Once airborne, Merk would go back to the cargo bay to debrief Peder Olsen.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Two-dozen soldiers from the 4th Platoon, Brave Battery, 2nd Battalion, sat with their gear, backpacks, and duffel bags on one side of the fuselage. Some were chatting up a storm, others were half asleep, a nod away from deep slumber. Across from them, four MPs stood watch over Peder Olsen, whom they seated in a folding chair as the mercenary tried to grab some shut-eye.
With a tablet under his arm, Merk climbed down from the flight deck and headed over to him. He put the tablet on Peder’s lap. “Take a look at these. Tell me what you think.”
Peder shook himself awake and looked up at Merk and then at an underwater photo of a rusty boiler-type vessel sitting on the seafloor. “Ja, okay. From where did you get this?”
Merk pulled up a chair and sat next to him, saying, “From your years as an offshore oil diver and a special forces expert in your homeland, show me.” He handed the Norwegian a stylus to mark photos on the tablet that intrigued him or sparked questions.
For the next half hour, Peder swiped back and forth through the photos that Tasi and Inapo had captured underwater of the illegally dumped drums, barrels, and oversized boilers off the coast of northern Somalia. Instead of the discarded oil drums being repurposed for Syrian barrel bombs they were used to store waste — toxic, radioactive waste.
Merk glanced at the photos now and then, and thought of the young boy he had met at the cove, his corroded skin, his arms covered in rashes and boils. Then Peder studied one close-up photo. It showed the backside of the half-buried boiler. He enlarged the image, turned the tablet sideways to read a faint inscription or serial number next to the welded seam of the lid on the container. It appeared as if the lettering had been grinded off, not faded from decay, barnacles, or rust. But erased. “Have you showed these to anyone?” Peder asked.
“You’re the first,” Merk said. “Can I trace the nuclear waste inside those containers?”
“How do you know it’s hot?”
Merk flipped through the gallery of photos, scrolled down, showing graphs of the nuclear probe readings Tasi took. For the first time, it dawned on Merk: Tasi was pregnant when he sent her down to search for, locate, and probe the toxic waste — but he didn’t know that she was six months pregnant. The readings from the yellowcake refuse, the nuclear waste, or the spent fuel rods punched him in the gut. He felt his shoulders go slack as a stone pressed against his heart with dead, cold weight.
He then thought back to the shock wave created by the blast from the sea-mine blowing up the Iranian fishing trawler. Did that have any impact on Tasi? Did it affect the mother-to-be or her unborn calf? Damn it, he thought, knowing he was a fool. He should’ve listened to Morgan Azar and kept the dolphins out of harm’s way. He now regretted more than ever the terrible risk he took, for Azar, for Inapo, for Tasi and her offspring. Now Merk had to see to it that Tasi wouldn’t be sent back to the Navy Marine Mammal Program in Point Loma; that he, and only he had to look out for her welfare and that of her calf; and that whatever mission grew out of the terrorist threat he had to make sure he worked with the dolphins, protocol and risks be damned.
“Is that it?” Peder asked, picking at his flaking sunburnt skin.
“You help me, I will help you,” Merk said, staring aimlessly at the back of the cavernous fuselage. “I need to know where the hot load came from.”
“I have an idea. But I’ll need this corner of the image blown up. Err, re-colored and rendered with contrast lightened so I can see it better.”
“Roger that,” Merk said. “When we land in Ramstein, you’re going to be debriefed by an FBI counterterrorism expert. Don’t worry, I’ll be sitting with you in the meeting.”
Chapter Sixty-Four
The C-5 Galaxy landed on time at US Ramstein AFB. After taxing from the main runway, the transport plane pulled into the hangar, where the base’s military police met with the cargo master holding the flight manifest, observation log, and cargo inventory sheet. The ONI naval attaché deboarded the plane and greeted the base MPs.
A cordon of MPs led Merk, the ONI attaché, and Peder Olsen to waiting SUVs that drove them to Building No. 413. Ramstein Air Force Base Headquarters had been built inside a forest perimeter, which contained the base golf course, massive runway, and the nerve center of the US Drone Program, all housed in the confines of thick, tall pine trees.
The MPs took Merk and Peder down into the HQ’s intel room, where Merk Toten and Peder Olsen were introduced to FBI Special Agent Diane Wheelhouse. The auburn-haired agent was well dressed in a business suit and heels, her fingernails manicured with Ferrari-red nail polish. Special Agent Wheelhouse wore prescription sunglasses. She firmly shook Merk and Peder’s hands, and then made the ONI attaché go to the next room. There, he joined CIA analysts, a pair of FBI counterterrorism agents, and other DIA intel officers in an adjacent soundproof room, where they would watch and listen as the debriefing unfolded.
Merk sat down with the Norwegian mercenary.
“As I said, I am FBI Special Agent Wheelhouse. I will be conducting this interview, which is being recorded,” she said in a direct manner. “I’m jetlagged, landing only an hour before you did from LA. That’s nine time zones away. So what did this navy…” she looked at her notes, “…dolphin trainer tell you?”
“Er, what do you mean?” Peder asked.
“Your expectations? Did he promise you the world? Like, you’re going home today?”
“Nay, not at all,” he said, his facial muscles tightened, glancing over at Merk.
“Good. Today this is your home,” she said, clicking a remote.
A wall screen behind Merk showed a split-screen of joint US-Norwegian intelligence agents rummaging through Peder Olsen’s house in Stavanger, Norway, and Norwegian police officers rifling through his summer cabin up in the mountains. She clicked the next image that showed a live shot of still more Interpol agents going through the offices and home of the Blå Himmel shipowner in Bergen. She clicked another image, pulling up emails and cloud services that Peder had used, then zoomed on a half dozen emails addressed to a charity organization in the Puntland autonomous state. “You recognize these emails? What does P.O. stand for?”
“Pratique Occulte,” he said, sinking in the chair.
“Black Mass? Nice. Is that the new terrorist group with no affiliation to any other org?”
“Uh, ja, I suppose. Um, how did you know the name?”
“It’s my job to know. I get around. Who was on the receiving end of your emails?”
“Warlord Korfa.” His voice cracked.
“It wasn’t him. You were communicating with a CIA asset from Kenyan intelligence code-named Nairobi. She has just been confirmed tortured and murdered. Her raped, bloodied body dumped this morning by her pirate captors. The same terrorists who hijacked the supertanker you were supposed to be guarding, but instead you helped steal,” the FBI special agent said, holding up a flash drive. “You used one of these to inject malware into the tanker’s nav system, didn’t you?”
“My god…”
“God’s not here. Nairobi is just one person in a growing list of people who will die,” she said, slamming the notepad on the table. She tapped a pen on the table. “Both she and Korfa are being used to mask a much greater enemy alliance,” Wheelhouse said, pointing the pen in his face. She clicked the next image, showing the bombs planted on the hull of the tanker.