Gauntlet (22 page)

“So?”

“They’ve grown from nothing to become a very large shipping firm. In record time,” said Turbee.

Now Rhodes broke in. “He’s got a point there, Dan.” He turned back to Turbee. “How certain are you that they’re the ones we’re looking for?”

“Positive. I have some really strong evidence.”

“Do you know which ships may be involved in the smuggling?”

“Yes,” said Turbee. “The private yacht of the owner of the company, some guy by the name of Jhananda. It’s a yacht called the
Mankial Star.
She’s large — 80 feet, perhaps a bit more. She was anchored off the eastern coast of a small island called Socotra, where Yemen has jurisdiction. There are several pictures; here, I’ll flip them on the 101’s for you. There they are. Note the times. There were repeat helicopter visits to the yacht. These are from one day after the Semtex was stolen. There’s a small runway on the island, just to the west of what appears to be a huge estate overlooking the Gulf of Arabia.”

Everyone was paying attention now. The pictures on the 101’s showed exactly what Turbee said they would. He had the floor. “I am positive that the Semtex is on that ship, Dan. It’s headed east, toward us.”

“How did it get from Darfur to a ship off the coast of Socotra, of all places?” asked Rhodes. “That’s a long distance to travel.”

“Well,” said Turbee, “look at the runway. There’s a plane there, and I’m told by Kingston at the NSA that it’s a DC-3. Look at the next set of pictures. You can clearly see the helicopter that’s landed beside the DC-3. You can also see it, an hour later, sitting on the rear deck of the
Mankial Star.
That helicopter was ferrying cargo of some sort from the DC-3 on the runway to the ship.”

“It’s all kind of circumstantial, isn’t it?” asked Dan. “In any event, how do you know that ship is the
Mankial Star?”

“Simple,” responded Turbee. “The Office of Naval Intelligence has a database for every ship larger than 70 feet in length. The database has measurements for the length, width, and shape of any hull, along with other distinguishing features. I ran that particular photograph through the database, and it spit out the name of the ship, its owners, its beam size, and so on. It’s the
Mankial Star.”

“Dan, I’m not sure what you mean by circumstantial, but it gives us enough reason to have a closer look at least,” said Rahlson. “We should check it out.”

“I think I’ll call the DDCI,” said Dan, motioning to Johnson to get the Deputy Director on the line. “He should hear this, although I’m sure the heavies are more concerned about nuclear weapons gone astray than a few tons of high explosive. I mean any large construction company in the States could probably acquire this if they wanted to.”

After a moment, Johnson motioned that he had the connection. Dan asked for him to put the conversation on the large control room speakers.

“What do you have?” came the booming voice of Admiral Jackson. “We’re in the briefing room right now.”

Dan outlined Turbee’s theory, and the evidence supporting it. “Give us a few minutes, would you,” came Big Jack’s reply.

Dan muted the speaker and told his crew that Jackson was probably briefing the President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military or Intelligence leaders at that very moment.

The reply was not long in coming. “Dan, Richard Lawrence is apparently at the Islamabad Embassy right now. Call over there, and check with him and the station chief on what our next move should be. The station chief is Michael Buckingham, and Jennifer Coe is one of his main researchers. They know more about the drug trade in Afghanistan and Pakistan than anyone else. If the Karachi Star Line is owned by heroin dealers, we have it nailed. Get back to us.” The line went dead.

Dan motioned to Johnson. “Islamabad, now,” he snapped. Within seconds, Michael Buckingham’s voice crackled across the conference room speakers. He was a career civil servant, having spent a lifetime in the Middle East Intelligence business. He was 55 years old, and had been part of the 1980 operation that armed the Afghani rebels against the Soviets. Buckingham was very familiar with the geography, tribal politics, and languages of Afghanistan, and knew more about that country than most of its citizens. The stress of his job had led him into chain smoking and heavy drinking at an early age, and he was trying to quit both. Aside from those bad habits, he had a sterling reputation as a man who could get the job done in the Middle East.

“Let me get Jennifer and see what I can do about Richard,” he said, once they had him on the phone. “Is Khasha around?” he added as an afterthought.

“I’m right here, big boy,” said Khasha. She had worked for a few years with the Islamabad desk, and knew Buckingham well. Jennifer Coe had taken over her duties when she moved to TTIC.

