Tom Clancy's Op-center Novels 7-12 (9781101644591)

by Clancy, Tom

  “Because there are short blackouts after every conversation with the trawler,” Marcus told him. “They are of roughly the same duration as the initial conversation. It’s as if the boat receiving the message is translating and relaying the conversation word for word.”

  “Why wouldn’t another ship just listen in?” Hawke asked.

  “Because as soon as the other ship turned on their radio, someone like me would know they were there. And, more importantly, I’d know exactly who they were,” Marcus said.

  “I see,” Kannaday said. “Is that a military tactic?”

  “Military or police, yes,” Marcus replied.

  Military and police vessels did not go to that site on routine visits. The area was monitored by civilian vessels of the International Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

  “We need to find out who is there,” Hawke said.

  “Why?” Kannaday asked. “The dumping grounds are not on any of our routes.”

  “They are on Jaafar’s route,” Hawke pointed out.

  “Why should that worry us?” Kannaday asked.

  “He is an ally.”

  “By now Jaafar has got the name of his ship repainted and is flying a different flag,” Kannaday said. “Those changes would have been made at night or under a tarpaulin. It is very unlikely that anyone would have seen him.”

  “Then what are one and possibly two military vessels doing at the waste site?” Hawke asked.

  “I have no idea, and I’m not sure it concerns us,” Kannaday said.

  “If they discover that Jaafar deposited empty drums of nuclear waste, it could come back to us,” Hawke said.

  “They would have to find him first, which is unlikely,” Kannaday said. “If Jaafar thinks someone is on to him, he will go into hiding. We can warn him on our secure channel.”

  “I want to know who’s out there,” Hawke repeated.

  “And do what, exactly?” Kannaday asked.

  “Go after those vessels, if necessary,” Hawke said. “Do to them what the pirates wanted to do to us.”

  A preemptive strike, Kannaday thought. Just what Darling might have suggested. Maybe Hawke was sincerely concerned about the patrol ship. Or maybe he was simply trying to provoke a confrontation with Kannaday. In either case, the captain decided to let him have his head on this one.

  “How do you recommend we conduct reconnaissance?” Kannaday asked.

  “We need a satellite overview,” Hawke replied. “We need to see who is there and what they’re doing.”

  “Marcus, can you do that?” Kannaday asked.

  “We can do that through Colonel Hwan,” Marcus said.

  “Who is that?” Kannaday asked.

  “Colonel Kim Hwan is my uncle’s man at the North Korean Reconnaissance Bureau,” Marcus replied. “The NKRB collects strategic and tactical intelligence for the Ministry of the People’s Armed Forces. They also eavesdrop on business rivals when my uncle needs them to.”

  “How long will it take to get information from Colonel Hwan?” Kannaday asked.

  “We won’t know until we contact him,” Marcus said. “He may be able to get the information through normal channels. If not, he might have to go to the Chinese for access to one of their satellites.”

  “Do it,” Hawke said.

  Hawke did not bother to ask Kannaday. The captain let that go, too. Kannaday wondered if he was afraid to stop him or letting him run until he hit a reef. He realized now how complacent he had grown as a commander. Maybe he should question this more. Just to flex his muscles.

  “You’re certain there’s no way anyone can eavesdrop on our message or trace the signal?” Kannaday asked.

  “It’s extremely unlikely,” Marcus replied. “My uncle has a direct line to Colonel Hwan’s cell comm. We’ll patch into that and send E-mails directly to him. Hwan can respond to them immediately. No one would have any reason to monitor those communications.”

  “And if someone does?” Kannaday asked stubbornly.

  “Every message we send is coded and untraceable,” Marcus told him. “We’ll be safe.”

  “All right,” Kannaday said. “Go ahead.”

  Marcus accessed the main transmitter in Darwin. He turned to his laptop and accessed the codebook on the hard drive. He looked up Hwan’s code name. Once he had that, he took the appropriate diskette from a small safe under the radio stand. He plugged that into the drive.

  “Ready,” Marcus said.

