by Peter Telep
“Not too bad yet.”
“It’ll get worse.”
“Guess I’m holding my breath.”
“Wait. There’s hydrogen in there, too. You can’t smell it, but it builds up when they charge and discharge the batteries. Ventilation’s poor and those vapors are highly combustible.”
“So what’re you saying?”
“I’m saying don’t let him start the engines. One spark and that thing will light up like a Roman candle—”
“—along with the fuel tanks,” Johnny said with a groan. “Shit!”
Johnny glanced down into the sub’s interior. The rungs of a rusty ladder mounted to the bulkhead led to a makeshift control station fitted with a steering wheel looted from an old Audi. To the right lay a pair of heavy throttle levers—
And in the pilot’s chair sat the professor himself. He was studying an array of pipes, gauges, and color-coded shutoff valves mounted to the bulkhead and exposed like a circulatory system. His gaze shifted between the wheel and the pipes until he beat a fist on the console, as though in frustration.
“What’s the matter, asshole? You lose your keys?”
Nazari glanced up at Johnny, then bolted from the chair.
With the ticking of straining metal, the sub listed to port and took on more water. Johnny took a deep breath and hurried down the ladder. He moved past the control station, which sat on a ledge above an open hatch leading to the bow compartment where crews ordinarily stored tons of cocaine.
He hopped down from the ladder to the deck, where his bare feet splashed into ankle-high water. The Marauder’s spotlight shone as a thin shaft from the hatch above, filtering into the narrow confines and producing irregular shadows that could easily hide a man beneath the intestine work of pipes and wires. Seawater arced from the bullet holes along one side and pooled across the narrow main aisle. More pipes, tubes, and wires snaked across the overhead. There were no creature comforts in this metal can; it was strictly a drug transportation platform.
“Johnny, it’s Corey. If you can hear me, listen up. There has to be an emergency air intake cutoff valve. I’m thinking it’s aft, somewhere near the engines. Find that valve and jam it shut—because the engines can’t run without oxygen.”
Nazari’s anger at the control station suggested he had no idea how to start this boat, which was probably why he had gone aft to find an ignition switch. Still, as an engineer, he had to know something about the smell and volatility of the gas. Maybe his game was not escape but to martyr himself and take Johnny with him. Instead of a suicide vest, he now had a seventy-four-foot long submarine and hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel at his disposal. All he needed was that spark.
After venturing about half way to the stern, with seawater up to his shins and still rising, Johnny stopped. He could leave the sub, go back to The Marauder, and light up this bitch with .50 caliber rounds until that aforementioned spark sent Nazari hurtling toward Allah. But then all truths would die with him. Uncovering the rest of his network, along with someone else who might know the truth about Daniel, would be difficult if not impossible without him.
Blinking hard against the fumes, Johnny forged on. The engines came into view—the fading letters of the word YAMAHA seeming to pulsate above the pulleys and belts and braided hoses, along with some NASA-looking conduits wrapped in aluminum. The engines sat abreast, and Johnny leaned forward, probing the elongated shadows behind them.
The urge to steal a breath grew stronger and suddenly overcame him. He allowed a trace of air to enter his nostrils. The chlorine smell had grown much stronger. He was about to cough when Josh’s voice buzzed in his earpiece: “Johnny, we have another boat on radar. Big one. He’s got a constant bearing, decreasing range, which means an intercept course. Could be Coast Guard. I’m not sure. ETA like ten minutes. We need to get out of here.”
“Solid copy,” he whispered, wrestling with the itch in his throat. He took a step forward, searching for that valve Corey had mentioned, praying it was not labeled in Spanish.
A shuffling of feet and splashing of water erupted behind him.
Johnny whirled just as Nazari detached himself from the shadows and reared back with a two-foot-long pipe wrench painted neon red.
The wrench arced high in the chlorine-filled air, with faint light flickering off its surfaces before it came down toward Johnny.
Chapter Forty-Five
“Marines never give up, never give in, and never accept second best. So while the rest of us were running out of ideas, Johnny remembered that the one thing that could save us... was us.”
