The Ghost of Flight 666

by Christopher Anderson

“Then what is this about?”

  “It is simply that your mission has changed,” Colonel Nikahd informed him.

  “Changed, what do you mean?” blurted Fletcher.

  “Follow me, you are needed on the bridge—both of you,” the Iranian jihadi officer replied suavely. “If you please!”

  Nikahd motioned for Eva and the captain to precede him. They re-entered the cabin and headed for the bridge.

  Slade switched the channels in his earbud. Then he climbed back onto the roof. Cat footing across the steel structure Slade made his way carefully to the awning over the bridge. He reached it just as Fletcher and Eva reached the bridge. What they saw was enough to have Slade throw himself down flat on the roof of the bridge.

  Eva and the captain gasped.

  CHAPTER 30: Nikahd Takes the Helm

  Slade stifled a curse. His ‘vanilla mission’ had taken a turn for the worse. Running up the gangway and lining the deck were several hundred Iranian troops. He recognized their black uniforms and green checkered schmaugs: the Republican Guard, the jihadists, the maddest of the mad.

  A crane was busy loading a very large container in an empty hold. Captain Fletcher was angry. “What the Hell are they loading on my ship and why are all these troops here? I’m carrying sand for a frigging zoo—sand—what’s this all about?”

  “Do not worry captain, everything is fine, but we will need your ship for an ulterior mission. We will leave as soon as possible, in fact here is the harbor pilot,” Nikahd smiled as an Iranian naval officer entered the bridge. The officer saluted. Nikahd only nodded. He turned back to Captain Fletcher.

  “I suggest you get down to the business of leaving port. The sooner you do this the better it will be for you and your very lovely wife.”

  “My wife?” Captain Fletcher said hesitantly.

  The insincere voice of Colonel Nikahd dripped with evil intent. He laughed and said, “Should you not cooperate I will simply have my officer take your ship. I shall of course kill you Captain Fletcher, something that no doubt you are ready for. But are you ready for what will become of the lovely Eva?” He paused to let that sink in. “There is only one of her and I have so many very passionate men!”

  He laughed wickedly.

  “Whatever you need,” Fletcher told him quickly. “We can be under way in fifteen minutes.”

  “Excellent, Captain Fletcher. I knew you were a reasonable man! First then, I wish you to muster your crew on deck here below the bridge.

  There was no reason to refuse Nikahd.

  . “All hands report to the aft deck! Repeat, all hands report to the aft deck.”

  Within ten minutes fifty men were gathered beneath the bridge. The Iranians gathered there as well in two ordered ranks. Colonel Nikahd appeared and addressed the multinational crew in English.

  “I am Colonel Nikahd! You are now under my command. My first order is for you all to surrender your cell phones and any other device on your person which could be used for communication!”

  Most of the men complied. Some informed the Iranians they didn’t have the cell phones on them or they were in their quarters. Nikahd had every man searched.

  Seven of the fifty were found to have cell phones or other devices on them. Nikahd had these men separated from the rest and lined up against the port rail.

  Slade had enough familiarity with the jihadists to know what was about to happen. He called Director Gann and apprised him of the changing situation. Everyone was watching the port rail as the Iranians gunned down the hapless seamen, shooting them with a flurry of AK-47 fire.

  The Iranians laughed, grabbing the bodies and tossing them overboard. A few of the stricken men were still alive when they hit the water.

  When the slaughter was over, all Slade could say was a caustic, “Well that’s a typical jihadist response!”

  Nikahd had the remaining men marched down into the aft hold directly beneath the bridge. It was the smallest of the ship’s holds, meant for miscellaneous cargo. Apparently the Iranians would run the ship. The only value of the crew was as hostages; a very temporary value at that.

  Slade spent the remainder of the day playing cat and mouse. The Iranians searched the ship thoroughly. They collected all of the crews cloths, books, computers—everything—and dumped all of it overboard. Another couple of crewmembers were shot. The Iranians carried them out of the hold and tossed them overboard.

  #

  Director Gann took Mertzl’s arm and simultaneously cast a glance at FBI Director MacCloud. They convened together apart from Carrabolla, who eyed them suspiciously.

