Pirate (46 page)

“Froggy! Get over here!” Hawke cried aloud. He pressed his balaclava into the sultan’s wound. “Here, Your Highness, press this into the wound as hard as you can. I’ll get help!”

First he needed a weapon. He saw a boot a foot away and grabbed it, pulling the man wearing it down. The Kalashnikov in his hands clattered to the floor and Hawke grabbed it. He used the butt end of the gun to put the former owner out of his misery, and then came up on his knees. He saw Ahmed, crabbing across the stone on hands and knees. He seemed to be headed for the mouth of the cave. A hundred-foot drop? He wasn’t going anywhere. The firefight was intense now.

Where was Stoke? Was he down?

Hawke got to his feet. He had to find Froggy somewhere in this interior cloudbank. The little French sharpshooter and medic was the only one with a prayer of stanching the sultan’s bleeding artery. Hawke had only one thought now: getting the leader of Oman on tape telling the truth. The swirling smoke made identification of anyone in this fight damn near impossible. If he couldn’t get to Froggy, Froggy would have to get to him.

He aimed the AK-47 straight up, flipped the lever to full auto, and fired a sustained burst at the ceiling.

“Froggy, I’m going to fire a second burst into the overhead. Make your way to me!” He pulled the trigger and emptied the magazine into the vault of stone.

Someone was tapping on his knee. Hawke looked down and saw the smiling face looking up at him.
“Mon ami,”
Froggy said, “how may I be of service?”

Ten minutes later, it was almost over. Thunder and Lightning had taken casualties. Stokely was missing. Bandini had been the first to go down, instantly killed with a clean head shot coming through the door. Two of the Gurhkas had suffered gunshot wounds to the neck and chest but Froggy was tending to them. If they had any chance at all, he’d make sure they got it. Major Tony Tang and most of his men were dead. Tang, Hawke was less than shocked to notice, had been nearly beheaded. Harry Brock was standing over the corpse with Ahmed’s bloody scimitar in his hand.

The few mercenaries and French regular troops who weren’t dead were either down with injuries or being cuffed by Fitz’s men. Thunder and Lightning, wounded, had struck back with a vengeance. Hawke was sure the searing memory of the grievously injured Chief Rainwater had been in their hearts and minds when they entered the room.

Fitz had posted four of his commandos outside the door to deal with any curiosity seekers who came to see what all the noise had been about. He and Harry Brock were now helping Hawke with the sultan. They’d gotten the mortally wounded man back into his chair and were tightening the tourniquet Froggy had applied. The Omani sovereign’s breathing was shallow and his pulse was faint.

“Fitz,” Hawke said, putting a canteen of water to the sultan’s trembling lips, “get the camera set up. See if the lights are still working. We haven’t got much time.”

“I am worried about Stokely,” Froggy said, erecting the camera in its old position. “We cannot find him.”

“We don’t have time to worry about anybody but the sultan right now. We need to get this man on record. Damn it, he’s got blood in his eyes. Bring me some water and a cloth, will you?”

“I’ve no idea who you are,” the sultan croaked, his voice barely audible as he gazed up at Hawke, “but what you’ve done here today is save people.”

“Bien sûr,”
Froggy said, “The camera is recording.”

Hawke saw the flashing red light under the lens and carefully lifted the dying man more upright in the chair. The sultan seemed to sense what was happening. He placed his hands on the desk, squared his shoulders, and stared into the camera. A steely light came into his eyes and Hawke knew it would be all right.

“Your Highness,” Hawke said, “I’d like you to finish your address. It’s very important that your people hear your words. The world needs to hear the truth about what is happening this day in your country.”

“Yes,” Aji Abbas said, “I will do it now.”

With his dying words, the sultan of Oman did just that.

He told his countrymen about the treachery and lies of the new French government. Of President Bonaparte, who had betrayed them. He spoke of the suffering his family had endured at the hands of the many Chinese “advisors” and French soldiers who were in Oman illegally. He asked that world leaders, especially England and America, ensure that Oman’s borders were respected and that no foreign troops were ever again allowed on her soil. Oman was a peaceful, law-abiding nation, he said in closing, and, with the help of Allah, the true and just God, it would ever be so.

The sultan sat back in the chair and closed his eyes.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Hawke said, smiling at him. The old man’s bravery in the waning moments of his life was undeniable.

“Hey, boss,” Hawke heard Stoke say. “Come take a look at this.” The big man had suddenly appeared and was standing at the edge of the cave mouth. The sky behind him was dusky pink.

“What is it?” Hawke said, not wanting to leave the sultan’s side. The man had only a few more moments to live.

