by Robert Gandt
Maxwell’s face broke into a happy grin. “Claire!”
The cute little speech vaporized. She threw herself into his arms. The words tumbled out. “Sam, Sam. . . I thought I’d lost you. . . I missed you so much. . .”
He held her until she’d run out of words, ignoring the curious officers walking past the doorway. Then he pulled her inside and closed the door. He took her face in his hands and kissed her.
She pressed herself against him. For a precious moment they were finally together. She was safe and Sam was safe and nothing—not Yemen, not the Navy, not Jamal Al-Fasr—mattered.
For a long while he continued holding her. He stroked her as he nuzzled her neck. Her own numbing fatigue melted away. She held him tightly, wanting him.
He tilted her chin back and looked at her. “I believe we’ve reached the point where I’m supposed to tear your clothes off and take you to bed.”
“I believe we’re aboard a U. S. naval vessel, Commander.”
She knew the Navy’s position on the matter. Intimate relations aboard a naval ship were taboo. But they were alone, the door was closed, and she didn’t give a damn about the Navy’s taboos.
Maxwell seemed to be going through his own thought process. He kept his hands on her shoulders, regarding her with those icy blue eyes. “I’m the guy who tells his people not to do this.”
“Is making love to me in your stateroom a bad thing?”
“It is if you’re the squadron skipper.”
Claire sighed. That was what was so contradictory about Sam Maxwell. He had no problem breaking rules, but he refused to be a hypocrite about it.
“Will we still spend a week together when this is over?”
“Anywhere you want.”
“Doesn’t matter as long as I’m with you. And it’s not in Yemen.” She shivered, the memories of her last night in Sana’a coming back to her. “Hold me, Sam. I’m afraid. Something bad is happening, and I don’t know what it is.”
He tousled her hair. “You’re safe now.”
“I don’t know what safe means anymore.”
While he held her, she blurted the whole story—Sana’a, Vince Maloney, his revelation about Al-Fasr and Whitney Babcock. And the car bomb.
Maxwell didn’t speak. She wondered if he understood what she had told him.
Finally he said, “We have to tell this to someone. The part about Al-Fasr and Babcock.”
“To whom? The intelligence officer? What’s his name—Morse?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. I want you to tell this to Red Boyce, verbatim, just like you just told me.”
“Do you think it could be true, the part about Babcock making a deal with Al-Fasr?”
A cloud passed over Maxwell’s face. “It fits.”
“Why is Babcock letting the press cover the story now? After kicking us off before?”
“Publicity. Self-glorification. He thinks the situation is almost wrapped up, and he wants to make sure you portray him as the brilliant leader who took command and made it happen. While you’re aboard this ship, he can control whatever information is dispensed to you.”
She nodded. “Then that’s why he gave us that little briefing this morning. The message seemed to be that we had better give him plenty of camera time, otherwise we’d find ourselves back in a tent at the Aden airport.”
She shivered again. The accumulated stress of the past two days was bearing down like a weight on her. She put her head on his chest. “Sam, I never thought I’d miss you so much.”
He took her in his arms, stroking her hair. . .
Thunk. Thunk.
Maxwell glared at the door. “Damn.”
“It’s okay,” Claire said. “It might be important.”
He opened the door. Standing in the passageway, staring as if she were seeing an apparition, was B. J. Johnson. She saw Claire inside the room. For a long frozen moment the two women held eye contact. Volumes of unspoken communication passed between them.
Abruptly, B.J. whirled and bolted down the passageway.
Maxwell called after her. “B.J.! What was it you—”
She was gone. Maxwell stood in the passageway, shaking his head.
Chapter Seventeen
Baiting the Trap
Southern Coast of Yemen
0240, Thursday, 20 June
At a speed of three knots, the Ilia Mourmetz crept from its hiding place beneath the littoral shelf. Manilov was doing his best to keep the boat at a depth of seventy meters, where it was still concealed under the thermal layer. At this snail-like speed, the big bow planes of the Mourmetz were almost useless.