—Josh Eriksson (FBI interview, 23 December)
Johnny caught the wrench in one hand as it came within an inch of his forehead. He could not stop Nazari’s momentum but managed to divert the blow from his skull to his shoulder. He crashed onto the flooded deck, never losing his grip on the wrench. Corey was barking something over the radio, but the headset slipped from Johnny’s ear, his friend’s voice tinny for a second then gone.
Meanwhile, Nazari straddled Johnny and maneuvered the heavy wrench down, across Johnny’s throat. Using the tool’s weight, Nazari forced Johnny’s head back, the seawater splashing into his eyes and about to swamp his face. Nazari, while hardly an athlete, had much more leverage, and he drove Johnny’s head deeper into the water.
Raging aloud, Johnny squeezed his other hand onto the wrench and drove the jihadi professor up and away like a set of barbells that had pinned him. The second his head was clear, Johnny rolled, forcing Nazari off his chest and throwing him against the bulkhead.
However, the wrench had remained with the professor. As Johnny crawled backward, Nazari pushed forward and swung again, the wrench hammering into the deck, the seawater dousing any spark that might have danced between the metal.
A cluster of pipes off to the right lay within grasp. Johnny seized one and struggled to his feet. Nazari coughed and rose himself, doddering a moment as he two-handed the wrench like a baseball bat. He squinted, as though he had lost sight of Johnny, then leaned forward in a combat stance, leading with his left leg.
Johnny kept his gaze riveted on the wrench, contemplating his next move.
Nazari bared his crowded teeth, his face knotting into a ball of wrinkles spanned by throbbing blue veins. He swung sideways.
Johnny jerked back and dodged the blow—
But the wrench clanged against a pipe fitting.
The professor set up again, wielding the wrench like an axe now, preparing to split open Johnny’s head. The weapon came down, and once more, Johnny ducked away, finding himself pinned against one of the engines.
As Nazari drew back for another strike, Johnny lurched forward and seized the wrench in both hands. He tried to pull it away, but his strength was sapped by the lack of air, the chlorine gas, and weeks’ worth of stress.
The wrench slipped free from Johnny’s hands, and Nazari struck Johnny in the bicep, a glancing blow, but it knocked him off balance. One leg came out of the water, and both hands groped air just as he hit the deck.
Now lying on his side, with the sub’s interior beginning to spin, Johnny struggled to sit up. Nazari shambled a few more steps, then fought for balance, his arm extended, the wrench’s metal claws scraping against a pipe. That sound, not unlike nails on a chalkboard, startled Johnny into action. He cursed and pushed off the engine to stand. He started for Nazari, but the aisle dilated like a pupil, making it difficult to measure his steps. He sloshed forward, nearly tripped, then banged his head on a copper conduit.
With creaks of buckling metal and a much louder groan, the submarine pitched hard and fast, and suddenly, all the seawater collecting at the stern rose in a powerful wave rushing toward the bow.
Nazari had all of a second to glance back before he was swept off his feet, thrown into the crest, and was riding it toward the open hatch below the control station. He groped for purchase as he spun and rolled.
Barely another second later, Johnny lost his grip and j
oined the professor, sliding down, across the deck, the submarine pitching even more, perhaps forty degrees now. As he neared the conning tower’s hatch, he glanced up at the light and willed himself toward the ladder, but his body would not obey. He rolled and hit the wall beside Nazari, just as another wave crashed across their faces. He gulped seawater and spat reflexively against the salt. The submarine’s aft section rasped, along with a strange and somewhat rhythmic thumping that could be his pulse or something else.
Johnny lifted an arm, fingers straining. The bulkheads folded in on themselves as though the boat had already sunk and the ocean’s crushing weight would now finish them. Pins and needles sewed across his cheeks. As he began to lose consciousness, a voice echoed from the back of the submarine. “Hey, Johnny? Let’s go for a little ride...”
* * *
After Willie and Corey had transferred an unconscious Johnny and Nazari back to The Marauder, Willie gave the word, and Josh said he would be on the throttle like a fat kid on a cupcake. Willie glanced at Johnny and smiled painfully over that reply.
