“How long a flight?” Isherwood asked him.
Sterling gave him an appraising look. Not many Caribbean blacks got this far north, and Sterling inspected his passenger as if he were studying a circus oddity. “About an hour, if we can start anytime soon, Mr. Isherwood.”
Isherwood’s muscles bunched. It would take less than two seconds to remove his belt buckle, slide the razor-sharp lower half open on its hinge pin, and slit the man’s throat. Maybe he would see an apology in the eyes. Maybe not. But there would be copious amounts of infidel blood. He forced a faint smile. “Anytime that you’re ready, captain.”
Mary was obviously embarrassed by an exchange between the two men that she didn’t understand. “I hope you have a good week of fishing, Mr. Isherwood. This time of year it should be great.”
“Ah, thank you, Mary, my love,” Isherwood said, laughing. “You’re a terrible flirt, but thank you for the transport over.”
He stepped up on the starboard float, climbed in the front right seat, and strapped himself in. Sterling said something to the woman, then got aboard, strapped in, flipped a few switches, and hit the starter switch. The big Pratt & Whitney radial engine roared into life, and once the gauges were all in their nominal ranges, Sterling set the altimeter, released the brake, and eased the throttle forward, sending them trundling out of the hangar and down the sloping apron into the chilly black waters of Stephens Passage, doing his run-up to check the magnetos on the move.
Without a glance at his passenger, Sterling said something into the mike of his headset, then firewalled the throttle as he turned the big plane into the wind. They were airborne within a thousand feet, water streaming off the floats, and almost immediately the thick overcast ceiling was just above them. Sterling leveled off, and turned just east of due south to follow the pass all the way down to Entrance Island, where he would swing west to pass Cape Baranof, and then on to Karsten’s Fishin’ Mission on the northwest bay of Kuiu Island.
Isherwood had studied the air and sea charts of the region, so he knew the area almost as if he had lived there all his life. He prepared for every mission in the same way, with a professional thoroughness that left little or nothing to chance. He was a man who did not like surprises. In his business the unknown could be deadly.
In fact, Isherwood was not his real name. According to Western intelligence agencies, he was the international terrorist, possibly Osama bin Laden’s operations chief, known only as Khalil. According to the CIA, he was thought to be an Egyptian with a wife and children hidden somewhere in Cairo under assumed identities. Supposedly he was a medical doctor who had served with bin Laden in Afghanistan in the eighties fighting Russians, whom he hated almost as deeply as he hated Jews and Americans. No clear photographs of him existed in any Western intel file, nor was there any DNA or fingerprint evidence available that could positively identify him. He was as elusive as the night mists, and as cruel as is possible for a human being to be. In the past fifteen years no one who had come up against him had survived. Rumors were that even bin Laden was respectful — if not frightened — of the depth of the man’s savagery.
As the town of Juneau fell away from them, one spot of civilization in the middle of a vast rugged wilderness, Khalil realized how perfect an area this was for the operation he had so meticulously planned. Heavily forested, craggy islands separated the limitless expanse of the Pacific Ocean to the west from the snow and glacier-covered, forbidding mountains to the east. Except for fishing boats heading to or from the passes to the open ocean, cruise ships that traveled the Inside Passage, and the occasional sailboat or recreational trawler, there was nothing below them for as far as the eye could see.
“Empty, isn’t it?” Sterling shouted over the roar of the engine.
“No,” Khalil replied, mesmerized by the bleak landscape below. “It’s filled with opportunities down there.” He glanced at the pilot, who was looking at him. “Lots of fish to catch. And I will catch them.”
The small fishing resort was invisible from the air until the last moment, when Sterling set down in the long bay as lightly as a feather on a woman’s cheek and taxied to the end of the long dock on the south side. Then, except for the dock and two small fishing boats and three canoes, all that could be seen was a gravel footpath that led to a scattering of cabins all but hidden in the dense forest that ran right down to the water’s edge.
It was raining harder here than up in Juneau, and it had gotten dark. Sterling held up at the dock, the Otter’s engine idling, as Khalil got out and unloaded his own bags.
“I’ll be back the same time next week, unless you want to get out sooner,” Sterling said. Without waiting for a reply, he reached over and closed the passenger door, then gunned the engine and turned left, the broad wing sweeping over the dock so that Khalil had to step back to avoid getting hit.
There were seven sets of eyes watching from the woods and from the cabins. Khalil could feel them studying him, evaluating his behavior. Some of his soldiers had been here for as long as three days, waiting for their leader to show up. Waiting for the operation to finally begin. Only Zahir al Majid, his second-in-command, had ever worked with him on an operation. The others had heard of him, of course. Kahlil was a living legend, and they would be curious to see how he handled what was obviously an insult.
He gave a thumbs-up to the departing airplane, then walked up to the main lodge completely hidden in the forest, leaving his bags on the dock for someone to fetch.
Zahir, a short squat man with a thick mustache, but nearly bald on top, met Khalil in the rustic lobby. They warmly embraced. A fire burned on the stone hearth. The log walls were adorned with mounted fish, presumably caught by former patrons of the fishing camp.
“I’m glad you have finally arrived safely,” Zahir said. “Will you have something to eat? Our people would like to sit with you.”
“Soon. Is the equipment we need here?”
“Yes.”
“Our other soldiers are in place?”
Zahir checked his watch. “I spoke with Abdul in Juneau this morning. All is as it should be. The vessel will depart in a few hours and begin its southbound cruise.”
“The resort staff?”
“The maintenance man, two guides, and the owner are dead, as you ordered. Their bodies were placed in the generator building, safe from the wildlife. The owner’s wife and their daughter are being held upstairs, in case a radiotelephone call needs to be answered.”
“Cell phones are out of range?”
“Yes.”
Khalil nodded in satisfaction. “Give the daughter to the men. When they are finished with her, kill her. The mother can answer the telephone if need be.”
“They will like that.”
“Now we will go fishing,” Khalil said. “Do you know how, Zahir?”
“There is no fishing in the desert.”
Khalil laughed. “Then we will learn together.”
“In the meantime I will send someone to the dock for your bags.”
TWO
Kirk McGarvey got out of the cab into the cold drizzle at the cruise ship dock, and paused for a moment to unlimber his tall, husky body and look up at the bulk of the 192-foot pocket cruise ship Spirit of ’98 that would be his and Katy’s home for the next seven days.