“Fishing boats,” Stoke said, smiling. “All kinds of damn boats. Trawlers, schooners, little baby scows. Hundred or more of them leaving the mainland and headed this way. Looks like everybody in Oman with a boat and a paddle is coming out to show the flag. Must have heard all the explosions, seen the fires burning. Coming to rescue the sultan’s family and kick the damn Frenchies off this island.”

Hawke and Brock crossed and stood beside Stoke, neither man believing his eyes. It was, as Stoke had said, a magnificent sight. Perhaps a hundred vessels of every size and description, all lit by the first red-gold streaks of sun, and every one of them headed due east, bound for Masara Island.

“Where’s Ahmed?” Hawke asked.

“Down there on the rocks where I left him,” Stoke said. “We had a little disagreement about the future of the world. He lost.”

“Fitz,” Hawke said quietly, “Could you and Froggy carry His Highness’s chair over here? I think he ought to see this.”

“Aye, we’re bringing him,” Fitz said. They gently lowered the sultan’s chair to the ground. “What is it?”

“It’s quite something, Your Highness,” Hawke said. “Just have a look.”

“Yes,” Aji Abbas said softly, his cloudy eyes taking in the vast armada come to his family’s rescue. “A miracle. Like Dunkirk, isn’t it?” he whispered.

Then his eyes slowly closed and he slipped away.

The little boats began to arrive an hour later. It seemed every fisherman and fisherman’s son in Oman had steered his boat across the dangerous stretch of water that lay between the mainland and the island of Masara. Two or three of the tiny vessels had been sunk by the patrol boat before Fitz realized what was happening and got on the radio to tell the French captain and crew it was over. The Fort Mahoud garrison, composed of Chinese and French mercenary forces, had surrendered.

The patrol boat captain, delighted at any excuse to leave the god-forsaken place, had surrendered over the radio. Half an hour later he was steaming into the dock, all of his crew’s small arms in a pile on the afterdeck.

Down at the docks, Hawke was standing with Stokely and Harry Brock. They saw
Obaidallah
’s captain, Ali, and the patrol boat crew helping all the hostages, women and children mostly, into the waiting fishing boats. After a few minutes, they went back aboard their boat to check on Rainwater. They ran into Froggy coming out of the captain’s cabin. He had been in with him for the last hour, doing what he could.

“How’s he doing, Froggy?” Stoke asked, unable to read the little Frenchman’s expression.

“The lord, he is still making up his mind,” Froggy said, with a shrug of his broad shoulders, “but I think he’s going to decide in the Chief’s favor.”

“MR. PRESIDENT?”

Jack McAtee looked up from his desk in the Oval Office to see his longtime secretary, Betsey Hall, standing in the doorway. She had the
look.
Something was up. It was nearly ten o’clock at night and he was only now getting around to reading his goddamn PDB. The president’s daily brief was so sensitive only a dozen people shared it. He was bone-tired. Dr. Ken Beer, his newly appointed White House physician, had told him just this morning that he needed to get more sleep and more exercise. And cut down on the cigars. The bourbon and branch water. And that golf didn’t count as exercise and—

“Mr. President?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s apparently urgent.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Gooch and General Moore to see you, sir. Assistant Secretary Baker from the State Department is in the Roosevelt Room, if you need him.”

“Please show them in, Betsey,” McAtee said.

His national security advisor, John Gooch, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Charlie Moore, walked in. He closed his PDB file and pushed it aside. Maybe he’d get to it before tomorrow’s report arrived on his desk at 6:45. He got to his feet and moved over to the sofa near the fireplace. Might as well be comfortable. The two men filed in and took the two chairs opposite him.

“Let me guess,” McAtee said, smiling at each of them in turn, “Something troubling is afoot.”

Gooch, a tall, thin Boston Brahmin, St. Paul’s and Harvard, spoke first. This was not at all unusual. The NSA talked and the JCS chairman listened. Moore would hold his fire until he heard something he and the president would construe as actionable. Sometimes this happened and sometimes it did not.

“Mr. President,” Gooch said, riffling through a sheaf of reports, “I don’t like what I’m seeing here. There are patterns here that—”

“Tea-leaf reading again, John?” McAtee said, firing up his Partagas Black Label despite doctor’s orders.

“I’m afraid it’s a bit more than that. We’ve got French naval assets—here, have a look at the overheads. Time-sequenced satellite imagery shows French assets moving rapidly out of the Indian Ocean into the Gulf of Oman…go ahead, sir, take a look.”

“What am I looking at?”

“That’s the nuclear carrier
Charles de Gaulle,
sir, their flag vessel, and—”

“Just last month you—or someone—told me the
de Gaulle
was laid up in dry dock for repairs,” McAtee said. “Her reactors were throwing off too much radiation. The crews were getting sick and suing the goddamn French government.”