The risk was enormous. The Americans had displayed too keen an interest in the brief contact they picked up when he last peeked with the Mourmetz’s periscope. For several hours they had bombarded the area with sound signals and sonobuoys, passing back and forth with their helicopters and S-3 Vikings equipped with magnetic anomaly detectors.
Finally they had given up the search.
Or had they? As he had done earlier, Manilov tried to place himself inside the mind of the American commander.
If you were unable to pinpoint the precise location of the enemy submarine, what would be your next course of action?
Elementary. You backed off and waited for the enemy submarine to emerge from hiding.
As he was doing now.
Of course it was possible that the Americans had never confirmed a positive contact and were merely being cautious. That would be typical of the U. S. Navy, with their ridiculously overstuffed budgets, to waste tons of ordnance and fuel in such a stupid exercise.
Everything depended now on the Kilo class’s legendary stealthiness. The special single-shaft, seven-bladed screw was driven by the nearly-silent Elektrosila electric motor. Anechoic rubber anti-sonar tiles covered the Mourmetz’s hull. The submerged vessel was as indistinguishable in the sea as a mackerel.
At the large three-paneled control console of the MGK-400EM digital sonar, Warrant Officer Borodin tracked the enemy’s ships. The MGK-400 was one of the retrofits the Mourmetz had received in the Vladivostok yard. The new sonar was working in passive mode now, emitting no acoustical signals while it absorbed and plotted the signatures of every moving vessel in a thirty-kilometer radius.
Peering over Borodin’s shoulder, Manilov estimated that it would take two, perhaps three hours, to reach the firing position he wanted. Each of the Mourmetz’s six torpedo tubes was loaded with a SET-16 torpedo containing a 200 kilogram warhead. He had four more torpedoes in racks with the new fast-loader at the ready. More than he would ever need.
Manilov wished again he had the firepower of a Russian Navy submarine on routine patrol. He would have television-guided electronic homing torpedoes that he could manually switch to alternative targets if necessary. He’d be equipped with Novator anti-ship missiles in the event he was thwarted from firing his torpedoes. The Novators would deter the destroyers that would come racing like greyhounds to kill him.
Deterring aircraft was another matter. Before the voyage to Iran, he had insisted that the Mourmetz be armed with Igla SA-N-10 infrared-guided anti-aircraft missiles. Only after a bitter argument did the flotilla commander let him requisition three of the sophisticated missiles. Three! Nothing more than a flea bite against the overwhelming airpower of the Americans. Still, the presence of the missiles gave him a small comfort.
For two hours the Mourmetz crept southward, deeper into the Gulf of Aden. Manilov repeatedly checked the MVU-110 combat information computer for updates on the target.
At least the enemy was predictable. The great acoustic mass of the target ship—it had to be the Reagan—continued to move in a large northeast-southwest oval pattern. It was probably in accordance with the wind direction, launching and recovering aircraft, then returning to the original position to repeat the operation. Smaller warships—the destroyer screen—seemed to be following random patterns, crisscrossing the path of the carrier.
Judging by t
he benign activities of the destroyers and the absence of sonar-dipping helicopters, Manilov was sure that they had not been detected. He uttered a silent thanks to the Mourmetz’s designers—the Rubin Central Maritime Bureau in St. Petersburg.
Russians had proven themselves to be inept at so many things. But they knew how to build submarines.
<>
“I’m Commander Morse,” said Spook, forcing a smile on his face as he rose to shake hands with the members of the counter-espionage team. “Welcome aboard the Ronald Reagan.”
The counter-espionage team had landed aboard the Reagan on the 0700 COD—a C-2 Greyhound cargo hauler—from Dubai. Carrying their equipment in padded bags, the four men were taken directly to the flag conference compartment and introduced to Admiral Fletcher and Spook Morse.
