O’Halloran evidently hadn’t.
Coburn hadn’t either, but he’d heard of them. ‘I know they’re Russian or ex-Soviet,’ he said. ‘They’re a kind of crude surface to surface cruise-missile, aren’t they?’
‘Not that crude.’ Ritchie left his desk and went to stare out of a window. ‘They’re only about twenty feet long, but they can be fitted with three different types of warhead. They’re an old Soviet design so they’re fairly cheap and simple, but anywhere inside a range of forty or fifty kilometres a Styx can be pretty damn lethal.’ He turned round. ‘I guess if I wanted to use a couple, I’d surprise the crew of an Osa patrol boat when they were half asleep or looking the wrong way. Then I wouldn’t need a crash course on how to arm and fire a type of missile I hadn’t been trained to use.’
‘Because you’d be able to force the patrol boat crew to do it for you,’ Coburn said.
‘Sure. That’s not my problem, though, is it? The problem is what the hell I’m going to do about it. You’re expecting me to say the solution is obvious, but in a case like this, the obvious response to a threat isn’t always the right one. For a start, the US doesn’t recognize the Demarkation Line as an international boundary, and even if we did, I still have to follow accepted international rules and what are called the Laws of War.’
O’Halloran switched off his laptop. ‘Which stops any country from attacking a foreign ship without good reason,’ he said. ‘And from what you’ve seen on my computer, you don’t think you’d have a good reason.’
‘Not good enough.’ Ritchie thought for a second. ‘I can take any measures I consider necessary to protect the interests of the United States and to defend my ship and my crew. That probably doesn’t include opening fire on a North Korean navy vessel whose captain has made the mistake of deciding I’ve strayed into foreign waters and has asked me to change course.’
‘That’s what we figured,’ O’Halloran said. ‘And why we think we have an answer for you.’
Ritchie allowed himself a smile. ‘I’m glad somebody has.’
Realizing O’Halloran was talking himself into a corner, Coburn took over. ‘The Counter-Proliferation people have nothing to do with what I’m about to say,’ he said. ‘And it’ll be best if you only know what you need to know.’
‘I see.’ Ritchie returned to stand beside his desk. ‘You’d better tell me what it is then, hadn’t you?’
‘OK. This is the deal. Two seconds after you’re told to make your course change, you’ll see the patrol boat have a big accident. You can decide for yourself what set it on fire and why it’s sinking. It’s only if that doesn’t happen that you’ll have to choose whether or not you use your guns.’ Giving Ritchie no opportunity to interrupt, Coburn placed a photograph on the desk. ‘While you’re picking up the crew, that’s the guy you have to get your hands on. His name’s Juri Yegorov. He works for Shriver, so he’s the key to shutting down the FAL.’
‘Because his presence on the Korean boat will confirm what you’ve been telling me this morning?’
‘You can’t afford to wait until then,’ Coburn said. ‘If we don’t sort this out now and work together, you might not have the chance to get anything confirmed.’
Ritchie’s eyebrows had gone up again. ‘I think I can assess the risk without your assistance, Mr Coburn – unless of course there’s more I need to know.’
‘There is. As soon as you’re satisfied Yegorov was so damn close to attacking your ship you’re lucky the Sandpiper’s still afloat, you’ll have to contact someone in the States who has the authority to arrest Shriver before he can clean out his records and to stop him getting nasty. He’s already threatened O’Halloran’s family and he could make trouble for me, too.’
O’Halloran had sensed the need for diplomacy. ‘The FAL has recently come under investigation,’ he said. ‘If this goes down the way it’s supposed to, Washington will be able to indict Shriver for subversion.’
Since this was the first Coburn had heard about any investigation, was O’Halloran improvising, he wondered? And if so, why did he think he had to?
Ritchie’s expression made it impossible to tell what he thought of the plan, but if he wasn’t looking entirely convinced of its merits, at least he was looking more receptive than he had been a minute ago.
‘A two-second window,’ he said. ‘Not a three-or four-second window?’
