Joint Task Force #2: America (4 page)

The sound of heavy machinery filled the air, riding over the noise of the dockworkers and the grinding gears of the truck. A huge crane started creeping along the tracks running the length of the pier. Several minutes passed before it stopped, the arm with the heavy crane positioned over the bed of the truck. The strain of the machinery ceased as the crane stopped moving. The grinding noise from the gears of the truck had stopped, and the driver had turned the engine off.

“You, you, and you!” shouted the supervisor. “Get up here and help with this.”

Three African dockhands leapt aboard the bed of the truck. One of them stopped long enough to run his hand along the flush edges of the small door leading inside the van.

Abu Alhaul saw the man, but considering the future of the dockhands, singling out the action would accomplish little other than to slow up an already slow evolution, so he kept his tongue. He wondered briefly who the man worked for? CIA? French? African nationalist?

Oh, yes, African nationalist, no doubt. This Mumar Kabir, who had at one time had been his number-one African leader, was building a rabble army north of Liberia and northwest of here. What did the African think they could accomplish? If it weren’t for the Arabs helping the Africans, nothing would ever evolve in this dark continent.

Two of the Jihadists pulled themselves onto the top of the van. One motioned the crane operator to lower the
hook, and when it was at head level, he placed the chains, handed to him by the other Jihadist, one at a time onto the huge iron hook. Then the two jumped down.

The people on the bed of the truck leaped down. The Africans shifted farther away from the truck as the crane took a strain on the weight. The screaming of the straining engine of the crane preceded the lifting of the van until it was several inches from the bed. Then the noise seemed to steady as the van rose higher.

The truck driver started the engine and eased the truck from beneath the heavy weight, knowing that if the crane lost purchase on the cargo, the drop would destroy his truck. Ownership of a commercial vehicle in the Ivory Coast was more important than protecting whatever it was they paid him to deliver. A television set. That was what he was going to buy with this money. All he wanted was the remainder of what was owed him and he was going to get the hell out of here; for whatever they were doing, he didn’t want to know. The less known is better sometimes.

The flaking red hull of the freighter highlighted the dark van swaying minutely beside it. Abu Alhaul traced the slow pace of the van rising alongside the freighter. To his left, the Africans had resumed carrying the stuff from the pier onto the freighter. He looked at the top of the ladder and saw only two of his men. It meant one of the two missing would be at the stern of the ship, supervising the loading of the van. He was one of the Jihadist warriors. But where was the other one? Then he spotted him. The man in the western suit stepping off the bottom of the ladder had been hidden behind several large dockworkers as they worked their way up the narrow gangway. The man met Abu Alhaul’s gaze and headed toward him. Abu Alhaul took a further step into the shadows. Ignoring the approaching man, he turned his attention to the van that had now reached a level above the safety lines along the edge of the deck.

The van wobbled about two feet above the height of the safety lines. Complaining gears matched with less
strain on the engines, twisted the dangling cargo inch by inch across the edge of the deck. The engine pitch increased as the crane eased forward on its huge wheels, giving the arm better reach over the ship as the van inched forward. Beneath the van, a slight rise on the deck marked the helicopter landing pad. A yellow cross with a circle near the center of the ‘X’ highlighted the target for an approaching pilot.

As his engineer had explained to Abu Alhaul, this was the only place topside that had the reinforced deck to support the weight of the van. The crane started lowering the heavy van toward the deck several feet below it.

The sudden sound of snapping chains startled Abu Alhaul, causing him to cringe instinctively. Dockworkers dropped their loads as they ran. The chains spun through the buckles, smoke rising from the friction as the steel chain links whipped across the hook. The van tilted forward. The chain shot out, whipping across a supervisor standing to the right of the cargo. In the fraction of a second that the chain caught him, it snapped his spinal cord, bending the man’s head backward to touch the heels of his feet even as it continued a deadly swath through the dust rising as the cargo unceremoniously crashed to the deck.