  Mertzl was furious. “The Key West has them, they have them dead to rights! How can the president not see that?”

  “We need hard evidence; evidence the president can’t refute,” MacCloud said. “Everything points to this being the fulcrum of something big. The mosques are being sent messages to prepare for a great event on the anniversary of Nine-Eleven. This has to be part of it.”

  “We just checked the cargo of the Galaxus,” Gann told them.

  “And?”

  “Sand, nothing but innocuous silicates. It’s preparing to leave Bandar Abbas as we speak.”

  “I’ll bet a star that the sub’s going to rendezvous with it.”

  MacCloud shook his head. “All of our satellites are glued to the Atlas. We’re blind thirty miles away from that ship.”

  “The damn Iranians are going to make the switch right in front of us and we won’t be able to see it,” Mertzl growled.

  “I have a man on the Galaxus,” Gann told them. “He’s going to stay put and let us know what’s going on.”

  “Good! The Key West will continue to shadow the midget sub. By the time the Atlas gets to Abu Dhabi we’ll know whether the sub has the nuclear material or not.”

  Now all they could do was wait.

  They didn’t have to wait long.

  “Director!” an aide interrupted. “We have an urgent communique from our operative in Bandar Abbas.”

  “Slade?”

  “Yes sir,” he said.

  “Jeremiah Slade; the man who murdered President Ataturk’s nephew?” Carrabolla heard the exchange and she grimaced.

  “Yes young Turgot, who died in the company of his ISIS and Al Qaeda heroes,” the director told her, as close to being overtly angry as he ever showed.

  “He was a boy, a Human Being,” she responded incredulously. The director was about to speak, but she interrupted, asking with a sneer, “Did your precious Slade find contraband on the freighter?”

  “No, just sand,” the director admitted. “So far Soekarno’s story checks out.”

  “Oh my God,” Carrabolla exclaimed with mock panic. “Sand? Say it isn’t so!”

  The director shook his head, taking the iPad. The director looked at it. Seeing Slade’s face, he frowned. “Report Agent Slade?”

  “Sorry to bother you so soon, sir, but the situation has changed. The Galaxus has been commandeered by the Iranian Republican Guard. Hold on, I better let you see what’s going on.” Slade’s picture disappeared and the deck of the Galaxus replaced it. Iranian soldiers were lining up the crew. The image zoomed in on a particular figure. He was a tall man in uniform with a short beard and a craggy, pock marked face.

  “Our old friend Colonel Nikahd!” Director Gann said. He nodded to the console operator who put the feed on the big screens.

  “Sir, you can bet Colonel Nikahd isn’t here to escort sand! We are leaving Bandar Abbas at this time. Whoa, I was afraid of this, here we go,” he said in a growl, turning the camera to the rail.

  There were seven sailors who were being herded by the Iranians to the rail. Slade zoomed in. The sailors were terrified, but it didn’t last long. The four Iranian soldiers lined them on the rail and backed off. Without warning their AK-47’s barked.

  There was a gasp in the room, led by Carrabolla, as the seven sailors crumpled. Four of them stayed still, lying on the deck or draped over the rail. Three were still movin
g. The Iranians didn’t waste any bullets on them; instead, they unceremoniously dumped them over the side.

  “Typical jihadist response!” Slade commented.

  “Oh my God!” Carrabolla said.

  “Don’t fret Ms. Carrabolla,” Gann said icily, “perhaps the president can explain this to you since he understands these people so well.”

  Mertzl laughed in a grisly way. “Why don’t you get your friends at the EPA to go after the Iranians for polluting the gulf?”

  “Slade, stay out of sight; stay out of trouble. Keep me posted!” The director cut the connection and turned to Carrabolla, his voice growing increasingly callous, “Why would Colonel Nikahd, who just met with the president’s personal envoy Freddy Waters, commandeer the Champion Galaxus if not to rendezvous with the midget sub and take the Uranium? Do you still think nothing is going on?”

