Authors: Steve Alten
Claudia waited impatiently, but the dark being refused to move. She heard the dive boat sound its horn, recalling the snorkelers.
Knowing fame and fortune depended upon her next move, Claudia inhaled a belly full of air from her snorkel and tucked her head into a steep surface dive, kicking hard to compensate for her natural buoyancy. Seconds later, her knees touched down along the sandy bottom a good fifteen feet in front of the reef formation.
Before she could raise the camera strapped around her left wrist the current grabbed her—an invisible cushion of water that propelled her rapidly toward the object she desired. Rather than fight the stream she went with it, aiming her camera at the strange looking sea creature.
Goot Gott im Himmel . . .
Claudia dug the heels of her fins in the sand. This was not a mermaid; this was an alien life form! Its black eyes stared at her, its head cocked in a curious expression. Its almost human lower jaw hung open . . . filled with triangular teeth.
Near panic, the Swiss woman kicked off the bottom—only to be embraced by the alien’s frail arms. One knotted five-fingered hand clutched Claudia’s right wrist, the other stroked her blonde hair as it palmed the back of her skull.
Ich Fühle mich nicht gut.
Claudia’s eyes widened as the voice whispered the German phrase,
“I don’t feel well”
into her head.
The burning sensation in her lungs took precedence and she twisted and kicked her way free, racing to the surface—the creature hitching a ride by grabbing hold of her ankle!
Claudia’s head popped free and she gasped several breaths, searching for her voice—as the being surfaced next to her, its mouth opening with a horrifying gurgle.
“
Hilfe
. . . help!” The Swiss woman pushed the listless creature away, slicing her hands on its rigid, extremely sharp skin.
Sabeen submerged, her nostrils inhaling the swirling trickles of blood. The scent jump-started her senses, burning away the fog that had been veiling her consciousness. Homing in on the symphony of beating pulses, she grabbed the shrieking woman by her throat and bit her neck, her teeth gnawing on her prey’s cervical vertebrae.
Blood spurted from the severed carotid arteries into Sabeen’s throat and down her open gullet, igniting a savage urge to feed. Following the blood stream, she buried her face and jaws into the blonde’s fleshy bosom, shaking her head like a dog as she ravaged the fatty morsels.
Kurt Roberts heard his missing passenger’s scream and knew it was a shark attack even before he saw the spreading pool of crimson thirty yards off the port bow. Yelling “hold on,” he gunned the idling engines, nearly tossing a Canadian couple over the side.
The thirty-foot Pro Kat covered the distance in seconds, forcing Captain Roberts to throttle back in a tight circle. Looking down, he saw the dark presence of a shark-like creature writhing beneath billowing scarlet clouds of blood.
Roberts pulled his head back, feeling queasy. In twenty-two years of working the sanctuary, he had never heard of a shark-related fatality. As he reached for the radio, his passengers pointed excitedly at an object floating behind the outboard.
The captain grabbed a reach pole from a storage bin and staggered to the stern. Floating along the surface was an underwater camera—still attached to the severed, blood-streaked left arm of its owner.
38
Atlantic Ocean, twenty-three miles due east of Port Everglades, Florida
T
he 38,000 ton cruise ship
Prinsendam
churned west, its bow navigating along a beacon of sunlight reflecting on the surface. The Holland America Line excursion had set sail from Fort Lauderdale seven weeks ago with seven hundred and forty passengers on board. After spending eight days at sea, the ship had arrived in Madeira, a Portuguese island off the west coast of Africa. Two days in paradise were followed by twenty more port cities in the Mediterranean, including Haifa, Athens, and Venice.
Twenty-nine-year-old Christopher Stump stood in the crow’s nest of the sports deck with one leg over the rail, clowning around for his pregnant wife, Kelly, who was videotaping him on her cell phone.
“Go on, honey, jump. Show your unborn child what a dumbass her father was.”
“You mean
him
. And my son will respect me for the genius I am. What time are we supposed to dock?”
“Between five and six o’clock, and don’t ask me again,
genius
. What are you looking at?”
Christopher signaled her over. The couple peered one level down to the lido deck where three Middle Eastern men were kneeling on small embroidered prayer rugs, prostrating themselves before Allah. “There they are again. Five times a day, like clockwork.”
The three Iranians had boarded the cruise ship in Istanbul on day thirty-three of the voyage. The gray-beard and his two younger companions had kept to themselves—except for their daily ritual prayer sessions, which made many of the American passengers—especially the New Yorkers, more than a bit uneasy. By voyage end, the men’s faces had been posted over a thousand times just on Facebook alone.
One level up on the observation deck, a spry man in his fifties sporting “runner’s calves” watched the pregnant woman snap the Iranians’ photo with her iPhone.
