Countdown: The Liberators-ARC (6 page)

"You do understand," the Yemeni said, "I am only getting the things on a ship, a ship that will be poorly guarded, and that ship to the local waters. It is up to your maritime mujahadin to actually seize the ship and its cargo."

"Yes, of course," Gutaale agreed, with a confident shrug. "And the trainers will come?"

"About three weeks later," the Yemeni answered. "It will take you that long to get the equipment off-loaded and moved to where it can't be seized back again by the Russians." Should they try which, given the fracturing among them, and the degree to which one splinter answers as much to me as anyone, seems unlikely. But let the Habar Afaan think this is a more perilous enterprise than it really is. It helps keep the price up.

"I will also need . . . " Gutaale stopped speaking as the lights suddenly dimmed.

"Captain!" shouted the Yemeni. "Start the engines. The light is failing."

D-150, Bonny River, Nigeria

The nighttime lights of Port Harcourt, seen through the smoky haze of the town and reflecting off clouds above and in the distance, were nothing much, despite the nearly four million people who lived in or near the place. Less impressive still were the lights of Okrika, a suburb of the main town, and it was closer. No, what attracted the eye were the plumes of natural gas fires flaring to either side as the Galloway made its careful way up the river.

Labaan stood on the bridge with the ship's captain, the bridge crew, and Gheddi. The captain was speaking into a ship's telephone.

"The ambulance will meet us at dockside," the captain said. He hesitated before asking, "I know you are going to the airport, and not Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital. But if I might enquire . . . "

Labaan shook his head no. "Captain, what you don't know can't do you any harm." Turning to Gheddi, Labaan ordered, "Cousin, let us go prepare our charge for transportation."

Adam's clue that they'd entered a port or something, at least, not on the high seas, was that the lamp overhead had mostly stopped swinging. Of the subtle change in the tenor of the ship's engines he was not really aware. Mentally, he began preparing himself for fight and flight.

They'll have to unchain me, he thought. If we're near a port, or even a coastline, and if I can get free for ten seconds, I can leap overboard. I'm a good, well a decent, swimmer. I can be ashore and running like hell before they can catch me.

He thought he sensed footsteps outside. Sure enough, the steel rods that held the door in place began to slide. A thin, crack appeared, the flickering light that marked it faint, at best.

Make yourself meek, Adam, the boy told himself. Lull them, if you can. Maybe they'll be slack enough to give you your chance.

Within moments of the door opening, Adam knew there would be no chance. Labaan entered, followed by three more men. Only one of them, the one called "Gheddi," looked particularly hostile. The others, however, didn't look bored or slack. Over one shoulder, one of these carried a stretcher with straps attached.

Labaan had a hypodermic syringe in one hand. Holding it point up, he squeezed the plunger until a few drops leaked out. "This is a mix of an hallucinogen, a small admixture of an opiate, and arachidonic acid. It will not harm you permanently, though it will relax you even while making you see things that will not be there. It will also give you a fever. Will you cooperate or-" Labaan's head inclined to indicate the others "– will you have to be restrained?"

Meek, Adam reminded himself. If it doesn't matter here, it might still, later." He held out one arms and began to roll his sleeve.

"No," said Labaan. "I am sorry. This needs to go in your buttocks. Drop your trousers please."

***

The moon was up and shining through the smoke of the town as Gheddi and Abdi carried the insensate Adam down the ship's gangplank, one man at each end of the stretcher. The boy moaned incoherently, and thrashed a bit. Straps on the stretcher kept him in place.

At the foot of the gangplank sat an ambulance, white with an orange stripe that narrowed toward the front. The ambulance doors were open, a couple of white clad emergency medical technicians standing beside them. Neither lights nor sirens were active.

Labaan and the captain of the George Galloway had been chatting amiably by the brow. The captain would no more say what his next mission was than the African would. He did admit, "I have to pick up some people in Northern Ireland."

The two shook hands farewell. Labaan walked down the gangplank to join his men and his charge.

Once the boy was loaded, and the kidnapping party had joined him in the back of the ambulance, the lights came on and the siren began to whoop.

