Gray Matter Splatter (A Deckard Novel Book 4)

by Jack Murphy

  “We can help with that.”

  “How?”

  “Ten-meter imagery captured by synthetic aperture radar from a passing satellite forty-five minutes ago. The national geospatial agency was able to track fourteen commercial shipping vessels passing Kotelny Island, plus one mystery vessel. All we can do is an analysis of the ship’s wake and attempt to project a distance and heading.”

  “I’m starting to feel like Captain Jack Sparrow chasing a ghost ship.”

  “We’ll exchange business cards and swap saliva under the bleachers later, Deckard,” the man in the black jacket said. “Right now we need to get this operation back on track. I’m bringing some imagery up on your screen right now. Craig, get that shit up on the VTC, dammit.”

  The screen on Deckard’s laptop showed overhead imagery of an ice-strewn sea, a patch of the seemingly endless Arctic Ocean just like any other.

  “We’ve gotten no direct returns from searching for this particular ship, meaning it has poor radar backscatter characteristics.”

  “A stealth ship?”

  “It almost certainly has characteristics to reduce its radar cross section. The wake we detected was faint as well, meaning there are probably measures to reduce that, too. Whoever these guys are, they are trying very hard to stay hidden, and that makes them very interesting to us. We need you to close the distance and keep the pressure on them, otherwise they might have time to offload the device to a waiting airplane or submarine. Zoom in on that picture and take a closer look at the wake.”

  Deckard clicked the magnifying glass icon and enlarged the image. The ship’s wake was hard to spot at first, but it was definitely present.

  “You can make out a stern wave and the turbulent wake leaving a trail behind wherever the vessel is off to,” the man in black continued. “I crunched the numbers. By measuring distances where the transverse and divergent waves intersect with the Kelvin envelope, I was able to get you a new heading for the suspect vessel. This heading also backtracks to Kotelny Island.”

  “What am I up against?

  “My best assessment is that it is a semi-submersible craft, which would explain why we can’t find a radar cross section on it. The good news is that this means the ship is moving at relatively slow speeds, meaning you’ve got a shot at catching up with it.”

  “The bad news?”

  “It probably lowers its draft by filling internal ballast tanks along the sides of its hull. It would also be able to evacuate those tanks quickly and then take off at much higher speeds. It’s going to be hard to spot, even visually, but once you do and begin pursuit, you will have your hands full.”

  “You’re an old sea dog, aren’t you?”

  The man in black chuckled.

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “And now?”

  “You could say that I specialize in quiet weapons for silent wars.”

  “Oh.”

  “You can call me Will, by the way.”

  “Will?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Who are they?”

  Will was about to say something until Craig, the guy with the reading glasses, interrupted.

  “We don't know who they are, Deckard. That’s what has everyone here so scared. Russia has come under attack, America got hit hard last night, and we are seeing some really weird movements in Ukraine, Syria, and the South China Sea in recent hours. Right now it would be extremely speculative to point a finger at one actor or another because none of this is making sense,” Craig finished. “We’ll be in touch the moment we know more.”

  “I would appreciate that,” Deckard said, his words left hanging in the air.

  Will looked back at him.

  “You remember the Moscow apartment complex bombing in 1999?” Will asked.

  “It kicked off the second war in Chechnya.”

  “It’s not a secret that the bombing was a false flag conducted by the Russian FSB intelligence service.”

  “What are you saying? That the Russians stole their own nuclear weapon?”

  “I’m saying that all of the villains in Gotham City are teaming up on us.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “As I said, we’ll contact you when we have something solid,” Craig cut in again.

  The VTC went dark, and Deckard was again sitting on the bridge with only Otter to keep him company. The ship captain whistled as he began steering them on a new heading that had just been sent to them.

  “Damn, son,” the ship captain said as he took a swig of spiked coffee. “That’s some black helicopter shit right there.”

  Chapter 7

  Deckard climbed down the metal stairwell from the bridge and down into the passenger compartment of the ship. He stood in the middle of his men’s living and work space, the mercenaries stepping around him in the cramped ship’s quarters. His vision was still transfixed by the piece of paper he held in his hand. They had received it by email and Deckard had printed off a couple of copies.

  In his hand he held a letter of marque signed by the president, authorizing him to attack enemy vessels at his own discretion. With the flick of a pen, the Carrickfergus had been made into a pirate ship, and Deckard the pirate captain. Some of the mercenaries looked at him strangely as they passed by. No one could recall seeing their boss with such a big smile on his face.

  Snapping out of it, Deckard stepped over Mk48 machine guns and around winter parkas and trousers drying from improvised clotheslines. He was looking for the computer hacker he kept on Samruk International’s payroll when he stumbled across Chuck Rochenoire’s hootch. He and Nate, the new guy who had served with Marine Corps special operations, were sitting on top of MRE boxes while drinking a couple Miller High Life beers.

  “You want one, Deck?” Rochenoire asked. “It's the fuckin’ champagne of beers.”

  Deckard stepped forward, looking at the giant black flag that Chuck had strung up on the wall. The skull and crossbones were something Marines and SEALs could always appreciate.

