A Blast to Sail_A Connie Barrera Thriller_The 3rd Novel in the Caribbean Mystery and Adventure Series

by Charles Dougherty

  "Yeah, sure. I just had to check that nobody else was with you. You sure poked a hornets' nest this time."

  "Sorry; I really appreciate the favor. We're in a time bind, here. I'll owe you big for this one."

  "Not a problem, but I'll hold you to that just the same."

  "What's going on, Luke?" Connie asked.

  "Well, I'm not sure, exactly. You know how the Feds clam up when things get exciting, Paul."

  "Two kids out of control is exciting? Must be a slow day in the counter-terrorism business."

  "Apparently not. It took about 30 minutes for all hell to break loose after I gave the FBI their names."

  "The kids' names?" Paul asked.

  "Yeah. They're on a watch list, and they've been off the radar for nearly six months."

  "What kind of watch list?"

  "Looks like they might have been recruited by ISIS. They raised somebody's suspicions while they were in college. Then they took a year off after graduation to 'see the world,' and they were traced to Turkey. Looks like a pretty sure thing that they crossed the border into Syria. They were there for maybe six months, and then they disappeared in Canada. DHS has been looking for them ever since."

  "That's interesting," Paul said, "but there must be quite a few kids that have done that. Do they all rate four suits flying out to a Coast Guard cutter to interrogate them when they screw up?"

  "Okay, now you're ahead of me, Russo. How'd you discover that?"

  Connie shook her head and held a finger across her lips.

  "Connie. It's a girl thing — can't really say more without compromising her source."

  "Okay. That's consistent with the excitement, but nobody's saying why their capture is so important right this minute."

  "Well, keep us posted, and we'll do the same. I doubt we're going to hear anything that you don't know first, though," Paul said.

  "Yeah, okay," Luke said. "I just emailed you a whole package of what we know, with a bunch of questions for you and Connie."

  "All right. We probably won't see it until tomorrow. We don't have the satellite communications system installed yet. We'll have to wait until we're in the marina in New York."

  "That'll be okay. If there's anything I need in a hurry, I'll call. You guys stay safe, and enjoy the new boat."

  Paul frowned as he disconnected the call.

  "What's wrong?" Connie asked.

  "I have a feeling we're not through with this; I hope it doesn't mess up our charter."

  "We'll cope, Mr. Pretty Face. Thanks for covering up Jane's slip. She probably told us more than she should have."

  Paul shrugged and refilled their coffee mugs. "Some people would think so, anyway. We'll see."

  6

  Mo was in pain as the RIB skipped over the waves; his leg throbbed with every jolt. It was dawn; there was enough light for him to see. He twisted his head to look at Abe, strapped in the adjacent stretcher. Abe was quiet, though the expression on his face betrayed that he was suffering as well.

  "Abe?" Mo asked.

  "Yeah?"

  "What are — "

  "Shut up! No talking," the Coastguardsman nearest them said.

  "Fuck you, asshole. We'll talk if we want to," Abe said.

  "Tape 'em up, Fred," Jane Dawson ordered.

  "I know my rights. You can't — " Abe's breath left in a whoosh as Fred delivered a measured punch to his belly. Before he caught his breath, his mouth was taped shut. Fred ran the tape under his chin and over the top of his head, clamping his jaw shut, and then ran another piece across his mouth.

  Mo didn't protest as the man repeated the process with him. He alternated between fear and anger; this was Abe's fault. If the horny bastard had behaved himself, they would have parted friends with Connie and Paul and been back in Maine by noon on the fourth. At least he'd had the foresight to arm the weapon when Abe sent him below to get the duct tape. The battery was fresh; it should last with no problem. Their mission wasn't in jeopardy.

  Now, though, they were prisoners of the infidels, thanks to Abe. So much for laying low until they got their next assignment. He began to wonder if he could somehow extricate himself from this situation. Abe was the one who had held Connie and Paul at gunpoint; for that matter, the big oaf had threatened him with the pistol as well. He hadn't even known that Abe had a pistol; he wondered where it had come from. It was a violation of everything they had been taught. There had been no need for them to be armed, and possession of a handgun would make them look suspicious if anyone discovered it. He began to think through a plausible story that he could use to distance himself from Abe; he could claim that he was as much a victim as Connie and Paul. They would no doubt support his statement that Abe had threatened him with the pistol and made him go below to get the tape to bind Paul.

