The Inside Passage (Ted Higuera Series Book 1) (27 page)

Qayyum held the tip of the sword near the
fisherman’s neck. The intruder broke down crying, crumpling to the ground.
Ahmad started to move towards him but Mohammed thrust his arm across Ahmad’s
chest, stepped forward and dragged the man back to his knees.

“With this act, we show there is no safe
place in this world for the unjust.” After each sentence, Qayyum paused for
Mohammed to translate into English. “The cause we fight for is right and just,
it is Allah’s cause.”

With each burst of words, Ahmad’s heart
rate inched up. It was difficult to breathe.
 

“What’re you rag-heads up to?” One of the
fishermen shouted out with fear. “What’re you gonna to do with us?”

Qayyum said something in Arabic.

“You’re out of your fuckin’ minds,” the
captive shrieked.

Qayyum touched the tip of his blade to the
infidel’s neck. Ahmad’s mind froze. He was riveted to the ground. He watched
the upswing of the scimitar, the blade a blur in the sunlight as it made its
swift downward arch. The fisherman’s hooded head toppled free from his body, a
stream of blood spurting up from each side of the stub of his neck.

Vancouver,
Canada

The light was dim in the old bar. Located
along the rough waterfront section of Vancouver B.C., it could have been any
bar in any seaport in the world. A cloud of smoke clung to the ceiling, neon
beer signs crowded the mirrored wall behind the bar. The walls reeked of
tobacco smoke, alcohol and sweat. Men gathered around the bar or at tables
ignoring the music blaring from a juke box.

Rick Sorensen, a tall, slender middle-aged
man with short-cropped gray hair, sat at the bar nursing his Canadian Club. He
wore cowboy boots, jeans, a Seattle Mariners baseball cap and a worn leather
flight jacket with a shield-shaped tan patch with a horse’s head, the insignia
of the First Cavalry Division, on the shoulder. Looking up from his drink, he
saw an old man shuffling through the door.
It can’t be!

Limping slightly from his bad knees, the old
man made his way through the gloom and smoke to the bar. Rick watched as he
surveyed the patrons.

“Rick Sorensen, y’ ol’ bastard, I thought I’d
find y’ here lad,” the old man said.

“Jack? Jack MacDonald? Are you still alive?
I thought they’d have gotten you long ago.”

Rick rocketed to his feet and embraced
Jack, ignoring the rough surroundings in which they found themselves.

 “What brings you to the big city, you old
son of a bitch?”

“You, Rick. I’ve been looking fer you.”
Jack still had his hands on Rick’s shoulders. He gave him a quick pat.

“And? . . . “

“I need your help, son. I need your
particular skills. Can y’ still make a helicopter defy the laws of physics?”

Those words stirred a long-suppressed
memory in Rick’s mind. He heard the thud of the chopper blades, smelt the
cordite from the mini-gun blazing away in the open doorway, tasted the dense
jungle air. Was it Quezon province where he first encountered Jack? Hard to
remember. He shut all of those memories away. Locked them tight in a safe he
never wanted to open again. Now, just hearing the sound of Jack’s voice, the
lilt of his brogue, made the tumblers fall into place and the door swing wide.

“What are y’ doing these days, lad?”

Jack’s words brought Rick back to the
present. “I’m still flying choppers. In the winter, I ferry back-country skiers
up the mountains, in the summer I take tourists chasing whales. I’ve become a
God damned bus driver.” Rick broke free from Jack’s grasp and settled onto his
stool.

“I dinna imagine y’ encounter much hostile
fire on those missions. Y’ never need to slip in on a dark monsoon-filled
night, eh?”

“Milk runs; all milk runs. But, it pays the
rent.” Rick sipped at the Canadian Club in his glass.

“How would y’ like a little excitement back
in your life?” Jack sat on the stool next to Rick.

“What did you have in mind?”

Rick listened to the Jack’s story. He
picked up on the part about the terrorist having SAMs. They’d already fired on
those kids, so they weren’t afraid to use them.

“Let me get this straight. You want me to
ferry you up there to reconnoiter these terrorists? And you know that they’re
armed with SAMs?” Rick swirled the whiskey in his glass with his index finger,
then licked the finger. “What are you, crazy? You’re an old man. What can you
do about all of this? Jack, just report it to the authorities and walk away. We’re
out of that business now.” Rick signaled the bartender for a refill.

