She had to do better than that. Letting the boat drift, she went to the forward deck and peeled off her outer clothes, revealing her bathing suit.
The rope holding the
Ferguson took a breath, then pulled himself up over the side.
Thirty feet to his right, a stubby, aircraftlike missile sat in the middle of the deck. Two men were working on one of the wings.
Ferguson lifted his MP5N and fired a brief burst into the air.
“Hello! What we want to do is move away from there,” he shouted. “Back up! Now, boys.”
The men threw up their hands. Ferguson glanced toward the super-structure of the ship. There were two or three people there, and at least one other sailor near the rail on the opposite side of the ship.
“Who are you?” yelled a man.
“That’s my Siren missile,” said Ferguson. “I want it back.”
“Where exactly do you want it?” said Ravid, emerging from a hatchway on the deck to Ferguson’s right.
“Raise the pistol at me, and I’ll shoot the missile,” Ferguson warned, guessing — correctly — that Ravid had a weapon in the hand he had down by his side.
Ravid held the gun up but not aimed at him. “You would die for Islam?”
“I don’t quite look at it that way,” said Ferguson. He kept the MP5N aimed at the missile. “You really think it would be a good idea to drop a Siren missile on Mecca?”
“It’s a start. I only wish it were a nuke.”
“Because some crazies killed your wife and son?”
“She was a Muslim,” said Ravid. “It didn’t save her.”
“I’m sorry. This isn’t good, though. You can’t just kill people, right? The people there are as innocent as your wife and kid.”
“No, they’re not.”
“God wouldn’t want you to kill innocent people.”
“There is no God,” said Ravid. “So you’ve dogged me the whole way?”
“Not the whole way. Tell me you didn’t blow up Thatch.”
Ravid frowned.
“Just an accident?” Ferguson took another sidestep on the deck. He’d been working to try and get close enough to Ravid to roll and knock him off balance, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
“There are no accidents.”
“Oh, sure there are.” Ferguson took another half step. “People die in bathtubs all the time.”
“You won’t.” He raised his gun.
“This isn’t going to make you feel better.”
“Oh, yes, it will.” He fired, striking Ferguson in the chest and side, the bullets piercing his wetsuit.
Ferguson, protected by his bulletproof vest, pitched himself downward and fired his gun. His bullets caught Ravid across the chest as well, twisting his aim wide and sending him back in a stagger.
Revenge would be so sweet, thought Ravid. All these years he had pretended to be one of them, and now he would have his revenge.
He fired his gun and gave the order to fire the missile. But his last shots were unaimed, and the words a bare whisper. Ferguson fired another burst, striking him in the head. Ravid tried to talk but choked, his last thought dying on his tongue: So sweet, revenge.
By the time Ferg got to his feet, the others had scrambled for cover. He ran past the missile launcher to the other side, looking first for them and then examining the launcher, trying to think of how he might disable it. A thick wire ran off one side of the metal base. As he reached into his pocket for his phone to call the weapons expert, the missile ignited. Surprised by the rumble, he turned and emptied his gun into the billowing smoke, but it had no visible effect; the missile shot off the ship.
“Use the SA-7,” he yelled to Thera. “The SA-7!”
Then he dove headlong into the water below, arcing down to the waves.
Thera had already sighted the Siren with the weapon even as Ferguson dove. The surface-to-air missile leapt from the launcher, trailing the thick oval of flame and smoke heading toward land.
As an early cruise missile, the Siren had one great vulnerability: it was basically a slow and lumbering airplane, and presented a fat and juicy target to even a rudimentary air-to-air missile such as the SA-7. But Thera had given the siren too much of a head start. After a few hundred yards the SA-7 stopped gaining on its target; it began to steer right, then faltered and disappeared.
“Jesus,” said Thera.
Something flashed in the distance. There was a loud thunderclap, and then a bright finger of flame and a plume of black smoke rose from the shoreline.
“It blew up! It blew up on its own,” said Thera as Ferguson climbed aboard the boat.
“No,” said Ferguson. “Listen.”
It began as a whisper in the distance, but within a few moments the throaty roar of a pair of F-15s boomed high overhead. The missile had been shot down by an Israeli interceptor.
“Helicopters,” said Ferguson, pointing behind him. A pair of Sikorsky Vas’ur 2000 (improved H-53s) and a quartet of Bell Tsefa gunships roared over the water from the north. “They’re going to want us to lay flat with our hands out. Nice thong, by the way. Wicked Weasel?”
4
Tischler was with the troops who roped down to the tanker. He took his time coming to the diving boat. By then Ferguson had been searched by several Israelis — it was obvious Thera was unarmed — and allowed to get up off the deck. Ferguson went below and retrieved a beer from the ice chest. He was drinking one when the Mossad supervisor came aboard.
“Why’d you wait so long if you knew what was going on?” Ferguson asked him.
“I didn’t know what was going on. We followed you.”
“You couldn’t have found Ravid on your own?”
Tischler didn’t answer. They could have, certainly, though they might not have thought to if the Americans hadn’t raised questions. Or at least that’s what Ferguson thought. Tischler wasn’t the type to say.
“The operation was always to get Meles,” said Ferguson. “And you tipped us off about Khazaal as a matter of courtesy. Am I right?”
Tischler shrugged.
“But Ravid wanted more. He didn’t tell you, but he’d probably been looking at getting more for quite a while. Did he stumble across Seven Angels, or did they come to him?” asked Ferguson.
“I assume he ran into them in Syria. There are all sorts of crazies there.”
“The sister… is she on the boat?”
Tischler shook his head. “I would have told you if she was. There are no Americans. Probably Ravid killed her.”
“So he used Thatch’s credit card, not her,” said Ferguson.
“I would believe so.”
Ferguson thought so as well.
“Ravid took Khazaal’s jewels and used Coldwell to buy the missile, because Birk might not have sold it to him. And you just watched?” said Ferguson.
“We would not have let that happen if we had been in a position to observe it.”
“You expect me to believe it?”
“You missed it as well. You were there, Ferguson. It happened under your nose.”