Allen Foster smiled to himself. In a world overrun by surveillance, the court of public opinion was easier to sway than ever—perfect for maneuvering unsuspecting players into a false flag operation.
Coined from the naval tactic of flying another country’s flag to fool an enemy ship, a false flag operation was a covert action where the perpetrator lays the blame on another political party, nation, or terrorist organization, often to influence the public to go to war. In 1931, the Japanese government blew up sections of their own railway as a pretext for annexing Manchuria. In 1933, the Reichstag fire brought Hitler’s Nazi party to power. Twenty years later, the United States and Britain unleashed Operation Ajax, a false flag event that targeted Mohammad Mosaddegh, the democratically elected leader of Iran. In 1962, President Kennedy shut down Operation Northwoods, a Defense Department plot that would have blamed Cuba for the hijacking and crash of a US commercial airliner.
Forty years later, commercial airliners were used in an event that led the United States into an unjustified invasion of Iraq.
In the twenty-first-century chess game known as global economics, covert intelligence officers like Allen Foster were used to manipulating the board. Terrorist organizations played the role of the knight—a chess piece convinced its actions were noble, when in reality, it was simply a lower-valued player upon which a false flag could be draped.
Was 9/11 a false flag operation?
Despite a myriad of security failures and excuses, despite multiple warnings from foreign intelligence agencies, no one lost their job after 9/11 or was even reprimanded. An FAA administrator who “accidently” destroyed the recordings of the day’s tragic events was actually promoted.
Any individual or organization bold enough to challenge the “official facts” was labeled unpatriotic.
Allen Foster aimed his camera two decks below, zooming in on his three al Qaeda stooges. Despite its success in leading the United States to invade Iraq, September eleventh had been a bull-in-the-china-shop event that left a huge mess to clean up. This time around, the neoconspirators’ plan was far simpler. Upon disembarking from the boat, the three al Qaeda operatives would proceed to a limousine with their luggage. Instead of escaping from ground zero, they would be terminated and left for incineration. In the aftermath of the nuclear explosion, their fake passports would lead investigators on a trail that ended with an Iranian Qods Force demolition expert and several Iranian nuclear physicists—all of whom would also turn up dead.
Weeks later, Iran’s leaders would either surrender or Tehran would be nuked back into the Stone Age. Either way, the nuclear threat would be eliminated, Iranian oil would flow through the Persian Gulf under US jurisdiction, and the military-industrial complex would continue to prosper.
As for the deaths of millions of innocent civilians?
Amalek had said it best: “One cannot expect to win an economic chess match without sacrificing a few pieces. On an overpopulated planet bleeding resources, there were plenty of pawns to spare.”
Bal Harbour, Florida
While the cruise ship
Prinsendam
continued its westward direction on its rendezvous with destiny, I moved north, paralleling the shoreline through the shallows, shadowed by the
Malchut
. As I passed the island of Miami Beach, a current swept me into Baker’s Haulover Inlet, a manmade channel that connects Biscayne Bay with the Atlantic Ocean.
Baker’s Haulover Bridge is a fixed bridge with only thirty-two feet of clearance—a fact that kept the 165-foot
Malchut
from following me into Biscayne Bay. The fishing vessel remained half a mile offshore, its radio operator no doubt tracking me with GPS.
I hovered by one of the moss-covered steel and concrete supports, avoiding a swirl of bleeding bait fish attached to a hundred fishing hooks while I contemplated my next move.
My father’s relentless pursuit allowed me no place to separate myself from the nuke and alert the authorities.
Perhaps by hanging out at certain locations—like the bridge—I could force the Admiral to deploy a scuba team to check if I left the SADM behind, buying me some time.
Traveling underwater was too slow. To distance myself from my pursuers I needed a car. That meant exposing myself on land . . . literally—I was naked as a jaybird.
I remained underwater by the bridge support for three more minutes before entering Biscayne Bay. Moving through the turquoise shallows, I popped my head free, inhaled a gust of air into my lungs, and reverted to my human flesh before anyone knew better.
As luck would have it, I had surfaced at the right place.
Haulover Beach Park covers the bay side to a half-mile stretch of oceanfront located between Bal Harbour and Sunny Isles Beach, representing Miami’s only legal “clothing optional” nude beach. Exiting the water, I positioned the suitcase over my chest and naked groin and hustled through the park, jogging past shaded picnic facilities before crossing Route 1A to the beach . . . my bare behind exposed to traffic.
Stowing the suitcase beneath a shrub behind the public shower, I kept my head down and ventured onto the nude beach, searching for a pile of clothing I could “borrow.”
