“Course change on track four-four, coming left,” a quartermaster said.
That one was a surface contact just inside UIR-ian waters, seven miles away and passing aft. Kemper leaned forward. A computer command showed the contact’s course-track for the last twenty minutes. It had been moving along at mere steerage speed, about five knots. It was now doing ten, and had turned ... toward the trailing decoy group. That data was linked to USS O’Bannon, whose captain was the senior officer for the group. The range between the two ships was 16,000 yards and closing.
Things got more interesting. Normandy’s helicopter closed on the track from behind, keeping low. The pilots saw a green-white bloom as the unknown craft increased power, stirring the water and disturbing more of the organisms which somehow survived all the pollution here. A sudden burst of power meant ...
“That’s a gunboat,” the pilot reported over the data link. “He just goosed it. Target has just increased power.”
Kemper grimaced. He had a choice now. Do nothing, and maybe nothing would happen. Do nothing, and maybe give the gun/missile boat the first shot at O’Bannon and her group. Do something, and risk alerting the other side. But if the enemy craft shot first, the enemy would know something anyway, right? Maybe. Maybe not. It was a complex set of data for five seconds. He waited five more.
“Target is a missile boat, I see two launchers, target steadying down on course.”
“He’s got a direct line to O’Bannon, sir,” Weps reported.
“Radio chatter, I have radio chatter on UHF, bearing zero-one-five.”
“Take the shot,” Kemper said instantly.
“Shoot!” Weps said over the voice channel to the helo.
“Roger, engaging!”
“Combat, lookout, sir, I have a flash like a missile launch on the port quarter—make that two, sir,” a speaker announced.
“Give it a sweep ”
“Two more launches, sir.”
Shit, Kemper thought. The helo carried only two Penguin antiship missiles. The enemy had gotten the first two off. And he couldn’t do anything now. The decoy group was fulfilling its function. It was getting shot at.
“Two vampires inbound—target destroyed,” the pilot added, announcing the destruction of the missile boat— confirmed a moment later by the topside lookout. “Say again, two vampires inbound O’Bannon. ”
“Silkworms are big targets,” Weps said.
They watched the mini-battle imperfectly. The navigation-radar display showed O’Bannon changing course to port. That would be to unmask her point-defense missile system, located far aft. It would also provide a huge radar target to the inbound missiles. The destroyer did not fire off her decoys for fear that spoofing the inbounds would only divert them to the replenishment ships she was guarding. An automatic decision? Kemper wondered. A considered one? Ballsy either way. The destroyer’s illumination radar came on. That meant she was firing her missiles, but the navigation radar couldn’t tell. Then at least one of the frigates joined in.
“All kinda flashes aft,” the topside lookout said next. “Wow, that was a big one! There goes another!” Then five seconds of silence.
“O’Bannon to group, we’re okay,” a voice reported.
For now, Kemper thought.
THE PREDATORS WERE up, three of them, one each for the three corps encamped southwest of Baghdad, motoring through the air at only twice the speed of a tank. None of them got as far as planned. Thirty miles short of their objectives, their look-down thermal cameras showed the glowing shapes of armored vehicles. The Army of God was moving. The feed to STORM TRACK was instantly cross-loaded to KKMC, and from there all over the world.
“Another couple of days would have been nice,” Ben Goodley thought aloud.
“How ready are our people?” Ryan turned to the J-3.
“The 10th’s ready to rock. The 11th needs at least a day. The other brigade doesn’t even have its equipment yet,” Jackson replied.
“How long before contact?” the President asked next.
“At least twelve hours, maybe eighteen. Depends on where they’re going, exactly.”
Jack nodded. “Arnie, has Callie been briefed in on all this?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then let’s get that done. I have a speech to make.”
ALAHAD MUST HAVE gotten bored running a business with no customers, Loomis thought. He left early, walked to where his car was parked, and drove off. Tailing him on such empty streets would probably be fairly easy. A few minutes later, the subject was observed to park his car and enter his apartment building. Then she and Selig walked out of the unit they’d been in, crossed the street, and walked around the back. There were two locks on the door, which caused the junior agent to take ten minutes to defeat them, much to his own annoyance. Then came the alarm system, but that was more easily accomplished. It was an old one with a socket key and a very simple disarming code. Inside they found a few more photos, one, probably, of his son. They checked the Rolodex first, and there was the card for J. Sloan, with the number 536-4040, but no address.
“Tell me what you think,” Loomis said.
“I think it’s a new card, not dog-eared or anything like that, and I think there’s a dot over the first numeral four. Tells him which number to change, Sis.”
“This guy’s a player, Donny.”
“I think you’re right, and that makes Aref Raman one, too.”
But how to prove it?
