Goliath (22 page)

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Authors: Steve Alten

BOOK: Goliath
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General Jackson groans as two sailors in a life raft pluck him from the sea. Ten minutes later, he is helped aboard a Navy cutter. The Bear drops to his knees
on deck, protecting his broken wrists. The hooded suit is removed, replaced by a wool blanket. Two sailors help him to his feet, leading him out of a driving rain and into the cutter’s bridge.
Vice Admiral Arthur M. Krawitz, Commander of the Navy’s Submarine Force in the Atlantic (COMSUBLANT) hands him a cup of coffee. “You okay?”
“Broke both wrists. Nearly drowned. And I’m one of the lucky ones.”
“Let’s get you to sick bay.”
“Not yet.” He struggles to support the styrofoam cup as he sips the bitter brew. “My daughter?”
“No sign of her, but we heard from Covah.
Goliath
transmitted a message via satellite uplink about an hour ago. There’s a chopper on its way to take you to Washington. Let’s get those broken bones set while you have a spare moment. I’d say the shit’s about to hit the fan.”
“A man suffers little from unfulfilled wishes if he has trained his imagination to think of the past as hateful.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher
 
 
“I would kill a Turk, but I wouldn’t torture them.”
—Anonymous Serbian priest expressing his disapproval of the torture of Muslims
 
 
“That was a good hunt. There were a lot of rabbits here.”
—Anonymous Serbian soldier, while looking over a field piled with the bodies of Muslims
 
