End of Enemies

64

Full-scale battles involving hundreds of faction soldiers and militiamen had erupted across the Green Line. Artillery duels sparked fires in dozens of districts and they burned out of control as responding fire crews found nearly every street barricaded. Camille and Safir spent the day picking their way through the rubble-strewn neighborhoods, probing the few falaches in her network. No one had seen Tanner. Camille felt hope slipping away.

Late in the afternoon, she met Safir in the Atlas Hotel’s coffee shop. As he sat down, she saw his clothes were torn and he was limping. “Are you all right?” Camille asked.

“Yes. I had trouble at the Museum Crossing. The fighting is very bad.”

Just then the windows of the coffee shop rattled from a nearby explosion. Several people ran past on the sidewalk, several of them women clutching babies.

“Everyone is shooting at everyone. The PLO against the Maronites; the Phalange against the Shiites; the Shiites against the Lebanese Forces. I have never seen it like this.”

“Worse than eighty-two?”

“Very much worse.”

A smiling waitress came and took their orders.

My God, just another day in Beirut, Camille thought. Like the waitress, the shop’s patrons seemed perfectly at ease, laughing and joking as they ate, oblivious to what was happening outside. She suddenly felt a surge of admiration for these people. What strength it must take to live here.

“I found someone who claims to know where Briggs is,” Safir said.

“What? Where?”

“Karm el Zeitoun. The man claims he saw a gray Volvo pull up to a building and drag a man inside. The description sounds very close.”

Karm el Zeitoun was a neighborhood in East Beirut near the Beirut River. And the gray Volvo… Was it the same one that followed her and Asseal? she wondered.

“There is a problem, however,” said Safir.

“What?”

“He’s already passed along the location to your people.”

Oh God. “Do you know this neighborhood?”

“Yes.”

“Take me there.”

For a long time after the murder, Cahil sat in the ladder shaft and stared out the hatch at Slud’s body. It lay there for an hour before two of the crew appeared, lifted it between then, and heaved it over the side. One of them gave a comical wave as the surging water took it away. Slud….

Finally, Cahil crawled back down the ladder and forced his mind back on track. Where was the bomb?

He closed his eyes and tried to recall what he knew about Tsumago. Certainly the cargo holds were the most likely hiding places, but then again, the bomb was probably no larger than a footlocker. It could be anywhere.

An image drifted into his mind. During his and Tanner’s search, the forward hold had been half-covered with cables and scaffolding. Even so, Cahil distinctly remembered the layout: Six inset holds in a three by two pattern, all seated inside a larger hold. Six inset holds…

He scrambled up the ladder and peeked out the hatch. The main hold — whose hatch sat on a raised combing about ten inches off the deck — dominated the center of the forecastle, leaving only a small walkway around its edges.

“That’s it,” Bear whispered.

Instead of six inset hatches, there were only four. What had happened to the other two, and what were they doing with the space?

“We have a location,” Sherabi told Stucky. “A building in East Beirut near the river. We’re moving tonight.”

Stucky nodded solemnly; it was all he could do to keep from smiling. Payback is a bitch, ain’t it, Briggs? His only regret was he wouldn’t be there to see it. That would be the icing on the cake. Otherwise, things were working out perfectly. They would get Azhar and stop Tsumago… and Tanner would die in the fireworks.

“Who’re you sending?” Stucky asked.

“It depends. The chief of staff may make that decision.”

“Bullshit, Hayem. It’s your op.”

“We’ll see. Who knows, with luck we may be able to even rescue your agent.”

Asshole. The Jew was playing games. If an IDF unit such as Sayeret Golani or Flotilla 13 were sent instead of Mossad’s own Unit 504, Sherabi would have no control over their orders.

“He may still be alive, you know,” Sherabi said.

“Could be,” Stucky replied. “Either way, I’m sure your people will do the right thing, just like I did the right thing when you needed help. You’re not forgetting that, are you?”

“Nor have I forgotten you failed to warn us about the bomb.”

“Jesus Christ, I told you: I didn’t know!” Stucky put his palms on Sherabi’s desk and leaned forward. “Let’s stop fucking around. Do you know what’ll happen to me if my government finds out I’ve cooperated with you?”

“It would be bad for you.”

“No shit. But not just for me: For us. My getting nailed would put a real damper on our future relationship.”

“I see what you mean.”

“Glad to hear it. You just make sure it’s your people who go tonight.”

The President strode into the room. “Let’s see it, Dick.”

Mason aimed a remote at the wall-mounted TV, and the screen filled with an elevated view of Tsumago’s bow. In the background they could hear the beating of the helicopter’s rotors. Two men walked onto the forecastle, followed by a second pair dragging Sludowski’s inert figure.

“Al-Baz?” the president asked.

“Yes, sir.”