  Hawke dictated as Marcus typed. The security director had not reacted to Kannaday giving the final okay to contact Hwan. Hawke asked the North Korean colonel to find out who was at the waste site and, if possible, why. While they waited for an acknowledgment, Kannaday watched for any sign of bonding between the two men. A glance. Hawke moving closer to Marcus. Something that might indicate collusion. Both men would benefit by Kannaday making a misstep. Hawke could seize the Hosannah. Marcus could run certain aspects of the mission, show his uncle leadership chops. They did not seem to be connecting in any meaningful way. The captain felt some wind in his sails.

  Many paranoids do have enemies, Kannaday reflected. But he wondered whether, more often than not, it was themselves.

  “What do we do in the meantime?” Marcus asked.

  “We continue to the rendezvous point,” Kannaday said. “Is everything set with the Malaysian crew?”

  “I received a radio message while you were with the boss,” Marcus said. He accessed the notes on his computer. “They’ve been crisscrossing the area since we missed our appointment. I told them we had an equipment problem. They are awaiting a new ETA.”

  “Tell Captain bin Omar we’ll be there at one A.M.,” Kannaday said. “And thanks for being vague about what happened.”

  “I didn’t have much choice,” Marcus said. “It would not have instilled confidence to tell them the truth.”

  That was true.

  Kannaday asked Marcus to let him know when he had any information. Then he went to the deck to chat with the crewmen who were posing as passengers. There was a great deal of sea traffic offshore. Kannaday knew many of the local skippers who ran pleasure boats. Ironically, if they saw Kannaday, if they waved to him, it helped him stay anonymous. No one thought, Where is Captain Kannaday and what is he up to?

  Kannaday walked the deck. The sea air was unusually misty. The droplets felt good on the captain’s face. He felt slightly better than he did before. Hawke had a different project to focus on. That kept the pressure off Kannaday. It also did something else.

  It gave him time to figure out what to do about the security chief.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Washington, D.C. Friday, 7:17 A.M.

  As mayor of Los Angeles and as head of Op-Center, Paul Hood had taken calls from heads of state. During times of crisis he had spoken calmly over the phone with his counterparts in other nations. Even when lives were at risk or lost, Hood had been able to speak without agitation to operatives in the field. He had talked with the wives and mothers of police officers and firefighters who had lost husbands and sons. He had called and visited the families of the Strikers who had perished in the Kashmir conflict.

  But Hood was somewhat unnerved when he got around to accessing his personal cell phone messages. Daphne Connors had called at six-fifteen that morning. From the sound of her voice she had just woken up. Or perhaps she was just going to sleep. She often went to client parties that continued late into the night. She reported in a low, smoky voice that she had a dream about him. It had something to do with a stagecoach driver and a tavern owner in the old West. Only Hood was running the saloon and Daphne was running the stage.

  Maybe that was true. Or maybe it was a pretext to phone. In either case, the call troubled him. Or rather, it was the tone of Daphne’s voice. He had not heard a bedroom voice in years. His former wife, Sharon, had never had one, really. And the one night he spent with Op-Center’s former press liaison, Ann Farris, was followed by awkward silence and forced felicity.

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sp; Daphne’s voice was very feminine, very seductive. It got into Hood’s ear, into his mind, into all his nerve endings in a way that made him very uncomfortable. It also made him wonder with dismay whether his discomfort was actually with Daphne. It might be with the idea of anyone getting close. Maybe his marriage had gone just the way he wanted it to. Built around a core of emotional and physical detachment for the sake of stability. It was as if he were running a city government or federal agency.

  Hood did not like that thought at all. He chose not to think about it. He had arrived at the office a half hour before, and he was still going through the report from the evening unit. It appeared to have been an uneventful night everywhere except in the Celebes Sea. Hood listened to a call from Lowell Coffey to Hood’s evening counterpart, Curt Hardaway. The call had been recorded digitally on Hood’s computer.

  Coffey reported that the Singaporean patrol ship had discovered an empty concrete block at a nuclear disposal site. The block should have contained radioactive waste. Radiation detectors on board Coffey’s ship, an Australian MIC corvette, supported the findings.