  That reminded him that he had armed the weapon. In two and a half days, New York would be no more. Connie and Paul and their yacht would be vaporized. There would be no one to support his story. There would be no evidence to connect the yacht to the blast, either. He tried to imagine what would become of any charges against him and Abe, but it was beyond him right now. He'd stick to the story that he'd been taken by surprise by Abe's actions; that was plausible. It wasn't true, because he knew Abe had a history of forcing himself on women, but the pistol had indeed been a surprise.

  He heard the RIB's engine stop. Looking around, he could see that they were resting alongside a white ship. One of the men attached a three-point lifting harness to the RIB, and they began to rise. Soon, the RIB was deposited in a cradle on the cutter's deck, and two men lifted his stretcher and passed it over the side to two more men on deck.

  "Take the prisoners to the sick bay first," he heard the woman say. "Let Doc patch 'em up before the suits start on 'em."

  The reference to the suits puzzled him, but he focused on fleshing out his story. Abe was in deep shit no matter what, but he might be able to save himself.

  Abe sat at the polished table in the officers' wardroom aboard the Coast Guard cutter. The local anesthetic the ship's surgeon had given him while he probed for the bullet was wearing off. His discomfort was on its way to becoming pain. His hands were cuffed behind him. He tried to change his position, but his ankles were cuffed to the chair, and the bastards had passed the chain on his handcuffs through the metal spokes on the chair's back. He couldn't move much, and he was angry.

  They had ignored his demands to let him call a lawyer, to tell him what he was charged with, or to let him call his parents. Two of the four men had brought him in here and secured him to the chair and left. There was a clock on the bulkhead; he'd been here for over an hour. The only bright spot in the whole debacle was that he had armed the weapon. He had done his part before that prick-teasing bitch had ruined everything.

  Two of the men in suits came in. He saw that they were drinking coffee. One of them sat down across from him; the other remained standing, moving out of his field of vision. He assumed that was supposed to make him uncomfortable, but he'd been trained for this kind of thing. He was ready.

  "Want some coffee?" the man who was sitting asked.

  Abe was surprised by that. Coffee was tempting, but he had a raging thirst. Maybe he could establish a pattern of negotiating with his questioners. That was a technique he'd been taught. "How about ice water?" he asked.

  "We can probably do that," the seated man said, nodding to his invisible partner.

  Abe heard the door behind him open. In a moment, it closed, and the standing man reached over his shoulder and set a big glass of water with crushed ice on a coaster in front of Abe.

  "Thanks," Abe muttered.

  "No problem," said a voice from behind him.

  "You are Abubakar Shahir, correct?" the seated man asked.

  "Abe Shahir, yeah."

  "You prefer Abe?"

  "Yeah. I can't drink the water."

  "Why? Something wrong with it?"

  "No. My hands are cuffed."

  "Oh. Right.
Sorry about that, Abubakar."

  "Abe."

  "Your friends call you Abe?"

  "Right. Can I have some of that water?"

  "Sure. Help yourself, Abubakar. I'm not interested in being your friend, so I'll stick to Abubakar. What did your friends in Syria call you?"

  "Syria? What are you talking about? I want a lawyer."

  "You want a lawyer? What for?"

  "I'm entitled to a lawyer."

  "You're mistaken, Abubakar. You ever hear of the PATRIOT Act?"

  "Doesn't apply to me; I'm a U.S. citizen. I know my rights."

  "Do you, now? You familiar with the National Defense Authorization Act?"

  "No."

  "It effectively extended the PATRIOT Act to U.S. citizens. Those rights you know about?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You lost 'em when you signed up with ISIS. You've got no rights. We'll keep you hidden away forever, if we feel like it. Unless you want to try to earn your way back."

