Weapons of Mass Deception

by David Bruns

  The captain shook his head emphatically. “Absolutely not!”

  Hashem’s phone rang. “Cargo on the dock?” he said into the receiver.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ll be right down.”

  Hashem smoked in silence as the captain shifted from foot to foot. His hand touched the knife at the small of his back. His years of experience told him the captain was telling the truth. Using more forceful measures would only cause the North Korean to try to tell him what he thought Hashem wanted to hear, and it would take a long time. Even as he sat staring at the captain, the Americans might have a satellite overhead taking photos of his newly acquired TELs, the final piece in his decade-long plan to bring nuclear strike capability to his beloved Iran.

  No, the captain was telling the truth. This had been a pirate attack.

  The crane hoist lines were just lifting away from the third TEL on the pier. Glistening black in the harsh glare of the overhead lights, the units looked deadly. Hashem smiled to himself when he thought about how they would look with his missiles loaded onto them.

  Mansour met him at the base of the gangway. “We’ve been over all three and found nothing that could be a transmitter. We’re fueling the trucks now. We’ll be ready to leave in another fifteen minutes.” He handed Hashem a small briefcase, and then hesitated. “Should I hand out the GPS units, sir?”

  Hashem pursed his lips. The GPS units were programmed to guide them to the bunker location—or he could store the launchers locally and do a more thorough search, maybe one with x-ray capability. But then he would have to move the TELs again, increasing his exposure to the American satellites.

  Captain Kim seemed to understand that Hashem was making a significant decision. His eyes grew wary and he stepped back, away from the gangway.

  Hashem smiled suddenly and handed the briefcase to the North Korean. “For your trouble, Captain Kim. I want you to leave this port as soon as possible, but make sure you get the bullet holes in your ship repaired before you return to North Korea. Have a safe trip home.”

  The captain accepted the case with trembling hands. “Thank you, sir.”

  Hashem nodded as he tapped out another Marlboro. His lighter flared up, and he focused on the glowing tip of the cigarette.

  “Hand out the GPS units, Mansour. I will ride with you.”

  ***

  CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  01 November 2013 – 1900 local

  Victor Warren fingered the bump under his chin. It felt to him like the start of another pimple. He pressed down hard on the little bump until it hurt. He’d read somewhere that the pressure would suppress the swelling and prevent a pimple from forming. Probably one of the old Cosmo magazines that Gloria had left stacked next to the toilet when she moved out. She’d be back.

  He heard the door to the command center open behind him and saw the square of light reflected in his computer screen. Victor sneaked a glance behind him. They didn’t often get visitors down here in the bowels of the CIA on a Friday night unless there was something going on.

  The visitor was a naval officer, a rangy black guy with his broad back facing Victor. When he turned, Victor caught a glimpse of a sizeable patch of medals on the front of his service dress blues, and the four gold stripes of a captain.

  Victor sat up straighter in his seat and adjusted his headset. Maybe this shift wouldn’t be boring after all.

  The officer and his shift supervisor were taking a long time conferring. They broke off as the supervisor put up a time-lapsed satellite feed on the big screen. Victor’s eyebrows went up when he saw it was Iran. Now this was getting interesting. They were discussing a beat-up merchant ship that had docked next to the pier. Victor called up a tab on his screen and typed in the lat-long: Bandar Lengeh, Iran. He ran his eyes over the port details. Small port on the Persian Gulf. Nothing unusual about the port or the ship.

  He flicked his eyes up to the big screen again, where the supe had thrown up some new images. Holy shit! TELs! Even he could tell they were North Korean models.

  “Warren,” the supe called.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’re going to do an activation sequence on one of the devices for the captain here.”

  Victor twisted around in his chair. “I’m ready whenever you are, sir.”

  The officer snagged a chair from one of the vacant stations and rolled it over to Victor’s desk. The man had a square face that looked deadly serious until he smiled. He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, holding a single sheet of paper. His hands were huge, with scarred knuckles.

