Blackmail Earth (20 page)

Adnan turned to shoot the soldier; but his head had fallen to the dock, and his dead eyes saw nothing.

“
You
must get on board.”

Alone, Adnan started up the long ramp.

*   *   *

The sounds of the soldiers racing toward Birk grew louder. The jihadist couldn’t be far behind. One raggedy-ass headscarf, four soldiers. Why the fuck were
they
running? But Birk knew the answer: The perverse ratio of religious nutbars to political psychos generally favored the former, even when handily outnumbered. Hey, the afterlife promised gardens full of low-hanging fruit and bubbling streams, fine food and drink, and dozens of virgins—good lookers!—swarming over your loins. Even the most rigorous military training couldn’t compete with that.

Birk abandoned the idea of trying to race twenty-year-old soldiers being chased by a rabid Islamist. Be worse than Pamplona, where a bull almost gored him in the behind in ’73, after Birk had drunk a wee too much courage in his favorite cantina.

The memory had him sucking on his flask, savoring the gin, but he wasn’t drinking courage now—just settling his nerves: He decided against trying to run away from the jihadist
and
the soldiers—
all
the brown buggers—after remembering that you never made sudden moves in a firefight that could catch the eyes of jumpy gunmen. For better or worse, the pallet, piled high with heavy-looking crates, provided the only protection, however minimal, on the whole goddamn dock.

All Birk could do was peek out long enough to see the soldiers drawing closer with Mr. Raggedy Ass right on their heels. But the worst part, the fright that made Birk wince and groan and want to stomp his poor fallen arches, was that Raggedy Ass caught his eye.

Oh, fuck a duck.

Birk hadn’t prayed in decades, not since the Tet Offensive when the Vietcong pinned him down near the embassy in Saigon. But he prayed now, if profanities interlaced with “Jesus” and “God”—as in “Jesus fucking God”—could be considered, if but for a second only, as a means of petitioning a higher power. (Not a lot of spiritual belief animated Birk, not after all he’d seen of earthly miseries, but self-interest came into play, and he wasn’t about to bet against the big bully in the sky, not if he could eke out any kind of edge on the theological constructs that turned other men insanely murderous.)

And there they go.
The pounding boots of the soldiers. He watched them pass without ever looking over at him. Their backs quickly grew smaller.

And here comes Mr. Raggedy Ass.
Birk saw him rear up and start shooting.
Oh, Christ alfuckingmighty.
All four soldiers fell.

The best Birk could hope for was that the jihadist, having slaughtered the only outright resistance left on the dock, wanted nothing more than to hustle back to whatever nasty business he had planned for the tanker. Or that in the excitement of gunning down four men with a single burst of his dearly beloved Kalashnikov, he’d forgotten about the geezer huddling behind the pallet.

Silence descended, sudden and uneasy. No more bullets, boots, or Raggedy Ass’s bare soles. Birk peered out to see if the jihadist had taken to creeping around. No sign of him. Birk looked behind him. No sign there, either. Then Birk heard him—no question—moving along the far side of the pallet.

He clocked the man’s every step, and tiptoed away.
Oh, sweet Jesus. Cat and mouse time.

He had no illusions about which tail-twitching role belonged to him.

*   *   *

Adnan pulled himself up the gangplank to the tanker’s main deck, panting heavily and sweating profusely. The deck was deserted. If any seamen or soldiers were on board, they’d retreated.

Following Parvez’s instructions, Adnan immediately stripped off his shirt to bare the powerful bomb that circled his torso—bulky packages of C-4 plastic explosives strung together with wires.

“It’s important,” Parvez had told him, “to show them the bomb right away. Don’t worry about them shooting you; they’ll never risk setting off anything this powerful.”

Adnan hoped Parvez could see him. The first step toward martyrdom had been achieved. If everything else was also going according to plan, his old friend could see him on a computer screen or television, and so could millions of others.

Imagining himself before their eyes, Adnan raised his arms high above his head. A fighter for Muhammad.

A champion.

*   *   *

Birk eased around the pallet, hoping that when Raggedy Ass turned the first corner, he’d see nothing and go on about his homicidal chores like a good jihadist. Maybe he wasn’t thinking of the geezer at all. Maybe he’d only slowed down to catch his breath by the only cover on the dock. All that chasing and murdering had to be exhausting.

