09.Deep Black: Death Wave

by Stephen Coonts

  Douglas pursed his lips. “Ouch. What do you want from me?”

  Rubens looked at Noelle. This was his department.

  “When Desk Three gets this sorted out,” Noelle said, “we’re almost certainly going to need military action. Fast. Our people are tracking the nukes at Karachi now.” He looked at Rubens. “A freighter?”

  “Russian freighter,” Rubens agreed. “The Yakutsk. Maltese flagged. Destination Tel Aviv.”

  “The Yakutsk. We may need to put a VBSS team on board her.”

  VBSS was the naval acronym for “visit, board, search, and seizure.” It meant a SEAL team taking down a Russian ship and grabbing the nukes on board.

  Douglas made a face. “That is not going to fly well with the Oval Office.”

  “No, sir. And that’s why the request is going to have to come from your office.”

  “We can enlist Johnny James,” Noelle added. “He’s sympathetic to us.”

  “We’ll need to brief him.” Douglas arched an eyebrow in Rubens’ direction.

  “I can handle that, sir. This afternoon, if I can get an appointment.”

  “Use my priority code for the request.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “It occurs to me that we have some people here we might want to talk to. It sounds like al-Khuwaytir may be in on this scheme, whatever it is. And your sources in Spain—Feng, Shah, and this French guy, Chatel.”

  “Already on that, sir. Al-Khuwaytir may be someone for State to look at. But my people in south Asia are checking on both the ship and on other forms of transport out of Karachi.”

  “Good. Anything to stop us from picking up the three in Spain immediately?”

  “Just one thing,” Rubens told him. “Al-Wawi, apparently, is the guy running Operation Wrath of God. Right now he’s on the island of La Palma, Canary Islands. He’s the one we really want, and we don’t want him tipped off ahead of time. If he disappears, he might take the suitcase nukes with him, and we’ll have to start all over from scratch.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Yes, sir. One of my best Desk Three operators is with Feng now, in Spain. I’m sending her to La Palma this afternoon.”

  “To save Carlylse?”

  Rubens hesitated. “If possible. But Carlylse might lead us to the Jackal. That’s our first priority.”

  “Bait,” Douglas said.

  “Hate to say it, but yes. I don’t know how else to flush al-Wawi into the open without spooking him.”

  “Well, I’ll leave that in your hands, Bill. Keep me up to date. Let me know if anything changes. And I’ll let you know what the President says. He may insist on deniability.”

  “That might not be possible, sir. It is imperative that we recover those nukes.”

  “I agree. But in this business, imperatives aren’t always possible.”

  “I know that, sir. All too well.”

  HOTEL ALMIRANTE

  ALICANTE, SPAIN

  THURSDAY, 1725 HOURS LOCAL TIME

  Lia DeFrancesca walked into the luxurious, light-filled lobby of the Almirante, holding Feng’s arm. She was wearing a brightly colored beach wrap now—she didn’t mind going three-quarters naked in public, but only where such exposure would be natural and unremarkable, like on the beach. She wasn’t about to emulate the couple she’d seen a few years before in Madrid.

  “You know, Ms. Lau,” Feng told her as they waited for the elevator to arrive on the lobby floor, “you could share my room.”

  “Why, thank you, Mr. Feng,” she replied. “It is tempting … but what kind of a message would that send to your business associates?”

  “How would they know? Besides, they would merely think of me as very fortunate indeed.”

  “I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “Mr. Shah has the traditional Muslim scorn for women who expose themselves in public. I’m sure he thinks of me as a ‘fallen woman.’ If he learned you were sleeping with me, he would be convinced that you are as decadent and degraded as I am.”

  He looked at her sharply. “How do you know he called you a fallen woman? Do you speak Arabic?”

  “No, but I know what bintilkha-ta means. And associating with such a person would taint you as well. Unless you’re trying to scandalize the poor boy?”

  He smiled and patted her arm. “I do like … how is it you Americans put it? To yank on his rope?”

  “His chain. You like to yank his chain.”

  “Just so.”