  Biting her lip, Carrabolla obviously realized that the intelligence agencies had made the connection between the White House and the Iranians. That could be damning for the next election if the Iranians were shown to be lying. If that came out it wouldn’t matter how much money the president raised. Fortunately, the president was convinced, and so she was convinced, that the Uranium was still on the freighter—it had to be.

  CHAPTER 31: The Shell Game

  Captain Bashir looked with concern at the depth gauge and then at the spray of water coming from the ruptured weld in the seam of the pressure hull. The depth gauge read ten meters. The leak came from behind a patch the engineer tried to apply to the crack.

  “Can the bilge pumps keep up with it?”

  The first officer and engineer shook his head, telling him, “Not for long. In another five minutes we will have taken on so much water that the engines and hydroplanes can’t keep us from sinking. We need to surface now while we still can.”

  “We’re not outside the ring of American escorts yet,” Captain Bashir said firmly.

  “Can we at least go to periscope depth?” the first officer pleaded, fear in his eyes. “It doesn’t seem like much but the water pressure is that much less. The pumps might be able to handle it.”

  “Then we risk being run over by an American warship,” Bashir remarked.

  “We cannot jeopardize the mission!” the navigator interjected.

  “The mission will fail if the boat sinks!” the first officer countered.

  “Enough!” Bashir snapped. The two officers stayed silent, waiting on his decision. He took a deep breath of consideration before announcing, “We cannot remain where we are and we cannot surface. Therefore we will proceed to periscope depth and trust to Allah to protect us until we get through the ring of escorts—hopefully undetected.”

  “Surely Allah will not abandon this sacred mission,” the navigator said boldly.

  “Not unless we are so stupid that Allah refuses to recognize us!” the first officer muttered, glancing darkly at the navigator.

  They ascended to four meters. Water kept leaking from behind the patch but it was not nearly as much. The first officer reported, “Water level is going down in the bilge. We’re pumping the water into the dive tanks and then blowing them out using compressed air. We should be able to maintain this depth.”

  “Can we dive deeper for a limited time if need be?”

  The first officer shook his head. “It’s risky. If we do that the seam could burst and then it won’t matter what we do.” He looked at the navigator. “Our sacred mission will rest on the bottom of the Straits of Hormuz.”

  Bashir stayed at the periscope, gauging the traffic around them. For a tense hour they altered course first one way and then another, weaving through the escorting ships, trying not to get run over or detected. After the hour was up they had progressed only a few kilometers, but the convoy and its shadow ships passed them by.

  “I think that’s the last of them,” Bashir sighed, sweat streaming down his forehead. The crew breathed a sigh of relief.

  Without warning the boat heeled over to starboard, rolling so hard that it threw Bashir off his feet and hard into the trim valves of dive tanks. The blow stunned him. He stumbled across the bridge and fell onto the deck, his head swimming. Somewhere in the back of his brain he heard screaming.

  Blinking through the blood in his eyes and the confusion in his mind Bashir had the image of the navigator, the zealot of unshakeable jihadist faith, screaming like a little girl. Over his piercing cries was the urgent voice of his first officer yelling, “We’re sinking!”

  #

  In half an hour the Galaxus was outside the breakwater. Fletcher turned to Nikahd. “Where to now Colonel?”

  Nikahd paused. Then a bright flash shown in the darkness to the southwest. After around thirty seconds a low rumbling boom rolled over the waters. The colonel was busy setting a frequency in the ship’s radio. He looked up and pointed in the direction of the fading glow. “Set your course towards the light.”

  They ran for several hours before a call came over the ship’s radio. “Abd al-Rahman hero of the Umayyad! Abd al-Rahman hero of the Umayyad!”

  “Go ahead Rahman!” Nikahd answered.

  “Request immediate rendezvous!” the urgent voice of Captain Bashir answered. “We are close to sinking with our cargo. We are heavily damaged. We do not have much time!”

  “Give me your coordinates!” Nikahd told the Rahman.

  The Rahman did so and Nikahd directed Fletcher to proceed there at flank speed. They sailed for another forty minutes, the Galaxus heaving in the seas, her engines straining. At last Fletcher reported that they were nearing the coordinates.

