Corsair of-6

by Clive Cussler

Max Hanley was known by the crew as a man who kept his own counsel, so Eric was surprised when he suddenly blurted in frustration, “I hate this.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Juan shouldn’t have taken off like that.”

  “He saw it as a tactical necessity. How else would we know where they staged from?”

  “There are better ways. We could have tracked the chopper on radar.”

  “We never saw them flying to the accident site,” Eric replied. “How would we have tracked them out? They were flying nap-of-the-earth the whole way. Completely invisible to us from this distance. And before you say it, there wasn’t time to get satellite coverage again. Juan made the only decision open to him.”

  Max raked his hand through his thinning ginger hair. “You’re right. I know. I just don’t like it. There are so many variables at play here that I don’t know if we’re coming or going. Is this state-sponsored terrorism, a rogue faction within Libya’s government, or some garden-variety terrorist group, most likely Suleiman Al-Jama’s outfit? We have no idea who we’re up against or what they want. We don’t know if Katamora’s alive or dead. Basically, we don’t know squat. Linc, Linda, and Mark discover a chopper that looks like it was armed to take the Secretary’s plane down, but, again, we don’t know who’s behind it. Then we’ve got a group of missing archaeologists who may or may not be involved, and some other academic weenie who says they’ve all been navel-gazing so he can pay off an ex-wife. Did I miss any other pieces to this jigsaw puzzle? Oh yeah, the most important peace conference since Camp David is in a couple of days. And with Juan incommunicado, I don’t know what piece fits where.”

  And there it was, Eric thought. The crux of Max’s problem. Hanley wasn’t a natural leader, not the way Cabrillo was. Give Max a technical challenge and he will work it until he has a solution, or present him with a plan and he will see it carried out to the letter. But when it came to making the hard decisions, he agonized because it wasn’t his forte. He wasn’t a strategist or tactician, and he, more than anyone else, knew it.

  “If it were up to me,” Eric said diplomatically, “I would get Mark and the others to within striking distance of the mine-terrorist camp for when Juan calls.”

  “What about the archaeologists and the scrolls?”

  “A distraction, for now. Our priorities are the Chairman and then Secretary Katamora.”

  Max’s phone rang. He could tell from the display it was the communications duty officer. He hit the button to put the phone on speaker. “Hanley.”

  “Max, I just received a secure alert from Overholt.”

  “Now what?” he groused.

  “A chopper fitting the description of the one Juan flew in earlier showed up at the Roman archaeology site across the border in Tunisia. Armed men kidnapped Professor Emile Bumford, the Tunisian government overseer, and one member of the camp staff, a local boy that may be related to him.”

  Max looked Eric in the eye, arching one of his bushy brows. “A distraction?” He then addressed the comm specialist. “Okay. Send an acknowledgment to Lang that we received his message.” He snapped off the phone and leaned back into his padded chair. “Another damned piece that just won’t fit.”

  Eric wisely didn’t add that the piece might be part of an entirely different puzzle.

  NINETEEN

  HIS PRECIOUS FACE WAS A MIX OF DETERMINATION AND delight. His mouth was formed into a tiny O, and his eyes were open despite the chlorine sting. Beads of water clung to his impossibly long lashes like diamond chips. His body wriggled with the almost rhythm of his kicking legs, and the inflatable bands around his arms kept bumping into his chin with each awkward stroke.

  Alana felt like her heart was going to explode, as she stood waist-deep in her condo’s community pool, Josh striking out for her as she retreated a slow pace at a time. He knew the game, would complain bitterly if he tired out before reaching her, or beam with pride if he made it to the sanctuary of her waiting arms.

  Her buttocks pressed against the pool’s concrete side. Josh was a few feet away, his mouth now spreading into a triumphant grin. He knew he was going to make it. And then his water wings suddenly vanished, and his face fell into the water. Alana tried to push herself off the wall, but it was as though her skin and swimsuit were adhered to the concrete and tile.

