Section 8

by Bob Mayer

  “Down periscope,” Moreno ordered. “Descend to fifty meters.”

  According to the intelligence he had, the tanker drew almost twenty-five meters when fully loaded. Moreno went forward to the sonar man. “Range?”

  “Three hundred meters,” the man announced.

  Moreno waited. He cocked his head as a noise began to reverberate through the hull. The sonar man turned down the volume on his set and looked up at Moreno. “The screws.”

  They were hearing the sound the Jahre Viking’s propellers slicing through the water. It grew in intensity as they got closer.

  “Two hundred meters.”

  “Slow to one half,” Moreno ordered. The Viking was big, but it was slow, making no more than ten knots.

  The entire submarine began to vibrate, and when the ship rolled almost ten degrees before righting itself, Moreno knew they were passing through the massive tanker’s bow wake.

  “One hundred meters!” The sonar man had to yell to be heard over the vibrating sound echoing through the steel tube.

  “Slow to one-quarter,” Moreno announced. “Are we past the propellers?” he asked, leaning close to the sonar man.

  The man nodded, his eyes closed, focusing on the sound. “Fifty meters,” he announced.

  Moreno felt a bead of sweat dribble down his temple onto his cheek. He did not raise his hand to wipe it off, knowing the action could be more easily seen than the perspiration.

  “We’re under!” the sonar man yelled.

  “Up, slow, very slow,” Moreno ordered. “Maintain one quarter speed.” He licked his lips, as this part was guesswork.

  “Forty-five meters,” the dive master announced. “Slow and steady. Forty meters.”

  Moreno slowly waited back into the center of the crowded control room. Every eye was on him, except those of the dive master, who was watching his gauges, hands resting lightly on his controls. “Thirty-five meters.”

  The submarine was rocking even more violendy now caught in the turbulence from the proximity to the massive ship right above them.

  “Thirty meters.”

  “All stop. Brace for impact!” Moreno yelled, and the order was relayed through the submarine. “Turn on the magnets.”

  His executive officer threw a red switch, and power ran to the two horseshoe-shaped brackets fore and aft. The energized magnets caught the nearest attraction: the steel behemoth above the submarine. The invisible lines of force reached out and pulled the much smaller submarine toward the vessel above it.

  Moreno’s knees buckled as the magnets made contact with the oil tanker with a solid thud.

  “Contact!” the executive officer yelled unnecessarily.

  Moreno stood still for several moments, the only sound that of the tanker’s screws behind them and the turbulent water rushing by.

  “Maintaining contact,” the executive officer said.

  Finally Moreno allowed himself to smile. They had their ride to San Francisco.

  “Power down to minimum,” Moreno ordered. “Silent running.” Not that anyone was going to hear anything from the sub, given the sound of the tanker’s massive screws churning just a couple of hundred meters behind them, but it never hurt to be careful.

  Jolo Island

  “The Golden Lily,” Vaughn said.

  “Literally,” Tai confirmed. They both sat back on their rucksacks, listening to the air being pulled by them. “At least part of it.”

  “But our target isn’t the gold,” Vaughn noted. “We still have to find Abayon.”

  “And when we find him?” Tai asked.

  Vaughn pulled out a canteen and took a deep drink. “Then we get out of here, call it in. The rest of the team comes in. We kill him. We leave.”

  “Hell of a plan, since we still haven’t pinpointed his location.”

  “That, we do next.”

  “And go where, after the mission is done?”

  “That’s too far ahead,” Vaughn said.

  “All right,” Tai allowed. “Say we find him. The rest of the team comes in. We kill him. Then what?”

  Vaughn shrugged. “Then he’s dead and the Abu Sayef are fucked.”

  “And the gold?”

  Vaughn stared at her in the glow from the red lens flashlight. “Not my business.”

  “Whose business do you think it is?”

  Vaughn closed his eyes and rubbed the lids, trying to momentarily drive away the irritation he felt. He’d been up now for over thirty-six straight hours and it was beginning to wear on him. “Who are you?”

  When there was no answer, he opened his eyes and looked at Tai. She was staring at him, and he knew she was trying to figure out if she should trust him, which he didn’t give a shit about, because he had no clue whether he could trust her.

  “Remember back in isolation where I mentioned the Black Eagle Trust?” she finally said.

  “Yes.”

  “It came out of the Golden Lily,” Tai said. “After the war, we recovered a good portion of the treasure that the Japanese and Germans looted. Some of it was given back to the rightful owners, mostly pieces of art in Europe where the scrutiny level was higher. But gold—like that below—a lot of it was untraceable, or could be melted down into bars that were untraceable.”

  “And that became?”

  “The Black Eagle Trust,” Tai said. “At the end of the war some far-thinking people saw the threat that communism posed for the West. And they realized that they would need money—a lot of it—to wage the fight.”

  “I thought that was called taxes,” Vaughn noted.

  “The Black Eagle fund was a slush fund,” Tai said. “Used to bribe people, influence elections, pay for black ops with complete deniability.”

  The last thing she’d mentioned caught Vaughn’s attention.

