Page 36 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier
Just as the next quad launcher was being filled with its fourth Yari, the Vendor’s digital watch dinged on his wrist.
“Excellent,” he said to himself.
The third applicant for the “VIP security” assignment posted on the dark web had cleared his records check and accepted the job offer. Of course, none of the applicants would know that the true mission was a battle to the death with the Vendor’s new weapons systems on a remote island until it was too late.
The dark web advertisement promised a twenty-five percent upfront payment of an extravagant salary upon such acceptance. The Vendor tapped his watch and transferred Bitcoin into the applicant’s account. At this rate of recruitment, he would be traveling to the Island of Sorrows sooner than he planned.
18
Somewhere Over the Gulf of Oman
Juan’s eyes flittered open, but his mind was fogged by a brutal migraine headache and a throbbing pain on the side of his skull. A high-pitched roar filled his ears and his face was pressed against cold metal, cold as the air around him. He suddenly remembered Yaqoob’s hammering blow against the side of his face and his lights snapping out. The burning pain in his cheek made him think it might be broken.
He shook his head to clear a few more cobwebs, but it felt like his brain was hitting the sides of his skull like a tennis ball in a can, so he stopped. But it was enough to get his bearings.
The roaring noise was the whine of jet turbines. He glanced around, still lying on the floor. His vision was blocked by pallets stacked with metal cases and wooden crates. Everything was shrink-wrapped in plastic and then covered with cargo straps. Glancing a few inches in the other direction showed the base of the pallet nearest him. It was constructed of plywood sheets with seven-inch-thick honeycombed cardboard sandwiched between them. He’d seen this kind of setup before on humanitarian aid drops over Africa. No doubt each pallet had a parachute packed on top.
He tried to raise his hands to rub his eyes, but his arms couldn’t move. In fact, his wrists were zip-tied behind his back. Worse, he waswrapped up like a mummy in plastic from his shoulders to his thighs—just like the pallets. He was lying on the metal deck of the aircraft, tossed there like a sack of wet cement.
No doubt about it. He was cinched up tighter than one of hisabuelita’s spicy tamales.
Adrenaline kicked in. If there was anything that Cabrillo couldn’t abide, it was the loss of freedom of movement. That angry endocrine surge cleared his mind enough to get to work.
He leveraged his legs to roll onto his back. His shoulders ached and now he was crushing his bound wrists, but he had a better view of his situation. At least his ankles weren’t tied up. Either they ran out of zip ties or they felt sorry for him with his prosthetic leg.
Cabrillo noticed that the ragged end of the plastic wrap ran down his front. That gave him an idea.
He looked around until he found what he was hoping for—the head of a nail sticking out of the corner of a nearby pallet. He flopped and wriggled like a catfish in the bottom of a johnboat until he was able to scooch his way up against it.
It took him ten minutes of careful twisting and turning against the nailhead for him to finally peel back the edge of the plastic several inches along his torso.
It took him several more exhausting minutes of micro-movements to get the exposed plastic edge secured to the nailhead.
He took a deep breath to replenish his reserves, then gently rolled himself over. The sibilant whisper of the unwrapping plastic lifted his spirits, but he ran into the bulkhead before he was free. He wriggled his way carefully back to the pallet without tearing the plastic, resecured the plastic to the nailhead, then rolled away again. He repeated the process several more times until he was finally free of the sheeting, emerging from the cocoon of plastic film like a crippled snake shedding its translucent skin.
Drenched in sweat despite the cold and fighting through the burn of lactic acid eating into every muscle fiber in his body, Juan rolled onto his back once again. Planting his boots on the deck he thrust hiships upward, forming a high-angled bridge from the top of his knees down to his shoulders now pressing against the floor.
He then angled his thighs closer to his twisting arms until his fingers were finally able to reach the first of three buckles securing his prosthetic leg. Since he’d already shown the Taliban his artificial limb they had no reason to be surprised by it as they were securing him—let alone suspect anything of it.
By now Juan’s hands ached as if they had been crushed in a hydraulic press because of the blood flow restricted by the zip ties. But with the grace of an arthritic yoga instructor, he managed to manipulate his numbing fingers enough to unlatch the buckles beneath his trousers and pop them open.
He then lowered himself and used his left boot to leverage against his right boot until he finally inched the prosthetic free from his pant leg. With his hands still tied behind his back, he couldn’t see the leg itself, so he had to open the secret compartment with his stiffening fingers like a blind safecracker.
Once opened, Juan found the razor-sharp Benchmade Infidel double-action switchblade, flipped it upside down, and flicked it open. Suffering a few cuts along the way, he finally managed to saw his way through the hard plastic zip tie.
His wrists now free, it felt like fire ants were biting the skin beneath his hands as the blood rushed back into his fingers.
Exhausted from the Houdini-like escape, Juan quickly reattached his leg and climbed unsteadily to his feet. His head was still throbbing from his beating, but all of his exertions had cleared his mind, flooding it with questions, the most important of which wasWho had ratted him out?
The only people who knew about his mission were theOregoncrew and Overholt. Cabrillo would have bet his life on their discretion and loyalty and, in fact, had done so on numerous occasions. No, it was somebody else. That was a leak that needed to be found and plugged as soon as possible.
Juan also didn’t understand why Yaqoob hadn’t killed him outright or at least tortured him for information about his identity and mission.Apparently whoever was on the other end of that phone call had told the murderous Pashtun to save those pleasures for himself when Cabrillo would arrive on his doorstep trussed up like a Christmas goose.
He might have been better off with the bloodthirsty Taliban giant.
As bad as things had gone so far, they could have been a whole lot worse if a guard had been posted in the plane’s cargo bay. Cabrillo scanned the area. He saw several CCTV cameras posted up high, but apparently no one was monitoring them since no armed crewman was appearing.
Cabrillo did a quick inventory of the aircraft. He estimated at least five hundred thousand rounds of 7.62x39 ammo, along with five hundred crated AK-47s, several pallets of cased M67 fragmentation grenades, and a hundred boxes of Kevlar body armor. It was enough gear to equip a small insurgent army.
