Red stood in the seat and waved him off. “Touch me again and you'll be eating your hand.”
“Reicherd!” the corpsman shouted. “Need some help on this one!” He pressed Red back into his seat. “Please, sir.”
Red grabbed the corpsman's hand and twisted till it was scratching the back of the guy's neck. He screamed. Red stepped into the aisle and let go, stumbling back into the cabin. Crawler was hopping on one foot, moving the remains of the crate so he could open the door to the head. Jim and Ali were gone. Carter lay outside on a stretcher, in a neck brace. Lanyard jumped across the threshold, which was canted, the door lying on the deck. He swung an arm around Red.
“You need to sit down, sir.” He pulled Red in to lean on his shoulder.
“Status?” Red asked, highly nasal, nose clogged, spraying blood with the question.
“We're alive. Took a few minutes to get my wind back. Damn, and I thought getting shot hurt.”
Red pushed away and stepped through the doorway onto gray steel deck plate mounded with foam. He had to get to Lori. Why did everyone seem to be leaning? The wings were cut jagged where the plane had slid sideways and hit the net. The air smelled of JP-8. White streaks from the belly of the craft painted the deck where hoses were washing the foam off. The turbine in one of the engines whined, spinning down. The former ghost ship was crawling with life. Skittles everywhere, yellow and red and green jerseys, lugging fire hose, running lift trucks, and pushing the tail section into the sea. White jerseys carried stretchers. Amin was attached to one, arms strapped down as in an asylum.
Good riddance
, thought Red.
A man in a khaki uniform stepped around the nose of the plane. “You Major Harmon?” he shouted over the wind.
Wait. There were two khaki uniforms now. Red blinked hard, then again. Nope, still two. “Yeah.”
The guy grabbed his hand and shook it hard, slapping his shoulder. Red winced.
“Your corpsman told me you're in charge.”
“Where's Lori?”
“Who's she? The pilot? Don't know. I'll take you there. You need a corpsman yourself.”
“The colonel, he okay?”
The officer scowled. “Y'all got no insignia. He the guy shot? Lost a lot of blood. Looks like shit. You got him here alive. We'll try to keep him that way.”
Red tried to focus but the officer kept moving, both of him. Damn. He was a captain. Red offered a salute.
“Steady. Ship's nurse'll get you to sick bay.” Red refused a stretcher. Lanyard came back over to walk him upright. An MP followedâdidn't look old enough to shave yet.
“Hope you don't mind,” the captain said with an eat-shit grin, “but your team will be escorted till you're off my ship.”
The MP drew a pistol, aiming at the door of the plane. Crawler stepped out with a SAM slung across his back.
“Shit, Crawler,” Red shouted. “You're on a carrier. Don't be a dumbass here, too.”
Crawler paused, frowned, then set the SAM behind him, back on the floor of the plane.
White jerseys laid the prisoners on stretchers, handcuffed them down, and carried them toward the island. A guy in a bright blue jersey ran to the captain and leaned to his ear.
The captain shouted over a gust of wind, leaning into it. “Anything else you need off your plane?” he asked Red.
“What plane?”
The man in blue smiled, turned back toward the Gulfstream, raised a finger and swung it in a tight circle. Then tractor drivers pushed the aircraft into the sea, followed by a brigade of street sweepers pushing foam and jagged metal and glass in front of them, off the deck.
Chapter 26
Today
C
arter jerked the cuffs of his Brooks Brothers pinpoint oxford down over his wrists, maintaining a neat half-inch reveal from under a crisp blue Armani suit coat. Better to go cheap on the shirt instead of the jacket. The hard soles of his Gucci lace-ups clacked down the tiled hallway in the basement of El Maruot, a vending concessions depot off of Nassir Fawzi, outside Cairo, Egypt. The corridor smelled of bleach, the chemical scent a welcome change from the stench of the Pardis River that had taken days to scrub off.
