Patrick Robinson - To The Death

And, for the briefest of moments, he wondered what the hell he could possibly be doing, surrounded by renegade jihadists, on his way to assassinate one of America ’s most revered naval figures. It was, without question, the most mutinous thought that had ever crossed his mind since he had crossed the line and become a Holy Warrior in the cause of Islam, eight years before.

But, quickly, he pulled himself together, and he thought of Shakira and the merciless way her two very young children had been gunned down by a British Army sergeant in that hellhole of a battle in Hebron. And, of course, he knew there was no going back. Not now. It was too late. Much too late. All he could do was to hope his beautiful wife would be awaiting him in Ireland. Because, if she was not there, he now believed there was nothing left for him. Not in this life. Except for blood, sorrow, death, and tears, and a cause he believed might not be won.

They reached Cape St. Vincent at 1900 hours and made another turn to the north, heading out into deep Atlantic water, with three thousand feet below the keel. They ran at twelve knots now, at PD, which meant they would cover close to three hundred miles each day. It was Wednesday evening, July 11, and Shakira should be looking for Ravi on Monday, at the Great Mosque on the outskirts of Dublin.

It was thus essential that the Hamas military commander reach the shores of Ireland on Monday morning, because he would still be two hundred miles from Dublin. And he needed to make that journey unobtrusively, attracting no attention, revealing absolutely nothing about himself, leaving no imprint on anyone’s memory.

One of the main drawbacks in being a terrorist was the necessity to eliminate your enemy completely. No trace could ever be left; no one could still be walking around with knowledge of you, however slight. Which was why, broadly, Matt Barker had perished.

Ravi understood his own situation as well as Shakira had understood hers. If, during his forthcoming journey across the Emerald Isle, any Irishman tried to get too close, or was too persistent, then Ravi would have no choice. The stakes were too high, the risks too great. It was costing $100,000 just to get him to West Cork. No one must interfere with his mission, however well-meaning.

And again, in this mood of self-examination, General Rashood wondered about his wife. Just what had gone wrong? And where was she? She had not tried to make contact again, but how could she? There was no cell-phone reception deep under the sea. Maybe she had tried. Maybe Shakira had cried out for help. Help that he could not provide. For all he knew, she could be in Guantánamo Bay, being interrogated by the servants of that evil bastard Admiral Morgan.

This particular thought sent that old familiar ramrod of steely resolve up his spine. If Shakira was in Cuba, he would make sure she was the last person Morgan ever sent there. And then, somehow, he and his warriors would get her out. “Can’t this thing go any faster?” he asked Captain Abad.

“Sorry, General. This is top speed. We must be patient. The worst part is over.”

Lt. Commander Ramshawe called Detective Joe Segel down in Brockhurst every day. And both of them were growing increasingly depressed. The detective was heartily sick of chasing the impossible shadow of Carla Martin, and Jimmy was growing more and more concerned for the safety of Arnold Morgan.

He had alerted associates at the FBI and the CIA that the admiral would need more security during his trip to England. He had consulted with the Secret Service agents at the White House and requested extra vigilance at British ports of entry through which a would-be assassin might pass.

Jimmy had even had the FBI search through the airport records in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston for any passenger who had bought an expensive one-way transatlantic ticket on the night of the murder-either to London, Paris, or any of the big European terminals: Amsterdam, Bonn, Hamburg, Madrid, Rome, Milan, or Geneva. Nothing popped up.

Neither Jimmy nor the FBI gave one thought to Dublin, simply because it’s not a big enough onward-journey airport. London probably has twenty international flights going anywhere you could name, anywhere in the world, to Dublin ’s one. Same with Paris and the rest. One call to Aer Lingus would almost certainly have revealed that last Tuesday morning, a woman named Maureen Carson had turned up at the airport and paid more than six thousand dollars with her American Express card to travel on the 10:30 A.M. flight to Dublin.

Such passengers are quite rare, people with no bookings or reservations, only going one way, plainly acting on a spur-of-the-moment decision. Even a bank robber would have found time for preliminary arrangements. Murder can of course be slightly less predictable.

And Carla had slipped through the net, with a lot of savvy and a bit of luck. Jimmy, armed with a lot of facts, but not enough certain knowledge, was unable to close in. There were too many gaps, especially the one in Dublin airport.

The other problem was that no one was very impressed with Jimmy’s diagnosis of the situation. Like the admiral himself, it seemed no one could take seriously the vanishing barmaid as some kind of latter-day Mata Hari. Everyone was polite. But no one was convinced of the danger posed by the lady who had journeyed to Brockhurst with one mission in mind.

What really got to Jimmy was the fact that this Carla Martin had plainly succeeded in her mission. In a very few short days, she had moved in, befriended Arnold’s mother-in-law, and found, almost to the hour, the time of their departure, their destination, and their hotel. The Australian lieutenant commander, on this unproductive morning, was mildly surprised that Carla, or whoever the hell she was, had not managed to come up with the room number or Arnie’s breakfast order-so some fucking terrorist can get in there and poison the bloody eggs and bacon.

Those heavily connected facts and thoughts were quite sufficient for Jimmy’s antennae to start vibrating. But the clincher was the antiseptic precision of “Carla’s” departure. She had carefully erased every detail, sneaked around taking things out of the hotel files, signed for her apartment under a different name, handed over thousands of dollars. And left nothing behind. She had had no car, but there was obviously a 24-hour chauffeur to transport her everywhere: a chauffeur for whom someone was paying, with cash that had not come out of a barmaid’s wages… not to mention the bloody dagger, the one with “ Syria ” carved on the blade in Arabic.

Jimmy’s montage of facts sounded fine when he had them all together. It was simply one of those conundrums that did not play well to a third party. Too many little things, too much lack of one big overwhelming fact that could not be disputed. On the phone Jimmy could sense people growing more bored by the minute, thinking silently, “Shut up, Jim, the admiral’s going to be fine. None of this adds up to an assassination attempt on Admiral Morgan.”

Lt. Commander James Ramshawe knew better. Or at least he thought he did. He checked the airline schedules to London from Washington on Monday night, July 30. Arnie and Kathy would travel first-class on a U.S. airline, the trip arranged by the White House travel department. That would almost certainly be American Airlines, departing 2115, arriving Heathrow around 0830. They’d be at the Ritz by 1015 on Tuesday morning. In Jimmy’s mind, thanks to “Carla,” a Middle Eastern terrorist organization knew all that as well as he did.

He’d already had the Secret Service call the London embassy to ensure that the admiral always traveled in a bulletproof car. He’d asked for extra agents, he’d asked the FBI to alert Scotland Yard that there might be an attempt on Arnie’s life, he’d had the CIA check in with the British secret services MI-5 and MI-6, just to keep everyone on high alert.