The Inside Passage (Ted Higuera Series Book 1) (19 page)

Ottawa, Canada

Jean Broussard
walked quickly down the hallway and into the refuge of her office. She hated
Cabinet briefings. The new Prime Minister, less liberal than his predecessor
and friendlier to the United States, still didn’t take the Islamic extremist
threat against Canada seriously.

Entering her
office, Jean kicked her shoes under her desk. At five-foot one, she never appeared
in public without high-heels. Walking over to her credenza she grabbed a cup
and reached for the carafe of coffee.

“I got you fresh
coffee.” Jeremy Browne, her all too perfect assistant, materialized in the
doorway. Ten years her junior and over a foot taller, she wasn’t sure how to
handle him. His clipped accent spoke of upper class breeding. “Copenhagens,
too.”

Jean eyed the
almond-flavored pastries hungrily. “Many more of those and I’ll be as wide as I
am tall, eh?”

“I know how tough
cabinet meeting days are.” Jeremy poured himself a cup of coffee, then added
cream and sugar. “You need a little reward for subjecting yourself to it.”

“Thanks, Jeremy.
It’s been a tough day and it’s only nine o’clock.” Smoothing down her white
linen suit, she settled in behind her desk.

“Those chaps don’t
get it, do they, mum?”

“Stop calling me
that. I’m not your mum. You make me feel a thousand years old.” Jean lifted her
cup to her lips, then paused in mid-sip. “And, no, they don’t get it. Half of
them refuse to believe that there’s any threat to Canada. The other half thinks
that we can protect them against anything. It’s just a matter of time. We’ve
been lucky so far, but one of these days we’ll slip up. We can’t possibly stop
every threat that comes against us.”

“We did pretty
well with Toronto, didn’t we?” Jeremy waved his spoon in the air, then casually
draped himself over a chair.

“We rounded most
of ‘em up. There are a few higher-ups we didn’t nab. That concerns me. They set
these things up, then disappear to create more mischief.” Finally, craving got
the better of discretion and Jean lifted a Copenhagen onto a small, glass
plate.

“Do you have
anything new for me?” she asked.

“More intel on Yasim
Hassan.” Jeremy handed her a manila folder. “His wife and family are still in Toronto. She’s still driving the hack, but no word on him. He’s just disappeared. What is
he going to do with all that money?”

“No good, I can
assure you of that. What else?”

“We’ve been
running down a lead on Smythe and Goldstreet, solicitors. Hassan was seen
entering their offices in Toronto.”

Jean perked up. “That
sounds promising.”

“Something’s
rotten in Denmark, mum.”

Jean ignored the
“mum” this time.

“Alfred Smythe
recently set up a new company,” Jeremy continued. “Pacific Marine Surveys. All
the officers are dyed-in-the-wool Canadian heavy weights, but we can’t find
evidence that any of them work for the company. As a matter of fact, we can’t
find any physical location for the company. Just a Post Office box. We have a
man staking out the Post Office, but they never receive any mail.”

“So who’s running
the show? Is there a show?”

“Let’s see.”
Jeremy looked in his own copy of the manila folder. “Here it is. They’ve just
let an island in BC for a research station. It looks like Smythe signed all of
the paper work.”

“Follow up on it,
Jeremy. It’s not much, but I have a gut feeling. This one doesn’t smell right.”

****

William and Mary Island, Canada 

Ted heard the bark
of automatic weapon fire. “Shit, man, let’s get out o’ here.” He turned for the
door.

“There’re some men
down in the clearing.” Meagan snuck into the shed, breathing hard. “They’re
firing off machine guns. I can’t understand what they’re saying.”

Another burst of
fire, then silence. Foreign-sounding voices carried through the fog.

Ted strained to
hear the words.

“I’m sorry, but I
don’t speak Arabic,” a disembodied voice said. “Can we do this in English?”

“Allah will hear
you in any language,” a thickly accented voice replied. “Remember, must aim
below target. Kick of rifle will cause to shoot high.”