What was that?
Footsteps. But they were getting softer and sounded farther away.
Go, Raggedy Ass. Go-go-go.

Birk could have howled with joy. Instead, he took a nip from his flask.
You are one savvy son of a bitch,
Birk said to himself.
Pulled another rabbit out of the old hat.

Birk put away his flask and fished out his phone. He dialed the direct line to the network desk, which was run by a good-looking Brit named Sheila. A little old for his taste—at least fifty, by now—but not too old for a little friendly phone flirtation. And slim, like Miss Sari.

The septuagenarian correspondent cleared his throat and said, “Sheila, dear, you are not going to believe this, but I’m right smack dab in the middle of a gun battle in Malé.” He thought he sounded debonair as ever. “Put me on live.”

Oh, baby, it felt
great
to say those four words again:
“Put me on live.”
And to deliver them with such well-earned authority. Sounded so good that he repeated them to himself one more time during an odd stretch of dead air; Sheila was generally so perky. That’s why it was so easy to imagine spanking her.

“Listen, love…”
Getting a little flirty herself with that “love” business. Might have to give her a chance, after all.
“… you
are
on live, and if you’re really, really smart you’ll stop drinking and you won’t move when the guy behind you sticks his gun up your arse.”

“What?” Birk felt an adrenaline rush that became a tsunami as a gun barrel pressed against his head. Hot fucking steel burned so bad Birk thought he could smell his skin cooking, but he didn’t dare move.

“You there, love?” Sheila said. “We’re watching you and your friend. Everybody sends their best, I’m sure. Hang in there. No time to panic, old man.”

A hand reached over Birk’s shoulder, groped for his laminates. Then he was jerked around to face Mr. Raggedy Ass himself, who shouted the universal language of
“Run, asshole, run”
with uncommon force and fluency.

Birk ran, viciously poked and prodded to the gangplank by Raggedy Ass’s weapon. He looked around and saw that there was no one to save him; only one barrel poked out from the crack of a metal door, and it was the lens of chickenshit’s camera.

Raggedy Ass grabbed the RPG from a dead jihadist and screamed at Birk all the way up to the deck of the
Dick Cheney.
The correspondent had no idea what the jihadist was saying now, but the porker whom Birk had suspected of carrying a suicide bomb was speaking all too clearly of blood and bedlam with his half-naked show-and-tell. Birk took no comfort in seeing that his deductive powers had remained as sharp as ever. The vest looked like it held enough C-4 to take out the tanker, dock, and anything and anyone else within a half-mile radius.

Raggedy Ass cracked Birk on the shoulder with his rifle stock, collapsing his legs and forcing him to lie down, probably to be executed—and this really hurt—
off
camera.

Birk stretched out facedown on the filthy deck. The metal was so goddamn hot he felt like a boneless breast of chicken slapped on a grill.

Raggedy Ass cuffed his hands behind his back with plastic restraints, tightening them way too much. Birk took this as a good sign: Who cuffs you and
then
shoots you?

Idiots the world over,
he answered himself.

*   *   *

Adnan felt sorry for the old man lying on the deck, captured by the surviving Waziristani. The seaman had been hoping that the jihadist would be killed along with the other three, or so seriously wounded that he wouldn’t make it aboard. Then Adnan wouldn’t have had to worry about the crazy, murderous Waziristanis. He would have ordered the captain to take them out to sea, and after three or four days of world attention, the great martyr would have blown up the tanker so he could have paradise and pomegranates and virgins who would make him want their ridiculous bodies with those silly breasts that shook like rice pudding.

Instead, Adnan eyed the jihadist, who pointed to himself and the ship’s bridge. Adnan nodded, and the man ran toward a metal stairway, holding his rifle ready, so he could shoot anyone who got in his way.

That means you, too,
Adnan reminded himself.

*   *   *

Birk figured that the laminates had saved his butt. Raggedy Ass must have been smart enough to know the value of his prize.