 
“We are a race of savages and have no pity.”
—Adolf Hitler
Rocky lies facedown on the bunk, her swollen, singed right hand wrapped in a wet towel. Gunnar is seated on the floor beside her. He brushes aside the straw-colored blond hair, matted with perspiration, and massages her neck.
“Don’t touch me.”
A heavy
click,
and the stateroom door swings open. The African and Asian enter the cabin, followed by a third man, a white-haired Albanian in his late fifties. All three carry assault rifles. “On your knees, the two of you.”
“She’s hurt.”
The older man, a physician, examines her burn. “I’ll get some salve for this—”
“Tafili, later.” The Asian removes two plastic dog collars from a satchel. “Simon’s requested your presence as our dinner guests. We prefer not to carry weapons. These devices should keep you on your best behavior.”
Thomas Chau slips the collar around Rocky’s throat, locking it in place so that its two quarter-inch metal prongs press against the back of her neck, fitting snugly against the base of her cervical vertebrae. A small black receiver rests along one side of her throat.
“Rigged these myself,” the Albanian physician boasts. “The Russians used similar collars to train our attack dogs. Quite simple really. The remote is linked to the sub’s computer.”
Chau fastens the remaining collar around Gunnar’s neck. “Let’s have a quick test.
Sorceress,
a level-two charge.”
A brilliant explosion of pain—sudden and devastating—sizzles through
every nerve ending in Gunnar’s body. He collapses to the deck, writhing on the floor like an epileptic having a violent seizure, the purple lights blinding his eyes.
The electrical charge subsides. Gunnar rolls over, spitting up a frothy, acrid saliva. He senses Rocky next to him, the woman gagging as well.
The Albanian physician bends over them. “That was a level-two charge. Please don’t do anything rash, a level-ten charge would fry you like bacon.”
“Simon’s rules are simple,” Chau states. “The two of you are guests, under constant surveillance. Overstep your boundaries and the computer will dole out the appropriate response. Now come with us.”
The three men exit.
Gunnar slips his hand beneath his waistband, groaning in agony as he palpates a small spot below his right hip. The tender point just beneath the skin is scorching hot.
Rocky helps him to his feet. Arm in arm, they follow the three men down the corridor to a small galley. The rest of the crew is already inside, seated around a large rectangular table secured to the deck. Plastic utensils litter the white Formica top. The scent of fresh-baked pizza drifts out from open double doors leading back into the kitchen.
Covah stands to greet Rocky, motioning her to an empty setting on his left. “Please, Commander, come and sit down.”
Rocky steps forward, smiles, then kicks outward, the top of her bare foot rushing toward Covah’s groin.
The electrical charge grips her in midstrike, flipping her body out from under her and hard onto the linoleum floor.
“Like a bull in a china shop,” says David, shaking his head.
Rocky rolls onto her knees, her chest heaving in convulsions.
Gunnar kneels beside her. “Not like this—”
“Leave me alone.”
Covah returns to his seat. “As you can see, the collar’s probes detect even the slightest neuromuscular activity, and I shouldn’t need to remind you how fast
Sorceress
can react.”
Ignoring her protests, Gunnar helps Rocky to her feet, leading her to one of the empty place settings. “Sit down and save your energy.”
She wipes saliva from her chin. “Go screw yourself.”
Two Arabs enter from the kitchen, carrying pizzas on large aluminum trays. The crew digs in as if famished.
Covah breaks off a small piece of dough and sauce, placing it gingerly in his deformed mouth, the mangled flesh around his jaw and right eye contorting as he chews. “Go ahead, Gunnar, help yourself. If I remember correctly, pizza was your favorite.”
Gunnar’s stomach growls a reply. He takes a slice, earning more of Rocky’s wrath.
Covah feeds himself another morsel, then removes a vial from his pocket, fishing out several pills. One at a time, he places the tablets in his mouth and swallows.
Gunnar watches him, saying nothing.
“I can’t … I can’t do this.” Rocky bites down on her quivering lower lip. “You murdered my husband, you murdered the sailors aboard the
Ronald Reagan,”
She looks at Covah, her hazel eyes swimming. “I swear to God, before this is over—” She stops, wary of
Sorceress.
The crew pauses from eating, waiting for Covah’s response.
“You swear to God? What makes you think God is listening? What is he, an absentee God? A God amused by the suffering of His children?” Simon Covah’s mouth twitches in midswallow. He coughs, gags, then reaches out with his good hand, lifting the wine to his lips, dripping some down his rust-colored goatee as he drains the glass. The pale blue lashless eyes never leave the woman’s. “As for murder, isn’t it you who are calling the kettle black?”
“What are you talking about?”
“David tells me it was you who ended the life of Mr. Strejcek.”
“Strejcek killed my husband—”
“And you killed him. Murder is murder, Commander, no matter how we justify the act.”
“That was self-defense. You killed thousands—”
“Using a weapon of mass destruction which you helped design.” Covah swallows another morsel of food. “Interesting how you sit back and judge me—you, a general’s daughter, a sanctimonious warmonger who helped design two of the most lethal killing machines ever to navigate the seven seas.”
“You’re insane.”
Covah nods, wiping his mouth. “There we finally agree. Personally, I’m convinced we’re all insane, not just us, I mean our entire species. At times I believe we are all just animals, hell-bent on self-annihilation. We preach love, yet we caress violence as a forbidden lover, tasting it, smelling it, overindulging our senses in it, until we are forced to push it away after the deed has been done so we can beg our Maker’s forgiveness. The hypocrisy makes me ill.”
Covah looks at Rocky, his gaze growing harsh. “You and I worked together for two years, Commander. During that time, I found you to be an adequate manager, competent and knowledgeable, but, like most of your country’s leaders, a bit too ignorant for my taste.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, you have no concept as to how the rest of the world thinks. When it comes to conflict, you’re convinced that all men want peace, that all
