Joshuas Hammer km-8

by David Hagberg

  “Good point,” McGarvey agreed. “Has there been any word from bin Laden or his people about the raid?”

  “Not so much as a peep,” Elizabeth said. “I have a halfdozen search engines going on the Net, but we’ve come up empty-handed so far.” Elizabeth looked perplexed. “But I don’t get it, Dad. You’d think he would want to get the maximum mileage from his daughter’s death. I mean guys like that usually take advantage of anything that comes their way. Something like the evil empire killing innocent women and children. Something. Anything.”

  “Would bin Laden know for certain that we knew his daughter had been killed?” McGarvey asked.

  “He could know our satellite schedule,” Rencke said. “But if we don’t issue an apology, something he might expect us to do, there’s no way for him to know for sure.”

  McGarvey turned back to his daughter. “Do you mention her death in your search engines?”

  Elizabeth shook her head uncertainly. “No.”

  “Okay, that’s one piece of information we won’t put out,” McGarvey said.

  Understanding dawned on Elizabeth’s face. “He figures that if we know that we killed his daughter, we’ll also know that he’s going to come after us.”

  “Something like that,” McGarvey said tiredly.

  “But, Dad, that makes us the same as him,” Elizabeth protested. “He’s going to use his daughter’s death to give himself an advantage over us. And now we’re going to do the same thing.”

  “That’s right, Liz,” McGarvey said, liking it even less than she did. But he had traveled with Sarah, eaten with her, talked to her, had even saved her from rape. “Have we come up with anything new on the Russian weapon?”

  “No, and we probably won’t,” Rencke said. “The Bolshies are running scared and they’re covering up now, ‘cause they know the score.”

  “Did you get into the old Lubyanka mainframe?”

  “It was easy green,” Rencke said. “But there wasn’t much. They’re not even talking about it amongst themselves.” He got a wistful look on his face that was almost comical in its intensity. Someone who didn’t know him would believe that he had lost his mind or had zoned out. But then he smiled shyly. “I figured there had to be something, ya know. So I snooped around their out-station files, and you’ll never guess what I came up with.” Rencke looked around for someone to guess, but then shrugged. “There was a military trial yesterday. A captain and a colonel were found guilty of theft and dereliction of duty. Pretty common these days. But they were executed. Lined up in front of a wall and shot dead, big time. And guess where all this took place.”

  “Tajikistan,” McGarvey said.

  “Yeah,” Rencke replied. “Yavan Depot, right where the weapon came from. Which means we’re not going to get diddly from the Russkies. They’re going to deny everything. We are definitely on our own, kimo sabe.” “The bomb is on its way,” McGarvey said.

  “You can bet the farm on it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  M/V Margo

  I told you that we should have waited a few days,” First Officer Joseph Green said. Captain George Panagiotopolous glanced over at the pissant little man standing in front of the radar. The storm” was going to be a good one, he could not deny that, but it wasn’t a typhoon. He’d sailed through those by whatever name they were called — hurricane, anti cyclone extratropical storm — in four different oceans. Rough, dangerous, uncomfortable, but not impossible for a ship like the Margo.

  He walked over to the bank of ship’s phones and called his deck officer/loadmaster Lazlo Schumatz in his quarters. “This is Panagiotopolous, it looks like we’re going to get that weather sooner than expected. Are you ready?”

  “The deck cargo is secure, and Heiddi’s section should be finished in the holds in about an hour. Do you want me to go down there?”

  “It might not hurt,” the captain said.

  “What are we in for?”

  Panagiotopolous glanced again at Green, who was staring intently out the windows across the cluttered cargo deck toward the bows, which were already beginning to rise and fall with the action of the increasing waves. “We’re in for a force eight, maybe a nine.”

  Schumatz laughed. “Thirty-five to forty-five knot winds, and you call me? What, is Green quaking in his boots again?”

