Holman shrugged. “We’re doing everything we can already. We know the freighter was a gift of this Abu Alhaul. He’s in West Africa. The French pursued him for a while until he vanished north and presumably left the Ivory Coast. Spain, Greece, Singapore, and Hong Kong have boarded and seized six other commercial vessels at the behest of our State Department. Vessels which, along with this one, our intelligence and law enforcement arms of Homeland Security had under surveillance for over a year.”
“Should have seized them a year ago.”
Holman shrugged. “Who knows the mind of the intelligence community?”
“
The Shadow do,
” Upmann ad-libbed.
“He’ll be back.”
“Abu Alhaul?”
“Yes. He only came because of Commander Raleigh. We used him as a honeypot to lure the terrorists to us and then when our best brains decided this freighter had turned toward Europe, we jumped the gun and rushed off, leaving our own shores undefended. That won’t happen again.”
The Officer of the Deck, a Lieutenant Commander, stepped through the hatchway, catching their attention. He held two hot cups of coffee in his hands. “Admiral,
Captain Upmann, thought you might enjoy some fresh coffee the mess decks just sent up.”
They took the coffee. “Thanks, Commander,” Holman said.
The man disappeared back inside to his duty station on the bridge. A ship at anchor still kept a ready crew on the bridge. Anchors were known to give way or break loose, and ships were known to be pushed into the chains leading to them.
Holman slipped a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to Upmann. “This is top secret, Leo.”
Captain Upmann unfolded the paper and read the short paragraph on it. “Doesn’t surprise me in the least,” he said, handing the paper back to Admiral Holman.
“Me either. My directions are, once the quarantine is lifted, to escort our good friend Captain Marc St. Cyr directly to the airport, where an aircraft will be standing by to return him to France. I understand the State Department will quietly tell
our valued ally
that his presence in the United States is no longer desired.”
Upmann leaned forward, folding his arms on the bridge wing railing. “You’d think after the confrontation we had with the French last year off Liberia, they’d jump at the chance to put some salve on the diplomatic scars between our two countries. Instead, in the one combined effort of nations, they send an agent to spy on us.”
Holman slipped the paper back in his pocket. “Don’t let me forget to return this to Mary Davidson for destruction. I know what you mean. I didn’t feel comfortable working with the French, but for the sake of improving our relations, I thought the three combined Special Forces teams divided among our three nations was a step in the right direction.” He patted his pocket. “I suspect the FBI will arrest whoever the American was that gave the CD to St. Cyr.”
“They find anything else in his belongings?”
Holman shook his head. “Don’t know. When they went to gather the clothes of those stuck on the ship, the CD was in a hidden compartment in St. Cyr’s suitcase.” He
shrugged again. “Other than what you read, the only other thing I know is the CD originated from the Missile Defense Agency—MDA—and had a lot of technical mumbo jumbo on our laser-weapons programs. St. Cyr didn’t get this by himself. Someone had to have given it to him, and the information on the CD tends to indicate that additional information has already been given.”
Holman looked over his shoulder before holding his coffee cup over the railing and pouring the coffee out. “Too strong for the afternoon,” he said.
Finished, Holman continued. “The espionage isn’t within my mission scope. Escorting him to the first plane out of the country is. Trying to figure out what the terrorists will do next is also something about which I will worry. Whoever the traitor is will be caught, and when they do I hope they hang him.”
“They caught him. Heard it on CNN a few minutes ago,” Upmann added. “The FBI arrested someone at the Navy Annex in Arlington late yesterday.”
“What’d they say?”
“Said the man worked on the Air Force’s laser weapons program and was assigned to the Missile Defense Agency. They haven’t charged him yet. Ought to send him to a plastic surgeon, make him look like Commander Raleigh, and air-drop him into Africa.”
“If we air-dropped him into Africa disguised as Commander Raleigh,” Upmann went on with the fantasy. “Be just our luck for this African army we’ve been reading about to catch him before Abu Alhaul.”
“Bet they’re working with him. Same sort of convergence we’re seeing with other terrorist groups.”
Holman shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. You recall when I went to the Pentagon to see Admiral James and meet this Commander Raleigh?”
Upmann nodded.
“I was also invited to sit along the wall in the Joint Staff Tank as the Joint Chiefs were briefed about this resurrection of Al Qaeda. Along with that briefing was one about this African army. Seems Moslems aren’t their
favorite people from some of the atrocities being attributed to them. Lots of unknowns. Who’s their leader? Don’t know. What’s their intention? Not sure, but they believe it’s nationalistic. Uprising and fights that are nationalistic are a lot easier to handle than something like terrorism, which is global. A national objective is usually restricted to a specific geographical area.”