  “How ya doin’, son?”

  “Fine, sir. How about yourself?”

  “Ask me after we see if this friggin’ thing works or not,” he growled. “We went to a lot of trouble to get it in place.”

  Victor tried not to show the surprise he felt. They had a tracking beacon on a North Korean TEL that was being off-loaded in Iran? He cursed the fact that he couldn’t talk about his job outside of work. Gloria would definitely take him back if he could talk about this kind of shit.

  Victor called up a sensor activation screen. “Standing by, sir.”

  “Alrighty then. Let’s do this. Xray, Delta, Xray, Seven, Niner, Papa, Romeo, Xray.”

  Victor repeated the letters as he typed them in, then again reading them off the screen. The captain confirmed, and Victor toggled the box that said ACTIVATE.

  The status changed from INACTIVE to STANDING BY with three dots that ran on and on.

  “How long does this take?” the officer asked.

  “Well, sir, these are low-energy signals and are very sensitive to shielding, so it might not pick up on the first pass. I’ve seen it take only a few minutes or a few hours.” He hesitated. “Or not at all.”

  The captain made a face.

  Victor switched screens to the satellite map. “We’ve got a bird coming over the horizon in a few minutes that has a good angle of attack. If they’re still in the clear, I’m sure we’ll see your sensor, sir.”

  The officer fidgeted next to him, folding and unfolding the paper.

  The sensor status went to ACTIVE.

  “Supe, we’re live on the captain’s sensor,” Victor called out. “Getting parameters now.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  “We’re okay?” The officer crowded next to Victor’s chair.

  “I’ll tell you in a minute, sir. Just as soon as the sensor tells me.” Victor’s fingers flew over the keyboard. He called out again. “Supe, sensor is active, and location correlates with the satellite feed. Programmed for hourly location pings, battery at ninety-nine percent, no radiological emissions present.”

  A nuke detector! If only Gloria could see me now.

  “Acknowledged, Warren.”

  Victor turned to the captain. “Is that what you were looking for, sir?”

  The smile said it all. “That’s perfect,” he said. “How does this thing work?”

  Victor turned in his chair. “The sensor puts out a low-energy ping that can be picked up by any friendly satellite in range. It’s a simple binary string on a header. That piggybacks on any available comm signal, then the NSA strips it off in processing and it comes to us. I’ll warn you, this is not real-time comms. The sensor sends out a signal once an hour, but it has no idea if it’s connecting or not. It might take us another hour to get the signal from processing. If the launcher is stored in a big metal hangar or underground, you may not get a signal at all.”

  The captain blew out a long breath. “Okay, I guess that’s all I need for now.”

  “Warren, let’s put that new sensor on the watch list.”

  “Yes, supe.” Victor made the necessary adjustments. Adding the sensor to the watch list meant that all locational data would be collated daily and released to a preset distribution list. He looked up at the officer. “I assume you want to be added to the distribution list for this sensor, sir? I’m going to need your name.”

  �
�Baxter, Richard,” the officer replied. “But you can call me Rick.”

  Victor looked up the name in the database. He clicked the check box with a flourish. “You’re all set, Rick. If this puppy activates, you’ll be one of the first to know.”

  Victor settled in for a long shift after Baxter left. He periodically toggled back to check on the new sensor. The TEL was on the move, heading north for two hours, then due west into the desert.

  CHAPTER 25

  Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Washington, DC

  04 November 2013 – 1100 local

  “I’m sorry, sir. Are you telling me that you gave this person access to your personal information, or that she stole the information?” The woman’s voice had a professional tone, but underneath Brendan could almost hear her saying, You fucking idiot.

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  “Which part, sir? If she stole from you, you need to contact the police. If you want to remove her from an account, then you need to contact your bank and get them to remove her from the account. We’re just a credit agency, sir, we just report the data.”

  You fucking idiot, Brendan finished for her.