In five seconds it was over. Mason clicked off the TV.

“Did he have a family?” the president whispered.

“A wife and a little boy,” replied Cathermeier. “Four years old.”

“Do they know yet?”

“The CNO is on his way to see them personally. Hopefully, he’ll get there before the footage goes public. It’s already getting a lot of play in Europe. By evening, the whole world will know what’s going on.”

“Where is Tsumago now?”

“Two hundred miles southeast of Sicily. Twenty-two hours from Tel Aviv.”

“Is the exclusion zone in place?”

“I’ve ordered an SAG split from the battle group,” Cathermeier replied. “Two frigates — including Ford—a cruiser, and a Burke destroyer. They’ll be on station in a couple hours. If we need it, Indy’s Combat Air Patrol is only six minutes away.”

“We can’t have so much as a seagull getting inside that zone, General, or we’ll be fishing corpses out of her wake.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where’s the Indy group now?” asked Dick Mason.

“Running racetracks twenty miles off Beirut. We’re flying round-the-clock CAPs — Tomcats and Hornets — that can be over the beach in two minutes. As of an hour ago, recon flights show the Syrian exercise group still moving north toward Damascus.”

“The Bekka?”

“Quiet.”

“Good. Dutch, what about your man aboard Tsumago?”

“We expect him to make contact tonight, sir.”

As cryptic as he’d found his new sailing orders, Captain Jim Newman complied and turned Minneapolis from its sector ahead of Indy and headed south. Best submerged speed for his boat was thirty-plus knots, so the 130-mile transit had taken just over four hours.

In his twelve years as a sub driver Newman had commanded plenty of attack boats, but none compared to this 688 Los Angeles boat, especially Minneapolis, which, as luck had it, was named after his hometown.

Minneapolis was known as an improved 688, having been refitted with vertical launch Tomahawk missiles to complement her Harpoon antiship birds, SUBROCs (submarine rockets), and standard MK 50 torpedoes. The 688 boats were the most feared hunter submarines in the world; they were fast, deadly, and so quiet they were known colloquially as “moving holes in the water.”

Minneapolis’s Tomahawks and Harpoons could destroy land targets, sink ships, crater runways, and if the worst came to pass, take out strategic targets. Of her fifteen Tomahawks, four were armed with tactical nuclear warheads, a fact never far from Newman’s mind.

After four hours of running a lazy ten-knot racetrack at 200 feet, Newman’s executive officer, Lieutenant Randy Stapes, walked over to the blue-lit tactical table.

“Flash traffic, Captain. Straight from the CNO.”

“Pardon?”

“I checked, sir. It’s legit.”

For Minneapolis to receive orders directly from the chief of naval operations, at least four separate commands had to have been circumvented, including the commander of the entire Sixth Fleet. Newman felt a sinking in his belly. He took the message, scanned past the header, and read:

“Holy cow,” murmured Newman.

He handed the message to Stapes, who read it. “Sir, isn’t this the ship that—”

“Yes, it is.” Like the rest of the Indy group, Minneapolis had gotten the news about the hostages. “And now they want us to kill it.”

Until the moment he’d opened the box Abu Azhar had lived two separate lives, one he hadn’t let himself remember for fifteen years and another he wished was over. The end of his first life and the start of his second had happened on the same day: the day he learned his little girl — their miracle — was dead.

Whether from grief or hatred or the ache that seemed to squeeze his heart a little tighter every day, Azhar went insane. Every memory was forgotten. Every person he knew was dead to him. Friends saw the change in him nearly overnight. His hair turned white, and his face turned to stone. The warm and gregarious teacher who laughed often and easily was gone, and in his place was a husk of a man.

Azhar sat in his room — a spartan affair with a wooden table and a cot — and stared at the box. The figurine seemed so familiar, as did the American’s name: Tanner… the ghost of a memory from another life. “My father is Henry…. You gave that to me…. You know me!”

“How can I know you?” Azhar whispered.

He’d approached but never crossed this threshold many times. He would see a familiar face on the streets of Beirut, and a distant voice would whisper a name or recount a party or a vacation. But he would dismiss it and walk on. Rarely did those former friends recognize him, further proof the whispering voice was wrong.

“My name is Briggs! You gave that to me…. It had been in your family for ten generations… carved from the same cedar….”

“Afqa,” he murmured. “Afqa.”

How could the American have known his birthplace? If in fact he was CIA, they would have done their research. They are like that, the Americans, with their computers and spy networks and conspiracies. They found out about the ship, invented this fantasy, and sent this man to stop him.

Azhar reached out and touched the box. A silly trinket, nothing more. But the whispering voice was still talking to him: “My name is Briggs Tanner…. My father is Henry…. You know me! You…”

“No,” Azhar said. He slid the box away from him. “No.”