Two were from the FBI—the bureau’s counter-intelligence division—and two from the Central Intelligence Agency. Each was a civilian, wearing khakis with no insignia. Each had a guarded, suspicious manner about him.
As if they were investigating him.
Morse kept the smile frozen on his face. In truth, he despised these agents. As civilians, they operated outside the military chain of command. They were invariably abrasive, disrespectful of rank and authority.
These were no exception.
One of the FBI agents, an encryption specialist named Korchek, dropped his bag and looked at Morse. “What’s your job here, pal?”
“Flag intelligence officer. You can call me Commander.”
Korchek seemed to find this funny. “Yeah, sure thing.”
Admiral Fletcher appeared not to notice the agent’s manners. “Make yourselves at home, gentlemen. You can set up your equipment here, if you like. Commander Morse will see to it you have whatever you need.”
More than ever, Morse was concerned about security. He had insisted that the briefing be restricted to those with an immediate need to know—himself, Vitale, and Morse. None of the air wing officers, especially the contentious Boyce, had been informed. Nor had Whitney Babcock, for reasons that Morse did not want to explain to Fletcher. Not yet.
“It will take us a day or so to get set up,” said Korchek. He had a pockmarked face and oily, slicked-back hair. “In the meantime, this room is off limits to everyone except me and my agents, unless we specifically invite you to come in.”
“Now wait a minute,” said Morse. “This happens to be the—”
“Never mind,” said Fletcher. “We’re going to cooperate with these gentlemen. Tell us what you want us to do.”
The agents exchanged private nods. Korchek said, “First thing, I want the files on each of your suspects, plus the locations of their work and sleeping quarters.”
Fletcher nodded, and Morse handed a stack of files to Korchek.
“Here’s the way I see your situation,” said Korchek. “You’ve got encrypted data leaving this ship in one of two ways, maybe both. Somebody is transmitting with a satellite comm device. That’s an easy one to home on, if we know when the guy is using it. Another way is over the net, which is a hell of a lot more complicated because there are so many goddamn computers on this boat.”
“How can someone be sending classified data via our intranet without our comm monitors reading it?” said Morse. “Everything that goes over the net is monitored.”
“That’s what you think. They could be using some kind of plain language encryption. Like a how-are-you-I’m-fine note to their mom, but embedded in the language is another message.”
“You mean, something that can be decoded with a key?”
“You got it. Old-fashioned shit, but very sophisticated in the short term, especially if they change the key every time they transmit. The problem is identifying whose computer it comes from.”
Morse said, “Sorry, but that theory won’t wash. I happen to know that we can trace any e-mail on this ship to the sender.”
Korchek gave him a withering look. “What you happen to know happens to be flat ass wrong, pal. There are tools out there—really magic shit—that can totally erase the origin of any internet message. And there’s even newer stuff available that can undo the erasure. And so on. It all depends on who owns the latest stuff.”
“Do you people have the latest stuff?”
“Do you think we’d travel all the way out to this barge if we didn’t?”
<>
“There it is,” said Korchek. Two hours had passed before he summoned Morse and Fletcher back to the flag conference room. “Anything in any bandwidth or medium that goes out from the Reagan—satellite phone, internet connection, you name it—we should be able to identify and locate it.”
He pointed to device that looked like a laptop computer. Depicted on its color screen was a schematic view of the O-3 level of the carrier. He tabbed a key, and the screen flipped through a series of displays showing each separate deck and level on the ship.
“This is a CRC-91 integrated location processor. We feed it data from whichever homing monitor first picks up the transmission. In less than a minute after we’ve intercepted the transmission, we get a plot here on the screen. We can tell within twenty yards where on the ship the signal is coming from.”
Fletcher peered into the screen. “This is amazing. Why don’t we have this equipment running full time on our ships?”
“This is cutting edge stuff,” said Korchek. “Still highly classified. The more exposure it gets, the sooner someone figures out a way to beat it. We don’t want any more people to know this exists than absolutely necessary.”
