Silhouettes: A James Bond Story

Silhouettes Part 16

The red-eye flight arrived in Muscat at seven-twenty in the morning local time. Bond rented a car and made the two-hour drive to Sohar under a clear blue sky and atop shimmering, sweltering pavement. The port was easy enough to find. It was a long, curving tentacle reaching into the Gulf of Oman. Palco Shipping was located near the tip of the tentacle, the most distant point, and the most private.

They poked around the main building a bit, hands on their guns, prepared to either talk fast for shoot faster depending upon how things worked out. They ended up doing neither, finding the main building—a collection of large, bland, rectangles—empty and locked. Beyond it stood two massive cranes that loomed over a seemingly endless city of immense shipping containers. With their bright colors and meticulous stacking they resembled nothing so much as the building blocks of some gigantic and very meticulous child. Beyond the mountain range of containers, the great, black hulk of the Bayangan Hitam devoured the horizon.

"What's the container number?" Bond asked.

"A-two-zero-six-eight-four-two-two."

"Let's have a look, then," Bond made toward the containers.

"It could take hours," Indira complained.

"Enough time for someone to show up, then," Bond replied.

"They won't be happy with a couple foreigners poking about."

"They'll be even less happy to know they're transporting a dirty bomb."

Indira jogged to catch up with him. They were walking into the maze of containers, now and the sun began to disappear as they passed beneath high towers of containers. "If this organization—this Spectre—really is behind everything, they're sure to have security."

"They always do. But we're out of options at this point. England's relations with the Arab world are ice-cold right now, thanks to Muqab's assassination. Oman is hardy going to turn their port upside down on our say-so. I doubt they're even taking the FM's phone calls."

"This is insane, Bond," Indira said exasperatedly. "Is this how it's done in the Double-Oh Branch?"

"As a matter of fact," Bond said as he craned his neck to read the numbers stenciled on the containers, "it is."

"And here I thought you all put some actual thought into your operations."

Bond faced her. "Here's what you don't understand about being a double-oh: you're on your own. No teammates. No diplomatic channels to the local government. You're totally alone and totally expendable. And when you operate in that place, there comes a point where the only thing left to do is to walk right into the dragon's teeth. That's why you're there: because if there had been another way, they would have tried it."

Indira said nothing, but turned away somewhat abashed. She began scanning the containers on her side. They continued that way in a tense silence for about fifteen minutes until Indira pointed to a container at ground level a few rows away.

"There."

"At least they made it easy for us," Bond mused as he double-checked the shipping number.

"We don't have to climb," Indira said.

"It's not locked, either," Bond noticed. "How very considerate." He wrestled with the heavy twist-locks, forcing them out of their latches and opening the huge metal doors.

The inside of the container was pitch black for a moment then quickly lit up as a motion-sensitive fluorescent light. The box was empty except for a large brushed-steel case, roughly the size of a footlocker, but much deeper. It stood almost a meter and half off the floor.

"I rather suspect we've found it," Bond mused.

"Great what do we do now?"

"Now," Bond said, stepping into the echoing cargo container, "we take a look." He circled the device, noting its hinges and latches, but seeing no tripwires or obvious booby-traps.

"Jesus, Bond, should we be this close to the thing?" Indira said from the doorway of the container.

"If this is the same type as the one we were after in Monrovia, the nuclear material is safely contained." He grasped the box's lid and looked over at Indira. Her face was deathly pale in the fluorescent light. "If it's not, we've already been severely irradiated, so..." He yanked the lid open.

Indira's whole body flinched.

Bond inspected the contents. "Good news," he said, "it seems we'll live a bit longer." Inside the box was an olive-green warhead suspected in a homemade cradle. A poorly-stenciled red star was emblazoned on its side.

"Is that..."

"Yes. Probably stripped from a decommissioned ballistic missile."

"That's significantly more than a dirty bomb," Indira said, peering into the box, sweeping aside errant stands of her hair that stuck to her cheeks in the heat. "That could erase a city."

"And Karachi's just on the other side of the Gulf from here." Bond looked closely at the warhead in its cradle, tilted his head to see better. "Strange," he said.

"What is?"

Bond straightened up. "There's no detonator. Nothing to set off the warhead."

"No?" Indira looked into the box.

"Not even an explosive device to scatter the warhead's radioactive material."

"Maybe that's why the container was unlocked. Maybe they haven't gotten it yet."

"Why would they have loaded it in the container without—" Then they heard the distant crunch of tires on gravel.

"Someone's here!" Indira drew her pistol. Bond ran to the doors of the container and pulled them shut.

"It could be a security guard. Or a dock foreman." Bond fumbled with his watch.

Indira's head was cocked to the slight gap between the container's doors.

"They've stopped," she whispered. "But I think I hear footsteps."

Bond clasped the Omega, then slowly, quietly closed the lid of the bomb.

"I think they..." Indira stopped, jerking her head, but Bond noticed it, too: the acrid taste of the air. Like almonds.

"Gas!" Indira pointed to the air conditioning unit mounted into the far side of the container.

"Hurry!" Bond whispered. "We have to...take...our chances..." But his brain was already growing fuzzy. He drew the Walther, but it seemed impossibly heavy. He stumbled toward the exit.

Indira threw herself gracelessly into the doors, falling out of the container. Bond staggered after her into the burning daylight, hitting the gravel drive on his knees. Gulping fresh, uncontaminated air, he noted Indira's unconscious body and the half-dozen people standing above them.

The one in front was Nicolai Butavsky. He pointed a big pistol at Bond's head. There was movement in his peripheral vision. Bond looked around just in time to see Livani Fazura aka Shanti Ernawati's kick before it impacted the side of his head. He fell into darkness.