2

JOHNSTON ATOLL, NORTH PACIFIC

The plane shook and rattled in turbulence, clouds swirling swiftly across the windscreen. The pilot tightened his grip on the controls and banked and dipped to the southwest.

Baskale had flown through tight mountain passes, across scorching deserts, but never over such a great body of water. And he had no intention of setting down in the ocean. He hated the water, where creatures lurked below, waiting to rip a leg from the helpless idiot who bobbed about. He preferred to face his enemies eye to eye.

Rocking and rolling, one engine sputtering, the old Navy C-1 transport, last used to deliver mail to aircraft carriers before being decommissioned, made more strange sounds than Baskale cared for. Sweat bubbled from his freshly-shaved face, where his thick beard had disguised his rough, jagged jaw just hours ago. His thick, dark hair stuck straight up through the head set, which he monitored constantly for any sign that they had been discovered.

In a moment, the plane broke from the clouds, and Baskale could make out the outline of the tiny island chain below. He had never been there, only studied the maps and charts. There was Johnston. His zealous eyes narrowed toward the barren set of rocky islands, desolate dots of nothingness that a brisk wind from Allah would bury in waves. He could finally see an airstrip. Searching the controls, which were not entirely familiar to him, he prepared himself for a tenuous landing. There would be a heavy cross wind.

All Baskale could smell was the ham. He was sick of it by now. From the moment they had stuffed the smoked ham in the back, hijacked the plane, and flown off in a hurry, he wondered how Americans could even eat the stuff. Give him a good leg of lamb any day. But the odor of pork also brought a pleasurable smile to his weathered face. It was a power he had never felt before.

He glanced over his shoulder at his three men. They all looked like airsick children in colorful costumes, traditional Hawaiian shirts. They had never worked together, but Baskale knew they were as dedicated as him. He could tell by their vigor on Hawaii last night. They had killed without question. They would do anything to make this work. Including die.

Over the radio, the air traffic controller cleared them for landing.

Baskale smiled and then dropped the landing gear and straightened the plane to the runway. The wings flipped up and down with gusts of wind. It took all the strength in both his arms to battle the controls.

●

Ten miles off the tiny island, the fishing trawler clicked along at five knots, rolling in the gradual swells. Wind whipped across the bow.

The captain of the boat, Atik Aziz, a short, dark man with intense eyes, lowered the binoculars to his chest and turned to his first mate at the wheel.

“Hold it steady along this reef,” Aziz ordered.

Aziz was a wiry Turkish Cypriot who had fought hard against the Greeks until it had become fruitless to do so, and until he had found it more profitable to work for himself. Now he controlled his own destiny, something few men could say for themselves.

“Our timing must be perfect,” the captain said, as he shifted to a broad stance to balance himself.

The first mate nodded, not knowing what he was really agreeing to, but not wanting to ask for details either. Sailors who asked too many questions could slip overboard, never to be seen again.

Aziz yelled orders to the two other crew members to lower the fishing nets, his gravelly voice reverberating off the wooden decks. How could they appear to be fishing without the nets in the water? He had no respect for this rag-tag crew. He had lost his real men to an Israeli gunboat, and replaced them with these pathetic boys when he could find no others on short notice after this job came up. The long journey had been difficult. They had changed their flag and the nameplate at the stern as some would their underwear. He would have to live with his decision to use these amateurs until the right moment. He glassed the island again. A smile crossed his face as he watched the plane set down.

●

On the island, the delivery plane from Hawaii had just landed, and the three crew members and the pilot were off-loading crates of food into a blue truck with U.S. Air Force stenciled on each door. Baskale kept an eye out for security police, but saw none—only an officer and an unarmed aide.

It was Easter morning, and it had become a ritual to fly in fifty fresh hams from a small vendor in Pearl Harbor, who meticulously smoked them, injecting them with a special sauce that had remained a secret, but had each base commander at the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System, begging for more year after year.

Colonel Stan Barker was no exception. He stood outside the operations building in battle fatigues below the airport tower, supervising the entire project with a young airman in blues at his side. Barker was in his second year of command, his last year before heading back to Arizona to retire. He wanted to please the troops, who considered the isolated duty a hell-hole and felt the only reason they were there was because they had pissed someone off down the road. And what better way to please the troops than by appealing to their stomachs. Barker grinned as he took in a whiff of the succulent pork. This year would be better than any other. Even the cooks would get a break, for Barker had ordered all food to be catered. Sweet potatoes, Idaho russets with gravy, and a special pineapple dessert.

Two of the men, their colorful shirts soaked in sweat, stopped loading for a moment after making repeated trips from the plane to the truck.

Colonel Barker stepped forward briskly, his hands on his hips. “You boys have a problem with hard work?” he yelled. “Get your ass in gear. We’ve got men to feed.”

The largest man started toward the colonel, but Baskale grabbed his arm, holding him back. Baskale whispered into the man’s ear, and the man nodded, smiled, and went back to work.

When the men were finished loading the truck, they closed up the back and piled into a Suburban. They would follow the truck to the dining facility and cook for the Army and Air Force troops. Everyone would get a day off this Easter.

●

At noon the meal was ready. The soldiers and airmen, who had spent the entire morning in a heated game of softball with plenty of beer, piled into the dining facility, hungry.

Colonel Barker, having umpired the game, was in the lead, lauding the aroma of the ham, ubiquitous in the air. He had the men from Hawaii load extra ham on his tray.

“I hope it’s as good as last year,” the colonel said, winking.

Baskale smiled and continued quickly loading trays. He needed to push people through as fast as possible.

