They had all been instructed that when spoken to, merely nod, smile, and go on.
Their faces were grim, determined. "Remember to smile." A smile was an American's passport, the visible proof that his heart was pure and his intentions honorable. Since World War II the Americans had grinned at almost everyone on earth.
Now even nomads in the Gobi desert were smiling.
"G." When everyone had left the compartment, Qazi closed the door and placed a padlock on it. He removed the key from the padlock and put it in his pocket. A close examination would show the door had been forced and the door-handle lock broken, but the padlock would delay them for a few minutes. He picked up his gym bag and, with two of his men behind him, walked between the airplanes until he could look up at the man in the center hangar-deck fire station, CONFLAG 2. He smiled at him and walked toward the hatch immediately below the watch station. He glanced around. One of the red paint lockers stood against the bulkhead. As soon as he finished upstairs, while his men were visiting the other two CONFLAG stations, he would plant bombs on at least four or five of these paint lockers.
He took a deep breath and began to climb the ladder.
HE ASKED ME not to tell." "She knew you would." Tarkington's face was a study. Lines radiated from the corners of his eyes and his face seemed... older. "She knew you had to tell," Jake said.
"If she knew I was going to spill it, why did she ask me not to? How come she didn't just shoot me?" "Women are like that," Jake Grafton muttered.
"They ask you of to do something they know you're gonna do, and they watch our face while they ask it." He shrugged. "Maybe they're just measuring the size of your heart." "I think they were Israelis. Mossad." "Any evidence?" "They ragged on one guy who sounded like an American. They called him an "agency asshole." Apparently he shot the first guy when he wasn't supposed to." Toad looked around desperately.
"They didn't kill me," he said, his voice rising. "The Mossad only kills terrorists." "Or so you've heard. And you've ratted on them when she asked you not to. Now you feel guilty as hell. Thank you, Judith Farrell." Jake picked up the phone and dialed Farnsworth. "Find the senior intelligence officer who's aboard tonight and tell him to go to the intel center.
I'm sending Mr. Tarkington over there now. I want them to wring out Tarkington like a sponge and draft up a Top Secret flash message.
Then find out if Admiral Parker's aboard, or the chief of staff." When he cradled the receiver, he said to Toad, "I want you to tell this tale to the Air Intelligence guys. Describe every one of those people.
Including Judith. What they were wearing, height and weight, facial features, the works." As Toad rose to go, Jake added, "Sooner or later, you may get curious about why I had everyone on this boat looking for you all afternoon.
Judith Farrell is not a native speaker of English.
She's probably not an American.
Toad looked dazed. "But she said she was!" "Tarkington Jake said, exasperation creeping into his voice, "you got yourself smack in the middle of somebody's heavy operation. Farrell's on someone's team. You're real fucking lucky you didn't get zapped for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time." Toad didn't react, the sap. "Look at it this way, Toad: if you hadn't meant anything to her, she wouldn't have bothered to tell you to keep quiet." The younger man just stared, his mouth open slightly.
Jake came around the desk and sat on it. Maybe he shouldn't go into this. But Toad.
Why wait for the guy to figure all this out ten years from now? "You care about her, right? And she was telling you she cares about you.
She told you the only way she could. The words weren't the message; it was the way she said it." Toad nodded slowly.
"Now quit feeling like a shit and go tell the intel guys everything you know." Jake pointed toward the door. "Beat it." As Toad left the room he glanced back at the captain, who was absently patting his pockets as he gazed at the telephone. Then the door closed.
0 0 0 Private Harold Porter hadn't worn his slicker for this watch. the rain had soaked him and the wind was making him miserable.
He huddled against the side of the ship, under the lip of the flight deck curb, and kept his hands tucked under his armpits. The ip's red flight-deck floodlights illuminated the$50-caliber maine gun and the ammo feed box. The sound-powered telephone headset he wore kept his ears warm.
At least that was something.
Porter elevated his head and watched the helicopter lift off the deck.
Its flashing red anticollision light swept the numbers on the side of the island. The chopper rose several feet off the deck and the tail came up, then it accelerated forward off the angled flight deck.
Porter watched it go, then lowered his head back below the curb of the deck.
Those poor bastards in the water were really in the soup. Too bad the action was on the other side of the ship, where he couldn't see it. The scuttlebutt on the sound-powered circuit was that they were drunk. So if they don't drown, they're going to be shoveling it when old man James gets through with them. Serves the stards right, Porter decided. He hadn't been ashore for the last two nights. Envy wrapped its slimy fingers around his heart. The corporal should be around in a few minutes. Maybe he could get the corporal to go down to the berthing spaces and get a slicker for him. Naw, not Simons, that prick. But maybe Jons would relieve him for a few minutes and let him go get it. sourly contemplated the odds of talking the corporal into that. imons was an asshole, no question.
Two little red chevrons he acted like he'd been promoted to disciple. Why in hell the ps ever promoted a cock-stroking butt-licker like him was a od question to contemplate on a bad night.
