by Tom Hron
The map display of the global positioning system beamed myriad green islands on a blue sea, and then, when he zoomed out the scale, the yellow depiction of the town of Bissau. He bent his head forward as if he was studying hieroglyphics. “We’ve got Guinea-Bissau, ladies and gentlemen, or the Archipelago of Bijagos, to be more exact,” he said. “No wonder the Navy set up there—it was the perfect hiding place. You’re absolutely magical, Alexis.”
“I got it from MIT, where they had gotten it from Raytheon, whose home office just happens to be next door.”
“You accessed MIT’s computers?” asked Shawki, amazed.
“Sure, colleges are easy, and nearly all associate themselves with big corporations. It took a couple of phone calls before I gave up on the military historians, since no one wanted to help this late at night.”
Harry swung in his seat toward Shawki. “Can you make your phone call for the submersible and sonar, since it’s almost morning in Manama? Then Alexis and you get some sleep. Joe and I can get our rest tomorrow, while you two hire a boat.”
Once Shawki had made his phone call silence filled the airplane, and, with Joe nodding off, Harry found himself all alone with his thoughts. The Dragon had turned out to be another bombshell he hadn’t seen coming, and what had seemed so simple at first, a little counterintelligence work, had now gotten so mysterious he felt as if he were dealing with the surreal. Every move he’d made since the Aurora’s crash had gone awry, as if he’d lost his ability to think logically. He was a soldier caught in a crossfire, and he had to somehow get his mind ahead of the action before it was too late.
“What are thinking about?” asked Joe, surprising him and pulling him back to the dim, red-lit cockpit.
“The link between the Aurora and the Black Dragon.”
“Well, the Security Council is the most important, for sure. The problem is they have all the silver bullets. All the people with the big horsepower are on their side, the CIA, the FBI, you name it.”
“We need to find a way to return as soon as we can.”
“We’ve got to find the Dragon first,” breathed Joe.
But why? wondered Harry once more. The Black Dragon was so disparate it didn’t compute with anything. He was starting to worry the answer might leave him feeling like a total fool, which left him with this constant fear. Then he heard Air Traffic Control tell him to let down, so he forgot about his anxiety and set up for the descent into the Verde Islands. There was a red sunrise over Africa and they would soon find out. Or would it be like the old saying went, red morning sailor’s warning?
They landed in Espargos on Sal Island while it was still dark, which then cost them a hefty fine, partly for calling out customs early, partly because Alexis didn’t have a passport, and partly for their pets. For a few moments, they thought they might be arrested, but the immigration officer suddenly remembered that Cape Verde and Bahrain were analogous island nations, great neighbors, and that he’d always wanted to meet an oil sheik. He had dreamed about it, actually. There must be some way to work this out, he suggested, in light of all the additional paperwork. Shawki instantly said that they should go into the customs office and discuss the problem further. Not long afterward, Officer Koumba, as he’d introduced himself, wondered if they would like a ride to the Hotel Alantico.
They saw that Sal was a flat, desert island filled with European tourists, and there were good hotels, bars, and restaurants everywhere. Alexis opined that she liked the adventurous life just fine, thank you very much. But Joe cautioned that he didn’t think the good times would last. Nonetheless, the tropical air and blue-green ocean lifted their spirits and eased some of their fears. A day or two in the sun would do them good while they waited for the diving equipment. Harry and Joe walked to the beach and Shawki and Alexis went off to find a boat. They would get back together at dinner.
That evening they ate at the Restaurante Roselita and, over sole en Papillote and white Cotes du Rhone, Shawki described the forty-meter-long boat Alexis and he had chartered. That’s not a boat, protested Joe, that’s a freaking ship. Shawki countered that he’d asked his people to bring a remote operated vehicle and a decompression chamber, so they needed all the room they could get. This isn’t a little thing we’re doing, okay?