“Christ, man,
they’re takin’ target practice.” Ted slunk back to the cover of the pickup.
There was another bust of gunfire. “Those are AK-47s, serious assault rifles.”

“How would you
know an AK-47?” Meagan pressed her back to the truck.

“In my ‘hood, we
had drive-by shootings all the time. When there were gang wars they brought out
the heavy artillery. I’ve heard AK-47’s before.”

“Let’s get out of
here.” Chris pulled at Meagan’s wrist. “I don’t think these guys‘re fooling
around.”

The three crouched
low and ran for the welcoming cover of the trees. As they dashed down the hill,
Chris suddenly stopped.

“Shit, I forgot to
seal the crate.”

“Don’t worry about
it, dude,” Ted called back over his shoulder. “We can’t go back now. We gotta
get out of here.”

Meagan grabbed
Chris’ arm and tugged him along.

****

 “What are those
dudes doin’ with a missile?” Ted, still breathing hard, secured the dinghy
behind the
Defiant
. 

“Hell if I know.
What do we know about Exocet missiles?” Chris asked.

“Let’s Google it.”
Meagan started down the companionway steps.

“We ain’t got no
connection out here.” Ted dried his wet hands on the seat of his pants. “They
had Wi-Fi back at Echo Bay. We could head back there.”

“But we were going
to the hot springs,” Meagan said.

A long burst of
gunfire rolled down the hill. “Christ, it sounds like there’s a war going on up
there.” Chris pulled up the swim steps and secured them to the stern pulpit.

“Don’t you think
findin’ out about that missile is more important than the hot springs?” Ted
asked. Sharp barks from a rifle accentuated Ted’s point.

“They can’t be up
to any good,” Chris said. “What if they’re terrorists?”

“We need to head
back towards civilization,” Ted said. “If they
are
terrorists, we can’t
do anything about it out here.”

William and Mary Island, Canada

“Yasim, come
quickly.” Ahmad shouted from the door of the storage shed.           

“What is?” Yasim
raced to the shed.

“Someone’s been in
our camp.” Ahmad led him to one of the crates of SAMs. “Look, the lid to this
crate’s been pried open.”

Yasim examined the
crate. “Could this have been done before was shipped?”

“I don’t think so.
I don’t remember any of the crates being opened when we got ’em. We haven’t
touched the SAMs yet. We were busy with the AK-47s.”

“Call everyone
together. We must search camp. We need to know if anything has been disturbed.”

A thorough search
of the camp, found no further traces of tampering.

Qayyum spoke in
Arabic. Mohammed translated his words into English as the group re-assembled in
front of the cook tent. “He says that this isn’t good. Our mission depends on
the utmost secrecy. Who could have been in our camp?”

“I knew we
shouldn’t have left the camp unguarded,” Kalil said.

“But we’re on a
deserted island” Mohammed responded. “There’s no one else here.”

“Obviously, there
was someone else here.” Kalil spat in disgust. “You have the military training.
You should have thought of this.”

“There is no point
in arguing now.” Yasim took control. “What is done is done. Where did they come
from?”

Ahmad thought back
to last night. “The sail boat. There was a blue sail boat in the bay yesterday.
They must’ve come ashore.”

“I knew we
should’ve taken care of them.” Anger flashed in Kalil’s eyes. “I knew we
shouldn’t have left any witnesses.”

“No, was right
decision.” Yasim examined the lid to the crate he still held in his hand, as if
it contained the answer. “If boat and crew went missing, Coast Guard would have
started search.” He looked up from the lid. “With planes and helicopters flying
overhead, would have been in even greater danger of discovery.” Yasim tossed
the crate lid aside.

Qayyum spoke
again.

Yasim started to
respond to their leader, then held it.

“He doesn’t agree
with Yasim,” Mohammed translated. “He says that we must find the sail boat. We
have to stop the intruders before they alert the authorities.”

Yasim stared at
his mentor for a moment, held back his anger, then spoke. “Ahmad, how much more
time you need?”

