Joint Task Force #2: America (11 page)

“That’s great news,” added Kelly. “Means we can bingo to Roosevelt Roads sooner than we thought.”

“Only a few more minutes, Senior Chief, and we’ll go up a few hundred feet. Besides, we need to re-establish radio contact with
Spruance
and Joint Task Force America so we can update the contact report.”

The aircraft leveled off and approached the turning merchant vessel from the rear. The wake revealed that the Captain had put the ship into a hard right-hand turn. Whatever the ship had, they didn’t want the aircraft to know.

The ICS inside her helmet crackled for a second before LTJG Forrester’s voice replaced it. “Lieutenant Early, Win here. We got the updated contact report off.
Spruance
rogers up receipt, but we lost contact before JTF America responded.”

“Good work, Win.”

“We’re working a third update to tell them what’s under the canvas.”

As the nose of the P-3C reached level with the stern of the ship, a dark car slid over the railing and hit the sea. Early and the other two in the cockpit watched it sink. As it turned on its end, heading downward, she was able to see the tan interior of the automobile. Looked like leather to her. A sea of bubbles rose around it as it disappeared beneath the surface.

“Now, why in the hell would anyone throw away a perfectly good Mercedes?” Kelly asked, staring at the spot in the ocean where the car had sank. The churning of the merchant’s propellers tore up the sea behind the commercial ship as its stern crossed over the bubbles where the car had disappeared.

“Looks as if we’ve caught us a car smuggler,” Forrester said over the ICS.

“Car smuggler?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Ever wonder what happens to all those stolen cars in America? Well, they’re shipped out of the country where they were stolen and resold overseas in some third-world country where documentation can be rubber-stamped with a slip of a dollar or two. My-oh-my, the Coast Guard is going to love this one.”

“Okay, Win. Sounds like a nice interlude to an otherwise boring flight. You got enough so I can climb?”

“I do on this one, but the lab operator has a Marconi radar bearing two-seven-zero relative from our position. If we have it at this altitude, then the contact can’t be more than twenty or twenty-five west of us. If we go up, we could lose the contact. The passive contact on the surface-search radar is weak, but surface-search radars bend to the earth’s surface. If we go up, the lab operator may lose contact.”

“Win, quit beating around the bush. What do you want?”

“Can we stay at this altitude and approach the contact? This way, we can maintain electronic contact and it’ll guide up right onto the commercial vessel using the Marconi. Plus, it means we can probably sneak up on the son-of-a-bitch.”

“Two things, Win,” Maureen Early replied over the ICS. “One, yes we will maintain this altitude—”

“Ma’am,” the Senior Chief said, his hand over the mike so it didn’t carry into the ICS. “That is gonna eat up more of our flight time.”

She nodded to the Senior Chief’s comment and finished her sentence, “—and, two, watch your language. You want to be a bad influence on the young men and women who look up to you?” She smiled, exchanging winks with her copilot.

“Ah, Lieutenant, most of these men and women are older than me. Besides, it was the Senior Chief who taught me that phrase.”

Early and Kelly glanced back at Senior Chief Leary, who placed his palm on his chest, fingers spread, and mouthed the French word,
Moi,
while shaking his head.

“Alright, you two,” Early said, “let’s bring it around left and steady up on—”

“Win,” she said into the ICS. “Relative bearing is alright for visual lookouts, but what about a true course so we can turn this little piece of America?”

A few seconds passed and the Navigator’s voice joined the ICS. “Pilot, navigator; recommend course two-five-zero to target.”

Kelly pushed his mike down from in front of his lips. “Does Stan ever quit working?” he asked.

“Stan’s the man,” Early added, shaking her head. She turned the yoke, pushed the pedals down, turning the huge aircraft left. “I think he was born with a work defect. Put him in a room by himself with a sheet of paper and a pencil, and in twenty-four hours he will have developed a watch schedule. Come to think of it, I don’t think I have ever seen him in the Officers’ Club for Friday-afternoon Captain’s Call.”

She eased the yoke back, steadying the aircraft on course two-five-zero. The altimeter read one hundred feet, so sometime in the past thirty minutes they had ascended twenty-five feet. The shaking was still present, but seemed less intense. The turn west put the wind at their tail, and speed increased a few knots without her giving it additional throttle.

