The Afghan

Three days before the G8 meeting, patience finally ran out-and at the highest level-with the global search based on the British tip-off. Marek Gumie

“Same thing. No dice. We have checked out just about every goddamn tanker on the planet, all categories. About fifty left to locate and identify then it’s over. Whatever this al-Isra phrase meant, either we’ll never find out, or it means nothing, or it has been long discontinued. Hold on… I’ll kill the other line.”

In a moment, he came back on. “There’s a ship overdue. Left Trinidad for Puerto Rico four days ago. Due yesterday. Never showed. Won’t answer.” “What kind of ship?” asked Hill.

“A tanker. Three thousand tons. Look, she may have foundered. But we’re checking now.”

“What was she carrying?” asked Hill. “Liquefied petroleum gas,” was the answer.

It was a KH-n “Keyhole” satellite that found her six hours after the complaint from Puerto Rico to head office of the oil company owners of the refinery, based in Houston, was turned into a major alarm.

Sweeping through the eastern Caribbean with its cameras and listening sensors checking on a five-hundred-mile-wide swath of sea and islands, the Keyhole heard a transponder signal from far below, and its computer confirmed it was from the missing Dona Maria.

The intelligence went instantly to a variety of agencies, which was why Marek Gumie

At Tampa, her course was plotted and extended forward. It went straight into the open mouth of the port of Miami, a waterway that leads to the heart of the city. Within ten minutes, the small tanker was attracting real company. A P-3 Orion sub hunter, aloft from the Naval Air Station at Key West, found her, dropped to a few thousand feet and began to circle, filming her from every angle. She appeared on a wall-sized plasma screen in the near darkness of the ops room at Tampa, almost life-sized.

“Jesus, would you look at that,” murmured an operator to no one in particular. While the freighter was at sea, someone had gone over the stern with a brush and white paint and daubed a crossbar over the letter i in Maria. It attempted to rechristen her the Dona Marta, but the white smear was simply too crude to dupe any onlooker for more than a few seconds.

There are two Coast Guard cutters operating out of Charleston, South Carolina, both Hamilton class, and both were at sea. They are the 717 USCG Mellon and her sister ship, the Morgenthau. The Mellon was closer, and turned toward the hijacked fugitive, moved from optimum cruising speed to flanking speed. Her navigator rapidly plotted her intercept at ninety minutes, just before sundown. The term “cutter” hardly does the Mellon justice; she can perform like a small destroyer, at 150 meters in length and 3,300 tons deadweight. As she raced through the early-April Atlantic swell, her crew ran to prepare her armament-just in case. The missing tanker was already rated as “likely hostile.” Then two figures appeared from the door of the sterncastle, just behind the bridge. One had an M6o machine gun slung round his neck. It was a futile gesture, and sealed the tanker’s fate. He was clearly North African, and clearly visible in the setting sun. He loosed off a short burst of gunfire that went over the top of the Mellon, then took a bullet in the chest from one of the four M16 carbines being aimed at him from the deck of the Mellon. That was the end of negotiations. As the Algerian’s body slumped backward, and the steel door through which he had stepped slammed shut, the captain of the Mellon asked for permission to sink the runaway. But permission was denied. The message from the base was unequivocal.

“Pull away from her. Make distance now, and make it fast. She’s a floating bomb.

Resume station a mile from the tanker.”

Regretfully, the Mellon turned away, powering up to maximum speed and leaving the tanker alone to her fate. The two F-16 Falcons were already airborne, and three minutes distant.

There is a squadron at Pensacola Air Force Base, on the Florida panhandle, that maintains a five-minutes-to-scramble standby readiness round the clock. Its primary use is against drug smugglers, airborne and sometimes seaborne, trying to slip into Florida and neighboring states with mostly cocaine. They came out of the sunset in a clear, darkling sky, locked on to the tanker west of Bimini and armed their Maverick missiles. Each pilot’s visual display showed him the SMART… MISSILES… LOCK on the target, and the death of the tanker was very mechanical, very precise, very devoid of emotion. There was a clipped command from the element leader, and both Mavericks left their housing beneath the fighters and followed their noses. Seconds later, two warheads involving some 135 kilograms of unpleasantness hit the tanker. Even though the Dona Marias cargo was not air-mixed for maximum power, the detonations of the Mavericks deep inside her petrol jelly were enough. From a mile away, the crew of the Mellon watched the Dona Maria burn and were duly impressed. They felt the heat wash over their faces and smelled the stench of concentrated gasoline on fire. It was quick. There was nothing left to smolder on the surface. The forward and stern ends of the tanker went down as two separate pieces of molten junk. The last of her heavier fuel oil flickered for five minutes, then the sea claimed it all.

Just as Ali Aziz al-Khattab had intended.

Within an hour, the president of the USA was interrupted at a state banquet with a brief, whispered message. He nodded, demanded a full verbal report at eight the next morning in the Oval Office and returned to his soup. At five minutes before eight, the director of the CIA, with Mark Gumie

The formalities were brief. Marek Gumie

“So, the tip from the Brits turned out to be right?” said the vice president. “Yes, sir. The agent they slipped inside Al Qaeda, a very brave officer whom I had the privilege of meeting last fall, must be presumed dead. If not, he would have shown sign of life by now. But he got the message out. The terror weapon was indeed a ship.”