The busy distribution center above buzzed with hundreds of workers and salesmen scampering around the maze of a warehouse, a perfect cover for any screams that might escape from the basement. Fifteen inches of concrete and steel separated the two floors.
He turned a heavy handle and pushed through a thick metal door into a dim room the size of a single-car garage. Seats in two rows faced a huge flat-screen television, like a movie theater. Carter slipped back into a padded folding chair beside two Israelis, one a black-haired woman in her mid-thirties with long frizzy locks and the other an older man with bright white eyes rimmed in red at the bottom like hardboiled eggs floating in blood. He'd met the man, Mr. Levine, a Mossad spy, early this morning, and his eyes had appeared the same then.
The screen displayed an interrogation room, the interior of an ocean shipping crate with deeply corrugated walls. The view of the high-definition camera came from one corner of the ceiling, behind the interrogator, who was sitting with legs crossed and with his hands knit together, resting on a clipboard on his lap. The subject, Amin, sat on a wooden stool, arms and legs shackled by dull steel chains to an eyebolt in the floor. Black stubble grew across his face into a short beard, thin down his neck, flecked in white. Greasy olive skin glowed in a pale shade of yellow, as if jaundiced, wrinkled across his nose like creased wax paper. Puffy close-set eyes were flush in pink exhaustion. A small wooden table separated the interrogator from him. The layout was similar to Carter's debrief room stateside, next to the sheriff's office. Except this space had a plywood floor, stained various shades of brown in overlapping splatters like dried petals of a huge flower.
Blood
, Carter thought.
He leaned toward Mr. Levine. “Anything happen since I stepped out?”
The bags under Levine's bright eyes vibrated as he spoke. “Nothing.” The man slapped his thigh. “We will get it. We have ways. Wut not here.” His B's sounded like W's.
Of course they had ways. But Mossad would put its best foot forward at this stage, trying to maintain a civil appearance while among unfamiliar company. They couldn't act in a politically incorrect manner when CIA was present, since you never know when that organization might bust at a seam and spew leaked intelligence to the world. Lately it seemed to happen once a year. Ever heard of Mossad having a leak? No, these guys plugged them with dead bodies. “I'm not CIA.”
Levine's chin rumpled as he stuck out a lip. “None of you ever are. If it makes you feel wetter, I'm a sales executive for Filo Caldo, an Italian manufacturer of wire products.”
Carter pushed up a cuff and glanced at the black blades beneath the watch crystal. The interrogation was wearing into its fourth hour. Mind-numbing. Mossad's tactics thus far had not proven to be worthy of their reputation. Carter had gotten more out of the man in five minutes than they'd produced in two days. Might as well call it an interview. But at least he'd be able to slip home tomorrow. Mossad had requested Carter to be present for only the first three days after Amin was turned over. Two down, almost. One to go.
The interrogator's voice through the speaker was a monotone hum. All day yesterday. And four long hours today. Hell, Carter was about to confess to the crime. Anything to get moving. Except there had been no wrongdoing, according to Amin.
“Tell me about the hidden centrifuges,” the interrogator droned. He slid a photo across the table. Amin reached for it, but his cuffs stopped his arms short. “How many are running now?”
Amin stared at the picture. “I've never seen those things.”
“We have photos of you next to them.”
“Show me.”
“It would compromise those who gave them to us. We can't.”
And on and on it went. A dog chasing its tail.
The interrogator held up two fingers toward the camera.
Finally!
An odd gesture, but clear to Carter. The detective stood, brushed his suit straight, recinched his green silk Ferragamo tie, and stepped outside the door. Slipping through a wide opening covered by ribbons of thick clear sheet vinyl, he strode down an elongated white room past three green shipping containers, stopping at the third. His breath frosted in refrigerated air; outside the building it was a balmy fifty degrees. A loudspeaker gushed waves lapping against a bulkhead, accented with an occasional laughing seagull and clanging buoy. All a play, an act, for Amin. As far as the prisoner was aware, he was inside an insulated ocean container on a dock outside an abandoned salmon processing plant somewhere in Alaska.