Fifteen minutes passed with the cockpit crew checking and double-checking the gauges. Early even had time to quiz her copilot on proper procedures for ditching one of these flying rocks. Every routine flight required the pilot in charge to conduct crew training, plus, as the senior pilot, she was also responsible for the professional development of her flight crew. Though she did wonder just what a Lieutenant could teach the Senior Chief that the old man didn’t already know as a flight engineer. A quick erotic thought flashed through her mind, making her blush. “No way,” she said.

“No way what?” Kelly asked.

She grinned. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Don’t you hate it when she has these silent arguments that she settles this way?”

The Senior Chief leaned between the two pilots and pointed left about ten degrees off their heading. “I’ve got distant smoke,” he said.

Early and Kelly looked. After several seconds, a faint but discernible white smoke rising from a funnel or funnels broke the horizon.

The Senior Chief used to be a Boatswain Mate before changing his rating to aviation technician. There weren’t many AT’s who were flight engineers, and he knew it. Of course, there weren’t many sailors who recalled or knew how to report visual lookouts at sea. Distant smoke always was the first indicator of a ship in your vicinity. The horizon was approximately fifteen nautical miles from a surface position. It was a little higher at one hundred feet altitude. Distant smoke was a ship-lookout term to report a contact just over the horizon. The next to appear were
masts, and when you saw them from sea level, you knew the two of you had fifteen nautical miles of separation. Then came the funnels and superstructure, followed shortly by the complete distant view. Another critical thing he’d learned as a young seaman during his deck plate life aboard the Destroyer
Stribling
DD-64 was that when you saw a contact growing bigger and it remained on a contact bearing, then you were going to collide with it. “Constant bearing, decreasing range,” or “CBDR,” was the term to describe this relative phenomenon.

Early turned the aircraft slightly, bringing the nose to bear on the visual contact. “Win, we’ve a visual on the merchant contact.” She looked at the compass on the flight console. “We’re steady on course two-four-zero.”

“I hold us on two-four-two, ma’am,” Forrester added.

“Thanks, make that two-four-two.”

“I bet he folds his underwear after he washes them,” Kelly offered.

“And why wouldn’t he?” Early asked, perplexed at the comment. Her eyes remained fixed on the contact on the horizon. Visual contact at this range was tenuous. If she broke eye contact for more than a second, she could lose it for several minutes.

“He’s single!” Kelly said as if that explained everything.

Twenty minutes later, the complete ship was visible.

“Win, this is Maureen; we’ll do the same as before. Make a starboard pass, turn across its bow, and then pass down along its port side. You pass this contact to
Spruance
for further transmission?”

“Nope. We got that one transmission off, then lost contact. We’ll keep trying, but we haven’t had radio contact since we issued that contact update on the car smuggler. But I have everything on a file. Once we regain communications, we’ll transmit the second update telling them it’s a car smuggler, then we can sit back and watch the Coasties go eat them some crooks.”

TAMURSHEKI PUSHED DR. IBRAHIM, CAUSING HIM TO
stumble against the table. “Everyone is ready for when we reach America,” he snarled. “Abu Alhaul insisted that you make sure we are healthy for the land of heretics. I have men leaning over the rails, throwing their food into the ocean. They are dying instead, and when they come here for help, you give them some trash about motion, old man. If they are sick now, they will be sick later.”

Dr. Ibrahim pushed himself upright off the table where he had caught himself. He straightened his bifocals. He shook himself as if straightening his clothes, and with tight lips, the square-bodied Palestinian leaned forward, his face only inches from the lean, angry Tamursheki. “Let’s get one thing straight, young man. I’m the doctor.” He poked himself in the chest to emphasize his words. “I’m the only one on this death trap who knows what has to be done.”

Tamursheki turned his head and spit in disgust. “And I am the one who is in charge.” He turned, walked across the small wardroom compartment, and flopped down on a tattered sofa that was bracketed to a spotted bulkhead where paint from long ago had flaked off. “I am going to send them down again. You give them medicine or a shot or whatever to make them feel better.”

