Battlecraft (2006) (24 page)

WHALER BOAT

INDIAN OCEAN

VICINITY OF 5deg NORTH AND 55deg EAST

0900 HOURS LOCAL

MIKE
Assad stood at the wheel maintaining a course of due east on the compass. Three things were irritating the hell out of him. The first was that the radio in the boat was not hooked into the vessel's power. Instead, it ran on its own battery, which seemed to be quite low. That meant he could not maintain a continuous attempt to contact American warships. From the way things looked, the commo gear could possibly be completely dead within three or four hours.

The second vexing problem was navigation. Without a chart he could not plot a course to any particular point in the watery world he moved across. The GPS gave him accurate readings on his longitude and latitude, but he did not know the exact coordinates of the nearest landfall or where he might run into a U. S. carrier battle group. As it was, he hadn't seen so much as a single aircraft in the sky to give evidence of a nearby task force.

The third and most aggravating and exasperating part of this escape was his companion. Hildegard Keppler had begun the trip in a high frame of mind in spite of some preliminary nervousness. She'd thought it exciting to run away from the sheikh's fortress, but now her attitude had evolved into a petulant, demanding mood. Mike now realized she was an immature woman who demanded instant gratification for her wants and needs. The temperature was relatively temperate when the sun was on the other side of the world, but now it had been steadily climbing. The heat had increased markedly and without a bimini over the cockpit, the rays beat down on them in perceptible waves of stinging heat.

And it was only nine o'clock in the morning.

Hildegard reached into the tote bag for a bottle of the Evian water. Mike snapped at her. "Hey! Let's take it easy with that stuff, okay? We don't know how long it will have to last us."

She pouted. "But thirsty I am."

"I don't give a shit if thirsty you are," Mike said, mocking her in his anger. "If we drink up all our water in one day, then pretty damn quick it'll be dead we are. Understand?"

"Why you want to bring the water if drink it we are not?"

"We came with a case of that stuff, all right?" Mike said, forcing himself to calm down. "That's twenty-four half-liter bottles, see? Each of 'em is a little over a pint."

"A pint I don't know what it is."

"Look at the godamn bottles!" he growled. "You can see how big they are, right? Okay. Now we got to each drink no more than one of them a day, see? That gives us twelve frigging days. After that, we better find somebody within sixty to seventy hours or we're gonna die from thirst."

"Already I am dying of thirst," she protested.

"You just think you are," Mike said. "You ain't near thirsty yet."

"If a sandwich I eat, it is thirsty I get."

'That's another thing," Mike warned her. "If we eat a sandwich a day, we'll have food for five days. I figure we can go two or three weeks without eating anything at all after that."

"You did not anything say to me about this when you take me on this trip," Hildegard said.

"I took you because you wanted to go," Mike said.
God!
he thought.
You stupid broad. I guess you just want to keep being a punchboard for a goddamn Middle Eastern letch!
"When we get back to civilization, you'll forget all about this hardship. When the sheikh is nailed for your friend's murder, you'll be happy."

"But I am not being happy right now!" "Please, God!" Mike said, looking up to the sky. "Just get me back to the Brigands! That's all I ask."

.

ROYAL YACHT
SAYIH

FORTRESS MIKNBAYI

1030 HOURS LOCAL

THE
five European women were terrified.

The Italian Lucia, Frenchwoman Blanche, the Portuguese Teresa, and the two Russians Olga and Adelaida had been herded into their lounge and now sat on the sofas and chairs. The Russians huddled close together. All the women were dressed relatively modestly, wearing halters, shorts, and sandals. The rules were that they were to never go bare-breasted with thongs when aboard the yacht at Mikhbayi. Even an accidental sighting of a woman's body was punishable according to the tenets of Islam, and Sheikh Omar Jambarah didn't want any morale problems with his mujahideen or their families.

The modem courtesans knew something was wrong, and expected to be blamed for it whether they were really at fault or not. It had to have something to with Hildegard Keppler. The German bitch had already caused trouble when she made a row over her stupid friend Franziska, and now both were gone. Hildegard had gotten uppity when she caught the attention of the American. The sheikh put her off-limits to other men, allowing her to have Mike as a lover while keeping her on the payroll. Hildegard continually boasted to the other women she didn't have to take battering and rape from the sheikh anymore or service any of his friends who came aboard.