One of the crate's end doors stood ajar. Carter slipped through it into a cramped space, a foyer he'd call it, had it not been the entrance to an interrogation chamber. One last tug on his jacket, a lift of his chin, a final turn of a handle, and he pressed through the last door.
Carter stepped onto the plywood floor. The room was just as sparse as revealed by the video feed to the joint CIA/Mossad observation room he'd just left. He entered behind the interrogator and stood. It had been a week since Carter had questioned Amin in the basement bunker, and the slice in Amin's cheek where his teeth had broken through was healing nicely, held together by knotted black threads sewn by a corpsman trained to be expedient in battle, not to minimize scarring. Eye sockets were still sunken in purple. Orange prison clothes hung loosely from his body. His lips were purple, not quite blue, and he shivered.
Amin's eyes widened as he lifted his gaze from the photos on the table. He backed away from the detective as if he were radioactive waste, slipping off his stool, but was caught by his shackles with a jerk.
Carter twisted his neck to one side, popping a vertebra that had become particularly noisy since Lori's crash landing. He slipped onto a matching stool in a corner, below the video camera, rested one foot on a rung, and leaned toward Amin.
The interrogator didn't miss a beat. He tapped the picture on the table and rubbed an eyebrow. His English was flat, without any noticeable accent, as if from Maryland or Virginia. “The Americans who brought you here, they did not want to give you up. But we persuaded them. It appears you made a personal attack on the family of a high-ranking politician. The U.S. has lobbied for your possession.” The interrogator looked up now, a weak smile hanging on thin lips. “We acknowledge their significant investment in obtaining you, and since you appear to not have any information of value to us, I am inclined to allow them to have you.”
Carter stood.
Amin shuddered. He brushed his thin pants as if sweeping off ants. “This man is not American! You can't turn me over to him.”
The interrogator covered his mouth as he yawned. Good move. Carter was going to have to remember that one. “The Americans will treat you well.”
“This man will kill me. He's the one who stabbed me in my legs. He put a blade through my foot!”
The interrogator straightened in his chair, arched his back, and rubbed his kidneys. “This man saved your life. He pulled you from a burning plane after it crash-landed. Your own air force shot it down. I've shown you the news clip from your own state-run news agency. The fact you came out of it with only a few dozen stiches shows how much the Americans care for your well-being.”
Well played. Carter held out a hand. “I'll take him now.”
Amin jerked his arms away. A crimson dot spread on the thigh of his orange cotton pants. All the jostling he'd just performed may have opened a stitch. “Those news clips are a lie! We didn'tâ”
The interrogator squared to Amin, placing both feet on the plywood. “But it is a state news agency. You mean we can't believe what your government says?”
Amin stuttered. “N-no. I mean, yes. You're putting words in my mouth.”
“If we can't trust what they broadcast to the world, we can't believe their denials of secret weapons-grade-uranium-enrichment facilities.” The interrogator tapped the photo.
Amin glanced at the picture again, leaning over it. “IâI may have been here before.” He smiled, uncovering a chipped front tooth. “Yes. I believe it was a petroleum laboratory. That is why I didn't recognize it at first. Yes, just a few months ago.” He sat down on his stool, gazed locked with the interrogator. “I stay in Israeli custody. You move me from this site to a secure location, within Israeli borders, with white-collar criminals. You do this, and I will tell you all I know about this photo.”
The interrogator was a genius. He'd just moved the conversation from Amin denying any knowledge of Iran's underground nuclear facilities to full disclosure. And in the process Amin had unwittingly sealed his own fate. This droning monotone man had just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.
Carter sat back down. He pushed aside a pang of guilt, knowing Mossad wouldn't let Amin live but a few more weeks. You don't make deals with the enemy. What a joke. They don't speak that language. But Amin deserved what he was going to get.