CHAPTER FIVE

The niceties of peacetime are blown away

like cobwebs, and men are allowed to become what, under their skins, they have never ceased to be.

-Martin van Creveld, "The Culture of War"

D-124, San Antonio, Texas

Phillie had never seen, really couldn't have imagined, the speed with which Stauer's apartment had been converted into a headquarters. She might have called it "organized chaos," except that she sensed the chaos was more apparent than real while the organization, for all that it was hard to trace the lines of it, was both real and natural. The woman was used to chaos; after all, she was an ER nurse. But this kind of chaos was of a totally different quality and quantity than any she'd experienced before.

It had begun with Wes grilling his African friend. Of that grilling, Phillie had caught only snatches over the sound of frying bacon, for her and Wes, and frying bologna, for Wahab. Having to use two separate frying pans had been a little odd.

"You know or can reliably find out where those people are?"

"No problem, Wes."

"It's going to be a minimum ten million for personnel costs, several times that-many times that-for facilities, equipment, transportation, and supply."

"No problem, Wes. My chief will transfer to an account I'll set up and give me permission to disburse as needed. There'll have to be an accounting."

"Sure. To be expected. I'll need a bunch of your people-"

"Bad idea, Wes. The reason I know or can find out where those people you want are is that we have low level informers, slaves and outlying septs, in the Habar Afaan. They've got them among us, too. We can maybe use a few really close kin. No more than that though."

"Then add fifteen-no, twenty-million to the personnel costs."

"No problem. How much to get started? And can you take me to set up an account my chief can make a transfer to?"

"Phillie will take you," Stauer had answered. "At least we can set up a local account until we can have one of the people I'll invite set up something more discreet." Phillie found it also a little odd that he didn't even ask if she would, but just assumed it.

Because I'm part of the team? she wondered. Because he's just taking me for granted? That can wait; no sense taking offense until I know it's really been offered.

While Phillie had taken Wahab downtown to make arrangements, Wes had gone shopping. He'd come home just after she and Wahab returned. He had with him half a dozen high-end laptops, plus a dozen and a half each sleeping bags and air mattresses, a big coffee maker, several cases of Lone Star, a case of mixed hard liquor with mixers, paper plates, plastic utensils . . .

Phillie guessed that Stauer must have been making phone calls on the way because the door knocking had begun before noon and hadn't apparently ended yet. Oddly, every man at the door had asked the same question as soon as it opened: "Free beer?"

As if the chaos weren't enough already, Wahab had taken Wes' car to the airport to pick up a few more people. He wasn't due back for a couple of hours. And still the pizza boxes had begun building up in the kitchen.

She heard Stauer shout from the dining room, in which room the table had disappeared under maps, printed off by sections on the color printer and carefully taped together, "Gordo, you got a line on a ship yet?"

From the living room came the shout back, "I've got five possibilities. And two small subs . . . well, three, but one of those is a little big. And a fast patrol boat up in Finland but it would need to be re-armed. But I need a decision on the assembly area. We've got a line on eighty-five plus square kilometers in South Africa, but it's only near, not on, the sea. Natal, don't you know. It's a safari lodge so does have some buildings-five of 'em suitable for barracks, I think-and the firing of weapons would be unremarkable. Six million bucks. I've also found two parcels in Brazil, deep in the Amazon, no facilities whatsoever but along a navigable river leading to the Amazon and then the Atlantic. One of the Brazilian pieces is five million acres-think ‘Massachusetts'-for twenty-five million; the other's about one point two million-think ‘Rhode Island, plus'-for about half that. The second one's closer to Manaus, which has its good points and its bad. The realtor's being cagey; both are really old royal grants and may have some unusual attributes.

"Whichever parcel we go with," Harry Gordon continued, "we'll probably need something to navigate the river for supply purposes. I'm working on that, too. I've got a handle on something that maybe would do for a forward assembly area, if we need it; anything up to sixty thousand acres, fifty-five acres abutting Nairobi National Park, for four hundred and seventeen K, USD. Also, if you're willing to stay in the U.S., I can get you forty-five thousand underground square feet, also under about fourteen feet of reinforced concrete, on two hundred and ten acres near Denver, and a similar facility in Washington state. And there's a one hundred and seventy-five thousand acre parcel in Guyana for about two bucks an acre."

