Soldier of God (6 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Soldier of God
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Khalil was first. He threw open the door, went inside, and stepped left to allow Zahir and Hasan to come in right behind him.
Captain Darling turned around, and seeing the weapons realized in a split instant that something was drastically wrong. He held a cup of hot coffee in his left hand. He tossed it at the intruders, hoping for a moment’s distraction, and sprang for the weapons locker.
Khalil easily sidestepped the cup and fired three shots, the first two hitting the captain in the shoulder, but the third plowing into the side of his head, killing him instantly.
Zahir put three shots into Abfalter’s chest, knocking the officer-intraining off his feet; he struggled to breathe for almost three seconds before he too died.
The young woman at the helm released the wheel and stepped back, her hands going to her face. She was shaking, and she appeared ready to faint. Khalil lowered his weapon and went to her. He took her arm and guided her back to the wheel.
“Someone has to steer the boat, my dear,” he said pleasantly. “It wouldn’t do to run us aground. Might upset the passengers.”
She was frightened out of her mind, but she did as she was told, bringing the Spirit, which had drifted only a few degrees to starboard, back on course.
“The captain’s satphone,” Khalil reminded Zahir. He keyed his walkie-talkie. “One is secure,” he radioed.
Shortly after ten Katy realized that she’d lost an earring, and she leaned over to her husband. “Could you fetch something for me from our cabin, like a good boy?” They were having after-dinner drinks at one of the tables at the edge of the dance floor. It was the second night out, and most of the ninety-six passengers were enjoying themselves in the Gay Nineties, plush, floral-upholstered, and hand-carved-wood ambiance of the Spirit’s Grand Salon.
They were tablemates with Don Shaw and his wife, Karen. The two couples had agreed at the boarding cocktail reception not to talk shop, and the ship’s crew had been instructed not to recognize the former secretary. He and his wife were to be treated as ordinary passengers.
“I hope it’s nothing heavy,” McGarvey told his wife under his breath. “It’s been a long day and I’m tired.”
“Would you believe an earring?”
McGarvey gave her a smile. “I don’t suppose it would do me any good to say that you look beautiful without it.”
“You’d earn points, but other than that—” She gave him a contented, warm smile. “Small, blue velvet, zippered pouch in one of the pockets of my brown leather hanging bag.”
Their drink order arrived, and their steward seemed a bit nervous. He spilled some of Shaw’s martini on the napkin and clumsily started to wipe it up, but the former SecDef waved him off. “It’s all right.”
Captain Darling had been seated with them, but he’d been called away by the chief steward a few minutes ago. “What happened to the captain?” Karen Shaw asked, pleasantly. Darling had been regaling them with hilarious stories about some of the gaffes he had committed with passengers when he was a young, inexperienced officer just out of the Merchant Marine Academy.
The steward, a young, dark-complexioned man with long, delicate
fingers glanced across the dance floor toward the door. “He was called to the bridge, ma’am, though I’m sure I don’t know why.”
“Will he be long?”
“I don’t know, ma’am,” the steward said, and he turned abruptly and hurried across to the service alcove, where he disappeared behind the screen.
The hairs at the base of McGarvey’s neck prickled, and his eyes narrowed. He resisted the urge to follow the steward and ask what was bothering him. This was supposed to be a vacation. It was the first one he and Katy had taken since the trouble, and they needed the time away from Washington. Jim Grassinger was seated at a table by the door with Shaw’s bodyguard, Tony Battaglia. Both of them sipped soda water. Their heads were on swivels, but turning slowly, as if they were nonchalantly people watching. Nothing could have been further from the truth. McGarvey caught Grassinger’s eye and nodded toward the door. Grassinger got to his feet, said something to Battaglia who surreptitiously glanced over at his boss’s table, and then Grassinger stepped out into the passageway.
“Duty calls,” McGarvey told the Shaws, and he got up.
The former SecDef looked up, questioningly, but McGarvey gave him a reassuring nod.
“Be just a minute,” he said, and he left the Grand Salon. Grassinger was waiting out in the passageway, very alert.
“What’s up, boss?”