“Is Richard around?” asked Dan.

“He’s around, Dan, but not exactly available,” replied Buckingham.

“Meaning?” asked Dan.

Buckingham sighed. When a body had shown up in front of the Embassy, he’d been the one in charge of inspecting it. He had known Zak Goldberg and his parents personally, so it had been extremely upsetting when he’d recognized Zak’s ring on the hand they’d received. Declaring the body parts to be those of Zak Goldberg had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. Talking about it wasn’t getting any easier.

“Well it’s a bad situation,” he began. “And it starts with an unpleasant coincidence.”

“Go on,” urged Dan.

“The CIA wanted Richard back in Islamabad, because they thought he would be of value to them, given his involvement in the Semtex case. And you know how Langley is. When they finally decide to do something, they want it done yesterday.”

“Yeah, we know,” came the refrain from several workstations at TTIC.

“So they put him on a Super Hornet with a Captain Trufit, to get him back here in record time. At about the same time, a bag of body parts was found in front of the Embassy. I looked them over, and I believed that they belonged to Zak Goldberg. But Langley wanted a top notch forensic analysis done, and the closest decent and friendly lab is in Tel Aviv. Since he was going to be in the area, Langley assigned Trufit to the mission. Let me tell you, he was not happy about it.”

“Can you blame him?” asked George, disgusted.

“Not really,” said Buckingham. “Anyway, Trufit bitched at the only person he could when he found out. That person happened to be Richard, sitting in the copilot’s seat. Trufit didn’t know that the remains were Zak’s, but he did know that they came from an undercover agent, and evidently he said so. Richard got curious, and when he deplaned, he met the ground crew, who had these plastic bags. They didn’t even put them in freezers. Just here you go my good man, here’s your body parts. Richard got suspicious of all the weird treatment, and opened one of the bags. Out drops this severed hand, with a ring on it. He ID’s the ring — it’s very rare, and you can only buy it in the Peshawar marketplace. He knew Zak was undercover here. And he knew the ring. Zak had it on most of the time, and it’s actually how I made my initial ID of the body. It didn’t take long for Richard to make the same connection.”

“Okay, so?” asked Dan.

A few of the TTIC employees stared at him, shocked. For anyone who knew Richard and Zak’s history, the conclusion of this scene was obvious.

“Jesus, Dan, what do you think?” Buckingham snapped. “He started rooting around in the bags, looking at the various body parts, most of which showed signs of the most brutal torture. Then he sat down on the tarmac and started to just blubber. It was pretty bad. He seems to be in some kind of shock. The medics here are with him now. They’ve shot him up with a bunch of tranquillizers.”

“Oh my God,” breathed Lance. “He’s going to need to decompress. He needs a whole staff of doctors looking after him, Michael.”

There was some murmuring around the TTIC control room. Many of the people there knew Richard, and were concerned over his physical and mental well-being. At length, Dan pulled them back together, asking several people to help outline what they knew so far for Buckingham and Jennifer Coe.

“The Karachi Star Line is an interesting creature alright,” said Buckingham. “It seemed to come out of nowhere. We’re not even sure who owns it, but we think it’s probably a gentleman by the name of Omar Jhananda. His father was an old Indus River ferryman, who probably smuggled more than his fair share of heroin from Rawalpindi to the saltwater, though no one’s really sure. We’ve always thought that the company was involved in drugs in some way, but no one has been able to prove it for sure. If you’re asking for my gut feeling on it, yeah, I’d say that they’re in the trade.”

Buckingham’s gut was seldom wrong on these things.

“What about you, Khasha? You grew up there. What’s your take on it?” asked Dan.

She shrugged. “I think they’re in the business. When I was going to school there, they were called the Indus Star Cargo Company. They ran goods up and down the river. They paid their employees in cash. They grew really fast. Everyone knew about it. The people who run it are from the border areas of the Northwest Frontier Province. I agree with Michael, but it’s only an educated guess.”

“Jennifer, what about you?” asked Dan.

“I’m too damn tired to think,” came the reply. “I knew Zak personally, and let me tell you, it’s harsh to see his body so beat up and ruined. All I can say is the timing works out. But it’s all circumstantial. It’s intelligent speculation.”

“What do the locals think about this, Michael?” asked Rahlson.

