Sandstorm (Page 54)

“We’re too late.”

He knew with certainty that the grenade explosion hadn’t marked the start of the mission, but its end.

He silently cursed his stupidity. This was all the endgame. And he hadn’t even been playing. He had been caught totally off guard. He allowed himself this moment of anger, then focused on the situation.

An endgame was not necessarily the end itself.

He stared as the four Jet Skis swooped toward the boat. Come to collect the last members of the assault team, the rear guard, the demolition team assigned to blow the radio shack. One of the Omani sailors must have stumbled upon these men, leading to the firefight on the deck.

More gunfire erupted, sounding farther away, more determined, near the stern of the boat. They were attempting to retreat.

Out the window, Painter watched the last of the Jet Skis circle wide, wary of the gunfire. The other Jet Skis, those with men manning the mounted assault rifles, were nowhere in sight. He also heard no sign of their engagement. They were gone. Along with the point team, Painter imagined. Along with the prize.

But to where?

Again he searched the water for the main assault ship. It was out there somewhere. But only dark waters lay beyond. Storm clouds now obliterated both moon and stars, turning the world black. His fingers clenched on the sill of the wide window.

As he searched, a flicker of light drew his eye—not out across the waters, but down below it.

He leaned farther and stared into the depths.

Deep in the midnight waters, a glow glided out from under the ship. It slowly slipped off to starboard and floated determinedly away. Painter’s brow crinkled. He recognized what he saw. A submersible. Why?

The answer came immediately with the question.

With the mission over, the sub and the main assault team were bugging out. All that was left was the cleanup. To leave no witnesses.

He knew the purpose of the sub’s presence. To come in baffled and silent, too small to detect…

“They’ve mined the ship,” he said aloud. He calculated in his head how long it would take for a sub to clear the blast zone.

Kara said something, but he had gone deaf to her.

Painter swung from the window and hurried to the door. The firefight seemed to have settled to a stalemate of sporadic shots. He listened at the door. Nothing sounded close. He slid back the bolt.

“What are you doing?” Kara asked at his shoulder, sticking close but clearly irritated by her own need to do so.

“We must get off this boat.”

He cracked the door open. A few steps away lay the opening to the middeck. The winds had kicked up as the edge of the coming storm brushed over the Shabab Oman. Sails snapped like whips. Ropes rattled in stanchions.

He studied the deck, reading it like a chessboard.

The crew had no opportunity to reef and secure the mainsails. The Omani sailors were pinned down by a pair—no, three gunmen—hidden behind a pile of barrels stacked at the far end of the middeck. The masked men had the perfect vantage point to guard the forward sections of the ship. One of the pair kept his rifle pointed toward the raised stern deck, protecting their rear.

Closer, a fourth masked gunman lay sprawled on the deck, facedown, blood pooled around his head, the body only a few steps from Painter.

He took in the situation with a glance. Similarly ensconced behind crates on this side of the middeck were the four Omani border-patrol agents, the Desert Phantoms. They lay on their bellies, rifles pointed toward the gunmen. It was a standoff. It must have been the Phantoms who had waylaid the assault team’s rear guard, pinned them down, kept them from escaping over rails.

“C’mon,” Painter said, and took Kara by the elbow. He dragged her out the suite’s door and toward the lower stairs.

“Where’re we going?” she asked. “What about getting off the boat?”

He didn’t answer. He was too late, but he had to be sure. He clambered down the stairs to the next landing. A short passage led to the guest quarters.

In the middle of the hall, bathed in the light from the single overhead lamp, a body draped across the floor. Facedown like the masked man above. But this was not one of the attackers.

He wore only boxers and a white T-shirt. A tiny dark stain marred the center of his back. Shot from behind as he attempted to flee.

“It’s Clay…” Kara mumbled in shock, hurrying forward with Painter.

She knelt near the boy’s body, but Painter stepped over him. He had no time for mourning. He hurried to the door toward which the graduate student had been heading, seeking a place to hide or to warn others. Too late.

They’d all been too late.

Painter stopped outside the door. It was cracked half open. Lamplight flowed into the hall. Painter listened intently. Silence. He steeled himself against what he would find.

Kara called to him, knowing what he feared. “Safia?”

2:02 A.M.

O MAHA SHOVED out an arm as the ship rolled beneath him. The darkness of the bilge threw off his sense of balance. Water sloshed over his shoes, chilling his ankles.

A crash sounded behind him…and a curse. Danny was faring no better.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Coral asked Omaha, her voice frosty, echoing a bit in the dank bilge.

“Yes,” he snapped back. It was a lie. He kept trailing one hand along the sloped wall to the left, praying he’d find a ladder leading back up. The next one should lead to the main storage hold under the middeck. Or so he hoped.

They continued in silence.

Rats squeaked in sharp protest, sounding larger in the darkness, as big as wet bulldogs. Their numbers multiplied in the imagination. Omaha heard their bodies splashing through the bilge waters, running ahead of them, likely piling into an angry mass at the stern of the ship. In an alley in Calcutta, he had seen a rat-gnawed corpse. The eyes gone, the genitals eaten away, all soft places gnashed. He did not like rats.

But fear for Safia drove him onward, his anxiety heightened by the darkness, the spates of gunfire. Bloody images flashed across his mind’s eye, too terrible to dwell upon. Why had he put off telling her how he still felt about her? He would gladly drop on his knees now to have her safe and sound.

His outstretched hand struck something solid. He reached out and discovered rungs and nail heads. A ladder.

“Here it is,” he said with more confidence than he felt. He didn’t care if he was right or wrong or where the hell the ladder led. He was climbing out.

As Danny and Coral moved closer, he mounted the rungs.

“Be careful,” Coral warned.