Death Wave (39 page)

Except that only two of the expected twelve suitcase nukes had been on board.

“We regret the casualties, sir,” Dean told the man.

“
Da?
Then you can regret it all you like to the Russian antipiracy flotilla. It will be here any moment.”

Dean already knew about the Russian ships, a detachment from the Russian contribution to the international force patrolling Somali waters, though in practice they only escorted Russian ships. Since the
Yakutsk
was Maltese-flagged, perhaps they’d overlooked her.

Or,
just
possibly, they’d deliberately planned on distancing themselves from the
Yakutsk
when she reached Haifa with her deadly cargo. Did the Russians know about the nukes on board? That raised a few terrifying thoughts …

That was for the politicians to work out, and the Navy SEALs and the NEST personnel had no intention of being on board when the Russians arrived. According to radar reports, a couple of Udaloyclass guided missile destroyers and the frigate
Gromkiy
were on the way but still three hours off, rather than due to arrive “any moment,” as Nuranin claimed.

“There is also the small matter of damage to my ship,” Nuranin complained. “My forward hatch blown off, the locking mechanisms destroyed! Both of my masts cut down, the standing rigging destroyed! Bullet holes everywhere! The bridge windows smashed out!”

“Put together a list,” McCauley growled at him, “and shove it up your ass!”

“I believe Commander McCauley means … submit it to our State Department,” Dean added.

“Should I list the cargo you forcibly removed from my forward hold?”

“We have no idea what you are talking about, sir,” McCauley said.

“Liars! You were seen sending packaged bundles up to your helicopters! You are as bad as the damned pirates!”

“I think you will find, Captain,” Dean said carefully, “that everything on your ship’s cargo manifest is still on board.”

“What was in those bundles?”

“We have no idea what you are talking about, sir,” McCauley said, repeating himself in a manner that suggested he would continue repeating that sentence, word for word, for as long as Nuranin cared to keep asking the question.

“This … this invasion means big trouble between your country and mine,” Nuranin declared. “You cannot simply shoot your way on board and rifle through my cargo!”

“You’re welcome,” Dean said. “We’re always happy to help distressed seamen of any nation.”

McCauley tapped his Velcro-covered watch. “We need to haul ass, sir.”

Dean tossed Nuranin a mock salute. “Don’t hesitate to call us if you have any more pirate problems,” he said, grinning.

“Padla!”
the Russian spat.

They emerged on the port bridge wing and trotted down the metal ladder to the deck. The sun was setting in a bank of flame-washed clouds off the ship’s bow. The helicopters had been circling the ship in shifts, returning to the
Constellation
as their fuel ran low and being replaced by others.

On the forward deck, the three Pakistani prisoners were being readied for their ascent to one of the HH-60s. Their hands were zip-stripped at their backs, they had hoods over their heads, and each had been wrestled into a harness. As Dean watched, a heavy snap-hook was affixed to a D-ring on one prisoner’s harness, with a cable reaching from the hook up to the hovering aircraft overhead. A SEAL gave the cable three sharp tugs, and the prisoner was jerked off his feet, screaming as he rose swiftly through the darkening evening sky, his legs kicking wildly.

The captured pirates would be left for the Russian military to handle. The Pakistanis, however, were a priceless windfall for American intelligence. While they were likely the terrorist equivalent of privates rather than officers, and probably ignorant of the overall plan, interrogating them might turn up the names of contacts or leaders, timetables, telephone numbers, the locations of training camps, and details of their operational orders.

As the prisoner vanished into the cargo hatch of the HH-60 overhead, McCauley said, “Officially, there were no survivors.”

“What do you mean?”

McCauley shrugged. “We can’t very well send them to Gitmo, right?”

“I’ve already reported to my handlers,” Dean said. “These prisoners will be properly and
legally
processed.”

McCauley made a face. “What good is it fighting the bastards if we have to let them go?”

“Well … that won’t happen for a while yet. They’ll be questioned, probably at a military base somewhere in Europe.” Likely the prisoners would be held at the same facility where they would be working over Koch, or possibly the Israelis would get them. Those two weapons had been aimed at Israeli targets, after all.

It would be cleaner to shoot them here and pitch them over the side. How did you get desperately needed information from people, information that might save tens of thousands of lives, without violating their rights as human beings?

The question had gnawed at Charlie Dean ever since they’d picked up Alfred Koch in Karachi. If there was an answer, it had to do with people losing those rights when they sought to kill people on a monstrous scale. That they did so behind the cloak of religion made it worse, if that was possible.

Charlie Dean was very glad that the decisions were not his to make.

CUMBRE VIEJA
LA PALMA, CANARY ISLANDS
SUNDAY, 1533 HOURS LOCAL TIME

Lia picked her way down the steep inner slope of the crater, cinders and small rocks tumbling away in front of her with each awkward step. As soon as she started down the red-colored slope, the guards inside the caldera saw her and moved to a point directly beneath her, weapons ready, watching her descent expectantly.

She was already having second thoughts about the wisdom of this. If they wanted to, they could pick her off with a single shot. If they let her get to the bottom alive, her survival depended, she realized, on Herve Chatel’s goodwill—and, just possibly, on how much influence he had with Ibrahim Azhar, a known terrorist, hijacker, and murderer.

The hell of it was, there was no way for her to change her mind. She couldn’t scramble up and out of this crater if those people down there decided that she wasn’t going to leave.

