Robert Ludlum's (TM) The Janson Option (Paul Janson) Page 17

  The gunfire petered out raggedly.

  * * *

  IN THE SILENCE that followed the shooting, Allegra Helms could hear the gunmen gasping for breath, as if they had run marathons. None of them moved. Those who had been shooting from the hip stood frozen, with rifles clutched to their sides. Those aiming carefully pressed them to their shoulders. Then Maxammed swaggered across the bridge. He switched on his cell phone. He played the screen’s pale light over the riddled bodies and ripped the mask from the smaller figure.

  Allegra Helms screamed, a terrible sound of heartbreak, rage, and dismay.

  * * *

  JANSON AND KINCAID switched fire-mode selectors to full auto and bounded up the stairs three at a time, vaulting their weight on the handrails to hush their footfalls. The deck layout was burned in memory from repeated readings of Lynds’s builder plans. They split up at the helo deck, Janson darting across the ship so he could mount the exterior stairs to the bridge from the opposite side.

  He tsked that he was in position, and they raced up the final flight, trusting the Panoramics’ sharp green images to avoid shooting each other in a cross fire. He was halfway up the stairs when he saw a big man in jungle fatigues. The pirate sensed the rush behind him and whipped around with an AK-47. Janson fired the sound-suppressed MTAR once, lowered the pirate’s body and assault rifle smoothly to the steps, and continued up.

  “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.” Kincaid, signaling a holdup.

  Janson kept going. A triple meant she could handle it. A quad would summon help. He eased himself onto the open wing outside the bridge and scanned the interior through his night-vision goggles.

  More than a dozen armed fighters were staring at two commandos in battle black who lay dead against a bulkhead, shot to pieces. Someone else’s rescue team? From where? Three hostages—a woman and two men in civilian clothes—lay in a heap under the chart table. Whether dead, wounded, or huddling for cover, Janson could not tell.

  Allegra Helms’s long blond hair showed lemon yellow in the green image. Her back was to him, as was the back of one of the big men flanking her. The other, facing her—close enough to grab her for a shield—Janson recognized as Mad Max Maxammed, from the Navy drone video of the pirate using her as a shield when the Chinese PLAN forces attacked. He could kill Maxammed with his first shot, and the other pirate with his second.

  Kincaid whispered in his earpiece, “I see her.”

  Janson covered his lip mike. “Too many fighters. Fall back.”

  “I can kill five before they know what hit them.”

  “The rest will hose the place. No civilian casualties.”

  “I’m only ten meters—”

  “I’m five.”

  Janson kept looking for signs of life. Were the hostages dead? Were they wounded? Were they frozen with fear? Or did they, reeling in whirlwinds of terror and chaos, still have the presence of mind to play possum?

  “Can you see the hostages?”

  “I’m looking right at ’em. I can’t tell if they’re dead or alive. And Allegra’s in the line of fire. Fall back.”

  “But I see her face.”

  “Fall back!”

  “I can kill ’em all.”

  “Fall back!”

  TWENTY-THREE

  C-four the Bell Ranger,” Janson ordered.

  They had fewer than four hours to try again. Come dawn, the sight of their hydrofoil scooter standing off the ship would be a dead giveaway. A diversion would draw the fighters from the bridge.

  They retraced their steps, moving like shadows, down from the bridge wings to the helo deck, down to the main deck, and started forward to blow up the smaller helicopter on the foredeck. Its helipad would be hardened and fireproofed. A spectacular-looking blaze set off by a mini-block of C-4 would not threaten the ship itself, or the lives of the hostages left behind. There was no question of saving all of them this time. Their only way off now was the scooter, and it had barely enough room for Allegra.

  Halfway to the Bell Ranger, they heard the buzzing of outboard engines. The sound was coming from the beach. The engines were straining, the boats low in the water, heavily burdened. The pirates had found more boats.

  “Fuck!” said Kincaid.

  Lights skipped across the water, powerful handheld halogen flashlights. In their back-glow, Janson counted three skiffs plowing through the low seas, filled with armed men.

