Lester sat on his balcony watching the water rush by. How could he be in this tropical paradise setting while somewhere on the ship a bomb waited to be detonated? Possibly more than one. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but his mind wouldn’t clear. There was a knock on his door.
A few minutes later, Lester was sitting at the captain’s conference table surrounded by the two government guys who had ushered him from his room, along with several other people. Strangely enough, Monte and Simone were in attendance. Also sitting around the table were the two government officers masquerading as vacationing couples and some unidentified men who appeared to be commando-types dressed in ill-fitting, cheap suits. They would soon dump the suits and bedeck themselves in tourist garb. There were eight other men and women whom Lester didn’t know at the table, but he assumed they were from various government agencies.
A conference phone was placed in the center of the table and all doors were locked, with staff posted at both doors. Captain Polycron pushed the conference button and adjusted the volume so everyone could hear. It was Jim’s voice on the line.
“Gentlemen, ladies, my name’s Jim Webb with Interpol. Captain Polycron has given me a list of all of you that are present. Some of you have had prior briefing, but for Ms. Simone Visser and Mr. Monte Hendrix, the information you are about to hear is classified. The reason you’re at this meeting concerns two people that you directly supervise, Ziya and Salama Moussa. We’ve information that they may have placed a bomb on your vessel. We have been investigating this for the last few days with the assistance of Mr. Lester McFarlin, a former law enforcement officer in the states, who is at the table with you.
“After a great deal of thought from most all of our security agencies, we have decided to place these people in custody so that a thorough search can be made, and the bomb or bombs defused. All our information says that the planned detonation will be during the voyage through the locks in the Panama Canal or in the shallow harbors to block traffic. There is the risk—a very heavy risk—that they will detonate as soon as they are discovered. Each of you will be given a pocket communicator, so this group knows where they are at all times. Simone, do you know if Ziya is at work?”
“No, sir. Her shift begins at eleven this morning.”
“Monte, the status of Salama?”
“Mr. Webb, I believe he and Ziya are at the buffet line having breakfast. He reports to work at ten o’clock this morning,” Monte said, perplexed. “I have worked with him for a year. This is bizarre!”
“Do not—repeat—do not approach them, should they be at work when you return. Just wanted you in the loop. We believe there may be as many as one hundred ships with bombs aboard. This will be the first one where we try to take them down. The captain has ordered all personnel out of the engine room, which is the most likely place to sink it. I’m going to ask our arrest team to approach the couple from both sides of the buffet line and then converge on them. If they display any weapons—shoot to kill, but spare any of the passengers in the area. The same goes if they reach for any detonators. Good luck to you. As soon as they are subdued, take the dogs and the bomb specialist guys to the engine room. You are all dismissed,” Jim said.
As everyone stood up from the meeting, Lester noticed the two fake vacationing couples had guns in their rear waist bands. The other men in suits had pistols in shoulder holsters. They decided to divide up, enter the buffet area from opposite sides, and converge on the unsuspecting couple. Lester went along to observe from a distance.
The two teams of four did not attempt to conceal themselves. Each group spotted the couple eating breakfast near a door which led to the outside deck. Lester could see from his vantage point that Salama and Ziya had spotted them at some distance. Ziya bolted for the door leading to the outside and disappeared down a gangway leading to decks below. There was no one from the two takedown teams who could go after her and soon they would have their hands full with Salama, who had now pulled a pistol from his front waistband under his shirt. Grabbing an elderly lady as a shield, Salama fired two shots at the team approaching from his right and fired three times at the other four-man team. He was a good shot. All the rounds hit flesh, and two men were down with serious wounds.
Lester ducked behind a serving counter and then slid through a door to the prep area. The door had viewing glass on the top half and large swinging hinges, so they would close on their own. He pulled it open, held it with one hand, and grabbed a large metal serving spatula with the other. Glancing through the glass window, he could see that Salama was dragging the elderly woman he had taken captive a few minutes before—who now was motionless and had apparently had fainted—towards the same doorway. Salama pulled the unconscious woman through the doorway, holding her with his left arm and carrying the pistol in his other hand.
Immediately as he cleared the door, Lester stepped out and slammed the metal spatula edgeways down on the top of his gun hand with all his strength, knocking the gun loose on the floor and cutting a large gash on the top of his adversary’s hand. Salama dove for the gun. Lester beat him to it but was only able to slide it further under a big prep table.
Salama had released the woman and was still scrambling to get to the gun. Lester, who outweighed the small man by fifty pounds, crashed down on his back and wrapped his arm around his neck cutting off his oxygen. The smaller man, slick and sweaty, slipped through Lester’s arms and rolled under the table and again inched toward the gun.