"Skip Denver! As for the other parcels, gimme a recommendation! And if it's Brazil or Guyana come up with tentage figures! Kosciusko will be here in an hour or so and you can figure out the ship with him!"

Phillie shook her head with wonder at all of it. It was just all so exciting. And Wes seemed to radiate energy and sheer happiness in a way she'd never seen before.

That wasn't the only change that had come over him. In the time they'd been together, he'd always been the perfect, and perfectly accommodating, gentleman. If she'd wanted to eat Mexican, Mexican it had been. If she'd wanted to see a chick flick, then it was off to whichever movie had tears running out in waves under the exit doors and the sound of wet vacuums slurping up the residue of broken, celluloid hearts. She'd never asked, but she was pretty sure that if she had asked to see Klingon Opera-had Klingon Opera existed-he'd have gone along.

She had the sense now that that prior accommodation had been indifference as much as gentlemanliness. Certainly, he didn't show much tendency to accommodation now, for her or for any of the dozen or so men who had, so far, assembled on the apartment. Wandering from ad hoc work station to ad hoc work station, coffee pot in hand, she thought, Maybe I should thank you for not listening, God. He seems so happy. We'll have to see.

She walked up to Stauer and took his cup from his unresisting hand. She filled it, and returned it.

"Thanks, Phillie," Stauer said, without looking at her. He seemed engrossed in conversation with someone she vaguely remembered had been introduced as "Ralph." Mmmm . . . last name . . . Boxer, I think. Yeah, that was it. Boxer was about Wes' height, not in such good shape, and a couple of years older. She still thought his graying hair was distinguished, sexy even. And the suit? Well, Phillie was also one of those not particularly rare women who could be and usually were turned on by a nice suit. Boxer's had to be Brooks Brothers or something just as good.

"You need to assemble a strike team soonest, Wes," Ralph was saying. "There's a chance, a slim chance but still a chance, that I can find where the boy is being held or moved to. He may be moving at the time and you'll have to strike fast and hard."

Ralph Boxer was, in terms of retired rank, the third senior man present, though Phillie didn't know that. An Air Force two star, he'd resigned in lieu of submitting even one more report to the White House that was generous with wishful thinking and economical with the truth. Boxer's own moment of truth had come when two pilots were shot down and killed after one of his intelligence summaries had been doctored by the next echelon up because the White House simply didn't want to hear that the enemy in Afghanistan had grown considerably stronger as a result of its own political mismanagement. He'd made it as noisy a resignation as he knew how. The papers had ignored it.

"Problem is," Wes countered, "without some idea of where he'll be it's nearly impossible to plan. If you find him, you might find him someplace where we can't get arms for the team. He could be at sea and we've no way to get a team to a ship."

"Victor can always get us arms, I think," Boxer said. "Anywhere at all."

"Well . . . yeah," Stauer conceded. He grimaced, "But for God's sake, not Victor."

"What's the matter with Victor?" Ralph seemed truly perplexed.

Stauer shook his head. "You never know who Victor's reporting to."

"Sure we do. He's reporting to FSB, the successor in interest to KGB. So? This is not something the Russians are going to object to. And we don't necessarily have to tell Victor what the arms are for. As for arms-free countries, there is not a one Victor can't smuggle into, given a little time. And once they're in hand, the team can carry what it needs by chartered plane or ship . . . or yacht. The rules then are all different."

Stauer still looked skeptical. "Victor, huh?"

Boxer nodded. "I think so. If we had all the time in the world we could use somebody else. There's an Arab in Yemen, I've heard, who's starting to make a name for himself in the trade. But when you need to start a war in a hurry . . . "

"Victor," Stauer finished. He said the name in the tone of a man who's just been told he's got an incurable disease. "Well, I suppose it's not as if he's a complete stranger."

"Indeed not," Ralph said, with a broad smile. "Now if you'll let me get to work until Bridges and Lox get here . . . "