The Socotra Incident (16 page)

A hatchway below on the main deck burst open, and a security guard ran out onto the deck, clutching a bloody arm against his side. He stumbled and fell against a cargo container. Two Israelis followed him out, weapons trained on the guard.

Ritter heard the guard’s protests and saw him hold out his good arm to surrender. Ritter brought the rifle to his shoulder and drew a bead on the trailing Israeli. He waited for the inevitable.

The Israeli closest to the guard leveled his weapon and shot the guard with a blast of bullets. Ritter fired a fraction of a second later, and his target fell to a knee, then on his face.

The other Israeli whirled around toward to his dead companion, then looked up at Ritter. Ritter hit him with two shots and sent him to the deck. He squeezed the trigger again, but the weapon clicked empty.

“Ritter,” Moshe’s voice crackled from the dead men’s radios.

Ritter pried a radio off a corpse and put the headset on.

“Moshe,” he said.

“I have Mike. If you want him to live, you come to the bomb,” Moshe said.

Ritter pulled the Korean Makarov from his waistband and slid the magazine from the pistol. There were two bullets in the mag, one in the chamber. Every shot would have to count. He made his way down the stairs, peeking around the corners in case Moshe, or the last Israeli, was waiting to ambush him.

Mike sat next to the open container leading to the Club K, his hands bound with a zip tie, a gun pressed against his head. Moshe had the gun; most of his body was safe inside the cargo container. He pulled the gun back from Mike’s temple as Ritter neared but kept it pointed in a lethal direction. Mike sat with his head held low, blood dripping from his face unto his wrists.

“That’s enough,” Moshe said.

“How’d you know it was a bomb?” Ritter asked.

“We were the buyer, schmuck. The Koreans screwed up the delivery, then you and that bitch Shannon did us a favor by finding it. Got us the bomb and the delivery system at no cost. Mossad thought it must be God working in our favor,” he said.

“Your team’s dead, Moshe. Was that worth it?” Ritter asked. The twelfth Israeli was unaccounted for, and Ritter hoped either that Mike had killed him or that he was dead below decks.

“All our lives are forfeit for the greater good of Israel,” Moshe said. He stepped from the container and knelt behind Mike, using him as a human shield between him a Ritter. He kept his pistol pointed at Mike’s temple. “Problem is, Mike didn’t get the launch codes for us before everything went sideways. So, you’re going to call Shannon and give us the codes, and we’ll let you two live.”

Mike tapped two fingers onto the knuckles of his right hand.
Behind.

“Moshe, I know Bronislava. She’ll sell you the codes,” Ritter said.

Moshe’s face contorted with rage, and he extended his arm to point the pistol at Ritter. Mike’s head snapped to the side, and he sank his teeth into Moshe’s arm. Mike shook his head with the furry of a striking crocodile. Moshe dropped his pistol to the ground and struck at Mike.

Ritter whirled around and found the last Israeli, his rifle aimed at Ritter.

Ritter fell backward and fired in sync with the Israeli. Ritter’s shot caught the ambusher in the throat. The Israeli hit Ritter in the shoulder.

Ritter felt the sting of the bullet and fell on his back. He had a half second before the real pain set in. He used his uninjured arm to raise the pistol over his head and rolled onto his side.

Moshe stood over Mike, who still had his teeth sunk into Moshe’s arm, and was pounding the bound man in the head.

Ritter shot Moshe in the face. The back of his head burst onto the deck behind them. Moshe stumbled back a step, then toppled over.

Ritter’s shoulder felt like someone had stuck a red-hot fork in it and started stirring. The bullet had dug a quarter-inch divot from the flesh over his shoulder. It bled freely, and the pain gripped his entire upper body in a vice.

Mike appeared over him. His lip was split, and blood had soaked into his beard.

“You okay?” Ritter asked.

Mike nodded and slapped a bandage onto Ritter’s wounded shoulder, then put another bandage over that. Mike sat Ritter up and propped him against a cargo container. Mike slouched down next to Ritter and pulled a tin of chewing tobacco from a pocket. He tapped it against his hand with three snaps and pushed a wad of the foul-smelling black bits into his gumline. He held the tin out to Ritter.

“No, thanks.” Ritter ground his teeth and hissed. His shoulder was spasming.

“Flesh wound. Don’t be a pussy,” Mike said.