“They’ve apparently repaired her, sir. At least temporarily. Here you’ve got tankers, destroyers, frigates, subs…”

“Goddamn it, this is an offensive configuration—or am I wrong?” McAtee said, holding up a photo for closer inspection. “These smaller boats here and here are amphibious landing craft, right?”

“Indeed they are, sir.”

“So they’re going ahead with this damn thing, John, this invasion.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Goddamn it! Are they fucking nuts?”

“Not all of them. You can point the finger directly at this man Bonaparte, sir. He’s going to have to be dealt with, sooner rather than later. We’re building the Interpol file now. It’s only a matter of days before we go public with the patricide story.”

“Guy murdered his own father to get ahead in the Union Corse. At sixteen. You believe that, Charlie?”

“From what I’ve heard about him, yes, it’s believable.”

“He’s guilty of homicide and we can prove it, sir. We’ve got an eyewitness to that crime. I just got a call from Captain John Mariucci, NYPD. He and a Scotland Yard man named Ambrose Congreve located a witness in New York.”

“I know Congreve. Through Alex Hawke. Any news from him, John? Hawke, I mean.”

“As you know, Hawke is involved in an arm’s-length operation to get the sultan out of Oman alive, Mr. President.”

“Right. Put him in front of a camera. Have him tell the truth about Oman asking France to invade. France has pulled the wool over the world’s eyes for long enough. Suppress an insurrection, my ass. They’re going in for oil to sell to China.”

“Our team is inside the fortress on Masara Island now, Mr. President. They went in to pull the sultan out at 1140 hours EST. About twenty minutes ago. We are monitoring real-time.”

“Hawke and I go back a long way. Not the kind of man who’ll let us down. But the sooner we get Sultan Abbas out of that hellhole, the better. Do what you have to do, John.”

“We’re on it, sir.”

“All right, Charlie. What do you make of this French navy in the Arabian Sea bullshit? All this faux muscle-flexing?”

“It may be just that, Mr. President,” General Moore said. “The CNO has been on the horn with Frank Blair, who commands the Sixth Fleet now…they’re trying to get a read on it, sir.”

“Is the fleet moving?”

“Yes, sir. The Pentagon confirmed that Admiral Starke’s lead units entered the canal at 1700 hours. They’re positioning for a holding action. Assume we control the canal at this point—no one in, or out, unless we give the word.”

“Good! Now that’s thinking ahead.”

“That is good,” Gooch said, “but we haven’t heard from the Egyptians, or the Chinese, or the rest of the ‘striped-pants’ crowd yet.”

General Moore leaned forward in his chair. “Frankly, Mr. President, the French are overextended and they know it. Probably a little tension in the dialogue back in Paris. They know we could take them down in about four hours.”

“I know we could. We could, but we won’t. Because France, as we all know, is just a goddamn shill for the Chinese, a prophylactic in this whole thing. Hell, if China wasn’t involved—let’s talk seriously about this China gambit. Where are we with them? John?”

“Certainly, sir,” Gooch said. “Here’s where we are now. There are—”

“Don’t tell me. Two schools of thought,” the president said with a wry smile. He’d been down this well-traveled road before.

“Exactly,” Gooch said. “That much hasn’t changed. On the one hand, the State Department’s position. State says don’t rock the boat. We can go along to get along. Because we
have
to.”

“On the other hand,” General Moore said, “there’s my position. Send a signal to the French and the Chinese that we won’t tolerate interference with our oil supply in the Gulf. The kick-ass-and-take-names position.”

The president smiled and waited for Gooch’s reaction.

“Mr. President,” Gooch said, “we probably ought to round-table this in the morning. Get a fresh look at it from State, the Pentagon, and the Agency—especially if you are considering a policy change. I have to tell you I firmly believe we can get along with China once we move past this situation in Oman. We
have
to, sir. In all honesty, we’re in a very tight spot with Beijing.”

“You mean we find a way to get along with them or we’ll tank our own economy.”

“Exactly my feeling, Mr. President.”

“John, the bullet points. Just briefly.”

“There are two pressure points with China, sir. Our economy and Taiwan. The one that concerns me most right now is the former.”

“Because?”

“Because if we lean on China about the OOTB in Taiwan or their little misadventure in Oman, we run the risk of an economic—”

“OOTB? What the hell is that? Why does everybody who comes in this office have to sound like a walking Tom Clancy novel?”

