by Mack Maloney
Twitch started to protest again, but Batman stopped him short. The little man was making sense.
“How much?” he asked Murphy.
He thought a moment. “Well, you guys won the key, but you lost a substantial amount of money doing it. Plus, you figured out the Jihad Brothers would be taking the yacht for their escape.
“Plus, we suffered mental distress,” Twitch added. “You know, in the penthouse, and then suddenly not in the penthouse…”
“Thirty percent,” Murphy said.
“Plus you return our ten million you stole,” Batman told him.
Murphy thought a moment, but then nodded.
Batman looked at Twitch. “Instead of a hundred million, we get seventy, plus our ten back,” he said. “Plus, Murphy here does all the heavy lifting.”
Twitch thought a moment then just shrugged. “OK, deal…” he said.
They all shook hands, but it was very quick and perfunctory.
Then Twitch asked, “Now, how are you going to get that boat sunk? It’s already been thirty minutes since it left, and the goddamn thing is moving at eighty miles an hour.”
Murphy just smiled.
He pulled out his phone — and finally got a dial tone.
“Leave that to me,” he said.
25
Off the coast of France
Fahd Fahim Shabazz had grown up on a yacht.
For more than thirty years, his father was the chief maritime engineer who oversaw the upkeep and repair of a fleet of yachts owned by members of the Saudi Royal Family.
That fleet contained more than two dozen yachts and involved so much work, around the clock, over the years, that the Fahim family lived on the fleet tender, which, in fact, was an old yacht converted to carry tools, spare equipment and replacement parts. Fahim Shabazz was two years old before he’d set foot on dry ground. Until he turned twenty-one, he’d spend the majority of his life on that old yacht tender, with only the water rolling beneath his feet.
Now he was at the controls of the Smoke-Lar, one of the most fantastic yachts ever built and going almost eighty mph. It was fifty-six feet long, constructed mostly of lightweight composites, with a gas turbine that was powerful enough that, with a few tweaks, it could produce enough electricity to light a small city.
The yacht was shaped like a bullet that had melded with a knife. Everything in its design was about aerodynamics; every ounce of weight, every contour, even the special glass in its sleek cockpit was made to let the air slip past it in the most efficient way.
When all this was working together, Fahim Shabazz could get the yacht moving at more than eighty miles an hour and nothing on the ocean’s surface could catch him — with the exception of the yacht currently following him, of course.
* * *
Fahim Shabazz was also on a suicide mission — and he couldn’t have been more excited about it.
He was a soldier of al Qaeda, by way of the Jihad Brotherhood, and he’d been hoping for just such a mission ever since being sent to Somalia to stir up trouble there. Because of his nautical background, he’d been imbedded with local Somali pirate groups, such as the Shaka, and had gone on several raids with them, all in hopes that a suitable opportunity, like this one, would arise. So, in a way, he was a bit of a pirate himself.
When word came down from the al Qaeda leadership that a powerful weapon needed for a retaliatory operation against the Americans would soon be in place and all that was required was for an activation key to be smuggled into the United States, possibly by boat, Fahim Shabazz jumped at the chance to serve.
So now here he was, piloting what was probably the fastest yacht in the world and making great time. If everything went right and this unusual way to circumvent U.S. security actually worked, Fahim Shabazz hoped to reach his goal in fifty-five hours and start the operation with no problems whatsoever.
Getting to this point had been challenging, however. He’d slipped into Monte Carlo among the deluge of street vendors allowed in to sell their wares during Race Week. He’d made contact with officials from the Pakistani consulate in Monaco. They gave him clothes, funds, weapons and lastly a place to stay, which was probably the most difficult arrangement of all. The Pakistani Intelligence Service, the notorious ISI, secured a seat for him at the Grande Gagnant by paying the ten million dollar buy-in fee up front and then wiring a surety bond for the remaining forty million in his name to the game’s organizers.
Fahim Shabazz had also been led to believe by the ISI that some sort of fix was in for him in the game, but when the late-arriving pair of Americans wound up winning the key, he had to fall back on his al Qaeda training and ruthlessly get by force what he could not win by chance.
He’d been lying in wait for the Americans to come down the Palace Road; that they were subsequently kidnapped and then stopped by their friendly rivals worked in his favor. It set up the massacre on the road — and put the key in his possession.
Had he won the key, he would have just left, as he’d come in, through the airport at Nice and then on to America. But obtaining the key by violence led him to Plan B, which is where his nautical background came into play, which was why he’d been selected for this mission in the first place.
Plan B required he kill the original drivers and support crew of the Smoke-Lar. This was done without a problem. Weighted down, they were thrown overboard as soon as the Smoke-Lar was out of sight of land. And now, with a little last minute insurance aboard, Fahim Shabazz wasn’t expecting any trouble from anybody.
Off in the distance, maybe ten miles behind him, was the second racing yacht, Numero Two. As there would be no radio contact between the two competitors — indeed no radio contact with anyone, barring emergencies, until they were in sight of the U.S. coastline — there would be no way the crew of the Italian boat would know anything was amiss on the Smoke-Lar.