  “Something wrong?” Nate asked.

  “Far from it,” Deckard answered.

  He handed Chuck the letter bearing the letterhead of the Oval Office. Chuck and Nate crowded around the piece of paper, trying to make sense of it.

  “This can’t be what I think it is,” Nate said.

  For once, Chuck was at a loss for words.

  “Let’s start flying the Jolly Roger and make it official,” Deckard said with a grin.

  * * *

  Deckard found Cody hunched over a desk, finger-fucking some electronic gadget. At the end of the passenger compartment, Cody had set up a small work station. The desk was covered with wires, batteries, rechargers, thumb drives, and other odds and ends. He was perhaps the only non-combat personnel in the company, but he had a magic touch with electronics. From computer network operations to jury-rigging satellite dishes or isolating obscure radio frequency spectrums, Cody had an exceptional talent.

  Not that it didn’t come without its drawbacks.

  “What do you want?” Cody asked after briefly looking up at Deckard. Then he muttered under his breath, “Fucking pussy.”

  Cody was in a unique position, as he had both Asperger’s syndrome and apparently an undiagnosed form of Tourette syndrome on top of it.

  “Get anything off those laptops?” Deckard asked, noticing the laptop computers Aghassi had taken off the Russian mafia target they had hit.

  “Not much, just social media shit that can be used to link them back to the rest of the Russian mob. But we already knew that.”

  “The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is what happened on Kotelny.”

  Cody didn’t look up and continued to mess around with the Pwn Pad in his hands. It was a Nexus 7 tablet that had been specially built for penetration testing of electronic networks.

  “Tanks got hacked. What else you wanna know?” Cody asked. “COCK!”

  “How hard is it to do something like that?”

  “Ver
y difficult. Just like our Predator drones. The signals being transmitted between the drone and the operator are unencrypted, otherwise the encryption would lead to such a lag time that it would be like trying to have a firefight with a 56k AOL dial-up connection.”

  “But intercepting signals doesn’t allow you to take control of the drone?”

  “No. FUCK. To do that you have hack the actual hardware on the drone and that is encrypted.”

  “Who could do something like that?”

  “Military-grade encryption? Not me. Not anyone I would know. Governments only, I guess.”

  “So we’re talking about a major power player? A country that has a massive electronic warfare infrastructure like China?”

  “DICK. FACE. Yes. No. Or just a Russian military insider who sold his secrets to someone. I don’t know.”

  “You are not filling with me confidence right now, Cody.”

  “Why the fuck would I want to do that?” Cody snorted. “We’re all going to die up in this frozen shithole you brought us to.”

  “Well, that’s nice to know,” Deckard said as he looked up at the ceiling. “Anything else you can actually do to help me before we stumble into oblivion?”

  “Take this,” Cody turned around and tossed Deckard the Pwn Pad. “Turn it on next time you come in contact with these guys. It might suck up some interesting signals we can use.”

  Deckard looked down at the tablet and pursed his lips.

  “OK, Cody,” Deckard said as he turned to walk away. “OK.”

  “Little shit.”

  * * *

  Deckard found his cot in the middle of the mercenary maelstrom and sat down. It was his ship and his merry band of pirates, but even he could get lost in the chaos. Having soldiers live right on top of each other in cramped quarters made for an interesting combination of fistfights and grab ass. These were no professional sailors either; they were blow-the-door-down, kill everyone inside, and be home by beer-thirty ground pounders. The few former SEALs and Marines may have been used to it, but most of the men adapted to the maritime lifestyle with great reluctance.

  But none of them complained just as long as Deckard’s checks cleared. For now, anyway.

  The former special operations soldier picked up his AK-103 rifle, depressed the nub at the end of the carrier spring, and detached the dust cover. He then popped out the spring and pulled out the bolt carrier. Using a rag and some oil, he did a few minutes of weapons maintenance.

  They were quickly learning how to put a weapon into operation effectively in the Arctic. More and more of the mercenaries were rolling out with just iron sights, as the batteries in optical sights froze after 15 minutes. Deckard applied a very light coat of oil prior to reassembling his rifle. Any more, and he risked having the oil freeze and gum up the cycle of operation when he pulled the trigger, leading to malfunctions.

  Next, he moved on to his Glock 19, the standard-issue sidearm in Samruk International. He had given up his much-loved Kimber 1911. As much as he loved God's gun, Deckard knew that 1911s were high maintenance tack drivers only carried by Luddites, iconoclasts, and connoisseurs. At the end of the day, the Glock 19 was more reliable, and reliability was something they desperately needed in the Arctic. It took three minutes to disassemble the pistol, wipe it down, and put it back together again.

  Deckard slid the Glock into the Raven Concealment holster on his hip and headed back up to the bridge. Otter had actually let Kurt Jager take the helm while the ship’s captain was looking over sea charts and plotting a course.

  “Where do you think the enemy is heading?” Deckard asked him.

  “Well,” Otter said as he frowned and blew out his cheeks. “Based on the wake analysis we were given, it looks like they are heading toward the De Long Strait.”