“Mission of mercy. Katy lost an earring.” They headed to the starboard stairs one deck up and forward to the McGarveys’ inside-corridor deluxe stateroom. The wind was screaming outside now, but they were sailing in protected waters and the cruise liner rode easily.
This part of the ship seemed very quiet. They could hear music from downstairs, but nothing else in the inside passageway. There were no stewards, no crewmen, no engineers doing maintenance. But then perhaps nothing was broken and needed fixing.
McGarvey forced his dire feelings to the back of his mind. Pretty soon he would be looking for bogeymen under his bed. It was just a case of overwrought nerves brought on by the constant pressures of the seventh floor at Langley and the events of the past year. He smiled, and chuckled
to himself. Hell, considering the life he had led, the people he’d killed, and the ones who had made very serious efforts to kill him, it was a wonder he wasn’t a basket case.
“Something I said?” Grassinger asked.
“I’m going to give it another half hour or so, and then I’m going to pull the pin,” McGarvey said, stifling a yawn. “I’m so tired I’m starting to imagine all sorts of stuff.”
Grassinger reacted as if he had just sucked on a lemon. “Jeez, don’t say that, Mac; I’m already spooked as it is.”
“You too?”
“Yeah.”
McGarvey had to laugh. “It’s one of the perks of the business. Things will look up tomorrow.”
Khalil’s people finished their sweep of the upper deck, silently killing two crewmen—one on steward’s duty and one repairing a jammed door lock—and three passengers who had the misfortune to miss the night’s entertainment and retire early.
They assembled in the port stairwell that led down to the lounge deck, six operators plus Khalil, who keyed his walkie-talkie. “Engine room.”
“Secure,” Granger reported.
“Bridge.”
“Secure,” Karin replied.
“Communications.”
“Secure,” Muhamed came back.
“Abdul,” Khalil radioed.
For several seconds there was no reply, but then Adani finally came back. “Two of the male passengers left about three minutes ago. They took the stairs to the upper deck. Did you run into them?”
“No. Who are they?”
“I haven’t had time to check. But they must have cabins on that deck; there’s nothing else up there.”
“We just took care of three passengers up there,” Khalil said. “It must have been them.” He considered sending two of his people back to make
sure, but in another four or five minutes they would have Shaw in custody and would be off this ship. “Is our target still there?”
“Yes.”
“What about the rest of our people?” Khalil asked. Besides Adani and two others on the steward’s staff in the Grand Salon, there were three from engineering.
“They’re in place on the bow viewing area, ready to strike on your command,” Adani said, and it was clear from his voice that he was excited.
“We’re coming down. The time is now T-minus-thirty seconds.”
“Insha’allah
,” Adani radioed.
Yes,
insha’allah,
Khalil thought, and he led his people downstairs to the lounge deck, in the corridor just aft of the Grand Salon. The combo was doing a good job with “In the Mood,” and he could hear people talking and laughing, having a good time. After the events of this evening, however, the handful of passengers and crew who might survive, if they were lucky, would forever have second thoughts about the true meaning of happiness.
Of the sixteen operators, Khalil’s was the only face not in the photographic files of any intelligence or law enforcement agency somewhere in the world. One of his strengths was his anonymity. He pulled a black nylon mesh balaclava over his head, checked his RAK machine pistol’s silencer, and motioned for his people to do the same. They had made little or no noise to this point, and he wanted to keep it that way. There were still crewmen on duty in various parts of the ship. Alerting them at this stage would merely complicate things. They all would die in due course, but for the moment Khalil wanted to maintain his tight schedule. In approximately sixty minutes, the Spirit would be in range of one of the cell-phone towers that served the Ketchikan area. They had to be well away long before that time, because there was no possibility of finding all the cell phones that might be aboard.
Khalil watched the numerals of his digital watch count down the last five seconds to 22:15. He keyed his walkie-talkie, and spoke one word: “Now.”
The four men from engineering who waited on the bow were first inside the Grand Salon. Without warning they opened fire on the tiny stage,
killing the four musicians. They quickly took positions along the starboard wall.
Adani and his two stewards snatched their weapons, hidden under towels on serving trolleys, and opened fire on the eight officers seated at various tables throughout the salon, moving in from the pantry and serving stations along the port wall.