  He signaled retreat. They would be immensely outnumbered and outgunned, and would end up putting all their effort into not getting caught, none into saving Allegra. They raced aft the length of the ship and down the rope ladders. Kincaid keyed the remote and the electric scooter slid under them like a faithful dog.

  They dropped into their seats. Kincaid engaged the silent motor. The impellers bit and they started away from the yacht.

  “Tsk!” Janson warned her.

  An enormous shark swept alongside—tall fin and part of its back rising darker than the dark water—and circled in front of them. Kincaid turned behind it, toward the oncoming boats, bumped over its tail, which felt solid as a waterlogged floating tree trunk, and gunned the motor. The scooter leaped up on its foils. Kincaid steered a weaving path, dodging light beams.

  It was neatly done, Janson thought. The guards they had shot would be chalked up to the firefight, and Mad Max would have no inkling that they had come and gone. But neither would Allegra Helms, and a masterful retreat could not change the fact that their mission had collapsed in total failure.

  * * *

  “PRETTY LADY, why did you scream when I took the mask off this commando?”

  Maxammed loomed menacingly. Allegra said nothing, biting her lip, staring at the body. By a miracle none of the countless bullets had marked his face.

  Suddenly the helicopter started its motors, a high-pitched whine that grew louder and louder as it warmed up. The noise made Maxammed even angrier.

  “Pretty Lady, I will hurt you a lot if you don’t tell me why you screamed when I took the mask off this commando.”

  He leaned closer. She was afraid and said, “He’s my cousin.”

  Maxammed slapped her so hard her head snapped back and she was knocked off her feet. Her whole face was burning. It hurt so much she wept. Only the beginning of pain. There would be so much more. Weeping in terror, she murmured, “My folk have wedded me. Across heaven’s span, Into a far country.”

  “Cousin?” he shouted.

  “My folk—”

  He jerked her upright by her arm. “Cousin?”

  She tried to cover her face. “Adolfo was trying to save me.”

  Maxammed slapped her again. It felt like an explosion in her brain. As if his voice were muffled by a wall between them, she heard, “Aristocrats don’t carry bullpup rifles.”

  She turned her face, only to recoil from the sight of Susan and Hank’s lifeless bodies. She hadn’t realized they were shot, riddled by the cross fire. They were heaped under the table, their hands for once not touching. Near the dead couple, the old man was curled in a fetal position, untouched by the bullets, staring at them. Close your eyes, she wanted to say. No one should see that. But Maxammed was screaming at her.

  “Adolfo was not an aristocrat!” she shouted back. “A different side of the family. From Naples.”

  “The city in the south?”

  “Through my mother. When someone first told me, I didn’t believe them.”

  He jerked her arm. “Told you what?”

  “They are Camorra.”

  “What is Camorra?”

  “Il Sistema. The system. Criminals.”

  “Like mafia?”

  “Worse,” said Allegra.

  “Mafia in your clan?” The tall pirate smiled and with one long finger brushed the tears from her face. “You’re like me.”

  But his mind was racing. How had the two men gotten all the way here? Who helped them? They’re Italian. This woman is Italian. Were they somehow related to the “Italian” everyone in Mogadishu feared a
nd no one knew? Not a figment but as real as this beautiful woman and her dead cousin. She would not know. But these commandos could have.

  He stared at the fire on the beach, wondering. Had the attack on his boats been a feint arranged by this woman’s family with powerful European Union connections? Was it possible she would fetch an even bigger ransom than the hostage Farole had shot?

  Maxammed shifted his gaze from the fires to the woman. She was weeping. But no longer in fear, he thought, nor in pain, but solely in grief, mourning her Adolfo. She brushed past him as if he did not exist and knelt by the body and laid her breast on his mangled torso and closed her arms around him, stroking him gently, probing as if to find some breath of life.

  She made a sight only God should see, and Maxammed turned away and stared out the shattered windows at his burning boats. He turned back when he heard her open a zipper.

  “Help me get his vest off.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to wear it.”

  Maxammed knelt beside her. Allegra unzipped the rubbery fabric. He lifted the body and they tugged his arms out of the vest and she put the bloody garment on.

