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.
But there was no way Ozzi was going to bring that up here.
“Look, General,” he began again, his anger building despite efforts to stay cool. “Are you looking for a fall guy here? Is that it? If so, then let it be me. I will take responsibility for everything that happened. If you want to pin a drug rap on me, so be it. I’ll be glad to sit before an NSC board of inquiry. I’ll even welcome a court-martial, if that’s what you are trying to cook up.
“But don’t pull the Nine-Eleven team down into the gutter with you. How many times do I have to tell you? No matter who sent them out or why, they saved thousands of American lives at Hormuz and thousands more in Singapore. And because of them, the world is rid of its first superterrorist. And, they’ve probably disrupted Al Qaeda more in the last four months than the entire U.S. intelligence community has in the last four years. It’s just not right to punish those men after what they’ve done for our country.”
Rushton opened his mouth—but no words would come out. He stared down at the floor instead, unable to look Ozzi in the eye. The NSC wonks were averting their gaze as well.
Ozzi took this as a sign his words were finally hitting on target.
“All these guys wanted was to get home again,” he said, his voice cracking. “They just wanted to get back to America. To see their families again. To touch American soil again. You’re a soldier—or at least you used to be. Don’t you at least owe them that?”
Finally Rushton looked up. His face was beet red now, his lips pursed and sinister. But his eyes, they were telling a different story. Puffy, watery—they were oozing guilt.
Yes, Ozzi thought, this is a man who is definitely hiding something.
“Nice speech, lieutenant,” Rushton said. “But on the contrary, I consider the whole lot of them security risks. Not to do so would be dereliction of duty on my part. So not only are these men not going home; they will stay in my custody until further notice. And when I return to Washington, I plan to seek a Executive Order barring them from ever entering the United States again.”
Ozzi felt like he’d been hit in the stomach with a hammer. His mind began racing crazily again. A severe beating was too good for Rusthon. He wondered if the NSC men were armed. If he could somehow get a gun from one of them, he could shoot Rushton instead, put a couple bullets right between his beady eyes, then maybe blast his way out of this joint….
But then, strangely, he saw Rushton’s face soften a bit. The rotund officer walked past the NSC men and sat on the corner of the desk closest to Ozzi, effectively blocking the prosecutors’ view. Up this close, Rushton looked oddly feminine.
“Lieutenant Ozzi,” he began again. “Let’s cut the BS and get to the point of your being here. I’ve reviewed your service record. I know you’ve done outstanding work for the NSC. And I know you come from a family who have served our country proudly as well. Now, you’re facing several lifetimes in jail—and it will be no country club, I assure you. But I believe I can offer you a ray of hope here. A way that you can avoid disgracing your family.”
What the hell is this? Ozzi thought.
“All you have to do is tell us everything,” Rushton went on. “Fill in some of the holes—like where you all got the crazy notion that there were Stinger launchers being carried by that B-2, and what really happened at Singapore—and then just fall into step with the official report. It will be like a plea bargain. You help us, we help you. I’ll make sure you get off.”
That was it. Screw getting a gun. Ozzi decided he was going to kill Rushton with his bare hands right then and there. The mere suggestion that he could be flipped, so easily turned into a rat, filled him with a blood rage. But then, just as he was about to explode out of his chair…he realized something. Suddenly he knew what was really going on here. If Rushton was offering him a deal, and he was the last guy in line, it could only mean one thing: Everyone before him—Fox, the original 9/11 guys, even the SEALs and the State Department guards—must have turned him down. No one had cracked. No one had bought into Rushton’s game.
“No other takers, is that it, General?” Ozzi asked him, still fighting mightily to keep his cool.
Rushton let his guard slip and shook his head no. “Not a smart one in the bunch,” he said.
That’s when Ozzi finally smiled. God damn, he thought. The whole team is going down together. Including me….
And at last, at that moment, he felt like one of them. One of the team. One of the heroes. A patriot. It had been a long time coming, but when it arrived it was like getting hit by a lightning bolt. Electricity, from his head to his toes. Suddenly, he was on top of the world.
“So?” Rushton asked him. “What do you say, son? Are you willing to take my offer? Are you going to be the only one smart enough to save your own skin?”
