Soldier of God (12 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Soldier of God
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McGarvey raced forward along the starboard walkway out of sight of Khalil and his people, kicked off his shoes, laid the RAK on the deck, climbed over the rail, and jumped.
The water was unbelievably cold. The shock took his breath away as he
plunged several feet under the surface, and he came back up sputtering. Within a few minutes anyone in the water would start to lose their ability to kick or move their arms so that they could keep afloat. A few minutes after that, hypothermia would be so advanced that the swimmer would lose consciousness. And finally their heart would stop.
The effects came much faster for someone with a small body mass, such as a young, slender woman or, worse yet, an infant.
Staying within reach of the hull, McGarvey set out for the stern of the ship, where the mother and child had gone overboard. The angle of the ship’s hard chine offered him some protection from a shooter on deck, but not from someone on the bow of the smaller boat that was attached to the Spirit’s stern by a towing bridle.
If the cruise ship had not been resting at anchor, any rescue attempt would have been futile. As it was, a fairly fast tidal current was running, only slightly counteracted by the strong northerly wind, and a vicious two-foot chop marched whitecaps down the narrow Frederick Sound.
A woman’s weak voice cried out in the darkness ten yards or so off to McGarvey’s right. It was the young mother. She had drifted away from the stern and away from the protection of the flaring hull.
He could not see her, but he struck out in the direction of her cries.
Someone shouted something in Arabic from above on the starboard lounge deck where McGarvey had left his shoes and the RAK.
Now they knew that he was in the water.
The ship still showed all her running lights, so Khalil and his men on the stern platform were at a disadvantage for seeing anyone in the water. They were lit as if onstage. McGarvey looked back over his shoulder. There were a lot of people up there. He spotted Shaw and his wife, and Katy, who had gone to them. The tallest of the terrorists was Khalil. He was giving orders to his people, some of whom were starting down the ladder that dangled onto the bow of the small fishing boat.
McGarvey considered using the Steyr pistol stuck in his belt to try for a headshot on Khalil. If he could take out the terrorist leader, perhaps the others would fold their tents and get the hell out.
But considering his precarious position, there was the very real possibility that he would miss, and the further possibility that no matter
what happened, Katy, Shaw, and the former SecDef’s wife would be gunned down in retaliation for a mission spoiled by the director of Central Intelligence.
The young mother’s screams were already becoming weaker as the cold water affected her. She was crying a name, “Brian” or perhaps “baby”; it was very difficult to understand her.
One of the hijackers from the ship suddenly opened fire in the general direction of the woman’s feeble cries. The bullets peppered the water a few yards ahead and to the left of McGarvey. The poor woman did not realize that the terrorists could not see her; they were shooting in the blind. If she stopped crying, they would have no idea where she was.
They had thrown the woman and child overboard, and now they were shooting at them. What manner of animals were they?
The cold was beginning to seep into McGarvey’s bones. He could feel that his coordination was falling apart, and already he was having trouble thinking straight. He would not last long in the water.
The woman was suddenly there to his right. He could see her blond hair floating on the water. She was splashing with her hands, as if she were shooing away flies, but slowly, aimlessly.
McGarvey had nearly reached her when the yellow beam of a powerful small light slashed across the water from aft of the bow of the small fishing boat. Whoever was aboard had switched on a handheld halogen spotlight and was searching the water.
The woman looked up, desperately hoping that someone was coming to her rescue. She managed to raise her right hand in the air when the spotlight found her and stopped.
“Brian,” she cried, her voice so low as to be nothing more than a whisper.
McGarvey could see that she no longer had the infant with her. She’d probably lost her hold on the child when she’d first hit the water. At this point there was absolutely no hope for the baby.
The bastards. This fight had become personal the moment they’d manhandled Katy. But now, seeing what depths they were capable of sinking to, his resolve to hit back rose ten thousand percent.
“There she is, Mr. McGarvey,” Khalil’s voice came across the water.
The stern was in the lee of the waves, the bulk of the cruise liner creating a wind shadow of relative calm.
McGarvey was within a few strokes of the woman as she began to flail weakly, her head sinking beneath the surface. She popped back up, but just for a moment. She was on the verge of drowning.
“Come to her rescue, Mr. McGarvey,” Khalil called.
“Kirk,” Katy screamed.
One of the terrorists opened fire on the young woman.
McGarvey dove beneath the surface, and in a couple of powerful strokes came up behind the young mother, bullets splashing the water all around them. He clamped his left hand over her nose and mouth, dragged her beneath the surface, and swam directly toward the stern of the boat.
For the first few feet she fought against him, but then her body went slack. He couldn’t tell if she had lost consciousness or had simply given up the fight, given up the will to live. But with bullets smacking into the water above, he could not risk surfacing. Not until they had come under the flare of the ship’s hull.
After that he had only a vague idea about getting the woman back aboard the ship and stashing her someplace out of the wind and out of harm’s way so that he could continue his fight to save his wife.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep on track.
The ship’s hull loomed up in front of him like a huge black wall, and McGarvey surfaced, willing himself to stay focused. He took his hand away from the woman’s mouth and nose. She took a deep, blubbering breath and then another and another.
He held her head above water by the collar of her sodden blouse, while he tried to figure out where they’d come up. They were about thirty feet forward of the stern. He could just make out the starboard anchor chain angling away from the bow, an impossibly long way forward against the wind-driven chop. But at this point it was the only way aboard.
The woman slipped away from his grasp. He turned but she was gone. At first he thought she had lost consciousness and slipped under the water, and he dove for her. But when he came up, he heard her feeble voice already fifteen or twenty yards back the way they had come.
“Brian,” she cried. She was going back for her baby.