  “If you are from gangsters,” he asked softly, “why did your family allow you to marry outside your clan?”

  She looked up from her cousin’s body and met the pirate’s eyes with an expression of disbelief as if to say, How could you not know? How could anyone not know?

  “Answer me! Why did they allow it?”

  “I gave them no choice.”

  “But why?”

  “To escape. Why do you think?”

  * * *

  “HELICOPTER’S BACK,” Kincaid warned.

  Janson heard it too, coming after them fast.

  “What kind of radar on the AH-6?”

  “Probably nothing special,” said Janson. The scooter signature was negligible, although sophisticated radar looking straight down might pick up the battery and the motor. “Except it doesn’t sound like an AH-6. It’s bigger.”

  “Sea Hawk?”

  “Let us hope not.” The Sea Hawk had surface search radar monitored by a dedicated sensor operator. If the helicopter was specially equipped for pirate patrol, a forward-looking thermal-imaging camera would detect their body heat.

  “In the water,” said Janson.

  “There’s a goddamned shark in the water.”

  “Bullpups work underwater.”

  “We have to see him to shoot him.”

  “I’d rather shoot him than get shot by the Navy. Ready?”

  Kincaid throttled back and the scooter wallowed to a stop. “Ready.”

  They stood up and were about to step into the dark water when Janson said, “Wait! Listen. That’s not a Sea Hawk.”

  Kincaid pulled the hood off her head. “Sounds sort of like one.”

  “The rotors are turning slower. And a lighter blade beat. It’s that S76D from the yacht. No way they’ve got serious infrared.”

  “Where’d they get pilots?”

  “Who knows. But it’s not hunting. It’s turning away.”

  “Good. That son of a bitch is right alongside again.”

  “Go!”

  The scooter leaped onto its foils.

  * * *

  THEIR LUCK HELD—their luck, not Allegra’s, Kincaid thought bitterly—and the GPS brought them to the rendezvous with the Otter floating in a patch of empty sea twenty miles offshore just as the hydrofoil’s low-battery warning light began pulsing. They retracted its foils, winched it up the ramp, and buttoned up the cargo hatch.

  “Go.”

  “Where’s your hostage?” asked Kirpal Singh.

  “We blew it,” said Kincaid.

  “Go!” Janson repeated. This close to the coast they could run into anything from Combined Forces patrols to more pirates. “Get off the water. Set your course for Mogadishu.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not on,” said Kirpal Singh. The pilot slouched behind the right-hand yoke.

  “We don’t have enough fuel for Mogadishu,” said the South African copilot, who had taken the left-hand seat.

  “Why not? Your tanks are topped up and you can refuel in the harbor.” As one of Janson’s contingencies, Catspaw had fuel and Customs paperwork waiting at a Mog boatyard, and bribes paid.

  “Sadly,” said Singh, “we are not entirely topped up. In fact, we’re piss-all half-full.”

  “What happened?”

  “A patrol ship interrupted us in the midst of fueling,” Choh explained. “We dropped the hose and got away before they saw us. But we have barely enough fuel to make it back to the tanker.”

  “Pray the patrols have moved on,” Singh added.

  Janson took a closer look at the senior pilot. His eyes were dull, his bearded face mournful.

  “Are you all right, Captain Singh?”

  “I am down in the depths on the ninetieth floor.”

  “What?” said Kincaid. “What are you talking about?”

  “Cole Porter,” he said to Janson. “You might know the song. She’s too young.”

  “I dance to it,” Kincaid said.

  “A beguine,” Singh muttered.

  “What is wrong with him?” Kincaid asked the South African.

  “He crashed.”

  “Grimly,” said Singh, “I’m reminded that the far side of manic is depressive. But not to worry. First Officer Choh has placed me in the right-hand seat. With instructions not to touch a thing.”

  “How close can you get us to Mogadishu?” Janson asked Choh.

  “What do you mean? Drop you partway?”

  “How close?”

  “You’ll be in the middle of nowhere.”

  “We already are. How close to Mogadishu?”

  “Let me see what I can do.”