Shaking his head, Harry smiled. Their lives had been a little altered since Alexis had joined them. Now an animation existed that hadn’t been there before. “When will that stuff get here?” he asked after the good-natured squabbling had stopped. “I’d like to sail tomorrow.”
“I promise by morning,” answered Shawki. “The captain knows of a truck that will haul everything to the harbor, and then we’ll be ready to leave.”
“Have you ever done anything like this before?” asked Alexis, “and how long do you think it will take?”
“Yes, many times. I’ve discovered three ancient shipwrecks, two Assyrian and one Greek.” Shawki’s eyes shone in the table’s candle light. “Guinea-Bissau is two days away, but for finding the Dragon, who knows how long?”
An hour later, they walked back to their hotel and went to their rooms. Harry had gotten one alone and lay awake thinking. Getting out of New York now seemed like a good idea, since it had taken his mind off Catherine and given him a chance to calm down. When Jefferies had recruited him, they had talked about the possibility of the Russians and/or the Chinese having spies high in the CIA or the FBI, maybe even the State Department. The arrest of Robert Philip Hanssen, a veteran FBI counterintelligence agent, had shown just how successful a foreign country could be in installing a mole in the top echelons of the government. But, what if there were people in higher places still, so high they would never be suspected, like in the Security Council, for example? If you had someone in the CIA or the FBI with access to the classified counterintelligence databases, example being Robert Hanssen again, short circuiting the investigations of people higher up … well, the idea left him cold and could explain why he had always been a step behind. It also meant the president could very well be caught in a game of deadly treason, one in which there was no escape, since he’d be compromised no matter what he did. Paying blackmail, acquiescence, resignation, what in hell were his choices?
He picked up the telephone and dialed Alexis’s room. There was something else bothering him. “I hope I didn’t wake you,” he said when she answered. “I need to ask you a question.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.” Her voice almost had a schoolgirl’s tone. “I’m too excited to sleep.”
“I told you that the Aurora started all this.” He paused because he didn’t want to sound like an idiot. “Do you know anything about high-frequency radio waves and pulse energies that could destroy a spacecraft’s electrical and avionics systems?”
“The Air Force and Navy have three research facilities that are testing just those kinds of technologies. One is in Platteville, Colorado, another is at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and the third is near Fairbanks, Alaska. They’re known as Haarp sites, H-double A-R-P, which stands for the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program. All three can energize focused areas in the ionosphere for scientific studies. They’re duplicating the phenomenon that’s generated by sunspots, solar flares that knock out satellite communications and electrical grids for whole cities.”
He quickly sat up in bed. “You learned that at the CIA?”
“Actually, no, it’s all on the Internet for everyone to see. When you clear off whole forests for crossed dipole antenna farms the size of small towns and then build adjoining facilities without windows, people start asking questions. The program is associated with several major colleges, Penn State, UCLA, MIT, and Stanford, to name just a few. The program is fascinating, but scary as well. The Air Force Research Laboratory has overall management responsibilities.”
“Why in such distant places?”
“This is all over-the-horizon stuff. The Air Force also has an airborne laser weapon it’s testing, all stuffed into a Boeing 747-400. That too
could easily blow a spacecraft like you were flying out of the sky. You can read about it on the Internet as well if you want.”
An idea, like a pinpoint, started growing in his mind. Maybe there was a link between the Aurora and the Black Dragon after all, and in few days he might have proof.
“Thanks, Alexis, you’ve been a big help. See you at breakfast.”
“Is that all you wanted to know?” She sounded surprised.
“Yes, you’ve told me more than enough.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me why you asked about radio waves and pulse energies?”
“After we find the Dragon, then maybe I can explain without sounding like I’m nuts.”
“What if we never find it?”
“Don’t worry—Shawki’s the best in the business.”
“Now you’ve got me so I’ll never sleep.”
“Try, okay, since we’ll need you tomorrow.” He then smiled and hung up. Beauty, brains, and felicity as well, he thought. She was probably the most remarkable woman he had ever met. Lying down once again, he fell asleep and dreamed of his boyhood home in Montana.