  Josh came up, sputtering. His eyes were wide with panic as the first choking cough shook his little body. Water and saliva bubbled from his lips. He managed to cry out “Mommy!” before his head slipped under the surface again.

  Alana stretched her arms, feeling like they were pulling from their sockets, but she couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t move. There were people all around the pool area, lounging on chairs or sitting at the water’s edge with their feet dangling in the cool water. She tried to call to them but no sound escaped her lips. They were oblivious to her plight.

  Josh’s thrashing became less frantic, his longish hair spreading around his head, swaying in the eddies like some sea creature. His hands were balled into little fists, as if trying to hang on, but there was nothing Alana could do. The pool’s filtration system was pushing him farther from her. Her arms screamed with the strain of trying to reach him, and her head pounded with an unholy ache—the punishment for being a bad mother, she knew.

  Her baby was dying.

  She was dying.

  And she would have accepted such a fate, but reality was much more cruel.

  She came back from the nightmare.

  The pain in her head was from being clubbed and momentarily stunned by one of the guards. Her arms ached because she was being dragged from the serving line, where moments earlier she had been slopping a thin gruel onto the tin plates of the other prisoners. Her backside felt numb because the ground was rough gravel and the man dragging her set a strong pace.

  Another of the guards shouted at the man who had hit her. He stopped midstride and let her fall to the dirt. She paid no attention to the rapid-fire Arabic the two shot at each other. She simply lay still, hoping against hope that they would forget about her.

  The image of her son drowning, something her imagination conjured up to add more pain to her already brutal existence, was like a dull ache in her chest. Josh was eleven now, not the five-year-old she had seen, and he was an excellent swimmer.

  The shouting match between the two guards grew more heated until a third man entered the fray. She knew he was one of the senior people at the work camp, and a quiet word from him ended the discussion instantly. The man who had hit Alana toed her in the ribs to get her on her feet and motioned for her to retake her place at the trestle table that served as the prisoners’ buffet. The servers were all women, while the people they fed were mostly men, men who were wasting away in the heat until their ragged clothes hung off their thin frames and their cheeks were shadowed hollows.

  Alana had been here less than a week and already knew that most of these poor souls had been here for months. They looked no better than the prisoners liberated from Nazi concentration camps.

  When she retook her place behind the table, the woman next to her muttered something in Arabic.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  The woman, who had once been heavyset, judging by the slabs of flesh that hung from her neck, pointed to Alana’s eyes and then pointed down to the table. Don’t look at the guards, she was trying to say. Or that was Alana’s interpretation. Maybe, keep your eye on your work. Either way, when the next prisoner shuffled up to her, she lifted her gaze just enough to see the plate he held in one trembling hand.

  After getting their food and a cup filled with water that was hot enough to scald the tongue, the prisoners ate on the ground. A few were lucky enough to be able to rest their backs against one of the old buildings. The buildings were all two and three stories high, with badly rusted iron roofs. Their sides were powdery clapboards that the sun and heat had curled and split. On the other side of the buildings were rail sidings holding a few rai
lcars as well as two locomotives, one not much larger than a truck. Unlike the buildings and railcars, the locomotives were newer, though still coated in dust. A little farther down the main line, which vanished around a curve in the mountains a half mile away, was an enormous rusted-steel structure with old conveyor belts and metal chutes that sagged from neglect.

  It hadn’t taken her long to realize this was an old mine, and that the prisoners were working to reopen it. Gangs of the strongest detainees went off every morning to labor on the tracks to the north, while others toiled in the massive open pit at the bottom of the valley. There was little heavy equipment being used, only a crane mounted on a rail flatbed, to help lay track, and a couple of bulldozers. Everything else was done by hand under the watchful eye, and quick fists, of the guards.

  A buzz of soft whispers suddenly swept through the prisoners while eating their meal, their eyes turned to the east, along the rim of the valley. A vehicle was approaching, coils of dust billowing from its tires as it negotiated the narrow trail.