“I’m not sure. This is unraveling pretty quickly,” Buckingham replied slowly. “We haven’t really had a chance to do any research on it yet.”

“Let’s find out, people,” said Dan.

“Can you hold off a minute?” responded Buckingham. “I want to get the Deputy Commander of the Pakistani Interior Police on the line. His office is here, in Islamabad, and I know him well. His office has been spectacularly successful in drug arrests in the past ten years or so. They’ve almost single-handedly destroyed the Peshawar-to-Karachi drug pipeline. He knows more about this than anyone else I know. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll get in touch with him. His name is Marak el Ghazi. If I can I’ll get him to call you personally.”

I
N A DARK CELL buried under the mountains in the Sefid Koh, Zak lay very still on a pile of straw. He thought he’d been there almost 24 hours. It had been hours now since the guards had brought him back to his cell, minus one hand. He was trying hard not to think about his left hand, or what had happened in the room down the hall. Instead he was focusing on his chances of escape, and formulating several different plans.

He knew that by this time his government probably thought he was dead. He’d never gone more than 30 hours without establishing contact in one way or another. But there hadn’t been any way to let them know exactly where he was, and it had been years since he’d had any contact with anyone who could actually track him using anything other than his GPS broadcasts. He was well and truly on his own, with no one coming to his rescue. His only hope was to find a way out.

He took a deep breath and started going over his options once again, trying to ignore the throbbing in his wrist.

A
T THE SAME TIME, three time zones west of Washington, DC, Indy was turning around very slowly. His blood had turned to ice water in his veins. The sight that met his eyes as he turned made it run even colder. This must be Leon. Up close. All 6′2″ of him. Leather vest, faded jeans. His chest and arms were enormous, built up from years of pumping iron. Both of his arms were covered in tattoos. He sported a gold earring in one ear and had long, graying hair pulled back in a ponytail. He was shouldering an old US Army M-14, pointed directly at Indy. But the most frightening aspect of the situation was Leon’s eyes. They were a pale, expressionless blue, and were unblinking. Indy had seen eyes like that on men before. They always meant trouble. In that instant Indy realized that Leon was cut from vastly different cloth than Dennis or Benny. The first two had been biting and sarcastic, but stupid and harmless for the most part. Eyes like Leon’s belonged only to a man capable of murder. Leon could and would kill, as easily as he might flick away an irritating mosquito. Indy was in a dangerous spot, and he definitely knew it.

But Indy had survived more than a decade of undercover work, using his quick wits to stave off misadventure. He hadn’t risen to the coveted rank of inspector by blowing cases, or by needlessly endangering the lives of himself or others. He possessed a lively intelligence, and knew how to operate smoothly, even in situations like this.

“No shoot sir. No speak English. No shoot. See bear. Beeg bear.” He pointed to his camera, and then behind the house. He let loose with a sting of Punjabi, which, loosely translated, meant, “Dear God, please get me the hell out of this mess.” Then again. “Beeg, beeg bear. On tour with bike company.” He pointed to his bicycle, left standing just a few feet away. And then more Punjabi, even faster. “Lord, get me the hell out of this mess now and I will be your humble servant forever.”

Leon started to snigger. “What are you jabbering about, you little brown fucker? No bears here. But you better haul your little rag head ass the fuck off my property or I’ll fucking feed you to the fucking bears. This here is no trespassing country. Dig it?” He pointed to a faded no trespassing sign affixed to a nearby tree.

“No read English. So sorry. So very very sorry.” And then more Punjabi. “Yes Lord, I am praying very hard now. Hear my prayer...”

Leon gave Indy a shove, and Indy bowed deeply, several times.

“Fuck off. Now,” said Leon again, motioning with the gun. He’d have to talk to Dennis about this. He shouldn’t be letting his tourists come up this road.

A bowing Indy backed out of the driveway. Leon snorted with laughter. Maybe he should have shot him after all, he thought. Just for the fun of it.

Indy turned around on his bike and headed back toward the Akamina. He would need to study the photos. He thought he had seen something, but that was only a moment before Leon had intercepted him. He knew Leon’s type. He had been in precisely this situation earlier in his career, and had rescued himself in precisely the same way. Guys like Leon wore their prejudices rather loudly. He was almost back at the bus before it occurred to him that Leon, if he were smart, would have taken the camera from him. In his self-righteous mirth, he had completely ignored it. A rather large error, that.

