Richard Johnson - Deadly Cargo - A Chilling Naval Terrorism Thriller

“I can hardly wait to hear the rest of that story.”

“Later. We’re running out of time, and I’ve only got one chance.”

“Where is the little girl?” Husam al Din took the plate of food from Nicole, sat at the dinette table and shoveled food into his mouth. He fed himself with his hands, and bits of food caught in his beard. To Nicole, his piggish manners were disgusting, but he didn’t seem to notice, or if he noticed he didn’t seem to mind. He was hungry and here was food. That was all that mattered.

“Why do you want to know?” Nicole’s eyes couldn’t hide the contempt she felt for him.

“Perhaps I just want to know that your husband has not thrown her overboard.” He flashed a cruel smile. Then he lowered his eyebrows and scowled. “If I want her, you cannot hide her from me.”

“You stay away from her.” Nicole slammed a plastic cup on the table, bouncing his food from his plate. “She has done nothing to you.”

He was enjoying the control he had over Nicole’s emotions. “Take my word for it, girls grow up and disappoint their parents. You might as well let me kill her now, before she dishonors your family.”

“Listen, mister,” Dan came through the companionway door from the cockpit where he had heard the conversation, “if you want to get to Miami, you better shut up and stop talking like that. I won’t have it.”

“You won’t have it?” Husam al Din rose from his seat. “There is very little you can do about it.”

Without a word of argument, Dan spun around and went out to the cockpit, released the genoa sheet and grabbed the furling line and hauled it in hand over hand. Then he vaulted to the cabin roof and went to the mast, released the main halyard and let the sail fall into the lazy jacks. The boat glided to a stop. He jumped down from the side deck and faced Husam al Din, who had come into the cockpit to see what was going on. “You told me you don’t know how to handle a sailboat. Well, now you either apologize to my family and then shut your mouth, or I won’t take you another mile. Nobody’s going anywhere.”

Shick… Dan heard the sound of the dagger coming out of its sheath before he saw it. The bearded man lowered his head like a crazed dog about to charge and held the knife out to one side, carving little circles in the air with the point. Through the open doorway, Dan flashed a hand signal to Nicole, but to Husam al Din, it looked like nothing but the quivering hand of a frightened man.

Nicole raced down the steps into the starboard hull, pushed open Cadee’s cabin door and gathered her daughter into her arms, then fled to the forward cabin where Jacob was resting. “We go now,” she whispered.

Husam al Din swung the blade back and forth as he slowly approached Dan. “I will not apologize, but neither will I kill you. I will injure you only enough that you can still run the boat, but by the time I am finished with you, you will lose your desire to disobey me.”

Dan backed away, stepping up onto the rear deck where the davits held the dinghy over the transom. From his position, he saw the forward hatch open and Cadee climb out onto the forward deck. “I will not have you abuse my family anymore,” he said as he reached for the davit line and released it from its cleat and held it in a tight grip.

He glanced forward and could see Jacob on deck now, taking the ditch bag from Nicole as she climbed through the hatch. With quick steps, Dan scrambled to the other davit and released the line, then opened his fist and the dinghy dropped into the water. Husam al Din lunged, but Dan stepped back and fell into the water next to the dinghy, leaving his captor standing alone in the cockpit, waving the dagger at nobody.

Three splashes from the front of the boat told Dan that his family had gotten safely away and abandoned ship. He grabbed the dinghy rope, jammed it in his teeth and towed the small boat behind as he swam away from the catamaran. Fifty feet from the Whisper , the family came together and he helped boost Cadee into their 10-foot Walker Bay sailing dinghy. Nicole swung the waterproof ditch bag into the small boat, and Dan helped lift her over the side. Jacob climbed aboard next and Dan followed.

“You cannot leave me here,” Husam al Din screamed from the cockpit.

“Tough luck, buddy,” Dan yelled back, as he and Jacob rigged up the mast and sail. “I told you not to mess with my family.”

A few minutes later, the breeze filled the sail and the dinghy moved away smartly. “Now what?” Nicole asked.

Dan squinted into the sun, held one hand above his eyes and pointed with the other. “I’ve always wanted to sail to Cuba. Can’t quite see it from here, but according to my last chart entry, it’s over there about sixty miles or so.”

“We can’t go to Cuba, dad,” Cadee said. “It’s against the law. Won’t we get in trouble?”

Dan heaved a sigh. “Look around, sweetheart. We’re already in trouble.”

Beneath his feet, the aircraft carrier felt like a steel building on solid ground compared with the cutter Josh had been on for the past couple of days. He stared into the screen of his laptop and studied the dim night satellite image of the Whisper . During the time it took for him to be flown to the runabout and dropped by wire so he could transfer to the fast attack helicopter for his flight to the carrier, he wasn’t able to keep an eye on the progress of the catamaran. And now, strangely, it stopped moving, except for a bit of drift on the current. The infrared scan indicated only one person onboard, and that worried him. He had no doubt that it was Husam al Din, as he watched his target go to the foredeck, spread a prayer rug and kneel. Josh wondered what this madman had done with the Plover family.

His phone rang. It was Curt. “The Needlefish will be on deck in three hours.” Josh checked his watch. “Emile Nunez is your pilot. He’s the best there is with this little sub. He can thread the eye of a needle.”

“Well,” Josh answered, “if he can thread the space between the hulls of a catamaran in the pitch dark of 0130, that’s all I ask. My plan is to rig it under a chopper and drop in ten miles from the catamaran, so the sound of the rotors won’t alert Husam al Din. We’ll make the final approach at periscope depth.”

“And just what is your plan once you’re aboard? You can’t wear a hazmat suit in that sub. There’s barely room to inhale.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll just have to wing it, I guess. Have you seen Susan?”

“Only briefly. She’s on leave for the next little while.”

“How is she doing?”

“Ummm.” Curt sounded as if he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Curt, you there?”

“I’m here. I just think it’s better for you to decide that for yourself after you get back.”

Under a black overcast sky, the Sikorsky MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopter lowered the Needlefish sub into the water without so much as a splash, and the four cable attachments disengaged. The trip from the carrier reminded Josh of an extreme ride at Six Flags, except they didn’t get upside down. Emile Nunez switched on the intercom and asked, “All set?”

“I’m ready,” Josh answered, a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead. He hated closed spaces, and he had never been in a tighter enclosure in his life.

“It’ll take us about an hour for the approach,” Nunez explained. “That will put us right under the target. Then I need to work us into position, which can take some time.”

“You just do what you do best,” Josh said. “The important part is that the guy on that catamaran never knows we’re there.”