The other member of his crew was Abdul Adbul. Typical of al Qaeda operations, for security reasons, Fahim Shabazz had met Adbul just the day before when they both stole into Monte Carlo pretending to be street vendors.
Like Fahim Shabazz, Abdul was a Saudi. He’d been Fahim Shabazz’s second at the Grande Gagnant, and when they didn’t win the key, he’d helped gun down the group of men on the Palace Road and then assisted in the murders of the Smoke-Lar’s crew and support team.
Abdul Adbul was here for one important reason. He’d worked as an engineer at the vast Ghawar oil field in the Saudi desert. He knew about gas turbines, which meant he knew that if you just left them alone, if you didn’t mess with them, they would run forever on their own.
They hadn’t spoken much since stealing the Smoke-Lar. Abdul knew very little about driving racing yachts, not that he had to. The entire trip was programmed into the vessel’s onboard guidance computer, which used the same integrated navigation technology as a modern jet fighter or airliner. Basically the humans on board confirmed the course set in for the race, at the maximum speed allowable and the guidance computer and the GPS unit did the rest.
What Abdul didn’t know was he was just along as a backup in case anything went wrong during this transatlantic dash. But once they reached America and the time was right, just to uncomplicate things, Fahim Shabazz was under orders to send Abdul to paradise early.
This was the perfect situation for Shabazz. He hated Americans, hated the West, and he loved fast boats. He looked for this to be the best way to spend the last forty-eight hours of his life on Earth.
He’d already recorded his martyr video; he hadn’t seen his family in years, not that it mattered. He would get to cross the mighty Atlantic and invade the hated USA, the land of the Great Satan — with a key to a weapon more powerful than an entire army.
So everything was going smoothly.
For the first three hours.
Then the jet fighter appeared.
* * *
The Smoke-Lar was on the other side of Majorca when Fahim Shabazz first spotted the jet.
He was three h
undred miles out of Monte Carlo by this time and making great headway. He’d just passed a small fleet of sardine boats, making sure he waved to them just as he did any vessel that came within 1,000 feet of him, when heard the unmistakable sound of a jet overhead.
It rocketed very high above the yacht, then banked sharply and started circling. It was at least two miles up, too high to identify its make or country of origin. But on the face of it, it seemed innocent enough. There was always a chance the aircraft was just curious to see such a large boat going so fast. Or maybe it hadn’t noticed him at all and was just on a training flight or something.
Still, it was enough for Fahim Shabazz to get worried.
He watched the jet for about five minutes, aware only that by continuing to fly in wide circles it was keeping pace with him. But then, once he was out of sight of the mainland or any island or any other vessel, it began diving on him.
For Fahim Shabazz, this was like something from a bad dream. He’d been having nightmares since being selected for the honor of martyrdom. He was told this was normal, that the Devil was trying to tempt him into not obeying God’s will.
But one of the bad dreams was about the sky itself falling on top of him — and almost as soon as that thought went through his head, the jet fighter was down at wave-top level, coming right at him. Any notion that this might be just a curious pilot was dashed.
The jet went by his port side at tremendous speed. Not fifty feet away, and no more than ten feet off the top of the water, just the disruption in air pressure around the Smoke-Lar violently rocked the racing yacht back and forth.
Fahim Shabazz knew by now what kind of a plane it was. It was a Harrier jump jet. He’d seen plenty of them as a boy growing up on the Persian Gulf. Flown by both the U.S. Marines and the British Navy, they made a distinctive high-pitched sound when they flew overhead.
But this jump jet had no national markings. Instead, it was painted in sinister black camouflage. And it was turning again.
The second time, the jump jet went by so low and so fast, Fahim Shabazz thought for sure it was going to crash into the sea. Through the clear cockpit glass, he could see the pilot glaring at him as he flashed by. The pilot actually gave him the thumbs-down sign.
Fahim Shabazz knew it would be foolish to disconnect from autopilot and try to evade the jet. One deviation from the planned course could put them off course by hundreds of miles. And besides, where would he go? There was no way he could outrun the jet fighter.
As he was thinking all this, the jump jet turned again and this time he saw its nose light up with flashes of cannon fire.
The plane was shooting at him!
But physics worked in Fahim Shabazz’s favor at that moment. As a result of its tight, low-altitude turn, the jump jet was now flying due north, while the yacht was racing due west. The window for firing on the yacht was a brief one. Of the dozen or so shells fired at him, only two pinged off the long yacht’s snout, the rest ripping into the water on his starboard side.
But then the jump jet turned once again and was coming back at a much better firing angle.
There was no real mystery now. Fahim Shabazz knew that someone had obviously caught on to him.
Luckily, he had made provisions for just sort a thing.
He screamed for Abdul to come up from the engine room, then he started nervously playing with the silver rings on his fingers as he watched the jump jet approach again.
Abdul appeared and quickly appraised the situation. He disappeared below but reappeared a few moments later — with a third person.
She was an Asian woman — her name was Li. To a non-zealot Muslim, and to just about the rest of the world, she would have been considered astonishingly beautiful.