THE COVER MIGHT or might not have been blown. There was no knowing. Kemper assessed the situation as best he could. Maybe the missile boat had gotten off a broadcast and received permission to fire ... Maybe the young commander had decided to shoot on his own ... probably not. Dictatorial countries didn’t give much autonomy to their military commanders. If you were the dictator and you started doing that, it was a sure way to find your back to a wall sooner or later. The score to this point was USN 1 and UIR 0. Both groups were continuing, going southwest now into a widening gulf, still doing twenty-six knots, still surrounded by merchant traffic, and the electronic environment was alive with ship-to-ship chatter wondering what the hell had just happened north of Abu Musa.
Omani patrol boats were out now, and they were talking back and forth with somebody, perhaps the UIR, asking what was going on.
In confusion, Kemper decided, there was profit. It was dark out, and identifying ships in darkness was never an easy business.
“When’s nautical twilight?”
“Five hours, sir,” the quartermaster of the watch replied.
“That’s a hundred fifty miles to the good. We continue as before. Let them sort things out if they can.” Getting as far as Bahrain without detection would be miracle enough.
THEY LAID IT all out on Inspector O’Day’s desk. “It all” amounted to three pages of notes and a couple of Polaroid photographs. The most important-looking tidbit was a printout of the phone records, duplicating Selig’s scribbling. That was also the only legal piece of evidence they had.
“Not exactly the thickest pile of proof I’ve ever seen,” Pat noted.
“Hey, Pat, you said to move fast,” Loomis reminded him. “They’re both dirty. I can’t prove it to a jury, but that’s enough to start a major investigation, assuming we have the luxury of time, which I don’t think we do.”
“Correct. Come on,” he said, rising. “We have to see the Director.”
It wasn’t as though Murray weren’t busy enough. The FBI wasn’t exactly running the epidemiological investigation of all the Ebola cases, but the Bureau’s agents were doing a lot of legwork. There was the ongoing, and practically new, case on the attack on Giant Steps, which was both criminal and FCI—and an inter-agency case to boot. And now this, the third “put everything else aside” situation in less than ten days. The inspector waved his way past the secretaries and walked into the Director’s office without a knock.
“It’s a good thing I wasn’t taking a leak,” Murray observed.
“Oh?”
“Oh, yeah, and oh, shit. I’ll let Loomis and Selig walk you through it.”
“Can I take this to Andrea Price without getting shot?” the Director asked.
“I think so.”
58
THE LIGHT OF DAY
IT WASN’T SONETHING TO celebrate, but for the second day in a row, new Ebola cases had dropped. Of the new cases identified, moreover, about a third were people who tested positive for the antibodies but were asymptomatic. CDC and USAMRIID rechecked the data twice before reporting it to the White House, also cautioning that it was too preliminary to be released to the public. The travel ban, it seemed, and the spinoff effects it was having on interpersonal contacts, was working—but the President couldn’t say it was working, because then it would stop working.
The Giant Steps case was also ongoing, mainly a task of the FBI laboratory division. There, electronic microscopes were being used for something other than the identification of Ebola strands, and were narrowing in on pollen and other tiny particles. This was complicated by the fact that the Giant Steps attack had been made in the spring, when the air was full of pollens.
Mordecai Azir, it was now firmly established, was a quintessential unperson who had sprung into existence seemingly for a single purpose and, fulfilling it, had disappeared. But he had left behind photographs, and there were ways of dealing with that, Ryan learned. He wondered if there might be some good news to end the day. There wouldn’t be.
“Hi, Dan.” He was back in his office. The Situation Room was just one more reminder that his next major order was to send people into combat.
“Mr. President,” the FBI Director said, entering with Inspector O’Day and Andrea Price.
“Why do you look so happy?”
And then they told him.
IT WAS A BRAVE man who awoke the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei before dawn, and since those around him feared his wrath, it took two hours for them to summon the courage to do so. Not that it would help matters. At four in the morning in Tehran, the phone by the side of his bed rang. Ten minutes after that, he was in the sitting room of his private apartment, his dark, sunken eyes waiting to punish those responsible.
“We have a report that American ships have entered the Gulf,” the intelligence chief told him.
“When and where?” the Ayatollah asked quietly.
“It was after midnight at the narrows. One of our missile-patrol boats spotted what it reported to be an American destroyer. It was ordered in to attack by the local naval commander, but we’ve heard nothing more from the boat.”
“That is all?” You awakened me for this?
“There was some radio traffic in the area, ships talking back and forth. They talked about several explosions. We have reason to believe that our missile boat was attacked and destroyed by someone, probably an aircraft—but an aircraft from where?”
“We want your permission to commence air operations to sweep the Gulf after dawn. We have never done this without your word,” the air force chief pointed out.
“Permission is given,” Daryaei told them. Well, he was awake now, the cleric told himself. “What else?”
“The Army of God is making its approach march to the border area. The operation is proceeding as scheduled.” Surely this news would please him, the intelligence chief thought.
