Targets of Opportunity

by Jeffrey S. Stephens

  “The issue, gentlemen, is the stretch of land that acts as a breaker outside Galveston Bay. As you can see, access to the interior Gulf waters, and ultimately to Baytown, is limited to a single cut between Port Bolivar to the north and Galveston to the south. Any vessel passing through, whether above or below the waterline, is subjected to the most rigorous surveillance.”

  “Why a submarine, then?” asked Bastidas. “Why all of this subtlety? Why not a ground-to-ground missile, or an unmanned air attack?”

  Adina gave a patient nod. “These options have been considered, of course, but we must be realistic about the lack of sophistication of our systems when compared with American defenses. Missiles would be swatted from the sky like so many mosquitoes, and a drone attack would endure a similar fate. Even with the information we have gathered on their security mechanisms, stealth is absolutely required.”

  “But aren’t you also telling us that a submarine has no chance of getting through?”

  “No, I am not. I am telling you of the difficulty, not the impossibility. Given a hurricane for cover and the destruction of the communications center at Fort Oscar, it can be done.”

  Bastidas was not convinced. “The entire area is on high alert, Rafael,” he said, one of the few men who had the familiarity with Adina to use his given name. “They are investigating the plane crash near St. Maarten and the invasion of the fortress in St. Barths. Why would you think such a plan will not be detected?”

  “I assume it will be detected, Antonio, I absolutely expect it. But the discovery will come too late.”

  The man from Chavez’s inner circle stared down at the map again. “And what about the men onboard? Won’t they be captured? Won’t that compromise your intentions?”

  Their host deferred to Dr. Silfen, who was only too pleased to expound upon his plan to create the catastrophic subterranean explosion that would annihilate the Baytown refinery, including everything and everyone in the vicinity. And he would do it, in effect, by remote control.

  “So,” Bastidas said when the proud scientist was done, “you’re telling me this submarine can operate without a crew?”

  “Precisely,” Silfen replied. He described how American ingenuity had created the Super Scorpio class of unmanned submarines, also known as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, or AUVs. The research and development had been conducted at the naval base in San Diego and resulted in what essentially became a submersible drone. In an ironic twist of fate, Moscow had hastened the progress and use of these vessels.

  In August 2005, a Russian Akula class submarine became disabled, apparently having been caught in a maze of high-tensile fishing nets off Russia’s east coast. The lives of the entire crew were in danger.

  Knowing of the San Diego project, the Kremlin asked Washington for help and the U.S. Navy responded, sending two of its Super Scorpios from California via an Air Force C-5 transport, together with the ancillary equipment, crew, and technicians to undertake the rescue. The American AUVs led the successful recovery, resulting in increased cooperation between the two countries. The project was expanded and then moved to Norfolk, Virginia, where it became known as ISMERLO, for International Submarine Escape and Rescue Liaison Office.

  “The Russians benefited from the new technology,” Silfen continued, “as did others on the black market.”

  “The Russians sold the plans?”

  “It’s what they do,” Adina observed with an indulgent smile. “The cooperation of our friends in North Korea has also been essential. You’ve heard of narco subs?”

  Bastidas nodded.

  “Those units are not nearly as sophisticated as the AUVs,” Silfen said, then explained how drug runners from Colombia were using a simpler system for their SPSS boats, or Self-Propelled Semi-Submersibles, to transport cocaine. “They’re not actually submarines in the truest sense, since they cannot dive. They merely glide unseen just below the surface. And, unlike the AUVs, they are operated by a two-man crew. If detected by the authorities, the pilots simply scuttle the craft. They are designed with side chambers that can be opened to let the seawater rush in. In a matter of moments they sink to the bottom like a stone, while the men onboard are jettisoned from the cockpit to the surface. Under international law the crew must be rescued. They cannot be charged with any crime since the evidence by then has been dissolved in the seawater and washed away.”

  “But these narco subs would be easy to spot in a highly protected area, such as this,” Bastidas said, pointing to the map.

  “Of course,” Silfen sniffed, annoyed at the suggestion he might employ such primitive technology, “but the North Koreans have taken the U.S. plans and created a hybrid between these crude models and the American Scorpios. Their unit moves faster than an SPSS, operates without a crew, and runs in relative silence.”

  Bastidas was impressed and said so. He also expressed surprise that he was not made aware that such a project was under way in Venezuela.

  “Please take no offense, my friend,” Adina said. “The secrecy has been fueled more by our concerns about the factions in Bogota than in Washington. At some later date we may be willing to sell the plans to the drug lords in Medellin, but for now we have a more important purpose in mind.”

  Bastidas let it go, but his dour look made it clear that being excluded from these discussions was a topic he would raise with Chavez when he returned home. “All right, I admit it seems very clever and perhaps it can work. But what about Baton Rouge?” Returning his attention to the map, he pointed at the long, winding route one would have to negotiate up the Mississippi River to reach that refinery. “You have already said that you cannot reach that refinery by submarine.”

  “Ah yes,” Adina said with a smile. “We have plans for that too.”

