by Jeff Edwards
“Yes, sir,” Brenthoven said. “It’s a pity we’ll never get a chance to bring them to justice.”
The president’s eyebrows went up. “Why is that?”
“They’re almost certainly dead, Mr. President,” Brenthoven said. “They couldn’t very well arouse suspicion at the embassy by wearing gas masks or biohazard suits. They would have had to do the job in their regular work uniforms.
No masks, no respirators, no special protective equipment. I don’t see any way they could have avoided absorbing lethal concentrations of the mycotoxin.”
“A suicide mission,” the president said.
“I think so, sir,” Brenthoven said. “Standing right next to the carpet shampooing machines as they were pouring out the mycotoxin, Umar and Ghazi were probably the first people in the embassy to receive a lethal dose. It’s also likely that they were exposed to higher concentrations than everyone else—again because they were right next to the machines. So they got it first and they got it worst. According to CDC, victims of T2 exposure generally begin to show symptoms about five or six hours after contact with the mycotoxin. Death usually follows an hour or two after that. So the attackers were almost certainly dead before any of the embassy staff began to show symptoms.”
“So much for catching the attackers,” the president said.
“I’m afraid so, sir,” Brenthoven said. “We’ll probably find their bodies in a day or two.”
“Do we have any other leads?” Doyle asked. “Can we trace the source of the biological warfare agent?”
“We’re working on that,” Brenthoven said. “USAMRIID thinks the mycotoxin may have been genetically modified for increased lethality and a higher rate of contagion. That should narrow the field for us a bit. Despite the UN’s efforts to stamp them out, there are a number of biological warfare laboratories in the Persian Gulf region. But most of them lack the sophistication for tinkering at the genetic level. The list of countries that could pull it off is relatively short.”
“Don’t tell me,” the president said, “Siraj is at the top of that list.”
“Pretty near the top, sir,” Brenthoven said.
The president held up a hand. “I’ll get the rest of the details at the briefing. Talk to me about Germany.”
Brenthoven fished out his little leather notebook and flipped it open. “CIA has authenticated the memo.”
“The one from Chancellor Shoernberg to his attaché officer?”
“Yes, sir. It looks like Germany is going ahead with the arms-for-oil deal.”
The president’s eyebrows went up a millimeter. “You’re certain about this?”
Brenthoven nodded. “I’m afraid so, sir. Three days ago, one of the Air Force’s Oracle spy satellites imaged four submarines at the naval arsenal in Kiel, Germany. A significant portion of the satellite’s imaging footprint was blocked by cloud cover, but it’s pretty clear that the subs were on-loading missiles and torpedoes.”
Doyle glanced at her watch. “Three days ago? Why are we just finding out about this now?”
Gregory Brenthoven pursed his lips and paused for a second before answering. “Three days ago, our German allies were not considered to be even a remote threat. Air Force intelligence analysts didn’t regard a routine weapons on-load by an allied navy as very noteworthy. It was a reasonable decision, based on the situation as they understood it. It hardly seems fair to second-guess their judgment after the fact.”
“I agree,” the president said. “Is there more?”
Brenthoven looked back at his notes. “Yes, sir. Langley has been chasing down a few leads. It turns out that a lot of the Indian pilots that Germany has been training over the last several months might not actually be Indian.”
“Meaning they’re Siraji?”
“That’s what we’re thinking, sir. We’re running it down, but—at this stage—all we can say for certain is that a number of their immigration papers have strange inconsistencies.”
“It’s starting to sound like this deal has been cooking for a while,” the president said. “So the Germans might be ready to deliver some of the hardware right now?”
“They may have already started, sir,” Brenthoven said. “Yesterday evening, one of our destroyers in the Persian Gulf intercepted and boarded a cargo ship that was attempting to run the blockade of Siraj. The Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure teams discovered approximately three hundred German-built, over-the-shoulder missile launchers.”
Doyle shook her head. “Greg, how in the hell did we miss something this big?”
Brenthoven closed his notebook. “A lot of our intelligence assets—too many—are electronic. We’re still feeling the bite from the Clinton years; he cut our network of field operatives to ribbons. And the best electronics in the world are no substitute for good agents working on the scene. Our European network is especially thin; we’ve been concentrating most of our efforts on the Middle Eastern countries.”
The president closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He released it slowly and opened his eyes. “Where are the subs now?”
Brenthoven blinked twice and looked at the president. “Ah … we don’t know, sir. Our last satellite imagery of them is three days old. They could be through the English Channel by now.”
“They’ll have to transit the Strait of Gibraltar to get to the Mediterranean,” the president said. “What if we blockade the strait?”
Brenthoven said, “Our nearest significant asset is the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group. They’re way down at the east end of the Med. Even at top speed, they’d never make it in time.”
“If we can’t get ships over there,” the president said, “we’ll have to find someone who can. Who are our allies in this?”
Brenthoven said, “The United Kingdom for certain, sir. Greece. Italy, maybe.”
Doyle shook her head. “Not Italy. They’re tied up too closely to France and Germany both. They’ve all got that Joint Theater Defense Missile thing going. Greece is a little shaky too.”