  "And how would I do that?"

  "I'll let you ponder that one for a while, Abubakar. Your buddy Mohammed's more cooperative. I'm going to chat with him for a while, but I'll be back."

  The man pushed his chair away from the table and stood.

  "How about some of that water?" Abe asked.

  "Sure, Abubakar. Go for it."

  "Fuck you, asshole," Abe said, as the two men walked out and closed the door.

  Bill O'Brien sipped his lukewarm coffee and studied the email that had arrived in his inbox a few minutes ago. From the Counterterrorism Division's Operations Branch I, it advised of the apprehension of two recent college graduates who had disappeared after spending at least six months in Syria, presumably with ISIS. The two men had been volunteer crew on a yacht bound from a boatyard in Maine to New York. They had been captured early this morning after they attempted to overpower the man and woman who owned the yacht. Both suspects had suffered non-lethal gunshot wounds after the owners took a pistol from one of the men in a struggle. Through luck, the male owner was a retired policeman who had served on the JTTF in Miami. He had called one of his old contacts in an effort to minimize the disruption to their sailing plans. When the men's names were entered into the system, alarms went off. Ops Branch I had dispatched a team to interrogate the two men, who were being held on a Coast Guard cutter off Cape Cod. The yacht was underway for the 79th Street Boat Basin in Manhattan, expected to arrive on the afternoon of July 2.

  O'Brien scratched his head and thought about the timing. Like most people in law enforcement, he was suspicious of coincidence. Two suspected ISIS agents were headed for midtown Manhattan, planning to arrive shortly before the Fourth of July. The video that had embarrassed him threatened a nuclear attack on a major population center on the East Coast on the fourth. Further, the ISIS terrorists were traveling on a private yacht, which might have offered them a means of delivering a nuclear weapon. The pieces sort of fit together, except for the attack on the owners of the yacht. Why would they have tried to overpower the couple who owned the boat? That didn't make sense to O'Brien, unless the couple had discovered something that the terrorists were trying to hide. Was there a nuclear weapon concealed on that yacht? Or had the terrorists wanted to divert the vessel for some reason? Maybe the target wasn't Manhattan. Given where the altercation took place, the terrorists might have intended to take the yacht into Boston Harbor. That would have been a fitting target for the Fourth of July.

  He selected a pencil from his center drawer and pulled a yellow legal pad into the center of his desk. After scribbling a few notes to himself, he picked up the telephone and punched in the number of his counterpart in Ops Branch I. He wanted their team on the Coast Guard cutter to ask the prisoners some specific questions. And he wanted someone to search that yacht while it was still at sea.

  7

  “Well, Mohammed, you gonna talk to us?" The man who spoke was husky, with close-cropped hair.

  Mo thought he looked like a soldier; he seemed out of place in the dark suit. Mo kept his facial muscles relaxed, hiding his thoughts.

  "Your friend, Abubakar, is talking like crazy. He's already put you in deep shit. So much for that Muslim Brotherhood crap, huh?" The second man was slight. He wore glasses, and reminded Mo of his English prof.

  Mo looked at the two men in suits, focusing his eyes on the bridge of the speaker's nose. "He's just trying to cover his own ass. This is all his fault; I didn't do anything."

  "That so?" the husky one asked. "He said the same thing."

  Mo offered no comment. He'd been trained to answer direct questions in a non-committal, evasive manner, and avoid rising to provocation. He looked away from the men, down at the formica table top. They were in some kind of small conference room. His hands were cuffed behind his back, so he was forced to sit on the edge of his chair. The bigger of the two men had hustled him into the room, practically dragging him from the sick bay. He had ordered Mo to walk, ignoring the leg wound, and had become rough when Mo couldn't comply.

