Frankly, he was indifferent about any thoughts of an afterlife. His time was here and now. He made meticulous plans for the future, but he lived for the present. Whatever money and worldly goods he could possibly want were his merely for the asking. On the rare occasions he found that he desired female companionship, or a male friend, or even the services of a young boy, he had those pleasures as well.
His only real interest was in the game, what Western intelligence analysts called the jihad, which Muslims took to mean holy war, or the struggle, and in the fatwahs, or decrees, issued by religious leaders or scholars, who for years had been telling the faithful to kill all Christians and Jews — men, women, and children — whenever and wherever they were found. He had visions of swimming in rivers of blood wider than the Tigris or Euphrates, wider even than the Jordan or the Mississippi.
Kidnapping the war criminal Donald Shaw, whisking him to a cargo ship one hundred miles offshore, and transporting him eventually to Pakistan, where he would stand trial for crimes against Islam, would be the perfect counterpoint to the supremely arrogant religious war in Iraq.
It would be doubly satisfying to the jihad, because Shaw had repeatedly made public his disdain for the cause, calling al-Quaida’s soldiers of God “criminals.” The former secretary of defense had been a combat pilot in Vietnam, flying more than one hundred missions before his plane was shot down. He spent the next two and a half years as a POW at the Hanoi Hilton. But the enemy never broke him. He was a genuine American hero. But all that would change when he stood trial and his crimes against humanity were exposed to the world.
No important westerner would ever consider himself safe after this mission, Khalil reflected. Presidents, prime ministers, even kings and queens would not be immune from accounting for their transgressions. Ultimately the effect of such kidnappings and trials would make every leader in the West think twice about supporting Israel or continuing the war against Dar el Islam. The world would become a safer place in which to live.
He braced himself against the control console and raised the motiondamping Steiner mil specs binoculars to study the green-and-white rotating beacon of the small airport at Kake on the big island of Kupreanof a few miles to the northeast. There was no activity over there at this time of the evening, nor would there be any scheduled flights in or out until morning, except for the twin Otter, parked at this moment in the Air West hangar on the south end of the field; it would leave and fly west sometime after midnight tonight. No one at the field would know about the unauthorized flight until it was too late. Nor would the tower be manned, so there would be no one to track the flight on radar out into the ocean where the airplane would be scuttled in water that was a half-mile deep.
Khalil had gone over the details dozens of times, from the initial planning stages three months earlier, when it was first learned that Shaw might be taking an Alaskan Inside Passage cruise, until last night when he had gone over each step of the operation with Zahir and the other six operators. In addition to the eight men already aboard Spirit—four in engineering and four on the steward’s staff — they would present an overwhelming force, with superior weapons and the element of surprise.
Shaw traveled with a bodyguard, who would be armed, but his would be the only operational weapon aboard the ship. The one Ruger Mini-14 folding stock rifle and the few Colt .45 pistols in the ship’s weapons locker had been disabled, their firing pins removed. Meanwhile Khalil and his people were armed with the suppressed Polish-made 9mm RAK PM-63 machine-pistols, Austrian Steyr GB self-loading pistols modified to take the same Makarov round as the RAKs, several Haley and Weller E182 stun grenades, and a total of forty kilos of Semtex plastic explosive and acid fuses.
The crew and passengers would present no insurmountable problems. Those who did not instantly cooperate would be killed. Nor would communications be a problem once the ship’s SSB and VHF radios were disabled, and the comm center’s satellite phone rendered inoperative. In this stretch of the Inside Passage between Juneau to the north and Ketchikan to the south, cell phones were out of range. A cross-match of the crew and passenger lists with the FCC’s roster of amateur radio operators, to see who might be carrying portable radios or handie-talkies, came up with no hits. And the only other people aboard who might carry a satellite phone would be Shaw or his bodyguard.
Those two men were the primary targets. They would be brought under control so fast that neither of them would have time to react.
He checked the chart again, against what he was viewing through the windshield, and rechecked his weapons. Although he was supremely confident in his own preparations, he wanted the men to see that even he took special care with his equipment. Image had a lot to do with success, and he was a master at presenting the face that he wanted the world to see.
One hour later they finally came abeam of Kake settlement, a town of about seven hundred people, the wind screaming at a full force of at least thirty knots, with viciously steep, two-meter waves that slammed into the bows of the Nancy N. Anything or anyone not tied down or holding on for dear life would be in trouble.
“I have a target,” Zahir called out over the shrieking wind.
Khalil turned the binoculars across the pass toward Entrance Island, where he picked up the many lights of the small cruise ship. “I see it,” he shouted.
The Spirit was turning southeast into Frederick Sound at about ten or twelve knots, taking the seas in stride at her stern. She was a little early by Khalil’s reckoning, but he saw no obstacles to coming around the tip of the big island and catching up with her in the next half hour while most of the passengers would be finishing dinner and awaiting a show in the Grand Salon. He motioned for Zahir to increase their speed, despite the pounding they were taking, until they were practically flying off the tops of the waves.
“As soon as we clear the island, head directly for the ship,” Khalil shouted.
“We could broach if we take a big enough wave on our stern,” Zahir warned.
Khalil fixed him with a baleful stare. “In that case we would all perish out here. See that you do not allow a broach to happen.”
Zahir didn’t bother to respond, turning his entire attention back to controlling the boat. Khalil was a man who was not to be disappointed.
Khalil made his way below to where his operators were grimly hanging on. The cabin reeked of vomit, but he was satisfied that not one of them seemed like he was ready to give up. They were competent, if unimaginative, men. “Ten minutes,” he told them.
No one had a question.
In the pilothouse Zahir was getting set to turn downwind. He was braced against the console, one hand fighting the wheel, the other trying to feather the engines each time they came off the top of a wave. Water flew from every direction as if they had gotten themselves caught at the base of Niagara Falls.
They were clear of the tip of the big island but not quite abeam of the cruise ship. It took Khalil a moment or two to sort out the situation from the picture being painted on the radar screen. He saw immediately that Zahir was correct not to make the downwind turn until they crossed the cruise ship’s track. If they turned now they would almost certainly broach, but if they waited they could steer a zigzag path toward the ship, keeping the waves on their quarters, not square to their stern.
He braced himself next to Zahir. “You steer,” he shouted. “I’ll take the throttles.”
The boat, the seas, and the wind were three separate living things that had to be balanced against each other to avert disaster. Ten seconds after he’d taken over the throttles, his respect for his chief lieutenant soared. But then, he thought, fear was the most powerful of all motivators. Without it Zahir would have turned back by now.