The president ran his right index finger up and down along the bridge of his nose. “We’ll get State to drum us up a list of possibles. In the meantime, we’ll start with the UK.” He glanced at his watch and nodded toward the door to the East Room. “I’d better get back out there before Jenny gets spoiled by so much attention.” He turned his eyes to his chief of staff. “Get me Prime Minister Irons on the phone in an hour. Britain has at least as big a stake in this as we have.” His eyes shifted to his national security advisor. “Wake some people up at Langley. You’d better call ONI as well. If I’m going to yell for help, I want some idea of what we’re up against.” He looked at his watch again. “You’ve got about fifty-seven minutes.”
CHAPTER 11
R-92:
The signal rocketed through the fiber-optic core of the gray Kevlar cable and into the torpedo’s dorsal interface module. A portion of R-92’s digital brain powered itself up and awaited further instructions.
The cable, known as an umbilical in the parlance of technicians and torpedomen, served as a digital communications conduit between the weapon and the submarine’s digital fire control computers.
In the seconds preceding a launch, the umbilical would upload programming commands and updated target information into the weapon’s on-board computer. When the launch order came, the umbilical would relay that command to the torpedo and then automatically detach itself from the weapon at the instant of firing.
But the burst of digital codes coming through the umbilical now was not a launch order or targeting data. It was a routine maintenance signal.
R-92’s on-board computer responded as ordered—transmitting power to each of its major systems in turn, running diagnostic routines to test for faults or errors—and then removing power and letting each subsystem revert to its normal at-rest condition.
The entire sequence of electronic tests took just under three seconds. All subsystems reported themselves as fully operational. R-92’s digital co
mputer relayed the reports back to the fire control computers via the umbilical.
This done, the torpedo waited another three hundred seconds for follow-on orders. When none were detected, R-92’s digital brain powered itself down. Secure in its firing tube, deep in the belly of Gröeler’s U-307, the predator was dormant.
CHAPTER 12
STRAIT OF GIBRALTAR
SUNDAY; 13 MAY
0132 hours (1:32 AM)
TIME ZONE 0 ‘ZULU’
The bridge of HMS York was rigged for darken-ship: all unnecessary lights turned off to preserve the night vision of the watchstanders. What little illumination there was came from the soft red glow of instrument lamps, and even those feeble lights were turned down to minimal intensity to preserve the night vision of the bridge crew. As was often the case on evenings when the moon was out, it was actually darker on the bridge of the old British destroyer than it was outside under the night sky.
Second Officer of the Watch, Sub Lieutenant Michael Kensington, felt the front panel of the radar repeater until his fingers located the dimmer knob. He turned the brightness up for a few seconds, just enough to get a good look at the sweep. Still just the one contact, aft and off to port. He turned the dimmer back down. That would be HMS Chatham, the Royal Navy frigate that formed the other half of their little task force.
The young officer raised his binoculars and peered out the window into the night. The seas were calm, and the moonlight coated the gently rolling wave tops with liquid silver. “Good moon tonight,” he said, in what he hoped was an authoritative voice. “Shouldn’t be very hard to spot a periscope.”
Somewhere behind him, Ian Bryce, a seasoned lieutenant and First Officer of the Watch, exhaled sharply through his nose. “I keep telling you, there aren’t going to be any periscopes. Fact of the matter is there aren’t going to be any submarines. No submarines—no periscopes. Can’t very well have one without the other, now, can we?”
Sub Lieutenant Kensington continued his binocular sweep of the waves. “I’d say Her Majesty’s Navy thinks otherwise, or else we wouldn’t be here.”
The other two crew members on the darkened bridge, the Helmsman and the Bo’sun of the Watch, performed their respective jobs in near silence. They were both enlisted men, and—in much the same fashion that butlers and chauffeurs are paid to ignore the dealings of their employers—enlisted men were trained to stay out of the private conversations of commissioned officers.
Lieutenant Bryce sighed, his breath a disembodied sound on the darkened bridge. “The Germans are many things, but they are not stupid. They may posture and rattle their sabers, but when it comes down to it, they aren’t going to challenge the combined might of NATO. They’d have to be pretty well deranged to pull a fool stunt like that, now wouldn’t they? Use your head. If the Admiralty really intended for us to blockade the strait against those German subs, they’d have sent more than two ships.” His words were punctuated by the sound of him patting something in the darkness. “This old girl has got more than twenty-five years on her, and the Chatham’s getting a bit long in the tooth as well. One old destroyer and one old frigate do not a blockade make.”
Sub Lieutenant Kensington lowered his binoculars. “Then why send us out here at all?”
“We … are a symbol,” said his unseen superior. “We are a visual reminder to the Germans, and to the world, that Her Majesty’s government and her NATO allies are firmly opposed to the illegal sale of arms to Siraj. The Germans have rattled their sabers, and now it’s time to rattle ours. Trust me on this, lad; it’s all posturing.”
Kensington shook his head, a pointless gesture in the darkness. “The captain doesn’t seem to think so. You were at the briefing; he made it sound as if we’re going to see some action.”