Aagh, it's enough make you puke. You work your ass off spit-shining your fucking es and polishing your fucking brass and cleaning your fucking shoes, and then Hershey-bar lifer pricks like Simons. omeone was coming down the catwalk. Damn! Couldn't be ons.
Not five minutes early. Oh, it's some dirt-bag sailor, bably drunk, out wandering around after a big night in town, to give the corps some shit.
'Hey Dixie-cup, you-was he first bullet from the silenced 9-millimeter hit Private Porter in the throat. The wind swallowed the muffled report. As the marine's hands went to his throat, the pistol popped twice more, and the now-lifeless body slumped down into a sitting position.
The assassin opened the breech of the big fifty and the ammo feed box.
He lifted out the belt of shells and fed it over the rail, between the big gray canisters that contained the fifty-man life rafts. The ammo belt fell into the blackness. The killer bent over the open breech. In a few seconds he snapped the weapon's breech and the ammo-box lid closed, and walked forward toward the bow.
Lance Corporal James Van Housen was bored. And when he was bored, he entertained himself with isometric exercises. He strained at the top bar of the catwalk rail, trying to curl it. He counted the seconds:.
fourteen, thousand, fifteen, thousand, sixteen,.
When he got to twenty, he relaxed and counted his pulse while he examined the sweep second hand of his watch, just visible in the red lights of the ship's island.
The rest of these guys, they just stand around and get fat while the sergeants kick their asses. Van Housen was staying in shape. He was taking advantage of every opportunity to exercise. That's what the corps is all about, staying in shape, ready to fight. If they wanted to be marshmallows, they should have joined the fucking navy. The sailors all think exercise is what they do to their dicks in the shower.
Van Housen saw the chopper cross the fantail and make its approach to the helo spot on the angle. The sound-powered circuit talker said the angel had picked one guy up from the liberty boat, which had pulled him from the water. A damn bad night for a swim. The talker didn't know about the other guy in the water. Van Housen watched a team of corpsmen with a litter run toward the chopper as soon as it touched down.
The lance corporal seized the top rail and lifted again, counting to himself. He finished th
is set and was flexing his arms, trying to pump out the fatigue toxins, when he saw a sailor come up a ladder from the 0-3 level, fifty feet aft, and turn toward him. He first glimpsed the man from the corner of his eye, then turned to watch him.
What the hell is he doing out here at this time of night? The sailor had something in his right hand, down against his leg. He was concealing it behind his thigh. A doper? Carrying a joint?
Naw, it was an object of some kind.
Van Housen stepped back against the bulkhead, partially out of sight because of the way the catwalk zagged outboard around this nearest ladder up from the 0-3 level.
As the sailor in a sweater came around the corner, Van Housen was watching his hand. It swung up. A gun! It flashed-Van ousen heard the dull pop-and the bullet rocked him, but he ad already launched himself forward. His momentum drove the sailer back against the rail, stunning him. Van Housen wrestled for the gun. There was a silencer on the barrel. He smashed the sailer's arm against the railing. The pistol fell. Van Housen nched his assailant in the stomach, then again. The man doubled over.
Van Housen could feel himself weakening. Got to stop this guy! Got to!
Before I go down. He seized the man by the belt and one arm and heaved him up and outboard as he exhaled convulsively from the exertion. The man sprawled on top of a life-raft canister. Van Housen tore the wool cap off and grabbed him by the hair. He smashed his fist into the sailor's face.
No strength. The blow was weak. His legs were buckling. The marine summoned every last ounce of strength and hit the man again in the face, swinging with his weight behind the blow. The man slid backward off the canister and disappeared, falling toward the sea.
Van Housen collapsed on the catwalk grid.
His sound-powered adset had come off in the fight. He felt his stomach. His hand was warm and black and wet.
Blood!
He was fainting. He lowered his head to the grid to stay conscious and felt for the headset. He pulled it toward him and m4 for the mike button. "This is gun one. Then he passed out. He was unconscious when another sailor wearing a sweater with a pistol in his hand emerged from between the anes on the flight deck and stood looking down into the catlk.
Lance Corporal Van Housen never felt the next bullet, which killed him.
0 0 0 Admiral Parker was wearing white uniform trousers and a T-shirt.
Apparently he had just pulled the trousers on after his orderly woke him. Jake told him about the incident at the Vittorio, and Judith Farrell and Toad Tarkington's involvement.
"Hell yes, I'll release a flash message. You briefed Captain James on this yet?" "Not yet, sir. I just heard this from Tarkington and the captain's busy with the man overboard." "The captain called me just before you knocked. One man's still in the water and one's on his way to sick bay, half dead." Parker turned to his aide, Lieutenant Franklin Delano Roosevelt Snyder. "Get my clothes, Duke. It's time we went up to the bridge." As he dressed the admiral told Jake, "Tonight's Shore Patrol officer has been found dead on the quay. Neck broken." "What?" Jake said. "Murdered." "Where?" "Right in the Shore Patrol office. He was found just a few minutes ago.
