Trident Force (2 page)

Pop. Pop.
To be certain, he fired a second shot into each head, from a different angle than the first. He then loaded the two cadavers onto a plastic tarpaulin in the back of the van, washed away the small, obvious pools of blood with a five-gallon jug of water he had brought with him, and drove off.

To the south, over the city, there was a distant flash of lightning. Then another.

 

The air was humid, hazy and heavy as the sun first peeked over the horizon. Anna Olivieros lay in bed, watching the pink wall of her bedroom brighten, and wished she were dead.

Carlos had not come home that night. True, he had stayed out other nights, but she knew that this time was different. The past few days he'd been so distant. It was as if she weren't even there. She'd tried to convince herself that he had another girlfriend. That would have hurt but it would have been bearable. But it wasn't true. Carlos had been busy with some project, some clever, unsavory project. He often was. But this time was different, she knew in her heart. He'd moved on to something bigger. This time he had left her and she was certain she'd never see him again.

The last thing in the world she wanted to do was get up, but she did. She dragged herself out of her bed and headed for the bathroom. Life does go on, she told herself, knowing that was true but not totally relevant. More to the point, she had to work to eat, and that, she knew, was something she would want to do. As for the apartment, she suspected that without money from Carlos it was history.

Realizing she was running late and struck with a sudden terror that she might lose her job in addition to losing Carlos, Anna picked up the pace, her actions reflecting habit more than conscious thought. She showered, dressed in something, made up her face, combed her hair and was out the door, her heels clacking, in less than half an hour.

If Anna's apartment and neighborhood were far from grand, they were also far from
favela.
No tin and cardboard shacks with muddy dirt floors. The building was of concrete and had electricity, running hot and cold water and an elevator. The interior walls and floors were worn but reasonably clean. Despite the almost overwhelming pain at losing Carlos, she was able to feel how much she would miss living in the building, which she wouldn't be able to afford on her own income. Unless some miracle occurred, her next stop would be both lonely and wretched.

Muggy though the morning was, it was still early. In another hour it would be much worse. When Anna stepped out the front door of the apartment building, she stepped into the vibrant flow of life that is Brazil. The crowds flowing both directions along the sidewalk weren't exactly dancing the rumba, but they were moving rapidly and purposefully. Out in the road, the solid mass of cars, trucks and buses executed their own incomprehensible ballet—jerking and twisting and weaving around and between one another. As they danced, they filled the already super-saturated air with the blasts of their horns.

Anna turned toward the bus stop, only to see the bus pulling away, leaving a dense tail of diesel smoke. She cursed quietly, then debated with herself whether to try to catch the bus at the next stop or wait for the next one at her normal stop.

Did it really matter? she wondered numbly. Her mother hadn't liked Carlos. Neither had her brother. They didn't trust him, and neither, really, did she. He was handsome, flashy, vibrant, and she knew that she was plain. Worst of all, she was in love with him. Now all she could do was hope against hope that she was wrong. With a sigh, she decided she couldn't run with her heels on, so she turned toward the stop she used every day.

Distracted as she was, Anna didn't at first notice the white SUV with heavily tinted windows parked between her and the bus stop. Out of the corner of her eye she did, however, notice Oswaldo, the handsome young street thug standing beside the car. Impossible as it seemed to her, she found him even more attractive than Carlos. The fact was that everybody who'd ever laid eyes on him would have agreed that he was a very presentable and attractive young man. Except when he was beating your face to a pulp with a two-by-four or shoving a knife into your navel.

“Anna, my love!” shouted Oswaldo as he reached out and grabbed her passing arm. Using her momentum, he then swung her around in one smooth motion and ushered her into the SUV before she understood what was happening. He jumped in behind her, slammed the door behind him, and the van sped off, weaving through the heavy, but not impossible, traffic. Without pausing, Oswaldo wrapped a thin line around Anna's neck and quickly twisted it tight. He wanted to silence and strangle her, not to cut her head off. He watched with pleasure as her startled look turned to one of fear, her hands clutched frantically at her throat and her mouth opened wide, screaming silently. He slammed her in the side of the head when her body tried to struggle. He looked again at her face. Her eyes looked as if they were about to pop out. He considered relaxing the garrote slightly, deceiving her into believing that she might yet draw another breath, but he resisted the temptation. The job had to be done quickly and thoroughly.