T
HE BOARDROOM at Ramma 5, Diplomatic Enclave, Islamabad was once again connected to the TTIC control room. Once again, Buckingham’s voice boomed through the large room. Once again, all eyes turned to Turbee.

“How sure are you guys of the information you developed? The police boss I just talked to laughed when you mentioned Karachi Star Line as a prime suspect.”

“Look,” said Dan. “We have access to unlimited information here. We know more about what’s going on in Islamabad than the cops in Islamabad do.”

“Yeah,” blurted Turbee, seeing the opportunity to be funny. “We know more about you than you do.”

“Who was THAT?” asked Buckingham, somewhat shocked.

“Nevermind. One of our technicians,” said Dan. “Now what did the cop say?”

“He used the word
borange
. The cop who’s been putting drug runners behind bars for the past two decades thinks you and your supercomputers are full of, well,
borange.
”

“What? Bo-what?”

“Merde. Crap. Shit. You know,” said Buckingham. “
Borange
. That was Marak’s word. He says that they’ve checked into that company and found nothing. Thinks the cash is a way to evade taxes, more than anything else.”

“Fine,” Dan muttered. “Turbee, you explain it.”

Turbee steeled himself, and went into a detailed explanation of the comparative database searching technology that he had used to discover the Pakistani shipping company. Halfway through his dissertation on the correlations between the trafficking of precursor chemicals and the unusual financial transactions that had characterized the company, Dan interrupted him.

“Are you getting the picture, Buckingham?” he asked.

“Sort of. But isn’t it just as plausible that the Semtex headed south toward the Sudan proper? In fact, once it was loaded onto the DC-3, we basically lost track of it. How confident are you about this, Turbee?”

“Extremely. We’re continually measuring confidence factors on things like this. This whole process is probabilistic. And this one is up there at like 99 percent. I have a higher confidence rating in this than we had in the Madrid bombing case. While nothing is certain, this one is close.”

It was as bold a speech as Turbee had ever given. No one could see his knees shaking, although he knew some of the old-timers in the room could probably hear the anxiety in his voice, and see the whiteness in his knuckles as he clasped his hands together. But he knew. He was certain. These guys were running drugs in a big way. And he stood by it. It was important that everyone else see the certainty of it.

“What about the rest of you guys?” asked Dan, addressing the control room as though there were no women in it. There were a few voices here and there, in general consensus. “OK Michael, we have your view, or rather, the view of the police in Islamabad. We’re going to pass it along. But we’ve got a billion-dollar computer here, and a brain trust to match it. We’re going to talk to the White House.”

It was with some nervousness that Dan called Admiral Jackson back. He was still in his meeting with the President, most of his Cabinet, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were waiting for TTIC’s call.

“Dan,” said Jackson, “you’re on the speaker phone here. We have the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Head of the National Security Council, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You have the floor.”

The usually unflappable Dan Alexander gulped. If this telephone call went badly, it could end his career. And his main support came from a raccoon-eyed kid who had fallen asleep on a workstation, amongst a sea of coffee cups and food and candy wrappers. A kid who, for God’s sake, was on a cornucopia of medications and had never learned to ride a bicycle. He’d better be right, Dan thought. Dammit, here it went...

“We believe that the stolen Semtex is on a large yacht called the
Mankial Star.
At this moment she is in the Arabian Sea, heading east toward India.”

“How do you know this, Dan?” This came from the President. Dan was desperately in need of a glass of water. His lips were as dry as sandpaper. His throat was parched. He looked to Turbee for assistance, but none was forthcoming. Turbee’s face was pointed directly downward, and he showed no signs of changing his posture.

Dan folded under the pressure. “Actually, sir,” he stuttered, “we’re not sure. This is just a theory cooked up by Turbee, and who knows–”

“Mr. President, if you’ll allow me,” interrupted Rhodes, standing and shooting Dan a black glare. “Obviously I have a better understanding of the situation than our
director
.” There was an obvious emphasis on the word “director.” It wasn’t hard to notice Rhodes’ feelings on the matter. Most of the team agreed; Dan was demonstrating his incompetence at every possible opportunity.

Turbee chuckled, then breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that Rhodes was going to be the one supporting his research. The second in command quickly outlined the correlations that Turbee had uncovered. He went into the history and significance of the unusual banking mechanisms, the rapid growth, and the trade in precursor chemicals.

