Warlord

FORTY-NINE

THEY HAULED HIM ABOARD AND STRETCHED him out on the teak foredeck. He was pretty bloody and chopped up from the barnacles. And, by the time Stoke reeled him in, the imam had experienced the thrill of ravenous sharks nipping at his heels because of all the blood in the water. Even now the sharks were circling the boat, looking for fresh meat. "Called keelhauling, Ozzie," Stoke said, "predates the Geneva Conventions by four hundred years. It's a bitch, ain't it?"

Stoke now took the freshwater wash-down hose and cleaned him up a little. Then they took him aft and sat him in the big chrome fishing chair. The imam sat there like a dazed and bloodied Neptune on his nautical throne, staring into space, his protruding eyes wide with real terror.

He now realized these two animals were capable of anything. This was not quite true, Stoke thought, but it was definitely the right impression to convey under the circumstances.

Stoke popped a cold Diet Coke snatched from the big cooler full of ice and underhanded Harry a frosty Bud. Both men sat on the gunwales and sipped their drinks, content to watch the dolphins play and let the imam think things over before they went back to work on him. About ten minutes later, having duly considered his situation, Ozzie started singing like a canary on crack.

"Smith," he croaked, his chin resting on his chest.

"Yeah, what about him?" Stoke said, looking up.

"Englishman. In Afghanistan."

"Okay, I'll bite. What's this Englishman doing in Afghanistan?"

"Assassination."

Stoke stood up and pulled a black leather notepad and pencil from his shirt pocket, then walked over and lifted the guy's chin up with his beard.

"Assassination of who?"

"Harry."

"Harry's not in Afghanistan. Harry's right here."

"No. Prince Harry. Son of Prince Charles."

Stoke looked back at Harry Brock who mouthed the words, Ho-ly Shit!

"Harry. That's the son who's serving in the British Army? Right?" Brock asked the prisoner.

"Yes."

"I thought he was in Iraq."

"No. Afghanistan."

"When is the attempt on his life?" Stoke said.

"Most imminent."

"You telling us the truth? If you're not, you're going right back under the boat. As many times as it takes."

"Truth. God's truth."

"Harry, on the off chance the little bastard really is telling the truth, you want to go get on the radio and call this in to Langley? Pentagon? This intel needs to get to the CO of the British Army forces in Afghanistan right now."

"You're right," Harry said, leaping to his feet and disappearing inside the wheelhouse.

"Okay, little buddy," Stoke said, pencil poised, "one more. Who the hell is this Scimitar I keep seeing?" The imam, who looked like a guy who'd just climbed out of a bathtub full of piranhas, gave Stoke the evil eye.

"He is known in my country as the Lion of the Punjab. His name is Sheik Abu al-Rashad."

"Sheik Abu al-Rashad. Good boy. I've heard that name. How high up? In the Sword of Allah organization?"

"Most high."

"High as you can go? Higher than bin Laden?"

"Yes."

"Where do I find this high and mighty Sheik?"

"Pakistan. Sometimes Afghanistan. Always on the move."

"Nomad, huh?"

"Precisely so. He travels light. Cave to cave, camp to camp."

"Where is he now?"

"Islamabad, I think."

"Where in Islamabad?"

"Hospital."

"Sick? Injured? Which hospital?"

"Don't know. That is the truth, I swear it."

Stoke grabbed his beard and lifted his face so that the guy was staring directly into Stoke's deadly serious eyes.

Nada.

"Okay, fine. On your feet. You're going scuba diving again without the scuba. See all those sharks swimming around the boat? They can't wait to see your bloody carcass back in the water."

"No! No!"

"All right. Take it from the top, one more time. What. Is. The. Name. Of. The. Hospital?"

"Quaid-e-Azam International Hospital."

"Spell it. Nice and slow," Stoke said, and copied it down letter for letter.

"You're absolutely sure about this hospital? I can go google it right now on my laptop."

"I speak the truth."

"We'll see about that. Where does this guy typically hang out when he's not in the hospital?"

"Mountains."

"Which mountains? You got some pretty serious peaks in Pakistan, right? Like, that's where K2 is, correct? Second-tallest mountain in the world."