  “Will we overtake them prior to getting there?”

  “I have no idea. It depends on their speed relative to ours, and right now we have no idea how many knots they are moving at. We should have a better idea in five hours, when the next satellite in polar orbit goes overhead. If it is able to pick up the stealth ship’s wake again, we could be able to calculate speeds.”

  “How long until we reach the strait if we continue at our max speed?”

  “At twenty-five knots we will get there in just a little over twenty-four hours.”

  “Feels like we’re fighting a war in slow motion.”

  “We're not hitting time-sensitive targets in some urban sprawl,” Kurt reminded Deckard. “Even with the northeast passage opening up, there is still very little infrastructure in the Arctic.”

  “Maybe that won’t be the case in another twenty years, after the oil companies try to suck every bit of energy reserves out of the Arctic,” Otter confirmed. “But for now, we are faced with the tyranny of distance and the austerity of the environment.”

  “I guess the good news is that the enemy is as well,” Deckard said.

  “Their choice of vessel would make one believe that they chose stealth over speed, counting on the assumption they would not be found.”

  “But we’ve already got their heading.”

  “And we’re probably gaining on them as we speak,” Otter said with a rare smile.

  Deckard ran his finger over the chart, tracing the projected route of the Carrickfergus, wondering what the next day would bring.

  Chapter 8

  Tampa, Florida

  Craig rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Joshua had his head down on the table, taking a nap. Gary had stepped outside to call his wife and tell her that he wouldn’t be coming home any time soon. SCOPE was a think tank, not an operations center that worked in shifts. Everyone was exhausted and needed a break while the Carrickfergus was in transit and they waited for the satellite window to open up again over northern Russia.

  The JSOC think tank was dead tired. Most of them, anyway.

  Will paced back and forth, his heels clicking on the floor. His lips were moving, the words coming out of his mouth barely decipherable even if someone had been listening. The only words that were really recognizable were the ones consisting of four letters. After years of warning the intelligence community, everything he’d said was coming true. It wasn’t something he took pride in, but now no one could doubt that his assessment had merit. Or at least they wouldn't be able to much longer.

  Suddenly, Will stopped dead in his tracks.

  “I’ve got it!” he shouted.

  “Got what?” Craig said with a yawn.

  Joshua continued to snore.

  “Something we can do instead of sitting around with our thumbs up our asses.”

  “Well, I could go rub one out I guess—”

  “Yeah,” Will said under his breath. “Or you could go dust your old lady’s pussy off.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Sorry, just mumbling to myself.”

  “Mumbling what?”

  “We need to take a serious look at getting inside the enemy’s communications network.”

  Craig put his head down on the table.

  “Will, we don't even know who the enemy is, so how are we supposed to even identify how they are talking to one another?”

  “I told you before, they use Infinity Blade.”

  “Infinity what?”

  “Infinity Blade. It’s an MMORPG.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “A massive multiplayer online role-playing game.”

  “My kids play those?” Craig asked no one in particular before turning to Joshua, who was still asleep. “Do my kids play that?”

  The door swung open and Gary walked back inside, pocketing his cell phone.

  “The game is based on a series of fantasy novels that became an underground hit. The game also has a cult following. It was produced by the same Norwegian guy who created Paradoxica.”

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” Gary demanded.

  “Para what?” Craig asked.

  “Paradoxica,” Will said. “It’s a game
about a young woman traveling between three worlds...and filled with existential malaise….”

  “Oh. My. God. I'm going back outside,” Gary said as he reached for the door.

  “Hold on, dammit!” Will yelled. “I’m getting to the good part.”

  “So there is a point to all of this?”

  “I’ve been playing Infinity Blade for years, and I know something is going on inside this game.”

  “I should have known. You're a bigger gamer than my kids, but at least my kids don’t have conspiracy theories about the games they play,” Craig said as he rolled his eyes.

  “Look, what is a video game?” Will asked rhetorically. “It’s a communications medium, another way to talk over the internet. But in this case, it is within a massive multiplayer video game. The FBI identified an island in the game called Second Life that Hezbollah uses to talk to each other. Hezbollah members from anywhere in the world, including their handlers in Iran, can log into the game and meet up with each other to exchange information and issue orders.”

  “And you think this Infinity Blade game is used the same way,” Gary said as he walked back and took his seat.

  “I know it is. The FBI investigated, but they can't crack the cell inside Infinity Blade. Their operational security is tight. You don't get into their castle unless you’ve been extensively vetted.”

  “Assuming you are correct, what makes you think this is the same group behind our current situation?”

  “When I realized that a number of countries antagonistic toward the United States were in collusion with each other, I began looking for traces of them and how they communicate. The servers for Infinity Blade are physically located in China, which doesn’t mean anything in of itself, but that prevents the FBI from gaining access.”

  “So you identified some secretive group inside a video game operated out of China, which means this is just another wild-ass hunch of yours?” Craig asked.

  “This is how the baddies communicate,” Will replied. “I’m sure of it.”

  “I’m sure this is a waste of time,” Craig said as he put his head back down on the table. “I’m taking a nap.”