Captain Aswad Abu Alrajool leaned back in his chair and laughed. “You are both fools,” he said, looking at Ibrahim. When he turned his gaze toward Tamursheki, the laughter stopped. “But I’m sure you both believe very strongly in what you do,” he said, licking lips that moments ago were moist with humor.

“I would be careful, Captain,” Tamursheki said, his voice threatening.

“Yeah,” Ibrahim added, looking at the Jihadist leader. “I would be careful, too, Captain, for this man—this youngster who is still wet behind the ears—may decide you don’t know your job either.”

Tamursheki leaned forward and put both hands on his knees. “As Allah wills, so shall I do.”

Ibrahim laughed. “You don’t scare me, Tamursheki.
You need me, and even when you have finished your mission, I am the only one who can ensure the
other
is completed.” Ibrahim walked around the end of the table, behind the Captain, to the other side, putting the table between him and the fanatic. If Allah, God, or Yahweh, or whatever anyone calls their God, really existed, he wouldn’t allow assholes like Tamursheki to be a member of his flock.”

“We will reach the coast of America within the next few days.”

Captain Alrajool shrugged. “That is true, but we don’t know our final destination yet. Abu Alhaul told me to expect final instructions when we near the coast.”

“Blessed be his name,” said the Jihadist.

Ibrahim angrily shoved papers and charts across the table, some falling onto the carpeted deck. “And that is why, my angry friend, I cannot complete my medical duties. How do I know when to check the medical health of your men when your leader hasn’t even told you the destination of this weapon? There will be shots to give to protect you from the diseases of America. Do you want your men or even you to catch AIDS? You’ve seen what it has done to Africa.”

“There is no cure for this disease,” Tamursheki said arrogantly.

“Abu Alhaul believes I can help protect you from this disease and anything else that may stop you from completing your mission, which is . . . ?”

Tamursheki’s eyes narrowed for a moment before his face relaxed. He leaned forward, placing both hands flat on the table, leaning across toward Ibrahim. “We are to activate the device on the ship and then work our way to various American cities to await other missions. That is why you are along. We may be there years before we are called to do our duty.”

“Glad you know what you’re supposed to do,” Captain Alrajool said. “What I need is a port where I can transfer this van. You want to activate it! I want to get it off my ship before it blows. Just remember that Abu Alhaul
wants a seventy-two-hour setting on it. Less than that, and my beloved freighter could be dust.”

Thinking of the large ticking van strapped to the stern deck, Tamursheki nodded. “It matters little where the destination is. What matters is that we martyrs are in good health and prepared to cross into paradise.”

Captain Alrajool grinned. “You want paradise, then you have to go to Cocoa Beach, Florida. I went there once to see the rockets lift off from Cape Canaveral. My friend and I visited many of the dance places to discover that the women—no, young girls—dance completely nude. Without any clothes. They would change your dollars into single dollar bills—”

“That is enough, Captain,” Tamursheki warned. “Your words are obscene to the word of Allah.”

Ibrahim turned to the forward-most porthole in the compartment, leaned against the opening, and muttered, “That’s really great. Bars in Cocoa Beach, Florida, are an obscenity to a prophet who married a five-year old girl.” He turned back around, his finger pointing at the Jihadist. He started to say something, stopped, shook his head, and sighed. Where do they find these young men and women who want nothing more than to grow into young adulthood so they can rush off to kill themselves in some sort of macabre religious fever? Seventy virgins? Who do they think are going to get the seventy virgins? Martyrs or Marines?

“Something bothering you, Doctor?”

He ran his tongue across his upper lip, his thoughts on a bottle of whiskey, third drawer down, in his desk in the clinic, hidden under a bunch of papers. With this bunch, he wasn’t so much worried they’d drink than they’d destroy it.

“I said, Doctor,” Tamursheki said firmly. “Is there something bothering you?”

Ibrahim shook his head.

“Good. Then what do we do?”

“You asking me?”

“Of course, Doctor. You’re the one who must see to
the welfare of my warriors. Regardless of where Abu Alhaul orders us to go, the men must be in the very best of health to accomplish their mission. Today, most are shaving their body hair.”

“That’s a thought I can do without,” the Captain added.