Sea Of Terror (2010)

by Stephen - Deep Black 08 Coonts

  This sort of thing, she thought, was more Charlie Dean's line of work. Charlie had been a sniper in the Marines and, according to his service jacket, a damned good one. But Charlie had been tapped for another mission, something in England, and Lia had already been in Turkey finishing up another mission. She had the requisite training, so when Stargazer had surfaced, she and Howard Taggart had been dispatched to Lebanon.

  Normally, two people were deployed in a sniper team, a shooter and a spotter, and that had been the original plan. Debra Collins had recommended splitting Lia and Howard up, however, as two independent shooters in order to give better coverage of the street, one on each side. There hadn't been time to bring in more people.

  With luck, they wouldn't need to shoot. If Suleiman had taken the electronic bait just now, Echo Whiskey was about to deliver to Sagittarius an envelope containing a bank note for 45 million Lebanese pounds--a bit under thirty thousand U. S. dollars.

  Lia did not believe in luck. If Syrian intelligence suspected something was wrong, Echo Whiskey might have just been dispatched to eliminate Sagittarius. Hell, even if Suleiman had accepted the thumb drive's contents as genuine, the man was perfectly capable of eliminating Haddid simply to wrap up some untidy loose ends. The hope, of course, was that the IMJ would choose to keep Haddid alive and available as a regular source of intelligence inside the U. S. Embassy, but according to the jacket compiled by the CIA over the years, Colonel Suleiman was a paranoid and psychopathic thug. It was anybody's guess how the next few seconds were going to play out.

  Which was why Lia and Taggart were there as over-watch. If Echo Whiskey produced a weapon from inside that overcoat, he was a dead man. If he produced an envelope, he would live. As simple as that.

  She watched as he stopped next to Haddid's sidewalk table, exchanging words with the CIA man. Lia could hear words in Arabic but didn't understand them. A moment later, Echo Whiskey walked around to Haddid's right and took a seat, facing the street. One hand reached inside his coat, and Lia's finger tightened ever so slightly on the trigger.

  "I've got the shot," she said.

  Echo Whiskey's hand emerged from the jacket, holding an envelope, which he casually placed on the table between the two men. They continued to speak for a few moments, and at one point Haddid picked up the envelope, looked inside, then slipped it inside his jacket.

  "That's it," Collins said. "Payment received. The fish bit."

  "Aquarius, stay on Echo Whiskey," Caravaggio warned. "It's not over yet!"

  But a few moments later, Echo Whiskey stood, exchanged a few more words with Haddid, then walked back up the street. Haddid visibly sagged in his seat, rubbed his jaw, then said, "Mission complete. I'm coming in."

  Lia continued to cover the man, however, as he stood, paid for his drink, and left the cafe. Only when he was out of sight from her sniper's perch did she lean back from the wall and begin breaking her weapon down.

  She worked swiftly and with no wasted motion. The Mk 11 had been designed to disassemble into a small package, and this special modification had several extra steps to make it smaller still. The barrel and sound suppressor unscrewed, then came apart into two pieces. Then the receiver assembly unsnapped from the stock, then clicked apart into two more pieces, until Lia had five parts, not counting the magazine, none more than twelve inches long. After she pulled a tightly bundled roll of cloth and a pair of sandals from her handbag, all of the parts went into the bag, which concealed them easily. Her shoes went into the bag as well, followed by the camera and tripod.

  With a final look around to sanitize her rooftop observation post, she pulled on the sandals, then crossed the open roof to the small building sheltering the top of the service stairs. Once inside, with no possibility of being seen, she slung the bag over her neck by its long strap, so that it hung over her torso just below her breasts. Unrolling the dark cloth, she slipped it over her head and tugged it into place--a traditional Muslim woman's burka covering Lia from head to foot and effectively concealing the handbag.

  Down the service stairs to the main level, where she stepped out into the building lobby. None of the people there--mostly men--gave her a second glance.

  Lebanon was a remarkably progressive and Western nation within a sea of conservative Islam. Women could be seen on the streets in blue jeans, miniskirts, and other Western attire, and could grace the local beaches in almost nonexistent bikinis. There was even one beach a few blocks from here in downtown Beirut, restricted to women only, of course, where they could sunbathe topless.

