“Is it time yet?” asked Yousef. He, too, was a new recruit. Like Hassan, he had been assigned by the Leader.
Hassan trained the glasses on the blunt aft end of the ship. A stairway descended from the fantail to a boarding platform, where a boat was moored. “Yes,” he said. “They’re leaving.”
He laid down the binoculars. “Rig the sail.”
Yousef scrambled across the deck, swinging the suspended mast around so that it blocked any view of the dhow’s deck from the ship across the harbor. The triangular sail hung like a curtain in the windless air. That was the way Hassan wanted it. He would be concealed behind the sail. “Bring up the launcher,” he said.
Yousef ducked into the open hatch, then came back up with the Chinese-made weapon. Hassan busied himself affixing the launcher tube to the shoulder mount. Then he attached the reel of guidance wire to the base plate of the weapon. He tried to screw the threaded end of the wire to its connector on the missile but he was unable. His fingers were trembling.
“Be careful,” said Yousef. “You’ll blow us up.”
“Shut up. I know what I’m doing.” Hassan had performed this task only once before, practicing with an inert round while the Leader observed his performance. It had been easy then.
Now it wasn’t easy. The live round weighed several kilos more than the inert dummy. He drew a deep breath, clenched and unclenched his fist, then tried again. This time he succeeded. The threads caught, and the wire was attached to the connector. “There. It’s done.”
He peered across the channel. He had assembled the weapon just in time. Raising the launcher to his shoulder, he braced the tube across the lowered mast. He aimed the weapon toward his target.
From the fantail, Brick and Claire watched the admiral’s gig pull away from its mooring. At the helm of the polished wooden boat stood a boatswain’s mate in white uniform. Standing on the aft deck were Dunn, Halaby, the ambassador, and the soon-to-be-relieved Reagan Battle Group Commander, Tom Mellon.
Dunn waved from the deck as the polished wooden boat turned and pointed its bow toward the Dubai shoreline. Brick and Claire watched the boat churn across the Dubai channel. By the time it was a mile away, they could still see the tiny figure of Dunn standing on the aft deck next to the coxswain.
“He tries to act gruff,” said Claire, “but that old sailor loves you.”
“Josh is like a father to me.”
“What about your real father? Why isn’t he here?”
Brick didn’t answer right away. He continued watching the boat as it headed into the choppy waters of the channel.
The reporter in Claire wanted to know more. She was about to ask another question; then she stopped. She saw something in Brick’s face. He was staring at the harbor. Squinting against the morning sun, she followed his gaze out over the water.
Then she saw it.
It looked like a fast-moving bird, zigzagging low over the water, gathering speed as if it were seeking something. The object, whatever it was, seemed to be trailing a plume of fire.
“Oh, no!” she heard Brick say.
Claire didn’t know what it was, but her instinct told her it was something bad. In the next three seconds, she knew she was right.
The low-flying object struck the gig amidships. The main fuel tank exploded, and the boat erupted in an orange ball of flame. Fragments of teak and mahogany and brass and human bodies cascaded into the morning sky.
Several seconds after the flash, the sound of the explosion reached the Reagan.
Stunned, Claire stared at the cataclysm. Pieces from the ruined boat were raining like shrapnel back into the water. “My God, what happened?”
As a journalist she had seen only the aftermath of war and terrorism. Never had she witnessed such violence close-up, while it occurred.
Maxwell was shaking his head. His hands clenched the steel rail. “No idea. Some kind of missile.”
A klaxon horn was going off. From the ship’s public address loudspeakers, a voice boomed: “General quarters! General quarters! This is not a drill! All hands man your battle stations!”
“What does that mean?” Claire asked.
“We’re going to combat readiness. Whoever fired that missile may be shooting at the Reagan. He grabbed her arm and hauled her away from the rail. “We’re going belowdecks, down to the ready room.”
From across the water they heard a siren wailing. On the Reagan’s flight deck, the blades of the SAR helicopter, a turbine-powered HH-60 Seahawk, began to rotate. Sailors ran across the deck, donning helmets and vests.
Before they ducked through the door that led onto the enclosed hangar deck, Maxwell stopped to peer out at the harbor. An oily slick was spreading out from where the gig had exploded. Flotsam littered the surface of the channel.
“I can’t believe it,” he murmurred. “They’re gone. Josh, the ambassador, the boat crew, Admiral Mellon.”
Claire began to shake uncontrollably. “We could have gone with them.”
Even before the debris had finished splashing back into the water, Hassan Fayez was dragging the launcher back toward the open hatch. On the deck lay the three extra missiles that he had not needed. Not yet.
“Move!” he yelled at Yousef. “Get the motor running! We’ll run for the fishing wharf.”
They had lied to him. They had assured him that the wire-guided missile was invisible. They said no one would know where it had come from. Their escape would be easy because it would be hours before anyone understood how the gig had been destroyed.
The instant he launched the missile, he knew they had lied. The ungodly thing looked like a signal flare. Any idiot who happened to be watching the harbor would have seen it, and he would deduce that it had come from the dhow out there in the channel.
Yousef had the diesel motor popping and growling. Even at full throttle the puny engine pushed the dhow through the water like a barge.
The fishing village was their only haven. Once they reached the wharf, they could melt into the throng of boat people. Their dhow looked just like any of a hundred other such vessels. They could abandon it and scramble across the cluttered decks of the boats that were moored to each other. The inhabitants of the floating village could be counted on to feign ignorance when they were questioned. The only loyalty the ancient cult of Gulf sailors had was to each other.
The harbor was buzzing with new traffic. Hassan saw a helicopter lifting from the deck of the aircraft carrier. It was headed toward them. He wished now that he had not been so quick to stow the launcher and the extra rounds. The helicopter would be an easy target.
The helicopter was keeping its distance from the dhow. That was bad, Hassan thought. It meant they had already concluded that he was a threat. They would be summoning help on the radio.
He tried waving to the crew of the helo. They didn’t respond. The helicopter maintained its distance, hovering a hundred yards from the dhow.
“What will they do?” asked Yousef, standing at the tiller.
“Nothing,” Hassan lied. “They don’t know who we are. We are just fishermen.”
It was then that Hassan saw the boat coming from the shore. A police boat, moving fast, trailing a high rooster tail in its wake. As the boat drew nearer, Hassan saw the machine gun mounted on the bow. A helmeted crewman crouched behind it.