all lying on their backs. Earlier he’d passed out what he’d told them was another dose of potassium iodide; it was in fact three grams of lorazepam stuffed into a generic cellulose capsule. At three times the standard dose, the anti- anxiety medication was enough to put the men into a profoundly deep sleep.
For the last four hours he’d wrestled with what he had to do next-not the necessity of it but the method. These men were already dying, and nothing could change that; he was dying, and nothing could change that, either. It was the cost of war and the burden of the faithful. He took some consolation that they would never awaken, never feel any pain. The only other consideration, then, was noise. Salychev was old, but he was tough and hardened by a life at sea. Safer to take him by surprise.
Adnan went to the workbench mounted on the aft bulkhead and opened the top left-hand drawer. Inside was the knife he’d found during his earlier search. It was J-shaped, with a needle-sharp point and a finely honed edge, used, he assumed, to gut fish.
He gripped the wooden haft, blade angled up, then stepped to the first bunk. He took a deep breath, then placed his left hand on the man’s chin, turned the head toward the mattress, then jammed the tip of the blade into the hollow beneath his earlobe and drew the knife up, following the edge of his jawline. Blood gushed from the severed carotid; in the darkness, it looked black. The man gave out a soft moan against Adnan’s palm, then spasmed once, twice, and went still. Adnan moved to the second man, repeated the process, then to the third. In all, it took ninety seconds. He dropped the knife onto the deck, then went up into the salon and washed the blood from his hands. He knelt down beside the sink, opened the bottom drawer, and withdrew the 9-millimeter Yarygin pistol he’d secreted there. He drew back the slide an inch to ensure that a bullet was chambered, then cocked the hammer, flipped off the safety, and stuffed the pistol into the side pocket of his jacket. Finally, he grabbed a plastic coffee cup from the drying rack.
He climbed back up the ladder and into the pilothouse.
“Coffee,” he said, handing the cup to Salychev with his left hand. The captain turned, reached for it. Adnan drew the Yarygin from his pocket and shot him in the forehead. Blood and brain matter splattered against the side window. Salychev slumped backward and slid down the bulkhead. Adnan flipped the autopilot switch on the helm console, then grabbed Salychev by the ankles, dragged him to the ladder, and rolled him down into the salon.
Back at the helm, Adnan took a minute to recheck their position with the ancient Loran-C unit, then he flipped off the autopilot and adjusted course.
The linear dark streak of the island appeared on the horizon an hour later, and an hour after that, Adnan slowed the engines and came about following the shoreline east until the Loran-C’s display showed the correct coordinates.
The island was known as Kolguyev and was, according to Adnan’s chart, part of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, an almost perfect circle of wetlands, bogs, and low hills measuring eighty kilometers across and home to one lonely settlement called Bugrino on the southeastern coast, populated by a few hundred Nenets, who fished, farmed, and herded reindeer.
Adnan throttled back to idle and turned off the ignition. He checked his watch: ten minutes late. He pulled the portable spotlight from the bulkhead rack and walked onto the deck. The coded blink of his spotlight was immediately followed by the correct response from shore.
Five minutes later he heard the soft rumble of an outboard motor. A speedboat appeared out of the darkness and pulled alongside the port gunwale. Four men were aboard; each was armed with an AK-47. Adnan didn’t recognize any of them. Not that it mattered; the spotlight code matched, and if it was a trap, there was nothing to be done about it now.
“You are Abdul-Baqi-Servant of the Creator?” one of the men, the leader, Adnan assumed, asked.
“No. Servant of the Everlasting,” Adnan replied. “It’s good to see you here.”
“And you, brother.”
“Toss me your bowline and come aboard. It will take at least two of you to lift.”
While Adnan wrapped the line around the gunwale cleat, two of the men climbed aboard, unchained the containment vessel from its position on the deck, and carried it back to the gunwale, where the two men aboard the speedboat took it and set it on the deck. The last two men joined their partners.
“Any problems?” the leader asked.
“None. Everything went as planned.”
“Can we help you any further?”
Adnan shook his head. “No, thank you. It’s almost done. It’s deep here, almost three hundred meters. The sea will do the rest.”
60
THIS, Admiral Stephen Netters knew, was going to be an unpleasant meeting, and it had as much to do with who wasn’t attending as it did with who was. By all rights, the man sitting on the other side of the desk from him should have been Robby Jackson, but it wasn’t. Some redneck with a heart full of hate had seen to that. Instead, they had Edward Kealty. The wrong man for any season. Netters and Jackson had come up together, starting at the Naval Academy, their careers intersecting now and again as they climbed the ladder until finally, in the waning days of the Ryan administration, Netters had been appointed chairman of the JCS. He’d taken the job for a variety of reasons, ambition being the lowest among them, respect for Ryan being paramount.
It’d been hard not to quit after that, and especially after it became clear that Kealty was going to win the Oval Office not on merit but by dumb fate and tragedy. But even as the votes were being counted and the electoral map inexorably tipped in favor of Kealty, Netters knew he’d stay on, lest the new President appoint one of the Pentagon’s “perfumed princes.” One only had to look at the depth (or lack thereof) of Kealty’s cabinet to know what the man expected from his people. And therein was the rub. Contradict the king too often or with too much zeal and a more amenable prince would be found. Fail to contradict the king and the kingdom goes to the barbarians.
“Tell me what I’m looking at, Admiral,” President Kealty said with a grunt, and shoved the satellite photo back across the desk at Netters.
“Mr. President, what we’re seeing is a large-scale movement of tanks and mechanized infantry moving west toward the border.”
“I can see that, Admiral. What kind of numbers are we talking about, and what the hell are they up to?”
“As for the first question, we’ve identified an armored division consisting of three tank brigades with a mix of older Soviet T-54s, T-62s, and Zulfiqar main battle tanks; four artillery battalions; and two mechanized infantry divisions. As for what they’re up to, Mr. President, we can’t think in those terms yet. We need to concentrate on what they’re capable of, then work forward to intention.”
“Explain that,” National Security Adviser Ann Reynolds said.
Translation:
“Say I intend to beat the Olympic record for the marathon. That’s my intention. Problem is, both my legs are broken and I’ve got a heart condition. That’s my capacity. The latter dictates the former.”
Reynolds nodded sagely.
Scott Kilborn, the DCI, said, “Mr. President, Tehran is going to call it an ‘exercise,’ but we can’t ignore the obvious: First of all, the force is moving toward the Ilam salient-as the crow flies, it’s as close to Baghdad as any point in Iran. Eighty or so miles. Second, we just put into motion our drawdown plan in Iraq. Best case, they’re
