Twenty-four Days Read online

  "Other than I'm busy?" Rowe leaned forward with a magnifying lens and examined the calcified debris encrusted on the pig’s teeth.

  "I can help; pour you a beer or something."

  Rowe chuckled in spite of himself. He had missed James’s irreverence. "Go ahead; chat."

  So James shared his God's eye view of Candy Caminski. "Not someone I'd marry—not like Kali—but my Ms. Perfect is still out there."

  When Rowe’s only response was a grunt, James asked, “How’s Kali? We haven’t talked in a few months."

  James and Kali didn’t talk, they argued, and refereeing made Rowe happy to be a former SEAL rather than a kindergarten teacher.

  "She didn’t see my best side last year. If she gets to know me, she’ll like me. Not today, but someday.”

  “God hasn’t invented that day, bud.”

  “I’d like to attend her competition tomorrow—Man vs. Machine."

  Before Rowe blurted out an inappropriate response, James’s phone buzzed. He glanced and stuffed it back in his pocket. "Eitan's running late."

  Dr. Eitan Sun, the FBI’s premiere intelligence expert, undercover as a Columbia University techie. What did James need with him?

  As though he read Rowe’s mind, James continued, “He’s checking something for me.”

  Rowe’s brain hummed, like an engine warming up. “He didn’t say anything this morning when we talked.”

  "It’s need-to-know.”

  Rowe processed this through a brain conditioned to reading behind words and decided James wanted to pull him in on whatever the newest emergency was. Not this time. Rowe had a job he loved and a girlfriend he planned to marry.

  “That leaves me out.”

  James flicked a piece of lint off his collar, his face the image of serenity. “I can tell you if you’re on the Task Force."

  Rowe tingled again, but focused back on the bones. “Tell me the outsider version.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Speak slowly. I’ll try to read your lips.”

  Sweat prickled James’s forehead and he shifted in his seat. “Hell, Zeke, we have a big problem. Two subs are missing.”

  Rowe focused on James. “What happened?”

  “A Brit sub, Triumph, was playing war games with the Dutch off the Netherlands. They were supposed to stay dark so it took seven hours for the Brits to realize they were missing. In an unrelated incident, Virginia left port yesterday and hasn’t been heard from since.” James ran down what he learned from a British agent named Haster.

  Rowe’s eyes were on the skull, but his concentration on the missing submarines. “These two subs’ combined weaponry theoretically can attack every location on the planet.”

  “Or hold it hostage. Eitan’s figuring out if the hijackers can access the nuclear weapons. MI-6 and the Navy say no, but I’ll believe it when Eitan says it. How does someone hijack a sub, Zeke?”

  A chill went through Rowe at the thought of rogue subs with his nation in their crosshairs. He pawed through a pile of old-fashioned wood pencils, selected one and flipped it. It was a habit developed years ago to help him think.

  "Submariners board the sub. No fingerprints or iris scans required. If they kill a few officers, threaten a few families, everyone knows they’re serious.”

  "We checked. Immediate families are healthy."

  “Subs have no communication with the outside world. Photoshopped images of dead wives and frightened kids are persuasive.

  “Why not use your in-house intel geniuses, Bobby?"

  James laughed. “You’re like them but smarter.”

  Rowe didn’t need extra smarts to know James was hiding something. He removed breccia from pig jaws while he waited for James to reach a decision. Finally, he spit it out.

  “They didn’t degauss Triumph, Zeke. Something about testing the crew's skills. Otto can find it. I’m trying to get Kali’s clearance reinstated, but after what she did last year, no one’s eager to give it."

  Rowe forced his voice to remain calm. “Why would she help you? She kept the entire American fleet out of enemy hands and you thanked her by trying to nationalize Otto. You would have, too, except she threatened to destroy him. Your response: Pull her clearance.”

  “We over-reacted. You’re right. I’m going to fix—”

  “How do you fix a lack of trust?”

  James’s face flushed. "Eitan says codes protecting the nuclear weapons can be broken, given enough time. The hijackers have a day head start. I’m prepared to apologize, but we’ll use Otto with or without her cooperation."

  That was a hell of a plan to mend bridges.