Ozzi just leaned back in his chair and relaxed. He wasn’t sweating anymore.
“General,” he said proudly. “You can go to hell.”
By chance, Ryder and Hunn were put into the same holding cell at the bottom of the Lincoln. They were both wearing prisoner suits, bright orange of course.
“How’s the chow down at Gitmo?” Ryder asked Hunn dryly. They were sure that’s where they were going.
“It sucks,” Hunn replied.
Ryder leaned back against the damp wall, wondering if it would be possible to forget everything that had happened and just go to sleep. But he was hungry, too.
“You didn’t sneak a roast beef sandwich in here with you, did you? I’ll split it with you, if you did.”
“Nope,” Hunn replied. “But look what I do have….”
He reached deep into the crotch of his prison suit and came up with a cell phone.
“I don’t want to know where you’ve been hiding that,” Ryder told Hunn wearily.
“Don’t ask; don’t tell,” Hunn said.
Ryder repositioned himself against the wall. His head felt like it was going to burst, he had so many secrets he had to keep.
“Well, maybe we can use it to call out for pizza when we get to jail,” he said to Hunn. “Do they even have pizza in Cuba?”
Hunn laughed in his angry sort of way. “It’s not just an ordinary phone, Colonel,” he said. “I took it off that shuka mook as I was stuffing the flag into his mouth. You know, just before the shit hit the fan? I figure it’s got to be how he was getting his orders.”
Suddenly Ryder was interested again.
“Hit the redial,” he suggested. “See who picks up.”
Hunn thought a moment, then did just that.
On the other side of the world, on a messy desk inside a soundproof office on the thirteenth floor of an otherwise nondescript mercantile building, a special red cell phone lit up. Just by habit, the man known to some as the judus went to answer it, but then hesitated, his hand hovering over it.
He’d been sitting at this desk now for the last 100 hours, managing the acquisition and shipment of the Stinger missiles to America. Despite some bumps in the road, his plan had worked beautifully. The 36 weapons would be inside the United States within hours, all the diversions and feints having been played to perfection. It was exactly the ending he wanted. So why ruin it?
Answering the ringing phone would probably do just that, he thought. He was exhausted. He needed a cigarette. He needed a drink. But most important, he needed to celebrate, just a little bit. So he let the phone ring until, finally, the person on the other end gave up. Then he picked up the cell phone, erased its memory, and disconnected the battery. Putting the phone between the heel of his shoe and the floor, he crushed it so it could never be used again. The remains he threw into his wastebasket.
He checked his watch. It was early afternoon. Yes, it was time for him to go home. He put all sensitive materials into his office safe. He also shredded a few very incriminating documents and placed them in the burn bag for disposal. Then he turned out the lights and locked the door behind him.
He walked through the outer office. There were several dozen people here, lower in rank than he, lording over computer screens, fax machines, and banks of scramble phones, the typical landscape of a foreign intelligence office. He nodded good-bye to several of them, chatted briefly with a few more. It had been raining for the past four days, they told him, something he could not tell from his windowless office. They all remarked with humor about his staying power and dedication. They told him to go home and get a few days’ sleep. He assured them that he would.
He walked to the elevator, passed his ID card through the egress security check, then placed his briefcase up to the document scanner. The machine confirmed that he was not taking any unauthorized security materials home with him. He stepped onto the elevator and rode it down to the small hidden lobby on the first floor. Another security check waited for him here: another X ray of his briefcase and a retina scan. He was cleared for the final time, and went through the unmarked door to the building’s real lobby, the one that served the import-export businesses that made up about half the tenants in the unassuming building.
He stepped out onto the street, and took his first deep breath of fresh air in almost five days.
The neon sign from the restaurant next door was crackling slightly, trying to lure him in. It was a chic bistro called The Palm Tree. He’d been there many times before, but the cognac was rarely up to his standards. And a bottle of some very good stuff awaited him at home. That’s where he would go.
Normally he would have taken a cab. But the rain had stopped by now, and he knew he had to stretch his tired legs. So he lit a cigarette and started walking.
He liked the way Paris looked after it rained.