  “There was an OSS operative by the name of Lansale,” Tai continued. “He went into the Philippines before MacArthur invaded and linked up with the guerrilla forces—not to mobilize the guerrillas, but with the explicit order to find as much of the Golden Lily as he could. Which wasn’t as easy as it sounds, since the Japanese were brutal about trying to hide places like this. They thought nothing of executing all the slave labor they used to build them—and even killing their own engineers who worked on them—in order to keep the locations secret.”

  “How did this Lansale know about the Golden Lily?” Vaughn asked.

  Tai shrugged. “That’s an interesting question. After the war, General Yamashita, the Japanese commander in the Philippines, was captured. He never talked before his execution, but his driver, a Major Kojima, was secretly tortured, and it was rumored he gave up the location of several of the caches, including some that Marcos recovered for his own fortune.”

  “But you said Lansale went in before the war was over,” Vaughn noted.

  Tai nodded. “I don’t know what Lansale knew or how he knew it, but however he found out about it, he realized its significance right away. He went to three of Roosevelt’s top advisors—the Secretary of War and the two men who would shortly become the Secretary of Defense and the head of the World Bank. They told Roosevelt that they needed to gain control of as much of the Golden Lily as possible—and when Roosevelt died, we have to assume they went to Truman with the same cause. The treasure they recovered was spread out around the world, to a lot of banks. They used that to create gold bearer certificates that could be used in any country in the world. The war against communism was, in a way, fought in a most capitalistic way.

  “There was more to it than just fighting communism, though,” Tai continued. “If so much gold flooded the market, it would have destabilized all the currencies that were based on a gold standard.”

  “So this Black Eagle Trust was a good thing,” Vaughn said.

  She shrugged. “It was illegal.”

  He gave a short laugh. “You think what we’re doing here is legal?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Tai allowed.

  “So what is your point?” Vaughn
snapped, tired of being strung along.

  “My point is that there’s a lot more going on in the covert world than we know—or maybe than anyone except a select handful know.”

  “So?”

  “So, I think we better be damn careful and watch our backs.”

  Vaughn let out his anger with a deep breath. “I agree to that.” He stood, shouldering his ruck. “Let’s go find Abayon.”

  “How do you propose to do that?” Tai asked.

  Vaughn pointed at the various openings that lined the walls. “Pick one.”

  She walked to the wall and went to each opening, shining her light into them. Vaughn waited in the middle of the room, listening to the thump of the air circulator.

  “This one,” she finally said.

  “Why that one?”

  “It goes up. Bosses always like being above it all. Plus the air intakes should be up there—and we’re going to need another way in and out of this place.”

  It made as much sense as anything else. Without waiting, Tai climbed into the tube. Vaughn followed.

  The pipe went upward at about a twenty-degree angle and was about two and a half feet wide. It was uncomfortable moving through it, and Vaughn was forced to tie his rucksack to his boot and drag it behind him. Every so often they came to a grate and paused to check out what was on the other side. So far the grates had opened onto dark rooms, and Vaughn was reluctant to shine a light into them for fear one might be a barracks room with sleeping guards.

  Finally they came upon a grate with light shining through it Tai peered through, then moved up, gesturing to Vaughn. He crawled to the grate and looked inside at a room with a half-dozen long tables. From the odor wafting in, he assumed it was some sort of mess hall. There was no one in sight.

  Tai was already moving, and he followed her.

  Another grate. A single lightbulb glowed in what was obviously a storage room. Tai kept moving. Vaughn estimated they had gone up at least two hundred feet in altitude, but it was hard to tell.

  They came to another grate where light shone through. Tai spent several moments looking, gesturing for Vaughn to be very quiet, then slid up, giving him access.

  He slid up to the grate, peered through and saw a medical dispensary. A woman in a white uniform was working on some sort of machine, checking it. It seemed they were getting closer, since the dispensary would be close to where the people were.

  As they continued to ascend, Vaughn began to wonder how much farther they could possibly go. He also worried about a way out. Reversing course meant they would have to find a way to get back up into the tube they had slid down, which he didn’t think would be possible.

  Tai stopped at another grate, and Vaughn waited as she peered through for over a minute. Finally she moved up the tube and signaled. He crawled up and peered through.

  An old man sat in a wheelchair behind a desk in a room portioned by what appeared to be a blast-proof clear wall. Even though the photo they had was out of date, Vaughn had no doubt the man was Rogelio Abayon. Vaughn’s hand slid down to his holster, but he paused as Tai’s boot tapped him on the head.

  She shook her head, then pointed up. She clicked on her red lens flashlight briefly, showing that the tube ended at what appeared to be a hatch. Without waiting, she began crawling upward.

  Vaughn took one last look at Abayon, then followed.

  CHAPTER 17

  Oahu

  Royce was driving toward Fort Shafter when his phone vibrated. He glanced at the number, then pushed down on the accelerator. He made it to the tunnel entrance, flashed his identification card to the guard, and entered. Foster was waiting for him in the control room. From the bustle of activity in the operations room, Royce had a good idea about what had happened.

  Foster confirmed it immediately. “The recon element has pinpointed Abayon’s location and found a way into the complex.”