  He pressed his free palm against his eye socket. “Can you just make a note that I called, please?” he said, trying to keep the whining tone out of his voice. “Any new credit cards that get opened in my name are not mine. Please.”

  Computer keys clicked as she typed. “Are you pressing charges against this woman, sir?”

  “No—yes. I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet.” He pressed his palm harder into his face. “I’m still in the hospital right now and I’m on the other side of the country . . . it’s complicated.”

  “Well, I do hope you get better soon, sir. Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

  “Uh, no, I guess not—”

  “Wonderful, if you could take a short survey after this call to tell us about your experience with—”

  Brendan slammed the hospital phone down, one of those hard plastic desk jobs with the coiled cord attached. His financial life was so fucked right now he couldn’t even get a goddamned cell phone.

  He clenched his eyes shut, afraid that he might actually cry.

  How could Amy do this to him? He was her “one and only”—she actually used to call him that, her one and only. She even signed her emails to him with O&O, their own private joke.

  And she was gone. Not only was she gone, but she had left his life a financial wreck in the wake of her departure. Brendan was afraid to even think about the list: Car—repossessed. Apartment overlooking Imperial Beach—evicted. Bank accounts—overdrawn. Credit cards—maxed out. She’d even opened new ones in his name and maxed those out, too.

  And she was gone.

  But that wasn’t even the worst part. He was pretty sure he still loved her. Five-foot-ten, auburn hair, green eyes, and a body that just would not quit, Amy had it all. Okay, maybe he didn’t love her, but he still missed her. If she walked through the hospital door right now, he’d take her back despite all the damage she’d done to his life.

  You are a fucking idiot, McHugh.

  Brendan shifted in the bed, wincing when he jostled his knee. The heavily bandaged joint was suspended in the traction device over his bed. He was now a veteran of three knee operations, performed by the ortho docs at Walter Reed. They’d considered trying the first operation at Balboa, in San Diego, but his CO had insisted they send him to Walter Reed. The orthopedic surgeons here had the most experience putting kids from Iraq and Afghanistan back together, and his skipper wanted only the best surgeons working on Brendan’s knee.

  He needed all the help he could get. The knife the North Korean kid had stabbed him with was a rusty piece of shit that he’d apparently used to gut fish. To say it was crawling with bacteria was an understatement; the little knife was like a direct bacterial injection into his leg.

  After the first operation, the infection got so bad the doctor had wanted to take the leg off above the knee. Brendan remembered the whispered argument next to his bed between his CO and the doctor—or maybe he’d dreamed it? Who knew; he was completely out of it by that point, his head swimming in fever from the infection. It was all a foggy half-memory.

  The second operation was what the doctors called “stabilization.” They had talked about cutting out the dead tissue and laying down a base of healthy material to build on. Brendan only half listened. What was he going to do, not have the surgery?

  His mother came to visit between the second and third operations. She was the one who asked about Amy. Brendan hadn’t fully realized the extent of his girlfriend’s destruction at that point, and he’d laughed off her absence with a “you know Amy” comment.

  Mom was full of Minneapolis family gossip and talk about his father’s heart condition, but by the end of the third day, Brendan was ready for her to go home.

  And then operation number three, the one where they put his knee all back together again, just like Humpty Dumpty. The third operation was the easiest of the three and the doctors were all smiles afterwards, which Brendan took to be a good sign.

  A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.

  Dr. Rob Bearon stood in the doorway—filled the doorway was a more apt description. He was a huge man who the nurses called “Bear” behind his back. He had short, thick brown hair, a dense, close-cropped beard of the same color, and squinty eyes.

  “Lieutenant McHugh,” he boomed, “how we doing this fine morning, sir?”

  Despite his foul mood, Brendan smiled. It was impossible not to smile with Dr. Bear. But his smile faded when he saw that the doctor had company with him.