  The elevator arrived; the door slid open. They stepped inside and she pressed the button for her floor, then for his.

  “Mr. Feng, I’m delighted that you appreciate my skills and my experience enough to hire me. But I submit that you need to decide just what it is you are hiring me for. As a consultant knowledgeable in foreign cultures? Or as a playmate in bed? The one gets in the way of the other.”

  “And what would you say if I told you I wanted you for my bed?”

  “I would say no, Mr. Feng. I would tell you that I was flattered … but no.” The elevator stopped at her floor, and she walked out. “Until later, Mr. Feng.”

  “Very smooth, Lia,” Rockman told her over her implant. “I’m not sure how you keep him at arm’s length with all the drool on the floor, though.”

  “He wants me for eye candy,” she murmured. “I think the job is just an excuse to show off a pretty woman hanging on his arm.”

  “Are you okay with that?” Bill Rubens asked.

  “Oh, sure. He’s putty in my hands.”

  “You’re going to want to wash your hands, then,” Rubens told her. “I’m pulling you out.”

  “Why?” She was genuinely startled. Surprise was followed immediately by a flush of anger. “Mr. Rubens. I can take care of myself, you know.”

  “I know you can, Lia, but we need you in La Palma. The sooner, the better.”

  “La Palma? Why?”

  “Because that’s where al-Wawi is. It’s also where a writer named Vince Carlylse is about to be murdered by al-Wawi’s people. When you went off to get those drinks this afternoon, they were discussing it.”

  “They’re killing writers? Why?”

  “We don’t know yet, but it’s wrapped up with a terrorist op, and it’s big.”

  “Feng wants me to fly with him back to Germany. Shah and Chatel are going to La Palma.” She had a new thought. “Shah and Chatel. They’re involved with the terrorist op?”

  “That’s part of what we want you to learn, Lia.”

  “Feng will be suspicious if I quit now and fly off to the Canary Islands with those two instead.”

  “We’ll take care of your legend, Lia. We want to preserve your relationship with Feng in case we need to penetrate his COSCO operations later. But right now, we can have you on Grand Canary in six hours … and it’ll be closer to twenty-four if I send someone out from the States.”

  “You got it.”

  “I’ll send along the file information on the writer, and what we know about the Canaries. We’re also sending Ms. Howorth down there. She’ll be your backup.”

  CJ had been left behind in Berlin to wrap up some loose ends there.

  “Very well. When do I leave?”

  “We have a ticket for you at the counter at Alicante Airport. Your flight leaves in eighty-five minutes.”

  “Then I guess I’d better pack and get over there.” She laughed.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Feng, sir. He’s going to be so disappointed. Or pissed. I can’t decide which.”

  ART ROOM

  NSA HEADQUARTERS

  FORT MEADE, MARYLAND

  THURSDAY, 1515 HOURS EDT

  “What is the ship’s position now?” Rubens asked.

  Marie Telach checked one of the Art Room displays. “Twenty-three forty-five north … sixty-five thirty-three east,” she replied. “One hundred three nautical miles southwest of Karachi. Course two two three degrees, speed seventeen knots.”

  “A week to Haifa.”

>   “Yes, sir.”

  “And the Lake Erie?”

  “Still shadowing the target, sir. Ninety nautical miles to the south and on a parallel course.”

  Rubens frowned at one of the monitors, which showed an aerial view of an aging, plodding merchant ship, tiny against the endless blue of the Gulf of Oman. The image was being relayed from a tilt-rotor Eagle Eye UAV remotely piloted from the Lake Erie. The Erie was a Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruiser, CG-70, part of the Constellation carrier battle group. The CBG had been tasked with following the target freighter without crowding her too closely.

  A CIA agent in Karachi had come up with the information that a number of containers supposedly carrying small nuclear weapons had been transported yesterday from Jinnah International Airport to a Russian freighter, the Yakutsk, moored on the Karachi waterfront. The agent had been unable to say how many containers had been transferred to the ship, but if the suitcase nukes were on board, even one was too many.

  In fact, there was no reason to suppose that the twelve weapons had been split up.