  “Has the rest of the team been alerted?” Royce asked as he scanned the short message.

  Foster nodded. “The message was forwarded to the AST.” He glanced at the clock. “Wheels up for the infiltration aircraft in four hours.”

  “How are they going in?” Royce asked.

  “Low level Combat Talon. They’re parachuting at three hundred feet right on top of the mountain. Rough terrain suits. The recon element found a tube that goes right in.”

  Royce pondered that. There was a very good chance the Talon flying low over the mountain would alert the guerrillas. On the other hand, it was fast. “How are they getting out?”

  Foster frowned. “They’ve requested Fulton Recovery off the top of the mountain by the same plane that puts them in. The general isn’t too happy about it. He wants them to walk away from the mountain to an open field five kilometers away.”

  Generals always wanted people to walk, Royce thought. “Approve the Fulton Recovery. Send me the contact information with the Talon and the code words for recovery.”

  “I’m going to have to lay on an in-flight refuel to allow the Talon to stay on station that long and—”

  Royce stared at Foster and he fell silent.

  Okinawa

  Orson looked at the prisoner, then issued an order to the two military police who had brought him. “Uncuff him. Then leave.”

  The two MPs glanced at each other, but they had their orders. They removed the cuffs, then departed the isolation area. The prisoner looked around the room, noting the maps and satellite imagery, then returned his gaze to Orson. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit that had seen better days. His head was shaved and his skin pale and sallow from little time spent out doors. But he appeared to be in shape and he had the right background, which was all that mattered.

  Orson briefly read the paperwork the MPs had brought with the man, then looked at him. “Clarret, Gregory, former staff sergeant in the First Special Forces Group. Convicted of arms trafficking and sentenced to twenty years awaiting transportation back to the States and a long stay in the big house at Fort Leavenworth.”

  Kasen and Sinclair were silently watching the exchange.

  Clarret didn’t say a word.

  Orson tossed the file in the burn barrel. “You’re coming with us on this mission. When you get back, it will be as if none of this happened. You can’t go back in the Army, but you’ll have your freedom. Roger that?”

  Clarret nodded. “Roger that.”

  Orson pointed toward what had been Hayes’s locker. “Uniform and equipment are in there. Get out of that. We’re wheels up in a little over three hours.”

  “How are we going in?” Sinclair asked.

  “LALO.” Low altitude, low opening. He looked at Clarret. “According to your records you are certified LALO, right?”

  The former sergeant nodded. “But it’s been a—”

  “Don’t worry about not being current. Gravity will take care of things. Be happy. That certification got you out of prison.”

  Sinclair was still looking at Orson. “How are we getting out?”

  “Fulton Recovery system.”

  Sinclair blinked. “But we don’t have the rigs or the balloon.”

  “Don’t worry,” Orson said. “They’ll be on the plane.”

  Johnston Atoll

  The C-141 cargo plane did three passes over the runway before touching down on the fourth. It rolled to a stop and the back ramp slowly descended until it touched the ground. A half dozen men dressed in bright yellow contaminant protection suits awkwardly waddled down the ramp.

  They went directly to the tower. They saw the body immediately. While two of the men began deploying sensors, another went to the body and checked it out. Within two minutes the sensors confirmed their worst fears: there were traces of ZX in the air.

  Checking the blueprints they’d brought with them, part of the reconnaissance element pinpointed the bunker where the ZX had been stored and made a beeline for it. Another element headed toward the main compound to confirm what was already becoming apparent: that there was no one left
alive on the island.

  When they arrived at the bunker, the holes in the fence, the doors open, and the lack of the containers that the manifest said were supposed to be inside confirmed this was not an accident. The team leader grabbed the satcom radio and called in his report.

  Jolo Island

  Rogelio Abayon stared at the IV in his arm for several seconds, then looked up as the door to his office opened. Fatima came in, her lips tightly pressed together, and Abayon knew she brought bad news. But that was part of the plan.

  “Ruiz is dead,” she said without preamble.

  Abayon nodded. “I expected that.”

  “You expected him to be killed?”

  “I expected him to betray us and in the process get killed.”

  Fatima tried to digest that. “You had him—”

  “No,” Abayon stopped her. “He got himself killed. He contacted our enemies and tried to broker a deal for half of what he took with him to Hong Kong. They took the deal, then they killed him, because they do not make deals.”

  Fatima sat down. “What is going on?”

  “A plan many years in the making is being implemented,” Abayon said. “Ruiz was one part. He accomplished what was needed, by bringing the Golden Lily back into the public spotlight. It is in the news, which is good for us and bad for our enemy.”

  “And my father?”

  “He goes to strike a blow for us. A powerful blow.”

  “And us?”

  Once more she was thinking some steps ahead. “You are to take our group and move it as we discussed to our alternate location.”

  “The emergency plan? But—”

  “The emergency is here,” Abayon said. “Issue the orders and get everyone moving.”

  “I’ll get the nurse—”

  Abayon shook his head. “I am staying here.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a thick folder. “This is all the information I have on our enemy. It is yours now.” He slid it across the desk, but Fatima did not pick it up right away.