“There’s never
enough time. The launcher’s ready.” Ahmad gestured towards the ugly steel box
next to his shop. “All we have to do is install it on the boat. That shouldn’t
take more than a few hours. I think I can be done with the guidance system in a
couple of days, but I won’t have a chance to do any testing. It’ll have to be
right the first time.”

“We no have time
for testing anyway.” Yasim walked towards the launcher. “Target will be in
Johnstone Straits in three days.” 

****

Echo Bay, Canada

It took the
Defiant
most of the day to re-trace her course to Echo Bay. Finally, Ted spotted the
tiny settlement floating on the edge of the island. Houseboats crowded around
the floats in the tiny round cove. A light blue fairy-tale sort of houseboat,
with white trim and shutters and a roof line that looked like it was melting
sat on the rocks across the bay.

“I don’t think I’ve
seen any villages on the land up here.” Like most of the settlements he’d seen
in the Broughtons, there were few permanent buildings on land at Echo Bay. Everything was built on floats.

“Echo Bay is kind of unique.” Chris steered the
Defiant
past a giant float and into the
harbor. “The owners bought a section of the old I-90 floating bridge when the
rest of the bridge sank during the Thanksgiving Day storm in Seattle. They
towed it here and made it the foundation of their settlement.”

A marina store and
workshop as well as fish cleaning station sat on the old pontoon section that
still had a layer of blacktop, complete with the white stripe down the middle.

As soon as they
tied up at the fuel dock, Ted broke out his lap top. He was glad to see that
they had a good wireless Internet connection. The other two crowded around him
in the main cabin to see the search results.

There were dozens
of hits on “Exocet.”

“It says here
‘Exocet’ means flying fish.” Ted scanned a Web page.  “It’s a French anti-ship
missile first built in the Seventies. The Argentines used them to sink the
HMS
Sheffield
and the
Atlantic Conveyer
during the Falklands War. They
did major damage to the
HMS Glamoran
.”

“Shit, that’s a
serious missile.” Chris leaned over his shoulder. “I wonder what those Arabs
are planning on doing with it.”

“Let’s look at
this link.” Meagan pointed at the computer’s screen. “It’s about Iraq.”

“Hmm, turns out
that the Iraqis used a bunch of Exocets in their war against Iran.” Ted skimmed through the Web page. “Looks like they put some serious hurt on Iranian shipping
. . .”

“Slow down.”
Meagan grabbed Ted’s wrist. “I can’t read when you scroll so fast.”

“The Israelis have
them too,” Ted continued. “They almost sank the
USS Stark
in 1987. I
guess they thought the
Stark
was an Iranian tanker.”

“Okay, so now we
know that the Exocet is an anti-ship missile” Chris straightened up. 

“So what are those
Arab dudes doin’ with an anti-ship missile?” Ted looked up from the lap top.

“There’s only one
thing they can be doing with it, dufus.” Meagan slapped Ted on the top of his
head. “They’re going to blow up a ship.” There was a long silence in the cabin.

“What ship?” Ted
finally asked. “What’s their target?”

“Well, I suppose
they could blow up an oil tanker,” Chris said. “It would cause an environmental
catastrophe.”

“They could be
going to blow up a container ship.” Meagan reached for her water bottle. “That
would cause a lot of damage to commerce.”

“No, that’s not
big enough.” Ted turned from the computer screen to his two comrades. “These
dudes are all about terror. They want to kill a lot of people and put the fear
of Allah in us. Besides, losing one tanker or one container ship wouldn’t
seriously damage our economy.”

“A civilian
target,” Chris’ hushed voice took on an ominous tone. “They want to spread
terror, like at the World Trade Center or Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. It’s all about scaring people.”

“What about a
ferry boat?” Meagan asked.

Ted pictured a
ferry with hundreds of passengers sinking.

“That would cause
panic,” Meagan continued. “It would kill a lot of people.”