As they pulled away, the submarine’s screws breached the surface, and something inside—something metallic—must have fallen from a shelf or a toolbox or a locker and produced that fateful spark Corey had warned them about.
The first blast came with a whoosh and violent ejection of flames that extended from the conning tower’s hatch just as it hit the water.
A secondary and even more potent explosion caught Willie off guard. The aft section burst apart in a conflagration of flames and wheeling pieces of jagged shrapnel.
Even as the thunderclaps echoed, columns of black smoke appeared and bowed instantly in the breeze. Fires below coalesced into globes of flames orbiting a white-hot mass of burning diesel fuel. Fainter cracks and pops of ammo cooking off punctuated the roar and hiss, while the entire spectacle was reflected across the pale yellow swells, duplicating the catastrophe beneath the waves.
Willie remained there at the gunwale, transfixed by the fires as they traced black cotton balls of smoke in eerie shades of orange.
“Hey, come on,” shouted Corey. “I have the first aid kit. Let’s see if we can bring him around.”
* * *
The Riverine Patrol Boat skipped like a rock over the Euphrates River, exceeding forty knots and accelerating. Daniel was at the wheel, the wind whipping through his wild mane of hair and Charlton Heston beard. Johnny stood beside him, frowning.
“Where we going?” he asked.
“To meet some of my friends up river.”
Daniel banked to the right, and the river flowed directly into a mosque with towering minarets and front doors replaced by a waterfall of blood. They passed under the crimson flow, protected by the boat’s canopy, then sailed across the musulla’s Persian carpet with its arch work pattern. They kept on past rows of ornate pillars, heading toward the raised minbar where on a dais constructed of live snakes woven together like wicker stood Shammas, Rasul, and Nazari, along with Nicholas Dresden, Edward Senecal, and Charles Plesner. Each was shirtless and clutching an AK-47 at rest with blood-stained palms.
The boat floated up to these men and slowed to a gentle hover. Daniel regarded Johnny with a snort. “You want the truth?” He gestured to the group. “What else do you need? I mean, look around, Johnny, you have a very vivid if not facile imagination. A blood waterfall? Snakes? Really? Come on, you know what’s happening here. For some, it’s about jihad. For others, it’s about money. It’s as simple as that.”
“What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you convert to Islam?”
Daniel closed his eyes and lifted his face toward the ceiling, which peeled off into blinding light. “It was Allah’s will.”
“Bullshit! What would—”
“What would Dad think? You think I ever gave a shit about the old man?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Forget about me, Johnny. I’m a sheep. A lost cause.”
“No, you’re my brother!”
Johnny’s shout repeated over and over, as though it were trapped forever on the dusty needle of the old man’s record player.
Suddenly, he sat up, choking, the burning stench of ammonia filling his nostrils. Familiar voices mingled with the gurgle of waterjets. His eyelids fluttered open, and Corey’s grave face came into focus. Between his thumb and forefinger was a tube of smelling salts. “I think he’s awake.”
Johnny coughed and spat. “No kidding.” It hurt to breathe, as though his lungs had been burned. There was pressure on his arms, and somehow he was standing and being ushered through a door. His gaze refocused, and he realized he was inside the wheelhouse.
“What the hell happened?”
“You passed out inside the sub,” said Willie. “We got you out. We’ll be in Seadrift in about five mikes.”
A chill struck Johnny’s shoulders. “Where’s Nazari?”
“He’s okay,” said Corey. “We brought him around.”
“Where is he?”
“We got him zipped up tight up in the bow compartment. ”
Johnny closed his eyes and breathed the sigh of a lifetime.
“Hey, Johnny, we’re running out of time,” said Willie, tapping his watch. “It’s nearly zero five thirty local, meaning we got about ninety minutes.”
“Damn.” Johnny rubbed the corners of his eyes and regarded Corey. “Athena still helping us with the translation?”
Corey nodded. “They’re on it like a tick on a hound dog, but they’re still looking for those missing cards. We need to help them.”
