"The coxswain sits in front on the left," Bayzani had said, illustrating with the salt and pepper shakers, so eager to instruct, so eager to please. "He's the captain of the small boat, so to speak. The man on his right maintains communications with the ship."
Without pausing Akil shot the man sitting next to the coxswain, and one of his men, Mahmoud he thought, reached over the side with a boat hook and snagged the bow of the inflatable.
"What the fuck?" the man in the bow said, staring open-mouthed. Yussuf shot him. The bullet hit his shoulder, high and to the left, and Akil was irritated. "We need the uniforms!" he repeated.
He had to raise his voice over the increasing cries of the migrants, who after the first shock were scrambling, clawing, fighting to get away from the guns. One man, braver than the rest and more stupid because of it, made a clumsy attempt to tackle Yussuf. Akil's bullet caught him in the stomach and he skidded backwards, to sit down hard on the deck. He looked with surprise at the rapidly growing stain on the front of his shirt.
Those migrants below had panicked at the sound of the gunshots, pouring out on deck, with screams and cries and pleas to their gods, only to fall back in fear when they saw the guns.
One of the two men left alive in the inflatable was trying to pull the coxswain's body free of his seat. Akil shot twice and missed twice when the man ducked, but by then his men had found their range and the next time his head popped up three bullets hit it more or less simultaneously. Miraculously, they had managed not to hit the boat.
The fifth man stood up in the back of the inflatable, hands raised in the air, his face a white blur in the night. The flap on his sidearm had been unfastened but his hands were empty.
At least five guns spoke at once, and the man tumbled backwards over the edge of the small boat and hit the water with a splash. There were other splashes as some of the migrants went in, some voluntarily, others falling. By now the Mokame was listing heavily to starboard because all the migrants were crowding the starboard side gunnel, trying to crouch as far away from the armed men as they could get.
Akil cursed with a fluency that momentarily stopped them all in their tracks. "Secure the boat!" he said.
Mahmoud knotted the end of the small boat's bow line around one of the cleats on the Mokame. Five of his men half jumped, half fell into the small boat and began stripping the bodies.
ON BOARD THE SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR
"T minus sixty."
The urge to urinate was by now all Kenai could think about. She still didn't trust the diaper, but her tonsils were floating. She ran a swift calculation. An hour to go till launch. From launch, it took ten minutes to get into orbit, when she could change into dry clothes. She would spend seventy minutes lying in her own pee if the diaper didn't work.
She decided to risk it. It took a few moments to convince her urethra that this was okay, prone on one's back not the most conducive environment for urination.
Her urethra got the message, and her bladder emptied out in a warm rush. The relief was immense, and she sighed. She sent out feelers for diaper failure, but her back was still dry, so far as she could tell.
All righty then. "Bring it on," she said.
"What's that, Kenai?" Rick said, his voice raspy over her headset.
"Nothing, sorry, Rick. Just hurrying up the count."
"Hear, hear," Laurel said.
"T minus fifty-five," said Mission Control.
ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO
"Less than an hour to go," Cal said to the Munros.
They smiled, their eyes glued to the binoculars. They didn't look or act apprehensive, but like any parent of any astronaut, they had to be thinking of Challenger, and Columbia.
He was.
When he wasn't monitoring boat ops on the bridge, that was. He went
back inside. "BMC?"
"Yes, Captain," Gilmartin said. "We haven't heard from Mun 1 since they sent their last ops normal call."
"When was that?"
"Five minutes ago."
They weren't overdue, and Garon's last communication had been to inform them that the contact appeared to be a sail-rigged coastal freighter
loaded with migrants. "The message sounded kind of garbled, like their radio was failing," BMC said apologetically. "OS2 Riley says the same."
"Oh, great," the XO said.
ET3 Lang, on watch during boat ops, said in a puzzled voice, "I don't know what can be wrong with the boat's radio, sir. I ran the morning check and it was fine."
They became aware of the presence of Admiral Matson standing in the doorway. "What's going on?"
Heads swiveled toward Cal. "We have a freighter that is refusing to identify itself inside the security zone, sir." He saw Barkley's head peering over Matson's shoulder. "We've launched the small boat to go over and take a look. The small boat's been out of touch for a little longer than we'd like, but that may be due to radio problems."
"Nothing interferes with Munro standing by this launch, Captain," Matson said, and returned to the port bridge wing.
There was a short, uncomfortable silence.
"One thing at a time," Cal said to his crew. "The BT will start the checklist, get the boat and crew information, if they're talking. In the meantime, we'll get this bird in the air. Then, if they haven't returned and we still haven't heard from them, we'll go over and take a look for ourselves."
"Works for me," the XO said more cheerfully.
ON BOARD USCG SMALL BOAT MUN 1
Akil, Yussuf, Mahmoud, and two of the others had donned the uniform shirts and life vests stripped from the dead boat crew. Mahmoud, the only experienced boatman among them, was in the coxswain's chair. He took a moment to familiarize himself with the controls before starting the engine.
Akil, sitting next to him, donned the headset and keyed the mike. He spoke tentatively, not entirely certain that the script he had put together from information received from Adam Bayzani and the traitor on board Munro was accurate enough to pass muster. "Munro, Mun 1."
The answer was prompt and sounded relieved. "Mun 1, Munro."
"The captain and crew are Haitian," Akil said. Unchallenged, he gained confidence. "The captain says his home port is Port-au-Prince." He dropped his voice as he said the last words.
"Mun 1, Munro, say again?"
Akil did so, again mumbling the words and keying the mike and throwing in the odd whistle and growl.
"Mun 1, Munro, you're breaking up."
"All right?" Akil said to Mahmoud.
"Yes, Isa," Mahmoud said.
"Then take us to the ship."
"Yes, Isa," Mahmoud said.
"Munro, Mun 1, the radio is breaking up. Mun 1 returning to base."
The tedious months of waiting, the interminable hours on the freighter, now it was all finally culminating in glorious action, action that would make them household names around the world, feared by their enemies and canonized by their friends. Mahmoud was a true believer, and if Akil could not easily make out his face in the darkness, he could plainly hear the joy in the other man's voice.
"Allahu Akbar!" Mahmoud said.
Eight of them responded, if not as joyously then with as much manufactured enthusiasm as they could bring to bear, knowing that they were going almost certainly to their deaths. Even the most fanatic among them suffered at least a pang of uncertainty when faced with the near future.
And then they looked to Akil sitting on the side of the small boat, at the calm certainty on his face, and were reassured. This was Isa, after all, Zarqawi's right-hand man, the author of too many successful actions taken against the infidel to count.