“I think you’re
one the right track,” Ted conceded. “They’re all about terror. These guys want
to put the hurt on a lot of people. How do they do that? By killing innocent
civilians, who aren’t suspecting that they might be in danger. I think I’ve got
it.”

“What?”

“A cruise ship.
They’re going to blow up a cruise ship.”

William and Mary Island, Canada

The July sun beat
down on the corrugated iron roof of Ahmad’s workshop. The bare bulbs gave
little light, but sunlight poured in through the sash windows. Inhaling the
scent of wood and oil, Ahmad wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“This is ancient
technology,” he told Yasim as he traced over the blue prints for the hundredth
time. “This missile was built before I was born.”  He began flipping through
the pages.

Yasim looked at
the white lines on blue paper.

He doesn’t
understand any of this, does he?
Ahmad thought

“It has a two-part
guidance system.” Ahmad found the page he was looking for and pointed with the
end of his mechanical pencil. “When it’s first fired, the inertial guidance
system stabilizes the flight and gets it headed in the right direction.” Ahmad
flipped the page. “When it acquires a target, the radar system locks on and
guides it in.”

“But will not suit
for our purposes?”

This is like
explaining to a child.
“I don’t trust it.” Ahmad reached for a sheaf of
computer printouts on the shelf above his work bench. “More than half of the
Exocets fired in combat failed.” He leafed through the pile of papers. “Either
they didn’t explode or the guidance system failed.” He found what he was
looking for and held it out to Yasim. “Iraq fired hundreds of missiles in the Iran war and only a few ever hit their targets.”

Yasim ignored the
offered paper. “So you will use toy airplane system?”

“The Americans use
the same kind of system on their smart bombs.” Ahmad un-tacked a hand-drawn
diagram from the wall and handed it to Yasim. “The TV camera sends a signal
back to the operator, who ‘flies’ the bomb to its target.” Pencil drawings
covered the page. “They’re accurate to within a few feet. I showed you I can
fly a remote controlled airplane without ever seeing the plane, I can do the
same thing with this missile.”

“And this,” Yasim
waved the page at Ahmad, “is better than radar system?”

“Yes. The missile
wasn’t designed to be fired so close to the target.” Ahmad rolled up the pile
of blue prints. “From an airplane or another ship, they might fire from fifty
miles. We’ll be less than five miles out.” He used the roll of paper in his
hand to imitate the missile. “It will only take the missile seconds to reach
its target. That isn’t enough time for the radar to lock on target and guide it
in. I’ll be flying it from the time it leaves its launcher. Fortunately, we
have a very large target.”

****

Echo Bay, Canada

Meagan gasped at
Ted’s deduction that the terrorists planned to blow up a cruise ship.

“It’s a perfect
target,” Ted went on. “There are five or six thousand people on one of those
babies. If they sink it quickly in these cold waters, most of the passengers
are gonna die.”

Silence descended
upon the
Defiant’s
cabin. Ted sensed, rather than saw both Chris and
Meagan take a step back from his computer screen.

Meagan wrapped her
arms around herself as if feeling the sting of the chilly water.

“They wouldn’t
have time to put life boats in the water.” Ted’s hands flew around,
illustrating his points as his excitement built. “They could kill thousands of
people.”

“But why a cruise
ship?” Chris stared out the cabin window. “Besides killing a lot of people,
what’s in it for them?”

“Think about it.
The cruise industry is a multi-billion dollar business, dude. What happened
after 9/11? Everyone stopped flying. They thought it wasn’t safe. A bunch of
airlines went broke.”

“Totally.” Meagan
moved closer Chris. “My mom had tickets to fly back to Virginia to visit her
sister. She was so scared she let them expire rather than get on an airplane.”

“Okay, so they
blow up a cruise ship.” Ted stood and paced the cabin. “Then people all over
the world know how vulnerable cruise ships are.” He was ready to explode with
pent-up energy.

“They stop booking
cruises. The industry collapses. It puts thousands of people out of work, stock
holders lose their investment.” Ted reached the forward end of the cabin,
grabbed the mast and swiveled back around to Chris and Meagan. “It wouldn’t
cripple our economy, but it sure would hurt it.”

