09.Deep Black: Death Wave Page 21

  “I find it hard to believe that they’d be able to unite that easily.”

  “Maybe not—but I’ll bet you a month’s salary they think it’s a possibility worth the effort. We know that the Jaish-e-Mohammad is the principal enemy group behind this. Al-Wawi—Ibrahim Hussain Azhar—is JeM, and his brother, Maulana Azhar, has been beating the drum for a united, militant fundamentalist Islam for over a decade now.”

  “You think the JeM is going to go global? They’ve been pretty much a regional terrorist group until now.”

  “Yes, sir, but they also have close ties to both the Taliban and to al-Qaeda. It wouldn’t take much to shift their focus from India and Kashmir to the world stage. They might think we’ll be so busy cleaning up the wreckage of our cities that we won’t be able to interfere if they start settling some scores and ending some boundary disputes. Kashmir. Israel. And there might be some bloody risings in countries with large Muslim populations. England. Germany. France. The Philippines. Even here in the United States.”

  “You’re just full of good news this afternoon, Bill.” Douglas sighed. “Obviously you want me to inform the President about this.”

  “At the very least, we are going to need a detailed reconnaissance of La Palma. We need to see the extent of the drilling and the exact positions of the wellheads. We have an agent team on the ground over there, but they’ll be limited in how much area they can cover. We need full, high-res satellite imagery, the sooner the better. And we may need to deploy a CAT, or coordinate with the military.”

  “An invasion? The Canary Islands are Spanish territory.”

  “If we need to take the boreholes out, we’ll need to do it simultaneously, or as close to simultaneous as we can manage. So we don’t warn the others when we take down one. We also need to push harder on recovering those nukes. If we can get our hands on those, the boreholes won’t matter.”

  “We’re doing everything we can do. The President is out of the country now. He’ll be back Monday.”

  “Then the Vice President—”

  “It’s not that easy, and you know that as well as I do,” Douglas said heatedly. “Requests of this nature go through the President’s personal staff at the Oval Office. They decide what is important, what has to be put in front of him immediately. We can flag this Code One Ultraviolet, but I’d damned well better have good justification to do so. And you have to admit that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons to generate a megatsunami large enough to wipe out the U.S. East Coast is just a tad on the far-fetched side.”

  “What about the request for military intervention on the Yakutsk?”

  “We’re still waiting to hear.” Douglas made a face. “I spoke with the President’s personal secretary yesterday. He was not … encouraging.”

  “Okay. Then what about the Saudi foreign trade minister? Our eavesdropping on Feng and his cronies suggested that al-Khuwaytir knows at least something about Operation Wrath of God. Enough to guess that our economy is going to be tanked.”

  “You know, Bill, it’s not exactly politically expedient going up to the representatives of a friendly foreign power and accusing a member of that government of collusion in a plot to flood the East Coast. And he would deny it, of course. It would also tip off the JeM. Let them know that we know.”

  “There’s also Feng,” Rubens said. “He may be behind the whole plot to begin with.”

  Douglas leaned back in his chair. “What the hell does China have to do with this anyway?”

  “It may just be opportunism on their part. But Feng did mention something about China holding an eighth of the entire U.S. foreign debt.”

  Douglas snorted. “You think they’re going to foreclose on San Francisco?”

  “No, but it would give them a hell of a lot of leverage in the world economy. I could see COSCO picking up some bargains when the stock market collapses.”

  “Hell, a thing like this could cause the dollar to collapse. The economy is still damned shaky as it is.”

  “Yes, sir. Even if they just bet against us on the Asian markets, the People’s Republic could end up making hundreds of billions and coming out of this as the leader in the global economy. If they have advance warning about what’s going to happen, something everyone thinks is an act of God, yeah, they could clean up.

  “We will want to pick Feng up, sir—but not before we have the nukes secured. It’s vital that we find and secure the nukes first. Otherwise, the bad guys go to ground and take their suitcases with them. We might not be as lucky next time around. When those weapons surface again—”

  “I know,” Douglas said woodenly.