If any of the passersby had even noticed the incident, they would have undoubtedly assumed that the handsome lad was giving a friend a ride. Unable to see through the windows, they would have had no way of knowing that Anna Olivieros was dead four minutes after the SUV pulled away from the curb.

 

Moored next to the finishing dock at the Estaleiro Tecmar yard, the white hull and upper works of the expedition cruise ship
Aurora Australis
glowed in the morning sun. Highlighting this great expanse of white, the ship's Day-Glo orange covered lifeboats/survival capsules hung like beads along the sides of her superstructure.

Roughly five hundred feet in length, with a net register tonnage of slightly under twenty-five thousand and powered by two huge, German diesels,
Aurora
was as small as cruise ships go. She was nothing in comparison with the immense floating hotels, over a thousand feet long, that made their long-established circuits around the Caribbean, but then she wasn't a standard cruise ship. Rather, she was one of the smallish group of ships designed to take—in her case five hundred—affluent adventurers on expeditions to out-of-the-way places and, along the way, provide a level of luxury almost equal to that offered by their larger cousins.

Aurora
was built tough—ice-reinforced hull, numerous redundant systems, an unusually high level of stability—to enable her to overcome the dangers of nature. But it is next to impossible to design and build a ship strong enough to resist the dangers posed by determined and resourceful men of ill will.

 

Mamoud al Hussein, the executive who provided on-scene representation for the foreign owner of the Estaleiro Tecmar, stood in the living room of his house. The house, of which he had for short periods of time been quite proud, was a large, modern concrete-and-glass structure set in Rio's high southern hills. All surrounded by a high wall and equally high-tech security system. The view was magnificent—the Atlantic to the south, the center of the city to the east and the Baia de Guanabara beyond. As he watched the sun continue its journey from Africa, Mamoud listened to the sultan's prime minister on the phone and thought just how fortunate he was to have the view he did. And how regrettable it was that he could no longer enjoy it emotionally as much as he appreciated it intellectually.

“From what you report, Mamoud, it all appears to be going well. Operating profits are up and the operation is beginning to develop an international reputation for quality and innovation.”

“Thank you, Your Exellency.”

As he spoke, Mamoud smiled slightly. Everything
was
going very well. The charges were in place, and Omar assured him that the heart of the man on the ship burned with a fury equal to Mamoud's. Although neither the prime minister nor the sultan realized it, His Highness was doing much to make the world a better place, much more than simply operating a cutting-edge shipyard. He was facilitating a cosmically good deed, a most virtuous act, without even knowing it.

In fact, the sultan might not even consider it a virtuous act at all.

While His Highness ranted endlessly to the masses of his subjects about his devotion to his faith, his true love was cash. Business. When it came to cash, His Highness was just as ruthless as the most vicious terrorist.

“We are so pleased, Mamoud, that we are considering moving you on to a totally new project, one which will be exceptionally challenging. Assuming you are ready to move on.”

“I'm confident that the local management at Tecmar is well able to follow through on the program, Your Excellency.”

“Good. You are familiar with our plan to build a new solar panel factory, are you not?”

“Yes, Your Excellency. The last I heard no decision had been made on where to build it.”

“For various reasons, both economic and political, it has been decided to build it in North Africa. We would like you to take charge of it and ensure that, despite the obvious challenges, it is a success.”

“I'm honored, Your Excellency. It sounds like a very interesting project. When should I plan to leave here?”

“Plan on another month in Brasil, then a couple weeks of vacation if you wish, then come to the capital to assemble your team.”

“I look forward to it, Your Exellency.”

