Very high speed.
It was amazing.
He had traversed the 190 kilometers of the Chesapeake Bay to its mouth in slightly more than two hours, staying close to the western edge of the shipping channel. If any of the commercial ships plying the passage had seen him racing south at over ninety kilometers per hour, none of them had sounded an alert. Lookouts stationed aboard freighters, tankers, and cargo ships would probably have only seen the white flash of his bow wave or his wake, anyway.
Badr had been so intent on his piloting and on avoiding other traffic that he had not learned to use the radios or the radar until long after he had passed under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and headed east into the Atlantic.
And when he finally activated the radar, he had found the screen cluttered with dozens of targets in the coastal shipping lanes. He had had to rely on the tanker captain having his ship located at the coordinates where he was supposed to be at six-thirty, 160 kilometers off the coast of North Carolina.
Badr hated relying on anyone except himself. That was because so many of his compatriots were unreliable, while he had absolute faith in himself.
Hakkar, for instance, had been a man requiring careful watching.
He was now a martyr to the cause and mercifully joined with Allah. Badr would tell others as much.
During the torturously slow trek to the west, then up the eastern shore of Carr Bay, he had cut the speed of the rubber boat to less than five knots, to keep the outboard motor quiet. It seemed that infinity passed before he located the right pier, the one mentioned in the newspaper story. Badr had shut off the motor as soon as he saw the watchman stationed aboard a large ship, and he and Hakkar took up paddles for the last several hundred meters into the dock.
He had been shocked when he saw the door rise, spilling interior light on the surface of the water.
Hakkar went flat into the bottom of the boat, dragging his pistol from his pocket.
And then the silhouette of the boat moving toward them.
Suddenly accelerating.
Badr grabbed the motor housing and pulled himself over it, launching into a dive that took him out of the path of the oncoming boat. Just before he went under the surface, he heard the sickly crunch as the bow of the boat hit something, very likely Muhammed Hakkar’s head.
He dove deep, and when he came up, the big boat was gone. He could hear a miniature moan off to the south, quickly abating. Beside him, the Zodiak was hissing, nearly deflated, and already slipping below the surface. One of Hakkar’s arms hung over the gunwale.
Badr paddled close to check on the man. His face was coated in blood, and his right temple looked mushy. He was breathing, but raggedly. Badr reach up, grabbed the man’s neck, and pulled his head underwater, finding only feeble resistance.
Casualties were a hindrance to any mission.
He scanned the shoreline, taking time to stare into the crevices and between buildings. The collision had not raised an alarm, apparently.
But time was running perilously short. He must get away from there before some patrol came by.
The Zodiak gurgled and went under, taking Hakkar with it. A stream of bubbles broke the surface, sounding unnaturally loud as they popped.
Badr looked toward the pier numbered nine, under the partially opened door.
And there was another of the boats, just as pictured by the newspaper photographer.
His blood sang in his veins.
Badr had been certain that he was too late. Someone else had stolen his boat.
He swam into the building, found the ladder rungs on the right side, and climbed to the dock. His heart was beating fast, and the sense of fear elevated his awareness. Everything inside the structure appeared sharp and clear.
Badr ran along the concrete dock, the leather soles of his shoes slapping loudly, spattering water.
It was such a sleek boat, and it took him several seconds to locate the hatchway and open it. Another two minutes were devoted to releasing the mooring lines, then he went aboard and found his way to the controls.
The instrument panel dismayed him. He had never seen anything like it. The face was flat black plastic, completely smooth except for a few touch-sensitive pads. In the vague light coming through the windshield, he searched it and tried various switches until the panel lights came on, a wild array of red, blue, yellow, and orange lines and letters. Fortunately, each control and readout was neatly labeled in blue. Americans insisted on labels — on their cigarettes, their cereal, their highways. Waiting for the bilge blower to ventilate the engine compartment felt like forever. The engines started so silently that, on the first one, he tried the starter again while the engine was already running. A horrible screeching from the back of the boat caused his heart to leap.
And then he was moving.
And four hours later, he was closing on the Kuwaiti-flagged Hormuz, steaming easily and very slowly in the calm blue ocean.
The tanker was moving at less than seven knots as Badr brought the Sea Spectre — the name was embossed in blue at the top of the instrument panel — alongside it. He adjusted the speed to match the tanker’s, held the wheel over to keep the boat in place against the rusted steel plates of the oiler’s hull, and tightened the steering lock.
Pulling himself out of the seat, he ran to the back and opened the narrow door into the cargo compartment. His legs and back were stiff after so many hours at the helm, and he realized that he badly needed to relieve himself.
He found the switch and flicked the lights on. Studying the hatch controls, he moved the identified toggle switch and looked up to see the doors first rise, then slide downward. Sunlight flooded in.
And struck all those missiles.
Badr felt the grin widening his face.
Allah was so good to him.
The cargo hatch doors settled into place, and Badr watched as the crewmen scampered down the netting suspended from the tanker’s railings. Quickly, they moved over the Sea Spectre’s decks, slipping and falling on the smooth, sloped surfaces, trying to locate the lifting rings.
Within five minutes, cables from the ship’s crane had been attached, and the Sea Spectre rose from the sea.
Badr hurried back inside the cabin to the helm and shut off the engines.
He returned to the cargo bay, smiled at the missiles, and watched the activity on the tanker’s cluttered decks as the Sea Spectre was brought aboard.
The hatch cover of the false tank had already been removed and the stealth boat was slowly lowered into the tank. Leaning out, Badr looked down and saw a half-dozen crew members scurrying to adjust the cradle secured in the bottom of the tank to the contours of the boat’s hull. To fit within the tank, the assault boat had to be lowered diagonally into it.
He watched them carefully, because he did not want the hull damaged after all of his work.
When the boat finally settled into place, Badr felt a great sense of achievement.
The boat was now his.
As were all of those lovely missiles.
Devlin McCory was a quick man with a temper. He had the scars to prove it — little dashes of hard tissue on his jaw, forehead, cheekbone, shoulder, arms. In earlier days, there weren’t too many saloons he hadn’t loved. And cleaned out.
He was six feet tall, with a chest like a barrel of Ireland’s own, and he had big gnarled hands and the hard muscles of a man not afraid to do his own work. His hair was the color of weathered orange brick, and his blue eyes could pierce egos. His face always gave him away, though. It went through fifty shades of suffusion in direct proportion to his temper.