  Rubens passed a hand over his face, trying to think.

  “Something you said earlier, Bill … about the militant Islamists using this to unite Islam and launch a global jihad.”

  “Yes?”

  “Maybe we could defuse things by stealing a march on them—publicize this thing. If the whole world knew before it happened that they were planning this …”

  “General, you’re the one who told me how thin this sounds right now,” Rubens said with a wry grin. “Again, the terrorists would disappear, and take their toys with them.”

  Douglas merely rubbed his face.

  “We must recover those weapons,” Ruben said flatly, “even if we have to violate Russian territoriality to do it.”

  Douglas cleared his throat, then said, “The President’s secretary brought up another option.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We could hand the responsibility off to the Russians.”

  “We may have to bring them in at some point,” Rubens said, “but—”

  “Exactly. ‘But.’ They’re not going to search one of their own ships without damned good reason. Especially in light of the Tajikistan incident.”

  Rubens nodded. The shoot-down of a Russian helicopter over Afghanistan territory was publicly being played as an unfortunate accident, a tragic helicopter crash on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Congressman Mullins’ unthinking revelations about a U.S. intelligence operation in Tajikistan, however, had sharply chilled relations between Washington and Moscow. The Russian ambassador had already delivered a crisply worded protest to the White House about “wild west shoot-outs” in the streets of Dushanbe, this despite the fact that Tajikistan no longer was a part of Russian territory.

  “Moscow denies that there are any missing tactical nukes,” Rubens said. “They have their heads planted firmly up their asses and aren’t going to extract them now.”

  Douglas grunted. “The Constellation CBG is the closest naval force to the area right now, he said. They’re in the best position to board and search the Yakutsk.”

  “Yes, sir. If we can get the approval to go in.”

  “Damn it, get me something harder to go on with this tidal wave thing. I can’t go to the President with a wild tale from a mass-market paperback.”

  “I’ve already arranged for the Deep Black team on La Palma to do some checking, sir,” Rubens told him. “I’ve also initiated a requisition with the NRO for detailed satellite reconnaissance of La Palma.” He spread his hands. “It’s all we have going for us at the moment.”

  “Then it’s going to have to do. You and your people have my authorization to do what you need to do … but get me that proof.”

  15

  HOTEL SOL

  PUERTO NAOS

  LA PALMA, CANARY ISLANDS

  FRIDAY, 1715 HOURS LOCAL TIME

  That woman isn’t really your wife, is she?” Lia asked.

  “Um, no,” Carlylse admitted. He looked embarrassed. “She’s a waitress at a restaurant in Puerto Naos. I met her a couple of days ago, and we kind of hit it off.”

  “You need to get rid of her.”

  “Damn, she’s been up there in my room for over an hour. She’s going to be wondering where the hell I am.”

  “We think that a hooker gave Jack Pender’s room key to some JeM assassins,” she told him. “I
f this is the same sort of setup, someone else could be waiting for you in your room.”

  “Gem? What’s gem?”

  “Jaish-e-Mohammad,” she told him. “The Army of Mohammad. Thoroughly nasty characters who blow up buses filled with civilians, among other unpleasant things.”

  “Shit.” He shook his head. “But Carmen is such a nice girl …”

  “Sure she is. Let’s go up to your room together, and you’ll explain to her that the date is off for tonight.”

  “Uh … I gave her my key.”

  “I’d rather not knock. Get another key from the front desk.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Carlylse seemed distracted, even a bit dazed. He wasn’t thinking straight.

  On the way up to the room, Lia pulled her P226 from her pocketbook and snapped a loaded magazine into the butt. The muzzle was threaded to receive a sound suppressor, which she screwed on tightly. If this was a setup, it was possible that a couple of JeM assassins were waiting in the room for Carlylse’s return, and Lia was taking no chances. At the door to room 312, she stood with her back to the wall, the pistol in both hands, muzzle pointed at the ceiling. “Open it,” she whispered, “and then get the hell out of the way.”