So they’d use him, and that was fine with Birk. This could resurrect his career, win him a George Polk Award for foreign reporting. Not much competition for it these days because there wasn’t much overseas reporting anymore; Americans just didn’t give a fig about the rest of the world—focus groups didn’t lie—and network executives didn’t cram foreign coverage down viewers’ throats anymore, not with their corporate overlords constantly carping about the costs of running a global news operation.

So this escapade could turn out to be the pièce de résistance of Birk’s career.
Go out in a blaze of glory.
He might win everything—Polk, Emmy, duPont-Columbia, Peabody. And why not? He deserved every one of them, a whole goddamn panoply of prizes. And with any luck at all, he might get to accept them in person, rather than posthumously.

The asshole in the vest had plans, but they weren’t imminent or they’d all be dead by now. Birk figured the suicide bomber wanted airtime, and he, Rick Birk, would do everything possible to make that happen. It would keep him alive
and
on camera.

Birk held hostage, day one,
he mused.
Look what those Americans in Iran did for Ted Koppel’s career, and that poor shmuck looked like Alfred E. Neuman.

Birk laughed, then stifled his mirth with a mighty effort—
mistake; don’t show them you’re amused
—but he could feel his whole body shaking.
Maybe that’s what an earthquake is,
he thought.
The whole planet trying not to laugh out loud at mankind’s latest folly.

*   *   *

The deck shuddered and Adnan looked up. Moments later he heard automatic weapons fire. Everything according to plan: The jihadist had forced the captain and crew to the bridge. Then the Waziristani had killed them, except for the captain himself.

Parvez had told them to leave the captain alive only till they got out to sea. “He can sail the ship by himself, if he has to.”

How did Parvez know all this?
Adnan wondered. And in the same moment he realized that Parvez had studied far more than the Koran in Waziristan. He’d studied jihad.

*   *   *

Parvez sat blocks away in an Internet café, watching a computer screen that showed the tanker heading away from Malé. Live video of the hijacking. Parvez had arranged for a jihadist who’d studied with him in Waziristan to set up a camera and provide a feed to an Islamic Web site, which was making this historic event available to the whole world.

The authorities would track down the camera soon enough, but every minute of video would draw more viewers. Even more important, it would attract the attention of world media.

Parvez clicked on the major news Web sites, including Al Jazeera, CNN, and the BBC. All of them were streaming video of the tanker leaving port, noting the decimated bodies in the foreground, and commenting on the “terrorist attack” in barely restrained voices. It was already a huge story. Hundreds of journalists would race to the Maldives, much like the rescuers who’d run to the bombing last week, to try to save the ruined survivors.

And then what happened?
Parvez thought with a smile.
The second bomb exploded.

He lifted his heavy-lidded eyes to the luxurious Golden Crescent Hotel across the street, where every room would soon become home to a foreign journalist.

Kill them all. The most famous faces.

Parvez knew that with each bomb, the story would get bigger, almost as huge as the orange stain that would soon spread across the sea.

*   *   *

Jenna stared stonily at her television, scarcely believing what she was witnessing: Maldivian soldiers blown up and gunned down by jihadists taking over Senator Gayle Higgens’s supertanker. That brazen moron. What was she thinking, making that kind of move on her own? And now, thanks to the hijacking, the task force was really in a state of suspended animation. Everything was on hold—except the phone starting to ring beside her. She looked at the digital readout: Marv, the executive producer of
The Morning Show
.

“What’s up?” She didn’t bother with niceties. Why pretend?

“You watching your old stomping grounds?”

“I am.”

“You see Birk getting taken hostage?”

“I did.” Birk was unmistakable both in appearance—shock of white unruly hair—and personality, which she declined to consider at any length.

“Elfren wants to see you in the morning. Soon as we’re off air.”

As in James Elfren, the vice president in charge of correspondents and producers. Smart guy. He didn’t waste anyone’s time. If he wanted to see her, she was about to take off for the Maldives.

CHAPTER 14

The hijacking of the supertanker trumped every other news story, including the presidential race. As soon as Jenna finished her weather segment, she rushed over to the main set to join host Andrea Hanson and Harold Swenson, a portly, gray-haired senior researcher at the Washington Center for International Terrorism Studies. Swenson immediately sparked an impromptu debate.