Huston, James W. -2003- Secret Justice (com v4.0)(html) (38 page)

Kendrick was furious at the idea of a ship with terrorists aboard heading toward the United States and United States intelligence and the military being unable to tell him where it was. “This ship is huge. Are you telling me we can’t find it?”

“Not easily, sir.”

“Stewart, what do you suggest?”

“We need to use every tool at our disposal to find this ship as soon as possible.”

“What do we tell Jacksonville? Do we evacuate the city? Do we tell them terrorists are inbound? Do we wait until the day before the ship is scheduled to arrive and see if we’ve intercepted it? Do we put up a blockade? Howard, what do you think?”

Stuntz had been waiting to be asked. “This is a very serious threat, Mr. President. I would like your permission to sink the ship. I’d like to send out every submarine on the East Coast, sortie every carrier, and inspect every ship that comes within two hundred miles of the United States. If we find the ship, sink it.”

“Anybody disagree?” Kendrick asked.

No one spoke. St. James thought, then said, “If Duar’s men are aboard that ship, which seems likely, aren’t there other, innocent sailors aboard? If we sink the ship, won’t they be killed?”

“Tough shit,” Stuntz said. “We can’t risk the lives of an entire city for a few sailors that are being held hostage.”

“I guess I’m wondering if we can do something other than sinking the ship. Disable it, or stop it.”

The members of the National Security Council sat silently. They stared at the photograph of the container ship with its massive cranes fore and aft and the details of its construction and performance at the bottom.

Kendrick spoke. “Send the Navy out in full force, Howard. Everything they can send to find this ship. No permission yet to sink it. Find it first, put a couple of warships around it, and we’ll decide then what to do about it.”

“Will do, sir.”

The captain of the
Monrovian Prince
stood on the air-conditioned bridge and looked through his large binoculars at what he thought was a light on the horizon. They hadn’t seen another ship in more than two days. He wanted to make sure that they didn’t have a collision. Hotary’s restriction that they leave the radar off made him feel like a blind man in a dark room hoping not to run into anyone. Although the sun had set three hours before and the moon had not yet risen, the stars were bright enough to illuminate the smooth Atlantic. The swells were minimal and the sea was gloriously flat as the
Prince
glided through the water at twelve knots.

Tayseer Hotary stood just outside the door to the bridge, his presence unknown to the crew. He watched the captain and the other members of the crew on the bridge. He looked behind him at six of his men, who had opened one of their containers and retrieved a case of AK-47 assault rifles. They stood with their backs against the bulkhead, weapons ready. They all gave him nearly imperceptible nods.

Hotary pulled the door open and walked onto the bridge with great confidence. He glanced around at the men there who looked at him with annoyance. He walked to the captain and stood beside him. “See anything?”

The captain did not even put down his binoculars. He immediately recognized Hotary’s voice. “I told you I did not want to see you on the bridge ever again.”

Hotary waited. “Why would what you say matter to me?”

The captain lowered the glasses angrily. “Because I am the captain of the ship.”

“
I
am the captain now.”

The captain looked for others on the bridge to be ready to remove Hotary forcefully. “Leave the bridge now.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“You will, or I’ll have you thrown off the bridge.”

One of the sailors who could hear the captain began moving to stand behind Hotary. Hotary knew he was there, but didn’t care. “I have done additional calculations. We need to increase our speed from twelve knots to the maximum sustainable speed of the ship.”

“That
is
twelve knots.”

“No. It is not. It is sixteen knots.”

“Going to sixteen knots in the open ocean with this top-heavy load would be too dangerous.”

“Not if the ship is handled properly. The ocean is calm. Call the engine room and tell them to increase speed to sixteen knots.”

“I will not.”

“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but I expected it would at some point. Please get on the public address system for the ship and tell your men to assemble in the mess deck. All of them. Including those in engineering, those on watch, every man on the ship. They must assemble in the mess deck in ten minutes. Make the announcement.”