  Rear Admiral Steve “Wiz” Wizniewski was a top dog at the Washington office of US Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and well known in the SEAL community. He had been CO of BUD/S, Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school, when Brendan went through the Program. He could still recall Wiz doing PT with the SEAL candidates half his age—and kicking their asses. Wiz had even pinned on Brendan’s Trident—the “Budweiser,” as the SEAL warfare pin was called—after he’d passed both Underwater Demolition and SEAL training.

  Wiz crossed the room in two strides and gripped Brendan’s hand. “Good to see you, Brendan. It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes, sir.” Brendan tried not to choke. Wiz’s grip said it all: he’s here to let me go. A dark cloud settled over his head as he half-listened to the Bear’s explanation.

  The big man had amazingly gentle hands. He lowered the traction line and removed the bandage like he was unwrapping a historical treasure. Brendan’s knee was a greenish-purple lump of cuts and stitches. It didn’t even look like a knee.

  “The injury occurred from the rear of the joint, piercing the hamstring and cutting all the way through to the patella.” Brendan gritted his teeth when he thought about the feeling of the knifepoint scraping the inside of his kneecap. Bear took out his pen and pointed to the lumpy right side of the knee.

  “The early infection was extensive and resulted in bone loss and tissue decay on this side of the joint. We were able to regrow a section of hamstring using some newer tissue regeneration techniques, and we spliced that new material into the existing hamstring.” He squinted at Brendan. “Physical therapy will not be pleasant, I’m afraid. The new material will need to be stretched into shape slowly—and painfully—but it will work if you stick with it. We tried an experimental bone matrix process to encourage bone regrowth. That was partially successful. We also grafted a metal plate into the left side to stabilize the joint.”

  “Alright, doc, let’s cut to the chase,” Wiz said. “What’s the prognosis?”

  Bear rewrapped the bandage around Brendan’s knee before he answered. “Well, the lieutenant won’t be running any marathons, but with hard work and lots of PT, he’ll probably be able to manage an easy 10K.”

  Brendan looked up, feeling a smile grow on his face. “So I’m going to get cleared for duty again?”


  Dr. Bearon held up his hands. “Whoa, cowboy, that’s not what I said. Brendan, you’re lucky you can walk, much less run—you almost lost your leg, remember? I said you would be able to use the knee again, that’s all.”

  Brendan gave the admiral a hard look. “So you’re here to put the icing on the cake, sir?”

  Wiz’s face softened. “Look, Brendan, you know the rules as well as anyone. You can’t be on the active roster with a bum knee. It’s not fair to the rest of the team. You know that.”

  Brendan nodded, not trusting himself to say anything. He gritted his teeth so that his chin wouldn’t tremble.

  Wizniewski continued. “I’ve been on the phone with the community manager, as well as Admiral McRaven down at SOCOM HQ in Tampa. Yes, we’re going to have to let you go, but the Navy has lots of options out there, Brendan. Some of them might surprise you.”

  “Supply corps, sir?” Brendan said, trying to keep the bitter edge out of his voice. He failed. “C’mon, sir. You know me. How long would I last as a pencil pusher?”

  Wizniewski glanced at his watch and stood up. “Brendan, do you trust me?”

  Brendan swallowed and nodded his head. His voice failed him again.

  “The doc says he’s going to release you next week. You’ve got some medical leave coming to you and the holidays are right around the corner. Take the time, clear your head, and don’t do anything stupid—like resign your commission.”

  He put out his hand. His Naval Academy class ring gleamed in the light. Brendan shook his hand. Wiz’s grip was cool, dry, reassuring. “Something will come up, Brendan. And sooner than you think. Trust me.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.”

  Brendan stared out the window for a long time. Lunch came and he left the tray untouched. They came back to get the tray, and he ignored them.

  His girlfriend, his career, his money, his car—it was all shit. His entire life was shit.

  He tried to will himself to call the next company on his list and just could not screw up the gumption to let one more credit agency lady explain to him why he was a fucking idiot. He laughed bitterly, a sharp bark in the quiet room. O&O, my ass.