Strike Force Alpha (16 page)

Murphy thought a moment, then turned to Martinez. He was the operations guy. The Delta boss just shrugged. “A sixteen-story building? Downtown Abu Dhabi? Noontime? You’ll make a mess, our biggest by far, no doubt about that. But you’ll have a body count, too.”

Murphy drained his cup of coffee, thought a long time, then snapped his briefcase closed.

“That’s why we’re here,” he said.

Ten hours later

Downtown Abu Dhabi was
extra
crowded this morning.

A large street festival was in progress, a celebration for the governor’s daughter who’d recently announced her impending motherhood. Sayeeb Avenue was the focal point for this event. The expansive concourse in front of the National Bank was jammed with vendors and outdoor stands selling food, tea, and candy. Musicians walked the sidewalks nearby. Magicians and storytellers entertained the children. Thousands were on the streets this day. Normally there would have been just hundreds.

A group of European missionaries was visiting Abu Dhabi today as well. Many were members of the German Green Party, here at the invitation of the UAE parliament. There were seventeen women on the tour, plus a tour guide and a translator. The missionaries were among the guests of honor at the motherhood festival. Two were carrying video cameras.

At noontime, the people in the streets were serenaded by the clanging of bells and the sounds of flutes. The height of the celebration had arrived. One of the German tourists turned her video camera up toward the Clock Tower, an 80-foot structure that soared above the near-spotless city. Through her viewfinder she saw a flock of white doves explode out of the tower, as if startled by something. Then a terrifying black form filled her frame. What was that? It was moving so fast, she could not tell. Then came the noise. It was horrendous, earsplitting. Then a second black shape crossed her eyepiece,

On the videotape, someone asks: “What is happening?”

“They are
Luftkriegers,
” the woman holding the camera was heard to reply. Jet fighters. She’d grown up in Bavaria in the 1970s. She was familiar with the sound of warplanes screaming over the countryside.

But these two had come out of nowhere. They were flying so low, so fast, and making so much noise, hundreds of windows were breaking throughout the city. A slew of car alarms along Sayeeb Avenue went off, triggered by the racket. The people at the festival watched as the pair of black jets climbed in perfect unison, turned over on their wings—and began heading right for the downtown.

Many in the street instinctively ran for cover. This was definitely not part of the celebration. The German woman with the camera held firm though. Somehow she kept the pair of aircraft in view as they passed back over the Clock Tower and flew right down the center of the avenue. The planes were no more than 100 feet off the ground and the wave of approaching noise they were creating was just tremendous. On the tape, someone could be heard screaming in German:
“They are going to bomb us!”

The frightened crowd became a frantic mob. People, running in all directions. The woman with the camera was knocked over in the stampede. She fell on her back but kept the camera pointing straight up. The videotape told the tale from there. By pure chance, it caught the flight of the first 2,000-pound bomb as it passed over Sayeeb Avenue and slammed right into the enormous, two-story front door of the crowded bank. The bomb exploded on impact. On the tape the building seemed to rise a foot in the air before coming back down. Every window in the 16-story structure was instantly blown out.

The tape then caught a second huge bomb slamming into the building just a few feet above the first. There was a gush of fire, blinding the lens for a moment. Then three people ran in front of the camera; they were engulfed in flame. They disappeared just in time for the camera to catch sight of the two planes, out over the water, but turning again. They were coming back.

There came now much static and the images of people’s feet running past the camera. Some were burned and shoeless. Others were covered to the ankles in blood. The two planes were suddenly over them again. The German woman tried to get to her own feet, camera still running, and caught the third 2,000-pound bomb coming in. It landed almost exactly where the first one did but kept right on going. It punctured the center of the massive vault and then exploded. The shock wave was so violent this time, the camera was blown from the woman’s hands. It landed with a crash—but did not break. It was made in America. The woman was somehow able to pick it up, and in the confusion now she, too, was running. The tape showed that she was on the tail end of a huge crowd of people fleeing for their lives, some looking back, though not believing what they were seeing.

Then came the sound of the fourth bomb hitting the target. The laser-guided munition went through the top of the fractured bank vault like a bullet through a tin can, blowing up only after it had embedded itself in the building’s foundation.

This was the biggest explosion of all. The ground began shaking and would not stop. The German woman fell again. This time, she stayed down. Either by accident or design, she turned the camera back toward the bank just in time to see the 16-story structure start to collapse. It went over to the north, away from the woman’s position, but the smoke and dust were horrible and suffocating. The tape showed the rubble of the bank was fully involved in smoke and flames, as was the wide concourse in front of it. There were bodies burning everywhere. One of the jets rocketed through the smoke and screamed away. The second jet was right on its tail. The German woman somehow used her zoom lens and caught, in full view, something that was painted on the side of the second departing jet.

It was an American flag.

