copenhagen onto a small, glass plate.

  “Do you have anything new for me?” she asked.

  “More intel on Yasim Hassan.” Jeremy handed her a manila folder. “His wife and family are still in Toronto. She’s still driving the hack, but no word on him. He’s just disappeared. What is he going to do with all that money?”

  “No good, I can assure you of that. What else?”

  “We’ve been running down a lead on Smythe and Goldstreet, solicitors. Hassan was seen entering their offices in Toronto.”

  Jean perked up. “That sounds promising.”

  “Something’s rotten in Denmark, mum.”

  Jean ignored the “mum” this time.

  “Alfred Smythe recently set up a new company,” Jeremy continued. “Pacific Marine Surveys. All the officers are dyed-in-the-wool Canadian heavy weights, but we can’t find evidence that any of them work for the company. As a matter of fact, we can’t find any physical location for the company. Just a Post Office box. We have a man staking out the Post Office, but they never receive any mail.”

  “So who’s running the show? Is there a show?”

  “Let’s see.” Jeremy looked in his own copy of the manila folder. “Here it is. They’ve just let an island in BC for a research station. It looks like Smythe signed all of the paper work.”

  “Follow up on it, Jeremy. It’s not much, but I have a gut feeling. This one doesn’t smell right.”

  ****

  William and Mary Island, Canada

  Ted heard the bark of automatic weapon fire. “Shit, man, let’s get out o’ here.” He turned for the door.

  “There’re some men down in the clearing.” Meagan snuck into the shed, breathing hard. “They’re firing off machine guns. I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

  Another burst of fire, then silence. Foreign-sounding voices carried through the fog.

  Ted strained to hear the words.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak Arabic,” a disembodied voice said. “Can we do this in English?”

  “Allah will hear you in any language,” a thickly accented voice replied. “Remember, must aim below target. Kick of rifle will cause to shoot high.”

  “Christ, man, they’re takin’ target practice.” Ted slunk back to the cover of the pickup. There was another bust of gunfire. “Those are AK-47s, serious assault rifles.”

  “How would you know an AK-47?” Meagan pressed her back to the truck.

  “In my ‘hood, we had drive-by shootings all the time. When there were gang wars they brought out the heavy artillery. I’ve heard AK-47’s before.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Chris pulled at Meagan’s wrist. “I don’t think these guys‘re fooling around.”

  The three crouched low and ran for the welcoming cover of the trees. As they dashed down the hill, Chris suddenly stopped.

  “Shit, I forgot to seal the crate.”

  “Don’t worry about it, dude,” Ted called back over his shoulder. “We can’t go back now. We gotta get out of here.”

  Meagan grabbed Chris’ arm and tugged him along.

  ****

  “What are those dudes doin’ with a missile?” Ted, still breathing hard, secured the dinghy behind the Defiant.

  “Hell if I know. What do we know about Exocet missiles?” Chris asked.

  “Let’s Google it.” Meagan started down the companionway steps.

  “We ain
’t got no connection out here.” Ted dried his wet hands on the seat of his pants. “They had Wi-Fi back at Echo Bay. We could head back there.”

  “But we were going to the hot springs,” Meagan said.

  A long burst of gunfire rolled down the hill. “Christ, it sounds like there’s a war going on up there.” Chris pulled up the swim steps and secured them to the stern pulpit.

  “Don’t you think findin’ out about that missile is more important than the hot springs?” Ted asked. Sharp barks from a rifle accentuated Ted’s point.

  “They can’t be up to any good,” Chris said. “What if they’re terrorists?”

  “We need to head back towards civilization,” Ted said. “If they are terrorists, we can’t do anything about it out here.”

  Chapter 39

  William and Mary Island, Canada

  “Yasim, come quickly.” Ahmad shouted from the door of the storage shed.

  “What is?” Yasim raced to the shed.

  “Someone’s been in our camp.” Ahmad led him to one of the crates of SAMs. “Look, the lid to this crate’s been pried open.”