Mahmoud Haji nodded. He’d hoped for a decent night’s sleep, in anticipation of being up long hours for the next few days, but it was his nature that, once awakened, he could not return to sleep. He looked at his desk clock—he didn’t wear a watch—and decided that the day would have to begin.
“Will we surprise them?”
“Somewhat, certainly,” Intelligence responded. “The army is under strict orders to maintain radio silence. The American listening posts are very sensitive, but they cannot hear nothing. When they reach Al Busayyah, we must expect detection, but then we will be ready to jump off, and it will be at night.”
Daryaei shook his head. “Wait, what did our patrol boat tell us?”
“He reported an American destroyer or frigate, possibly with other ships, but that was all. We will have aircraft up to look in two hours.”
“Their transport ships?”
“We don’t know,” Intelligence admitted. He’d hoped that they were past that.
“Find out!”
The two men took their leave with that order. Daryaei rang his servant for tea. He had another thought just then. All would be settled, or at least solved, when the Raman boy fulfilled his mission. The report was that he was in place, and had received his order. Why, then, hadn’t he fulfilled it! the Ayatollah asked himself, with a building anger. He looked at the clock again. It was too early to make a call.
KEMPER HAD GIVEN his crew something akin to a stand-down. The automation of the Aegis ships made that possible, and so, starting two hours after the incident with the gunboat—missile boat, he corrected himself—crewmen were allowed to rotate off their battle stations, to relieve themselves, to get something to eat, and in many cases to pump a little iron. That had lasted an hour, with each officer and man having had fifteen minutes. They were all back now. It was two hours to nautical twilight. They were just under a hundred miles from Qatar, now heading west-northwest, after having dodged behind every island and oil platform that might confuse an enemy radar post. COMEDY had been through the tough part. The Gulf was far wider here. There was sea room to maneuver in and to make full use of his powerful sensors. The radar picture in Anzio’s CIC showed a flight of four F-16s twenty miles north of his formation, their IFF codes clear on the display—his people had to be careful about that. It would have been better if there could be an AWACS aloft, but, he had just learned an hour before, all of those were deployed up north. Today, there would be a fight. It would not be the sort of thing Aegis had been designed for, or quite what he’d been trained for, but that was the Navy for you.
The decoy group he ordered south. Their job was done for now. With the sun up, there would be no disguising what COMEDY was and where they were going, he thought.
“HOW SURE OF this are you?” POTUS asked. “Christ, I’ve been alone with the guy a hundred times!”
“We know,” Price assured him. “We know. Sir, it’s hard to believe. I’ve known Jeff on and off—”
“He’s the basketball guy. He told me who was going to win the NCAA finals. He was right. His point spread was right on.”
“Yes, sir.” Andrea had to agree with that, too. “Unfortunately, these items are a little hard to explain.”
“Are you going to arrest him?”
“We can’t.” Murray took that one. “It’s one of those situations where you know, or think you know, but can’t prove anything. Pat here had an idea, though.”
“Then let’s hear it,” Ryan ordered. His headache was back. No, that wasn’t right. The intervening, brief period without a headache had ended. Bad enough that he’d been told of the vague possibility that the Secret Service was compromised, but now they thought they had proof—no, worse, he corrected himself, not good enough for proof, just more fucking suspicion!—that one of the people trusted to be around him and his family was a potential assassin. Would this never end? But he listened anyway.
“Actually, it’s pretty simple,” O’Day concluded.
“No!” Price said immediately. “What if—”
“We can control that. There won’t be any real danger,” the inspector assured everyone.
“Hold it,” SWORDSMAN said. “You say you can smoke the guy out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I actually get to do something instead of just sitting here like a goddamned king?”
“Yes, sir,” Pat repeated.
“Where do I sign up?” Ryan asked rhetorically. “Let’s do it.”
“Mr. President—”<
br />
“Andrea, you’ll be here, right?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Then it’s approved,” POTUS told her. “He doesn’t get near my family. I mean that. If he even looks at the elevator, you take him down yourself, Andrea, got that?”
“I understand, Mr. President. West Wing only.”
With that, they walked downstairs to the Situation Room, where Arnie and the rest of the national-security team were watching a map display on a large-screen TV.
“OKAY, LET’S LIGHT up the sky,” Kemper told the CIC crew. On command, Anzio and the other four Aegis ships flipped their SPY radars from standby to full radiated power. There was no percentage in hiding anymore. They were right under a commercial air route designated W-15, and any airline pilot could look down and see the small box of ships. When one did, he’d probably talk about it. The element of surprise had its practical limits.
In a second, the three big screens showed numerous air tracks. This had to be the busiest hunk of airspace outside O’Hare, Kemper thought. The IFF scan showed a flight of four F-16 fighters deployed northwest of his formation. There were six airliners aloft, and the day had scarcely started. Missile specialists ran practice tracks just to exercise the computers, but really the Aegis system was designed to be one of those supposedly all-powerful things that could sit still one second and raise hell the next. They’d come to the right place to do that.
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