“That would mean Ivory Coast, Liberia, and that area?”
“I heard one of the briefers offer an opinion that the national aim was much bigger.”
“Much bigger?”
“Yes, all of Africa.”
The helicopters carrying the military morticians from the air base in Dover, Delaware, completed dropping off their passengers. The fact that neither chopper touched their wheels on the deck wasn’t lost on the two men watching. Holman, being a pilot, had a good idea what was going through the minds of those helicopter pilots. Mislaid fears that touching down on the freighter would cause the disease to jump on board. He shrugged his shoulders. As much as he hated to admit it, he sympathized with them and doubted he would have touched down on the ship either. Of course, he flew fighter planes such as the Hornet F/A 18, which was better designed to blow the freighter out of the water than land on it.
For the next several minutes, neither man spoke as they watched the maneuvers of the helicopters shifting positions over the stern deck.
“He’ll be back,” Upmann said. “Abu Alhaul has turned his religious world conquest into a personal vendetta against our Commander. We know it.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t know we know, because whether Raleigh likes it or not, he’s the key for us taking this asshole down, and we’re going to use him. We’re going to use him because it’s the only way for him to live without having to look over his shoulder whenever he sees a young dark-skinned person who could be one of this man’s minions.”
Holman should have stuck with the original plan
calling for Abu Alhaul to come after Commander Raleigh. If he had, they would have stopped that freighter a long ways before it reached Hampton Roads. He turned to Leo Upmann and told him to keep him updated. He’d call him after his meeting with Commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. Holman turned and went below to his flag stateroom. It took him about a half-hour to change into summer whites. This wasn’t going to be a pleasant meeting. Both he and Commander U.S. Second Fleet were being called on the carpet to explain why this had happened. One thing you can always expect when something goes wrong—shit rolls downhill, and right now a lot of people were looking for where the huge roll should stop. One thing he could be sure of—it wouldn’t be on Capitol Hill.
“YOU’LL BE OKAY, SON,” HE SAID.
“I don’t feel too good, Mom. My eyes burn.”
She leaned over the front seat and put her hand against the boy’s forehead. “Well, he doesn’t feel okay to me,” she said to her husband. She turned back around and tightened her seatbelt. “I think we’re going to have to stop somewhere and have a doctor look at him.”
“We’re only a few hours from home. I think the couple at the rest stop was right. Said it was probably just a cold,” he said through tightened lips. He didn’t want to stop. He wanted to sleep in his own bed tonight after two weeks of touring Florida and the Gulf Coast. This was definitely the last time he tried this. Next time, they’d pick one spot—like Disney World—fly to it, enjoy it, and fly home. The voice of his wife intruded on his thoughts as he braked for the red light.
“Are you listening to me?” she asked, poking him a couple of times on the shoulder. “Or, have you tuned me out?”
“I’m listening.”
“Good! See that sign ahead? The blue one with the word
hospital
on it?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Momma, Daddy; I really don’t feel too good.”
“Good! Turn there. We’re taking Danny to the emergency room. They’ll have doctors there, and one of them can see him. Honey,” she said in a softer voice to the young boy sitting on the back seat. “Not much longer. We’re going to stop and get you something for this. Just hang in there.”
The light changed and he eased forward.
“Do you know how much emergency rooms cost?”
The sound of vomiting came from behind him.
“I don’t care,” she snapped. “He needs to see a doctor. Look at him! He’s throwing up!”
He turned at the sign, and after straightening out, he reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror so he could see the face of their twelve-year-old son. A rash of small bumps covered the boy’s face, and he noticed that one eye socket was swollen so much that if it kept swelling, Danny wouldn’t be able to see out of it.
“You’re right. I think he’s having an allergic reaction to the seafood we ate earlier. I remember Uncle Harold having something similar when he ate shrimp years ago. Face swelled up—”
“I don’t care about Uncle Harold. What I care about is Danny’s having a hard time breathing.”
He listened for a couple of seconds to a rasping sound from the rear seat. She’s right, he thought. He reached up, put on his emergency blinkers, and sped up. Blowing his horn, he followed the signs leading to the hospital. Several times he glanced in the mirror. His son’s head now lolled to the side. His wife’s arm was draped over the seat, her hand holding their son’s.
“There it is,” she said, her voice trembling as she pointed to a sign that read
WELCOME TO GRADY HOSPITAL
—
ATLANTA
,
GEORGIA
.
Captain David E. Meadows,
U.S. Navy, was recognized by
Writer’s Digest
magazine as one of its twelve “First Success” authors for 2001 and profiled in the
Writer’s Digest Guide to Writing Fiction
(Fall 2001) yearbook. Captain Meadows is still on active duty serving at the Pentagon on the Joint Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com