“Okay,” said Morse. “That takes care of satellite communcations. What about internet traffic.”
Korchek pointed to a notebook computer with a flickering blue screen. “See this? This box is running a software package that can detect embedded encryption. If we feed this program a normal e-mail message, then encrypt it and hide it in other normal message traffic, this little package can go after it and track it down like a bloodhound.”
Fletcher was shaking his head. “You lost me. How is that going to help us?”
Korchek gave Fletcher one of his patronizing smiles. “Simple. We’re going to send a plain language message, one that we know how to read. Then we’re going to get your spy to send the same message, encrypted.”
Fletcher was frowning. “And then. . .”
“And then this software—it’s called Omnivore—performs a million or so content comparisons, runs some very fancy algorithms that one of our borderline nut cases invented, and looks for a match. When it finds one, it shows up right here in this screen.”
“How will you know whose computer it came from?”
Korchek tapped the stack of files Morse had given him in the afternoon. “Every one of your suspects has a personal computer. Every one of them now conveniently contains an invisible command—a thing similar to the ‘cookie’ that on-line merchants sneak into your computers. It will respond to a query from our computer in this room. Then we’ll know who sent the encrypted message.”
“Amazing,” said Fletcher.
“No,” said Korchek. “Pure fucking magic.”
<>
TO: CVBG ELEVEN, ALL COMMANDERS
FROM: COMMANDER CARRIER BATTLE GROUP ELEVEN
COPY: OPNAV, JOINT TASK FORCE, SOUTHWEST ASIA, COMMANDER FIFTH FLEET
CLASSIFICATION: SECRET
SUBJECT: CVBG REVISED POINT OF INTENDED MOVEMENT
REFERENCE: OP PLAN 04061830Z
UPDATE PIM USS REAGAN 0600Z 20 JUNE; AIR OPS SCHEDULED 0630Z, LAUNCH AND RECOVERY POSITION N1248W5105. CVBG DISPOSITION DELTA.
NEGATIVE ACKNOWLEDGE.
Fletcher finished writing the message, then handed it to Korchek. “There. The revised point of intended movement amounts to about seventy miles. Normally, it would go to all the escorting vessels in the battle group.”
Sitting at his computer, Korchek pecked the message onto the screen using two fingers. When he was finished, Fletcher gave the message to the flag office yeoman who delivered
it to the ship’s communications center for transmission to the battle group.
The counter-espionage team members had their remote monitoring gear set up at three different stations—on either side of the island and one on the fantail. Korchek waited in the flag conference compartment to see if the spy took the bait.
It took four hours. Korchek and one of the CIA agents, Dick Mosely, were alone in the compartment.
“Gotcha!” yelled Korchek as the data began streaming into his computer. Encoded, the message didn’t make sense, not without going through the laborious computer decryption process that sometimes worked quickly and sometimes didn’t. Korchek didn’t care. The match was positive. Omnivore had detected an encrypted version of Fletcher’s message.
It also identified the computer from which it was sent.
Korchek jotted down the information on a steno pad. Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out the holstered Glock semi-automatic. He shoved a full magazine into the grip, then slipped the pistol into the holster in the small of his back.
Korchek summoned the two marines who were stationed in the passageway. They wore BDUs, helmets and flak jackets. Each carried an M-16A2 combat rifle.
“Where we going, sir?” said one of the marines, a burly sergeant.
“Big game hunting, Sergeant.”
<>
Commander Lou Parsons had been in his stateroom for five minutes when he was startled by the pounding on the door. He replaced his spectacles and went to the door.
“Yes?” he said, peering into the passageway.
It was the last word he could utter. The door slammed into his face, knocking his spectacles off, sending him reeling backward into a steel locker.
Korchek went in first. He seized Parsons’s arm, spun him around, slammed him against the locker. He bent Parson’s arm up into the middle of his back.
“Ahhhhh!” Parsons screamed in pain.
“Frisk him,” Korchek ordered the Marine sergeant.