“Then get on it.”
Corey winced. “Johnny, just so you know, our boy down below can’t stop them. Each cell has its orders, and they operate independently.”
“There has to be something we can do. Maybe Nazari can make a call, maybe he can, I don’t know, get in touch with Dresden and Senecal and figure out a way to...”
Willie and Corey shook their heads, rendering Johnny silent.
* * *
They gathered inside the office of Seadrift Dry Storage. Earlier in the evening, Josh had been given a set of keys by old Sooner, who said the place was theirs, whatever they needed, Semper Fi, oorah.
Nazari sat in a chair, wrists bound behind his back. His head was lowered, and his beard pressed against a wet silk shirt clinging to his chest. There was something ominous about the way he breathed—a careful rising and falling of his chest, punctuated by a gasp here and there, as though he were sifting through plans in his head and reacting to the devastation.
Corey and Josh had convened on the far end of the office. They teamed up on their computers to help translate the rest of the courier cards into a complete target list.
Johnny sat in a chair facing Nazari, while Willie stood behind the man, close enough to growl in his ear if needed.
“We’re not who you think we are,” Johnny began. “We don’t answer to anyone, so we can do whatever it takes. You’re going to sing like a goddamned canary.”
Without looking up, Nazari began to chuckle.
Willie throttled him and said, “You think we’re joking?”
“Allahu Akbar.”
Johnny snickered. “Really. If I were you, I wouldn’t think my God was so great right now. You’re ready to be martyred—but you’ll never get that pleasure out of us.”
Willie released him, and the professor nodded.
“We know about your courier cards. We know all about the targets.”
Nazari glanced away, his lips tightening in a smile.
“We know about your little dive shop in Iowa, and we know you’re in bed with Dresden and Senecal. We also know about Plesner from the FBI.”
Nazari faced Johnny, frowned, then raised his voice: “Allahu Akbar!”
As Willie began to choke him again, Johnny sighed and lifted his 1911 to Nazari’s forehead. “I’ll give you a phone, and you’ll call your buddies and put an end to these attacks.”
; Nazari closed his eyes and began muttering something in Arabic, a prayer perhaps.
Willie tightened his grip to the point that Johnny thought their prisoner might pass out—or his throat caved in, whichever came first. He gestured for Willie to release the man and then raised his voice. “Listen to me, asshole. Was my brother working for you?”
Nazari stared through Johnny.
“WAS HE WORKING FOR YOU?”
Nazari closed his eyes.
Johnny bolted from his chair and regarded Willie. “Wait here. Don’t do anything.” He rushed outside the office and dialed Mark Gatterton. After briefing his friend, he asked, “Once we have the list, can we work around Plesner and get it to the FBI?”
“You said some of those cards have a time. Zero eight Eastern.”
“That’s correct.”
“Then we barely have an hour. We’re screwed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Johnny, listen to me very carefully. Receipt of a major terrorist threat by the FBI means they have to notify their boss, the Attorney General. They have to call members of the National Security Council, Homeland Security, the CIA, and the TSA. Those groups need to activate their own emergency response teams to sweep through their own operational envelope for corroborating intel to support or refute the credibility of the threat before notifying the president.”
“So that’s the legalese for everyone having to cover their asses.”
“I’m not defending it. I’m telling you what’ll happen here.”
“I don’t believe this...”
“Look, even if you did this anonymously and used the online incident report, there’s a three thousand character limit. The target list wouldn’t fit in that space, and you’d have to fill out multiple reports and still have to wait for everything to be vetted.”
Johnny could barely breathe. “So we’re sunk. We can’t stop it in time.”
“I don’t see how. It’s impossible.”
* * *
Corey sat back and pillowed his head in his hands. “We have two water treatment plants in Phoenix. They’re barely seven miles apart. I don’t understand why they’re targets.” He frowned and ran a search on the 91st Avenue plant, which pumped reclaimed water along a thirty-eight mile pipe line to the Palo Verde complex in addition to some place called the Tres Rios wetland project. A map revealed that Palo Verde was the largest nuclear power plant in the country.