  James wandered through Rowe’s lab—the table of artifacts, the drawers bursting with comparison pieces, and the piles of documentation that supported Rowe’s early man research—as though he understood the weight of what he asked.

  “I need your help, Zeke.”

  Rowe flipped his pencil, peered at his friend and made a decision. "One condition: Tread lightly with Kali."

  “Don’t I always?”

  “Do you ever?”

  Chapter Five

  Yong Soon Young

  Yong Soon Young was the only child of Kim Soon Young and his Iranian bride Akhtar. ‘Yong’ translated as ‘brave’ in Korean, a fitting name for the son of North Korea’s most feared general, though a daunting goal for the scrawny, underweight infant who cried piteously every waking hour. Colic, the doctors said. He will grow out of it.

  By the age of two, he did indeed stop crying. He also stopped eating. Nothing edible persuaded this privileged child to do more than nibble. Failure to thrive, his doctors intoned.

  His father declared him spoiled.

  On Yong’s sixth birthday, his father had enough and forced the pale, stick-thin boy to join him in a review of the personal protection detail for North Korea’s Supreme Ruler. For ten minutes, Yong clung to the General’s leg, shaking with fear. When his father commanded he walk at his side, Yong peed his pants.

  His father was furious. He rechristened the boy Gil-dong—the invisible one—fired his tutors, and enrolled him in the local primary school. Living among the populace would cure him or kill him and the General didn’t care which. The boy tried to make friends, but respected no opinion other than his own. He was shocked when the other kids laughed. His father shared ideas with subordinates and they all agreed. Gil-dong fought back, pointing out to classmates—reasonably he thought—that tests proved him smarter than them so they should listen to him.

  He spent the next four years hiding in the library when not in class. There he lost himself in the benevolent world of fantasy where he became the courageous, noble son his father so badly wanted.

  One day, Gil-dong settled in at his usual table preparing to read yet another story about strong men with lofty goals they always achieved, when he noticed a volume discarded on the desk. The cover showed a skinny bespeckled man-boy named Trevor Fieldman. Gil-dong flipped it open and started reading. By the age of twenty-three, despite his weak body, Fieldman became one of the wealthiest, most influential men in the world—this, according to the same giants of industry and political leaders who feared and respected Gil-dong’s father.

  How was that possible? His father insisted success came from physical prowess, yet Fieldman had much of the former and none of the latter. As he poured through the chapters, Gil-dong discovered why. Where his father controlled people with brawn, Fieldman achieved the same results with his brain by hijacking secrets which he leveraged to achieve success. This was an epiphany. Gil-dong had never considered his astounding intellect useful beyond passing tests and impressing teachers.

  Over the next two years, Gil-dong learned to use trolls and viruses as his father did soldiers. By high school, the obsequious, frightened boy with the gracile physique and darting eyes became a self-assured man who treated his tormenters as lab rats. He hacked their school records, lowered grades and changed university recommendations to scathing attacks. When the cla
ss leader confronted him, he stuffed a dead bird into his locker. When the boy complained, Gil-dong hung the body of the family’s cat over the front door and smiled when the eight-year-old sister broke into tears.

  Everyone learned to leave Gil-dong alone.

  He hoped his cunning would curry his father’s favor, but the great general equated clever to weak. That changed when a few keystrokes persuaded his father’s alma mater, the prestigious Sakchu military academy, to interview him for one of their coveted spots. Gil-dong arrived at the meeting, saluted as he had practiced, sure this time he would make his father proud. A young officer greeted him, regal in his starched uniform and chestful of ribbons. Gil-dong proffered his resume, but the interviewer brushed it aside. Gil-dong must first pass the physical requirements.

  He failed.

  His father threw him out of the house.

  Thanks to a kindly administrator who took pity on the brilliant boy, he received a four-year scholarship to the American university NYU in Abu Dhabi UAE. Gil-dong changed his name to Ankour Mohammed—a football player he read about on the internet—and vowed to never again speak to his father.