  Carlylse nodded and slid the keycard through the reader. The door clicked open, Carlylse stepped back, and Lia rolled around the corner and into the room.

  The woman was in the king-sized bed, naked and half asleep. As Lia spun into the room, her pistol aimed two-handed at the woman, the waitress sat up and shrieked.

  Lia pivoted, checking each corner of the room, but the woman had been alone. Now she was out of bed, snatching up stray items of clothing from the floor and bolting for the door, still screaming.

  “Damn it, you scared the poor girl half to death!” Carlylse thought about it a moment. “You scared me half to death!”

  “Grab your things.”

  “Huh? What do you—”

  “If this was a setup, she’ll be talking to the assassins as soon as she gets her clothes back on. If it wasn’t, she’ll be talking to the desk manager, and he’ll have security up here in a few minutes. Do you really want to wait here and answer their questions?”

  “Um, no.” He gave her a hard look. “Look, who are you, anyway?”

  “I showed you my ID.”

  “I saw an ID for someone named Cathy Chung. I think the ID was for the U.S. State Department, but I’ve never seen one of those, so I have no way of knowing if it was real. If you’re real.”

  “While you try to figure that out,” Lia told him, “grab your suitcase and let’s get out of here.”

  “Look … did my ex send you?”

  “What?”

  “Did my ex-wife send you to screw up my sex life?”

  “Art Room,” Lia said.

  “What?” Carlylse asked, looking puzzled at the non sequitur.

  “Here, Lia,” Jeff Rockman said in her ear.

  “Give me some bio on this guy. Stat.”

  “Coming right up, Lia.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Carlylse asked, suspicious.

  “My electronic backup,” she told him. “Never leave home without them.” Rockman began reading a file into her ear. Lia listened a moment, then began repeating select lines. “Okay … you’re Matthew Vincent Carlylse but you’ve gone as Vince since high school. You were born in Peoria, Illinois, on May 2, 1972. U.S. Army from 1991 to 1995. Married June Hanson in 1994, but she divorced you twelve years later after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. The voices told her you were sleeping with other women. You started writing after your discharge, and your first book was published in 1998. The book was called Gray Terror: The UFO Abductors, and was a minor commercial success—”

  “Hey!”

  “You met John Pender at a book convention in Atlanta the following year, and—”

  “All right Hold it! Hold it! What’s the point of this?”

  “To prove to you that I am a U.S. federal agent with access to a great deal of background information on you. Information that foreign terrorists wouldn’t have.”

  “I don’t know. My wife was a foreign terrorist after she was hospitalized the first time. She would know all of that stuff.”

  “And she wouldn’t have told me that she was schizophrenic. Her medical records, however, are another matter. Mr. Carlylse, can we please continue this discussion in my room? Unless you really want to discuss me with hotel security or a couple of assassins from the Army of Mohammad.”

  Reluctantly, he began gathering his things.

  HAFUN

  NORTHEASTERN SOMALIA

  FRIDAY, 1940 HOURS LOCAL TIME

  The place still hasn’t recovered, Ahmed Babkir Taha thought as he walked along the sand through the darkness. Not completely. I wonder if it ever will?

  Even now, well past sunset, the pounding of hammers could be heard farther up the hill from the beach, as small handfuls of people continued to rebuild. A few lights shone here and there. It was late enough in the year that the wind coming in off the ocean was quite chilly. Unfortunately, it was also dry, with the promise of yet more crippling drought.

  God the most merciful had not been merciful to the town of Hafun—Xaafuun, in Somali. Drought, crushing poverty … and on December 26, 2004, an earthquake fifty-four hundred kilometers away, off the distant coast of Sumatra, had generated a tidal wave that had swept across the Indian Ocean, wreaking untold damage and killing 230,000 people in eleven countries.

  Hafun, a fishing village located on a sand spit just above sea level here at the very tip of the Horn of Africa, had been the population center hardest hit on the entire African continent. Some 280 people had been killed or missing, though only nineteen bodies in all had been recovered. Eight hundred homes had been washed away, the wells poisoned by saltwater, the fishing boats destroyed. The land here was parsimonious, barren, and unforgiving; some families had maintained small plots where they’d grown peas or lentils, but fishing had been the principal local industry. The tsunami had left the local people with nothing.