‘Depends on you.’ Coburn smiled at him. ‘The quicker I get your go ahead on the radio, the quicker I can stop any missiles from being fired at you.’
‘And you’ll be where exactly?’
‘Not far behind you – somewhere up near the Demarkation Line.’
‘Well, well.’ Ritchie sat down. ‘In that case, seeing as how we seem to have a common interest and we’re all heading in the same direction, what do you say I give you a lift? If you and Mr O’Halloran would like to join the crew of the Sandpiper, I can keep an eye on you, and we can all keep our eyes open for a Korean patrol boat you’re saying is going to attack me. How does that sound?’
‘I’ll need to transfer from your ship a couple of days ahead of time,’ Coburn said. ‘Otherwise that’s fine by me.’ He glanced at O’Halloran. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘Sure.’ The American nodded. ‘Why not?’
‘Right then. It’s settled.’ Ritchie picked up his phone. ‘If you care to tell me where you’re staying, I’ll have a staff car run you back to your hotel. The Sandpiper departs at 2300 hours on August 1st, but you’ll need to report here two or three hours before that so we can find somewhere for you to bunk down. If you haven’t been on board a minehunter before, there’s not much room so don’t expect to be going on a cruise.’
Because the offer made sense and had been made so casually, it wasn’t until Coburn was outside sitting in the car that he began to wonder how sincere it had been. A genuine invitation from a no-nonsense naval officer? Or a ploy that allowed Ritchie to detain the messengers of news he didn’t believe?
O’Halloran was looking as though he, too, had doubts, but decided not to voice them in front of the driver and made himself wait until they were back at their hotel and alone in the lobby.
‘Why do I have this feeling I’ve been out-manoeuvred?’ he said.
‘We’ve both been.’
‘There’s a difference. You told Ritchie you’ll be leaving the Sandpiper before the shit’s due to hit the fan. I’ll still be on board. He’s figuring on using me as his insurance.’
Coburn grinned. ‘Well, you’d better hope everything goes to plan then, hadn’t you? What was all that crap about the FAL being under investigation?’
‘It’s not crap. When I phoned the office to see if Yegorov was off to Korea, I was told his name’s been flagged, linking him to Shriver and questioning the reason for all his trips to Russia and Bangladesh.’
‘So someone else has made the connection,’ Coburn said.
‘Probably that guy who ran Yegorov’s facial recognition search for me. He could’ve put two and two together and made seven. Now you know why I changed my mind about coming with you. If Washington’s having a close look at the FAL, I’ll only get my share of those Brownie points if I’m in at the sharp end.’
‘So how far along is the investigation?’
O’Halloran shrugged. ‘No idea. I didn’t ask. You never know, though. I guess there’s always a chance you and I could be heading off up into the Yellow Sea for nothing.’
CHAPTER 19
FAR AWAY TO the west where thin streaks of silver-edged cloud were gradually turning from pink to orange, the division between sea and sky had become indistinct. Of the six sunsets Coburn had observed from the foredeck of the Sandpiper, none had been as colourful as this one and he couldn’t remember seeing the ocean quite so flat or the air being this clear.
He’d been on deck for most of the last hour, wanting to be alone on what would be his last evening on board, hoping O’Halloran wouldn’t come to find him and telling himself that jus
t because things had gone well up to now, it didn’t mean his luck was about to take a change for the worse.
Throughout the voyage he’d been counting down the days, but now the time for him to leave the ship had actually come, he felt unprepared, knowing that in a little more than twenty-four hours he’d discover whether his plan would be successful, or whether it would fail.
Until today he’d been able to exploit his unfamiliarity with life on board a minehunter as an excuse to avoid worrying about the consequences of failure, filling in his hours by learning about the Sandpiper’s capability and, with Ritchie’s approval, watching the crew operate some of the most sophisticated equipment Coburn had ever come across.
As well as having an I-band surface search radar, the ship was fitted with a variable-depth sonar system that was lowered by winch from a well in front of the bridge, and from which visual images were fed to data consoles that analysed all mine-like objects floating near or anchored to the seabed.
