Strike Force Bravo (28 page)

Throughout this, Atlas just held on, blank look on his face, never quite recovering from finding his ex-partner floating in the water, torn apart by his bullets. Why would Teddy be in league with the people stealing the missiles? How could he possibly be involved? There was no way to tell. But now Atlas had the same haunted look in his eyes as Martinez.

The sun had just come up when the Kai appeared overhead. Ryder had emerged from his haziness by this time. The big flying boat was a welcome sight as it orbited them once before coming in for a landing.

The coffin-shaped crate rode the swells over to it, and soon helping hands were pulling the three men aboard. Ryder went first, glad to get off the crate. But both Atlas and Martinez seemed reluctant to go. Finally they, too, were hauled aboard the big Kai. The empty box, their strange lifeboat, was then allowed to drift away.

It was only when the plane's door was closed and Ryder's eyes adjusted to the faint light inside the Kai's cabin that he saw the other members of the American team were aboard. Both the group who'd pursued the F-10 cargo plane and those who'd chased down the smuggling ship the
Sea Demon.

But the Americans were not flying the plane. The people at the controls were members of the Japanese Maritime Forces, its original owners. The Americans were sitting in rows inside the cargo compartment. All of them were in handcuffs.

Watching over them were several squads of heavily armed, rock-jawed Green Berets. Standing on the flight deck above everyone else, dressed in brand-new, never-been-worn combat camos, was General James Rushton, presidential advisor for special operations.

He did not look happy.

Somewhere in the Pacific
Six hours later

Ozzi's stomach was tied in knots. His palms were sweating. His eyes were burning. He was tired and nervous and aching all over. To make matters worse, everything around him was swaying with the movement of the sea.

He was sitting inside a small, damp, dimly lit compartment. It was painted entirely in U.S. Navy gray and was just big enough for a desk and four chairs. The tiny room reminded him of his office back at the Pentagon.
Oh, to be crammed inside that little cubbyhole right now,
he thought. That would be heaven. He'd never leave it again. But the way things looked, he seemed destined to spend time in a space even smaller than his dear old cube, one surrounded by metal bars and razor wire.

It was the height of irony that the American team was now being held aboard the carrier USS
Abraham Lincoln,
the same ship the original 9/11 unit had saved almost two months before. The supercarrier had rotated out of the Persian Gulf earlier that week and was on its way to a new station off the coast of North Korea when it was diverted to the Philippine Sea. After picking up Ryder, Martinez, and Atlas, the Kai had flown east, toward the Pacific and the hastily arranged rendezvous with the carrier. Once the big flying boat landed next to the
Lincoln,
the entire 9/11 unit, plus the SEALs, the SDS guys, Atlas, and the two DSA officers, were transferred to the carrier via rescue rafts. Curiously, Atlas was immediately flown off the ship, destination unknown. The remaining detainees were put in isolated cabins scattered throughout the huge ship. These cabins were then designated as “temporary brigs” and made off-limits to the rest of the crew.

 

As it turned out, a quadruple whammy had been in play all along. While the two American teams were off doing their various things, General Rushton had organized yet
another
special ops team to track them down; this one was made up entirely of Green Berets. Their tip-off? When the Kai contingent turned over the prisoners they'd rescued from the Aboos to a passing cruise ship, the freed hostages went directly to the U.S. embassy in Manila to spin their tale of the mysterious American unit that had saved their lives and was still out there, skulking around in a Japanese flying boat. Rushton and his search-and-arrest team left the United States soon afterward.

They'd arrived in Manila about the same time the
Ocean Voyager
was intercepting the
Sea Demon.
Traveling in a top-secret KC-135 surveillance plane known as
Compass Point,
they'd followed both the
Ocean Voyager
's activities plus the Kai's forcing-down of the F-10 cargo plane by using an NRO real-time TV satellite, the kind of eye in the sky that could count the number of buttons on your shirt. Both the Kai team and the crew of
Ocean Voyager
were contacted by the
Compass Point
plane and told to surrender. Navy jets flying in the area gave them little choice but to comply.

The containership and the flying boat were seized soon after that.

 

The cabin Ozzi was sitting in now was located on the middle deck of the
Lincoln,
a space used by the ship's chaplain to hear confessions. Directly across the desk from him were two special prosecutors attached to the National Security Council. Both were civilians; both were wearing suitcoats and ties. They'd accompanied Rushton on the quick trip over from Washington, apparently forgetting to pack their tropic-wear in the haste. Rushton himself was sitting in the corner off to Ozzi's left, arms folded, bulldog face in place. The tightly pressed creases on his new camouflage suit had yet to show any signs of relaxing. Ozzi could smell his cheap cologne from across the room.