  Before he could offer a further explanation, his steward came on deck.

  “Are we about to get under way?” Adina asked.

  “In just a few minutes, sir. But you have a call.” He held out a satellite phone. “It’s Jorge, from St. Barths.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  ST. BARTHÉLEMY, F.W.I.

  WHEN SANDOR AGREED that the body of the dead terrorist could finally be removed from the bedroom, Vauchon instructed the coroner to arrange for its transport directly to military headquarters on Guadeloupe. He also warned that if he heard of anyone on the island speaking of the man’s death, the coroner would be made to answer for it himself.

  With Stefanie and all other nongovernment personnel out of the way, the body was placed in a black bag, loaded into a police van, and carried away.

  Jorge, still bound at his ankles and wrists, was seated in a chair. According to what he told Sandor it was time for him to check in with Adina. Sandor entered the number Jorge provided and held the cell phone to the man’s face. Sandor was seated beside him on a table, listening to both ends of the conversation, which the tech staff was also taping. It began simply enough and, if Jorge was supposed to furnish a code of some sort, Sandor didn’t hear one. They spoke in Spanish, which Sandor followed easily enough.

  “So,” Adina said after a polite exchange of greetings, “is there anything I should know?”

  “An American arrived yesterday. He met with the French soldier who was at the fort that night. They visited the site, then had dinner.”

  “Any indication who this American might be?”

  “Not yet,” Jorge replied. Sandor was impressed with the man’s even, almost casual, manner. “We have found out where he is staying and we intend to follow him there.” Sandor thought the “we” was a nice touch.

  “Why are you waiting?”

  “I wanted your instructions. They seem to be moving slowly; we did not want to create any unnecessary problems.”

  Adina paused, as if thinking that over. “Was he NTSB, do you think?”

  “No,” Jorge said. “More like an undercover type.”

  “He might be NSA, or perhaps CIA. It could be helpful to find out. Go ahead, see what you can learn.�
�

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anything else, any American military presence?”

  “No, not that we’ve seen.”

  “Any technical services? Support teams?”

  “Only the activity at the fort.”

  “Very well. Call me tomorrow, same time.”

  “Yes sir,” Jorge said, then the line went dead.

  Sandor stood up, hit the end button, and shoved the phone in his jacket pocket. Jorge had basically kept to the script he prepared for him. “Nice work,” he said, giving the man a hard slap across the face. The Venezuelan tried to spit at him, but Sandor had already moved away. “Send the guard back in,” he told Vauchon and headed outside to the terrace.

  ————

  When Adina ended the call on his end he appeared perturbed. He handed the phone to the steward and sent him away.

  “What is it, Rafael?” Bastidas asked. “Is everything all right?”

  “I don’t think so,” Adina replied. “He called me ‘sir’ twice.” He nodded, as if confirming a thought. “Smart boy, that Jorge.”

  ————

  When Vauchon joined him on the terrace, Sandor was giving instructions to Leo, the lead technician sent by Byrnes. Sandor handed him Jorge’s phone and said, “I know they’ll have this signal scrambled all over the map, but take a shot at locating the receiver’s position on the call we just made, okay?”

  Leo nodded. “I hope this works a little better than that fried version you gave me yesterday. Couldn’t get a thing from that.”

  Vauchon looked confused and Sandor looked annoyed.

  “Just see what you can make of this one, all right?”

  Leo was about to say something like “Whoops,” thought better of it, then made for the living room, where his team had already set up their electronics center.

  When Sandor turned to Vauchon, the lieutenant was smiling. “Anything you want to share with me?”

  Sandor described the cell phone he removed from Fort Oscar. “Probably nothing, just wanted to get a read on it as quickly as I could.”

  “Without interference from the French authorities.”

  “Something like that.”

  Vauchon offered a rueful smile. “As you know, I already have a pretty good idea of how you work.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “As my mathematics teacher used to say, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. With you Jordan, even when you are shown a straight line you still seem to be looking for a shortcut.”

  “I try,” Sandor admitted.

  “Just remember,” Vauchon chided him with more bemusement than rancor, “we’re on the same side here.”

  “Point made,” Sandor replied.

  “Good. So tell me what you think about our friend Jorge.”

  Sandor rubbed his face as he thought it over. “It went too smoothly. Adina didn’t ask enough questions, especially after Jorge told him that he made me as someone working undercover. I think Jorge said something that warned him off, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what. Let’s face it, Henri, this guy is a terrorist in the employ of Adina and Chavez. He isn’t going to roll over that easily.”

  “Even if there were some code words in there, what signal could he possibly have given in such a brief conversation?”

  “Maybe that we have him in custody.”

  “I see.”

  “They obviously know our governments are working together to investigate the airliner explosion and the attack here, but they don’t know what we’ve discovered to date. They certainly have no way of knowing that one of their men spoke with you that night, and they can only guess at what we’ve learned in Washington.” When Vauchon responded with another puzzled look, Sandor realized the Frenchman knew nothing of the Jaber defection. He said, “I’ll explain that in a minute. The point is, from our perspective the less they think we know, the better off we are.”