“I will not—”

Hotary raised his hand as the captain was finishing his sentence. Hotary’s men rushed onto the bridge with their rifles and pointed them at everyone standing there. “You will.”

“And if I don’t?”

Hotary shrugged. “Then I’ll have you shot, and I’ll throw your body into the sea.”

The captain raged inside but saw no options. He crossed to the back of the bridge and picked up the public address microphone. “All hands to the mess deck in ten minutes. Including those on watch, including those in engineering. All hands to the mess deck in ten minutes.” He released the button on the microphone and slammed it back into his receiver.

Hotary spoke to his men in Arabic. He ordered two of them to escort the men from the bridge to the mess deck below. Two other men threw the slings from their rifles over their heads and took control of the ship. Hotary crossed to the navigation table and checked the chart. He saw the course line leading from their current position to Jacksonville, Florida, their supposed destination. He calculated a new heading to a point farther north and turned to the new helmsman. “Set a course of three-zero-five.”

His helmsman turned the wheel gently to the right until the large ship started to come around. The helmsman replied to Hotary, “Three-zero-five.”

Hotary nodded. “Set sixteen knots.” The bridge phone rang. He picked up. It was one of his men on the mess deck. “They’re all in a secure room on the second deck. We have locked the room.”

“Excellent. Meet us on the deck outside by the forward crane.”

“We’re on our way.”

Hotary and the other men from the bridge hurried down to the crane. The floodlights from the bridge pointed forward and illuminated the crane and the containers stacked up on the deck in front of the bridge. Hotary waited patiently as his men ran from the mess deck up to the crane. Finally they were all there. He searched for the man who was critical to the next step and saw him in the back. “Get into the crane.”

The man handed his rifle to the man standing next to him and scrambled up into the cockpit to operate the crane. The large white crane extended into the black sky like a monument. The motor for operating the crane began to hum as the operator familiarized himself with the controls. The crane swiveled and jerked and the cables came slowly to the deck.

Two men climbed on top of the nearest container and hooked the cables to the four corners. The crane operator moved his levers carefully and the cables were drawn tight to just where the container would be lifted off the deck. One of Hotary’s men came forward with two backpacks of equipment. Hotary nodded to him and he took out C4 plastic explosive and placed small silver-dollar-sized pieces in four places on either side of the container at its bottom. He hooked up detonators to each of the four spots and retreated behind another container as everyone else sought equivalent shelter. He pressed the electronic trigger and the small explosions cracked in the quiet night, blowing four holes in the container.

Hotary gave the signal to the crane operator, who quickly hauled the container into the dark sky, swung it over the side of the ship and dropped it into the ocean. It hit with a large splash, nearly pitched over, but settled onto its bottom as the ship raced away. Water began to fill the container through the new holes as it disappeared behind the ship.

Two men climbed on top of the next container and quickly hooked up the four cables again. They completed the same process as on the first, only quicker, and it too was dumped into the ocean. They went to the third, and fourth, and every container on the deck in quick succession.

A second team manned the crane aft of the superstructure and dropped containers off the port side of the ship with equal skill. The deck was quickly becoming visible as they went from one container to the next, stacked three high, then two, then none as they moved to the next group of containers. They carefully avoided the three containers that had been loaded last, the ones they had brought aboard the ship.

As the night wore on, they cleared the entire deck except for their three containers. They quickly opened the large hatches that gave them access to the holds below to the main deck. The containers were stacked inside the hold and could be moved to the port or starboard side of the ship by tracks. Several of the men jumped down in the hold to activate the tracks and move containers closer to the hatch so the crane could pull them up. One after another, the containers came up, had holes blasted into their sides, and were dropped into the night sea.

After all the containers had been removed the men lowered their three special containers down into the hold, out of sight, and opened one of them. They handed up electronics, more explosives, and satchels full of other equipment. The man in charge of the electronics hurried to the bridge and climbed on top of it in the blackness behind the lights. He quickly detached the surface search radar antenna, cut the wires long enough to reuse them, and hurled the small antenna over the side. He put a new antenna in its place and wired it quickly to the protruding wires. He hurried down from his perch and searched the bridge for the radar transmitter box. He unplugged it, removed the wires from its back, and attached the new radar transmitter that worked on a frequency very different from the one he had just thrown into the ocean.