Mamoud the engineer couldn't help but be pleased with the news. Mamoud the terrorist was also perfectly satisfied with it. There was nothing further for him to do in Rio.

Mamoud al Hussein was very much a man of science. He had a Ph.D. in engineering. He'd taught at both MIT and Caltech, owned a dozen major patents and gloried in the scientific method.

Mamoud al Hussein was also very much a man of faith. He had concluded, at an early age, that there existed concepts—good and evil, dignity, justice were examples he might use—that are utterly meaningless to science. The applications made by humans of these concepts were totally explicable to him, but the existence of the concepts, by themselves, was not. Thus, he concluded there was some sort of entity from which these concepts originated, and he was willing to call that corpus God.

For Mamoud al Hussein, there was no conflict between faith and science. Science constituted the revelation of God's wonders. The scientific method was one route to God. The great Arab scientists and philosophers of the First Millennium had no problem with the juxtaposition, so why should he? And whenever he thought of the millions of Christians and Moslems who had devoted, and still did devote, so much time and hate to fighting science, he felt ill.

Mamoud believed deeply that science and faith must coexist, yet everywhere he looked he saw faith under attack. More now than ever before, in his view. By the ignorant, foolish masses of the world, who were increasingly beguiled by their growing material prosperity. By the cynical, hateful institutions of politics and the media. For them, faith was a joke, something to be hugged when necessary and laughed at contemptuously when it threatened to cramp their style.

This abuse of faith—and the abuse of reason that was part of the process—infuriated Mamoud well beyond any state that might be called reasonable. It created within him a white-hot rage that burned in his guts day and night, even though no sign of it ever slipped through his façade of calm, measured reason. So powerful was the flame that it instantly vaporized the deep, emotional pleasure he had once felt from the company of a woman or from a view such as the one he was now observing or even from the thrill of an engineering triumph. He remained fully capable of appreciating but utterly unable to enjoy.

For years Mamoud had kept his silence, but the current situation was now intolerable. It was a situation that a man of his intellect, his abilities, his ego simply could not allow to continue. He had to speak out, to act. To make an unforgettable statement, a grim one if necessary, that would be seen by all. If, in time, this manifestation of faith—or another—led to his destruction, so be it.

2

South Florida

“God damn it!” growled Chief Boatswain's Mate (DV) Jerry Andrews as he squatted, squirming, in the rank, black mud, imprisoned on all sides by the head-high salt grass.

Mike Chambers, CO of the Trident Force, agreed silently as he squatted beside Andrews in the awful mud. The black gunk. The blowtorch sun. The sharp, tough grasses that made the dry squeaking sound of centuries-old dead bones as they rubbed against each other. The vicious horseflies that jabbed, sliced or bit every exposed part of their bodies—not to mention the yellowish-brown clouds of chiggers that hissed around their heads—all of which continued to attack despite the fact that Chambers and his people were totally soaked in DEET and undoubtedly developing some totally new type of cancer. It was sheer torture. And it was intended to be sheer torture.

Twenty years ago he might have considered the drill something close to sport. A test of physical skill and determination. A chance to prove himself to himself, if to nobody else. Not anymore. Now it was, at best, a vile necessity—an exercise to maintain certain skills that were but only a part of his current mission.

Captain Michael Chambers, USN, commanded a top-secret, super-low-profile antiterrorism intelligence and intervention/strike group that reported directly to the secretary of defense. The Force had been created to deal with nautical incidents and other threats to U.S. ports, shipping and other maritime interests, especially those involving sticky questions concerning sovereignty and intervention authority.

Mike himself had joined the SEALs upon graduation from the Naval Academy. After several years of special operations, he decided that maybe the navy really was about boats and ships. He transferred back to the fleet and, over the years, rose to command an LPH, one of the helicopter amphibious assault ships that had developed into the backbone of the navy's force projection mission. When SECDEF himself first offered the Trident job to Mike, he had demurred, but then agreed when assured that once he finished setting up the Force and running it for a year or two, he would get his flag.