Countdown_ The Liberators Part 6

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.

-Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice,"

Act III, Scene I

D-123, San Antonio, Texas

It was very late. While some of the crew could be heard arguing quietly, or in the case of Kosciusko and Gordo, not all that quietly, most were asleep. Phillie could hear still others typing on keyboards. She was amazed that any of them were still on their feet. She heard footsteps and looked up as Boxer descended the staircase.

"Well," said Ralph, walking down the stairs, "Victor's going to be a problem."

Stauer, currently poring over a map with Wahab, looked up and asked, "Why's that?"

"He's been caught and is in a Myanmar jail. Lox and Bridges are working on a complete report of the situation."

"So much for Victor," Stauer said. "Now who replaces him?"

"n.o.body," Boxer answered. "The only other one who both could have and would have, Israel Efimovich, is in an Italian jail. And that Yemeni I mentioned is too much of an unknown quant.i.ty."

"Well that sucks moose c.o.c.k. Suggestions?" Wes asked.

"Spring one of them. I'd recommend Victor, in part because he's better at his job than Efimovich, in part because his operation is probably much more intact, and in part because a Myanmar jail has to be easier to spring him from than an Italian one. After all, the Italians have been practicing on the Mafia for decades."

Stauer nodded and turned to Phillie. "Hon," he said, "would you call Terry at the lodge and have him come here?"

"But it's so late . . . "

"Trust me, babe, that's not an issue."

"You're actually going to free Victor Inning from jail?" Wahab asked. As an African, he was more than ordinarily sensitive to the various wars fed by the likes of Inning and his compet.i.tors.

"You knew we were going to use him, Wahab," Stauer said. "What difference how we get him? I mean, does your chief want his son back or not?"

"Speaking of which," Ralph interjected, "I know how the boy left Boston. I think I do, anyway."

Both Stauer and Wahab were interested in that. "How?" the African asked. "And how do you know?"

"I did a query of queries," Boxer answered. "About six weeks ago someone at sea, on a s.h.i.+p christened the George Galloway, did a number of searches for kidnappings and disappearances reported in Boston. Can't think of any good reason for someone to do that who wasn't concerned expressly about kidnappings in Boston. The Galloway also left Boston the morning after the boy disappeared. It was next seen in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. After that, the trail goes cold, unless the boy's still aboard."

"I wonder what the crew could tell us?" Stauer mused.

"I doubt they'd tell us anything," Boxer answered.

Stauer gave a wicked grin. "Yes they would. It's only a matter of making sure they understand their real priorities. Can you track down where the s.h.i.+p is and where it's headed now?"

"Piece o' cake," Boxer answered.

"Phillie," Stauer called out, "tell Terry to bring his tame SEAL, too."

"Use four men to take down one s.h.i.+p with a crew of maybe twenty or twenty-five, when they've got no warning that we're coming?" the SEAL asked. He sneered "Piece o' cake."

The SEAL, more exactly the retired SEAL, Richard "Biggus d.i.c.kus" Thornton, had arms the size of Terry Welch's legs. And Terry's legs were not spindly. Even Stauer found the man's sheer bulk and obvious strength almost intimidating.

"But," Biggus added, "We'll have to hit it in or near a port, preferably as it's leaving, so I'll need the s.h.i.+p's schedule some time in advance. Also architectural drawings, arms, a way to get there, NVGs"-night vision goggles- "preferably PVS-21's-"

"I can get you PVS-7s," Gordo interjected, "or something just as good. But 21's just aren't to be had on the open market."

Biggus thought about that before agreeing, and then adding to his shopping list, "I'll need scuba gear for four, a boat, a padded extending ladder, a . . . "

"Just give me your list," Gordo said. "I'll see what I can do."

Bridges looked decidedly skeptical.

Ralph waved a finger. "Chief," he said to the SEAL, "don't be so sure how easy this will be. Bridges has traced back all of the Galloway's stops and routes for the last couple of years. I think they're not just a carrier for hire. I suspect they're AQ Navy, either owned or leased."