“J-2 has developed similar information,” drawled General Pershing, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. J-2 was a little-known Intelligence Agency that provided all source Intelligence to the Joint Chiefs themselves. This agency was in charge of keeping the Chairman informed about foreign situations and Intelligence issues that might affect national security policies, objectives, and strategy. It was an overlap in military and Intelligence Agencies, yes, but the men in charge all agreed that it served American security. It was also a prime example of the type of redundancies that drove the congressional overseeing committees crazy. Rhodes, however, was pleased at the mention of the smaller agency. J-2 was on board with TTIC. He knew exactly who they were; it was good to have them on TTIC’s side.

“I’m happy to hear that different Intelligence Agencies are reaching similar conclusions,” he said. “However, we’ve run it past Michael Buckingham, the CIA station chief in Islamabad. He’s run it by a local high-ranking law enforcement official, who scoffed at it. He said that they knew about the company’s unusual financial transactions but that it was more an endeavor to dodge taxes than anything else. Evidently Karachi Star is highly regarded in Pakistan as a model corporate citizen, at least by the police, and is definitely not thought to be involved in the drug trade.”

“Well, there’s a major problem with what anyone in northern Pakistan says, isn’t there?” Admiral Jackson responded. “I mean, half the bastards support al-Qaeda anyway, and who knows how many high-ranking al-Qaeda guys are actually hiding on the Pakistan side of the border. Hell, by the time you get into the Northwest Frontier areas, there really isn’t any government at all, is there? I mean, Pakistan says it runs the area, but we all know that a bunch of Pashtun warlords are the only real authority there. We’ve got these guys practically running the Karzai regime, using drug money as grease.”

There was a nodding of agreement in the TTIC control room. Then the voice of the President came over the speakers. “I think I’ve seen this one before, gentlemen.” The President also forgot that there were women in the TTIC room. “You think the stolen Semtex is on the
Mankial Star.
That’s great. We interdict it. We search it from top to bottom. And if we don’t find Semtex? That’s kind of like saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We had to go in. We took a crap kicking when it turned out there weren’t any. But if we hadn’t gone in, and it turned out there
had
been WMD, we’d have taken a beating because we did nothing. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. General Pershing, what assets do we have in that area of the Indian Ocean that we can use to get to the
Mankial Star?”

“We have a couple of fast destroyers sitting in the Gulf of Oman at present. The
USS Cushing
is closest, I think. We would need some updated imaging to draw a bead on the
Mankial Star,
but she’s probably our best bet. She tops out at well over 30 knots, and we have a couple of Sea Hawks on board, I think. We should be able to nail this. I’ll give the orders on your say so, Mr. President.”

The orders were given, and the
USS Cushing
headed southeast, toward the eastern shores of the Arabian Sea. At the same time, the NRO was tasked with finding the
Mankial Star.

T
HE NAVY found the
Mankial Star
in record time, but she was moving at a gentle speed of ten knots, and heading west, not east. She made no effort to get away, and the boarding party was made to feel most welcome.

“Have some tea with us,” Yousseff said. He was dressed in the clothes of a deck hand — a pair of faded denim cut-offs, and an even more faded T-shirt. And giving his best impression of a strong accent. “We will of course let you search this ship, but you must sit and have tea with us. We are honored that the commander of so mighty a vessel,” he added, motioning to the vast hull of the
USS Cushing,
looming above them, “would pay us a visit. You are most welcome here. You want to search the boat, go ahead, but don’t wake up the captain. He is having his afternoon nap.”

The other deck hands nodded. Another showed up with a tea tray, half a dozen cups, and some baked goods. “Please, please make yourself at home, gentlemen. Have some tea, kind sirs,” said Yousseff, thoroughly enjoying himself. “Please feel at home. Search the ship from stem to stern. Go ahead.”

The boarding party from the
USS Cushing
felt obliged to have some tea and sit and chat for a few moments. Then they went through the ship from stem to stern, checking every nook and cranny they came across. They marveled at the scissors lift assembly and the small helicopter on the aft deck. They wondered about some of the mechanical structures within her hull, and about the enormous size of her engines, but they were not there on an engineering expedition. They were there to find the Semtex. Of course, none was found.