Jake Grafton seized the arms of his chair and leaned forward.
"Lieutenant Flynn?" "Yes." "I saw him go toward the office just before I boarded the mike boat to come out to the ship. He went down there with a chief who was on Shore Patrol duty tonight. The chief came back down the quay alone and rode to the ship on the boat with me. He's aboard." fore? Know his name?" Jake tried to remember.
"Duncan? No... Dustin, I think. Dustin.
And I can't recall ever seeing him before." The admiral finished lacing his shoes, straightened and started for the door. Jake and Duke Snyder followed him. "Here we sit," the admiral muttered, "three miles from the beach on the most valuable target in southern Italy. And we may already have an intruder aboard." "Or more than one, Jake said, recalling the unusual number of drunks on the boat this evening and the confusion on the fantail when the two men went into the water.
0 0 0 Colonel Qazi charged up a ladder on the starboard side of the ship with his two men carrying gym bags right at his heels. At the top of the ladder well, on the 0-3 level, they turned inboard to the long passageway that ran the length of the ship on the starboard side. Although this was one of the two main thoroughfares on this deck, it was narrow. Men could pass each other shoulder shoulder in the corridor, but the knee-knockers were only wide enough for one man at a time to pass through. Qazi consulted the numbers on the little brass plaques near the doors of the compartments as he walked past. He knew the numbering system, but he couldn't readily visualize just where he was from reading the numbers.
For the first time tonight Qazi knew a touch of panic.
these passageways all looked the same, narrow and full of ninety-degree turns. The place was a maze, a labyrinth of walls and doors and passageways that led off in every direction but the proper one. When the watertight doors swung shut, he would have to move his way from space to space and he would never know just where he was or where he was going.
He would be trapped like a that.
He touched the arm of a sailor walking aft.
"I'm new aboard. How do I get to the communication spaces?" "Port side, Chief." The sailor gestured toward a passageway that led off to the left, presumably to join with the port-side passageway that paralleled this one. "And forward maybe fifty frames. There's a window to pass messages through. You can't miss it." "Thanks." "Sure." The sailor hurried away. Qazi and his men strode down the indicated passageway.
They were in luck. Just beside the window where the clerks accepted messages for transmission, there was a security door which was locked and unlocked by an access device mounted head-high on the bulkhead.
The access device had a keyboard to which those who sought entrance tapped a code, which changed weekly.
And as Qazi approached, a sailor was tapping on the keys, which were hidden from an observer's view by a black lip which surrounded the keyboard.
The sailor started through the security door just as Qazi ached him and planted his shoulder in the man's back. They crashed through the door together, the two gunmen right behind, extracting their Uzis from their gym bags. Black security curtains screened the doorway from the rest of the compartment. Qazi pushed his man through the drapes into the room and Jamail and Haddad, the gunmen following, stepped clear to each side and opened fire. The silenced weapons made a ripping noise.
Spent shells spewed from the ejection ports. The sailor who had preceded Qazi spun toward him, and the colonel grabbed his head and broke his neck.
The other five Americans in the compartment died under the hail of bullets.
The office spaces were lit in white light, in contrast to the red light which had illuminated the ladders and passageways. As their eyes adjusted, the gunmen ran deeper into the communications complex, using their weapons on the four other sailors they found there. Qazi went into the equipment room. Banks of panels with dials and gauges and knobs covered the walls. Or did they? There seemed to be lights behind this equipment. Over there was a passage. Perhaps the power cables came in back there. That communications technician Ali had interrogated, what had he said?
Qazi stepped through the gap in the seven-foot-high gray boxes.
He saw the fist and the wrench swinging just in time, and ducked as the wrench smashed into the panel beside him.
The man wielding it was young. Young and black and scared. And quick.
He had the wrench swinging again before Qazi could react. The colonel tried to fall, and the wrench struck his head a glancing blow.
He was on the floor, dazed, and the sailor was on his chest, pinning his arms with his legs, drawing back the wrench for the coup de grace, his lips stretched back exposing his teeth, the cords in his neck as taut as wires.
Qazi heard a pop and blood spurted from the side of the American's head.
The corpse collapsed on top of him. The wrench rang a
s it hit the linoleum-covered deck.
Jamail rolled the body away. Qazi tried to rise. God, not this!
"Quickly," he tried to say, his tongue thick.
He gestured vaguely at Jamail, who nodded and left him there, struggling to rise from the sitting position.
Jamail and Haddad had almost completed the task of setting the charges when Qazi had the cobwebs sufficiently cleared to stand upright and walk out into the equipment room. "Put one on the electrical cables under the raised area of the floor," Qazi told hem, "back there." He pointed behind the panels. Haddad eized his gym bag and disappeared into the gap from which Qazi ad just come. The colonel inspected the timer on the charge against the power-distribution panel. It was readily apparent what his panel was, because he had opened the metal doors to expose all the switches and connectors.
Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 2 - Final Flight Page 30