The San Martin crater was oddly shaped, an oval a third of a mile long, northwest to southeast, and two-tenths of a mile wide. The crater ridge rose only about fifty meters above the surrounding black, moon-surface terrain; the deepest parts of the crater’s interior, however, plunged into shadow over a hundred meters below. The crater’s floor was broken and uneven, some places much deeper than others. The helipad and tents had been set up on a relatively shallow, level stretch to the southeast; the drilling derrick rose from the very deepest part of the crater, in the northwest. To Lia’s untrained eye, it looked as if the crater was the product of
two
eruptions, creating a single oblong caldera but, most likely, occurring many years apart.

The guards came up to meet her as she neared the bottom of the cinder slope. “You are not permitted here!” one barked in accented Spanish, then repeated himself in even worse English. “You no come here!”

One guard grabbed her arm and yanked her forward. “Hey!” she shouted, playing the outraged tourist role. “Get your hands off of me!”

“What you do, restricted area?” one of them demanded.

Lia turned and looked at Herve Chatel, watching from perhaps fifty yards away. “Herve!” she called. “Herve! It’s me, Diane! Call off your dogs, will you?”

One of the guards snarled something in Arabic and struck her in the back with the butt of his rifle, sending her sprawling to the ground. Too late, she remembered that the term “dog” was a deadly insult among Muslims in general and Arabs in particular. She’d meant the phrase colloquially, not as invective.

Shit. A fine cultural liaison
I
turned out to be
, she thought.

Rough hands grabbed her by either arm and hoisted her to her feet, dragging her toward Chatel and Azhar.

“Lia, are you okay?” Rubens’ voice said in her ear.

“Yeah,” she said through clenched teeth. “Language difficulties.”

“Silence, whore!” the guard on her right growled. They dropped her in an untidy heap on the ground.

“Diane!” Chatel said, hurrying forward. “What are you doing here?”

“I was out biking,” she told him. She started to rise, and Chatel reached out and helped her stand, brushing the volcanic dust off of her shirt in entirely too familiar a manner. She ignored it. “I was
just
out biking … and I saw this cinder cone above the trail. I was up there.” She pointed to the rim of the caldera, carefully avoiding that part of the crest where she knew CJ and Carlylse were still watching from under cover. “I was interested in the drilling … wondering what they were drilling for. And I saw you.” She patted the binoculars, now in their case and slung over her shoulder. “I hadn’t seen you since we got here, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt if I came down to say hi!”

Azhar joined them, his face dark but otherwise unreadable. “You know this woman?”

“Yes,” Chatel said. “She came with me from Spain. She is … a friend.”

Azhar smirked at that. “I know about your ‘friends.’ “ He looked at Lia. “Didn’t you see the postings on the trails? No trespassing.”

“I saw one north of here,” she said. “At Montaña Rejada. After that, I stayed on the bike trails below the crest of the ridge. Those weren’t blocked off.”

“You needed to be on the crest trail to get here,” Azhar told her.

“I went off-trail,” she replied. “I crossed a flat, open stretch of cinders and pine trees, and ended up on the ridge trail. I didn’t see any roadblocks.”

All of that was the exact truth. They couldn’t possibly block off all those miles of twisting bike trail and footpath, not without bringing in an army.

“Are you alone?” Chatel asked her.

“I was riding with a couple of other tourists for a while, but that was a few hours ago.” That would explain the presence of her companions if Chatel checked with the sentries that had turned them back at Rejada.

“I really wish you hadn’t come up here, Diane,” Chatel told her. “It makes things … complicated.”

“Why not? You were gone so
long
! I missed you!”

“I would have been back to the hotel tonight. I’ll be flying back to Spain tomorrow.”

“So … what are you doing here, anyway? Drilling for oil?”

“Not inside a volcanic crater,” he told her. He seemed uneasy. “This island, these volcanoes, they’re all igneous rock, not sedimentary. Not a good place to prospect for petroleum.”

“This is part of a research project,” Azhar told her. “There is a … a danger of the volcanoes on this ridge exploding, of them possibly triggering a massive tidal wave.”

“I’ve heard the theory,” Lia told him. “Why all the security? Roadblocks, armed guards …”

“These things can be … misunderstood by the general public,” Chatel said. “It could even cause a panic. People might think that an eruption is imminent if they see us drilling up here.”

The explanation actually made sense.

“I was reading a book just the other day about La Palma blowing up and causing a big tidal wave.
Death Wave: 2012
, or something like that.”

Chatel made a face. “
That
nonsense again. A bit too sensationalist for my taste.”

As they talked, Lia looked around the floor of the crater. In the deeper part, to her left, the drilling derrick ground and chugged. Nearby, she noticed more enormous wooden spools of insulated electrical wire. What the hell was that for?

“So long as I’m here,” she said brightly, “can you show me around? I
love
science.” She said it in that perky and airheaded singsong that suggested that she probably didn’t know the difference between astronomy and astrology.

Chatel exchanged glances with Azhar. “Perhaps later. But you
will
stay with us for a bit,
chère
.”

She looked at her watch. “Just so I’m back at the hotel by seven.”

“We’ll see what we can do.” He turned at the sound of rock scraping. Another figure was coming toward them from the direction of the workers’ tents.

Lia followed Chatel’s glance, her eyes widened, and she bit off a curse.
Shit!

“Well, well,” a familiar voice said. “The elusive Ms. Lau. I was wondering what had become of you.”

Feng Jiu Zhu, formerly of Chinese military intelligence, had the cold stare of a venomous snake as he joined them, and he was holding an ugly little semiautomatic pistol.

20

ART ROOM
NSA HEADQUARTERS
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
SUNDAY, 1140 HOURS EDT