They had snatched her shortly after they’d swiped the key from the winners of the gagnant. She’d secreted herself near the bend in Palace Road, and at first they took her because she’d been a witness to the killings and they weren’t sure what to do with her. But then they decided to keep her for just such a thing as was happening now. She was their extra insurance.
Fahim Shabazz made her stand out in the open in full view of the oncoming fighter jet. He drew out his razor-sharp knife and put it up to her throat.
The jump jet streaked by — but did not fire this time. It turned and went by slower; the pilot was fixated on the beautiful woman, almost as if he knew her.
Then finally, the airplane slowly rose into the sky and eventually disappeared from sight.
26
Monte Carlo
It was 8:00 A.M. when Murphy’s phone finally rang.
The three of them were still holed up in the support shack for Smoke-Lar. Twitch was presiding over the late support crew’s Power-Mac suite; it contained a Kestrel 4500 weather-tracking station and a GPS-slaved Earthworks program that allowed him to uncover the predetermined course of the two racing yachts. Batman, meanwhile, had been watching the door, on the lookout for any unexpected visitors.
Murphy had spent all this time on the phone. Outside, the preliminaries for the Grand Prix had begun, and between the sound of the Formula One cars and the noise made by the thousands of spectators awaiting the race, it didn’t seem like Monte Carlo would ever be quiet again.
But this did not deter him. He was constantly checking in with his network of operatives, especially the ones who were keeping an eye on Audette’s PSOs, who in turn were watching all the local transportation points where the terrorists or the other participants in the gagnant could leave the area. He spoke with other operatives who were watching for any suspicious activity around the Pakistani consulate.
Murphy was also in touch with his base of operations, which was a nondescript container ship anchored about fifteen miles to the west, off of Nice. While using cargo vessels as cover for special operations had been around since the Q-ships of World War Two, Murphy’s ship, built with funds he’d managed to weasel out of the U.S. government after 9/11, was not just for transport; it was a self-contained floating headquarters complete with advanced communications and eavesdropping equipment for his small army of spies and special ops experts. It was also part aircraft carrier: It was from here, still shrouded by the morning darkness and fog, that his unit’s jump jet had taken off.
Murphy had not been entirely successful getting all his people on the phone, though: at least one was not answering his calls. At one point, he blamed the growing commotion in town for screwing up his phone reception. “Monte Carlo is one big EID,” he said.
What Murphy was really doing, however, was waiting for someone to call him — namely the pilot of his jump jet. That was the one phone call that could change everything, the call that would tell them the key and the terrorists were sleeping with the fishes somewhere off the coast of Majorca. Only good things could come from that. The calamity that could be caused by the Z-box would be lessened tremendously. The box could then be tracked down in a much more rational manner. And the CIA could write a big fat check and reward those who’d pulled its collective ass from the fire.
So when Murphy’s phone finally rang — someone was calling him, and not the other way around — he hit the TALK button with much anticipation; Batman and Twitch were listening in close by.
But not five seconds into the conversation the little man literally slumped to the greasy floor, his face turning white, his eyes tearing up.
The call did not bring good news.
To Murphy’s credit, he pulled himself together just as quickly as he’d collapsed, getting back to his feet and brushing himself off even before Batman and Twitch could reach him to help.
“My fly guy found the yacht,” he told them after hanging up. “And he was ready to take it out, but then he realized the mooks had a hostage with them. One of my people.”
Batman and Twitch couldn’t believe it. “One of your people?” Batman said. “Who?”
“The woman you met twice,” Murphy said, his eyes red. “The woman who showed you the penthouse. The woman w
ho sat in for me at the gagnant. Her name is Li — and no wonder she wasn’t answering my calls. They got her and they made it clear they’d kill her if we interfered.”
Batman’s mind flashed on the face of the gorgeous Asian woman, clearly one of the most attractive females he’d ever met, and that included Her Bitchiness, Emma Simms. She made the perfect special ops operative because just about anyone with an ounce of testosterone in his body would be charmed into submission just by meeting her.
“But how could they have kidnapped her,” Batman finally asked him. “Her, of all people?”
Murphy could barely speak now. In a halting voice, he revealed that after she’d reported in to tell him that Batman and Twitch had won the gagnant, he’d told her to tail them. He could only guess that’s what she’d been doing on Palace Road when the shootout took place. The terrorists must have captured her in the process, and seeing her value as a hostage, didn’t kill her when they whacked the four PSO guys and the racing yacht’s support crew.
“So she’s the ‘hooker’ on the videotape?” Twitch asked.
“She’s hardly a hooker,” Murphy shot back. “And I know it sounds corny, but she’s like a daughter to me.”
But she was now a huge complication, this beautiful Asian woman who, up until then, had been haunting the edges of this very strange adventure.
Batman and Twitch eyed each other — they were thinking the same thing.
“I know it’s difficult to accept,” Twitch tried to explain to Murphy. “But this isn’t a time for sentimentality. We could have an enormous catastrophe in a major U.S. city if that boat isn’t dealt with.”
Murphy knew what he was proposing — and was immediately incensed.
“No way,” he said sternly. “Not in a million years.”