The door burst open and Sheikh Jambarah stormed in, startling the women. He was followed closely by Hafez Sabah and the two bodyguards Alif and Taa. The women feared the sheikh for his power, the bodyguards for their cruelty, and the Arab Sabah for his hatred of them as infidel whores. None of the women dared look up, and kept their gazes on the floor. Nothing happened for a few moments; then Alif suddenly grabbed the Portuguese woman and pulled her to her feet.

"Deixe~me so!"
she begged. "Leave me alone!"

The sheikh approached her, putting his face close to hers. "Where is Hildegard?"

"I do not know," Teresa sobbed. "I am not a friend to her. I never talk to her. If she goes someplace, how am I to know?"

Alif slapped her hard, then looked over at the sheikh. Jambarah nodded his head, and the bodyguard pushed her roughly back to the sofa where she had been sitting. Taa reached down and hauled the Italian Lucia off the settee. He shook her hard, slapped her face, then shoved her toward the sheikh.

"Per favore!"
she cried. "I know nothing."

"I think you are lying," the sheikh said. "I have noticed you being chummy with both Hildegard and her friend Franziska in the past. Where did she go?"

"I am not a friend to them," Lucia protested. "Nobody like those Germans. They are stuck up, both of them!"

Jambarah believed her and he nodded to Taa to let her go. The Italian ran to a spot behind the settee for safety. Blanche stood up, hoping to put off getting a hard slap. "I do not know where she go, but I see her in her cabin putting things in a bag. I say what are you doing? She say she go away with her
amant americain
Mike."

"Now we are getting somewhere," the sheikh said, smiling. "Where did she say she and Mike were going?"

Blanche cringed, her voice tinged with fear. "She did not tell me nothing except they go out on a picnic and come back when it is dark."

The sheikh suddenly laughed loudly. It seemed Mikael had developed a very special sexual attraction for the German, and wanted to be alone with her in some intimate place outside the yacht and fortress. He looked over at Sabah and motioned for the al-Mimkhalif agent to follow him to the stem deck. When they were out under the canvas awning, Jambarah asked, "What do you think?"

"Mikael is not yet a complete Muslim, Sheikh Omar," Sabah said. "His morals have long been corrupted by exposure to Western culture in America. I fear he has sinful passions for the German whore." He started to say something about fornication, but stopped short as he remembered that the sheikh had regular sex with the foreign women.

"How much do you know of Mikael Assad?" the sheikh asked.

Sabah shrugged. "Not much," he admitted. "I met him after he had returned to Camp Talata after escaping from the Americans."

"We have been informed that a whaler boat is missing," the sheikh said. "I was wondering if Mikael would have been able to operate it. It would take some skill to handle such a vessel."

"As far as I know, there is nothing that indicates Mikael has any experience with boats."

"We must also consider the attack on Baa," the sheikh said. "Would Mikael be capable of such a thing? Baa is a very large and skillful fighter."

"I have learned nothing that indicates Mikael is an expert in hand-to-hand combat," Sabah said. "Perhaps he sneaked up behind your bodyguard."

"Baa was hit from the front in a most devastating way," the sheikh said. 'The doctor in the dispensary has reported that the fellow remembers nothing of being attacked." He fell into a few moments of silence before speaking again. "How did Mikael enter al-Mimkhalif?"

"What I learned from Kumandan was that Mikael was sent to al-Mimkhalif from a mosque in America. The cleric who recruited him has been involved in obtaining mujahideen for a long time."

"All right" the sheikh said, "but I am beginning to feel that there is more to Mikael Assad than we figured ."

.

WHALER BOAT

VICINITY IF 5deg NORTH AND 57deg EAST

1800 HOURS LOCAL

MIKE
Assad throttled the motor of the whaler back to
slow ahead
. He had picked up a rapid current, and the GPS indicated he was making extremely fast progress; hence there was no reason to use up fuel unnecessarily. The afternoon had been an unrelenting hell of baking heat as the sun flared down on the boat, making all the metal parts too hot to touch. Mike had taken a rag from the toolbox and put it on the wheel so that he could handle it with a minimum of pain. A flicker of movement behind him was reflected in the windshield, and he whipped around to see Hildegard chugalugging a bottle of the precious water.