  Yasim examined the crate. “Could this have been done before was shipped?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t remember any of the crates being opened when we got ’em. We haven’t touched the SAMs yet. We were busy with the AK-47s.”

  “Call everyone together. We must search camp. We need to know if anything has been disturbed.”

  A thorough search of the camp, found no further traces of tampering.

  Qayyum spoke in Arabic. Mohammed translated his words into English as the group re-assembled in front of the cook tent. “He says that this isn’t good. Our mission depends on the utmost secrecy. Who could have been in our camp?”

  “I knew we shouldn’t have left the camp unguarded,” Kalil said.

  “But we’re on a deserted island” Mohammed responded. “There’s no one else here.”

  “Obviously, there was someone else here.” Kalil spat in disgust. “You have the military training. You should have thought of this.”

  “There is no point in arguing now.” Yasim took control. “What is done is done. Where did they come from?”

  Ahmad thought back to last night. “The sail boat. There was a blue sail boat in the bay yesterday. They must’ve come ashore.”

  “I knew we should’ve taken care of them.” Anger flashed in Kalil’s eyes. “I knew we shouldn’t have left any witnesses.”

  “No, was right decision.” Yasim examined the lid to the crate he still held in his hand, as if it contained the answer. “If boat and crew went missing, Coast Guard would have started search.” He looked up from the lid. “With planes and helicopters flying overhead, would have been in even greater danger of discovery.” Yasim tossed the crate lid aside.

  Qayyum spoke again.

  Yasim started to respond to their leader, then held it.

  “He doesn’t agree with Yasim,” Mohammed translated. “He says that we must find the sail boat. We have to stop the intruders before they alert the authorities.”

  Yasim stared at his mentor for a moment, held back his anger, then spoke. “Ahmad, how much more time you need?”

  “There’s never enough time. The launcher’s ready.” Ahmad gestured towards the ugly steel box next to his shop. “All we have to do is install it on the boat. That shouldn’t take more than a few hours. I think I can be done with the guidance system in a couple of days, but I won’t have a chance to do any testing. It’ll have to be right the first time.”

  “We no have time for testing anyway.” Yasim walked towards the launcher. “Target will be in Johnstone Straits in three days.”

  ****

  Echo Bay, Canada

  It took the Defiant most of the day to re-trace her course to Echo Bay. Finally, Ted spotted the tiny settlement floating on the edge of the island. Houseboats crowded around the floats in the tiny round cove. A light blue fairy-tale sort of houseboat, with white trim and shutters and a roof line that looked like it was melting sat on the rocks across the bay.

  “I don’t think I’ve seen any villages on the land up here.” Like most of the settlements he’d seen in the Broughtons, there were few permanent buildings on land at Echo Bay. Everything was built on floats.

  “Echo Bay is kind of unique.” Chris steered the Defiant past a giant float and into the harbor. “The owners bought a section of the old I-90 floating bridge when the rest of the bridge sank during the Thanksgiving Day storm in Seattle. They towed it here and made it the foundation of their settlement.”

  A marina store and workshop as well as fish cleaning station sat on the old pontoon section that still had a layer of blacktop, complete with the white stripe down the middle.

  As soon as they tied up at the fuel dock, Ted broke out his lap top. He was glad to see that they had a good wireless Internet connection. The other two crowded around him in the main cabin to see the search results.

  There were dozens of hits on “Exocet.”

  “It says here ‘Exocet’ means flying fish.” Ted scanned a Web page. “It’s a French anti-ship missile first built in the Seventies. The Argentines used them to sink the HMS Sheffield and the Atlantic Conveyer during the Falklands War. They did major damage to the HMS Glamoran.”

  “Shit, that’s a serious missile.” Chris leaned over his shoulder. “I wonder what those Arabs are planning on doing with it.”

  “Let’s look at this link.” Meagan pointed at the computer’s screen. “It’s about Iraq.”

  “Hmm, turns out that the Iraqis used a bunch of Exocets in their war against Iran.” Ted skimmed through the Web page. “Looks like they put some serious hurt on Iranian shipping . . .”