The hijackers at the stern heard her cries the same moment McGarvey did. The beam of the halogen spotlight from the small fishing boat stabbed the water to her left. It swept right and had her almost immediately.
She stopped and looked up into the light. “Brian?” she cried.
Someone on the stern of the cruise ship opened fire. At least half a dozen bullets slammed into the poor woman, killing her instantly, driving her riddled body beneath the whitecaps.
Even before the beam of the spotlight started a grid pattern search, centered on where the young woman went down, McGarvey had turned and headed forward toward the starboard anchor chain.
Revenge, pure, sweet, and simple, like the bright flame of a blast furnace, flared deep within his soul. Only Khalil’s death would quench the fire.
“Is there any sign of him?” Kahlil called down to the bow of the Nancy N.
“No, just the woman. But he’s out there, I can feel it,” Zahir warned. “It’s time to leave.”
Khalil glanced at his wristwatch.
It was past their time to leave. In less than four minutes the explosives that Pahlawan and his people had placed in strategic locations deep in the ship’s bilges would automatically arm themselves. From that moment the
Spirit
would be a gigantic bomb waiting for a hair trigger to send her to the bottom.
According to his chief engineer almost anything could set the charges off: a stray electrical current, a radio signal from a nearby ship or an airplane passing overhead. There were safeties on the triggers. But nothing was perfect.
The moment the explosives were armed, anyone left aboard the cruise ship would be in immediate danger.
All because of one man.
“No one could survive that long in this water,” Pahlawan said. “At the very least the motherless whore is incapacitated.”
“You’d better hope he’s dead or incapacitated,” Katy said softly. She was shivering violently, in part from the cold and in part because she’d witnessed the brutal murders of the young mother and her infant son.
Khalil looked at Katy. She was still defiant, against all odds, and he found that he could almost admire her mujahideen strength and courage. She was unlike any woman he’d ever known. Fascinating and dangerous.
The sooner she was dead and her body destroyed so that it would never be found, the sooner he would breathe easy.
“Very well. We’ll start them down now,” he told Pahlawan. “Mr. Shaw first.” He leaned over the rail to Zahir. “Keep a sharp watch. I want no further surprises.”
Katy was staring intently at him, as if something had just occurred to her. “You’re speaking in English.” She looked at the other terrorists. “Why?”
Shaw stopped at the rail and turned back, a look of defiance on his face. “They’re trying to prove they’re not as stupid as we know they are.”
Khalil raised his pistol to smash the former SecDef in the head, and Katy stepped away from Karen Shaw before any of the terrorists could stop her. She grabbed Khalil’s gun hand, and pulled him around.
“Try me, you bastard,” she shouted.
Khalil looked down at her like he might have been seeing a disagreeable bug at his feet.
“You like to beat up helpless people. Kill innocent women and children,” Katy said into his face. “Try me; why don’t you?”
He reached out with his free hand and took her throat. Before he could squeeze the life out of her, she drove her knee into his groin with every ounce of her strength.
All the air left him in an explosive gasp. He released his hold on her neck and stepped back a pace. His face was red in the dim illumination of the stern observation deck. All his men watched him. Looking for a sign of weakness. Looking for a lack of resolve.
Harden your heart if you wish to avenge the sacrilege. The gates of Paradise are not for the weak of spirit.
The sharp pain deep inside his body between his hips was not as unbearable as the thought of failure.
“Now, go ahead and do your thing if it makes you feel like a man,” Katy said. There was a great deal of fear in her eyes, but even more resolve in her voice.
Before Khalil could raise his pistol, the engineer Pahlawan shoved Shaw aside and came for Katy.
“Over the side with you—” he said, when a pistol shot came from the darkness one deck above. A small black hole appeared in his forehead, and he fell back dead.
Before anyone could react, another shot came from above, the bullet ricocheting off the deck inches from where Khalil stood.
“Everyone settle down,” McGarvey’s authoritative voice called out from one deck up.
One of the terrorists broke left, trying for the protection of the overhang.
“Yu’af,” stop, McGarvey shouted in Arabic.
The man started to raise his RAK when McGarvey fired one shot, catching him in the side of his head, knocking him to the deck.
Everyone on deck stopped in his tracks.
“No one else except for Khalil need die tonight,” McGarvey said. “But everyone else must leave right now.”
To every operation came the
dénouement,
as the French called it, the moment at which the operation’s success or failure was assured. Beyond that point it became fruitless to try to change the inevitable outcome. In the case of failure the only option was an orderly retreat, with covering fire if possible.
From his pocket Khalil took a small electronic device—what looked like a cell phone or a television remote control—and held it up for McGarvey to see. “I push the button, and the bottom of the ship blows out. All the passengers locked below will die.” His voice was strained because of the pain in his groin.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Katy said softly, “you’re nuts.”
“Dedicated,” Khalil corrected her. “What do you say, Mr. McGarvey: the lives of the passengers, including your wife, for the safe passage off this ship for myself, my operators, and Secretary Shaw?”
“No hostages. Get off this ship now.”
“You won’t risk the lives of the passengers—”
McGarvey fired two shots in rapid succession, one buzzing off the deck a few inches to Khalil’s left, the other to his right. “Don’t tempt me, because I sincerely want to meet you again. Soon.”
Khalil didn’t think the CIA director had it in him, but McGarvey had to play it up for the sake of his wife, who was an extraordinary woman. “Very well,” Khalil said, “it is a fair trade, for now. But you’re right; we will meet again, and I will kill you.”
“Go.”
Khalil turned to Katy and gave her a polite nod. “You will look good in black, madam.”
He turned and climbed down the boarding ladder to the bow of the
Nancy
N., where he brushed aside Zahir’s helping hand. “As soon as the rest of our people are aboard, get us out of here,” he said, and he made his way aft and below.

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