The men from the NSC did all the talking at first. They were here to compile evidence for a criminal case against the rogue team. They told Ozzi up front that the main 9/11 guys, the SEALs, the State Department guards, and Major Fox had already been interrogated—everyone had been grilled but him.
Last in line again,
Ozzi thought. It took them nearly 15 minutes just to read him the charges facing those involved in the Manila affair. The list was a long one: disobeying direct orders, destruction of government property, desertion, breaking into government-restricted cyberspace, all on top of dozens of national security violations. Adding to the misery, the prosecutors told Ozzi he was facing additional charges, including issuing false orders and aiding and abetting the unlawful release of the Gitmo Four. Their conclusion: he was looking at more than 500 years in jail.

While Ozzi couldn't deny that he and the others had broken a number of military laws, he also told the prosecutors that to a man, the entire team felt it had been in the country's best interests to do so. But the NSC men reminded him, just as Fox had so long ago, that while tales of rogue military units made for good bedtime novels, they just weren't tolerated in the real world. They couldn't be. And so it had come to this again: just like after Hormuz, the heroes had been turned into villains.

“We've already gone over everything the others told us,” one prosecutor said to him now. “From the B-2 crash, to looking for these supposed missiles, to killing this Kazeel guy, double crosses and
triple
crosses and shell games and the like. The same story, over and over. But we have to be straight with you. We have a hard time believing any of it. And so will a jury.”

The room started spinning for Ozzi at that moment. Sweat began dripping off his upper lip.

“But I
lived
through it,” he told them. “Or half of it anyway. And I trust the people who lived through the other half. Believe me, I…”

But the second NSC guy held up his hand and cut him off.

“Lieutenant, if I can be blunt here for a moment, the things that you people claim you did are simply preposterous. I mean, breaking up mudfights in whorehouses? Impersonating Chechen bodyguards? Flying all over Southwest Asia in a news chopper? Tracing this imaginary weapons cache by tracking a mute eunuch? You maintain this entire scheme hinged on the actions of an idiot, for Christ's sake! We found the guy just where you said you left him, half-dead in that hangar. He can't talk, he's barely alive, and on his best day he couldn't add two and two and come out with four. Yet you make it seem like he was the ringleader, a major player in this supposed Stinger deal.”

“But he was,” Ozzi insisted. “We were all sure of it….”

The first NSC man spoke again: “Then there's the way you all say it came to a head. That your half of this mystery team crashed in on these supposed missile smugglers in the hangar, and then another bunch of smugglers, who were part of the Philippine National Police no less, crashed in on you?”

“But
that's
the way it happened,” Ozzi pleaded. “Until…well, until the other half of the nine-eleven team busted in on them, and…”

He began painfully stumbling over his own words. Suddenly they felt very foolish coming off his lips. He had to agree with the NSC guys. The whole thing did
sound
crazy…not to mention that had the two teams hung around the hangar long enough, Rushton's Green Berets would have busted in on
them.

The first NSC man went on.

“You must have known none of this would check out. Your boss, Major Fox, was sent out on a simple recovery mission to look for two missing aircraft—and suddenly he falls off the map. Meanwhile you write out false orders to get some very sensitive detainees released—then you all meet up in Manila.
Then
all this nonsense takes place, and that's when the bullshit really starts to fly. You have to admit, it sounds like a plot from a bad paperback novel.”

Ozzi just stared back at him. Something was beginning to smell here, and it wasn't just Rushton's Old Spice.

“OK then,” Ozzi finally challenged them. “What do
you
think happened? What do
you
think we've been doing out here all this time?”

That's when Rushton rose from his seat, straightened his camo suit, and spoke for the first time. “Frankly,” he began in his trademark smug tone, “all the evidence indicates that you and your merry band were indeed involved in a smuggling operation. But it was a
drug
smuggling operation. One that went horribly awry.”

Ozzi couldn't believe what he was hearing. “Drugs?
Are you crazy?”

Rushton just shrugged. “Not likely,” he said, casually examining his finely manicured fingernails. “Look at the evidence. You admit having contact with this Buddha-statue man, don't you? He was a known drug smuggler, until you people killed him, that is. This woodworker—same thing, well-known by the National Police for his involvement in illegal operations, specifically making shipping crates for hiding heroin.