Ritter focused on his breathing to take his mind away from the pain. They sat in silence for a minute.

“Hey, you know how to steer this thing?” Ritter asked.

Mike shook his head and spat on the deck.

“Cavalry’s coming. Be here in a couple hours,” Mike said.

“You think we can go home after that?”

Mike shrugged.

An hour and a change of blood-soaked bandages later, Mike and Ritter waited at the helipad as a navy Seahawk helicopter approached. Ritter and Mike went to their knees, and Mike put his hands behind his head. Ritter did his best to mimic him with his one good arm.

Men in gray scale camouflage and ski masks jumped from the Seahawk and pointed MP5s at them. Red dots swirled on Ritter and Mike’s chests.

One of the masked men approached and yelled, “Garnet!” over the helicopter.

“Obsidian!” Mike answered.

The man lowered his weapon. “That’s your ride.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the helicopter, and Ritter let out a long sigh.

The rest of the new arrivals, anonymous beneath their masks, filed past Ritter and Mike without interest or another word.

Ritter and Mike climbed into the helicopter. The crew chief had to strap the wounded Ritter to his seat. The sailor refused to speak with, or even look at, Ritter and Mike after they took off from the cargo ship.

A nuke and a cruise missile were in the Caliban Program’s possession. Deep down, Ritter didn’t feel like the world was a safer place for it.

There was no good way to look debonair with one’s arm in a sling, Ritter decided. Dressing himself without his dominant arm was a challenge, and he’d had to wear his suit jacket over his right shoulder like it was a shawl. The staples holding the bullet wound on his shoulder together nagged at him, as much for the itching as for the reminder of how close he’d come to getting killed. Again.

Eisen Meer kept a number of doctors on retainer, all well known for their respect of patient confidentiality. An elderly Austrian doctor had tut-tutted over him as he sealed the cut on his face with skin adhesive. Gluing a wound shut struck him like something infantrymen would do, not a doctor with a wall full of diplomas.

The same doctor had cleaned out the rest of his wounds and given him prescriptions for painkillers and antibiotics. He took only the latter. The doctor promised Ritter’s arm would heal completely in short order as long as he didn’t pop his staples or “have another workplace accident,” as the doctor so gently put it.

Ritter shifted from foot to foot as the elevator hummed upward. Shannon gave him a day to get patched up, then ordered him back to the office immediately afterward. Vienna wasn’t the same place for him anymore. There had always been a threat from foreign intelligence agencies against him and the office, but after the bloody mess with Moshe and his team, he had a new enemy. If Mossad and the Israelis decided to retaliate, the action would be swift and brutal.

Ritter felt useless in the city. His sling made him stand out like a sore thumb, and ditching a tail was nearly impossible for him now. He wouldn’t favor himself in a fight with a common mugger, much less one of Mossad’s assassins.

The elevator to the Eisen Meer office opened, and Ritter stepped past a pile of boxes and packing material outside the reception desk. Through the Plexiglas walls, Ritter saw more boxes taped up and labeled for shipping. Office workers were clearing out their desks and packing their contents away. A man in overalls was scraping away the company’s name from the wall with a painter’s spatula.

“Hello, Mr. Ritter,” Pfennig said from her desk.

“What did I miss?”

She frowned and buzzed the door open. “Ms. Martel is waiting for you in the vault.”

Ritter pushed through the first door, and all the offices in the back, where the real work of the team was done, were vacant. Even the pile of spent juice boxes and empty potato chip bags from Tony’s office was absent.

The vault door was ajar. Shannon sat with her back to the door; it was a horrible bit of tradecraft that would have earned him a slap on the back of the head from Carlos or Mike. The only other things in the room were a table with a teleconference speaker and an empty chair. He pulled the door open with a grunt and stepped inside.

“Shut it,” Shannon said.

Ritter complied, and the door locked itself with a pair of heavy clicks. A red light on the ceiling switched to pale green.

Shannon wrapped her arms around Ritter and hugged him close, careful not to touch his injured shoulder. Ritter, surprised by this sudden display of affection from her, managed to pat her on the back. Her hair smelled like vanilla and lilacs.

She leaned back and ran a finger down the side of Ritter’s injured face.

“It adds character, but…no. We’ll have a plastic surgeon look it over. Can’t have you with a scar there, now can we?” she said.