"No. K2 is on the Chinese border with Pakistan. He's mostly in the mountains near Chitral. North-West Frontier Province. Malakand District. Where we fought Winston Churchill in 1885."

"Any particular mountain?"

"Yes."

"Does it have a name?"

"Wazizabad."

"Waz-iz-a-bad. Is that it?"

"Yes."

Stoke thrust the pad and pencil into his hands. "Draw me a map. Just rough. Put a black X where this Wazizabad mountain is, got that?"

The imam started drawing. He was actually a pretty good little artist, once he got into it. Had a horizon line, perspective, the whole deal.

Harry Brock stuck his head out the door.

"Hey, Stoke, you should come in here."

"I'm busy."

"I got through to the director at Langley, delivered the news. Now Alex Hawke is on the radio, patched through out here by the CIA station chief Miami. Says it's urgent."

"Hawke?" Stoke couldn't believe his ears.

"You heard me."

"Ozzie, you sit tight, buddy. I'll be right back. This is a fascinating conversation, so don't take this as an insult. Bossman on the phone, you know how that goes. Harry, will you babysit this badboy while I'm gone?"

"HEY, BOSS," STOKE SAID, PUTTING on the headphones and pushing the send button on the transmitter. "You're back! Man, it is great to hear your voice! You sound good."

"I am indeed, Stoke, but not surprisingly I need your help."

"Say the word. Where are you?"

"Cannons to the right, cannons to the left. I seem to be stuck in the middle. I'm in London now, but headed out to Pakistan. Like, yesterday. Urgent business requires my presence. Islamabad."

"What can I do?"

"I want you to be ready to go when I go. Start now. I'm going to need you over there. Things could get spicy fast. C wants me to ensure that all the Pakistani nukes are locked down. As you know, the local Pak government is not fond of us snooping around in their backyard. We'll be going in under the radar, needless to say."

"Boss, I was just there six months ago. Doing a small job for Brock, organizing transfers of F-34 aviation fuel to some supersecret U.S. airbase. F-34 is the stuff those Predator missile drones burn. Anyway, I got to know the town and some of the locals pretty well. I know one thing: don't trust a word the Pakistani Army generals tell you. Half of them are Taliban sympathizers. And the other half are on the fence."

"It's going to be tricky, all right. Your knowledge of the locals is a huge bonus, Stoke. Is Brock with you on that boat?"

"Yes, he is."

"You know how I feel about Harry. Always ready to give a helping hand to a man on a ledge a little higher up."

"I agree completely. We're in the same boat, so to speak."

"Sometimes I think he has the moral compass of a piece of driftwood. He could be useful to us, however. Good in a firefight. Do you agree? Your call."

"Yeah, we could use him all right. At least when he tells you he's got your back, he doesn't plan to stick a knife in it."

"Right. Tell him I'll be in touch with you guys the minute I've got a departure date scheduled. Be ready to roll at a moment's notice. Anything interesting going on aboard that fishing boat?"

"Yeah. We're interrogating a guy I met in prison. He's full of information and so was his laptop, some of it possibly true. Lot of chatter about the bombing at Heathrow, the attack on MI5 headquarters, et cetera. You ever heard of somebody named Smith?"

There was a long silence at Hawke's end of the line.

"Smith? Yes. I have definitely heard of him. What have you got?"

"Our guy says Smith's in Afghanistan right now. Aiming to kill the heir to the throne of England. Harry, the son of Prince Charles. You believe that?"

"I do now. I was just informed of an attempt on Prince Harry's life this morning. It failed. The sniper was killed and an accomplice escaped. Thanks to you, I now know who the accomplice was. Our friend Mr. Smith. And it makes sense of the fact that the shooter used the highly classified long-range British sniper rifle left at the scene."

"Sounds to me like you got a big hole in your bucket, boss, kinda leaks you're talking about."

"We certainly do. This intel is invaluable, Stoke, thank you. This Smith character must have connections at the highest levels of Britain's government. And he is deeply involved with Sword of Allah. One of our immediate tasks is to run him down."

