Warlord

FORTY-EIGHT

STOKELY JONES TOLD HARRY BROCK HE needed a damn break right this minute. Harry silently nodded yes, and the two of them went up on deck to talk things over. The little guy down in the owner's stateroom wasn't going anywhere. He was tied to the chair, his wrists tightly bound behind him with, ouch, dental floss, a trick Stoke had learned with VC captives back in the shit.

Right about now, little Yoda down there was praying for a one-way ticket to paradise. But Stoke had no intention of letting this murderous child-killing bastard keep his hot date with seventy-two virgins.

"Martyr, my ass," Stoke had told Yoda right off. "This is America, asshole. Unlike you, we don't kill noncombatants. You're going to spend what's left of your sorry life in a prison that makes Abu Ghraib and Gitmo look like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood."

Cool salt air smelling faintly of iodine stung Stoke's eyes when he stepped out on deck. After the stink of sweat and cigarette smoke in the small, airless cabin below, it felt good just to breathe again. How long had they been at it, he wondered, looking at his watch. Three damn hours.

He'd grown weary of interrogating an arrogant man who'd blown up a hospital full of doctors, nurses, and sick people; more recently he had caused the deaths of nearly two hundred innocent schoolchildren in a series of school bus bombings-and showed not a trace of remorse for any of it. A man whose only regret was that he'd been stopped before he could kill more kids. A man who'd prefer to die rather than betray his religion of death.

These effing people were certifiable, no doubt about it. They were making babies faster than anybody else on the whole planet, then teaching them how to hate. And kill anybody who disagreed with them.

Great, huh?

Future's so bright, I got to wear shades.

"Good cop, bad cop thing? Just ain't working, Harry," Stoke finally said, hands on the varnished teak railing. He willed himself to relax, eyes gazing out over the deeply rolling swells of the blue Atlantic, ruffled whitecaps marching away to the horizon. The boat they were on, Maiden Voyage, a weather-beaten and barnacle-encrusted sixty-foot Viking sport-fishing boat, was a blind CIA charter out of Cracker Boy Marine over at Grove Key marina.

Stoke had four lines out, two from the outriggers and two off the stern. They were slowly moving south at idle speed, the helm on autopilot. Fishermen. Nobody would bother them.

Earlier, Stoke had taken Maiden Voyage through Government Cut into the Atlantic and out to a preset GPS waypoint beyond U.S. territorial waters. He'd deliberately established his destination four miles outside the United States' twelve-nautical-mile limit, just to be on the safe side. He was now in international waters, a good place to have unpleasant conversations like the one they were having with the imam from the Glades prison.

The terror kingpin's real name was Azir al-Wazar. Probably Arabic for Wizard of Oz, Stoke thought, and started calling the guy "Ozzie" just to piss him off.

"Got a better idea?" Harry said, lighting up a fresh unfiltered Camel. He'd stubbed the last one out in the little guy's left ear. Harry being Harry as usual, he only smoked on certain very special social occasions. Like rendition.

"Yeah, I got one, Harry. Bad cop, bad cop."

"I like it."

"Ozzie won't like it."

"Screw Ozzie. He murders schoolchildren on school buses, remember that little tidbit? Three buses in three states in the last three weeks. How many of our kids does he get to kill before we can, you know, really torture the dickhead?"

"Really pisses me off waterboarding is no longer politically correct," Stoke said. "I miss it already."

"Hopeless nostalgia, man, wasted energy. Listen. I saw a pair of really rusty pliers at the bait station back there in the stern. We could pull his goddamn tongue out, right? Put a big fish hook in it first and then yank-"

"Then he couldn't talk at all, Harry."

"Good point."

"You need your tongue to talk."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever."

Stoke saw a baby dolphin suddenly surface about six feet away and then dive under the bow of boat, playing with them, surfacing on the other side before coming around again.

"I think I just got an idea," he said, smiling at Harry for the first time all afternoon.

"Spit it out. Look on your face, it's a really good one."

"Old navy tradition. Really old. Been around since the year 1560. But off the books for centuries so I doubt any of our more ladylike congressmen have passed any goddamn laws against it."

"Yeah? What is it?"

"Follow me," Stoke said heading aft for the stern cockpit where the big chrome fishing chair was and all the fishing gear was stowed. He did some quick mental calculations: the boat's beam; the draft. "C'mon, I'll show you how it works."

Harry flicked his smoke overboard, followed Stoke aft, and watched him opening hatch covers in the wide transom until he found the right one, a rope locker. He pulled out two big coils of thick white nylon line, each about thirty feet long, Harry guessed. Stoke quickly tied them together in a manner that suggested prior nautical experience.

Harry said, "Tie him up? With that? Whoa. But, yeah, very cool idea."

"Not tie him up, Harry."

"What then?"

"Go get his sorry ass. I'll show you right now."

Harry was back at the stern with Yoda in about five minutes. Boat was rocking pretty good in these big swells, and the Wizard was looking green about the gills. Shaky. Too bad they'd run out of Dramamine.

"Want to talk now, Ozzie?" Stoke asked him, leaning down until their noses were almost touching.

"How does one say 'go fuck yourself' in English?" he replied with his elfin smile. "Oh. I remember now. Go fuck yourself."

"Easy. Say it again, just one more time, and then try to say it without any teeth."

"There is no God but God," the imam smirked, and repeated his mantra for the hundredth time that day. His idea of name, rank, and serial number. This little dick was really getting on Stoke's nerves. He'd murdered, or caused to be murdered, nearly two hundred innocent American schoolchildren. And no one could legally lay a hand on him.