But by far the most advanced piece of equipment was the Sandpiper’s remotely controlled undersea vehicle, an SLQ-48 Raytheon neutralization device that could be deployed from a fantail on the side of the ship’s glass-fibre hull and tethered to it by a 1000 metre-long cable.
Since they’d left Chinhae, Ritchie had used the vehicle only once as an exercise, unwilling to waste time when tonight’s rendezvous with the Selina was vital, and when even a slight deterioration in the weather could have delayed their arrival time.
For a 900 ton vessel the Sandpiper was by no means a fast ship, powered by twin non-magnetic 800 horsepower Isotta Franschini diesel engines, but not able to travel at much more than ten knots, a speed that despite the calm summer conditions hadn’t given Ritchie the luxury of being able to hang around.
Hari hadn’t been hanging around either. Unlike the commander, who had charted a course that had taken the Sandpiper more or less straight up through the centre of the Yellow Sea, since Hari had made his last refuelling stop at Qingdao on the Chinese mainland he’d been hugging the coast, sounding increasingly irritable on each occasion Coburn had been in touch with him, until their conversation of this afternoon when he’d announced that he was standing by to collect Coburn as soon as the Sandpiper was close enough for the transfer to take place.
According to co-ordinates Hari had provided, the Selina was currently riding at anchor in the company of several Korean fishing boats four miles off the coast of a small island, and almost exactly sixty miles south of the Demarkation Line.
How accurate the co-ordinates were, Coburn wasn’t certain, although when this evening’s arrangements amounted to little more than him exchanging a bunk on the Sandpiper for a bunk on the Selina, his concerns were best reserved for tomorrow, he decided. It was then that Hari’s real skills would be put to the test in readiness for the crunch on the following night.
By now, although the last rays of sunlight had gone, he was reluctant to go below, trying not to wonder what Heather was doing in order to avoid cluttering up his mind with half-formed notions of the future and not wanting to think ahead too far.
He was still on deck when O’Halloran appeared. From the beginning of their trip from Chinhae, the American had been at pains to insulate Ritchie and himself from any direct involvement with either Hari or the Selina, spending more time with the commander than he had with Coburn, but since they’d received Hari’s last communication he seemed to be less on edge.
‘Skipper wants us on the bridge,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘He’s got what he thinks is the echo of a Korean patrol boat on his radar. It could be Yegorov making sure he’s picking up his target early. Come on.’
Of the forty-six members of the Sandpiper’s crew Coburn had met, he was able to remember the faces of the officers and some of the ratings, but this evening, so many people were coming and going that, apart from one of the young women from Baltimore who was leaving the bridge as they arrived, he didn’t know who he recognized and who he didn’t.
Ritchie was waiting for them, standing by the larger of two radar screens. ‘Got him,’ he said.
‘How do you know?’ Coburn studied the screen, uncertain of what he was looking at.
‘See there?’ Ritchie pointed to a number of glowing green dots. ‘Those are the fishing boats where your friend’s anchored. Now take a look at this one.’ Sliding his finger diagonally down the screen he let it come to rest beneath another dot. ‘For the last three-quarters of an hour, each time we’ve changed course, within a few minutes whoever it is has changed theirs. We’re being shadowed.’
‘Where did the boat come from?’
‘Probably out from one of these islands.’ Ritchie pushed a button to superimpose the outline of the coast. ‘Tokchok’s the biggest of them, but there are plenty of others where you could park up a patrol boat for a couple of days. An Osa only takes around nine feet of water, so you wouldn’t need much of an inlet to hide one in. Do you want me to order another course change so you can watch?’
Coburn shook his head. ‘If it’s Yegorov and you keep on doing what you’ve been doing, he’ll start wondering why the Sandpiper’s working in the dark.’
‘OK.’ Ritchie smiled. ‘How about this instead, then? First thing tomorrow I’ll head off north using the kind of search pattern he’ll be expecting us to use if we were hunting for mines. If the bastard stays with us all day, we’ll know he’s who we think he is.’ Ritchie spread out a chart. ‘See where I’ve marked that cross? As long as we’ve got a positive identification by evening, that’s where I’ll drop anchor for the night, so guess where he’ll be anchoring.’