Al Qaeda Navy, so called, was a collection, some suspected a very large collection, of merchant vessels owned or crewed by that terrorist organization.

"Really," the SEAL's face was lit with a feral smile. "In that case, what was professional has just become personal." He faced Stauer and asked, "Sir, if I find, after boarding, that they are AQN can I terminate the lot of them?"

Over that Stauer didn't hesitate a moment. He had his own grudges. "Yes. Or anything else you can imagine."

"You know," Gordo said, "if we're going to off the crew we could save a few million by taking over the Galloway, rather than buying our own."

"It's tempting," Stauer conceded. "But I think it drives up our chances of being compromised. Better just to scuttle it at sea. If, that is, it really is AQN."

Kosciusko wandered over and said, "Forget using Galloway; it's not big enough for our purposes.

"Oh, well," said Gordo. "How will you know if it is AQN?" he asked of Biggus.

"I find a mosque on the s.h.i.+p," the SEAL answered, with a shrug, "that's no big deal in itself. But if I find a c.r.a.pload of Al Qaeda literature, weapons over and above maybe two rifles and a pistol, anything remotely smelling of explosives or detonators, money much in excess of what a s.h.i.+p normally carries in the safe, a dungeon, complete with chains, code books, how-to make a suicide vest videos, CDs with Daniel Pearl's or Fabrizio Quatrocchi's heads being sawed off . . . "

Gordo held up his hands, palm out. "I get the picture, Chief."

"Slave girls being transported are also not uncommon indicators," Thornton finished.

Bridges, who had been silent for some time, took the opportunity to say, "Most of what you've asked for, Chief, even if Gordo can get it for you, you can't take it with you."

"Why the h.e.l.l not?" Biggus d.i.c.kus asked.

"The Euros are often quite sensitive to things with military potential, even if they're not actual weapons. Night vision is one of those things, for example. And firearms are really touchy. Once you have something on a boat or plane it isn't that much of a problem; it's getting it from one to the other."

"s.h.i.+t! I've always been used to travelling under orders, with whatever we need on hand. This is . . . different."

"We'll figure out something for you, Chief," Stauer said, then turned his attention to Welch. "Terry, yours is in most ways a tougher mission, even though we know where Victor's being held. How are you going to do it?"

Welch frowned. "We can get his lawyer to set up a hearing at which Victor will have to be present. That gives us a time certain he'll be outside of the jail and a probable or certain route. The problem will be getting him out of country after that."

"I don't want any Burmese police killed," Stauer said.

"Makes it tougher, of course," Terry said. "Not impossible, just tougher. It will also make getting him out of the country tougher. I'm going to need an airplane and a pilot, or, better, a helicopter and pilot, both to bring us in and to bring us out again."

"Mike Cruz isn't due in for another two days," Stauer said. "He's going to be our chief wing wiper."

"Marine chopper pilot with a Ranger Tab?" Welch asked.

"I didn't know you knew him, Terry?"

"I don't, Wes; I just heard about him. He'll do."

Stauer turned to Welch and Thornton in turn, then asked, "How many days until you can give me a plan we can go with?"

"Three days," Welch answered. Thornton weighed that for a minute before nodding agreement. "Sure, three days."

D-121, Corpus Christi, Texas

Seagulls whirled and swooped along the sh.o.r.e. A warm breeze came off the Gulf, carrying with it the not entirely unpleasant smell of the sea, which was to say, the smell of the sh.o.r.e. A number of people, a plurality of them neither white nor black, but brown, cavorted by that sh.o.r.e. A smaller number of people, most of them white and all of them older, watched from a cafe on land.

