Charles Taylor - First Salvo

The wail of the winch engine and the aroma of hot oil indicated their catch was unusually heavy. Porcino opened his fist, palm back toward Modica. The winch stopped. There was still nothing heaving into view. The captain arched his back, swinging his shoulders from side to side to ease the ache of almost two solid days of work. Tired, closing his eyes and squeezing them tight to ward off exhaustion, he barely heard the ceaseless chatter in Portuguese from the other hands.

Stretching again, he raised his arm and closed his fist. The whine of the winch pierced the air. Once more Porcino could feel the deck under his feet broadcasting as it had done for years, talking to him.

“There… down there,” one of the men shouted excitedly. Porcino searched for a moment before he saw a form taking shape just off the stern. He closed his fist to halt the engine. Peering down, he could barely make out the object. He opened his fist, wagging it softly behind him for a slow speed on the haul.

Gradually, as more of his gear came into view, Porcino saw it was no fish. The hazy sun reflected brightly off the object. Hastily he closed his fist. He knew what it was even before the sun caught the metal — a torpedo!

The others recognized the object. “What we have there, Captain?” one of them inquired nonchalantly. “Another one of those practice torpedoes?”

“More than likely,” he sighed half to himself, slamming his fist on the railing. His catch wasn’t bad enough, now the Navy was finishing his day! He glanced back at the object again. It was too big and too shiny for one of those practice loads the subs used. It should have been dirty and covered with mud. This one looked new. “Haul it in a little closer, Manuel,” he shouted behind him, arm raised, fist closed once again. “Very slowly.”

Rising through the cloudy water, the object took on a new perspective as the sun outlined its form in more detail. Captain Porcino had fouled dummy torpedoes before, and once even an old German one, but none compared in size to this. Longer than any he had seen, it was wider and more lethal looking, and judging by the metal, which was shiny and untarnished, it was of recent vintage. He recognized what looked like Navy markings on its body. It had not been in the water long.

“That’s it, Manuel,” he shouted, opening his fist as the torpedo bobbed to the surface, tearing the netting with its weight. A cable was still tangled around the fins. It was drawn against the fishing boat, bumping the hull each time the boat rolled in the opposite direction. Porcino ordered his men to swing the outrigger to haul the torpedo away from the boat, but the outrigger jammed.

Captain Porcino was not taking any chances. He had no desire to see this evil machine punch a hole in the side of the Joseph and Mary. As he started his cranky engine, an especially large swell heaved the round-bottomed boat first to starboard toward the torpedo, then even more wildly to port, yanking it sharply against the hull. With a cracking sound, the weapon smashed into the boat. That was immediately followed by a growling sound from the torpedo.

“Captain, she ees running!” Manuel shouted.

The torpedo drove against the boat’s hull once, then twice, as the projectile’s propellers picked up speed.

“Cut the cable!” Porcino shouted.

But Manuel had already seen the problem. With a huge fire ax, he slashed again and again at the woven metal cable until the combination of his blows and the surging of the boat parted the final strands.

Porcino watched helplessly as the torpedo banged once more against the Joseph and Mary ’s hull, then turned and ran in a line directly off the bow. At the same time, the last section of cable slid off the fins. Captain Porcino crossed himself and muttered a Hail Mary as the torpedo moved away, increasing speed rapidly as it slipped just below the surface.

Looking ahead, the captain gasped. Not more than a mile off his bow was the Block Island ferry, her rails lined with vacationers enjoying their brief ride. Mouth ajar, Porcino stared helplessly at the ferry as the telltale wake of the torpedo left no doubt of its direction.

He reached for the mike on his radio, checking to make sure he was still on the Coast Guard emergency frequency. “New London Coast Guard… New London Coast Guard this is Joseph and Mary… Emergency… please…” he pleaded.

A voice came back instantly. “Go ahead, Joseph and Mary. ”

There was no answer for a moment. Then the Coast Guard operator heard a voice repeat over and over again. “Mother of God… Mother of God… Mother of God…” It was all Captain Porcino could say as the large pleasure boat erupted in a sheet of flame. He gazed in horror at the bodies blown skyward, the flaming cars tumbling lazily through the air.

The Block Island ferry disintegrated.

The man squinted at the sun’s reflection on the face of his watch. Religious services would end soon and the premier and his party would be leaving the mosque. It was the largest, most ornate building in that part of Istanbul. The plaza in front and the wide main street were heavily guarded by Turkish security forces. No one for the past five minutes had been allowed into an area cordoned off by the army.

It was a high holy day, one of the most significant. That’s what he had been told the day before in Simferopol, a city in the Crimea northeast of Sevastopol. Not only was it a major Russian port on the Black Sea, Simferopol was also the headquarters for a major Soviet terrorist school run by the KGB. Each member of his so-called “guild” had been trained there and, like him, had departed only the day before.

Some of them would be performing the same acts near the other mosques in other major Turkish cities — Izmir, Konya, Adana, Ankara. He couldn’t begin to remember all those foreign names, nor had anyone ever answered his question about why the premier had chosen to attend services in Istanbul rather than the capital in Ankara. But he didn’t care either. His one and only requirement was to follow through with his orders.

This wasn’t his first assassination, and he was sure it wouldn’t be his last. Most of the new guild members, the first-timers, would be caught, he knew. They would be too excited, too interested in seeing the spoils of their work. Security forces would notice them quickly. The bodies and the gore and the blood meant nothing to him. He enjoyed his job and would be satisfied simply to read about it in the papers when he returned to Russia. His superiors always had copies of the foreign papers.

He saw the premier exiting, a retinue of guards surrounding him. The assassin never looked up, never made any motion that might attract attention. It was simple caution. He was more than a block away and it was unlikely anyone would notice him. As the Turkish leader walked briskly with his escort toward the car, the assassin thought briefly about his comrades in those other cities. In the next few hours, and certainly by the end of the day, Turkey would be in chaos. Government and military bases would be damaged. Many important officials would be dead, along with hundreds of innocent people unfortunate enough to be nearby.

The premier was within twenty yards of his car as the man watching him shook out a cigarette, sticking it in his mouth at enough of an angle to maintain his view. He extracted a cigarette lighter from a breast pocket, snapping it into flame. When he judged the positioning of everyone was as close to perfect as possible, he depressed a small pin on the underside of the lighter.

The explosion of the fire hydrant closest to the premier’s limousine was tremendous, the blast flattening people as far as fifty yards away. But the most exacting part of his job involved attaining the correct angle of explosion, for men could survive even mightier blasts at equivalent ranges. At the moment of the detonation, secondary charges propelling tiny cylindrical pieces of metal blossomed out in an arc that took in the Premier and his guards ten yards to either side of him. Like grapeshot, the metal shards ripped through them, tearing flesh to ribbons, shattering vital organs, amputating limbs. There was no chance of survival within that arc of metal.