Next morning they caught a cab to the airport and watched Shawki’s equipment unload from a C-130 Hercules onto a flatbed truck. Afterward, they took the cab to the harbor and helped load everything onto a wetfish trawler, the Capricornio, made in France in the 1980’s. It had a blue hull, a white forecastle, an A-frame, and hydraulic davits and winches. I told you guys this wasn’t no freaking boat, protested Joe. Laughing, Shawki said that he’d just been giving everyone a hard time the night before, since no one but he had any experience on the high seas. At lunchtime they sailed out of port.
The twenty-man crew was Creole, the mulatto descendants of the first contacts between the Portuguese and the Africans in the 1400’s. Strong and graceful, they had spent their lives at sea, where most Cape Verdeans made their living. Saltwater ran in their veins, and Shawki instantly fell in love with them. They were the fishermen and merchantmen he’d always admired. He talked constantly with them about their world, the North Atlantic. The ocean of storms. The ocean of death. His eyes beamed with excitement.
Sailing east through calm seas, they watched the island of Sal and it taller neighbors, Boa Vista, Maio, and Sao Tiago, fall from the horizon. They later spent the afternoon and the following day inspecting the submersible, decompression chamber, and diving gear. Nothing must be left to chance and everything must be in perfect condition and running completely, ordered Shawki. Like mutinous crybabies, Harry, Joe, and Alexis began calling him Captain Bly behind his back, though only when he couldn’t catch them at it. We will have to polish the submersible’s bubble window all over again, warned Harry, and the guy’s a real Blackbeard when he’s around saltwater. Funny you should mention that name, replied Alexis, afterward telling them about the Outer Banks and Ocracoke Island. That’s where the old thief lost his head. Neither appreciated her history lesson all that much.
On the following afternoon they saw the coastal plain of West Africa rise in front of them, then the archipelago of Guinea-Bissau. The Capricornio’s captain suggested they stay well offshore during the day and search at night, when Guinea-Bissau’s People’s Revolutionary Armed Force wouldn’t likely see them. They don’t have a navy, he explained, but let’s not ask for trouble, nevertheless. Shawki and Joe went to work with the crew rigging the towfish, the side scan sonar they’d pull behind the ship, and Harry and Alexis set up the computer and its printer that would give them the underwater graphics for their search. Next, they interfaced the software with the ship’s navigation equipment. Now they would have a color display of each survey track they sailed and printouts that could be studied afterward.
It was ten at night when they started searching, first by sailing to the point where the Dragon had been last seen, and then by tracing its escape route. They moved sideways on their grid pattern and sailed back when they had gone a few miles on the original track. The sea bottom was shown in squiggly, colored lines. Now all they had to do was wait for a target, letting them decide what it might be.
“What will a sub look like on the bottom?” asked Harry as he watched the computer’s display.
“Like a bent cigar, I think,” said Shawki, “at least if it is not broken up. The bottom is at five hundred meters and looks flat, which will make things much easier for us.”
“How deep is the towfish?”
“Look at the screen.” His right hand pointed. “See where it says twenty meters. That gives us a narrower field, but also excellent definition of everything.”
The hours ground by as the ship trolled back and forth on its grid lines, overlapping each survey with another. Slowly, their excitement turned to patience, then to boredom, finally to frustration as the search went on. Endless rolls of paper streamed off the printer, all looking the same. The ocean floor was empty. It grew shallower as they neared the archipelago and deeper as they sailed away. The ship’s bridge glowed in red, yellow, and green as the echosounders, global positioning, and computers flipped and beeped, leaving their faces looking artificial in the false light. But it was all the same, no joy in Mudville.
Finally, the captain told them that it was getting light and they must leave, and so they steered offshore to lay up for the day. Harry stood quietly with Shawki, Joe, and Alexis and watched the sunrise. The morning was filled with their disappointment, since they’d covered the primary area and had found nothing. “What if it’s closer to shore?” he asked after a few minutes.