The other men on the deck closed the large hatches. The ship now had a clean, unmolested look, devoid of stacked containers. The two loading cranes still stood high against the night sky, illuminated by the floodlights. The crane operator quickly abandoned his post, as the C4 was carefully wrapped around the base of the thick white steel crane. Hotary inspected it and gave his approval. He walked to a safe position and nodded.

The expert detonated the C4. A thunderous explosion severed the crane from its base. It leapt sideways still standing upright momentarily, then teetered. It settled back onto the deck in what appeared to be slow motion then fell toward the side of the ship. It gathered speed as it fell and the sharp-edged bottom gouged the deck as it skidded toward the side. The head of the crane surrendered to gravity and it pitched heavily over the side into the ocean. The splash threw dark ocean water back onto the deck, but the crane was gone.

The same men hurried to the back part of the ship and blew the second crane over the same side of the ship.

Hotary’s men gathered wooden two-by-fours that had been brought from their container and constructed a frame around the bases of the two cranes. Only a stub of white steel protruding from the deck showed there had ever been a crane. When the wood was built up to the level of the shattered steel, a gray dingy tarp was pulled over the frame to resemble some covered piece of nautical machinery on the ship’s deck.

Hotary looked for one man. “Are you ready? You have the paint?”

“Yes. The seas are calm. It should be no problem.”

Hotary said, “Rename it.
Sea Dragon
, Hong Kong. English and Cantonese.”

The CH-53 settled into a hover just above the flight deck of the
Belleau Wood
as the sun broke over the horizon. The South Indian Ocean was tranquil and the gray helicopter blended in well with the overcast morning. Rat had to fight to stay awake. He had been up all night. He did not sleep well aboard airplanes, especially when he was flying to testify in another trial in the middle of his own. He was wearing his khaki uniform with all his ribbons, not just the top row as he usually did. Not only did the SEAL insignia grab people’s eyes, but those who knew ribbons could see he had been awarded a Silver Star, an extremely high decoration, rarely given. The write-up for the medal was classified. No one could read it without a clearance and he couldn’t talk about it. It was from one of the raids he had conducted while he was with Dev Group. He didn’t think about it much, but he knew that people noticed, at least those who knew what the ribbon for a Silver Star looked like, those whose opinion he cared about most.

He rubbed his eyes trying to get the sleep out of his system as the wheels of the CH-53 touched down on the deck and the weight of the heavy helicopter transferred from its rotor blades to its landing gear. Rat wanted nothing other than to head directly to the wardroom and pour the biggest, strongest cup of coffee he could find. Only then would he try to find the prosecutor, a Commander Elizabeth Watson.

As he was ushered into the island by the flight deck crew he removed his flotation vest and cranial helmet and handed them to a sailor standing nearby. He hurried down the ladders without escort to the wardroom and grabbed a large porcelain cup that he took to the coffee urn. He drew a cup of steaming fresh black coffee, blew on it, and drank quickly. He sat at a long wardroom table, the only officer in the wardroom. Two sailors were buffing the tile deck on the other side of the wardroom.

Rat was growing angry. He stared at the cheap painting on the wall and wondered why he should continue to be loyal to a government that wanted to put him in jail. How could he work—even temporarily—for the CIA, brief the President, fly to the Indian Ocean to testify in a trial, and then just go back to Washington, D.C., for his trial like a calf to a veal party? In the rare moments when he was honest with himself about the trial, when he was objective instead of optimistic, he knew they had the evidence to convict him. Satterly’s testimony alone was enough. He had to admit the accusations were true. He disagreed strongly that what he had done should be illegal, but he couldn’t hide what he had done. He wished he had come back without Duar. Bring Mazmin back, let the CIA “interrogate” him, and let
them
find Duar. Another raid, another day, they would have found Duar. Possibly.