  The captain was a great respecter of rank. He didn’t hold with disrespect. “Maybe you should double check the deck cargo as well, especially before it gets any rougher,” he said.

  “As you wish.”

  “Thank you.” The captain hung up the phone and followed Green’s gaze out the bridge windows. The Margo was a tight ship. With an overall length of 654 feet and a beam of ninety-six, she could transport nearly one thousand containers in her seven holds and lashed to her cargo deck. A pair of Sulzer diesels could push her through the seas at sixteen knots, and since her 1978 launch from the Cockerill Yards in Hoboken, New Jersey, she had never been in a collision or any serious accident at sea. She’d been retrofitted with new hatches and bow thrusters at Tampa Marine Yards in Florida in 1985, and had undergone a complete rebuild in 1996. But now they wanted her back for a second overhaul even though it was too soon, and there was not enough wrong with her to pull her out of service for the two months it would take. But it was the owners’ decision and there was no arguing with them.

  They would sail up the Red Sea, transit the Suez Canal, cross the Med, and then head out across the Atlantic to the Port of New York where they would unload their cargo. From there it would be Tampa, and after that it was up to the owners. Everything was up to the owners, always. Panagiotopolous had been at sea for most of his life, and he understood the score. His job was to sail the boats, and leave the business and the politics to others. Not his responsibility. Green turned and gave the captain a bleak look. He was just a kid and he was frightened. But he was also the principal stock holder’s son, so he had to be treated with respect. And he did have his first officer’s papers.

  “These kinds of storms are confidence-builders,” the captain said, not unkindly. “Once you’ve gone through forty-five knots, and you see that you and your ship have done just fine, why then forty-five knots will never present a problem again.”

  “But fifty knots will,” Green said, relaxing a little. “What’s the biggest storm you’ve been in?”

  “I’ll tell you about it sometime over a beer,” Panagiotopolous said. He had his own upper limit like all men did.

  “How big?”

  The helmsman was studying the binnacle compass even though they were on autopilot. But he was listening.

  “A hundred sixty knots,” the captain said quietly. He grinned. “And I was pissing in my pants.”

  Green looked nervously out the window. “In other words this is no problem.”

  “Something like that.”

  CIA Headquarters

  General Roland Murphy appeared as if he hadn’t slept in a week, but unlike Rencke who looked like a wild man, Murphy looked ill. The skin hung on his jowls and neck, and his complexion was pasty. McGarvey was shocked by his appearance. He’d never seen him this way. The rumor was that Murphy was going to retire in six months, but McGarvey had to genuinely wonder if the man was going to make it that long. The general had worked for the CIA almost as long as McGarvey had been involved with the Company. During that time they had never been friends, but they’d maintained a mutual respect. They each were the best at what they did, which was one of the reasons why Murphy had gotten behind McGarvey’s appointment as last year, a move that stunned some people and angered others, and why it had gone through without a hitch. But he seemed to have greatly diminished in the week or so that McGarvey had been gone. Both of them had been beaten up by the mission.

  He got up from behind his desk and extended his hand. “Welcome home, Kirk. I’m glad to see you in one piece.”

  McGarvey took his hand and was happy that the general’s grip had not weakened. “Thanks, but I would rath
er have come home to a better set of circumstances.”

  “Partly my fault, I’m afraid,” Murphy’s face fell. “When you went off the air we thought you were dead and bin Laden was playing games with us.”

  “Dennis Berndt’s idea?”

  Murphy nodded. “Everyone’s except Otto’s.” He motioned for McGarvey to take a seat, and then he slumped back down in his chair. “I assume that you’ve already been briefed about bin Laden’s daughter.”

  “I got the high points on the way in from Andrews.” “A terrible business.” McGarvey nodded, there was nothing else to say about it. “I’ve called a National Threat Assessment meeting for eleven.”

  “That’s cutting everyone a little short, isn’t it?” Murphy said, glancing at the desk clock. It was a little before 10: 00 a.m. “The President wants to see you.”