The stern of the freighter dropped nearly a foot in its draft before the water pushed it back up over two feet. The water of the inlet rushed between the ship and dock. The lines running from the bullocks to the ship groaned as they narrowed from the strain of the wave shoving the freighter away from the pier. The gangway fell, twisting to the side and tossing a couple of the Africans into the water between the ship and the dock. If any of the lines snapped, each would be like a razor whipping through the butter of human flesh. The deadly chain on the stern collapsed onto the deck, part of it still attached to the crane.

The mooring lines held, jerking the freighter back to the dock where it bounced off the line of old tires mounted in a line just below the edge of the dock, serving as bumper guards. A cry between the ship and the dock
cut short. Abu Alhaul gave little thought to the two Africans flattened between the ship and the pier, their bodies already crushed and floating toward the bottom of the lifeless inlet. After all, they were just Africans.

Two of his men raced to the stern. Supervisors ashore screamed and berated the Africans until they emerged from hiding to hoist the loads they’d dropped and resumed the time-consuming work of loading the vessel. Abu Alhaul watched, emotionless. There was little that could be done, if it was Allah’s will.

“I hope the seals are unbroken,” Abdo said softly to his brother.

Abu Alhaul shrugged. “It matters little, if they are.”

“I think you may be wrong, my brother. If they are broken then people—spies—could determine what is inside the van.”

“The world will know soon enough what is inside it.”

“But surprises are better received when unexpected.”

“Abdo, you worry so much. You must trust Allah as I do.”

“It’s not Allah that bothers me, Abu; it is his followers—”

“—of which we are.”

Not all of the Africans continued loading the freighters. Some cautiously approached the stern of the ship, trying to see what had happened on the ship. Two Jihadists unpacked detection gear and were quickly waving the long wands around the van, sweeping the corners and the seals, looking for signs that a break in the container had occurred.

Abu Alhaul seemed to be the only one calm as time continued to pass and it began to look as if they would fail to meet his timetable. He looked left at two of his guards. He nodded at the one with the long mustache and watched as the young man handed his AK-47 to his comrade. The man reached down and pulled a small package from a backpack leaning against a stack of wooden cargo pads. Glancing both ways, the man, crouching, ran to the truck. The driver had slid across the seat to the open door
on the passenger side to watch the activity on the stern. The man slid onto his back and pulled himself under the truck. A few minutes later, he reemerged, looking toward his comrade, who had the automatic gun trained toward the truck. The comrade jerked his head, indicating the coast was clear. The man pulled himself completely out from under the truck, and with only a brief glance to assure himself the driver wasn’t in the seat above him, he ran back to his friend. Breathing heavily, he took his AK47. Then he looked at Abu Alhaul and, with a wide grin, nodded. When Abu Alhaul nodded in return, the man briefly touched his chin as a sign of respect and resumed his guard duties.

On board the freighter, the taller man handed his clipboard to a nearby Jihadist, and with the man wielding the wand, hoisted himself onto the roof of the van. He said something to the man with the detection gear. Taking the wand back, the younger man, bent at the waist, shuffled around the top of the dark van, sweeping the roof.

“Watch the edge, Tamursheki!” someone shouted.

Tamursheki never took his eyes off the man working the gear. He raised his hand motioning the comment aside.

Finished, the man stood, shrugged his shoulders, and said something to Tamursheki. Tamursheki looked over to where Abu Alhaul stood. He jumped from the top of the heavy cargo and grabbed a bullhorn from a nearby supervisor.

“Everything is okay, Alshiek!” Tamursheki shouted. “Amir has swept the . . . cargo.” The man on top waved the detection wand in the air.

“Well, there wouldn’t be, would there?” mumbled Abdo. When he saw the sharp look from Abu Alhaul, he offered, “After all, it’s thick steel with lead shielding surrounding every square inch of the inside. Of course, if we had built it here instead of miles away, we wouldn’t have had to transport it and this wouldn’t have wasted as much time loading.”

“The van is important.”

A cough drew Abu Alhaul’s attention. The man in the
western suit had been standing silently beside him throughout the incident. Abu Alhaul looked down at the man, his expression never changing. It was the Palestinian.

“Abu Alhaul,” the short, stout man said, pushing the brim of a white fedora off his forehead. “My apologies for interrupting your thoughts, but I wanted to apprise you of where we stand.”