Lester grabbed a large metal bowl from a table, and with all his strength, hurled it at Salama’s head. It knocked him unconscious just long enough for Lester to roll under the table and grab the gun. As Lester put his hand over the butt of the gun, Salama came to, grabbed the gun, and tried to turn the barrel towards Lester. The gun went off twice and missed Lester by inches. Then Lester applied his strength against the smaller man. He gradually edged the barrel next to Salama’s temple and pulled the trigger once. The small Muslim man went limp, showering Lester with blood and brain matter.
Two of the government men rushed in the doorway and helped Lester to his feet and searched Salama’s body for electronics triggers, detonators, and communication devices. They didn’t find anything except another clip for his gun, which Lester confiscated.
Lester put the gun in his waistband, wiped blood from his face and head with a dish towel, ran to the elevators, and took it down to Deck Seven. He assumed that Ziya would go where there would be a large crowd. The elevator opened and immediately he spotted Ziya with her back towards him. She was wearing a wrap-around explosive vest which appeared to be cut-up C4 bricks. He walked slowly behind her and out of her vision. The passengers in front of her were screaming and running for cover. Anyone within fifty feet of her would most likely not survive the concussion that would slam their brains against their skulls, causing instant death. Many people die from the shock wave of an explosion, which is so strong it can break every bone in one’s body without leaving a single mark.
Ziya was transfixed—looking straight ahead—almost in a trance. Death would come quickly. She probably thought her reward for martyrdom was merely an instant away. Her right thumb was held above the triggering mechanism—not touching it—but ready.
In one swift motion, Lester grabbed her thumb and broke it with a quick jerk, and then held her hand in check, as his left leg wrapped around the front of her body and trapped her other arm. No more than a millisecond later, he pushed his pistol into the back of her skull with his left hand and fired. The round tore through her skull and sprayed little, pink cauliflower-like pieces of brain towards the huge crowd of terrified passengers. He caught her limp body and held her upright so none of her appendages might set off the bomb. The huge crowd of stunned passengers stopped screaming and stood silent, unable to process what had just happened. He convinced a couple of young men to help with the corpse.
Not knowing if the vest was booby trapped or had a back-up time-delayed fuse, he felt the safest alternative was to cast her overboard. That’s what they did. The body didn’t immediately explode but a few seconds after it went under and out of sight, the vest detonated. The blast rocked the entire ship and threw up a column of water as tall as the top deck. Other than bathing several passengers on the lower decks, no one was seriously hurt. No one knew what mechanism triggered the blast, but Lester shook a little when he realized that it could have gone off at any minute while he fought with Ziya. He would never understand how a girl that beautiful would want to blow-up hundreds of others and herself. Lester realized she was the first woman he had killed, but probably the most deserving of all the people he had taken down.
One of the government men had died as a result of Salama’s gunshots. Three others were being treated by the ship’s doctor. The method they used in their attempt to capture Salama was a hurried response to the information that he and his wife were having breakfast in the buffet area. Later, it was determined they should have waited to confront them with no crowd around.
“Lester, you okay?” Jim asked as he finally reached Lester on the phone.
“Yes, but I need a drink.”
“If I were there, I’d buy you one.”
“You’d probably be asked to buy the ship’s drink package first,” Lester said lightly. “Have they started the search downstairs yet?”
“Yeah, the bomb guys and the dogs are on their way down to the engine room. You calm down and have that drink before you start down there. You did an amazing job with the two terrorists. Thank you, from me and all the other agencies,” Jim said.
“Jim, I think you can see what can go wrong on these takedowns. I pity the guys that will be doing them for the rest of the day and probably tonight,” Lester said. There was a certain tiredness in his voice.
His phone rang as soon as he hung up with Jim. It was Debi.
“What the fuck? Did you take down the whole jihadist movement by yourself? Tell me you’re okay, baby,” Debi said, crying into the phone.
“I’m fine, Debi. Having a drink at the piano bar. Come join me?”
In a matter of minutes, Debi came running to the bar wearing her spa bathrobe. When she flew into Lester and hugged and kissed him, her robe came open and swung to the side, exposing a very lovely bottom for the entire crowd to view. They both bowed when either the kiss or the bare ass got a standing applause from all the people in the area. Debi was still crying and hugging Lester when the captain came by to thank him.
The news of Lester killing two terrorists spread through the ship and eventually to the teams landing on the decks of both cruise ships and cargo ships on both sides of the Panama Canal. As reports came in, no one could find a single ounce of attached explosives in any engine room on any ship.