“No, m’ lad, I canna do that. By the time
the bureaucracy realizes there’s a threat it’ll be too late. Look at the
Americans. They had all sorts of warnings about 9/11 and didna act. Do y’ think
our Ministry of Defense will be any better? Thousands of people are going to
die,
then
they’ll mount an all out investigation to find out what happened.”
A sly smile spread across Jack’s face.

“Besides, I’m not going up there, m’ boy.
Y’ are. Y’re right. I’m too old for this kind of work. I need y’ to go up, take
a look around, let me know what y’ see. Then I can figure out what to do next.”

“Jack, you’re out of your f-in’ mind. If I
take one of the Sky-Tours birds up there, I’ll be unarmed. I’ll be a sitting
duck. You need two birds that can cover each other for this kind of mission.
I’d need a .50-cal and a gunner . . .”

“I’ve only got you, lad.” Jack signaled for
a drink. “I’ve only got you. Remember that night in the Mekong Delta? Yer bird
went down. If old Jack hanna been there t’ put a tourniquet on your leg, y’
wouldna be here now.”

“God damn you, old man.” Rick stared into
his Canadian Club. “So, when I get up there, what do you want me to do?”

“Here take this,” Jack reached inside his
coat and pulled out a cumbersome looking portable phone.

“What the hell?” Rick stared down at the
phone Jack just handed him. “Where did you get this?”

“I still have a few friends. It’s a secure
satellite phone. We canna have y’ reporting over the radio or a cell phone can
we? The targets might hear y’. Y’ call me on this phone when y’ get up there,
let me know what’s going on. Y’ have a camera don’t y’? And son, be careful.”

Ottawa, Canada

“With this statement, we are declaring a
right and just war, a holy Jihad, against the unbelieving state of Canada. . .”
The video concluded and the group sat frozen in the dark.

Pierre Chasson was stunned. There wasn’t a
sound from the other eight people in the room.

“Someone get the lights.” Chasson, Canada’s Deputy Minister of Defense, shook his head and regained his senses. “Where did you get
this?”

A short bald-headed man with horn rim
glasses flipped on the lights revealing a large conference room with a polished
oak table and leather-covered chairs. The occupants were all middle-aged males
in business suits or uniforms with the exception of a petite thirty-something
redheaded woman.

The bald man pushed a button on the control
panel built into the table and the screen at the end of the room retracted into
the ceiling. Another button and the light from the projector hanging from the
ceiling shut off.  A third button opened the blinds on the windows, revealing
downtown Ottawa twenty stories below them.

For a long moment the only sound in the
room was the hum and ticking as the projector cooled down.

“CBC.” Jean Broussard, the
Assistant
Director of Operations for CSIS, finally
got
her voice back. “They’re planning on broadcasting it on the five o’clock news,
but thought that we should see it first. To prepare a response.”

Response hell!
“I want those bastards.” Chasson felt fire
rising in his face. “They’ve declared war on us.” His voice cracked slightly.
“We have to find them. Stop them before they kill again. What do we know about
them?”

“Almost nothing.” Jean, the petite redhead,
referred to a clip board in her lap. “We’re not sure where this was filmed. It
could be anywhere in the country. It could be from outside the country for that
matter. It looks real enough. I’ve sent a copy along to our forensic lab for
analysis.”

“Who are those . . .”
God damn.
Chasson corrected himself. “Who
were
those men? The victims. Do we know anything
about them?”

“We can’t see their faces, obviously.
Forensics will do what they can.” Jean
continued to stare at her clip
board as she talked.
She never met
Chasson’s eyes. “We’ve already alerted the RCMP for any reports of missing men.
They look to be fairly young, maybe in their mid to late twenties. They’re
dressed like workers or maybe fishermen. We’ve asked the Coast Guard to report
any missing boats.”

“Don’t we know anything?” Chasson’s
impatience level went through the roof.

“Not yet, sir.” She dropped her clipboard
onto the table.

“Johnson what’s JTF2 doing?”
Chasson
glared at the man on his right.

Johnson, wearing a blue dress uniform, got
up and re-filled his china cup from the urn on a side table.
He always
stalls for time when he doesn’t know the answer.

“We’ve put three strike teams on alert,
sir.” Johnson stirred sugar into his coffee. “As soon as we gather some more
intelligence, we’ll know which team to move. Wherever the bad guys are, we can
get to them in a matter of hours.”