Mike Cruz-and it was "Mike," rather than "Miguel"-had arrived a bit early, the night before. Then he, Stauer, and a small cadre had driven the one hundred and fifty odd miles to this coastal city and port to explain the facts of life, of s.h.i.+ps anyway, to the landlubbers, Stauer, Boxer, and Gordo. Cruz pointed across the bay to the USS Lexington and said, "That's really what you want."

Cruz was a retired Marine, retired and bored. Normally, he ran a farm in middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania. Occasionally he did some teaching, or defense work, under contract.

As a younger man, a much younger man, he'd served as a very junior infantryman at the tail end of Vietnam. Following that, and despite the gla.s.ses he now wore perched on his nose, he'd gone commissioned, then to Army Ranger School, then switched over to choppers, the heaviest kind. As far as his emotional relations.h.i.+p between Marine infantry and Marine aviation, he sometimes said that he felt like a man, "torn between two lovers." He was pretty attached to both.

That wasn't why he'd come though. He'd come because, I was just so d.a.m.ned, b.l.o.o.d.y bored. I doubt I was alone in that.

Kosciusko, the mostly bald ex-naval officer, smiled at the stocky retired Marine and said, "I don't know about him, but I sure as h.e.l.l would like one."

"Delusions of grandeur," Cruz announced.

"Doesn't really matter," Gordo said. "It isn't for sale. Matter of fact, there's not another aircraft carrier for sale anywhere. Not so long ago it was a different story, the old Minas Gerais was even up on eBay. It's been sent to the breakers already."

"Wouldn't matter," Boxer said, "even if it were available. We need stealth, which in our case means complete lack of remarkability."

"Couldn't afford the crew if the thing were invisible. So a cargo s.h.i.+p?" Stauer asked.

"Yes," Kosciusko agreed, "except with a big but. You want the s.h.i.+p able to launch and recover helicopters-which isn't that hard-and fixed wing aircraft, which is really f.u.c.king hard. We could maybe build a temporary flight deck, if we had a long enough s.h.i.+p."

"Except that flight deck has to be something that can be quickly a.s.sembled and disa.s.sembled," Boxer said, "or we lose our stealth. Even I can't hide something like looks like an aircraft carrier continuously from the eye in the sky."

"We can get some genuine short takeoff birds," Cruz added, "which will reduce the need for a flight deck but of those that will take a really short roll before takeoff, the very best that are available are only really available in kit form."

"Which means we'd have to set up a factory and build them."

Stauer nodded, and said, "And I trust you have some recommendations."

"We need that abandoned missile base for a factory," Gordo said, "the one in Was.h.i.+ngton state. Two point eight million, plus maybe a few hundred thousand and ten days to a couple of weeks or so to make it halfa.s.s livable. The planes, of which we need about eight, take two hundred and fifty to five hundred man hours to turn from kits to aircraft. Call it five hundred. That's four thousand man hours."

"Why the missile base?" Stauer asked. "I would think any old warehouse-"

"The kits are made in the Czech Republic," Gordo said, then amended, "Well, some are made in Canada but the Czechs have a tradition of closed mouthedness. FAA lets them in on the presumption they'll be put together by a home builder. But eight of them? No, we're setting up something more like an industrial operation. Bound to attract attention from the FAA if noticed by someone and reported to them. So we move it out of sight."

"And I need them ready within the month," Cruz said, "and it will be two weeks to set everything up."

"So," Gordo continued, "even if we work the builders twelve hours a day for fifteen days, that's a building crew of, oh, call it twenty-three or twenty-four, with a foreman, every one of which is a security risk."

"But we have a solution," Ralph said, smiling.

"Why does that smile make me worry?" Stauer asked.

"Because you're a natural paranoid," Boxer replied. "In any case, we can solve both the labor problem and the security problem in one fell swoop."

"Oh, really? Tell me how."

Boxer jabbed a finger toward the beach. "Mexicans. Illegal Mexicans. They'll never complain to any authorities. And anyone who thinks Mexicans don't have an amazingly strong work ethic-at least until inner city liberals get their sticky paws on them-is an idiot."