‘Somewhere to the south of you,’ Coburn said.
‘Exactly, which means that if you and your friends are there waiting to do whatever it is I don’t need to know about, I can deliver him pretty much right to you.’
Which was going to significantly reduce the risk to Hari’s men, Coburn thought. Instead of them having to embark on what could have been a lengthy and dangerous trip from the Selina to the patrol boat and back again, at one stroke the problem had been largely overcome.
‘OK.’ Ritchie rolled up the chart and gave it to Coburn. ‘That’s settled then. Now all you and I have to do is finalize things for the 9th.’
‘Not that much left for you to do,’ Coburn said. ‘We know Yegorov will be banking on you being within a couple of miles of the Demarkation Line at some point, so he won’t be letting you get too far ahead of him. If we believe Shriver’s draft press statement, nothing’s going to happen until it’s dark, but it’ll be best if we keep a radio channel open all the time.’
O’Halloran wasn’t happy with the idea. ‘Forget the radio,’ he said. ‘If Yegorov’s been smart enough to overpower the crew of a Korean Osa, what makes you think he’s not smart enough to be monitoring every marine frequency he can find? It’ll be safer if you carry on communicating by satellite phone.’
Coburn looked at Ritchie. ‘What do you think?’
‘Sure. That makes sense. If you want to grab one of our phones now, you can tell your friend he can come and collect you in fifteen minutes. We’ll be at the rendezvous by then. In case someone’s looking, say we’ll be putting our hull between him and the patrol boat, and slinging a ladder over the starboard quarter for you near the stern.’ The commander stuck out his hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure. I hope this works out.’
Coburn hoped so too, keeping the doubt out of his voice and, after making his call to Hari, for the next quarter of an hour managed to avoid mentioning his misgivings to O’Halloran who had accompanied him from the bridge and was waiting with him on the afterdeck.
The sea was still as flat as it had been earlier, and because the Sandpiper had already started losing speed, the breeze generated by its forward motion was barely noticeable.
‘I’ve got to tell you this,’ O’Halloran said. ‘I can’t see Ritchie relying on you – not now he knows he’s being followed for sure. If you were in his sho
es, you wouldn’t rely on anybody else either.’
‘Do you reckon he’ll open fire the minute he hears from Yegorov?’ Coburn had considered the possibility.
‘He’d have to be brave not to, don’t you think?’
‘Depends how far away from the Sandpiper Yegorov’s going to be. Styx missiles have twenty times the range of Ritchie’s guns. Either way, your job’s to make sure I get that two-second window.’
O’Halloran forced a smile. ‘Because if I don’t, this could be the last time I get to enjoy a nice starry night.’
‘Let Ritchie look after the Sandpiper,’ Coburn said. ‘It’s you I’ll be wanting to hear from on the phone.’
‘Count on it.’ O’Halloran peered out to sea. ‘Sounds like your ride’s coming.’
Just audible above the noise of the Sandpiper’s idling diesels, Coburn could hear the buzz of an outboard motor. A moment later the shape of an inflatable swam out of the darkness.
It was travelling fast, one of the three village Zodiacs Hari occasionally used for raids on shallow-draught freighters that ventured too close to the coast.
The man at the helm was blacker than O’Halloran and equally difficult to see. But Coburn recognized him. It was Hari’s friend, the skinny Somalian, cutting back his speed now he’d caught sight of the ladder and beginning to ease the Zodiac alongside.
Feeling slightly awkward, Coburn shook hands with O’Halloran. ‘I guess this is it,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch tomorrow as soon as I know everything’s ready to go.’
‘I’ll be waiting for your call. Good luck.’
‘You too.’ Coburn went to the ladder, turning to wave before he steadied himself against the hull and clambered down into the Zodiac.
As though the Somalian saw nothing unusual in picking up a passenger from a US warship, he nodded his hello. ‘Thanks to Allah, it seems we have all made a safe journey,’ he said. ‘There is no luggage you bring?’
The Rybinsk Deception Page 20