“Continue, Doctor Ibrahim.”

“Food and water is onboard. Captain Alrajool asked that I relay that to you. The medical supplies needed—
for the health of the martyrs—
are also on board.”

Abu Alhaul reached out and touched the shorter, squared-bodied man on the shoulder, forcing himself not to jerk his hand away from touching the western garment. “Doctor, you’re very important for the success of this mission. This is not a mission that will be accomplished in a week or two weeks, but it’s one that will carry the jewels of obedience to the infidels. Those chosen to martyr themselves in this Holy cause must be
healthy
so they arrive at the right place at the right time. My friends in Somalia tell me you are the best, but then I have to ask myself, if you are the best then why do they send you. Could it be that maybe they have no further use for you? Can I count on their words of your ability to keep them clean and clear of focus?”

Dr. Ibrahim’s eyes narrowed and he stopped himself before he said something that may cost him his life. Changing the subject, he pointed at the van. “Is this necessary, my leader? I thought I was the secret of the mission. Is this real? Is this something like a backup in the event I am unsuccessful?”

Abu Alhaul allowed himself a laugh. “Of course, it is necessary, Doctor. Every great plan has its details. Great plans are better carried out when the enemy realizes that he failed to watch the other hand of the magician. By then”—Abu Alhaul snapped his fingers—“the trick is over, the crowd is both surprised and perplexed in their amusement. You, my dear friend, are the magician. The
van is the hand the Great Satan will watch.”

The sound of the chains being secured to the van and rehooked to the crane drowned out the doctor’s words, but Abu Alhaul nodded anyway. What did it matter in the scheme of obedience where the lesson was learned as long as those learning it recognized their decadence? But if America was as decadent and soft as Osama predicted, then why were they still fighting years later and still chasing the remnants of Al Qaeda around the world? He sighed.

The breeze changed slightly, blowing across the inlet, lifting the fetid smell higher into the air to whiff across the freighter, the pier, to flow across where Abu Alhaul stood.

“Whew!” said Abdo. “How do they stand living here? The smell, the dirt, the filth.”

“They need to understand Allah’s obedience before they can appreciate the depth of depravity in which they live.”

“Depravity? I would call it more a lack of hygiene. I bet if you gave them a bar of soap each, half of them would think it was something to eat.”

“And the other half?”

“Would
know
it was something to eat.”

The crane strained as it lifted the van slightly. On board the ship, about twenty men shoved and twisted the van until the supervisor shouted for them to stand back. Then the crane lowered the van into the corrected position on the helicopter deck.

“I have several more crates to load with my medical supplies, then we’ll be finished,” Dr. Ibrahim added.

Abu Alhaul watched the van. If it was damaged or lost, the mission could be endangered. He nodded at Ibrahim. As long as the doctor did what he was supposed to do, they would succeed with a greater measure of success than having the van explode inside the American harbor.

“I talked with Captain Alrajool, Abu,” Dr. Ibrahim continued, ignoring the inattention of the man in front of him. He wondered briefly what these Arabs saw in this
man. “He is in engineering, checking the steam pressure. He says that as soon as the remainder of the supplies, including the zodiac rafts, are on board, and they finish securing the van, the ship would sail.”

“Looks as if we have it loaded, my brother. I see that Tamursheki has taken charge again. You have a loyal servant in him.”

“And, I don’t in you, Abdo?”

Dr. Ibrahim sighed. “If there is nothing else, I’m going to return to the ship and make sure that the things I need to do my part have been properly loaded.” He looked past Abu Alhaul to Abdo. If you wanted something done, never go to the number one person, always go to the number two. Then, things get done. “Abdo, would you relay to my bosses that everything is going according to the agreement and plan.” He looked at Abu Alhaul, then back to Abdo. “That is, I trust everything is going according to your wishes?” He asked, peering over the top of his wire-rim glasses.

A few minutes later, the Palestinian was climbing back up the restored gangway to the ship.

“I am but Allah’s servant,” Abu Alhaul mumbled, just loud enough for Abdo to hear.