  Within a month, Ankour Mohammed, né Yong Soon Young, aka Gil-dong, hated NYU. Wealth served as the school's currency much like muscle had been his father's. Once classmates discovered his poverty, he became invisible. This surprised Mohammed. He thought here in the West, with its reputation for freedom of speech and open-minded attitudes, he’d find friends who agreed with his supremacist thoughts, but as in high school, everyone shunned his extremism. Mohammed wrote it off to stupidity and jealousy. Of course they hated him. He was smarter than they.

  Without friends to detract from studies, he spent his days studying and his evenings laundering and repairing the two sets of clothing he owned—white drawstring pants with a plain white t-shirt, and off-white linen pants with a black long-sleeved dress shirt. With little effort, he excelled at his courses, especially science and engineering, and graduated tenth in his class. Most graduates had jobs waiting for them or grad school positions secured through friendly professors, but not Mohammed. As he pondered his non-existent options, one of his professors invited him to lunch. Dr. Nasr Al-alah was small in stature like Mohammed, wore glasses and a poorly-made gray suit over a stark white old-fashioned Nehru shirt. During their meal, Dr. Al-alah chatted about the University, student life, even Middle Eastern politics.

  Halfway through Mohammed’s hot fudge sundae, Dr. Al-alah said, "Your father, Mr. Mohammed, must be proud of you."

  Mohammed flushed. He carefully folded his hands in his lap and looked Dr. Al-alah in the eye, "My father is dead to me as I am to him."

  Dr. Al-alah smiled and instructed Mohammed to call him Nasr.

  Mohammed liked this professor who allowed a boy to greet him informally. When Nasr offered to sponsor Mohammed’s grad school application, Mohammed blushed.

  “I have no money, Dr—Nasr. I must leave.”

  “Insha’Allah,” Nasr smiled. If God wills. He invited Mohammed to meet other applicants. Mohammed cringed, but Nasr stopped him.

  “This group is different. Each, like you, is brilliant and wishes to pursue graduate studies in a technical major.”

  Mohammed reluctantly agreed and arrived at the appointed time. He found himself chatting, receiving nods of agreement, and delving into ideas as he had never done his entire life. When he confessed to the pranks he pulled, everyone laughed with him, enjoying the strength brains brought to an argument. By evening’s end, Mohammed had found a family.

  The next day, he received an invitation to participate in a program sponsored by Dr. Nasr Al-alah. The money he earned would cover graduate studies. The only requirement was Mohammed join a jihad upon graduation. All adult Muslims must do this so Mohammed willingly agreed.

  Soon, Mohammed spent all his time outside of classes with these students. Never in his life had he experienced such love. With them, he became part of something big. When he shared this with Nasr, the man smiled in his calm, loving way, the one that made Mohammed feel he could do no wrong.

  "Praise be to Allah, young Ankour. It is time you understand the Great Satan. We will study Sayyid Qutb whose visionary ideas inspired even the great Osama bin Laden."

  In the first lesson, Mohammed learned the West considered the individual supreme. This confused Mohammed because Islam believed everyone served Allah equally. In the second lesson, Mohammed learned that the infidel considered death failure while Muslims believed it began their glorious existence with Allah.

  The last lesson startled Mohammed more than any other. Where the Prophet taught Muslim beliefs were never to be questioned, the West considered compromise a cornerstone to world harmony, that it demonstrated respect for other cultures by seeking a middle ground.

  When Mohammed graduated—at the top of his class again—Nasr Al-alah introduced him to the Vali-e-faqih of Iran, heir to the Prophet Muhammad. The man was tall and charismatic, older than Mohammed but younger than Nasr Al-alah, with dark curly hair framing a noble face, smooth except for a left cheek more hamburger than flesh. Mohammed prostrated himself, nose on the ground, elbows raised. The Vali-e-faqih patted Mohammed and then addressed the group.

  “The time has come to begin your jihad. Expect it to be difficult, but Allah will guide you. Follow his lead. Fi Amanullah—may Allah protect you."

  One by one, the Vali-e-faqih pulled each newly-minted PhD aside and explained their job. Finally, Mohammed’s turn came.

  "Your task, young Mohammed, is two-part. First, infiltrate an American warship. Second, forgive your father."