  At the same-time, most Muslim women still preferred more conservative dress, and you could see a range of fashion from colorful scarves over the head to full-length burkas like the one Lia was wearing now. Within Beirut, she was now effectively invisible.

  Bowed slightly under the weight of camera and rifle, she made her way toward the safe house on Verdun Street, as planned. The eerie wail of a muezzin calling out the adhan sounded from the loudspeaker in a spire-topped minaret nearby, calling the faithful to prayer.

  "Good job, Lia," William Rubens' voice said in her ear. It startled her. She'd not realized he was in the Art Room, or that he was watching this op. At any given moment there might be as many as three separate missions being handled through the Art Room, and a Deputy Director of the NSA could not be expected to closely watch them all.

  "Thank you, sir," she murmured. "It was routine and went down as planned ... thank God." Just another day at the office.

  "When you get back to the safe house," Rubens told her, "call in. I need you to check something for me."

  "In Beirut?" she asked. She liked Lebanon, and had been wondering if she might be able to grab some time as a tourist while she was here.

  To be sure, that sort of thing was not usually a good idea and Rubens would never have sanctioned it. Standard tradecraft required operators to be pulled out of a mission area as soon as the op was over, just in case there were unexpected repercussions. But this op had been a walk in the park with no hostile contact and no complications. There was almost zero chance that she'd been spotted, or that any of her covers had been blown. According to the op plan, she would be going home*on a commercial flight sometime tomorrow. That would give her the evening free, at least. And if Rubens wanted her to stay on for a while ...

  "Negative," Rubens told her. "Ankara. There's a company jet waiting for you at Beirut International."

  So much, she thought, for a free evening in exotic Beirut.

  "On my way," she told him.

  Office of Sir Charles Mayhew Atlantis Queen terminal complex Southampton, England Thursday, 1610 hours GMT

  Sir Charles Mayhew was a vice president of Royal Sky Line, Ltd., chief operations officer, and member of the corporate board of directors. He was also the company board member nearest to hand when Thomas Mitchell and MI5 needed a high-ranking corporate officer to give him some answers.

  They gathered in a small meeting room adjoining Sir Charles' office, which was located on the tenth floor of the ultra-modern green glass tower adjoining the Atlantis Queen's passenger terminal. The tower also housed a hotel and a ground-floor gallery of shops and travel agencies, but the penthouse had been reserved for Royal Sky bigwigs, most of whom weren't available at the moment.

  Typical, Mitchell thought. But unimportant. Sir Charles would do just fine. Mayhew was an obese man, heavy-faced but with nervous, active eyes. He was scared, Mitchell thought, scared that his company was about to be dealt a financial body blow.

  That fear could be useful.

  Also present were the ship's captain, Phillips, his second in command, Staff Captain Vandergrift, a solicitor for Royal Sky Line named James Alcock, and David Llewellyn, the chief of security on board the Atlantis Queen.

  "I take it," Mitchell said, placing a photograph on the table before them, "that none of you have ever seen this man before." It was a color shot of Nayim Erbakan, an eight-by-ten blow-up of the wallet-sized photo found on Chester Darrow's body.
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br />   "Sure," Llewellyn said, grinning. "A little while ago, when they arrested him. Caught him with his pants down, as it were, in the backscatter scanner."

  "I know," Mitchell said dryly. "I was there, too, remember? But how about any of you? Captain?"

  "Never seen him before," Captain Phillips said. "Should we have?"

  "Not really . .. but you have to admit that there are some puzzling facts about this case." Mitchell glanced at his notebook. "A Turkish national, caught smuggling one half kilogram of cocaine onto a luxury cruise ship ... bound from England to the eastern Mediterranean. That's not one of the usual smuggling routes, you" know. Erbakan has a legitimate ticket for a mid-priced stateroom, booked by a travel agency in Le Havre five days ago.