  The vehicle was identical to the one that had captured the two Americans, a desert-patrol truck with tall, knobby tires, and a machine gun mounted on its roof. As the truck drew closer, Alana could see a bundle of some kind roped to its hood. And closer still, she could tell it was the body of a man. His clothes were missing, and his once-dark skin was burned red and had begun to peel off in great sheets. She could tell an animal had gotten to the body, because there were bloody gouges all over his arms and chest. His face was a raw, pulpy mass.

  The patrol had been sent out to track down an escaped prisoner.

  The truck stopped just short of the trestle tables and the passenger’s door flew open. The man who emerged spoke to the guard captain for a moment. He, in turn, made an announcement to the assembled prisoners. Alana didn’t need to understand the language to know he was telling them that this is what happens to those who try to escape. He then drew a knife, cut the bindings holding the body to the truck, and strode away. The corpse hit the ground with a meaty sound, and the flies that were a constant swarm over the serving dishes suddenly found a more appetizing meal.

  There wasn’t enough food in Alana’s stomach for her to throw up. Instead, she bent at the waist, braced her hands against her knees, and dry-heaved until her stomach was a knotted lump. When she straightened, a guard she didn’t recognize eyed her with some interest.

  A half hour later, the meal finished, Alana and the other women were cleaning the tin serving dishes, using fistfuls of sand to scour the metal. Not that the prisoners back laboring in the mine and along the railroad had left much behind on their plates. One of the principal means for the guards to maintain control was to keep all the captives on the verge of starvation.

  She was kneeling on the ground, swirling sand inside a bowl, when a shadow loomed over her. She looked up. The other women working with her kept their attention on their work. Alana was suddenly yanked to her feet and turned around violently. It was the guard who had slapped her earlier. He was close enough that she could smell the tobacco on his breath and see that he wasn’t much older than twenty, and that there was a lifelessness in his eyes. He didn’t see her as another human being. There wasn’t enough behind his gaze to make her think he saw her as an animate object at all.

  The other guards meant to watch over the dozen women were purposefully looking away. An arrangement had been made, a deal struck. For however long he wished, Alana Shepard belonged to this man.

  She tried to ram a knee into his groin but must have telegraphed her intentions because he turned aside adroitly and took the glancing blow to his thigh. The leering expression on his face didn’t change, even when he slapped her on the same cheek that was already swollen and beginning to bruise.

  Alana refused to cry out or collapse. She swayed on her feet until the stinging subsided and her head cleared. The guard spun her again, and with a bony hand clamped on her shoulder so that his fingers dug into her flesh he maneuvered her away from the others.

  A hundred yards off was an old shed. Half the roof was missing, and the sides were bowed like the swayed back of an old horse. The door hung askew on a single rusted hinge. Just at the threshold, the guard shoved Alana hard enough to send her sprawling. She knew what was coming, had suffered the ordeal once before in college, and had vowed never to let it happen again. When she turned to face him from her supine position, her arm swept the floor to scoop up some pebbles and dirt.

  He came forward in a rush and kicked her wrist. Her fingers opened reflexively and her arm went numb. Her meager weapon was scattered back to the ground. He said something in Arabic and chuckled to himself.

  Alana opened her mouth to scream, and he was suddenly on her, one filthy hand clamped over her nose and mouth, the other she refused to think about. She tried to thrash under his weight, to bite his fingers, to block out the horror of what was about to happen, but he held her pressed to the earth. She couldn’t breathe. His lunge had knocked the air from her lungs and his hand shut off her airways. Her head began to swim, and after just a few seconds of a defense she thought she would never give up her body betrayed her. Her motions became less frantic. Unconsciousness loomed like a black shadow.

