Allah's Scorpion (31 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Allah's Scorpion
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“Shukran,”
McGarvey said.
Thank you.
He and Deyhim left the cell as Richardson and Gloria were coming out of number four. “I’m finished with the first two,” McGarvey said.
“Are we getting anything?” Gloria asked.
“About what we expected,” McGarvey replied, and she nodded.
He and Deyhim went into the third cell where Assa al-Haq was shackled to the bench. “Ask if he works for al-Quaida.”
Deyhim translated.
The prisoner looked up sleepily and nodded. He was drooling from the corners of his mouth.
“Tell him that we know that bin Laden has run to Iran and is hiding there now.”
Deyhim gave McGarvey a sharp look, but then translated.
“Tell him we merely want a confirmation,” McGarvey said, and Deyhim translated. But it was obvious that al-Haq had no idea what he was being asked.
“That’s enough,” McGarvey said and he led Deyhim into cell four, where the Pakistani prisoner Zia Warrag was all but unconscious on the bench. “Ask the son of a bitch if he works for al-Quaida.”
“Sir, I think this guy’s out of it,” Deyhim said.
“Ask him, goddammit!” McGarvey shouted. He felt dirty, like a voyeur peeking in a bathroom window at someone sitting on a toilet.
The prisoner looked up at the sound of McGarvey’s voice, and Deyhim made the translation, but there was no response.
Higgins came to the door, but said nothing.
“Tell him that we know bin Laden is hiding in Karachi,” McGarvey said. He wanted to get this over with right now, and get the hell out. “Tell him all I want is a confirmation. Yes or no.”
Deyhim translated, but the prisoner just stared at him.
“Fuck it,” McGarvey said. He turned and brushed past Higgins. “We’re out of here.”
“Did you find what you wanted, Mr. McGarvey?” the intel officer asked.
McGarvey stopped to look at the marine officer. “Yes, I did.” He glanced back at the prisoner in cell four. “The poor bastards don’t have a clue what they’re fighting for or why. They’re just killing people because some imam told them it was what Allah wanted them to do.”
 
 
NAVY C-20D
“Are you okay?” Gloria asked after they’d taken off from Guantanamo Bay and headed up toward cruising altitude.
As soon as they’d boarded the Gulfstream III business jet, the steward had handed McGarvey a stiff bourbon, which he’d knocked back. He held his glass up for another, and looked at Gloria. “I’ll live.”
The steward came and replenished McGarvey’s drink.
“It’s like poking through someone’s dirty laundry,” Gloria said. “And I have a feeling that Weiss likes that kind of shit.”
McGarvey held the cool glass against his forehead.
Gloria watched him for a long time. “Now what?” she finally asked.
“We go back to Langley and wait,” he said. “Weiss will find a way to spring those four, and Otto will track them.”
“To bin Laden?”
“Hopefully,” McGarvey said. He wanted to take a very long, very hot shower. If this didn’t work he was going to have to try all over again with a different batch of prisoners. Maybe some of them being held in Afghanistan. But no matter how long it took he wasn’t going to quit.
He looked up. Gloria was staring at him, waiting for him to explain.
“Within twenty-four hours after they get out of Gitmo, they’ll be leaving Cuba. Probably to Mexico City first. And unless I missed with all four guesses I suspect at least one of them will try to warn bin Laden.”
Gloria understood. “When we find out which one of them is
not
running for a place to hide, we’ll have the bastard.”
“Something like that.”
 
 
SS
SHEHAB
Everyone aboard the Libyan submarine was tired. It had been eighteen hours since they had been forced to submerge north of Benghazi, and for the entire time Graham had run the crew ragged with repeated battle stations missile and battle stations torpedo.
Fifty miles from their original position he had dove the boat steep and deep; full-down angle on the planes, at flank speed in a maneuver called angles and dangles, which was meant to shake out any loose gear or problems that might crop up under actual battle conditions.
The boat, though thirty-five years old, and just about due for the breaker yards, had done its job reasonably well.
And so had the crew, Graham thought, studying the chart in the control room. He glanced up at the bulkhead-mounted clock above the nav station. It was 2200 Greenwich mean time, which put it at ten in the evening on the surface. It was fully dark topside.
The same mix of Iranian and Libyan crew was still at their duty stations in the con, and throughout the entire boat. He’d allowed no one to leave his post. Not even to eat. The cook and his assistant had distributed tea and sandwiches throughout the long day and into this evening.