  "An hour or so after Erbakan is taken into custody, your fourth officer is murdered on the dock by persons unknown," Mitchell continued. "Three shots to the chest from a handgun at point-blank range. No one hears the shots, though there are plenty of dockworkers in the area, including just inside the ship's cargo hold forty or fifty feet away. That suggests Darrow was killed by a silenced weapon, a professional hit.

  "On Darrow's body, we find a small version of this photo. And in the Dumpster next to the body, right on top of the garbage as though it had just been tossed in, we find a briefcase containing thirty thousand euros. Coincidental^, that is the approximate street value of one half kilogram of cocaine . . . which is also, coincidentally, the amount of cocaine Erbakan was carrying. Anyone here want to connect the dots for me?"

  None of the others replied. Sir Charles shifted uncomfortably in his seat, which creaked as he moved. The solicitor, Alcock, wrote something down in a small notebook. Mitchell shrugged and continued.

  "I'll tell you how / see it. Erbakan was a small-time operator. Neither MI5 or Interpol has much on him. He doesn't appear to have had any organized crime connections, but he does have travel visas for half a dozen European countries, including Great Britain. I think Darrow had contacted Erbakan and arranged to buy half a kilo of coke. Erbakan gets picked up at the terminal security station. Darrow doesn't know this, and meets someone else, maybe someone pretending to be Erbakan, maybe someone claiming to work for Erbakan. Darrow takes the money for the exchange and hides it in the Dumpster before the other guy shows up . . . and then the other guy shows up and puts three bullets into him."

  "It sounds like you have the puzzle pretty well put together, Mr. Mitchell," Sir Charles said. He tried to sound casual, and failed. "Exactly how does this affect Royal Sky Line?"

  "It all fits together very neatly," Mitchell agreed. "Maybe a trifle too neatly, one might think."

  "Did Erbakan tell you anything?" Llewellyn asked.

  "A little. He seems to want to cooperate, but we're not sure he's telling us everything. He claims a man named Darrow met him a week ago in Le Havre, and arranged for him to smuggle the coke on board today."

  "Well, then, it all rather seems open-and-shut, doesn't it?" James Alcock said. He was a sour, precise little man who worked in Royal Sky's legal department.

  "Almost," Mitchell replied. "As I said, it's neat... but there are a couple of loose ends dangling, and they just don't make sense. Why did Erbakan try to board the ship when he could have simply met Darrow on the pier and not risked going through the security check? If he did get on board as a passenger, why not meet Darrow when the ship was at sea?

  "And, most important, who killed Darrow?"

  "The Mafia, perhaps?" Vandergrift suggested. "Or one of the other crime syndicates? They could have seen this . . . this transaction as competition."

  "Yes. That's what we thought at first," Mitchell acknowledged. "But it's not really their style, you know. A half-kilo deal is nothing for the big guys. Chump change. They might've demanded a percentage, or broken Darrow's kneecaps as a warning, or even killed Erbakan and told Darrow he needed to buy from them in the future ... but they wouldn't have just killed the guy like that. Not unless they thought Darrow was working for someone else!'

  "Sir!" Phillips said, angry. "Are you suggesting that we're operating some sort of drug ring off of my ship?"

  "The thought did cross our minds," Mitchell admitted. "Especially when we looked at the records of some of your passengers."

  "What?" Sir Charles snapped, startled. "Since when does MI5 have the right--"

  "Please, Sir Charles," Mitchell said. "There's nothing new in any of this. We have access to police records both here and abroad, and we use them. It's our job ... and if you have an issue with that, take it up with Parliament the next time they pass intrusive legislation. Or the Americans with their Patriot Act.

  "In any case, one of the passengers on the Atlantis Queen is a Ms. Gillian Harper. American. She's been in trouble half a dozen times. Two years ago she got a suspended sentence and a rehab order when she tested positive for cocaine.

  "And there's a stock trader... Adrian Bollinger. Another American. He did three years for possession back in the eighties. And there's--"

  "Just what is the point of this inquisition?" Alcock demanded. "That some of the people on the Queen's passenger list use drugs? Or have in the past?"

  "Mr. Alcock--"

  Captain Phillips interrupted, his anger barely contained now. "I think the latest statistics say that somewhere between one and three percent of the adult population either use or have used cocaine. Out of three thousand people on my ship, that's at least thirty! So what are you going to do .. . question every person on board? Treat them all like criminals?"