battles can be resolved through forced diplomacy. That fallacy, noble as it is, is based on Western values alien to most people. The world is filled with hatred, Commander, hatred rooted in religious beliefs and cultural disparities, compounded over thousands of years of bloody histories. It is not something I condone, mind you, it is simply the way things are. The United States enters the fray, carrying its big stick, and thinks it can exert its will in a foreign land, without ever having a true understanding as to how the bloodshed began, yet you’re still convinced you can end it.”
Covah leans forward, close enough so that Rocky can see her reflection distort in his steel cheek.
“You’ve served in the Armed Forces your whole life, but you’ve never really experienced war, have you, Commander? Like your military leaders, you’ve become enamored of the bloodless campaigns of twenty-first-century technology. How easy it is to build missiles and warplanes when you don’t have to deal with the atrocities your investment has wrought. Press a button, drop a cluster bomb, and read about it in the morning paper. War has not been waged on your soil for almost two hundred years. You’ve never inhaled the scent of burned human flesh. Or crawled through the cinders of a communal grave, through ashen bone and chunks of rotting limbs, attempting to identify the remains of a loved one. You’ve never had to watch, helpless as a baby, as a family member is dragged away and beaten to death before your very eyes.” Tears glisten in Covah’s eyes, blotting out the intensity of his glare. “You’ve never … stared into the face of an angel, forced to watch as her innocence is gutted before you, your precious child …” He shuts his eyes and wheezes through gritted teeth, forcing his anger to staunch his grief.
The older Albanian turns to Gunnar, taking over for Covah. “Mr. Wolfe, these things are difficult for Americans to understand. The Serbs butchered entire families as if we were livestock. These were not the actions of soldiers, but deliberate acts of vengeance—an ethnic cleansing, ordered by Milosevic himself, that went far beyond even the most brutal of military tactics. My name is Tafili. My family and I lived in Kapasnica, a neighborhood taken over by the Frenkijevci, a paramilitary unit run by the secret police. Belgrade’s military chiefs used the Frenki Boys to depopulate our cities. The Red Berets, as we called them, had orders to torch our homes and kill any resident in as brutal a manner as possible, if we refused to leave. But the Frenkijevci enjoyed their work a little too much. In the end, entire families were rounded up and slaughtered.”
The Albanian shakes his head. “People hear about these atrocities. They question how human beings can perpetrate such evil upon others. As ceasefires are instituted, their disbelief turns to ennui. But the survivors … we’re forced to live with these horrors forever. What the rest of the world fails to see are the invisible wounds—the mental anguish, the depression. You cannot just
pick up the pieces and go on after your family has been slaughtered. You cannot just turn your back when the perpetrators of these deeds run free. Your life … every thought, is scarred forever. Awakening from the nightmare, one becomes consumed with—”
“Revenge …” Covah stands, taking over the conversation. “My beloved wife’s uncle is so right. Lying half-dead in the hospital, all I could feel was my blood boiling with rage. Tafili came for me as soon as I could walk. We joined the Kosovo Liberation Army. The rebels gave us machine guns, then assigned us to a hit squad. On our first night out, our leader led us to the home of a man, a tank commander, who had murdered many of my wife’s people. We dragged the butcher from his house, kicking and screaming, and beat him to death right there on the stoop of his home.”
Covah pauses, massaging his forehead, fighting to maintain composure.
“As I participated in the act, I looked through one of the windows of his house and noticed a child, a little girl, perhaps a few years older than my youngest daughter. She looked up at me—a lost, frightened lamb—an angel … like my own dead children.”
Covah closes his eyes, shaking his head. “The look in that child’s eyes burned into my soul. My senseless act of vengeance had robbed her of her own father, of her own innocence. I realized at that moment that I was not the cure, but part of the disease, a disease that feeds on hatred. At that moment, something in me changed. I became sickened with our species, and I knew I had to do something drastic—something that would force the human race to change.”
“How?” Gunnar asks. “How can you change the human race using nuclear weapons?”
Covah rubs perspiration from his hairless brow. “Gunnar, you know me to be a man of law, a man who cherishes social order. I have learned the hard way that men who have no investment in society have no stake in peace. They thrive in chaos, and trade in violence. They murder and deceive to acquire life’s bounties, and refuse to abide by treaties, unless it suits them.”
Covah circles the table, placing his three-fingered right hand upon the shoulder of each crewman he passes. “The men in this room represent entire populations, populations whose lives have been rendered meaningless by oppressive governments and murderous factions disguised as freedom fighters. These men and their families were victims, by-products of violence, good people whose only crime was that they happened to be born into tyranny, or caught within the crossfire of rebel guerrillas in a land ruled by criminals.”
Covah stops at the lanky African. “This is Abdul Kaigbo, a history teacher born in Sierra Leone. As he escorted his family home from school, rebels ambushed him. They took an axe to both his arms and left him for dead, then kidnapped his two children.”
Kaigbo looks at Gunnar. “You were in Uganda.”
“Yes.”
“You witnessed children fighting?”
Gunnar nods.
Rocky notices his hands are shaking.
Kaigbo sighs. “Sierra Leone is even worse. Eight of ten rebels are between the ages of seven and fourteen. An entire generation of Africans is ruined, and the proliferation of small arms among the population ensures the fighting will never end—”
“—unless something drastic is done,” Covah interjects, squeezing the African’s shoulder. “Abdul is right. While the West preoccupies itself with warships and major weapon systems, it is the easy access to small arms like machine guns, mortars, and rifles that have led to hundreds of ethnic, religious, and sectarian conflicts over the last twenty years. More than 5 million people have been massacred, yet the fighting goes on like an incurable disease. You pride yourself on being a compassionate people, Commander, yet the death of a half million Rwandan Tutsis carries no more impact in your daily lives that a shattered piece of china.”

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