  “He’ll have to wait until this afternoon,” McGarvey said, and before Murphy could object he went on. “The bomb is on its way here, General. We don’t know how it’s coming, where it’s coming or even when it’s coming, but we have to deal with the problem. The sooner we get to it the greater our chances for success are going to be.”

  “Which are?”

  “I don’t know,” McGarvey said tiredly. “But the advantage is definitely his.”

  Murphy took a memo out of a file folder and passed it across the desk. It was on White House stationery and was signed by Haynes. “You’re going to be asked to assassinate bin Laden.”

  McGarvey read the note and passed it back. “At least this is one President who’s not afraid to take responsibility,” he said. “But he’s too late by at least six months, which is about how long it would take to pull off something like that — if it could be done at all.” McGarvey’s headache was coming back, and he passed a hand over his eyes. “Those days are gone, thank God.” He shook his head. “But even if we could push a little red button right this instant, and bin Laden would suddenly cease to exist, the bomb would still come here.”

  “Not without his orders.”

  “He’s gone to ground now. He set the machinery in motion, and even he might not be able to stop it even if he wanted to.”

  Some of Murphy’s spark came back. He’d personally seen just about everything that could happen in the shadow world, and he still controlled the largest and most powerful intelligence agency in the world. “Okay, how do we proceed?”

  “We’re going to tighten our border controls to start with. We’re putting tracers on all of bin Laden’s known associates and business connections here in the States and everywhere else. We’ve got the word out to be on the lookout for a special package. Something that’ll be getting more attention than whatever it’s disguised to look like should be getting. And we’re watching the possible routes. It started out in Tajikistan and had to have been transported overland through the mountains into Afghanistan. Assuming it’s on the move again it either has to be taken east to Pakistan or west to Iran. We have people on the ground who will be moved into positions to watch the roads, the trains, the planes and the ships.”

  “What’s your best guess?”

  “Best guess or worst fear?” McGarvey asked. “Because the worst case scenario would be the simplest They load the bomb on a commercial airliner, and as it approaches either New York City or Washington it goes off.”

  “Security at every international airport around the world will have to be tightened. Just like after Lockerbie.”

  “Maybe it’ll go by ship to Hamburg, then by truck to Frankfurt and from there by air to Washington,” McGarvey said. “Or any other combination you’d like to dream up.”

  “I see your point.”

  “Maybe it’ll stay in Tehran for a month, or maybe in Paris or London or Marseilles or Tripoli, and then when our security measures start to loosen up, which they will, it’ll be moved again. Leapfrogged here.”

  “Does he have a timetable?”

  “That’s a possibility we’re going to have to consider. Could be he’s going to hit us on the Fourth of July, or maybe Labor Day; maybe Thanksgiving or Christmas.” McGarvey shook his head again. “Do you want to try for Lincoln’s birthday?”

  Murphy sighed deeply. “If we had held back on the missile attack we could have avoided all of this.”

  “Maybe,” McGarvey said. “He might have been stalling for time after all. Kept us talking while he moved the bomb into place.”

  Murphy gave McGarvey a sharp look. “But you don’t believe that.” “Doesn’t matter. We have a situation in front of us now, and we have to deal with it. Nothing else is important.” The recriminations and finger-pointing would come later, McGarvey thought. Right now it was a question of motivation, dedication. “How are you feeling, Roland?”

  Murphy smiled wanly. “That’s supposed to be my question to you.”

  “I’ve felt worse. But when this is over I’m going to take a long vacation. Someplace without a mountain view.”

  “Next time send someone else out into the field, okay? I want my DDO running the show, not becoming the star attraction.”

  “No one likes the thought of getting old,” McGarvey said.

  “No,” Murphy agreed. When McGarvey was gone a snatch of something started running around in the back of his head. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but the line had something to do with dancing on a grave. It was disturbing, all the more so because his memory was imperfect, and because he wondered if it was a portent.

