Peleliu File

Chapter 4

Sulu Sea

Making minor engine turns and dragging a sea anchor aft, the big yacht wallowed in the Sulu Sea just south of Jolo. All the running lights were doused to avoid detection by Philippine Armed Forces coast-watchers and to make it easier for the crew to spot the signal they were looking for from the beach half a mile north of their position. The sophisticated nautical GPS system aboard the vessel indicated they were smack on the designated mark and they’d been holding position for the past twenty minutes. Someone ashore was late, compromised or simply stupid. They couldn’t keep the big yacht drifting for much longer without risking discovery by a patrol boat.

Jolo—like all the other islands strung out along the Sulu Archipelago in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao—was a primary focus of Philippine military activity these days. That was understandable. Abu Sayyaf jihadis had been on a rampage of killings and kidnappings lately in an effort to raise money and sustain their fight with the government in Manila and any other handy infidels. With these believers, if you weren’t willing to tolerate or propagate Islam worldwide, you were the enemy and there were no affordable holds barred. That’s what made them so attractive to the movement’s leadership. Muslim separatists in the Philippines, the Moro National Liberation Front and various off-shoots of that group, focused mainly on creating a Muslim state in Mindanao totally divorced from the infidel government in Manila but the leader of Abu Sayyaf on Mindinao had a greater global vision. What he didn’t have was means to realize the vision. That might be remedied tonight if all went according to the plan developed before they put to sea from the port of Dubai six weeks ago.

Sayed Abdullah focused the binoculars and swept the shoreline once again for the prearranged signal from the Abu Sayyaf contacts. Hopefully, they knew more about the science involved in the mission than they did about keeping schedules. His team stood on the brink of one of the most ingenious and potentially devastating strikes on the enemies of Islam ever attempted but he wished they were working with more sophisticated allies. Admittedly, the Abu Sayyaf military commander had conceived the plan and sold it to his superiors and the financiers in Saudi Arabia but the science involved in the mission was something else entirely. That’s why the first stop they made in the South Pacific was at Jakarta to pick up the Indonesian researcher now safely billeted in one of the yacht’s luxurious staterooms. His two scientific compatriots ashore on Jolo had failed to meet deadlines and drawn unwanted attention, so they were changing venues. Once he had the scientists and the Abu Sayyaf leader aboard, they were headed for a place where the American intelligence apparatus did not reach, a place where the people controlling the spy satellites would never think to look.

Abdullah handed the infrared sensing binoculars to the chief of his fifteen-man Quds Force security detail and headed toward the bridge to check on radar contacts. If patrol boats were in the area, he needed as much early warning as possible, so he’d ordered the captain to keep the air and surface search radars rotating. Those orders and all others on this operation were issued in English. With Arabs, Indonesians and Filipinos involved and so much at stake they could not afford language misunderstandings, misinterpretations—or secrets—within the team. Everyone involved would be competent in English and speak it at all times. That had been one of Abdullah’s first demands when he accepted the mission outlined weeks ago by the Iranian Quds Force mission commander aboard this very yacht in Dubai.

Climbing toward the blacked-out pilothouse, Abdullah pondered the enormity of what they were attempting. If it worked as planned, his place in heaven was assured and his life on this earth would be as heavenly as the staggering fee he was being paid could provide. But it was such a long-shot and he’d known that from the moment his Quds Force handler contacted him in Damascus. He was a veteran of several wild and wooly clandestine operations around the world but he really wanted no part of what he considered a gaggle of amateurs here in the South Pacific. The fight was for the cradle of Islam, cleansing the holy places, striking blows against infidels worldwide and putting his native country in a position of leadership in the inevitable Fourth Caliphate. That was the long-range plan and Abdullah believed they’d do well to stick with it.

That’s what he thought when the messenger found him in an Al Qaeda safe house but it certainly wasn’t what he said when he was ordered to proceed to Dubai for an important meeting. The Quds Force handler said go, he would be joined by a QF mission security team in Dubai. The man issuing the summons was a very rich and very influential member of the House of Saud who had funded a number of QF missions in the past and this one was to be viewed as a cooperative effort. Orders from the Saudi prince were to be obeyed as if they had come from the Supreme Council in Tehran.

He didn’t require much persuasion. Sayed was on the run anyway. He’d been hiding in the Syrian capital from intense scrutiny by the Americans and their various puppets who correctly suspected—but couldn’t yet prove—that he was both chief bag-man and primary show-runner in a series of spectacular attacks on targets ranging from Kabul to Karachi and into the belly of the beast. A number of bombings were planned for the U.S. mainland. It was wise to keep moving and enough money had been spread along the route to insure he’d slide safely across international borders between Damascus and Dubai.

On the bridge, a nervous captain reported both radar screens clear. He was equally anxious to get this part of the mission underway and kept switching his attention between read-outs from the GPS navigation station and the radar repeaters. The Lebanese Muslim sailor was a trusted operative and a veteran of many cruises in support of QF missions so he was prepared for the worst. If patrol boats were in the area, they would run for international waters to avoid contact. If he was stopped and boarded, the captain had valid international papers that would pass initial scrutiny but not much beyond that. The Philippine Navy was on high alert and they’d be more than a little suspicious of a yacht with Middle Eastern registry cruising off a string of islands infested by rabid separatist gangs. And then there was the arsenal of weapons stashed below decks that the QF security chief insisted was vital to the mission.