The entire crew resented him, but most of all the Libyans because their captain had been forced to act as Graham’s XO. But even his Iranian crew resented him because he’d demoted al-Hari to COB, which meant he and the others had to take orders from a Libyan.
Graham was doing two things: looking for weaknesses in the boat and his crew, and forcing the men to meld into a crew by giving them something to hold on to in common—hating him.
It was something that he’d learned in the Royal Navy after his wife had died, and his method, although it worked, was one of the reasons he was ultimately cashiered. There was no room aboard a warship for friendships and he’d made sure that everyone abided by that one rule.
But it always took an incident with each new crew for the men to fully understand him. An incident that he instigated.
Graham stepped around the corner to the sonar room, where one of his men plus a Libyan officer had been on duty the entire time. The compartment smelled like sweat, but there was no longer the unpleasant odor from the defective head, or of diesel fuel from the bilges. Both problems had been corrected within ninety minutes after they’d submerged.
“How’s it look out there?” he asked.
Both men looked up. “Many targets,” the Libyan officer said. He was a young ensign and his name was Salman Isomil. “It’s busy up there tonight.”
“What kind of targets?” Graham asked, holding his temper in check for the moment.
“Boats—” Isomil said with a sneer.
Graham backhanded him in the face, knocking the man’s earphones off his head, and bloodying his nose. “Shall we try again?”
Al-Abbas had come around the corner. “We do not treat our officers like this,” he said.
Graham looked over his shoulder at the Libyan first officer. “This is a warship, and we are on a mission. It’s my intention to run on the surface for as long as possible so that we can recharge the batteries and ventilate the boat. In order to do this I need to know what’s out there.” Graham turned away. “That’s the last time I’ll explain anything to anyone aboard this stinking pile of shit that smells like unwashed rag heads, an odor that I find offensive.”
The sonar operator picked his headphones off the deck and put them back on. He was no longer sneering, but his eyes were still filled with hate.
“What does it look like on the surface?” Graham asked, his voice calm.
“Sir, there are numerous surface targets, mostly cargo vessels, though earlier this evening we tracked something that was very large, and moving quite fast. Probably a cruise ship.”
“Range and bearings?”
“All over the place, sir,” the Libyan sonar operator said. He studied the display on the screen in front of him. “The nearest target is a small ship, bearing zero seven zero, approximately on the same course as us, range at least fifteen thousand meters.”
“Are there any underwater targets?” Graham asked.
The Libyan was momentarily startled. “None that I have been able to detect, sir.”
“Very well, keep alert, and let me know if anything heads our way.”
Graham brushed past al-Abbas and went back into the control room.
Everyone on duty couldn’t help but hear the confrontation, and some of them were looking to Ziyax to do something at last. But the Libyan captain said nothing.
Graham snatched a growler phone from its overhead cradle. “ESMs, con.”
“ESMs, aye.”
“We’re heading up. Soon as your sensors clear the surface, I want an all-band passive search, military emissions included, especially from aircraft search radars.”
“Can you tell me how long we’ll be running on the surface, sir?”
“Until I order us to submerge, which may depend on you,” Graham replied. “Look sharp.”
“Aye, sir.”
Graham replaced the growler phone. “Captain, bring us to periscope depth,” he told Ziyax. He started for the periscope platform, but stopped and turned back.
Ziyax had not given the order.
“Is there a problem?” Graham demanded.
“We’re too close to Malta to risk surfacing now, if that’s your intention,” Ziyax said. “We need to pass Isole Pelagie and Pantelleria before we’re in the clear. And the men are tired. I say we let them rest.”
“The batteries are low.”
“Then we stop and drift to conserve power,” Ziyax argued. “Or go to snorkel depth so that we can run the diesels.”
This was exactly the kind of incident Graham wanted. “What are you afraid of on the surface, Captain?”
Ziyax stiffened, but did not respond to the gross insult.
“I asked a question, Captain,” Graham said. “Are you a coward?”
The helmsman looked away from his instruments, his mouth open.
“Bring us to periscope depth, or I will relieve you of duty and place you under arrest,” Graham ordered harshly. “Now.”
Al-Abbas was suddenly right there, a compact 5.45mm PSM pistol in
his hand. He placed the muzzle against the back of Graham’s head. “We will be returning to base now,” he said. “I am relieving you of command.”
Ziyax said something in Arabic, and al-Abbas replied, but did not remove the pistol.
“You will be shot by your government as a traitor,” Graham said conversationally.
“You won’t be alive to see it.”
“Oh?” Graham replied.
Ziyax said something again in Arabic.