  “The Singaporeans are not trying to put anything over on us,” Coffey assured Hardaway. “We are going to try to locate the vessel that made this drop. The ship that was scheduled to have been at the 130-5 site is owned by Mahathir bin Dahman of Malaysia. Warrant Officer Jelbart has heard of Dahman. He is involved with waste disposal on a global scale.”

  Hood made a note of the name.

  “Jelbart is not hopeful of tracking the missing material from here,” Coffey continued. “If the ship sold the nuclear material, the vessel will already have gotten a face-lift. If they were just pawns, it will be difficult to get timely interviews with anyone who may have been involved. The Malaysian government is not known for opening its books, so to speak. Especially when it comes to the country’s leading citizens.”

  Coffey then asked Hardaway if the NRO would have a look at the region. Perhaps they saw something. Hardaway had left Hood a note saying that he had checked with the NRO. They did not routinely watch the Celebes Sea. The only time they would turn a satellite to the region was if they learned the Chinese or Russians were also doing so. Like the United States, those nations often tested their satellite systems using targets in out-of-the-way sectors. New space cameras were often calibrated and focused using targets on ships or submarines.

  Hood archived the messages, then put in a call to Bob Herbert. The intelligence officer would have been airborne for a little under six hours. That was just enough time to make him cranky. Herbert enjoyed being in the field. But once Herbert started downloading mission data into his brain, he was anxious to act on it. Waiting killed him.

  The pilot of the TR-1 said that Herbert was sleeping. He asked if Hood wanted to talk to him anyway. Hood said he did not. He was sure Herbert would check in when he woke.

  As Hood hung up, he got a call from Stephen Viens. For several years Viens had been the Satellite Imaging supervisor at the National Reconnaissance Office.

  Viens had been a college chum of Matt Stoll, Op-Center’s chief technical officer. Because of their close relationship, Viens had always given Op-Center’s needs top priority. Viens was now Op-Center’s internal security chief. He still had friends at the NRO, however. Whenever they came across something that might be of interest to Op-Center, they let him know.

  “Paul, I just got a call from Noah Moore-Mooney at the NRO,” Viens said. “Bob Herbert had put out an APB on activity in the Celebes Sea.”

  “Curt Hardaway said there’s nothing going on there,” Hood said.

  “There wasn’t,” Viens said. “Until a few minutes ago.”

  “What have you got?” Hood asked.

  “Our Shado-3 satellite watches Chinese satellites,” Viens said. “When they move, it tracks them. They just saw one shift from Taiwanese shipping lanes in the South China Sea to an area of the Celebes.”

  “What area?” Hood asked.

  “The coordinates are one-hundred and thirty degrees longitude, five degrees latitude,” Viens told him.

  “That’s where Lowell Coffey is,” Hood said, “along with Australian and Singaporean naval vessels. Why the hell would China be watching two small naval ships?”

  “How would they even know the ships were out there?” Viens asked. “Flyover?”

  “Maybe,” Hood said.

  It was unlikely that the Chinese would be dealing in third-party nuclear material. They had enough of their own to sell, much of it to Pakistan.

  “Stephen, when you were at the NRO, did you come across any cooperative satellite use?” Hood asked.

  “You mean would another nation have access to the Chinese satellite?” Viens asked.

  “Right.”

  “Allies like the Vietnamese or North Koreans asked Beijing for intelligence,” Viens said. “But China controlled the hardware.”

  “All right, Stephen, thanks,” Hood said. “Let me know if you get any other information about this.”

  “Will do,” Viens said.

  Hood hung up. He looked at his computer clock. He needed to call someone. Someone who had not been returning his calls. But right now it was the only person who might be able to get him the information he needed.

  Hood picked up the phone and placed one of those calls he was comfortable making. One he was good at. One where the fate of nations, and not the fate of Paul Hood, was at risk.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Celebes Sea Friday, 10:33 P.M.

  Raja Adnan bin Omar and his radio operator stood in the small dark cabin of the fishing boat. The radio operator was standing beside a shortwave set on a shelf.