The woman could be heard screaming in thick English:
“American bastards! Murderers!”

Then the tape ran out.

Ryder and Phelan were circling above
Ocean Voyager
twenty minutes later.

The ship was only a few miles off the coast of Abu Dhabi, still moving south. They got lucky, as the vessel had sailed right into an adequate security zone, allowing both jump jets to land with no problems.

The airplanes were quickly brought below and all evidence of their retrieval covered over. Ryder and Phelan went down with the pancakes and then headed for their makeshift ready room, an unused cabin next to the crews’ galley. They shook hands—a postflight first. Things had gone that well. They talked extensively, one-on-one, about the mission, another first. It was just as a flight leader and wingman should be. The adrenaline was still pumping in both of them. Neither had done anything like this before. They’d flown the job flawlessly, and they’d returned in one piece. It would take a while for this buzz to go away.

They changed quickly and went up to the combat center, knowing this was where the rest of the team would be. But instead of the expected case of beer and congratulations all round, they walked into a dry room, with some very startled faces hidden in the dark.

No one spoke. Martinez just clicked a remote and CNN blinked on a nearby TV screen. The first thing Ryder saw was his own jet passing above the burning bank back in Abu Dhabi, Phelan’s jet right on his tail. A female reporter was halfway into a Breaking News Report on the bombing. The German missionary had been killed, the newswoman reported breathlessly, but her camera had been found and immediately turned over to the local TV station, who immediately sent it to the Al Jazzier Arab TV network as a raw feed. Al Jazzier had it on the air even before the Harriers were back on the ship. CNN had picked up the footage from there. And this was not the dark, shaky camera work confiscated after the
Sea Princess
incident. This was clear and focused and disturbing. The damage was incredible. The noise. The fire. The carnage, appalling. And now it was being broadcast all over the world.

Ryder fell into the nearest seat. Phelan did, too.

“Wow,” the young Navy pilot breathed. “We’re on TV….”

The
Ocean Voyager
left the Persian Gulf the next morning.

They ran two hours out into the Indian Ocean and then began a series of slow 360s that kept them near the shipping lanes but not actually inside them. If a patrol plane, from any country, went overhead, the prewritten script would have Bingo and his crew claim they were doing rudder repairs.

Bobby Murphy had ordered the withdrawal from the Gulf. Things had changed a bit for his modern-day crusaders. Up until now, the American media had all but ignored the strike team’s activities. (It seemed like Murphy had friends everywhere.) Most of the videotapes from the
Sea Princess
had proved as persuasive as UFO footage. Shaky, fuzzy, and shot at night, the best ones had been confiscated as soon as the cruise ship reached Israel. For the most part, the actions in Sicily, Somalia, and the western Saudi desert had been reported as “isolated terrorist acts” for which no one had claimed responsibility. Murphy couldn’t have planned it better. By
chutzpah,
skill, and good luck, the team had become part of the Middle East’s murky underworld of terrorists and spies, mooks and Spooks. It was a place where no one knew exactly who was doing what to whom or why. Chaos, unreported, but just under the radar.

The titanic destruction in Abu Dhabi proved too much for the media to ignore, though. High-level friends or not, the footage shot by the German tourist had been playing on TVs around the globe nonstop. Enhanced and digitized, the bombing could be seen graphically clear, as could the two American-marked fighters carrying out the strike. More than 1,200 were dead.

Officially the Pentagon was investigating, but they had no idea what was going on. Neither did the CIA, the DIA, et al. The State Department reminded everybody that more than the British and Americans flew the Harrier. But no one could come up with a plausible explanation why the Indian Navy would want to bomb a bank in Abu Dubai and do so disguised as Americans.

So, the team had made headlines—and now half the world would be looking for them. The heat clearly on, Murphy decided to move to cooler waters for a while.

But the Harriers still needed gas. So on the third night following the bank bombing, Ryder and Phelan climbed into their jump jets again and took off for 20 Angels.

The night was clear over the water, a crescent moon just coming up between the mountains of faraway Pakistan. It was a beautiful time to fly, something that Ryder had not been able to appreciate of late. The stars were ablaze above them, and that bullshit about being able to reach out and touch the face of God almost seemed possible at the moment.

They reached 20,000 feet, on time, and at the right vertical plane.

Trouble was, the tanker wasn’t there.

This had never happened before. The refuelers were always on time and in the right place. Ryder didn’t have to call over to Phelan. The two were in sync by now. The young wingman banked right and Ryder banked left. They went looking for their gas truck.

In the past all the pilots knew about the refueling missions was that they could be flown by any number of U.S. tanker assets cruising the area. All had been classified as training missions, meaning the refuelers were getting practice in filling up Harrier jets. Tankers could fly great distances; the Harriers could be gassing up over the Red Sea from a tanker that was based in Germany. Someone waiting over the Indian Ocean might have come from nearby Diego Garcia. Or as far away as Guam.