  "Mr. Mitchell," Sir Charles said. His heavy face had gone florid, and he was perspiring freely. "Are you seriously considering delaying the Queen's departure? Do you have any idea how much revenue is involved here?"

  "No, Sir Charles. I don't."

  "Hundreds of thousands of pounds! Most of the passengers on that ship are on time-sensitive schedules! If there is a serious delay in sailing, they will. . . make other arrangements. Royal Sky will have to refund a fortune in moneys already paid. It could ruin this company!"

  "Don't worry, Sir Charles," Alcock said. "He won't delay the sailing."

  "And why won't I. do that, Mr. Alcock?" Mitchell asked.

  "Because to do so legally you will need to show cause, then get an injunction from the courts. And we will file to block that injunction. The ship is due to sail at nine tomorrow morning. I don't believe you could get the legal mills turning in time, sir."

  "In the case of a capital crime, Mr. Alcock, there are ways to expedite matters."

  "And there is also the unsavory possibility of a lawsuit against the government. And some very bad publicity both for MI5, and for you, personally. I assure you that if you try to harm this company, your name and the name of MI5 will be prominently displayed on page one of every newspaper in the country, from the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Times, all the way down to the Sun After that debacle over the files your bureau holds on ordinary, law-abiding citizens ... is that really something you wish to call down upon yourself?"

  Mitchell chuckled. "I'm terrified. Fortunately, I'm not suggesting that we delay the departure."

  "Then what are you suggesting, sir?" Captain Phillips asked icily.

  "That you take on board two additional passengers, myself and one other. There's no way we could question two thousand people, and no way we could legally hold them long enough to do so. Besides, I assure you, the government has no wish to put you out of business. But if I and an assistant could circulate among the crew and passengers for the next fortnight, we could ask our questions, carry out our investigation, and the entire matter could be kept more or less quiet."

  "That seems .. . most reasonable," Sir Charles said. "What do you think, Alcock?"

  "I think that the government could still find itself on the receiving end of a major lawsuit if their agents spread slanderous accusations about drug use on one of our cruise ships. I promise you, Mr. Mitchell, that any bad publicity whatsoever concerning this line or its employees could be actionable!"
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  "Mr. Alcock ... a man is dead." Mitchell's face was stony. "Drugs are involved. Rattle all the lawsuit threats you want at me. I promise we will be discreet, but we will do our job."

  They argued for another ten minutes, but in the end Mitchell got exactly what he'd wanted all along.

  There were people on board the Atlantis Queen who knew more about Darrow's murder than had emerged from the investigation so far.

  And Thomas Mitchell intended to find them.

  Chapter 6

  Bridge, Atlantis Queen

  Southampton, England

  Friday, 0849 hours GMT

  "the deck crew reports the gangway has been secured, Captain," Vandergrift reported.

  "Very well," Phillips replied. "Single up all lines, fore and aft, and secure the spring."

  "Aye, aye, Captain."

  Phillips walked to the port side of the spacious bridge, gazing out through the sloping windows overlooking the bow promenade and, below it and to port, the Atlantis Queen's berth alongside the Royal Sky cruise terminal. With the gangway pulled up and stowed, there were no longer security restrictions along the pier. People spilled out of the terminal to form a dense crowd alongside the ship, families, friends, and well-wishers giving her the traditional bon voyage send-off. Passengers lined the railing of the Promenade Deck, waving back, throwing confetti, and calling down inanities to the people ashore.

  Tradition. . .

  To starboard, the two harbor tugs Cornwall and Devonshire signaled their readiness to proceed with short whistle blasts. Southampton occupied the south-pointing arrowhead of land between two rivers, the Itchen to the east, the Test to the west. Where the rivers joined became Southampton Water, a broad, straight channel running southeast toward the coast and the Isle of Wight. The Royal Sky Line terminal was located on the Test, only a few hundred yards from the beginning of the Water. Phillips could see the numerous white triangular sails of pleasure craft beyond the Point, along with the faster-moving specks of powerboats.