"Sword of Allah took down Jackson Memorial Hospital here in Miami. It's the Sword that's blowing up school buses all over America. Another thing we found? About twenty radicalized homegrowns from a southside mosque in Chicago were all set to take down New Trier High School with AK-47s and suicide bomb belts. Almost five thousand kids in that school could have died. You believe that? FBI rounded up the killers just two days before they would have done it too."

"Appalling. We're dealing with the world's first, highly organized, megaterror group, Stoke. Recruiting and training in prisons. Forming allegiances with the IRA and the Communist governments in Cuba and Venezuela. Possibly the North Koreans, and God knows who else. Our job is to find and cut off the head so the body will die."

"I have more on them, boss. My songbird says the top dog in the entire Sword organization is somebody named Abu al-Rashad. Code-named Scimitar in all the encrypted Internet communications. I even think I might know where he is at the moment. In the Quaid-e-Azam hospital in Islamabad, sick or wounded, I don't know which."

"He was right about the assassination attempt on Prince Harry in Afghanistan. You've got him scared enough to start telling the truth. Good work. See what else you can get out of him. Whatever it takes."

"Will do."

"Please tell me, God forbid, you're not waterboarding this guy, Stoke. Politically incorrect in Washington, you know, even when the fate of the whole goddamn planet is at stake."

"Me? Waterboard? C'mon, boss, you know I'd never stoop that low."

"Stoke, I'll call you back in exactly one hour. I need to convey every word you just said to the directors of both MI5 and MI6. Stay near that radio."

Click.

Then Stoke heard Harry Brock cursing and screaming in pain.

WHEN STOKE STEPPED BACK OUT into the blazing sun, he saw Harry Brock clutching his gut, blood spurting between his fingers and pooling on the deck.

"He's got a knife!" Harry said, his eyes on the little guy, backing away. "Fucker tried to kill me."

"You okay?" Stoke asked him.

"Not really."

"Looks like a flesh wound."

"Hurts like a bitch though, trust me."

"Harry. Pay attention. You get that map he drew?"

"Yeah, I got it, that's when he knifed me, handing it over."

The master terrorist was backed up against the transom at the stern, nowhere to go, waving the rusty fish knife around as if daring Stokely to try to take it away from him. Stoke told him to relax. Then he put both his hands in the air and started slowly toward him in as nonthreatening a fashion as a man his size was capable of.

"Ozzie, listen up, partner. You're fighting way outside your weight division. Flyweights should not get into the ring with heavyweights, it's a well-known fact. Ask anybody."

He spat out something unprintable in Farsi or whatever.

"Just throw the knife down and no one else has to get hurt," Stoke said. "Drop it on the deck and-"

Screaming the now all-too-familiar Islamic war cry, "Allahu Akbar!" the terrorist charged Stokely, the bloody fish knife raised above his head. Stoke calmly waited for him to strike, then shot out a plate-size hand and vice-clamped al-Wazar's right wrist just as his knife hand started down, pivoted, yanking his arm violently enough to dislocate his shoulder.

In a single, fluid motion Stoke whirled completely around, still gripping the man's wrist, and flung Azir al-Wazar high into the air, whereupon he dropped into a frothing frenzy of the bloodthirsty sharks still circling about twenty yards off Maiden Voyage's stern.

"Hey, Stoke," Harry said, taking a front-row seat on top of the bait box. His fist pressed deep into his flesh wound to stanch the bleeding, he was watching with some interest the flashing fins circling ever nearer to the screeching and wailing terrorist, now flapping about like a pregnant pelican trying desperately to get airborne.

"Yeah?"

"I think you forgot to inform our little buddy out there of his Miranda rights."

"Did I? Damn, I think you're right, Harry."

Stoke lumbered up onto the wide teak transom, cupped his hands around his mouth, and called out to the man in the water now boiling with his own blood, the man who'd just tried to kill him and his pal Harry.

In a loud, clear voice, Stoke said, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?"

Stoke heard only a very garbled response.

"What'd he say?" Brock asked.

"Hard to tell. If I had to guess, I'd say he's going to exercise his right to remain silent."