Dead or Alive (65 page)

“Call them back in, Sam.”

As Chavez and the Carusos reentered, Brian said, “Hey, since we’re finally getting proactive about this shit ... The URC had that Dirar mutt killed for a good reason. Any more thoughts on us going to Tripoli and shaking the tree?”

“What do you expect to fall out?” Granger asked.

Dominic answered this one. “Either Dirar got whacked by the URC directly, or they had an affiliate do it. Either way, we find who did it and we’ve got another piece of the puzzle—maybe a peek at communication protocols, funding routes. . . . Who knows?”

Hendley nodded. “Draw your documents and get Travel working on itineraries. We’ll see if you can scare up a contact in Tripoli—somebody at the embassy who doesn’t mind having a hats-off chat. Also see if we can get Brian and Dominic a briefing—Jack, maybe that new deal you and Gavin have been working on?”

“Can do, boss.”

Hendley stood up and looked around the table. “Okay, gents, do your thing. We need a corner, something we can peel back and turn into leverage.”

 

 

E
ach man would need a motel room of his own, Hadi knew, all within an hour’s driving distance of the facility and none lavish enough that a ten- to fourteen-day stay would arouse curiosity. Foreigners coming to a new country looking for work didn’t have enough money for fancy accommodations, and while it might make sense for friends to stay together on such a trip, four Arabic-looking males staying in one place together might pique the interest of local law enforcement.

There were plenty of two-star motels in São Paulo; Hadi wasn’t worried about finding those, but this was his first foray into fieldwork and he wanted to leave nothing to chance—just as they’d left nothing to chance with their cover stories.

Each of them had studied or knew enough about the industry that their arrival and subsequent job inquiries would draw little attention, at least for the short time they planned to be in the country. Brazil’s new boon had seen an influx of workers, many of them from the Middle East and tired of being paid poverty-level wages for exhausting and dangerous work. No, Hadi thought, as long as they did nothing to distinguish themselves, four more Arabs going about the business of finding work would not be noticed.

The difficult part would be reconnaissance. There were many miles of track and hundreds of cars to survey; there were schedules and routes to double- and triple-check; topography and infrastructure to study. The facility itself, while far from impregnable, did have its own security force, and Ibriham’s preparatory research had suggested that the facility routinely conducted drills that involved both the military and the police, each of which maintained a quick-reaction force. Of course, such forces would be useful only up to a point. If he and the others planned well and remained steadfast under Allah’s guiding hand, nothing could stop them.

S
TEVE HAD PASSED the most recent test with flying colors, Allison decided. She had at the last minute canceled their rendezvous in Reno, claiming that her boss had asked her to take his place at a pharmaceutical-rep conference in Sacramento. The conference was real enough, as were her business cards and the drug samples and the literature she carried in her leather briefcase whenever they met for sex, but that’s as far as it went. She liked him well enough, but in her business, such things were gauged on a sliding scale. Steve wasn’t repulsive, or abusive, so that put him nearer to the upper end of the scale. Not that that would have mattered to her performance, but it certainly made their meetings tolerable.

As predicted, Steve had been upset and disappointed at her last-minute cancellation, and just as predictably, he’d immediately offered a solution: He would take time off from work and fly to Sacramento for the weekend so they could spend time together. She could attend the conference during the day, and they would have the nights to themselves. Allison showed the appropriate level of surprise and gratitude at his suggestion, and promised to make their first weekend getaway something to remember. At some point during the weekend, she would set the hook a little deeper, coyly suggesting that he introduce her to his family. Perhaps she might even arrange for him to catch her tearing up, after which she would confess that she was somewhat taken aback by the “special connection” she felt with him.

As she’d known from the beginning, the tricky part would be the pitch. Her “handler”—a Russian term she had never liked—the man with the fire-scarred hands, had proposed an angle she thought was worth exploring, but it would involve exposing herself with an unbackstopped story that Steve could check into, if so inclined. Then again, if by the time she made the pitch Steve wasn’t completely under her thumb, she would back off and try another tack. Steve wasn’t stupid, but when it came to matters of the heart, men were just as irrational, if not more so, than women. Sex, for all its power, was simply a stepping-stone, and if she judged her mark correctly, she was but a few stones away from the prize.

The question that Allison didn’t let herself wonder too much about was the nature of the information her employer was seeking. Why in the world, she wondered, did they care about groundwater in the middle of a desert?

 

 

 

A
s Panamax “box ships” went, the
Losan
was small, a “twelve abreast” 2,700 TEU—twenty-foot equivalent units—vessel measuring 542 feet, whose capacity had long since been surpassed by Post Panamax descendants, but Tarquay Industries of Smithfield, Virginia, was less interested in modernity than it was in cutting its losses.

Of the 120 five-hundred-gallon propane tanks it had sold to the government of Senegal, forty-six had proved defective, having slipped through quality control with improperly welded lifting lugs. By itself this was not an insurmountable problem, one that Tarquay had offered to fix at no cost and on-site, but an examination by both Senegalese government inspectors and Tarquay’s lead engineer in Dakar had revealed that the welds had compromised the shell integrity; none of the tanks could have withstood the mandated 250-pounds-per-square-inch pressure capacity.

As this was Tarquay’s initial contract with Senegal and in fact its first overseas deal, a quick refund was issued, along with an official apology from the board of directors, and replacement tanks were dispatched immediately. In Dakar, the defective tanks were listed on the bill of entry with the code R3001c—“Re-exportation of quality-rejected non-petroleum products following storage warehousing”—then transported to a government customs warehouse in Port Sud and offloaded in a vacant weed-filled lot surrounded by a four-foot-high hurricane fence.