  Picking his way through the darkness, Taha made his way out of the town, following a worn track across the sand toward the ocean, guiding on a small cluster of flickering lights on the beach. The pound-pound-pound of hammers, he thought, was a beautiful sound. The sound of rebuilding.

  The sound of life.

  Since the beginning of 2005, the town had started to rebuild, though this time the structures were rising higher up along the ridge of sand, some five hundred yards from the sea. The people were terrified that the waters would come again. Foreign aid had come to the impoverished area, and UNICEF had been attempting to establish a school for the local children, a school for girls as well as for boys, of all things. While anything resembling a real government in Somalia had collapsed in 1991, this northeastern corner of the country, the Horn of Africa, had stabilized somewhat over the past few years, with an uneasy balance between the Transitional Federal Government, operating out of Ethiopia, and the opposition party, the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia.

  It hadn’t been perfect. ARLS antiaircraft guns had repeatedly fired at aircraft bringing emergency food and medical supplies to the region, and the rivalry between the TFG and the ARLS continually threatened to slip back into civil war. Still, it had been a start, a small one, back to sanity and self-sufficiency. The Bars region around Hafun had long traditionally belonged to the Majeerteen sub-clan of the Osman Mahmoud. They were the true power here, the true government. Or they had been.

  Then the outsiders had come.

  With the TFG ruling from next-door Ethiopia, most of south and central Somalia was still held in the grip of various rival Islamist gangs—the most powerful being the Hizbul Islam and the rival al-Shabaab. United African forces—Kenyan and Ethiopian troops, mainly—had been alternately battling and attempting to appease the Islamist militants.

  Neither military intervention nor negotiation had made much headway.

  He was approaching t
he camp on the beach now. One of the guards stepped out of the shadows, blocking his way. “In the name of Allah and His Prophet,” the man said, “you will halt!”

  Man? It was a boy, a child no more than fifteen years old. The AK-47 rifle he held with wavering hands looked nearly as large as he did.

  Taha raised his hands chest high, palms out, to show he carried no weapons. “God willing, I am here to see General Abdallah,” he said. “He knows me. I’ve been here before.”

  The boy seemed uncertain, and Taha felt sick fear prickling at his spine. These people were perfectly capable of shooting a man dead in the street for no reason at all save that they mistrusted him, that they didn’t like his looks or his demeanor, that they thought he’d failed to show proper respect.

  “I’ll take him, Oamar,” another voice said. Abdiwahid Eelabe Adow stepped out of the night. “It’s all right.”

  Oamar gave Taha a surly look, then nodded, lowering his rifle, and Taha relaxed slightly. He knew Adow, one of Abadallah’s chief strongmen and the cleric of the group. At least Adow wouldn’t shoot him on sight.

  Adow gestured toward a fire burning in a drum on the beach a dozen meters away. “And what brings you to our humble camp this time, Taha?” Adow asked pleasantly.

  “News from Addis Ababa,” Taha replied. “A possible target with a fabulously rich payoff.”

  Adow snorted. “Better than the last few targets, I hope. The Westerners have been guarding their ships more and more closely. Business has become … very difficult, of late.”

  “This one,” Taha replied, “is unprotected. God willing, it carries a cargo of great value.”

  “We’ll see. There’s the general.”

  Taha despised the group known as al-Shabaab, Arabic for “the Youth.” Principally active in southern Somalia and in the capital of Mogadishu, they’d been fighting a bitter war there against the TFG. In recent months, they’d moved into the Hafun area as well, a region long under TFG control and protection. Ostensibly, they’d come with their boats, offering help. In fact, they were pirates, heavily armed raiders who set to sea every few days in hopes of catching one of the fabulously wealthy cargo ships passing through Somali waters. They would board a likely-looking vessel, hold the ship and crew hostage, and demand a ransom from the company or even the country owning the ship.