  Mohammed collapsed inside like wet tissue paper. Moments passed before he worked up the courage to speak to the man greater than all. "He refuses to speak to me, Holy Leader."

  He rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder, eyes boring into Mohammed’s. "Speak to his soul. Inshallah. If Allah wishes, your father will hear you.”

  Mohammed’s pride swelled. The Holy Leader saw potential in a man such as he, one rejected by his father, expelled from his homeland, and new to Islam. How great the Holy Leader must be to see what Mohammed offered.

  He bowed. "Praise be to Allah. I will do as required to serve Allah and his messenger." When the Vali-e-faqih left, Mohammed asked Nasr, "How am I to speak to my father's soul?"

  "Thy Lord hath decreed ye must be kind to parents. Say not a word of contempt, nor repel them, but address them in terms of honor. And, lower to them the wing of humility. These are the words of Allah. Praise be to him." He left Mohammed alone in the room.

  Mohammed decided to eat nothing, drink only water, and await Allah’s guidance. He sat cross-legged in a corner, held his hands out in supplication and prayed.

  A day later, he approached Al-alah. "I wish to call my father."

  “The time for that will come when Allah wills it. First, we begin your journey into the belly of the Beast."

  On the flight across the Atlantic, Al-alah explained al-Zahrawi’s plan.

  "You are responsible for the second of three stages in this the holiest of jihads. If you fail, we fail. The first is complete. We have two nuclear submarines which will soon destroy the West.” At Mohammed’s astonishment, Al-alah merely fluttered his hand through the air. “All is possible with the guidance of Allah.”

  “In the second stage, we capture an American naval vessel. You will be undercover so must sublimate your personality, opinions, and attitudes. They have no part in your jihad. Can you do this?”

  In Mohammed’s mind, his supremacist views were the root of his success so why would Al-alah require he hide them? Still, he answered in words spoken by every mujahid.

  “SubhanAllah. If Allah wills, he will give me the strength.”

  “You have less than three weeks. We have arranged quarters for you in San Diego, California. There, you will befriend an officer on the American warship. If female, you will seduce her. If male, you will turn him over to Shalimar."

  Mohammed blanched. "I cannot spea
k to females as is done in such a decadent country. I am repulsed to touch them. Is there another way?"

  Al-alah took the boy’s hand, “You are my star, Mohammed, but if you cannot do this, return to your father."

  "N-no, I will do it." He laughed nervously. "How does one ‘flirt’ with a female?"

  "I will teach you," and Al-alah said nothing more.

  They landed, passed through customs, and exited. Al-alah put his hand on Mohammed’s shoulder. "It is time to call your father. He must know you forgive him and he must forgive you."

  Mohammed bowed and made the call. To his surprise, his father was friendly, as though expecting the call. They discussed his mother, his father’s new position as Wonsu, and Mohammed’s desire to serve Allah. Where Mohammed expected disgust that he abandoned the religion of his family, his father merely grunted acknowledgement and hoped Mohammed would allow him to be part of his future.

  It shocked Mohammed. His father dictated, never requested. He offered a stunned, “Of course,” and ended the conversation.

  Al-alah now gave Mohammed final instructions. “A boy lives in the apartment building you will move to,” and provided a name. “You may need to eliminate him.”

  He gave Mohammed a card to provide money and they went their separate ways.

  Chapter Six

  When Mohammed reached San Diego, California, he moved into a bachelor unit—a funny name for a room big enough for a family. He found the building’s security cameras so he would know to avoid them, located the boy, pocketed the set of keys he found on the kitchen counter, and browsed through the supplies that filled the closets.

  That done, he logged onto his secure account. First, he needed a list of cruisers based at the San Diego Naval base. Thanks to the internet, he came up with six. Only two fit Al-alah’s requirements: USS Bunker Hill and USS Princeton. He would infiltrate both.

  For no particular reason, he started with USS Princeton. He drove to the base, parked in a public lot near Princeton’s dock, and trained a set of powerful binoculars on the gangway. When a group of officers left for the day, he followed them to a downtown bar called Trophy’s. The males trolled for women leaving the lone female by herself. He knew he should approach her, but Al-alah had not yet taught Mohammed how to talk to a female.