The meeting went on another half hour.
Chasson’s couldn’t believe it.
Didn’t anybody know anything?

What good was commanding one of the world’s
elite anti-terrorism units if they couldn’t find the bastards? They had plans
to handle this kind of emergency. He just needed to know where the targets were
to pull the trigger.

“I want reports back every hour,” Chasson
snapped at his subordinates. “I want these people found. NOW!”

He got up and stormed out of the room.

“Ah, sir?” A tall, blond man in a white
uniform followed him down the hall.

“Olson. What is it?”

“I don’t know if it means anything or not.
. .” Olson hesitated. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of the rest of
the group, but I thought you should know.”

“Know what?”
Damn it,
Chasson
thought,
spit it out!

“We had a report, sir. A couple of days
ago. It was from some kids. We wrote it off as unreliable.”

“A report of what?” Did he have to drag it
out of the man!

“These kids, Americans I think, said they
ran into a group of Arab terrorists. It didn’t make any sense. They were way up
in BC. Some island up there.”

“
What
!” How much more incompetence
did he have to deal with? “And you didn’t act on it?” How in the hell could
anyone not respond to a terrorist report?

“We had a resource problem, sir. . . That
was the same day of the BC Ferry grounding. We had people, civilians, in the
water. They were our top priority.”

“Find those kids!” Chasson thought the top
of his fucking head was going to blow off. “See what they know.
Find me
those terrorists
!”

****

William
and Mary Island, Canada

The bright red Bell 212 twin-jet
helicopter, similar to the Hueys Rick had flown in ‘Nam, thundered along at
over one hundred knots. The flight from Vancouver to William and Mary Island took less than three hours. Rick hoped his boss would forgive him for taking
his bird on this maverick trip. He told him he was having instrument problems
and needed to calibrate the GPS.

Once off the ground, he switched his
two-way radio off of his boss’ frequency. When he returned late from his “test
flight” he would tell him he was having radio problems as well. He knew for a
few beers, his buddies in the maintenance department would back up his story.
No one liked their little prick of a manager.

The morning mist lifted and William and Mary Island came into view. It looked just like his airman’s chart, a round island about
two miles in diameter with a single, long bay cut into its southwest side. Like
the thousands of other islands along the Inside Passage, trees covered it from
shoreline to peak.

He flew in, level with the island’s peak,
about six-hundred and fifty feet above sea level. Rick circled the island,
looking for anything out of the ordinary.

He reached for the satellite phone on the
seat next to him, inserted the id chip in the phone and dialed. “Jack, are you
there?”

“Sure enough, lad.” Jack’s thick Scottish
accent came across the air waves. “Go on.”

“I’m over the island now. There’s a big
fishing boat anchored in Prince William Bay. There’s something funny about it. I’m
going down for a closer look.”

The Bell slowed and descended to towards
the bay.

“Be careful m’ boy. Yer not exactly
camouflaged in that red bird.”

“It’s not like the VC is waiting for me
down there, Jack.” Rick held a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

“Dinna get sloppy on me now, son. These are
dangerous people.”

“Don’t worry about me old man. This is the
most action I’ve seen in thirty years.” Rick grinned beneath his baseball cap
and aviator sun glasses. “Okay, I can get a good look at it now.” Rick moved
the cyclical lever to dead center and the Bell hovered. “There’s a big steel
box on her after deck. There’s no net, no roller. I wonder what that box is
for.”

“Unless I miss m’ guess,” Jack’s electronic
voice came through the phone, “that’s the launch system for an Exocet missile.”

“Holy shit. You’re serious about this, aren’t
you?”

The helicopter rose even with the crest of
the island. Rick swung around and flew towards a clearing near the top of the island.

“I’m over an old logging camp.” Rick saw an
old truck, a couple of run-down buildings and some tents below him. “There’s
smoke coming from a cook tent. . . I see some people scrambling around.” He was
slightly amused at the concern his sudden appearance caused. “They’re looking
up at me. They don’t look too happy.”

“Be careful lad. Get out of there before y’
get hurt.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been shot at by
experts. I’m going to get a closer look, see what these bastards are up to. .
.”

A trail of white smoke shot up from the
clearing.

“Oh shit! They’ve fired on me. Taking
evasive action”