But wherever tonight’s fuel hound was flying from, he’d missed his duly appointed round.

Ryder and Phelan searched the skies for nearly 30 minutes, but the tanker never showed up. They couldn’t wait around any longer; they didn’t have the gas.

Reluctantly, they headed back down to the ship.

They landed and the planes were taken below. The Marine techs told Ryder and Phelan that Martinez was waiting for them back on the aft railing. They should see him right away.

The pilots found the Delta boss on the ass end of the ship, gazing out on the wake. There was not a beer in sight.

They told him what happened up top. Martinez didn’t seem very surprised, but he was obviously troubled by the news.

“While you were gone, a few of the screens up on the bridge blinked off,” he told them quietly. “A few more in the combat room went dark, too. Communications and navigation stuff mostly, but the discreet line to the U.S. Middle East Security Command also went down—and that’s like our lifeblood. Bingo’s guys are trying like hell to get it back, but so far, it’s been no dice. It doesn’t look to have been caused at our end, either. It seems that the other end just stopped transmitting to us. Like someone flipped a switch and everything getting fed to us just went away.”

Ryder felt his heart hit his feet. The
Ocean Voyager
was secretly wired into the same networks U.S. Navy ships used for navigation and communications. This included advanced GPS, SeaSatComm, the Navy’s global weather system, the works. Without these things, they were just another ship plowing through the water, with little more than a shortwave radio and reports from the local maritime weather service. Ryder had assumed the tanker no-show was a screwup on the part of the refueling corps. But now, with the ship’s nav/comm gear shutting down, too, could there be a connection?

“You’re the Delta God,” he said to Martinez. “What do you think is happening here?”

Martinez hesitated a moment. He was very good at being evasive; that’s what his by-the-book training had taught him to do. But he was also an emotional guy, hot-blooded. Sometimes, when asked a direct question, he couldn’t help but answer it straight.

“Maybe someone is trying to tell us something,” he finally said. “No tanker. No nav/comm support. Some of the sat phones are blinking out, too. We made a lot of noise the other day. Who knows what the bounce-back will be.”

“We made too much noise, you mean?” Ryder asked.

Martinez just shrugged and lit his cigar.

“But is that possible?” Phelan wondered. “I thought bigger was better?”

“I did, too,” Martinez said. “But one thing I’ve learned in this business: the rules can change at any time—and usually it’s the boots on the ground that are the last to know. Besides, just about
anything
is possible with Murphy and the guys who helped set him up. I mean, we’re deeper than deep. Blacker than black. We’re not supposed to exist. I don’t think being on CNN is exactly what they had in mind.”

Just then Gallant came walking along the rail.

“Precisely the people I’m looking for,” the copter pilot said to Ryder and Phelan. “Murphy wants to see you two. Up in the CQ, chop-chop.”

“Just us?” Phelan asked him.

“Just you.”

Ryder didn’t like the sound of that.

“Were you just up there?” he asked Gallant, nodding toward the bridge house where Murphy’s quarters were located. “What’s he doing? Sitting in the dark?”

Gallant laughed. “Actually, he’s going over a computer file of yours.”

“A file of mine?” Ryder asked, surprised. “Which one?”

Gallant winked at Martinez and Phelan.

“Everyone calls it ‘The Fruit File’…” he said.

Ryder and Phelan walked up to Murphy’s cabin and knocked twice.

Murphy yelled for them to come in. Ryder opened the door to see that Gallant had been right. The cabin was hardly dark. In fact, every available light inside was blazing at maximum intensity. There was no funeral atmosphere here.

The long dining table was covered with maps, charts, credit card read-outs, cell phone logs, and many, many satellite photos. Murphy was nearly lost behind this mountain of data. He was hunched over one of his six laptops, drinking a huge cup of coffee. He was wearing a ball cap that had
DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS
embroidered across the bill. Three small TVs, all tuned to CNN, were just an arm’s reach away. Each was replaying footage of the Abu Dubai incident. Different angles, different enhancements, slow-motion, stop-motion, all it needed now was its own music score. Ryder tried to ignore it. He’d seen the video a hundred times already, and even though he was in it and it was now the center of a huge international controversy, he’d grown tired of it a long time ago. Phelan, however, couldn’t wait for a chance to see it again.

Murphy waved them in and pointed in the direction of his bar.
At least there’s beer up here,
Ryder thought. He and Phelan each took a Bud and joined Murphy at the table. The funny little man was looking at a pile of jpg photos through a huge magnifying glass.

Ryder felt compelled to tell him the bad news first. He recounted the aerial tanker’s no-show and their unsuccessful search for it. Murphy listened, patiently. But he was more concerned with studying the photographs in front of him.

“I’ll look into it,” he said offhandedly.