Before me were a thousand bathers, seventy percent of whom were naked. They came in all colors, shapes, and sizes and no one was gawking . . . okay, maybe a few people were staring at my muscles—more guys than girls.
I scanned the horizon for the
Malchut
. Sure enough, the boat was heading for the channel, a team of divers donning scuba gear out on deck.
“Excuse me, but aren’t you Kwan Wilson?”
I turned to find a brown-haired woman in her midfifties. She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit, her waist wrapped in an oversized beach towel.
“I’m Terri Browning, I teach high school English back in Oxford, Kansas, and my students just adore you.”
“Can I borrow your towel?”
“My towel? Sure. Are you shy?”
“Are you?” I asked, wrapping the towel around my waist.
“Well, no, but like I told you, I’m an English teacher. English teachers from Oxford, Kansas, can’t be seen strutting around a public beach buck-naked. My husband and I are on vacation and Jim . . . well, he insisted we drive down from Fort Lauderdale. ‘Stop acting so old,’ he said. Well, I’m not old, but I am a new grandmother and it just wouldn’t be right to—”
“Wait, did you say you have a car?”
“Of course.”
“I need a ride. It’s an emergency. Please, Mrs. Browning.”
“My goodness, don’t you sound just like one of my seniors.” She turned to her left and yelled across the beach, “Jim, get your damn clothes on, we’re leaving!”
Ten minutes later I was seated in the back of a rental car, the leather bag by my feet as we cruised over Baker’s Haulover Bridge, my father’s fishing trawler less than a hundred yards away.
Borrowing Terri Browning’s cell phone, I dialed 4-1-1, asking for the phone number to the local FBI headquarters. Jim Browning eyed me suspiciously in the rearview mirror as I asked to be connected to the highest-ranking official.
“Special Agent Zachary Restivo, to whom am I speaking?”
“This is Kwan Wilson, the guy who was paralyzed. I was kidnapped but I escaped. It’s vital that I come in; my life is in danger.”
“Kwan Wilson, huh? Last I heard, you were in rehab for cocaine.”
“What? No—I’ve never done coke in my life.”
Jim Browning shot me another look.
“Agent Restivo, I can prove to you that I’m telling the truth. Where are you located?”
“North Miami Beach. We’re on NW 2nd Avenue, just past 163rd Street.”
“Okay, great—see you in a few.” I googled the address, calling out directions to Jim from the backseat, a big smile stretched across my face.
Got you, Admiral.
39
FBI Headquarters, North Miami Beach, Florida
T
hirty minutes later we arrived at the concrete and glass structure that housed the Miami-Dade County headquarters of the FBI. I said good-bye to the Brownings in the parking lot, posing, of course, for the obligatory photos, then approached the entrance wrapped in a beach towel.
Seconds later, I found myself encircled by the barrels of at least a dozen handguns.
The two guards posted outside the building were aiming them, the touristy-looking dude smoking by the entrance produced one, the two yakkity women exiting the building . . . the gardener trimming the hedges—it was like a bad cop show. They were joined by other agents in suits and earpieces, one of whom confiscated the leather tote bag, another who led me into the lobby, removed my towel, and visually searched my naked body. Then it was down two flights in an elevator to a windowless interrogation room where an agent in a bad suit greeted me.
“Kwan Wilson . . . nice towel.”
“Someone took my clothes.”
“Your kidnappers?”
“I can explain all that, but first you need to get some bomb squad dudes in here to deactivate the nuke I stole from my father and his wacko cronies.”
I cringed inwardly as I heard the words coming out of my mouth—
but hey, the SADM was real, who cared if I sounded like I was on drugs.
Special Agent Restivo looked at me with a smirk. “Are you high, son?”
“No, man. Just check what’s in the leather bag, but be careful; it’s set to go off at seven.”
“My agents are checking the bag, but this could take a while. Is there anything I can get you while you’re waiting?”
“Some clothes would be nice.”
“I’m not sure if we have anything in your size, but we’ll find you something. Are you hungry?”
“Are you kidding? I could eat a whole dolphin . . . uh, pizza. You know, the kind of pizza they serve at Miami Dolphin football games, or whatever you can find . . . they didn’t feed me very well.”
“The kidnappers?”
“Yeah, dude. Just check what’s in the bag—you’ll see I’m telling the truth.”
Agent Restivo shook his head and walked out, leaving me seated alone at a small conference table, staring at my reflection in a large framed wall mirror. From watching all the cop shows on television I knew it was one-way glass—my captors observing me from the other side.
Maybe coming here was a mistake . . .
The door opened and a woman entered, holding an armful of clothing. “Official FBI T-shirt and sweat pants; double extra large is the biggest we had, Mr. Muscles. We’re still working on the shoes.”
