Dale Brown - Act of War

Gemici closed his eyes as his heart sank through his chest into his bowels. Shit, he knew this was going to happen. But he still motioned to the agents rifling his file cabinets. “Do you not need a search warrant to do that, Special Agent DeLaine?”

“Do you want me to get a warrant, Yusuf?” Kelsey asked. “Would you like me to call the Mubahath el-Dawla? I’m sure they’d want to know what you’re up to.” The Mubahath el-Dawla, or State Security Investigations, was the Egyptian internal intelligence force, the secret Gestapo-like unit that provided information to the President and the Ministries of the Interior and Justice—any way they could, in whichever way the ministries wanted it, or so their reputations suggested.

Gemici’s eyes were darting around the room now in confusion, but he was still trying to bluff his way out of this, waiting to hear exactly how much information they had or if they were just on a fishing expedition. “Boroshev…Boroshev…”

“He was on board your vessel for several weeks on your last North and South American cruise,” Kelsey said. “As far as we can tell, he was on board all the way from Damascus to Richmond and all the way back to here. You don’t remember him?”

Crap, Gemici thought, they had everything…“Ah! You said Boroshev! Your accent is difficult for me,” he said, smiling and bobbing his head. “Of course I recognize him. Russian. Ugly. Sickly. A drug fiend, if I remember correctly. I do not know where he is.”

“Got the crew files, Kelsey,” one of the agents searching his file drawers said.

“Boroshev was not a crew member,” Gemici said. “He was a courier, a messenger boy. We paid very little attention to him.”

“Wall safe,” the other agent said, moving the large photograph of the King Zoser aside. He immediately started searching around the area of the picture, especially in dark, out-of-the-way places.

“That is the owner’s safe,” Gemici said.

“I thought you were the owner, Yusuf.”

“I am just a lowly ship’s captain,” he said. “I am not allowed to touch it. I do not have the…”

“Got it,” the second agent said. He copied a combination from the very edge of a piece of trim around the photograph on his notepad and then entered it into the wall safe, and the door popped open.

“You men are all alike—you can’t remember combinations so you write it on something nearby, thinking no one will ever find it,” Kelsey said. The second agent withdrew another batch of personnel files.

“I told you, Boroshev was a courier, a representative of a client,” Gemici said. The second agent flipped quickly through the personnel files, then went back to the open wall safe. “I have no records on him whatso…

“False bottom,” the agent said. He removed a piece of carpet from the floor of the safe, then a piece of metal.

“I’m afraid I must insist that I call the harbormaster and local police,” Gemici said. “This is getting quite…”

“More files,” the agent said, withdrawing another handful of folders from the bottom of the safe.

“This is outrageous!” Gemici said, his eyes bugging out in panic. “This is illegal! I shall report you to the ministry of justice in Cairo! You have no right to—”

“Got it,” the agent said, handing Kelsey a folder.

“Right on top—must be an important person, eh, Yusuf?” Kelsey said, flipping through the file. “Bottom note here says something about two million. Dollars? Egyptian pounds? Is this what Boroshev got paid to bring a nuclear weapon into the United States?”

“Nuclear weapon?” Gemici cried. “I know nothing of this! Nothing!”

“Sure you do,” Kelsey said. She continued to flip through the file, then gave up and handed it to the second agent, who began studying it himself. “You’re going to be extradited to the United States to face over two thousand counts of murder and conspiracy, Yusuf. I can pretty much guarantee you the death penalty. In fact, I don’t think we’re going to bother with going through an extradition—we’re going to hog-tie you like the murderous pig you are and just take you back with us. Your first stop will be Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Have you heard of it? Let’s go.” The second agent collected all the folders into a backpack while the first secured Gemici’s hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs.

“Wait! I will tell you all you want to know!” Gemici said. “But the real records of what Boroshev was doing are on board my ship, not here.”

“Ahmed?”

“Nothing in the files like addresses or phone numbers,” the second agent, an Arabic translator, said. “Looks like a payment sheet, maybe receipts. Hard to tell.”

“You better not be lying to me, Yusuf,” Kelsey said, “or I hope you can swim with your head bashed in.” She had the plastic handcuffs cut off. “Move out.”

They left the office and crossed over to the other side of the wharf to where the King Zoser was docked. There was one watch stander at the top of the gangway, who exchanged words with Gemici as they started up the ramp. The watch stander lit a cigarette and nodded, obviously not concerned that the captain was coming on board so late at night with four foreigners.

About halfway up the gangway, when the Arabic-speaking agent reached out to grasp the handrails with both hands as the ramp got slippery, Gemici saw his chance, slid under the handrail, and dropped about twelve meters into the harbor. “Ilha’uni!” Gemici shouted in Arabic when he surfaced. “Utlub el bolis! Ilha’uni!”

The watch stander reacted immediately, flicking his cigarette overboard, raising a small rifle, and shouting a warning to the rest of the crew. Several floodlights snapped on in the wheelhouse and somewhere on the bow. DeLaine, Ray Jefferson, and their agents were caught out in the open halfway up the gangway.

“Kelsey…?” one of the agents asked. “What do we fucking do now?”

“Let’s jump for it,” the other agent said. But at that instant the watch stander opened up with a short burst of machine gun fire and shouted something in Arabic, and the four Americans could do nothing else but raise their hands and remain still. More crewmen started rushing up on deck, converging on them, weapons at the ready…

Suddenly the searchlight up on the pilot’s arch near the wheelhouse went out in a shower of sparks, and they heard the sound of ripping metal, a scream, and then two splashes as something—or undoubtedly someone—dropped from the pilot’s arch into the harbor. As the terrified crew members ran over to the section of the rail to try to see what had gone overboard, there was another loud bang, the sound of crunching metal, and the searchlight on the bow went out.

“Move, everybody!” Jefferson said. He led the way up the gangway, drawing his sidearm.

“Wa’if! Haelan!” the watch stander shouted, then opened fire. One of the first rounds hit an agent in the leg; he screamed and dropped to the gangway. The other shots missed, but the watch stander kept on firing. Jefferson and DeLaine went back to help the injured agent to his feet, drawing their weapons and preparing to return fire. The watch stander had them all in his sights and was ready to squeeze the trigger…

…until he heard a loud thud! right beside him. He looked up and saw a massive figure standing beside him, as if he’d appeared out of thin air! The figure, a cross between a man and a machine, snatched the rifle out of his hands like a parent taking a noisy rattle away from an infant, then crumpled it up in his right hand as if it was nothing but a stick of cinnamon. Then its left hand snapped out, grasped the man by the throat, picked him up with ease, and casually dropped him over the side.