Adnan pulled himself up the gangplank to the tanker’s main deck, panting heavily and sweating profusely. The deck was deserted. If any seamen or soldiers were on board, they’d retreated.
Following Parvez’s instructions, Adnan immediately stripped off his shirt to bare the powerful bomb that circled his torso—bulky packages of C-4 plastic explosives strung together with wires.
“It’s important,” Parvez had told him, “to show them the bomb right away. Don’t worry about them shooting you; they’ll never risk setting off anything this powerful.”
Adnan hoped Parvez could see him. The first step toward martyrdom had been achieved. If everything else was also going according to plan, his old friend could see him on a computer screen or television, and so could millions of others.
Imagining himself before their eyes, Adnan raised his arms high above his head. A fighter for Muhammad.
A champion.
* * *
Birk eased around the pallet, hoping that when Raggedy Ass turned the first corner, he’d see nothing and go on about his homicidal chores like a good jihadist. Maybe he wasn’t thinking of the geezer at all. Maybe he’d only slowed down to catch his breath by the only cover on the dock. All that chasing and murdering had to be exhausting.
What was that? Footsteps. But they were getting softer and sounded farther away. Go, Raggedy Ass. Go-go-go.
Birk could have howled with joy. Instead, he took a nip from his flask. You are one savvy son of a bitch, Birk said to himself. Pulled another rabbit out of the old hat.
Birk put away his flask and fished out his phone. He dialed the direct line to the network desk, which was run by a good-looking Brit named Sheila. A little old for his taste—at least fifty, by now—but not too old for a little friendly phone flirtation. And slim, like Miss Sari.
The septuagenarian correspondent cleared his throat and said, “Sheila, dear, you are not going to believe this, but I’m right smack dab in the middle of a gun battle in Malé.” He thought he sounded debonair as ever. “Put me on live.”
Oh, baby, it felt great to say those four words again: “Put me on live.” And to deliver them with such well-earned authority. Sounded so good that he repeated them to himself one more time during an odd stretch of dead air; Sheila was generally so perky. That’s why it was so easy to imagine spanking her.
“Listen, love…” Getting a little flirty herself with that “love” business. Might have to give her a chance, after all. “… you are on live, and if you’re really, really smart you’ll stop drinking and you won’t move when the guy behind you sticks his gun up your arse.”
“What?” Birk felt an adrenaline rush that became a tsunami as a gun barrel pressed against his head. Hot fucking steel burned so bad Birk thought he could smell his skin cooking, but he didn’t dare move.
“You there, love?” Sheila said. “We’re watching you and your friend. Everybody sends their best, I’m sure. Hang in there. No time to panic, old man.”
A hand reached over Birk’s shoulder, groped for his laminates. Then he was jerked around to face Mr. Raggedy Ass himself, who shouted the universal language of “Run, asshole, run” with uncommon force and fluency.
Birk ran, viciously poked and prodded to the gangplank by Raggedy Ass’s weapon. He looked around and saw that there was no one to save him; only one barrel poked out from the crack of a metal door, and it was the lens of chickenshit’s camera.
Raggedy Ass grabbed the RPG from a dead jihadist and screamed at Birk all the way up to the deck of the Dick Cheney. The correspondent had no idea what the jihadist was saying now, but the porker whom Birk had suspected of carrying a suicide bomb was speaking all too clearly of blood and bedlam with his half-naked show-and-tell. Birk took no comfort in seeing that his deductive powers had remained as sharp as ever. The vest looked like it held enough C-4 to take out the tanker, dock, and anything and anyone else within a half-mile radius.
Raggedy Ass cracked Birk on the shoulder with his rifle stock, collapsing his legs and forcing him to lie down, probably to be executed—and this really hurt—off camera.
Birk stretched out facedown on the filthy deck. The metal was so goddamn hot he felt like a boneless breast of chicken slapped on a grill.
Raggedy Ass cuffed his hands behind his back with plastic restraints, tightening