“They only have
one anti-ship missile.” Chris mused out loud. “What’re they going to do with
all of those shoulder launched missiles?” 

“Think like a
terrorist, dude. They sink the biggest, fattest target they can find. Then what
happens?”

“Rescue.” Meagan
spoke slowly. “People come to the rescue.”

“That’s right.
They might get some life boats in the water. Some yachts might come to pick up
survivors, but who’s going to respond first?

“The Coast Guard,”
Meagan said. “They’ll send helicopters.”

“Bingo!” Ted
touched his index finger to the end of his nose. “Those are surface to air
missiles. They’re going to shoot down the rescue helicopters.”

“But how can they
get away with it?” Tears formed in the corners of Meagan’s eyes. “Even if they
sink a ship and shoot down helicopters, how’ll they get away? The Coast Guard
or the Navy’ll hunt them down.”

“What if they
aren’t planning on getting away?” Ted’s voice took on an icy tone. “There was a
box of plastic explosives in that shed. Maybe they’re suicide bombers. It’s
just like in Iraq. Maybe they plan on blowing up the ship, then fighting off
the rescuers, but they realize that the Coast Guard and the Navy’ll eventually
come after ‘em. Maybe they’ll wait until a Navy ship comes along side, then
BOOM! They’re planning on dying for Allah.”

A long silence
filled the cabin. Ted walked to the galley and grabbed a beer from the ice
chest. Chris climbed the companionway steps and stood staring out at the
settlement. Meagan just studied her hands.

 “Shit!” Chris
slammed his fist into the bulkhead. “I just realized something.” 

Ted looked at his
friend. Chris’ body trembled. His breathing was shallow. His face was beet-red.

 “What’s the
biggest, most expensive cruise ship ever built?” Chris’ voice cracked. “What
ship’s going to have the most passengers? What ship’s going to be filled with
VIPs?”

Ted had never seen
his friend this emotional.

“Oh my God!”
Meagan’s hands went to her face. “Your dad.”

“That’s right. The
Star of the Northwest
. Dad, Sarah and Candace’ll be coming up here in a
few days.” Chris wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. “It’s the maiden
voyage of the biggest, most expensive cruise ship ever built. There’s going to
be senators, congressmen, governors, movie stars, rock stars on board. It’s
going to be a Who’s Who of America’s celebrity culture. What could be a more
inviting target?”

“This just got
personal, dude.”

****

Echo Bay, Canada

John and Kathy
MacLaughlin sat in folding camp chairs, staring out at the waters of Cramer
Passage with binoculars.

“There they are!”
Kathy pointed at a large black lump in the water.

“There’s the
baby,” John said. “It’s the mother and her calf.”

The two, owners of
the marina at Echo Bay, were endlessly fascinated by the abundance of wild life
that surrounded their little outpost. A mother humpback whale and her calf had
taken up residence in Cramer Pass. John and Kathy spent hours watching their
antics.

“Excuse me,” a
voice behind them said, breaking in on their whale watching time. “But we’ve
got to make a call. Do you have a telephone?”

Kathy, a thin, fit
looking woman in her sixties with short gray hair, looked at her young guest.
She seemed to be horribly upset.

“No dear, there
are no telephones out here. We have a short wave radio.”

“No that won’t
work. We need to call the Coast Guard.”

“That’s no
problem,” John butted in. “We can raise them on the short wave, or they monitor
channel sixteen on your VHF.”

“We need a land
line. We can’t talk to them over the air waves.”

“What’s the
matter, dear,” Kathy’s motherly instincts kicked in. She had a daughter just about
the girl’s age living in Vancouver and going to grad school at UBC.

“It’s really
important. We need to talk to the authorities. Where’s the nearest phone?”

“Port McNeil, I
expect,” John said.

The girl turned on
her heels and ran back down the float to the fuel dock.

“That’s the most
peculiar young lady,” Kathy said. “I wonder what’s troubling her.”