  “Slow down.” Meagan grabbed Ted’s wrist. “I can’t read when you scroll so fast.”

  “The Israelis have them too,” Ted continued. “They almost sank the USS Stark in 1987. I guess they thought the Stark was an Iranian tanker.”

  “Okay, so now we know that the Exocet is an anti-ship missile” Chris straightened up.

  “So what are those Arab dudes doin’ with an anti-ship missile?” Ted looked up from the lap top.

  “There’s only one thing they can be doing with it, dufus.” Meagan slapped Ted on the top of his head. “They’re going to blow up a ship.” There was a long silence in the cabin.

  “What ship?” Ted finally asked. “What’s their target?”

  “Well, I suppose they could blow up an oil tanker,” Chris said. “It would cause an environmental catastrophe.”

  “They could be going to blow up a container ship.” Meagan reached for her water bottle. “That would cause a lot of damage to commerce.”

  “No, that’s not big enough.” Ted turned from the computer screen to his two comrades. “These dudes are all about terror. They want to kill a lot of people and put the fear of Allah in us. Besides, losing one tanker or one container ship wouldn’t seriously damage our economy.”

  “A civilian target,” Chris’ hushed voice took on an ominous tone. “They want to spread terror, like at the World Trade Center or Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. It’s all about scaring people.”

  “What about a ferry boat?” Meagan asked.

  Ted pictured a ferry with hundreds of passengers sinking.

  “That would cause panic,” Meagan continued. “It would kill a lot of people.”

  “I think you’re one the right track,” Ted conceded. “They’re all about terror. These guys want to put the hurt on a lot of people. How do they do that? By killing innocent civilians, who aren’t suspecting that they might be in danger. I think I’ve got it.”

  “What?”

  “A cruise ship. They’re going to blow up a cruise ship.”

  Chapter 40

  William and Mary Island, Canada

  The July sun beat down on the corrugated iron roof of Ahmad’s workshop. The bare bulbs gave little light, but sunlight poured in through the sash windows. Inhali
ng the scent of wood and oil, Ahmad wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  “This is ancient technology,” he told Yasim as he traced over the blue prints for the hundredth time. “This missile was built before I was born.” He began flipping through the pages.

  Yasim looked at the white lines on blue paper.

  He doesn’t understand any of this, does he? Ahmad thought

  “It has a two-part guidance system.” Ahmad found the page he was looking for and pointed with the end of his mechanical pencil. “When it’s first fired, the inertial guidance system stabilizes the flight and gets it headed in the right direction.” Ahmad flipped the page. “When it acquires a target, the radar system locks on and guides it in.”

  “But will not suit for our purposes?”

  This is like explaining to a child. “I don’t trust it.” Ahmad reached for a sheaf of computer printouts on the shelf above his work bench. “More than half of the Exocets fired in combat failed.” He leafed through the pile of papers. “Either they didn’t explode or the guidance system failed.” He found what he was looking for and held it out to Yasim. “Iraq fired hundreds of missiles in the Iran war and only a few ever hit their targets.”

  Yasim ignored the offered paper. “So you will use toy airplane system?”

  “The Americans use the same kind of system on their smart bombs.” Ahmad un-tacked a hand-drawn diagram from the wall and handed it to Yasim. “The TV camera sends a signal back to the operator, who ‘flies’ the bomb to its target.” Pencil drawings covered the page. “They’re accurate to within a few feet. I showed you I can fly a remote controlled airplane without ever seeing the plane, I can do the same thing with this missile.”

  “And this,” Yasim waved the page at Ahmad, “is better than radar system?”

  “Yes. The missile wasn’t designed to be fired so close to the target.” Ahmad rolled up the pile of blue prints. “From an airplane or another ship, they might fire from fifty miles. We’ll be less than five miles out.” He used the roll of paper in his hand to imitate the missile. “It will only take the missile seconds to reach its target. That isn’t enough time for the radar to lock on target and guide it in. I’ll be flying it from the time it leaves its launcher. Fortunately, we have a very large target.”