  Rubens wondered just how much they could trust the CIA’s source. This agent was a young Pakistani named Haroon who’d purportedly been turned after the ISI had arrested his sister and his father a year before, accusing them of being Taliban. Both were still in prison; the State Department was supposed to be making inquiries about the two, a part of the package that had brought Haroon to the U.S. Embassy and the CIA’s senior resident there.

  It felt convenient to Rubens, and he didn’t trust convenient.

  Still, the man was the only hard source they had at the moment regarding the whereabouts of the stolen nukes. If they were on board the Yakutsk, the United States needed to verify that—and secure them.

  If they could get the authorization to do so. The administration was—as General Douglas had pointed out that morning—reluctant to board a foreign ship on a suspicion, especially a ship belonging to the Russian Federation. Freedom of the sea was a vital principle in both American and international law. Hell, the War of 1812 had started with the British boarding and searching American ships at sea.

  What if the ship couldn’t be stopped, and nuclear warheads reached the Israeli port?

  Operation Wrath of God. Operation Fire from Heaven.

  American targets? Or Israeli?

  It scarcely mattered. Millions of people might die. Those warheads had to be found and secured, one way or another.

  To that end, he’d already ordered Dean and Akulinin to Karachi, where they would be working with the CIA to get confirmation of Haroon’s information.

  And there was, perhaps, one other thing he could do …

  “I’ll be in my office, Marie.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He had a phone call to make.

  13

  JAMI’AH BINORIA MADRASAH

  KARACHI, PAKISTAN

  FRIDAY, 1040 HOURS LOCAL TIME

  It was, Dean reflected, a matter of every spy agency for itself.

  When in Tajikistan, the Desk Three operators had had to maintain their covers as foreign military personnel. They couldn’t work with the Russian FSB because that organization had been thoroughly penetrated by the Russian mafiya. The Tajikistan police and security services were, for the most part, controlled by militant Islamics.

  Once across the border into Afghanistan, they’d learned that even NATO had been penetrated somehow, and they’d been less than open with their German hosts. So far as NATO was concerned, Dean, Akulinin, and Alekseyevna were journalists who’d needed rescuing.

  Now, less than twenty-four hours later, Dean and his partner were in Pakistan, a nation supposedly dedicated to fighting terrorism and bringing down Islamic militarist fanatics whether they were Taliban, al-Qaeda, or JeM—but the two NSA officers had to maintain their deep cover. Many members of the Pakistani ISI, both in the rank and file and in the leadership, were secretly pro-Taliban, pro-Islamist, or both, and simply could not be trusted. The ISI had scored some significant victories in recent years against the militants, especially in the case of suicide bombings on Pakistani soil, and yet there continued to be major security leaks, covert operations compromised, and even high-ranking militant leaders who lived and moved openly within Pakistan’s population, often as revered and respected clerics calling the faithful to jihad.

  Maulana Masood Azhar, the Army of Mohammad’s founder and leader, was a case in point.

  Dean and Akulinin moved slowly through the crowd that had spilled out onto the street from the courtyard of the Jami’ah Binoria Madrasah—a large and well-known Islamic university located in the sprawl of northwestern Karachi in the heart of an industrial district with the unlikely name of Metrovil. The mob was as raucous and noisy as the riot in the streets of Kunduz that morning; this time, though, the excitement was being generated by the speech coming from loudspeakers mounted high up on the madrasah’s walls. It was Friday, the Muslim holy day, and the sermon was being delivered to an enthusiastic crowd. Dean estimated that several thousand people were packed into the university’s grounds and the surrounding city streets.

  “What’s he saying?” Akulinin asked as a harsh, nasal voice brayed from the speakers in Urdu. “He sounds pretty passionate about it.”

  “The usual rant,” Jeff Rockman’s voice replied through their implants. “God is merciful, God is just, and God is going to mop the floor with Jews, fornicators, and Americans.”

  A fresh burst of cheering arose from the crowd. “These people really eat this stuff up,” Dean said.