Stoke said, "Not what I had in mind, sportin' life." He backhanded the guy across the chops, rattling his teeth.

"One-track mind," Harry said, shaking his head in mock disgust.

"Cut his hands loose," Stoke said, fed up.

"Loose? Really? Why?"

"Just do it. He's going to need his hands."

"Just do it, Harry," Ozzie said, mimicking Stoke's accent and holding his hands up to be freed.

Harry did it. As he turned away, the crazy little killer took a swing at him. Harry laughed and swatted his fist away as if disposing of an annoying fly. "Listen up, pal," Brock said to him. "You fuck with a truck, you get run over."

"You mean…like the World Trade towers?"

Harry quickly turned his back to the imam, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing the blazing anger in his eyes. As calmly as he could, he said to Stoke, "How about we just cut him into bite-sized pieces and feed him to the sharks?"

Stoke just stared back at Brock, so angry with the radical Muslim he didn't trust himself to speak.

As a result, neither man saw the terrorist snatch the fish knife from the bait station, lift up his prison garb orange shirt, and stick the blade inside his elastic waistband.

"Now what?" Brock said after a few long moments.

"We tie this line around his waist. Loop it around a couple of times. Okay, good. Now, nice and tight. He goes right in the middle. Need about twenty feet of line on either side of him."

"What the-"

"Trust me. Do it. Good. Oh, hold up, one more thing."

Stoke opened a locker full of scuba gear, dug through it, and pulled out a lead-weighted diver's belt. He cinched it good and tight around the guy's waist and tied the two ends of the nylon belt in a square knot.

"Perfect. Now we walk him forward to the bow. Ozzie? You cool with this? Good man."

Harry grabbed one end of the line and marched toward the bow. Stoke had the other end, bringing up the rear, Yoda in the middle, going along to get along.

"Now what?" Harry said, as they stood at the bow pulpit where the anchor was. Stoke grabbed the little guy by his scrawny neck and lifted him high above his head. Then he stepped out onto the pulpit projecting out from the bow.

"Okay, this is the good part. I'm just going to swing him around a little, like this, called the 'helicopter,' and then throw him in the ocean. Right off the front of the bow…Like that!"

"Cool!" Harry exclaimed, watching the guy splash down, disappear, and come up floundering, slapping the water to try and stay afloat; Harry was beginning to like this idea more and more.

"Pull him around to your side. Walk aft with the line. I'll ease my line to give you enough slack to do it. Don't let him sink."

"Why not?"

Stoke eased his line and went over to the opposite side of the boat, slowly feeding Harry some slack, the line disappearing under the boat, pulling his own end beneath the keel of the big Vike.

"Because that's not how you do this, Harry. Keep him afloat with your end of the line until I get over here in position. Okay, this is good right here." Stoke had stopped just forward of the wheelhouse, just about amidships.

"What the hell do we do now?"

"Keelhaul his ass. Just like the good old days. I bet nobody's done this in two hundred years. Maybe more."

"How does it work?"

"Hold on, let me tie my end to the railing over here."

Stoke did and then crossed over to Harry's side. He leaned way out over the starboard rail and saw Ozzie bobbing there, kept afloat by Harry's line.

"Here's a question, Ozzie," Stoke said. "Answer it and I'll think about not drowning you. Ready?"

"Ready," the terrorist said, nodding his head violently. Good sign. Some people just weren't comfortable out in the open seas with a life jacket made out of lead.

"Found a name in your computer, homes. Popped up a lot in fact. Somebody named Smith. Who the hell is Smith? You have ten seconds."

The guy shook his head no.

"Sink him," Stoke said. Harry eased his line and the little guy dropped like a rock. They both watched his bubbles for a minute or so.

"Okay, bring him up."

He popped to the surface, sputtering.

"Second question," Stoke said, bending over the rail. "Ready? Good. Another name that seemed to keep coming up in your electronic correspondence. A Sword of Allah bigwig code-named Scimitar. Tell me who he is and you can come back up."

"There is no God but God."

"Wrong answer. This time it's going to be a little tougher, okay, Ozzie?"

"What now?" Harry said. Stoke crossed back to the opposite port rail and untied his end of the line.

"We keelhaul him, that's what. There are two ways to do this. The bad way, and the really bad way."

"Talk to me."

"I'm going to pull him all the way under the boat's keel with my end of the line. Slowly. You feed me enough slack so that he just clears the bottom of the boat."

"And the really bad way?"

"You don't cut him any slack. That way, when I pull, he gets his ass bounced and scraped along about ten or twelve feet of really nasty, razor-sharp barnacles."

"Sounds unpleasant."

"Yeah. Do not try this one at home. Do it enough times and Ozzie won't have much skin left. First time, give him slack. We'll see what happens."

Stoke pulled on his end. The imam went down and disappeared under the boat on Harry's side, Brock feeding Stoke line. Stoke took his time reeling him in, looking at the sweep second hand on his watch, waiting to see the little bastard reappear in the water just below him.

He brought him up, sputtering and cursing.

"I'm going to wait until you finish throwing up all that seawater and ask you again. I don't want to alarm you, but all that splashing you're doing attracts sharks. Ready? Two names. Smith. And Scimitar."

"There is no God but-" He disappeared beneath the waves before he got it all out.

"Haul him back under, Harry. No slack this time."

"Fast or slow?"

"What do you think?"

Brock started slowly hauling away, singing a few bars of "Barnacle Bill, the Sailor."