“Mr. President,” General Moore said, “It’s an acronym for ‘out-of-the-blue.’ It’s a top-secret plan on the Chinese books to use wargames in the Formosa Strait as a cover for a general invasion of Taiwan. It looks like typical peacetime maneuvers…until the troops involved suddenly move. China’s got over six hundred ballistic missiles and several hundred warplanes stationed within range of Taiwan. Launch in the predawn hours and, well, it could be nasty. You’d catch most of the Taiwanese troops in their barracks and their ships, tanks, and warplanes lined up like ducks. We don’t necessarily believe that—”

“Wait a minute!” McAtee said, stubbing out his cigar. “Hold the phone. Didn’t Brick Kelly say in our morning briefing three days ago that they are in the goddamn Taiwan Straits? The Chinese fleet?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Gooch said. “They are.”

“Holding joint exercises with France, if I’m not mistaken. A shakedown cruise for that new Russian carrier they bought.”

“That’s correct, sir. Although France has now shifted the bulk of her assets to the Arabian Sea.”

“And you two are concerned with the economy?”

“He is. I’m not, sir,” General Moore said.

“No grandstanding in here, Charlie,” the president said.

“Okay, John and I are concerned about the economy in varying degrees.”

“Much better.”

“Damn right I’m concerned about it,” Gooch said. “Mr. President, if what Assistant Secretary Baker says is correct—”

“Who?”

“Anthony Baker. NSC staff member, sir. East Asian Affairs. He’s across the hall in the Roosevelt Room if we need him.”

“Go ahead.”

Gooch cleared his throat and adjusted his pale-blue Hermès tie. “We push France, in effect, China, on this Oman thing and China pushes back, big time, economically. As you are only too aware, sir, they are the largest holders of U.S. Treasury bonds in the world. Which keeps our interest rates low. China gets pissed off, sir, and stops buying U.S. bonds—well, I don’t need to tell you what happens.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“What happens is, to get new buyers, Treasury has to increase interest rates they pay on bonds. Ripple effect—everyone’s interest payments go up. Next, China stops selling cheap goods. The average American’s cost of living shoots up, China’s unemployment spikes, their export sector shuts down. U.S. inflation goes through the roof and so does everybody’s mortgage and credit card charges.”

“A lose-lose situation for both of us. Charlie?”

“I’m far more concerned about Taiwan, sir. What John says about the economic implications of any showdown with China is indisputable. Currency is the most decisive factor in foreign affairs. And they can sink our currency. But, here’s the thing. And, this point is nonnegotiable. China
must
have oil. It is absolutely essential. Everything else is bullshit. Push them and they will, Mr. President, I repeat, they
will
play the Taiwan card.”

“They’re doing just fine without Taiwan. Double-digit growth. Why are they so goddamn obsessive about it?”

“Because they’re not too keen on having a model of democracy just off their coast and they don’t particularly like us using Taiwan as our personal naval air station.”

“General Moore, put this whole goddamn thing in English for me.”

“If we order France out of Oman, China will push back using Taiwan. And I’m not talking about rampant U.S. inflation or goddamn spiking credit card charges. I’m talking about a nuclear confrontation that could change the quality of American life, sir. They will put Taiwan on the table because
they have no choice.
They will make that move.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it for me, Mr. President,” Moore said.

“John?”

“I’ve been saying this for four years, Mr. President. We’re vulnerable where China is concerned. But it’s a perfectly balanced symbiotic relationship, sir. They need us every bit as much as we need them. Economically. They won’t touch Taiwan. It would destroy everything they’ve worked to build. Wipe it out. They won’t do that.”

“Thanks for stopping by, gentlemen. Charlie, could you stick around for a couple of minutes? I’ve got something else.”

As the president got to his feet, the two men were already up. As they turned to leave, the president put his hand on General Moore’s shoulder. Gooch kept moving. As he left, the president took the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by the arm and guided him over to the bourbon decanter. He poured each of them a healthy one.

“If you think they’ll move on Taiwan, Charlie, that’s good enough for me.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“So, we damn well better be ready for them. Operation Wild Card.”

Moore looked at the president. Those were the three words he’d been dreading.

“We will be ready, Mr. President,” Moore said.

“Harry Brock’s working directly for you on this, right? Not CIA?”

“I sent him to China. I sent him to Oman, sir.”

“You getting any direct word from Brock or Alex Hawke? This whole Gulf thing gets a lot less nerve-wracking if we can point the finger directly at France. At this fucking Bonaparte.”

“Not a word since they went in. We should know within the hour, sir.”

“You’ll let me know as soon as you’ve got something?”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

“Mr. President?” Betsey Hall had reappeared in the doorway.

“Yes?”

“Sorry, sir. Mr. Gooch would like to—”