Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 10 (19 page)

 
          
“That
seems like a very large crew for a salvage vessel. What else? Has the crew been
interrogated? Who are they?”

           
Susan looked at the retired general
and saw that his mouth had dropped open in surprise. “General? What is it?”

           
“Our frigate was captured.”

           
“
Captured?
By the
rescued crew?”

           
“This is
extraordinary,” Baris exclaimed as he read. “The rescued crew members are
apparently commandos, led by three men in unusual and unidentifiable battle
dress uniforms, carrying powerful but unusual weapons.”

           
“What is the crew complement of the
frigate?”

           
“About two hundred sailors.”

           
“Sixty
men captured
two hundred sailors
on
board one of our own warships?” Susan asked incredulously. Surprise, however,
quickly turned to wonderment. “How do we know all this, General? Is someone on
the crew sending secret messages? Did someone escape?”

 
          
“No,
Susan—the leader of the commando unit is allowing the captain, Commander
Farouk, to send these messages,” Baris replied with astonishment in his eyes
and tone. “The leader, who calls himself Castor, says that no one on the ship
will be harmed and the ship will be allowed to return to Mersa Matruh as long
as we promise not to attack the ship as they approach and do not attempt to
capture them.”

 
          
“Who
are they? Israelis? Americans?”

           
“Commander Farouk believes they are
Americans, but they are wearing masks and are hiding their identities well. It
is apparently impossible to tell the nationality of the leaders—their voices
are electronically altered.”

 
          
“Electronically
altered?” Susan thought hard for a moment. Who were these soldiers? They were
powerful enough to commandeer an Egyptian warship, one of the most powerful in
northern
Africa
, but yet they couldn’t hold their base of
operations, a small salvage vessel. If they were terrorists or mercenaries sent
to attack an Egyptian target, they were sloppy indeed. They surely would not
have let the ship’s captain make a call back to base.

 
          
The
leader decided to trust the Egyptians not to harm them—but just to be sure,
they commandeered a guided missile frigate. An interesting blend of strength
and restraint, power and caution. Who was this leader? Obviously a man
concerned for the safety of his men, but not afraid to use the power at his
command. Obviously highly trained and skillful, but not berserkers either.

           
The leader’s nom de guerre was
“Castor”—one of a set of twins from Roman mythology. The twin gods, the
Dioscuri, were the “cosmic stabilizers,” representing darkness and light. One
was a man of peace, a horse tamer; the other was a boxer, a warrior. They also
protected mortals. When Pollux, the warrior, was killed during the Odyssey,
Castor the man of peace made a deal with the gods—when his fellow voyagers
needed a fighter, he would die so his brother could live. Susan wondered the
obvious—who and where was the Pollux?

 
          
Or
perhaps was there no Pollux now, and Castor the man of peace was the leader.
Perhaps that’s why these men didn’t slash their way on board the frigate, kill
the crew, and simply steal the ship. Could this Castor be convinced to
transform himself into Pollux the warrior to protect mortals ... or perhaps one
mortal in particular?

 
          
“I
will return to
Cairo
for the funeral, General,” Susan said. “But first we will go to Mersa
Matruh to meet these commandos. Make no attempt to retake the ship, but do not
allow it to leave, either.”

 
          
“You
want to keep one of our own captured warships sitting off our own shore with a
terrorist commando team aboard, and not do anything about it?”

 
          
“They
captured it, they deserve to stay on it,” Susan said. “Give them food, medical
attention, women—anything they want or need. Just don’t let them leave.” She
thought for a moment, then said, “Rather,
ask
them to stay, until I arrive.”

 
          
“Why
do you want to meet with them, Sekhmet?” Baris asked. “They could be dangerous
men.”

 
          
Susan
shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “In fact, they could be just what
we need to take back what Khan and Zuwayy have taken from us.”

 
          
It
was one of the hardest things she ever had to do in her young life: leave her
husband’s side to protect her own life. Now, several minutes from landing at
the huge sprawling joint forces military base at Mersa Matruh in northwestern
Egypt
, Susan Bailey Salaam finally had time to
sort out all the horrifying events that had happened over the past several
hours:

 
          
Susan
had been taken away from the mosque by an army ambulance, one of several in the
area. They tried to make their way back to
Abdin
Palace
, but the streets were now blocked by
protesters and rioters who had heard that Susan had been killed in the blast on
the
Nile
, and they sped off. She was transferred to
several different vehicles, and at one point dressed in a flak vest and wore a
helmet as a disguise when it appeared protesters were getting too close to
their vehicle. She was finally taken to Zahir Air Base in northeastern
Cairo
and flown out of the city in an army
helicopter. The pilot broadcast that his destination was the
Egyptian
Naval
Academy
in
Alexandria
, but once over the
Mediterranean
, the helicopter dipped low to the water,
out of sight of anyone on shore, then proceeded west.