I waited until she left before I removed my towel to dress, finding a small area of wall along the outer edge of the one-way glass for a bit of privacy.
What’s taking so long? Once they saw it was a nuke, they should have been in here, questioning me about my father.
I turned, eyeballing the observation glass.
Maybe I can eavesdrop on them . . .
Focusing inward, I closed my eyes and found the island of tranquility in my mind’s eye—causing dermal denticles to appear across my entire right arm. With my back to the one-way glass, I casually pressed my right palm and forearm to the smooth surface, “hearing” through the sensory cells in my shark skin.
“. . . yes, sir. He said exactly what you told us he’d say. Yes, sir, I totally understand. I had a cousin who was bi-polar. No, sir, the bag remains sealed as per your orders; in fact, it’s sitting right next to me. Ten minutes, yes, sir. I look forward to seeing you.”
My blood pressure soared, the internal heat converting impatience to rage as I spun around and punched the one-way mirror with my right fist, the emptying framework raining a thousand shards of glass.
Seated in the dark observation room was Special Agent Restivo, his eyes wide in shock. “That’s bullet-proof glass. How the hell—”
I grabbed him by the back of his neck and lifted him out of his chair as I reached for the brown leather bag with my free hand and tore it open. “Open your eyes and see for yourself! It’s a nuclear bomb!”
Agent Restivo hesitated, then looked at the spherical device. “Sweet Jesus.”
“Yeah, sweet Jesus. And there’s going to be a lot of innocent people meeting sweet Jesus in about three hours if you let my father have this back.”
“He’s on his way with my section chief. I don’t have anyone on staff trained to deactivate this, even if I had the authority to stop them.”
“Do you have a chopper? We can drop it far out to sea. Hello?”
He was inspecting the device again, pressing his nose to the sphere and inhaling.
“What are you doing?”
“SADMs require an explosive component to set off the nuclear chain reaction. C-4 has an oily odor when mixed with butyl mercaptan.” He inhaled again. “Smells like a skunk, which is good for you but bad for the rest of us. There’s a Miami PD chopper on the roof. I’ll instruct the pilot to dispose of this in deep water away from the shipping lanes. He’ll bring you back after the drop; then we’ll have a sit-down with your father and my section chief, who will no doubt drill me a new asshole.”
“You’re letting me go with him?”
“Technically, you’re escaping. Down the corridor and turn right, there’s a stairwell that will lead you up to the helipad. Go!”
Grabbing the bag, I left the observation room and ran down the empty corridor to a concrete stairwell—every movement caught on the security cameras positioned along the ceiling.
Reaching the exit to the first floor, I stopped.
The Admiral’s still tracking me. If I go with the chopper, they’ll follow; if I leave the bomb with the chopper pilot, Restivo’s section chief will order him to turn around.
“Screw ’em, I’ll do this myself.” Pushing open the fire door, I exited the building, stepping out into daylight.
Keeping low, I made it across the parking lot, then ran down the middle of NW 2nd Avenue. The first northbound vehicle coming at me was a 2006 Volkswagen Beetle, driven by a tall, skinny man with a red beard, who screeched to a stop when I blocked his way.
“FBI!” I yelled, pointing to my clothes. “Out of the car!”
“What’s the trouble?”
“A young boy was just kidnapped. I need your car and cell phone . . . mister?”
“Phillips, Dave Phillips. I have two young sons—take the car! Here’s my cell phone. Hey, where’s your shoes?”
“They fell off while I was chasing the suspect. Wait for me at HQ! Tell Agent Restivo I’m in pursuit.”
Climbing into the car, I sped off—as a Sikorsky S-434 helicopter landed on the roof of the FBI building.
I took the ramp onto the Palmetto Expressway, dialing a memorized phone number.
“Hello?”
“Professor Patel? It’s Kwan Wilson.”
“Kwan? Where are you? You sound anxious.”
“I need help. My father—he’s involved in some kind of terrorist plot. I need to expose it, but I don’t know how.”
“Where are you?”
“North Miami.”
“Can you get to my home?”
“Yeah. No. The car I’m in—there’s not enough gas.”
“There’s a Tri-Rail station on Hollywood Boulevard. Do you have enough gas to make it there?”
“Yes!”
“Get to the Tri-Rail station, there will be a ticket waiting for you in the name of Rudy Patel, no ID required. Get off at the station in Delray Beach; I’ll pick you up there.”
“Great. And thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I hung up; then I called the Tri-Rail for their schedule and directions to the Hollywood Boulevard Station.
Then I made one more call.
“Jesse, it’s your old pal, Dave Phillips.”
“Dave Phillips?”
“You know . . . from the Doors.”
“Dave! Where are you, dude?”
“Disappeared. But I’m about to reappear, only I need your help.”