  Nikahd placed lookouts at the bow of the ship. Shortly thereafter a light was spotted. In fifteen minutes the huge freighter slowed and pulled alongside the Rahman. The midget sub was barely afloat. The sea was over her deck. The three containers were half submerged.

  Quickly, the deckhands from the Galaxus lashed the midget sub to the side of the freighter. The men didn’t know why they were doing it, nor did they have to ask. The scores of Iranian soldiers with AK-47’s trained on them were all they needed to know.

  A small deck crane was enough to upload the three containers. They were then lowered into the same hold as the large container loaded by Nikahd. When that was done the hatch was closed.

  “What are we going to do about the sub, I can’t drag it to Indonesia. Besides, she won’t stand our towing. Our wake would break her up quick!” Captain Fletcher asked.

  Nikahd simply smiled and got on the radio. “Rahman, you have accomplished your mission. You may now return to Bandar Abbas. May the Prophet be with you!”

  “No!” came the desperate reply. “We must be fifty kilometers from Bandar Abbas; we’ll never make it!”

  “The Prophet will guide you!” Nikahd said firmly and he switched the radio frequency back to the normal frequency used for international waters. Turning to his lieutenant, he said, “Have the men cut the Rahman loose!”

  “Yes sir!”

  To Fletcher, he said, “You may continue your voyage captain.” Glancing at Eva, he added unnecessarily, “I would keep your lovely wife out of sight, but remember, if you fail to satisfy the needs of my mission she will satisfy the needs of my men—all of them. Do I make myself clear?”

  “So I am to set my course for Jakarta as planned?”

  “Of course,” Nikahd smiled. “We must get Mr. Soekarno his Iranian sand!”

  #

  Captain Bashir ordered, “Full ahead! Give me everything you have! Bow planes forty-five up! Aft planes neutral!”

  They’d cut away the lines, a necessity to keep them from fouling in the propeller. Now the Rahman surged forward, her diesel motor throbbing. Still, it was barely enough to keep her from sinking.

  “We won’t make Bandar Abbas!” the first officer told the captain.

  “I know. Send a distress call. Perhaps someone can reach us in time.”

  “Impossible,” the first officer shook his head, pounding on the radio. “The water is shorti
ng out all the electrical components. The radio just died.”

  Bashir went to the navigator. He grasped the officer by the shoulder and told him, “Plot me a course to the nearest land. I don’t care where!”

  The navigator nodded. Now that their mission was over he was all for survival over dying alone in the ocean. He went over his charts and shouted, “Course zero-two-four! We are nine-point-two kilometers from shore!”

  “Helmsman steer heading zero-two-four!” Bashir shouted to the man barely two feet away. “If she can hold together for an hour we may yet live through this!”

  #

  Captain Mars aboard the attack sub Key West watched the Galaxus cast the Rahman adrift. “Okay, they’ve transferred the cargo to the freighter. We’ll follow the freighter. Send word to Washington that we believe the Uranium is now on board the freighter Galaxus bound for Jakarta. We will follow the freighter and await further orders.”

  Captain Mars shook his head. “I have half a mind to sink that freighter now. With everything that we’ve seen already who knows how long that stuff will remain on that ship!”

  #

  As far as the fourth ship in the game was concerned, the Atlas was under tow and as the sun came up the eyes of every intelligence agency and news agency were upon her.

  In the situation room, all eyes were glued to the satellite feeds. During the night the freighter was hooked up to a destroyer and put under tow. As it moved out from under the smokescreen it appeared that the cargo was intact. When dawn finally broke over the Straits of Hormuz it became clear that there were three containers in the hold of the freighter. The Atlas would dock in Abu Dhabi in five hours.

  “You see general, all of your hand wringing was for nothing,” National Security Advisor Carrabolla gloated. “We put three containers on that freighter and there are still three containers. Where’s your national emergency now? Would you like me to get the president on the phone?”

  General Mertzl was conferring with Director Gann, nodding gravely. He looked up at Carrabolla, and said, “There are three containers there all right but are they the same ones?”