 
          
No
doubt about it, she thought ruefully as they began their approach for
landing—it was an evacuation, out of
Cairo
, out of the government, out of the people’s
lives, fleeing for her own life. She hated the idea of being forced to run from
her own home, her own people. She preferred facing her attackers, confronting
them head-on, battling for her honor and legacy and that of her husband. But
now she was gone. She had to disguise herself to get out of the area—they could
not even trust the citizens of
Cairo
to protect her long enough, even in her
grief, to get her safely away from such a disastrous, monstrous, unconscionable
event. Even the Presidential Palace was unsafe.

 
          
What
was she doing out here, hundreds of kilometers from civilization, running from
her people like a thief in the night? If there were strange commandos here in
Egypt
, why didn’t she have them brought to her in
Alexandria
? Something was drawing her out here. She
didn’t know who these men were, but something told her she had to go look for
herself out here. Not for safety. Perhaps it was the desert, the idea of
hegira
, and the cleansing forces of the desert.
Perhaps, like Moses and Jesus and Muhammad and thousands of others throughout
history, she needed to draw spiritual strength from the wastelands.

 
          
It
was about an hour before dusk when the helicopter made its approach to the huge
military base. Mersa Matruh looked more like a large industrial complex and
commercial shipyard than a military base. Sprawling almost two hundred square
kilometers, it was home to nearly a fifth of all of
Egypt
’s active-duty forces. Its main
assignment—not well publicized, for fear of angering its Arab neighbors— was to
repel a possible invasion from Libya, as well as to secure Egypt’s northern and
western flanks and protect its right to freely navigate the Mediterranean Sea.
Most of the base had been built by Nazi Germany and
Italy
during World War H, then occupied by the
British until the 1952 revolution. Susan noticed the large earth stations, part
of
Egypt
’s telecommunications network, as well as the early- warning radar
installation that scanned the
Mediterranean
and the skies to the north and west, watching and waiting for danger.

 
          
“God
must have something else in store for me rather than to die in the streets of
Cairo
,” Susan said to General Baris as they
exited the helicopter. She looked at the men arrayed before her. “These guards
. .. ?”

 
          
“Handpicked
by me for your protection,” Baris said. “On my payroll, and as loyal to me as
my own brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, you have some enemies, even out
here on the frontier.” He motioned to the man, obviously a high-ranking
officer, who stepped over to them. “Madame, this is Vice Marshal Sayed Ouda,
commander of the western military district headquartered here.”

 
          
Ouda
made a slight bow, then returned his hands casually to behind his back. He was
tall, good-looking in a rough-hewn way, with a stylish mustache, carrying—of
all things—a riding crop, his cap rakishly tilted to one side. “My condolences
to you,” he said simply.

 
          
“Thank
you, Vice Marshal,” Susan Salaam said. She regarded him coolly for a moment,
then said, “You do not approve of me being here, do you, Vice Marshal?”

           
“My duty is to protect my nation and
obey orders,” he said in a low monotone. He eyed General Baris suspiciously. “I
do what I must to obey the
legitimate
authorities.” Obviously he was beginning to doubt whether Baris represented any
legitimate authority at all anymore in
Egypt
.

 
          
“I
do not mean to cause you any trouble, Vice Marshal,” Susan said.

 
          
“The
president is dead, Madame,” Ouda said icily, “and his aide de camp and widow
are hiding themselves on my base, far from the capital. That is not the mark of
any legitimate authority I know.”

 
          
“Nonetheless,
you will obey his orders as you would have obeyed President Salaam,” Susan
said, “or you may discover your value as a commander in the Egyptian armed
forces to be greatly diminished.”

 
          
Ouda
looked Susan up and down with a faint smile. His unspoken words were crystal
clear: My value is considerably greater than yours right now. He gave her
another appraising look. Susan was very familiar with that look as well: The
man was momentarily forgetting she was the wife of an Egyptian president and
was looking at her as just another potential sexual conquest. Ouda was
obviously accustomed to doing that, no matter who else was looking on. He gave
her another half-bow, half-nod and departed.

 
          
A
woman in uniform quickly stepped over to them, snapped to attention, and
saluted. She wore the red beret of the Republican Guards, the elite infantry
soldiers assigned to protect the president and other high government officials,
and she wore a small MP5 submachine gun on a combat harness on her body. She
was shorter and thinner than Susan, and rather small for a soldier, but her
dark eyes and firm jaw told an entirely different story.

 
          
“Madame,
this is Captain Amina Shafik, formerly an infantry officer and a company
commander in the Republican Guards,” General Baris said. “She was first
assigned to protect my wife seven years ago until cancer took her. She has been
my personal aide since. I trust her implicitly. Captain Shafik, Madame Susan
Salaam.” Shafik saluted, then snapped to parade rest. “I have assigned her to
you as your personal bodyguard. She will stay with you night and day. You must
trust her judgment when it comes to your safety.”

           
Susan extended her hand, and the
handshake confirmed Susan’s observation—she was deceptively strong. “I am
pleased to meet you, Captain,” Susan said. “Do you have a family? A husband?”