"What the fuck are you doing?" he bellowed.

"I am thirsty!" she said defiantly. "And something else I tell you. I eat a sandwich too."

"Do you really want to die out here?" he asked. "Some controlled, temporary discomfort is a hell of a lot better than dying of thirst. Because that's what will kill you. You'll dry out like a mummy before you manage to starve to death."

'Too much you worry," Hildegard said. "Ships will we soon see and plenty too."

He reached back and grabbed her arm, jerking her up beside him at the wheel. 'Take a look at the fucking horizon! What the fuck do you see?"

Hildegard obediently looked around, noting nothing within sight. 'Talk to somebody on your radio again."

"I haven't
talked
to anybody yet," Mike said, "because I haven't been able to
raise
anybody." He reached over and clicked the set on, then grabbed the microphone and pressed the transmit button. "Any ship at sea. Any ship at sea. Mayday.

Mayday. Position five degrees, six minutes north and fifty-four degrees, twelve minutes east. Mayday. Over." He repeated the transmission twice more and waited a few minutes for a reply. None came.

"Ach, Himmel!"
she said, jerking her arm free. "You did not tell me it would be hot."

"You've been sailing around in these waters for weeks," Mike said. "Didn't you notice it was hot?"

'The deck we did not come out on when it was hot," she said. "I think better it is if back to the yacht we go where the air conditioner runs."

"What about your friend Franciska? Don't you want to avenge her murder?"

"Maybe not," Hildegard said, shrugging. "Franciska was a
torichist
--silly and always getting into trouble."

"Silly or not," Mike said, "we're not going back to that fucking yacht."

"But, Mike, out here we will die!"

He grinned without humor, speaking to himself under his breath. "That's one thing you're probably right about."

Chapter 17.

CAMP TALATA, PAKISTAN

28 OCTOBER

0500 HOURS LOCAL

KUMANDAN,
the field commander of al-Mimkhalif, stood in the empty field of what had once been a thriving terrorist camp. Orders had come to destroy any equipment, ammunition, weapons, and other material that could not be carried away. The task had kept the entire group busy for a full two days of round-the-clock labor. When the job was finally finished, the mujahideen were divided up into three groups and sent by separate routes to the coast for pickup by the dhow
Nijm Zarik.
This was to happen at the exact location where the arms shipments arrived in the past. The reason behind splitting them was supposedly to assure that most would be able to reach the destination on the beach after sneaking through Pakistani police and military areas. From there, the lucky ones would be going to Mikhbayi to join the supreme leader, Husan.

The last column sent out was now wending its way down the mountain to the lowlands before turning west toward the Arabian Sea. In spite of their optimism and trust in their leader, the mujahideen stood no chance of making it safely to the objective. Kumandan had carefully mapped out the routes of the withdrawal so that the men were certain to run into military and police posts where death or capture would result. In actuality, he was using the operation as a way to rid of himself of the less desirable elements of his command. The only people left with him were the dozen members of his immediate staff. The unfortunates now heading out would be the decoys to draw the Pakistani authorities away from the trails he and his entourage would be following while making their own escape. The twelve men who accompanied him were his best and brightest. They had to be saved if al-Mimkhalif s field campaign was going to reestablish its jihad.

The last few weeks had been especially difficult for the terrorist group. The supplies of arms and weaponry had dried up to the point that they were unable to conduct meaningful operations. Rather than raid police and army outposts, the mujahideen of al-Mimkhalif had been reduced to no more than reconnaissance activities to keep track of their enemies. A shortage of food that had at first been no more than an inconvenience quickly became critical to the point that many of the men were visibly weakening from malnourishment. By then, all outside activities had been canceled and the camp routine was reduced to the most basic guard and sanitation duties to keep the weakening men from wasting away. It was expected that at least a quarter of them would not be able to make it all the way to the coast even if they were not harassed by the authorities. Kumandan and his chosen elite, however, were in fine fettle. They had hidden away rations for their own escape, and were strong and fit for the ordeal ahead.

.