Abdullah thought it was an unnecessary risk. As far as he was concerned, the only conventional weapons needed on this trip were the ones already loaded in the Zodiac tied up alongside, waiting to go ashore and into the hands of the Abu Sayyaf on Jolo as part of the bargain. The Zodiac could be scuttled and abandoned quickly if they were discovered but there would not be enough time to dig out the collection of personal weapons—including RPGs, grenades, land mines and machineguns—which, for some paranoid reason, the security detail considered vital. QF Security Teams were never very sophisticated but they were responsible for mission safety, so the weaponry would remain aboard and he would just have to accept the risk.

Abdullah ducked out of the pilot house, glancing over the side where the small boat was tied up to the yacht and bobbing in the chop. The security guards were at their posts; one forward and one at the controls of the muffled outboard engine, and the two big crates of weapons and ammunition were lashed firmly in place. When the signal was finally made, he could quickly grab the valise full of cash and get aboard the boat for a quick trip ashore. They’d be three men going in and six coming back, but with the weapons and ammunition offloaded there would be plenty of room in the Zodiac.

It was the cash that worried Abdullah. There was a lot of it in various currencies easily negotiable on Mindanao. He didn’t like carrying cash. It was incriminating and hard to explain in an era when business deals involving big sums were almost always done via electronic transfer. It was clean and hard to trace that way but the Abu Sayyaf cells didn’t keep bank accounts. They insisted on cash for cooperation plus an extra infusion of arms and ammunition to cover the trail of operations on Jolo. The upside was the diversion Abu Sayyaf would provide once they had a fresh supply of funds and sophisticated weaponry. While the mission team worked in seclusion to the east of the Philippines, local jihadi cells throughout the archipelago and on Mindanao proper would run a bloodbath that would draw attention away from the real hammer being forged elsewhere.

Back inside the pilothouse, the yacht’s captain reported no radar contacts and still no signal from shore. He had an annoying habit of sucking noisily on an empty pipe when he could not smoke openly and the gurgling got on Abdullah’s frayed nerves. He gave the radars a quick glance and left the bridge along the companionway that led aft past a row of staterooms and out onto the weather decks. One of the doors on his left cracked open and he noted the bulging, bloodshot eyeballs of Dr. Susilo Nasuton sweeping the passageway. If there was anyone aboard more worried about the mission than Abdullah, it must be Nasuton, the lavishly-paid and internationally recognized geneticist and microbiologist from Jakarta. For a very senior and supposedly dedicated member of Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiya, the man seemed insufferably whiny. Abdullah suspected it was simply because the scientist was not used to field work. At any rate, he was vital to the mission and therefore had to be not only tolerated but placated.

“Why haven’t you gone ashore, Sayed?”

“No signal as yet. It will come soon. We aren’t dealing with people who keep precise schedules here. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“My compatriots need to be recovered quickly, you understand? There is still much work to be done and this relocation will set us back weeks.”

“And whose fault is that, my friend?” Abdullah tried hard to keep his tone friendly and patient but they’d had this discussion in one form or another every day since they left Indonesian waters. If the two scientists working for Nasuton on Jolo hadn’t made stupid mistakes they would not need to move out of the Philippines. And Abdullah would not have been called to oversee the project and get it back on track.

“The science is not exact. I’ve told you that before. We are in experimental territory here and….”

“Yes, Susilo, and some of those experiments have drawn unwanted attention. You saw the reports. The Americans have a scientific vessel investigating. Even Greenpeace is looking into it. How long will it be before the rest of world’s ecological alarmists get on the case?”

“They will find nothing that could not occur in nature. That’s the purpose of all this!”

“The purpose of all this, my friend, is to punish the infidels for their outrages and to further establishment of the Fourth Caliphate. You would do well to remember that.”

Susilo Nasuton blinked rapidly and chewed on his thick mustache. It was past time to change the subject. “Even if they trace the source to the southern Philippines, they will find nothing incriminating.”

“And we keep it that way, Susilo. That’s why we are moving. We’ve been through all this many times.”

Abdullah patted the scientist on the shoulder, shoved him gently back into his stateroom and pulled the door shut. At the rear exit of the passageway Amin Faraz, the QF security chief, waved the infrared binoculars and pointed toward the shore.

“We picked up the signal. They appear to be a few hundred meters east of where they are supposed to be.”

“Was the code correct?”

“It was. Two long, two short. All infrared. Do you want to get underway?”

“Immediately. I’ll be in the boat in three minutes.”

Abdullah ducked into his own stateroom, unlocked the storage bin beneath his bunk and grabbed the satchel of cash. With just a little more luck, they’d be underway to a new and secure location in less than an hour. If the scientists did the job they were so-well-paid to do, the attack could be launched in a matter of weeks, perhaps even less. It would, of course be the last effort they made on this earth but the scientists didn’t need to know they were martyrs just yet.