“I’m building up a collection,” Ritter said.

“Sit, sit.” She tapped perfectly manicured fingernails on the empty chair seat. Ritter eased himself into the chair. Everything hurt today.

Shannon smoothed her skirt and nibbled on her bottom lip.

“I’m sorry. We didn’t know the Israelis were the buyers for the Korean weapon. That they’d turn on you wasn’t part of our risk calculus either. We should have pieced it together, and you and Mike almost died for my mistake,” she said.

“If we had perfect knowledge, we’d play the lottery, not the spy game,” Ritter said. “What do we do about Mossad? They coming for us? Brontislava won’t be happy with the loss of the security team.”

Shannon sighed.

“Israel is why we’re relocating to the Reston office. The local Mossad contact, Ari—”

“The scumbag?”

“Ari was arrested in Slovenia with a kilo of cocaine in his trunk. Anonymous tip—most unfortunate for him. I called in a few favors, and known and suspected Mossad agents will have a hell of a time getting into Europe for another week at least. Enough time for us to get back to the States and regroup,” she said.

“Do we have to go to ground for this?” Ritter said. Getting a new identity and spending a year or more masquerading as an intelligence contractor in Arizona wouldn’t contribute to the war against al-Qaeda.

“No, just need to let the passions die down. We have the nuke, and we’ll intone that we have proof they were the buyer. The threat of going public will keep them in check. We can drink mai tais on a Haifa beach this time next year.”

“I’d rather not poke the bear, if that’s all right with you.” Ritter shifted in his chair. “Israel has nukes. Good ones. Why do they want one from North Korea?”

“All nuclear material has a signature. During the Cold War we picked up residue from Russian nuclear tests and traced the uranium back to a single mine in Siberia. One industrial accident later, and Russian nuke production came to a sudden halt. Measurement and signature intelligence, MASINT—amazing stuff.

“If the Israelis had used their own nuke on the Club K, the world could have traced it back to Israel. A Korean nuke is a wild card. They haven’t done enough nuke tests to establish a signature. Their weapon is untraceable,” she said.

“Is that why
we
want it?” he asked.

Shannon stiffened. If it was anyone else, Ritter would have known a lie was coming.

“I don’t know why we want it,” she said. Ritter’s face tightened in confusion.

“We all have our orders. Even me. Which brings us here. You weren’t cleared for that operation after the initial attempt to secure the device. Circumstances dictated that you stay in play, and I made the call.” Shannon’s hand went to her shoulder, to touch a phantom wound that was all too real for Ritter.

“I need you to tell me if you can remain silent about the device. Forever.”

Why? Why obtain a nuke and not expose all the guilty parties for their crimes? The questions burned in Ritter’s heart and danced on his tongue. To ask was futile—he knew that. The Caliban Program was a need-to-know organization. Curiosity was a trait that would get you fired—or worse. If he kept his head down and his mouth shut, the answers might come to him.

“It’s better we have it than anyone else. I’ll stay quiet,” he said.

Shannon nodded, her eyes sad.

“Then I have a word for you: Caius. When the Caius protocol is in use, anyone who comes across anything associated with that word is either marginalized…or eliminated. The nuke is Caius. Do you understand?”

Ritter had seen “Caius” on the message she’d sent Mike. The pieces fell into place quickly. That message had told Mike that the Israelis had to die but that Ritter must be spared. Why? Why was he so special?

“Caius,” Ritter said.

“Thank you, Eric. That’s done. Can you do me a favor with Natalie?” she said.

Shannon gave Ritter his instructions and shut the vault door behind him after he left.

She grabbed the teleconference speaker and spun it around. The green light showing an open line was still on.

“Well done,” a twisted voice said.

The light snapped off.

Shannon buried her face in her hands and wept.

Natalie opened the Styrofoam packs and guided the jaeger schnitzel onto plates with a butter knife. A side of tart-smelling, warm potato salad went on each plate.

“This is the closest I’ve come to cooking in months,” she said loudly enough for Ritter to hear. She heard him laugh from his bedroom.

She carried the plates to the little table and set them down. A dusty pack rested on one of the seats. She grabbed the carry handle, thinking it weighed only a few pounds. Her first tug at the pack told her something heavy, very heavy, was inside it.