  Then came a loud crackle, like the staccato snap of a bunch of twigs, and she could turn away and draw breath. Above her, she saw the back of a man’s hand and the back of her attacker’s head. The guard was dragged off of her, and Alana could breathe more deeply, short, choppy gasps that nevertheless filled her lungs. The would-be rapist came to rest next to her, his face inches from hers. If it was possible, death brought a certain amount of life to his unblinking eyes.

  Kneeling over her was the guard who had watched her dry-heave in the mess line. He had snapped the other man’s neck with his bare hands.

  He spoke in a soothing voice, and it took her a second to realize she recognized the words. He was speaking English. “You’re okay now,” he’d said. “His ardor has cooled. Permanently.”

  “Who? Who are you?” He’d pulled aside his kaffiyeh. He was older than all the other guards she had seen, his skin weathered by a lifetime of living outdoors. She noticed, too, that unlike any of the other people she’d seen recently, one of his eyes was brown and weepy while the other was a startling blue.

  “My name is Juan Cabrillo, and if you want to live you and I have to get out of here right now.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Cabrillo got to his feet and extended a hand to Alana. “You don’t need to. You just have to trust me.”

  AFTER A NIGHT OF moving by moonlight across the valley toward the construction site, gaining access to the facility had been simplicity itself. The guards had orders to keep people in. There was nothing about keeping men dressed like themselves out.

  When Juan had been questioned about his presence, as he stood casually in line for breakfast with the other guards after sunrise prayer, he’d replied that he had been sent from the other camp as punishment for failing on the obstacle course. The young man who’d questioned him had judged the answer adequate and said nothing more.

  Just like that, Cabrillo was part of the landscape—another Arab in desert fatigues, with half his face hidden by a checkered scarf. He had to be careful. During his tumble down the mountain, he had lost one of his brown contact lenses. The other he washed as best he could in his mouth, but it was ingrained with grit, and every time he blinked it felt like he was scratching his cornea with sandpaper. The eye streamed a constant flow of tears.

  He spent the morning wandering the workings, staying close enough to other guards that he didn’t attract anyone’s attention. He quickly grasped that this was a forced-labor camp, and, judging by the prisoners’ condition, it had either been here for a long time or they hadn’t been in the best shape when they arrived. He believed more in the latter than the former, because it didn’t look like a great amount of work had been accomplished.

  And that was the point, he realized after a couple of hours.
These people weren’t meant to accomplish anything at all. The holes they had excavated at the bottom of the valley appeared random, with no oversight by a mining engineer. As best he could tell, reopening the facility was make-work, something to keep them tired and hungry and grateful for the meager meals they were given. But whoever sent them here didn’t want them dead. At least not yet.

  It made him think about Secretary Katamora and how she, too, currently existed in limbo. Neither dead nor alive, at least by any official designation.

  By listening to the other guards, Juan built up a picture of the place, not what it was about—no one talked about that—but who staffed it. He heard Arabic in every accent imaginable, from the worst gutter talk of a Moroccan slum to the urbane polish of a university-educated Saudi. His belief that these were terrorists recruited from the far corners of the Middle East was confirmed by listening to the Babel of inflections and dialects.

  At one point during the day, he’d gotten close enough to the command tent to hear who he believed to be the guard captain speaking into either a radio or, most likely, a satellite phone. Juan paused to tie his boot, watched by a guard stationed outside the tent’s sealed flap, and was pretty sure he heard Suleiman Al-Jama’s name. He knew better than to linger and moved away before the guard became suspicious.

  It was during the noontime meal that he realized not all of the prisoners were Arabs. He spotted a fair-skinned man with thin blond hair among the detainees. The sun had burned him cruelly. And when one of the guards struck a serving woman, he saw that she, too, wasn’t native to the region. She was petite, with closely cropped bangs peeking out from the headscarf she had been given, and her eyes were a brilliant green. She could have been Turkish, he guessed, but there was a girl-next-door, all-American wholesomeness to her that made him think otherwise.

  He had kept an eye on her afterward and was in position when her attacker returned to avenge his humiliation at being dressed down by the guard captain in front of everyone.