Al-Abbas started to answer, when Graham suddenly stepped to the left, grabbed the officer’s gun hand, and shoved the man up against the bulkhead. He pulled out his stiletto and raised it to the man’s throat.
Ziyax came across the control room. “Don’t do it, Captain,” he said. “We need every capable man to run this boat.”
“I don’t want to be constantly looking over my shoulder,” Graham said, looking into al-Abbas’s eyes. There was nothing there now, only resignation.
“That will not be needed,” Ziyax promised. He reached around Graham and took the pistol from al-Abbas’s hand. “If Lieutenant Commander al-Abbas even looks as if he might try again I’ll kill him myself.”
The scenario had played out exactly as Graham had wanted it to do. He backed off. “Very well,” he said. He sheathed his knife. “Give me his pistol.”
Ziyax handed over the weapon, butt first.
Graham examined it for a moment. “Nice little gun. But I didn’t know the Sovs ever exported them.” He handed it to a startled al-Abbas. “Next time you’ll want to release the safety if you mean to fire it.” He turned his back on the Libyan. “Now, Captain, if you please, take us to periscope depth.”
“Yes, Captain,” Ziyax said.
 
 
GULF OF SIDRA
The sun was very high in the sky when Halim Subandrio, clinging to the precariously balanced tabletop, came out of his daze. It was hot, but he was shivering from being half-immersed in the sea for a full day and a night and now half of a second day. He was sick to his stomach from swallowing diesel-fouled seawater and his legs were cramping painfully.
For the first minute he wasn’t sure where he was or how he had gotten
there, or even the true nature of his predicament, or what had brought him back to consciousness. He was almost entirely focused on his thirst, which was monumental. And he couldn’t understand how he could be hot and cold at the same time.
Slowly he became aware of a low rumble that he could feel in his left side in contact with the table, and heard something behind him. He thought that he could smell the exhaust from a diesel engine, and perhaps someone shouting something.
Taking great care with his movements lest he unbalance the tabletop and plunge back into the water, Subandrio turned his head toward the sound, and the shock of what he saw caused his heart to skip a beat.
A ship was at idle less than twenty-five meters away. It was painted gray and for a moment or two it seemed to Subandrio that it was carrying two very large barrels, tipped on their sides aft of a low coach house. Forward, toward the bow, was a large cannon.
It came to him all at once that it was a warship. He looked toward the stern where a plain green flag fluttered in the breeze and his spirits sagged. He was in the middle of being rescued by a Libyan navy fast-attack missile boat.
If they had come to find their submarine it could mean that his ship had been spotted by a Libyan air force patrol plane. For the first time in his life, Subandrio was truly frightened. The Libyan intelligence service was said to have learned its interrogation techniques in the seventies and eighties from the Soviets, and he was getting too old to endure such pain.
An inflatable boat was launched over the side, and two men in uniform climbed aboard, started the outboard motor, and headed across the nearly flat sea.
Subandrio tried to clear his mind so that he could work out his options before he was taken aboard the Libyan warship.
When he’d been shot he’d been enraged by Graham’s betrayal, and he’d sworn to get revenge by putting a bullet in his old friend’s head. But when he’d been forced to abandon his ship, and watch her sink with all of his crew, plus a dozen or more men from the submarine, his anger had deepened to something more vivid than simple rage. He vowed to remain alive so that he could be rescued, and once he was ashore he would find a way to take away the only thing that Graham ever seemed to cherish: his freedom.
But it was the Libyans with whom Graham had made a deal for the
submarine, though what could have been given in exchange must have been very important to Quaddafi.
Considering the nationalities of the crew that had been brought aboard the
Distal Volente
hidden in the cargo container, Subandrio had a fair idea who was behind the exchange, if not what was exchanged other than money.
And he had more than a fair idea who would be willing to pay for such information.
First he would have to convince his rescuers that he was an innocent victim of piracy, in which his crew was murdered, his cargo stolen, and his ship sunk, and further convince them to allow him to leave the country.
The only fly in that ointment, so far as he could figure, would be if the Libyans knew what ship Graham used to transfer the crew and what its captain’s name was. If that were the case, then the game might be over even before it began.
At this point there were no choices. If God so willed it, he would survive to exact his revenge and perhaps collect enough money to either retire on an island somewhere in the Java Sea, or perhaps even purchase a cargo vessel of his own.
He raised his right hand and waved as the Libyan crewmen reached his raft. “Please,” he cried weakly in Bahasa, his native Indonesian language. “Help me!”

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