  While the floatplane bobbed on the gentle swells, which were growing visible as the sky lightened in the east, and Janson and Kincaid watched anxiously for roving patrols, Clarence Choh worked with chart, calipers, the calculator app in his cell phone, and the cell phone itself. The farther he flew down the coast, the closer to Mogadishu, the longer the triangle leg of his route offshore to the freight dhow that served as his tanker, the more fuel the Otter would burn. But stretching navigational limits was only half the challenge.

  Competing forces roamed the land—clan warlords, freelance militia, AMISOM troops—Ugandans, Burundians, Kenyans—Somali government soldiers, al-Shabaab terrorists no less deadly in retreat, and even American Special Forces hunting al-Qaeda. None of whom Janson wanted to tangle with while getting to the capital as fast as he could to regroup for another rescue.

  The copilot switched his cell phone on and off for the briefest of calls to query contacts ashore for the latest intelligence on who controlled what turf between Puntland and the capital city. This was why Janson trusted gunrunners. Those who survived knew their territory. He listened intently to the copilot’s exchanges with the local clan elders and private militia leaders they supplied.

  Choh put down his phone at last. “I can land near Harardhere.”

  Janson and Kincaid put their heads over the map. Three hundred miles to Mogadishu. Little more than halfway. But a lot closer than Eyl.

  “The surf is pretty rugged.”

  “Reefs?” asked Kincaid.

  “Sandbars. We went in all right, once, on a Zodiac. I wouldn’t want to attempt it on your water bug.”

  “We’ll swim,” said Janson.

  The last thing that he wanted spotted on the beach was an exotic landing craft painted flat black. Whoever ruled the sector would send troops after them with all four feet.

  “What’s the al-Shabaab presence?”

  “Diminished,” the South African answered carefully. “They were thick with the pirates, but they’re retreating, I’m told, and living off carjackings and robbery.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  Choh started the engine. Captain Singh broke his morose silence.

  “Why not crank a bit of right ail
eron and pick the left float out of the water?”

  “No need, Captain. But thank you for the thought.”

  “Cut some drag, what? We’ll hop off on the right float before you can say Jack Robinson.”

  “Jack Robinson,” said the South African, shoving his throttle wide open.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  3°58' N, 47°26' E

  Somali Coast

  You know you’re in a war zone,” Paul Janson told Jessica Kincaid, “when there’s never a beautiful place to sit.”

  The Catspaw operators were sitting on the concrete floor of an abandoned fish-drying plant, six hours and twenty miles after they swam ashore and the Otter disappeared to the northeast. Positioned left shoulder to left shoulder, as if on a tête-a-tête love seat, each watched ahead and to the right, boxing the compass with their MTARs.

  The plant had been built, judging by the shoddy masonry and severe architecture, by Soviets propping up Somalia’s long-since overthrown socialist dictatorship. It had recently housed an al-Shabaab training camp.

  The terrorists had fled with little warning, leaving rice, detonators, batteries, and wiring for improvised road mines, along with partially assembled suicide vests. The graffiti on the walls were stark reminders that the name al-Shabaab meant “the youth.” No one had written jihadist slogans in Arabic calligraphy or Roman script. Instead, scratched on the walls were boys’ drawings of pistols and assault rifles.

  Outside, crushed Toyota Carib technicals were scattered in front of the factory—improvised roadblocks that had been flattened under AMISOM tank treads. Shade trees planted around the factory gate had been dead so long the bark had peeled off and the sun had bleached the trunks white. The mud-colored walls had been smashed here and there, a consequence of the 2002 tsunami, judging by the sun-and-wind-weathered rubble. The only other structure in sight was across the road—a blue poly tarp shading a rough-and-ready truck stop.

  The road was the widest Janson and Kincaid had seen since they landed, a full two-lane detour that the Russians had laid from the decrepit dirt-and-rock single-track highway to the plant. It had weathered the tsunami better than the original. The sparse traffic—mostly trucks escorted by SUVs crammed with armed guards—shunted onto it and stopped by the front gate, where the men relieved themselves against the trees, then crossed the road and sat to eat rice and drink bottled water under the blue tarp.