Even before the first woman let out an ear-piercing scream, Khalil and his six operators stormed in from the aft corridor, and closed the watertight double doors, cutting off sounds from the rest of the ship.
The passengers reacted in stunned disbelief. Some of them ducked under their tables, while others shouted for the crew, for anyone, to do something.
Khalil’s men took up positions across the back wall, completing the encirclement of the Grand Salon. As the noise slowly began to subside, Khalil nonchalantly walked toward the front of the room, stopping next to the woman who was still crying and screaming, her eyes wide, her hands to her mouth. She was in her late sixties or early seventies, and frightened beyond control. Nothing like this had ever happened to her or any of her friends in Waterloo, Iowa.
She looked up into his eyes, suddenly rearing back as if she’d looked into the eyes of a hooded cobra ready to strike. “My God—”
Khalil raised his machine pistol and put one round in the middle of her forehead. She was shoved backward, onto the deck. An older man, probably her husband, dressed in a tuxedo, started to get to his feet, when Khalil calmly switched aim and fired one shot into his face at point-blank range, killing him instantly.
“The next person who utters a sound,
any
sound, will suffer the same fate,” Khalil told the passengers and those of the crew who were still alive.
A deathly silence descended upon the big room, as if someone had dropped a funeral shroud from the ceiling.
“Appreciate the gravity of the situation that you now find yourselves in,” Khalil told them. “You have my word as a gentleman that once we have accomplished our task this evening, we will leave the ship, and no further harm will come to any of you.”
“Just go away!” a teenaged girl seated with her parents cried, and her mother tried to hush her.
Khalil reached their table on three strides. “Which of your parents do you want me to kill, little girl?” he demanded.
The teenager looked up at him and shook her head, unable to speak.
“Make another sound, and I shall kill them both.” Khalil held her eye for several long moments, until the mother pulled her daughter away and protectively cradled her.
He looked at them with contempt. If it had been a defiant son who had made the challenge, he would have enjoyed the killing. But a daughter was not worth the effort of pulling the trigger.
Only five minutes had elapsed since they had come aboard, but already the cruise ship was under their control.
Khalil stepped back, then turned and walked to the tables in the front of the room at the edge of the dance floor. Shaw and his wife, plus another, very attractive, woman sat together. The seat next to the attractive woman was empty, as was the one at the head of the table.
“Mr. Secretary of Defense, what a pleasure to see you this evening,” Khalil said.
Shaw looked up over his glasses at Khalil, but said nothing.
Khalil motioned toward the empty chairs. “Where are the individuals who were seated with you?”
“They’re gone,” Kathleen answered quickly.
Khalil turned his bland, almost dreamy eyes to her. “One of them was your husband?”
“No. It was Captain Darling and one of his officers. The chief steward called them away a few minutes ago.”
Khalil considered her answer. The captain had come to the bridge, but he’d been alone. “Where is your husband?”
“I’m a widow.”
Khalil resisted the urge to tell her that she would soon be joining her husband. Instead he turned back to Shaw. “On your feet, Mr. Secretary, you are coming with us. Someone wishes to speak to you.”
Karen Shaw was clutching her husband’s arm. “Who?” the former SecDef asked.
“Why, Osama bin Laden, of course—”
An unsilenced pistol shot rang out at the back of the salon, immediately followed by the rapid putt-putting of at least two machine pistols. Khalil spun around in time to see that one of his operators was down, as was one of the male passengers. Blood was splattered all over the paneled wall, and was pooling under the two bodies.
“He had a gun,” one of the operators said.
Khalil turned again to Shaw. “Was he your bodyguard?”
The former SecDef nodded tightly. “However long it takes, we will hunt you down; you and the scum bastards you work with. Make no mistake.”
“It is you who have made a mistake by coming on this trip,” Khalil said, calming himself. “Get to your feet now, or I will kill your wife.”
Shaw stood up, disengaging himself from his wife’s grasp. “First Afghanistan, then Iraq. You and al-Quaida are next.”
“You will have plenty of time to practice your speech,” Khalil said. “Where we are going there will be many people most interested in your words.” He laughed. “Very interested indeed.”

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