“Why would you believe that?” asked Joe in a skeptical voice.
Harry pressed on. “What if the bomb didn’t miss by as much as Newman thought, and what if the sub was damaged before the torpedo sank it? Where would it have headed first?”
Shawki’s attention shifted away from the sunrise. “The commander would have tried to save his men, and he would have made for shore if he thought they might sink.”
“We could move nearer the coast,” said Alexis. “Otherwise the file I saw must be wrong.”
No one believed that, and each said so.
“There’s something else as well,” added Harry. “Didn’t the Germans control most of Africa at the time? Maybe they were trying to reach a sanctuary there.”
Alexis looked at him. “West Africa wasn’t like we know it now, because it belonged to France.” Then she smiled. “But Paris wasn’t liberated until September of nineteen-forty-four, three months after the Dragon went down.”
Joe stared at both of them. “Godalmighty, how do you guys remember stuff like that?” He shook his head as if he were in pain. “I never knew any of those things before.”
Shawki laughed and said, “Joe, I think you and I didn’t like history so much when we were in school, but our friends have made us much smarter now, okay.”
That night they sailed toward Guinea-Bissau again, but this time much nearer the archipelago islands they had seen on the first day. Back and forth they went, lined up on a long extension of the course the Dragon had taken after it had been bombed. Now the bottom was at three hundred meters, though it was just as empty. Their faces strained over the colored displays on the bridge. Still, there was nothing but squiggly lines. Then at three in the morning something changed, and there was some clutter on the computer screen.
Shawki almost flew at the captain. “Come about and take another pass. That is a debris field, definitely.”
As the Capricornio turned, everyone took a collective breath. Slowly, the clutter reappeared.
“Follow it, please,” shouted Shawki.
After a minute they saw an object, a silhouette like a wooden log, but one with a conning tower. Suddenly there were tears in Alexis’s eyes. “I never thought I would see something like this, history coming alive.”
“Mark it,” shouted Shawki again, “then stop here.”
While the captain went “all stop” on the engines, the crew ran to winch in the towfish. Harry stepped beside Shawki, who had torn off the printed i
mage of what they had found. “What do you think?” he asked.
“It is almost certainly the Dragon, but first we will look with the remote operated vehicle. After that we will use the submersible.”
Shawki and Joe left the bridge to help launch the ROV, and meanwhile Harry worked with Alexis to hook up its umbilical cable to the televised control system that would give them real-time feedback from its cameras. There were small levers that reminded him of the radio-controlled model airplanes he’d flown as a boy. After a half-hour, the ROV was lowered overboard and diving toward the bottom.
Shawki came back on the bridge. “Harry, I can never understand why you are so excellent with these technical things.”
“Depth and direction are right here on the screen, and the rest is like flying an airplane when the weather’s bad, which I’ve done so often in my life.”
“Lights on, camera, like the Hollywood producers say,” laughed Shawki. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Alexis let out a breath. “No wonder our language is getting ruined. We’re exporting clichés to foreign countries.”
“Something’s dead ahead,” said Harry. “How close do you want to get?”
“Ten or fifteen meters, then we will get an excellent view,” answered Shawki. “Start at the stern if you can.”
An enormous propeller and rudder assembly appeared, then the shape of a coal-black hull. The seabed lay thirty feet below.
“It is sitting upright, perfectly,” said Shawki. “Go forward, please.”
“I wish Joe could see this,” answered Harry. “Where is he?”
“He’s helping the crew with umbilical.”
The ROV inched ahead and filled the television screen with the color images of the submarine’s deck on which the hatches and cleats were all visible. Then it passed the conning tower and started toward the bow.
“There’s structural damage ahead,” said Harry as he steadied the ROV a few meters over the hull. “I think we’ve found where the torpedo hit.”