“That cargo plane you forced down—again, people steeped in the Southeast Asian heroin trade. And the freighter your friends stopped? It's considered the
Queen Mary
of smuggling ships around here. Plus, you admit flying to Pakistan and Afghanistan—only the poppy capitals of the world. I mean, just connect the dots: it was a large drug deal gone bad. And apparently you fellows wound up on the wrong end of the stick. You should have picked your companions more carefully out here. There's a lot of very disreputable people in this part of the world.”

Ozzi wanted to go right over the desk and throttle Rushton—just beat him to a pulp. The sight of someone else's blood flowing did not bother him anymore, not after spending the last 10 days with the Gitmo crew. But it was evident now that the odorous general was playing some kind of game here, maybe for the benefit of the NSC men, but maybe not. Certainly Rushton had known about Fox's mission to find the B-2 spy bomber, as well as his plans to ask for help from the original 9/11 team members. How? Because Fox had cleared both missions with Rushton first—he would have never been able to leave Washington if he hadn't. And certainly it had been Rushton who'd set up the UPX connection between Fox and the people who he'd been talking to throughout the long night on Fuggu—before being so suddenly cut off and set adrift, that is. How else would Fox have had enough juice to call in cruise missile strikes the next morning?

And what about the bomber itself? What was it really doing flying over the Bangtang Channel that night? What was it carrying in its bomb bay? And why was it so important that all evidence of its crash site be eliminated, and then those people who'd seen it up-close be suddenly turn into nonpersons? Ozzi knew of only two people who could answer those questions. One was Atlas—and he was long gone by now. The other was his apparently traitorous partner, the guy called Teddy Ballgame. And he was dead.

And
while it was no surprise that Ozzi's self-penned orders to go after Kazeel would eventually cross Rushton's desk, he still didn't have a clue who tipped off Ramosa that the Gitmo crew had flown to Manila to whack the superterrorist. Did someone in Washington make that call?

Ozzi studied Rushton up and down now. He was pompous, egomaniacal, conniving and deceitful. And he was displaying a penchant for changing history to suit his own needs. But could he really be a traitor, too?

“I don't know what your angle is here, General,” he told Rushton darkly. “But I can tell you this: whatever you want to believe, or make other people think, between those two teams, a lot of Aboo terrorists wound up dead, a major plot to shoot down the spy bomber was uncovered, and the world's first superterrorist was eliminated.

“And the men who did those things aren't drug smugglers or criminals. They're heroes.
Patriots.
More than you will ever be. And they have absolutely no reason to lie.”

Another deep breath for Ozzi. The two NSC men were suddenly riveted on him.

“Now the problem is those Stingers are still on the loose,” Ozzi went on, “and they are most likely heading for the U.S. And the
sharfa
go-code is still in possession of this unscrupulous puke Ramosa. Stopping him, sir, is what you should be focusing on—not how you're going to punish the likes of us.”

Dead silence in the room. The NSC men were speechless. Rushton, too, seemed surprised by Ozzi's verve. He began rubbing his crimson cheeks with his small, hairless hands. Ozzi could almost see the tiny wheels turning in his head.

“You claim they have no reason to lie?” Rushton finally said. “Then how do you explain the refusal of these original Nine-Eleven characters to talk about what they were doing at the Tonka Tower that day?”

“They were saving thousands of people from terrorists…” Ozzi shot back. “What do you think they were doing?”

“I watch TV, lieutenant,” Rushton replied, voice dripping with contempt. “I saw what happened. But perhaps you should ask your friends exactly
how
they came upon the TV news chopper they were flying that morning. And how did they know the attack was going to take place—when every other intelligence service in the world had no idea it was about to happen? Your comrades didn't mind spewing out their tales of playing superheroes for the past week and a half. Why then are they so reticent about what happened in Singapore just two weeks before?”

Ozzi found his eyes darting around the room. Rushton had a point. None of the original 9/11 team members had spoken one word to Ozzi or Fox about that day in Singapore. Nor was that the only thing they were tight-lipped about. None of the Kai team ever revealed how it was that they were so suddenly tuned in to what Ozzi and the Gitmo team were doing. How did they know to cue in on Ozzi's phone or even that he was in the Manila area? Fox had been traveling with Ryder, Bingham,
et al.,
and even
he
didn't know how they did it. Ozzi had a theory, though. It boiled down to a single name, a shadow, an elusive presence that was somehow still hovering on the edges of this thing:
Bobby Murphy.