Eight months later, arrangements were made to have the defective tanks returned to Smithfield. The
Losan
, making its final port of call before crossing the Atlantic to the United States, had the requisite space to take the cargo.

Two days before departure, the tanks were loaded by forklift onto platform railcars, locked into place, and transported two miles down the tracks to the
Losan
’s berth, where the tanks were offloaded by crane into open-top “bulktainers”—four tanks to a container—then hoisted to the
Losan
’s deck and stacked twelve abreast.

Having been inspected upon entry, the tanks, which had been under the control of customs since their arrival, were neither weighed nor examined before being loaded aboard the
Losan
.

 

 

 

T
he headache and nausea had been getting progressively worse for the last ten hours, which somewhat surprised Adnan; he hadn’t expected symptoms this soon. His hands were trembling and his skin felt clammy. Clearly the stories about the vessel’s toxicity hadn’t been exaggerations.
No matter,
he thought, it was almost time. According to Salychev’s chart, they were only twenty kilometers from the drop-off point.

By Allah’s grace they’d found the containment drum precisely where it should have been, still resting in its bulkhead-mounted rack. It had been lighter than Adnan had anticipated, which was both a blessing and a curse. He knew the approximate weight of the core, so it was relatively easy to estimate the weight of the containment drum; it was obviously lead-shielded but not as thickly as their intelligence had suggested. This meant the vault itself had been intended as the primary shield, but that wouldn’t help them. However, the drum was still sealed and seemed to have suffered no damage during the incident those many years ago.

They’d unlatched the rack enclosure, lifted the drum up and out by its four welded D-shaped handles, then walked it out of the vault and across the flooded deck to the ladder. Here they’d moved slowly, cautiously, one step at a time, to the catwalk, then out into the main passageway. The last two major obstacles—the ladder up to the weather deck and the accommodation ladder down to the rafts—passed without incident, and soon they were back on shore. They gratefully shed their protection suits and gas masks, then stuffed them in one of the backpacks, which was weighted down with a stone and tossed into the cove.

The walk back to the headland took an hour. Adnan ordered the men to put down the drum and rest, then he walked to the shoreline and peered through the mist toward the bay. He could just make out the outline of Salychev’s boat. He pulled a flare from his backpack, popped off the ignition cap, and waved the sparking tube over his head. Thirty seconds passed, and then from the boat there came the double wink of a flashlight. Adnan turned to the others and waved them ahead.

Thirty minutes later they were back aboard the boat and returning the way they’d come. By the time they reached the main bay, the containment drum was sealed inside the second, more heavily shielded, drum they’d brought along. Salychev eyed the container suspiciously but said nothing as he steered the boat toward open water.

Now Adnan stood beside Salychev in the pilothouse. It was nearly midnight, and nothing but blackness showed through the windows. “You’ve certainly earned your fee, Captain,” Adnan said. “We’re grateful.”

Salychev shrugged, said nothing.

Beside his hip, Adnan could feel the square outline of the radio jutting from the wooden helm console. Moving slowly, he withdrew the small knife from his jacket pocket and thumbed open the blade, which he pressed against the radio’s power cable. It made a barely perceptible
snick
as it parted.

“I’m going to check on the men,” Adnan said. “Can I bring you a cup of coffee? Something stronger?”

“Coffee.”

Adnan went down the ladder into the main salon, then down another short ladder into the sleeping compartment. It was dark, save what little light filtered down from the salon. The men were asleep, one to a bunk, all lying on their backs. Earlier he’d passed out what he’d told them was another dose of potassium iodide; it was in fact three grams of lorazepam stuffed into a generic cellulose capsule. At three times the standard dose, the anti-anxiety medication was enough to put the men into a profoundly deep sleep.
A blessing,
Adnan thought.

For the last four hours he’d wrestled with what he had to do next—not the necessity of it but the method. These men were already dying, and nothing could change that; he was dying, and nothing could change that, either. It was the cost of war and the burden of the faithful. He took some consolation that they would never awaken, never feel any pain. The only other consideration, then, was noise. Salychev was old, but he was tough and hardened by a life at sea. Safer to take him by surprise.

Adnan went to the workbench mounted on the aft bulkhead and opened the top left-hand drawer. Inside was the knife he’d found during his earlier search. It was J-shaped, with a needle-sharp point and a finely honed edge, used, he assumed, to gut fish.

He gripped the wooden haft, blade angled up, then stepped to the first bunk. He took a deep breath, then placed his left hand on the man’s chin, turned the head toward the mattress, then jammed the tip of the blade into the hollow beneath his earlobe and drew the knife up, following the edge of his jawline. Blood gushed from the severed carotid; in the darkness, it looked black. The man gave out a soft moan against Adnan’s palm, then spasmed once, twice, and went still. Adnan moved to the second man, repeated the process, then to the third. In all, it took ninety seconds. He dropped the knife onto the deck, then went up into the salon and washed the blood from his hands. He knelt down beside the sink, opened the bottom drawer, and withdrew the 9-millimeter Yarygin pistol he’d secreted there. He drew back the slide an inch to ensure that a bullet was chambered, then cocked the hammer, flipped off the safety, and stuffed the pistol into the side pocket of his jacket. Finally, he grabbed a plastic coffee cup from the drying rack.

He climbed back up the ladder and into the pilothouse.

“Coffee,” he said, handing the cup to Salychev with his left hand. The captain turned, reached for it. Adnan drew the Yarygin from his pocket and shot him in the forehead. Blood and brain matter splattered against the side window. Salychev slumped backward and slid down the bulkhead. Adnan flipped the autopilot switch on the helm console, then grabbed Salychev by the ankles, dragged him to the ladder, and rolled him down into the salon.