  Mo had been perplexed at the way they treated him, expecting that they would tell him he was under arrest and read him his rights. He had been trying to figure out who to call when the time came. He didn't want to call his parents, and he couldn't think of anyone else. He had decided to ask for a court-appointed attorney, but they hadn't mentioned any of those things yet. They had asked for his name and address earlier, and he had responded with his nickname, Mo Ramiz, and given them the address of the house trailer that he and Abe rented. They had not used their full names since they came back to the U.S., figuring that might invite questions. He wondered how these men had come up with Abubakar and Mohammed. None of their coworkers called them anything but Mo and Abe. Rick Peterson had probably given their last names to Paul and Connie, but they were on his payroll as Maurice Ramiz and Abraham Shahir.

  He broke the silence by saying, "I'd like to talk with a lawyer, please."

  "A lawyer?" the husky man asked. "Why do you need a lawyer?"

  "Am I not under arrest?"

  "No, not from a traditional legal perspective," the smaller man said. "You're being detained for questioning. It's not quite the same."

  "Since you have me chained up, I take it I'm not free to go."

  "You're a smart boy. Figured that right out," the big man said, grinning.

  "Questioning about what?" Mo asked. "I didn't see what happened between Abe and Connie."

  "No?" the big man asked. "Guess you can't answer questions about that, then."

  "I'm guessing Paul must have kicked his ass because he got fresh with Connie," Mo ventured. "But, like I said, I didn't see any of that. I just got up and came on watch, and then Abe pulled a gun and told me to get some duct tape and tie Paul up. When I didn't move fast enough, he shot at me. Not to hit me, you know, but to make me do what he said."

  "Uh-huh," the big man said. "So who did shoot you? Abubakar?"

  "No. Paul tackled Abe and Connie took the gun away. She shot Abe and then she turned around, and ... I was moving toward them. I was gonna help subdue him, but I guess she thought I was going to help him instead, so she shot me."

  "Makes sense," the big man said. "Then what?"

  "She put the pistol to Abe's head. I thought she was gonna kill him, but Paul talked her out of it."

  "That's good. Why do you think she was going to shoot him in the head?"

  "I guess he probably tried to, you know, like, force himself on her. He did that kind of thing in college. She must have been either really scared of him, or really angry. I don't know ... maybe he — "

  "You were friends in college, right?" the slight man asked, taking his glasses off and polishing them with a handkerchief.

  "Right."

  "Were you both recruited on campus?"

  "Recruited?" Mo asked, his mouth going dry. He worked his tongue around as he waited, but neither man said anything.

  He watched the clock on the wall; three full minutes passed in silence. "I want a lawyer," he said
.

  "You don't get a lawyer, Mohammed," the big man said.

  "What about my rights?"

  "Rights? You don't have any rights. You left those behind when you crossed that border."

  "What?" Mo asked. "What are you talking about?"

  "You may as well tell us," the small man said. "We already know most of it."

  "Most of what?"

  "You majored in engineering," the small man said.

  "Yes. What's that got to do — "

  "Nuclear engineering," the big man said. "That's why they recruited you, isn't it?"

  "I don't know what you mean, 'recruited.' Who do you think — "

  "Tell us about Syria, Mohammed," the smaller man said.

  "I'm done," Mo said. "I'm not talking to you any more until I see a lawyer."

  "That's what they all say," the big man said. "You been watching too much TV." He stood up.

  The smaller man nodded and stood up, walking to the door. He opened it and spoke to someone outside. "Put him in solitary, and give him the treatment. We'll work on the other one for a while."

  The big man paused in front of Mo and stepped on Mo's bare foot, transferring his weight as Mo felt the bones cracking. The man grinned and twisted on his foot. "Later, Mohammed."

  The breakwater at the west end of the Cape Cod Canal was a couple of miles astern, and Connie and Paul had decided to make sail and shut down their diesel auxiliary. They were in protected water, well up in the northeast end of Buzzard's Bay. They would be hard on the wind, but with the flat water, they thought they could sail down the bay as far as Gay Head. They were hoping that the wind would back once they were in more open water, allowing them to pass south of Block Island. They planned to sail down the ocean side of Long Island, avoiding the traffic on Long Island Sound. They no sooner finished trimming the sails than the phone rang. Paul put the winch handle he'd been using in its holder and picked up the satellite phone, looking at the caller i.d. screen before he answered.

  "Hi, Luke. What can I do for you?"