  McGarvey entered the CIA’s main auditorium at 11:00 a.m. sharp and went directly to the podium on the small stage. A table was set next to it. He felt like hell, but he did not let it show. There were nearly a hundred people hastily assembled, all of them law enforcement or intelligence gathering officials, and most of them experts in counterterrorism. Adkins and his own staff took up the back rows, along with Tommy Doyle and some of his people from the Directorate of Intelligence. Rencke was held up downstairs with Jared Kraus in Technical Services, and Elizabeth was with him.

  “Thank you for coming out on such short notice this morning. My name is Kirk McGarvey and for those of you who don’t know me, I’m the deputy director of Operations. I’ve called this meeting because the CIA believes that the United States is facing the worst threat of terrorism in its history. And we’re going to have to work together to try to stop it.” He dimmed the lights and clicked on the projection unit.

  The slide showed the engineering diagram of the Russian nuclear bomb. “This information comes to us from Department of Defense and Department of Energy files,” McGarvey said. “The device on the screen is a Russian nuclear demolitions weapon which they call atvartka, or screwdriver. It has a nominal yield of one kiloton, it fits into a package about the size of a large suitcase, and detonation-ready it weighs between eighty and ninety pounds.

  “It does not leak radiation, so Geiger counters cannot detect it and our conventional NEST forces will not work. Its conventional explosives are so well sealed that bomb sniffing dogs are of no use. It’s shockproof, heat proof waterproof and so extremely simple to operate that it does not require a trained technician to fire it. In short, ladies and gentlemen, the perfect terrorist’s weapon.”

  McGarvey had their attention. He switched to the next slide, which showed a photograph of the actual device with a serial number next to it. “The nuclear weapon with this serial number was stored, until recently, at the Yavan Depot outside of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Because of the decaying political situation in many of the former Soviet Union’s breakaway republics, security for and accountability of such equipment is lax at the very best.”

  He clicked to the next slide, showing two Russian officers. “Colonel Vladislav Drankov and Captain Vadim Perminov, who were in charge of security at the depot, were found guilty of dereliction of duty and theft by a military court. They were executed yesterday.”

  The next slide came up. It showed a map of the region between Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan. Several routes through the mountains were mark
ed in red. “We believe that these two Russian officers sold the nuclear weapon for thirty million U.S. dollars in cash to Osama bin Laden, who brought it by horseback through rebel-held territory to his base outside of Charikar as early as three months ago.”

  “How the hell long has the CIA known about this?” the FBI’s Fred Rudolph demanded. He and McGarvey had worked together before. They had a great deal of respect for each other. But now Rudolph was mad. And he was clearly shook up, everyone in the audience was.

  “About eight weeks, Fred,” McGarvey replied. “But we were not sitting on our hands. We had an operation in progress.”

  “Evidently it wasn’t a success, or you wouldn’t have called us here,” Rudolph said. “The missile raid was an exercise in futility. Are you going to tell us that bin Laden survived?”

  “It’s worse than that,” McGarvey said. He brought up the next image on the screen which showed the satellite shot of bin Laden carrying his daughter’s body. “This was taken from one of our Keyhole satellites within minutes after the missile attack on bin Laden’s mountain camp was completed. The figure at the lower left of the photograph is Osama bin Laden. As you can see, he survived. Subsequent photographs show that he was apparently not hurt.”

  McGarvey looked up at the screen. “He’s carrying someone who did not survive the attack, however.”

  He clicked to the next picture, this one the file photograph of Sarah. “This is Osama bin Laden’s nineteen-year old daughter, Sarah. It is her body he is carrying. It was she, along with at least eighteen of his mujahedeen, who was killed in the attack.”

  “Oh, shit,” someone in the audience said.

  “As you may expect, bin Laden is now well motivated” and he will attempt to bring the nuclear weapon into the United States sometime in the very near future — although we don’t know when — to hit a target that will inflict the maximum damage on us in retaliation for the death of his child. It’s up to us to stop him.”