“What the hell?” she said. She unzipped the pack and did a double take. She picked up a gold bar, almost the size of her forearm, loose gold coins covered the bottom of the pack.

“Eric?”

Ritter came out of the bedroom, his bad arm swinging loosely at his side.

“Oops, forgot about that,” he said. “I’ll drop it in a deposit box tomorrow. Worry about it later,” he said.

“This is almost”—she tested the weight of the gold in the bag against the weight of the bar in her hand—“a million dollars in gold.”

“Just put it on the couch, please.” He sat at the table and tried to open a bottle of Perrier water one handed.

Natalie left the gold and a slew of questions on the couch and grabbed the bottle from Ritter. She twisted the cap off and poured for both of them.

“Okay, the fortune in gold aside, what’s our plan?” she asked.

“We fly back to the States tomorrow and move to the company’s office in Reston, northern Virginia. Pack light. Anything you leave behind will get sent on later. And…we’re married,” he said.

“Come again?”

“Couples attract less scrutiny, and I need some help on account of my workplace accident. Shannon’s idea. I have our passports somewhere, Mrs. Chesterfield.”

Natalie gave Ritter a wry smile. “Not the worst thing I’ve had to do this week. So much for Salzburg, huh?”

“To misquote my favorite Austrian, we’ll be back. Someday,” he said.

Ritter tried mashing his jaeger schnitzel with the side of his fork with little success. Natalie pulled his plate closer and cut up his entire plate of food for him.

“Thanks, honey.”

“Is this how it’s going to be in our marriage? Me doing all the work?” she said.

“Only after I get shot.”

She pushed the plate back to him. The veneer of calm she’d held up to that moment fell away. Ritter watched as her face darkened and she drew her arms in to wrap them around her stomach.

“Is it always like this?” she asked quietly. “I got used to the life and death risks when we in Iraq. At least there I knew who the bad guys were, our mission, our priorities. Black and white. Now I don’t know who is on whose side. The Russian arms dealer is our friend. Mossad is our friend until they aren’t and they stab you in the back. Everything is…gray.

“No. This was”—he took a bite of potato salad and considered his next words carefully—“a special kind of miserable. Everything we do is in that gray area. Just the nature of the game.

“You’re OK with that?”

“I accept it. We had ideals in the Army, standards. Brontislava, Mossad…don’t. If we try and do things by our old standards we will lose, and you can imagine the consequence. If I had the chance to go back in uniform and do things on the up and up, I wouldn’t. My way of thinking has been set free,” he said, his interest in dinner gone.

“You think we’re ‘free.’ Someone is pulling our strings. Shannon may be an ice queen but I know she wasn’t on board with sending you and Mike out there with Mossad,” Davis said.

“Strings…Are we puppets if we play our parts willingly?” 

“You aren’t at all curious who those,” she lowered her voice “directors are?”

“Ever since I joined, our mission has been to protect the country, make the terrorists pay for what they’ve done. I have faith in that.”

“Speaking of faith. Do you know what happened to…it?”

“It’s safe,” he said. Once the nuke was handed off to the other team, his need to know went away. The fact that he hadn’t been called in to find it since then was of some comfort. The nuke was Caius, and he couldn’t have Natalie asking about it further. Time to change the subject.

“You finally took care of Suleiman?”

“It wasn’t intentional,” she said. Natalie recounted the whole ordeal in Beirut for Ritter. Her posture changed as she spoke; her shoulders slouched forward, and her head lowered. “Carlos debriefed me when I got back, and things were quiet—I mean, things were quiet in the office, not for you—until Shannon walks out of the vault and says we’re closing down.” She looked away.

“He was a bad man. He—” Ritter caught himself. Not because Suleiman’s history was classified. The man had forced his daughter, Baida, into marrying a jihadist to curry favor with al-Qaeda. After his daughter died in a drone attack in Pakistan, he’d used her martyr status to build even more clout with the organization’s financiers in Saudi Arabia. Ritter didn’t want to explain his relationship to Baida, his involvement in her death, and the final resolution with her husband, Haider, years later in Iraq.

“I wish I’d been the one to do it,” Ritter said.

“Is it always like this? The killing. The manipulation…The giant pile of gold on your couch,” she said.

“Not always. The gold is definitely an oddity. Do you want to stay on? We can transfer you anywhere you want if this isn’t for you. Even back to the army,” he said.