Within the hour, the entire base, nearly a thousand military, civilians and contract workers had eaten the ham. Even the small contingent of security police officers guarding the gates to the chemical weapons storage facility had eaten meals delivered to them.

The four men from Hawaii disappeared temporarily. They would wait patiently for the ham to do its magic.

In a short while everyone was debilitated. Those who were not puking their guts out, had lapsed into comas or died.

Returning to the dining facility, Baskale and his three men armed themselves with submachine guns they had stashed in a crate. They stepped over people lying strewn in contorted piles. Some had made it out the front door, only to collapse on the grass or sidewalk outside. The largest of Baskale’s men found the colonel dead in his chair at the head of a table, his face plastered into a plate of mashed potatoes. The man leveled his gun on the colonel and fired a burst into him. Blood exploded from each hit. The man smiled. Baskale pulled at him, and they hurried outside to the Suburban and piled in.

Baskale drove toward the chemical weapons storage site. If there was a body in the road, he would not swerve. Instead, he’d gun the engine and jump the body like a speed bump, his three men laughing each time he did it. The base looked like the villages he had seen bombed in his youth. Twitching bodies. Women hugging their children, looking up to the sky as if asking God why.

He crashed the truck through the metal fence at the storage site and went on to the secured bunkers. After blowing the locks on storage building Alfa, they rushed inside. Baskale smiled when he opened the first container. Inside, there was a cluster bomb with over a hundred four-pound bomblets containing deadly nerve gas. They closed the water-tight container and all four, in unison, hoisted the bomb onto the truck.

●

By now, the Cypriot registered fishing boat had made its way to shore and was docked at the pier. The captain ordered his men to tie the boat fore and aft. As they waited for the truck, two crew members refueled the boat with diesel, topping off the tanks. This was not a normal fishing trawler. It had a modified engine that could crank out over forty knots in the open seas, with extra fuel tanks where fish would have normally been stored.

The truck rolled to a stop. Baskale jumped out, smiled at Aziz, and explained that everything had gone as planned.

In a matter of minutes, the nerve gas weapon was loaded aboard the boat and they were steaming at full speed to the east.

CIA HEADQUARTERS
Langley, Virginia

The Director of Central Intelligence stormed into the communications room. John S. Malone, a former Navy admiral, demanded respect and got it. He was used to being called away from his family, even during the holidays, but he never liked it.

The new CIA was six months young, and Malone was determined to make it work. The plan to combine all intelligence into one cohesive unit was needed. Yet there were many who wanted the new organization to fail. Some had declared that combining the CIA, the FBI, NSA, DEA, ATF, and all the various military intelligence and law enforcement functions under one roof, was a ludicrous notion. It was too much like the KGB in its heyday, with its multitude of directorates. Those on Capitol Hill who had fought for it, the president among them, had hoped to streamline the bureaucracy. In the end, though, nothing had actually changed, with the exception of building another layer of bureaucracy between the CIA and the executive and legislative branches. The process had been more complex than anyone in the former organizations had ever encountered. Those forward-looking individuals who set it up hoped that the end result would be a network that resembled the most finely designed computer system with unencumbered software. In reality, the additional layer actually made it more difficult for the CIA to get its message to the president.

Malone wanted to be hands on, in the thick of the action. He was a hulk of a man, with a chest like a football offensive lineman. Over the last few months he had grown a bushy mustache, and would twirl the ends in tense moments. He was twisting away at it now. “This better be good, gentlemen,” Malone growled.

A nervous analyst handed the director a hard copy of the message received from Johnston Atoll. It was a cryptic message, at best, punched in by a dying Air Force communications controller from the island.

When Malone was finished, he handed the message to his assistant. “It doesn’t say how many dead, or the security of the weapons.”

The director of operations chimed in. “The Navy diverted the guided missile frigate Long Beach, that was en route to Guam, to the island. They’ve dispatched their helicopter to the site and should be on the ground by now.” The DO, Kurt Jenkins, had been career CIA and one of the only top ranking officials to survive the recent shake-up. He was a slight man with round glasses. He looked more like a nerdy bookkeeper than someone who ran the largest number of clandestine officers and secret operations in the world.

“Do we have communications with anyone there?” Malone asked.

The DO shook his head. “No, sir. It doesn’t look good. An Air Force intel officer at our Hickam office had a telephonic with the comm center at Johnston for a few minutes. But he didn’t get much. Something about a crew flying in Easter dinner from Pearl Harbor. Ham.”

The director twisted at his mustache again. “The entire island was poisoned?”

“It appears so,” Jenkins said. “The Air Force is checking into it now.”

The secure phone on the console buzzed and the analyst picked up. In a moment, he handed the phone to the director. “Sir, it’s the Navy frigate commander.”

The director picked up and listened carefully. His expression changed from concern to a gravity not often seen from him. “A medical team is on its way, and the Air Force is flying evac planes that way as we speak. Have your men secure the area. I don’t want the press involved. You’re in charge there, commander.” He handed the phone back to the analyst and turned to the DO. “At least a hundred confirmed dead, with more dying as we speak.” He paused for a moment. “And one of the weapons is missing.”

“Shit!”

Malone turned away. Someone had one of the most deadly nerve agents ever conceived. Terrorists probably. He had to think fast, be strong. He could not let this happen on his watch. “I’ll inform the president,” the director finally said. “In the meantime, I want maximum effort on this. I don’t care who you have to pull from other operations. Also, I want satellite tracking of every Goddamn ship in the Pacific. It appears that they didn’t escape by air. I want each craft vectored and boarded by the Navy or Coast Guard.”

“Yes, sir.” The DO hurried from the room.