  “This would definitely not be a good time to tell them you guys are American infidels,” Rockman said. “Wait a sec … I’m reading the translation off my screen … Okay, now he’s saying that the promised end of days is upon us, and God Himself is going to wipe America away in a deluge of righteousness … He has held back His hand to give America time to repent, but now the time of merciful forbearance is past … and when the eyes of the faithful behold the divine hand of God sweeping away His enemies, all of His faithful will put aside their differences and … Jesus, this guy ought to be a televangelist.”

  “I think we can do without the running commentary,” Dean said. “How far to the target?”

  “Twelve meters. And a bit more to your left. He’s hanging back, on the very edge of the crowd.”

  “Copy. I think I have him.”

  The two Desk Three operators continued to skirt the crowd as the impassioned declarations boomed out, eliciting waves of cheering, chants, and dizzying exultation. The speaker was Maulana Masood Azhar, delivering his Friday sermon from somewhere inside the Binoria Madrasah.

  That in itself was interesting. The Pakistani government had repeatedly told the West that they had no idea of Azhar’s whereabouts.

  Dean didn’t speak Urdu; since their arrival in Pakistan yesterday, the two operatives had been reliant on the Art Room’s simultaneous translations and on the efforts of Najamuddin Haroon. Even so, the rhythm and power and sheer thunder of the declamations had a mesmerizing quality. Dean was reminded of films he’d seen of Adolf Hitler delivering a speech to a sea of passionately adoring listeners at Nuremburg.

  The speech was an assault upon reason itself.

  Dean had hoped that by this time they would have been on their way back Stateside. After the debacle in Dushanbe, he’d assumed Rubens would pull them out, turning Haystack over to other field assets. He didn’t like breaking off in the middle of a mission, but he’d actually been looking forward to it this time. The riot in Kunduz had reminded him how much he hated this part of the world with its Islamic Nazis, volatile passions, brain-dead bigotry, and blind adherence to unreasoning hatred.

  They’d said good-bye to Masha at the Kabul airport yesterday afternoon—she would be flying to the States sometime today—and boarded a NATO C-130, heading south to Karachi and landing at a military airfield just outside the city. They’d been met by the CIA station chief himself and taken to the U.S. Embassy, where they’d spoken with
Rubens, eaten, and collapsed into exhausted sleep.

  Early this morning, they’d been awakened and introduced to Haroon. They received new legends, identity cards and papers, local clothing, money, and a new mission.

  Their target, they were told, was attending a public sermon by Maulana Azhar, who would be speaking at the Binoria Madrasah this morning.

  And there he was.

  Alfred Koch stood out in the crowd. Blond and blatantly Aryan, he was still wearing his gray flight utilities, though he’d donned a borrowed taqiyya in deference to local custom requiring a head covering for men. Koch had been the pilot of the NATO helicopter that had picked up twelve suitcase-sized containers in a cotton field outside Qurghonteppa and flown them to Karachi. He was leaning against the wall of a shop opposite the madrasah’s entrance and seemed to be nodding to the cant and meter of the speech.

  It had been relatively easy to follow him. Koch’s cell phone used a SIM card with a coded number that could be tracked if you had a sufficiently large antenna in orbit, and the NRO had several SIGINT satellites in the sky with truly large antennae indeed. The NSA had been able to lock onto Koch’s phone after tracking his banking records; a deposit of a quarter of a million euros that afternoon at a bank in Karachi had focused the agency’s attention on the man. German Luftwaffe lieutenants didn’t normally make deposits of that size.

  A final burst of invective from the loudspeakers set the crowd into wild and jubilant celebration. A chant had started. “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”

  God is great.

  Dean and Akulinin split up as they approached, sidling in from left and right. Koch seemed unaware of either of them until Dean stepped up on his left, draping his SIG SAUER P226 within the long and loose-hanging sleeves of his kameez and pressing the muzzle hard against the small of the German’s back.

  “What’s the matter, Alfred?” Akulinin said in English from Koch’s right. “You’re not joining in with all the celebrating.”

  “Was ist?” Koch demanded, eyes widening, then narrowing to slits. He shifted to English. “Who the hell are you?”