Jihad

CHAPTER 120

Kenan stood up as the boat approached the tanker. From the distance, the ship’s sides seemed very low in the water. But now that they were close, it loomed above them, larger even than the vessel he had crewed on the year before, let alone the ships he’d trained on as part of the advanced bridge management classes this past summer. It was a modern ship, with a long red hull and a bright white superstructure several stories high. The controls he expected to find on the bridge would allow it to sail with a normal complement of fourteen, and in fact it could be sailed with far less — and would be.

The Aztec Exact had been built in 1996 for a Dutch concern that had gone bankrupt; bought by the Iranian state petroleum company, it had been sold to two businessmen fronting for al-Qaeda. The plan to convert it into a floating bomb had been conceived more than two years before, but logistics — and money — had prevented its use until now.

Kenan braced himself, preparing to reach for the boarding ladder that hung over the side. Suddenly the boat seemed to durch backwards. Kenan recoiled against the thin metal rail, barely keeping himself from falling into the water.

“There is the matter of my pay, señors,” said the boat captain, his English considerably better than when they.started out.

Kenan looked at him, then at the mujahideen who had come in the bus with him from Mexico City.

“You were paid,” said the other man.

“Not enough,” said the captain. “If another hundred dollars cannot be found, perhaps I will forget my promise not to tell others what I have seen. A large boat like this, anchored out here for days — why would that be? Smuggling, perhaps?”

The captain grinned.

Kenan controlled his anger as the other mujahideen took the small shortwave radio from his belt. The greed of Devil People was almost incomprehensible.

“We have no money,” the mujahideen told the captain. “But I will see what I can arrange.”

The captain smiled. Kenan heard the mujahideen say something in a language he guessed was Arabic. Before he could try and puzzle out their meaning, shots rained down from the ship above, and the boat captain had fallen to the deck.