TWENTY-ONE

NINE DAYS EARLIER

The Remora Bay, a midsized dry-goods freighter flying the flag of Singapore, had left Mumbai, India, four days earlier with a mixed load of patio furniture, glassware, and cutlery, and it then began its voyage west across the Arabian Sea. She anchored in Abu Dhabi, offloaded one half of her cargo, and then made her way around the Arabian Peninsula, where she again moored off Assab, Eritrea.

There, in the midnight hours of a moonless night, two small dhow craft approached the anchored freighter from the east, and four rope ladders were lowered from the Remora Bay’s deck. The crew of the freighter, having dropped their ladders, hurried to the galley, turning off the deck floodlights along the way as they had been warned not to set eyes on their new cargo.

Fifteen men made the three-story climb from the decks of the dhows to the railing of the freighter. Cool, salty breezes blew across lean, sinewy physiques as they ascended. Each man carried a small folding-stock, short-barreled Zastava Kalashnikov rifle and extra loaded magazines slung and fastened to their bodies, as well as a large Patagonia backpack containing rations, Western-style clothing, and other essentials.

The first man onto the Remora Bay’s deck was dressed in black and wore collar-length black hair and a short beard and mustache. His weapon and gear hung behind him as he adroitly scaled the rope ladder, rolled onto the deck, and landed silently on his feet with the dexterity of a cat. He immediately turned back to the ladder, pulled men up by their hands, and pointed them towards the entrance to a stairwell that led directly from the deck to the cargo hold.

He was Hasan, a Signals Intelligence Agency operative from the UAE, and Sultan al-Habsi’s hand-picked operational commander for the mission in Europe. And the other fourteen were the Iranian prisoners of war released from the UAE black site in Yemen, just across the Bab al-Mandab Strait. While highly trained fighters, these men were slower, less healthy, but their fervent devotion to their mission was greater than Hasan’s. He was being paid for leading this group to their final objective; their will alone drove them on.

And despite having less experience than their Sunni leader, all these men were steeped in urban warfare; they’d all carried guns since puberty.

Hasan was the last man off the deck of the Remora Bay. He stood at the doorway to the stairwell and turned, looking back across a ship he could barely see at an ocean invisible in the night. He took a deep breath of brackish air, because he knew it would be his last for many days. He thought about his mission, his chances for survival, and he told himself that if he did make it back home, the crown prince would reward him with praise, money, and prestige. And when Rashid died, his son Sultan, Hasan’s boss, would be the leader of the nation, and he would make Hasan the new operational head of the SIA, while Sultan himself ascended to the throne.

There was much work to do between now and then; this, Hasan knew. But the incentive on the other side of this op was real, and it was incredibly enticing.

Hasan turned for the stairs, then descended into the belly of the hulking vessel.