Part 19 (2/2)
Jack said, ”They came asking about you last month. Arms smuggling. Said you grabbed an American weapons s.h.i.+pment by mistake.”
”Oh, it wasn't a mistake. I knew exactly what it was,” Wickham said. ”And I knew exactly where those weapons were heading.”
”Be careful, Wick,” Jack said. ”One man's crusader is another man's pirate.”
”They're calling me a pirate now?”
”You keep grabbing CIA weapons s.h.i.+pments to African warlords and soon you're gonna have the whole Seventh Fleet combing the Indian Ocean for your a.s.s.”
”Bring it on,” Wickham said. ”The American military can be beaten. I mean, h.e.l.l, look at whatyou did, and you're a chump!”
Jack smiled. ”Watch yourself is all I'm saying.”
”I will. Call me if you're ever in Zanzibar,” Wickham said. ”Buy you a beer.”
Then the midnight fireworks started going off. Seen from the helipad of the Burj al Arab, they were simply spectacular. The a.s.sembled crowd oohed and aahed as the desert sky lit up in a million colors.
But when Lily turned back from the dazzling fireworks display, J. J. Wickham was gone.
A few days later, when they were alone, Lily asked Jack about him.
”He's a good man,” Jack said. ”A decent man who got courtmartialed by the US Navy for doing the right thing.”
”What did he do?”
”It was more what hedidn't do. Wick was the XO on a submarine in the US Navy, a little Sturgeoncla.s.s sub operating out of Diego Garcia, the US base in the Indian Ocean, doing patrols off eastern Africa.
”Anyway, a few years after theBlack Hawk Down incident in Somalia, his boat intercepted an unregistered Kilocla.s.s submarine en route to the private dock of a Somali warlord: Russian pirates in an old Russian sub, smuggling arms. Wick's captain ordered him to take a boarding party onto the Kilo and sail it back to Diego Garcia.
”When he got on board the Kilo, however, Wick found a dozen crates of American Stinger missiles and one very p.i.s.sed off CIA agent. Turned out the CIA was in the process of destabilizing east Africa by armingall the warlords.”
”So what did he do?” Lily asked.
”Wick did what he'd been ordered to do. With a small team, he secured the Russian pirates, took command of the Russian sub, and began sailing it back to Diego Garcia.
”But halfway there, he got a priority signal from Naval HQ, telling him to hand the sub back to the CIA man and forget he'd ever seen it.
”Wick was stunned. The big shots back home were actuallysupporting this operation. So he made a decision. He figured enough was enough, and since he no longer had a family to worry about, he'd do something. And so he stopped the sub in the middle of the Indian Ocean, threw all its crew-including the enraged CIA man-into a liferaft and set them adrift.
”Knowing a courtmartial would follow, he offered all his men on board the sub the opportunity to leave-indeed, he encouraged them to do so, to think of their careers. Most did and he set them adrift as well, in life rafts with homing beacons.
”And so with a skeleton crew Wickkept the Russian submarine and has been using it ever since, conducting his own private patrols off the coast of Africa, using several old World War II submarine refueling stations as his bases. He was courtmartialedin absentia for desertion and disobeying a direct order and sentenced to twentyfive years in a military prison. There's still an outstanding warrant for his arrest.”
”So is he a pirate?”
”To the people of Africa, he's a hero, the only guy who stands up to the warlords, by intercepting their arms s.h.i.+pments. He also brings the people food, free of charge and obligation. They call him theSea Ranger. Unfortunately, he steals much of the food from western cargoes, so the US and British navies call him a pirate.”
Lily frowned. ”When I saw him on New Year's Eve, he seemed, I don't know, familiar.
Like I'd seen him before.”
”That's because you have seen him before.”
”I have? When?”
”When you were very young and we were living in Kenya. You were just a toddler and Wick had only just started sailing his own private submarine. He was on the run, so I let him hide out with us for a while.
”He played hideandseek with you, peekaboo, that sort of thing. You loved it. Now that you're officially my daughter, he's officially your uncle. He lives mostly on the island of Zanzibar, off the KenyanTanzanian coast. But wherever he is and wherever we are, we'll always be family.”
And so life went on for Lily-at the farm with Jack and at school with Alby, and with Zoe and Wizard when they came to visit-until that fine summer's day when the sky above the farm filled with parachutes.
K10 SUBMARINE BASE.
MORTIMER ISLAND.
BRISTOL CHANNEL, ENGLAND.
DECEMBER 9, 2007, 2145 HOURS.
”DADDY!”
Lily leaped into West's arms as he strode into the central lab of the submarine base, K10, having taken three full days to get to England.
Situated on a windswept island in the mouth of the Bristol Channel, K10 had been a refueling and repair station for US naval vessels in the Second World War. After the war, as a gesture of thanks to the Americans, the British had allowed them to keep using the island. To this day it has remained a US base on British soil.
In the American cla.s.sification system, it is a Level Alpha base, the highest security level, and along with Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, is the only base outside of continental America to maintain and store SLBMs-submarinelaunched ballistic nuclear missiles.
About a dozen people milled around the hightech lab: Zoe and the kids the twins in their ”Cow Level” Ts.h.i.+rts two Saudi commandos, guarding a small velvet case between them-Vulture went directly to them and Paul Robertson, the American diplomat/spy they'd met in Dubai, who had arrived with a larger Samsonite trunk.
When Lily saw Wizard-his welts and cuts still pink-she released Jack and threw her arms around the old man.
Jack went straight to Zoe. ”Hey. So?”
”We've been busy while we were waiting for you. The data from Stonehenge is absolutely mindblowing.”
Jack glanced at Robertson. ”He brought the Killing Stone of the Maya?”
”Arrived about an hour ago all by himself. With the Mayan Stone in his big case.”
”He didn't bring a Pillar, too?”
”No. He said America didn't possess one.”
”Hmmm. What'd he say about the SaxeCoburg Pillar?”
”Apparently a member of no less than the British Royal Family is coming here, bringing it. Mr. Robertson certainly has some pull.”
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