KUMANDAN'S
real name was Azam Marbuk. This leader of mujahideen had the slim muscularity of a naturally good physique, and intelligent dark eyes that betrayed a superior intellect. His beard was trimmed neatly and his hair wasn't overly longish, giving him a decidedly conventional appearance. He had been an officer in the Royal Jordanian Army with a bright future back in the early 1990s. He was the first of his military academy class to make the rank of captain, and he seemed destined for command and staff responsibilities at the highest echelons of King Hussein's army. His many career successes had made the young officer a bold and headstrong braggart; reticence was not a part of his personality. He was not hesitant about giving his opinions, and considered anything he had to say not only interesting to others, but most enlightening as well. It never occurred to him that anyone would disagree with his views.

One evening in the regimental officers' mess, Marbuk's inflated ego got the best of him. He stated that King Hussein's expulsion of the Palestinians from Jordan was unwise and against the best interests of Arabs. By turning against the fighters for Palestine liberation, the king was helping to maintain the state of Israel. That was bad enough to say in the company of six other officers, but things got worse when he also opined that it was a shame that the king's wife, Queen Noor, was an American. "She may be of Arab ancestry," the brash captain said, "but only a woman bom and raised in the Middle East has the right to be the queen in an Arab monarchy." Then he brazenly added, "I do not consider her any more cultured and refined than a fishwife shopping for food in the markets."

This treasonous conduct was dully reported by a couple of other junior officers jealous of Marbuk's quick rise within the commissioned cadre. The regimental commander hated to lose an excellent officer, but unless he took drastic steps against Marbuk, he would be guilty by association. This could not only end his career, but possibly his life. He went directly to the brigadier, who went to the chief of staff.

In less than a week Captain Marbuk had been broken in rank and tossed out of the Army. To add more shame to the dishonor, he was also exiled after being stripped of all his property. Even his family suffered when some lucrative government contracts with his father's shoe factory were abruptly canceled.

The ex-captain, bitter and infuriated, turned to the lodge in his hometown's mosque for help. They too had been unhappy with the king. The best they could do under the circumstances was arrange for Marbuk to go to Syria, where another chapter of their religious brotherhood was located in the city of Hims. The Syrians and Jordanians had been on opposite sides of several issues due to King Hussein's policy of minimal commitment to Arab causes, and the Syrian brothers were happy to welcome Marbuk into their midst.

The lodge was filled with activists who hated Israel and the West with a zealous fervor. Several members of the chapter were well placed in the Syrian government and were most effective in directing those passions. The membership had developed close ties with a burgeoning terrorist organization called al-Mimkhalif that was in the midst of organizing a fighting force to strike against the foes of Islam. When the well-trained, proficient officer with command and staff experience settled in, he was contacted by an operative named Hafez Sabah, who was an agent of al-Mimkhalif. The two became fast friends, and it was Sabah who recruited Marbuk into the group. They went directly to Mikhbayi to meet with Sheikh Omar Jambarah aka Husan, who assigned the Jordanian officer as his field commander. It was at that time that the Jordanian adopted the nom de guerre Kumandan. He was dispatched to set up a training and operation camp in Pakistan. Marbuk and Sabah worked well together, organizing training, logistics, and combat missions. Most of their operations were successful, the one big exception the disastrous raid on the police border guard station. No one had been able to figure out how the Pakistanis learned of the planned attack.

Other operations, while minor, were all successful, and with the arms smuggling running smoothly, the future of al-Mimkhalif's field campaign looked bright. Then things began to fall apart after the defeat of the Zauba Squadron, and the situation rolled back to square one.

.

NOW
Kumandan checked his watch, then turned to the twelve men gathered around him. "It is time to go, brothers," he said. "I do not want you to think of this as a defeat. It is no more than a setback that can be put right."

One of the men shouted, "
Allah akbar
--God is great!"

'That is true," Kumandan said emotionally. "Al-Sahara-- the Great Provider and Sustainer--shall guide us through this difficult time all the way to the golden victory that awaits Islam." He picked up his rucksack and slung it on his back, then grabbed his AK-47. "Let us go, brothers!"

They formed into a single column, walking toward the trail that would take them down to the lowlands.

.