Herring heard it too.
“Radio,” McGarvey mouthed the word. Probably from the bridge, which meant the door up there was open.
Herring nodded again, and McGarvey continued up, pausing for a moment at each turn, until they reached the third deck where someone from above opened fire, bullets ricocheting off the bulkheads, shrapnel flying everywhere.
McGarvey fell back and fired three shots up the stairs, aiming for the door frame to carom his shots off the steel plating into the corridor.
Someone cried out, and fired another burst from what sounded like an M8.
“Stay here,” McGarvey whispered to Herring. “I’m going to take the passageway one deck down across to the starboard side and see if I can get behind whoever’s shooting at us.”
“We don’t have much time,” Herring whispered.
“Keep them busy,” McGarvey said, and he turned and hurried down to the next deck, while above, Herring opened fire again.
TWENTY
The gunfire was coming from two decks below.
The big helicopter had come as a total surprise. But from the moment it had appeared from the north, Graham had known it was just a matter of minutes before he’d be cornered up here with nowhere to run. There was no time to be angry, or to try to reason how the authorities had uncovered the plan. There was only time to act.
He’d seriously considered punching the 9 # 11 detonator code on his cell phone, and ending everything in one brilliant flash of light. There would be absolutely no pain, and the deep ache inside his soul for Jillian would finally come to an end.
But there was more to be done. More blood to be shed, not for the cause the nutcases who surrounded bin Laden believed in, but for the pure sweet joy of the battle. Revenge by any other name became tactics. Outwit your enemy, kill him on the battlefield, and live to fight another day.
The helicopter had American navy markings. It hovered on station just across the road, waiting for someone to try to get off the ship.
The troops that had deployed were dressed all in black and apparently knew what they were doing. By now they would be finding and disabling the explosives, though there was still time to enter the code. If only one of the tanks went up, the rest would explode too.
But how had the Americans found out so soon? No one at the Syrian training camp knew the target, nor had any of his crew been told until they were already en route. Which left only a handful of bin Laden’s inner circle who knew all the details.
The first glimmerings of rage began to fill him with the determination to get out of here alive, so that he could make it back to Karachi and take his revenge on whoever had sold them out.
He wouldn’t be able to shoot his way out, and even if he was successful, and managed to slip over the side, the helicopter was standing by, probably with orders to kill anything that moved.
Nor could he hide aboard for very long. If this were his operation he’d order a thorough search of the ship for just that possibility.
The VHF radio was alive with chatter, most of it in Spanish, from Gatun Control, demanding to know what was going on. Graham caught the pilot’s name, and the solution came to him all at once. The Americans were going to give him a ride to the hospital, and from there, freedom.
Hurrying now lest he get caught, Graham put down his weapon and cell phone, and stripped the shirt and trousers from the pilot’s body.
There was a sudden burst of pistol fire one deck down, and someone cried out in Arabic.
Graham pulled off his shirt and trousers, and hurriedly put them on the dead pilot’s body, getting blood all over himself in the process.
“Now,” someone called softly. In English.
Graham donned the pilot’s trousers, which were slightly too small for him, and the light blue shirt, the front of which was covered in blood.
Someone was coming up the stairs, he could hear their footfalls.
Moving swiftly but silently, he laid his cell phone next to the pilot, then placed his pistol in the dead man’s hand.
Whoever was coming was just outside the door now.
Graham smeared blood all over his neck and face and in his mouth, then staggered back across the bridge where he fell to one knee next to the helm station and al-Tashkiri’s body. He was unarmed, and he no longer had the means to trigger the explosives. But as his operators would say, Insh’allah. If God wills it.
A tall, stocky man dressed in civilian clothes appeared in the doorway. He was armed with a pistol, which he swung left to right, centering on Graham.
“No, por favor, señor,” Graham shouted, holding up a hand as if in supplication.
The civilian moved aside, his pistol never wavering, to allow a much younger man dressed all in black, a black bandana on his head, a Heckler & Koch M8 in his hands, and a pistol strapped to his chest, to enter the bridge.
Graham didn’t know about the civilian, but the other man was definitely a U.S. Navy SEAL, almost certainly part of the Americans’ Rapid Response presence here in the Canal Zone. They were almost as good as the British Special Air Service paratroopers; highly trained to take down any force they encountered with a very high degree of accuracy and lightning speed.
“Por favor, senõr. ¡Ayúdame!”
“Do you speak English?” Herring asked.
“Sí,” Graham said. “I mean, yes.”
McGarvey had moved over to the dead pilot, and keeping one eye on Graham, kicked the pistol away, then bent down to check for a pulse in the man’s neck. He glanced at Herring and shook his head.
“What happened here?” Herring asked.
“The crazy bastardos killed each other!” Graham shouted desperately. “They tried to kill me, but this one interfered. They have bombs.”
Herring said something into the small mike at his lapel.
McGarvey checked for a pulse in Ramati’s body and then came to where Graham was kneeling and checked for al-Tashkiri’s pulse.
“What’s your name?” he asked Graham.
“Sanchez. I am the piloto, the pilot.” He looked up into McGarvey’s gray-green eyes and he could see wariness and skepticism. But the SEAL had lowered his weapon.
“The ship is secure,” Herring told McGarvey. “I’ve called the chopper back, they’ll take Mr. Sanchez to the hospital.”
“Por favor, we have to leave now,” Graham pleaded. “The dynamite will kill us all.”
“It’s all right, sir,” Herring said. “They didn’t use dynamite, and my people have disarmed the charges.”
“Can you walk?” McGarvey asked.
“I think so,” Graham said weakly. He held up a hand, but McGarvey stepped back, his pistol still pointed more or less in Graham’s direction.
Herring slung his carbine, came over, and helped Graham to his feet. “Where are you shot?”
“I don’t know. They hit me on the head, and then there was a lot of shooting.”
Herring keyed his radio. “This is Baker leader, we’re coming out.”
“Have your people found any of the real crew?” McGarvey asked.
“Fifteen of them so far,” Herring said, grim-lipped. “All shot to death.”
“We’ll need a new crew then,” McGarvey said. He went back to the body, dressed in the captain’s clothing. Something was wrong.