  “Agreed. Perhaps we should listen to the tape of their conversation, hear it one more time, eh?”

  “Good idea.”

  “And what have you learned in Washington?”

  Sandor briefed him on what they knew from Jaber, without sharing the Iranian’s name.

  “So, this defector did not predict either of these disasters.”

  “No,” Sandor conceded. “If he knew what was coming he never told us.”

  An officer arrived with a printout of the major yachts that had been in and out of St. Barths over the past ten days. Vauchon made the introductions and the three men sat at the dining table beside the pool and reviewed the data. It was difficult to re-create the information without the Fort Oscar computers available to help them, but the officer seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the large vessels and their owners.

  “Impressive,” Sandor said.

  “If you are in St. Barths long enough you recognize them all,” the man said in French, with Vauchon offering the translation.

  The officer was particularly familiar with the yachts and other vessels that regularly visited the island, and it was a simple matter of eliminating those from the roster. There were a few that had docked in the harbor and various yachts that anchored offshore, which were the most difficult to identify. As Vauchon had predicted, those were simply impossible to monitor in the chaotic aftermath of the attack on Fort Oscar.

  All the same, they had a dozen possibilities, so Sandor called over Leo’s second in command and handed him the list of names with ports of origin.

  “Find out everything you can about these. I know most of them will be owned by foreign corporations, but get behind that. I want the names of the principals who own the holding companies, the naval architects who designed them, the builders who built them, whether they’re used on a strictly private basis or whether they’re available for charter, and find out where they’ve been in the past twelve months.”

  The young man responded with a glassy-eyed look. “Wow,” was all he could say.

  “Wow? That’s all you’ve got for me?”

  “I just meant it’s going to be tough.”

  Sandor fixed him with a look that froze the man. “Tough? Duty in Afghanistan is tough. You’re about to find out what tough is if you don’t get this for me pronto. You follow?”

  Leo, who had just walked up to them, said, “If you’re wondering, I can assure you he’s serious. Get on it.” When his assistant hurried away, Leo told them, “The trace on that call didn’t give us much. All we could do was bounce the satellite signal back, and we’re pretty sure it was a Caribbean hookup.”

  “That’s not good enough, Leo.”

  “I know, but it’s all we can get right now. They scrambled their tracking link like an omelet; best I can get is that it’s an offshore link.”

  “You mean like a boat?”

  Leo frowned. “Yes, exactly like a boat.”

  Sandor’s eyes turned dark and his mouth tightened.

  Leo said, “Sorry. The more important information is that the boat, wherever it is, appears to be on the move.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  RASA JABER WAS flown to Washington on a military troop transport. As an Arab woman on a flight otherwise filled with young men and women returning home from their tour of duty, she was something of a curiosity, especially since she was being escorted by two MPs.

  Upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base she was met by an interpreter. Still carrying the valise she had packed when she left her home in Tehran to visit her sister just a little more than a week ago, it seemed to Rasa like some sort of connection to another lifetime. When an aide tried to take the bag she protested, but they politely explained that this was standard procedure and that her belongings would be returned to her. She was then driven in a black Suburban to the Mayflower hotel in downtown Washington.

  Unlike her husband, who had been secured under guard in the large estate outside the city as soon as he arrived in the States, she was o
stensibly being given minimum-security treatment. All the while, Byrnes had men monitoring the actions of others who might be interested in her whereabouts. The Deputy Director had determined that the best and highest use of Jaber’s wife was as bait. She had been in custody in Iran and her release was at best suspicious and almost certainly a purposeful ploy to help draw out her husband. Whether she was a willing participant or an innocent victim was immaterial. Byrnes intended to do his best to exploit the situation.

  He had two men trailing her SUV in a sedan. One of them was already taking apart her suitcase, searching for homing devices. The IRGC did not disappoint, the agent locating two different types of transmitters, one in the lining of the bag, the other in her toiletries. The agent repacked the valise and, at a traffic light where the sedan could pull alongside yet another SUV, the transmitters were handed off.

  When Rasa Jaber was shown to her room in the Mayflower, she was given her bag and told to take some time to clean up and rest. The interpreter said they would be back in two hours for an interview.

  Left alone, Rasa carefully unpacked her things, placed them in the closet, and arranged her cosmetics on the bathroom counter. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and, holding her face in her hands, she quietly wept.

  Meanwhile, the SUV with the two homing devices had veered off, taking a circuitous route around the Beltway. The two transmitters taken from Rasa’s bags were being delivered by Byrnes’s men to the FBI, where they would be placed on a desk in the Homeland Security liaison office.

  An hour later the two Iranian operatives assigned to track Rasa Jaber’s movements in Washington found themselves sitting in their car on Pennsylvania Avenue.

  “FBI,” the driver said. “Why would they interrogate her there?”

  The second man shrugged.

  “Why not the CIA?”

  “Who knows, maybe it’s one of those task force teams, or whatever they call them. Park around the corner and we’ll wait.”