  The radio operator’s legs were bent slightly to help him stand on the rocking deck. Bin Omar was at the wheel. Both men were dressed in heavy black pullovers. Their heads were uncovered, their hair and beards well groomed. A wet wind hissed against the windows. It punched through the old wood of the cabin walls. The two men were accustomed to it. So were the two other fishermen aboard the thirty-footer. One of them was bin Omar’s twenty-seven-year-old son. They were below, putting fish in large ice lockers and repairing the nets. They had caught more fish during their zigzagging delay. When they were finished, they ripped the nylon strands on purpose so they would have something to do. In case they were ever boarded, bin Omar wanted them to be busy. Idle men looked guilty, even if they were not. The lockers were stored in a closet at the stern of the vessel. Two of them were made of lead. They were not designed to hold fish.

  Automatic weapons were also stored below in case they were needed.

  The radio operator removed his headset. “They are just over two hours from us. They apologized again for the delay.”

  “Did they give you a reason?” bin Omar asked.

  “Mr. M said only that the problem was mechanical in nature,” the operator replied.

  “Ah,” said bin Omar. “The excuse that cannot be disproved.”

  “Perhaps they will tell us more when we are together,” the radio operator suggested.

  “They will have to,” bin Omar said. “Our employers will certainly wish to know more. But it is not our problem. We are merely messengers.”

  For the first time in more than a year of dealings, Captain Kannaday had failed to make a rendezvous. The sixty-two-year-old fisherman was unhappy about that. He disliked the unexpected, whether it was a storm, a surprise inspection by harbor police in Pontian Ketchil, or a delay. It was particularly dangerous in the smuggling business. Whether they were transporting drugs, weapons, or nuclear material, seamen did not like being out in the open sea. Here, they were equally vulnerable to patrol ships and pirate vessels.

  Bin Omar hoped that Captain Kannaday had a reasonable explanation. Though processed nuclear waste was not the easiest material to obtain, Kannaday was not the only supplier in the region. Until today, he had simply been the most efficient. And the group with whom bin Omar was associated, the Kansai Unit, demanded reliability. The Asian group also d
emanded accountability. Bin Omar would have to explain the delay.

  Despite that, bin Omar was at peace. His wife and other children were home and well cared for. And he was always at ease on these waters, which his family had sailed for hundreds of years. For whatever the fate of the angry men and the mad civilizations they built, he knew one thing for certain. The bin Omars would sail these seas for centuries to come.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Tokyo, Japan Friday, 9:34 P.M.

  Shigeo Fujima was standing on the balcony of his apartment smoking a cigarette. The Japanese intelligence officer was tired and had come home early. He wanted to try to relax this weekend. Fujima had worked on several situations back to back. There was Chinese involvement in the attack on Vatican clergy in Botswana; increasing Chinese financial links with Taiwan; and the rapid growth of the Chinese space program, which was about to put a man into orbit. Chinese expansionism on earth, with a workforce of one billion people, was a direct threat to Japan and the entire Asian Rim. Especially with the Japanese economy so hard hit by the worldwide recession.

  Fujima lived with his wife and two daughters in a spacious apartment near Yoyogi Park. They had been living here for nearly seven months. The elder Fujima daughter, Keiko, attended the International Trade and Industry Inspection Institute, which was just a five-minute walk from the apartment. Their younger daughter, ten-year-old Emiko, attended the Children’s Play International School, which was a six-minute walk from the apartment. They were lucky to get the 2,000-square-foot, two-story place, though the Fujimas’ good fortune came at a price. They lived here because the Japanese economy was in turmoil. A commercial photographer used to live here. When retail sales began to struggle, advertising was cut back. If agencies ran advertisements at all, they used text and computer-generated images rather than photographs. The photographer was evicted. The Fujimas moved in from an apartment that was half the size and nearly as expensive.

  “These are sad times,” he muttered to himself as he flicked his cigarette toward the street. They were difficult for the economy and they were barely manageable in areas of world security. He was lucky to be home this early. To be able to have dinner with his wife. To see the kids before they went to bed. Assuming Keiko got off the phone and Emiko unplugged herself from the computer, that is. He smiled as he turned back to the apartment. He could not really expect them to change their routine for him. Things were not as they were when he was a boy. If he had not gone to his father when he came home from his job as a train conductor, he would have been beaten with a strap.