And the Middle East would be that much more stable. Carter mused how restful his flight home tomorrow would be. CIA would spring for first-class tickets, with plush seats and complementary champagne. His cheeks drew tight as he smiled, realizing he'd soon be back to his semiretired state, a detective in New Kent County.
Where he'd never have to be dropped from an aircraft or carry an automatic weapon again.
* * *
The old gray Sikorsky MH-53J Pave Low shuddered as it lifted from the huge concrete apron behind the Det, where the Tupolev had picked up the team a week earlier. The huge cargo bay was lined down each side with drum-tight nylon seats that could double as stretchers, useful for both infil and exfil. Red had patted the two patched 35mm holes before climbing in. It was becoming a bit of a superstition, maybe like Crawler's pre-op puffs on his cigar. But today the team was in blue jeans and sweat shirts. A winter heat wave had rolled through the Mid-Atlantic states, and sixty degrees felt like summer. Most of those who had participated in last week's op sat inside the helo. The venerable craft could carry up to fifty-five troops, so plenty of room remained beside Dr. Ali, Capt. Richards, Marksman, Crawler, and Lanyard.
Marksman stood and strode to the front of the craft. He gripped the twin handles of the port-side minigun, then pulled the trigger and the six-barreled column spun, but didn't fire. The weapon was empty for the joyride. He pivoted and squeezed at imaginary targets as the helicopter gained altitude. “You know they make a fifty-cal minigun now, a GAU-19. Ought to get one of those.”
Across the aisle, Red stared at a blue and white bumper sticker stuck to the ship's olive drab aluminum skin, above Lanyard's head.
I Love Jet Noise
, it stated, with a silhouette of an F-18 Hornet. Red wondered which Navy squid had snuck into the hangar and stuck that one up there. He opened his mouth to tell Lanyard to rip it down, then decided against it. The Det was a purple-suit organization if there ever was one. Inside were members of every military branch, plus liaisons from most departments of the U.S. government and several foreign ones. RECON, SEALs, FBI, CIA, even a rep from British SAS and another from Russia's Spetsnaz. Like someone had opened a knife drawer and tossed in every blade they could find, then shaken it up till the daggers were strewn haphazardly. How had Jim kept them so neat and in order, lined in their little slots and not sliding around and dinging other blades?
Jim.
Red hadn't allowed himself time to think of his commander's death. Jim had hung on for three hours after the landing on the aircraft carrier, but one of the bullets he'd taken in the chest had plunged close to his heart, so Red had been told. Jim had saved Red's life, throwing him under the truck, taking shots that had been aimed at him. Sick bay hadn't allowed Red to see the body, and within eight hours a hasty evacuation in a blacked-out Grumman C-2 had taken the team and prisoners off the carrier.
Jim's absence had left a huge hole at the Det. A hole Red had been assigned by Higher to fill. He had to seal that void, to honor the man Jim had been. He pushed it from his mind once again. He'd allow time to process those thoughts later.
Because today was a happy day, a celebration of an op well done.
The helo climbed into a shallow bank, and afternoon sun gleamed into the open rear cargo door, highlighting a Browning fifty cal, mounted there and casting its shadow across the ramp, moving in an arc like a sun dial as the chopper turned.
Red gently squeezed plastic ribs taped across his nose. Still sore. Dr. Ali had said it'd be another few days till he could remove the splint. At least now he didn't have cotton gauze shoved into his sinuses. He drew a deep breath though his nose, just because he could. The aroma of jet fuel greeted his senses. One of the many scents of freedom. He leaned forward and placed a palm on the floor. The old gray girl felt joyous, like a mother released from prison, reunited with her family.
“How we going to get to the beach?” Lanyard shouted above the whir of dual General Electric turboshafts.
Marksman pointed to a fast rope, a thick braided mass fastened to the ceiling near the rear of the craft, hanging and coiled on the ramp like a cobra.