Ryder glanced over at Phelan, who just shrugged. “You also heard that some of the nav/comm gear shut down?” Ryder told Murphy quietly. “Some of the sat phones are blinking out, too.”

Murphy never took his eye from the magnifying glass. “Stuff happens,” he said. “Especially when you’re far out to sea.”

Ryder finally leaned over and looked at the photographs that had so captured Murphy’s interest. Just as Gallant had hinted, they were the pictures Ryder had taken of the “convoy ships” that night over the Med, the ones carrying all that fruit.

“I wish I’d known about these earlier,” Murphy said, sounding more enthusiastic than ever. “This is really dynamite stuff!”

Ryder was puzzled. Of all the things going on, why was Murphy so hyper about his so-called Fruit File?

“The Spooks told me it was just a bunch of ships, carrying lemons and grapes,” he told Murphy. “What’s the big deal?”

“It’s lemons and grapes, all right,” Murphy replied. “But want a guess
whose
fruit it is?”

“Chiquita Banana’s?” Phelan replied.

“How about the Head Mooks themselves?” Murphy shot back.

“You’re kidding,” Ryder said.

“They’re into peddling fruit?” Phelan asked.

Murphy flashed a smile. “I couldn’t make something like that up—it’s too good,” he said. He unloaded his briefcase onto the desk. It contained more enhanced photos from the Fruit File.

“I had some of ‘Norman’ Bates’ guys downstairs zoom in on the names of those convoy ships,” Murphy said. “They could only raise two—but that’s all I needed. I tracked them to this place.”

He showed them a satellite image of a city in Libya called Qartoom. In the eastern part of the country, right on the coast, it boasted a large harbor with vessels of all sizes tied up at the extensive docks. Murphy pointed to a huge structure next to a loading pier. It was a cargo transfer facility, very modern, with roll on, roll off capability and many heavy-lift cranes. It alone took up about a third of the harbor.

“This is the shipping terminal for an outfit called ‘Heavenly Fruits,’” Murphy explained. “Al Qaeda owns it; they are its sole investors. The Big Cheese started it as a corporation a few years back, one of his thirty-three legitimate companies. Most of them are small and slimy. But three of them are huge: A construction firm in the Sudan. A shipping company in Italy. And this place. Now, I know the Libyans are supposed to be our ‘friends’ these days, but any idea how much fruit they roll out of there in a week?”

Ryder studied the photo. It showed a lot of activity around the warehouse and sea terminal. There was a ship being loaded that was nearly as large as the
Ocean Voyager.
Many smaller cargo ships were lurking around as well.

“A couple dozen tons?” he offered.

“Try
four thousand
tons,” Murphy told them. “Lemons. Grapes. Oranges. Watermelons—who knew mooks liked watermelon? That place works twenty-four hours a day, shipping fruit all over the Middle East. And only to Muslim countries, or at least that’s the first stop. It’s expensive stuff, too, for fruit, that is.”

But Ryder was still a couple steps behind him. It showed.

“Don’t you get it?” Murphy asked him. “What you saw that night were some of their fruit ships, in a convoy, with at least two Arab flyboys providing air cover. That shows you how
valuable
this business is to them and their organization. In fact, Heavenly Fruits generates a good chunk of the fifty million they need to keep the whole
jihad
thing up and running. Those grapes are more precious to them these days than a hundred ships loaded with weapons. No wonder they’re protecting it on the high seas. Guns and bombs they have. It’s money that they need the most.”

Murphy sat back and took a sip of his coffee. Ryder and Phelan drained their beers and grabbed two more.

“Looking at your photos got me thinking,” Murphy went on. “We took care of twelve million of their cash the other day. That was a real shot to the ribs. Now here’s a way we can hit them with another punch, an even bigger one, right out of the blue. They’ll never see it coming!”

But just as those words came out of Murphy’s mouth, the three TVs next to him blinked off. Then all of his six computers shut down.

A moment later, the lights went off.

They sat there in the dark for the longest time, not talking, not moving. The ship started rolling; the wind outside was kicking up again.

“Well, this is weird,” Murphy finally drawled.

The emergency lights blinked on a moment later. Now the room was extremely dim and dreary. Murphy picked up his intership phone, intent on calling the bridge. But the phone was dead.

Then came a knock at the CQ door. Murphy yelled, “Come!” and the person hurried in. It was one of Bates’s guys, a very young-looking Spook. He’d obviously run all the way up from the bottom of the ship.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said, breathlessly attempting a weak salute. “But we’ve just lost almost everything down in the White Rooms. Everything coming in from Echelon is gone. Everything coming in from Central Command is too. We even lost a lot of our Internet sites.”

Murphy was stunned. Ryder and Phelan, too.

“Well, son, we just had a power outage,” Murphy said to him. “Are you saying everything kicked off because of that?”