Frederick Forsyth - The Afghan

Coincidental? thought Linnett. It was the one direction the fugitive must not take. It led to Canada, twenty-two miles away. But for the Afghan, forty-four hours of hiking. He would never make it, even if he could keep in a straight line. Anyway, the Alpha team would get him halfway there. It took another hour to cover the next mile on snowshoes. That was when they found the other cabin. No one had mentioned the other two or three cabins that were permitted in the Pasayten Wilderness because they predated the building prohibition. And this cabin had been broken into. The shattered triple glazing and the rock beside the gaping hole left no doubt. Captain Linnett went in first, carbine forward, safety catch off. Round the edges of the shattered glass, two men gave cover. It took them less than a minute to ensure there was no one present, either in the cabin, the adjacent log-storage shed or the empty garage. But the signs were everywhere. He tried the light switch, but the power clearly came from a generator that the owner shut down behind the garage when not in residence. They relied on their flashlights.

Beside the deep fireplace in the main sitting area was a box of matches and several long tapers, clearly for lighting the logs in the grate; also a bundle of candles in case the generator failed. The intruder had used both to find his way round. Captain Linnett turned to one of his comms sergeants. “Raise the county sheriff, and find out who owns this place,” he said. He began to explore. Nothing seemed to be smashed, but everything had been rifled. “It’s a surgeon from Seattle,” reported the sergeant. “Vacations up here in the summer, closes it all down in the fall.”

“Name and phone number. He must have left them with the sheriff’s office.” When the sergeant had them, he was told to contact Fort Lewis, have them call the surgeon at his Seattle home and put him on a direct patch-through. A surgeon was a lucky break; surgeons have pagers in case of an emergency. This situation definitely rated.

The ghost ship never went near Surabaya. There was no consignment of expensive oriental silks to be taken aboard, and the apparent six sea containers on the Countess of Richmond’s foredeck were in place anyway. She took the route south of Java, passed Christmas Island and headed out into the Indian Ocean. For Mike Martin, the onboard routines became a ritual. The psychopath Ibrahim remained mainly in his cabin, and the good news was that most of the time he was violently ill. Of the remaining seven men, the engineer tended his engines, set at maximum speed regardless of fuel use. Where the Countess was going, she would need no fuel for a return journey. For Martin, the twin enigmas remained unanswered. Where was she going, and what explosive power lay beneath her decks? No one seemed to know, with the possible exception of the chemical engineer. But he never spoke, and the subject was never raised.

The radio expert kept a listening watch and must have learned of a sea search taking place right across the Pacific and at the entrances to the Straits of Hormuz and the Suez Canal. He may have reported this to Ibrahim but made no mention of it to the rest.

The other five men took turns in the galley to turn out plate after plate of cold canned food, and took turns at the wheel. The navigator set the heading-always west, then south of due west to the Cape of Good Hope. For the rest, they prayed five times a day, read the Koran yet again and stared at the sea.

Martin considered attempting to take over the ship. He had no weapon other than the chance to steal a kitchen knife, and he would have to kill seven men, of whom he had to presume that Ibrahim had one or more firearms. And the men were scattered from the engine room to the radio shack to the fo’c’sle. If and when they came close to a clear target on shore, he knew he would have to do it. But across the Indian Ocean, he bided his time.

He did not know whether his message in the dive bag had ever been found or was tossed with the bag into some attic unread; and he did not know he had triggered a global ship hunt.

“This is Dr. Berenson. Who am I speaking with?”

Michael Linnett took over the speakerphone from the sergeant and lied. “I am with the sheriff’s office at Mazama,” he said. “Right now, I am in your cabin in the wilderness. I’m sorry I have to tell you there has been a break-in.”

“Hell, no. Dammit, is there damage done?” the tiny voice speaking from Seattle asked.

“He broke in by smashing the main front window with a rock, Doctor. That seems to be the only structural damage. I just want to check on theft. Did you have any firearms here?”

“Absolutely not. I keep two hunting rifles and a shotgun, but I bring them out with me in the fall.”

“Okay. Now, clothing. Do you have a closet with heavy winter clothing?”

“Sure. It’s a walk-in, right beside the bedroom door.” Captain Linnett nodded to his team sergeant, who led the way by flashlight. The closet was spacious, full of winter kit.

“There should be my pair of arctic snow boots, quilted pants and a parka with zippered hood.”

All gone.

“Any skis or snowshoes, Doctor?”

“Sure, both. In the same cupboard.”

Also gone.

“Any weapons at all? Compass?”

The big bowie knife in its sheaf should have been hanging inside the closet door, and the compass and flashlight should have been in the drawers of the desk. They were all taken. That apart, the fugitive had ransacked the kitchen, but there had been no fresh food left there to rot. A newly opened-and emptied-can of baked beans and a can opener lay on the countertop with two empty cans of soda. There was an empty pickle jar that had been full of quarters, but no one knew that.

“Thanks, Doc. I’d get up here when the weather clears with a team for a new window, and file a claim for the loss.”

The Alpha leader cut the connection, and looked round at his unit. “Let’s go,” was all he said. He knew the cabin, and what the Afghan had taken shortened the odds, and maybe even now they could be against him. He put the fugitive, who must have spent over an hour in the cabin to Linnett’s half hour, at two to three hours ahead, but now moving much faster. Swallowing his pride, he decided to bring up some cavalry. He called a pause, and spoke to Fort Lewis again.

“Tell McChord I want a Spectre and I want it now. Engage all the authority you need-the Pentagon, if you have to. I want it over the Cascades and talking to me directly.”

While waiting for their new ally to show up, the twelve men of Alpha 243 pressed on hard, pushing the pace. The sergeant tracker was at point, his flashlight picking up the marks of the snowshoes of the fugitive in the frozen snow. They were pushing the pace, but they were carrying much more equipment than the man ahead of them. Linnett estimated they had to be keeping up, but were they gaining? Then the snow started. It was a blessing and a curse. As the deceptively gentle flakes drifted down from the conifers around them, they covered the rocks and stumps, permitting another quick pause to switch from shoes to the faster skis. They also wiped out the trail. Linnett needed a guiding hand from heaven, and it came just after midnight in the form of a Lockheed-Martin Hercules AC -130 gunship, circling at twenty thousand feet, above the cloud layer but looking straight through it. Among the many toys that Special Forces are given to play with, the Spectre gunship is, from the viewpoint of the enemy on the ground, about as nasty as it gets.

The original Hercules transport plane was gutted and her innards replaced with a cockpit-to-tail array of technology designed to locate, target and kill an opponent on the ground. It is seventy-two million dollars’ worth of pure bad news.