Lieutenant Bryce laughed softly, that condescending chuckle that adults use when trying to explain difficult concepts to children. “Our fair captain is a wise man. Far too wise to cast doubt, however slight, upon the stated policies of his superiors. If you watch closely, you’ll notice that his orders and opinions are always a close reflection of the current official rhetoric. He’d have to be a fool to do otherwise, and that man is no fool.”
Kensington said, “You make him sound like a mindless puppet.”
“Not at all. He’s a smart naval officer who knows that his career floats as much on politics as it does on the ocean.”
“Ah,” Kensington said. “So a smart naval officer keeps his mouth shut and does his job. How is it, then, that you are able to speak your mind so freely?”
Lieutenant Bryce laughed. “Someone has got to teach the junior officers how the world really works.” He laughed again. “We haven’t fired a shot at one of Jerry’s ships since Churchill was PM. Do you really think we’re going to start another war over a handful of submarines? This is the voice of experience talking; if there’s any fighting to be done, it will all be political.”
“That’s very well,” Kensington said, “but if it’s all the same to you, I’ll be keeping an eye out for German periscopes.”
“And so you should be,” said Bryce. “The Royal Navy needs earnest young men like you, if only to offset the cynicism of broken-down old wretches like me.”
Sub Lieutenant Kensington snorted. “Listen to you, playing the Ancient Mariner. You may be more experienced than I am, but you’re not more than five or six years older.”
“Too true,” said Bryce. “But they’ve been hard years, Young Kensington. Very hard years. You should have a go at my life—never knowing when the Exocet is going to drop in. She did it again last month, the old bitch. Showed up for tea unannounced and didn’t leave for a week.”
Kensington laughed. “Why do you call your mum-in-law the Exocet?”
“That woman is not my mum-in-law,” Bryce said. “She’s my wife’s mum. She’s not anything to me. Not as far as I’m concerned.”
“But the Exocet?”
“Because,” said Bryce with a theatrical sigh, “she’s like a ruddy cruise missile: you can see her coming, but there’s not really much you can do about it.”
Sub Lieutenant Kensington laughed again. “Right.” He raised the binoculars and resumed his search of the waves.
* * *
For all his enthusiasm, two hours later, Kensington was beginning to admit to himself that the First Watch Officer might be right. German submarines weren’t exactly leaping out of the water like trained dolphins. And Bryce’s words, as cocky as they’d seemed at the time, did have a certain logic to them. Surely the Germans wouldn’t let things escalate to the point of military conflict. He yawned and raised the binoculars for what seemed like the hundredth time.
He was still searching for periscopes, diligently (if tiredly) when he felt a tap on his shoulder. A voice said softly, “Second Officer of the Watch, I stand ready to relieve you, sir.”
Kensington smiled in the darkness; the arrival of one’s watch relief was always an agreeable thing, but especially so after a long mid-watch. He lowered his binoculars and turned toward the sound of the voice. In the gloom, he could just make out the shape of the man waiting to assume his watch responsibilities. “Sub Lieutenant Lavelle, punctual as always. I am ready to be relieved, sir.”
Kensington turned up the brightness on the radar repeater to show Lavelle that the surface picture was empty of contacts with the exception of their escorting frigate, the HMS Chatham. He was about to crank the knob back down when he caught a tiny flash on the yellow phosphorous screen. “Hello,” he said. “What have we here?”
He spent a few seconds adjusting the controls on the faceplate of the repeater, trying to refine the tiny radar contact.
Sub Lieutenant Lavelle yawned loudly. “Probably a bit of sea return. Just finish your turnover. I’ll have a look at it later.”
“It’s not sea return,” Kensington said softly. “It’s small but consistent, and it’s tracking west-to-east. Right toward us.” He cleared his throat and spoke louder. “Lieutenant Bryce
, could you come look at this? I think I’m getting a radar return from a periscope.”
“Get on with your periscopes,” Bryce said. “Turn over the watch and go to bed. Then you can dream of Jerry subs all you want.”
Kensington stared at the radar screen. He made his voice as serious as possible. “First Officer of the Watch, I am officially requesting that you evaluate this radar contact.”
“Listen to you,” said Bryce with a laugh. “Go to bed, you silly bastard! There are no submarines out there. I give you my word as a British officer.”
In a fluke of timing more suited to a situation comedy than to the bridge of a warship at sea, a short burst of static punctuated his last sentence. It was followed immediately by the voice of the ship’s Operations Room Officer, coming from an overhead speaker. “Bridge—Operations Room. The sonar boys are tracking an active contact at bearing two-nine-zero, range of about six thousand meters. They’re requesting a bearing check. My radar shows a flicker of something at that bearing and range. Request you do a visual sweep for surface contacts at that position.”
Kensington swung his binoculars to the appropriate area. “I’ve got nothing,” he said.
Sub Lieutenant Lavelle keyed a comm box near the radar repeater. “Operations Room—Bridge. We have negative surface contacts. Bearing and range are clear.” He released the button. “Think it’s a submarine?” he asked softly.
“Probably a fishing boat,” Lieutenant Bryce said immediately. “Wooden hulls don’t give much of a radar return, especially if they’re small.”
“We should wake up the captain on this,” Kensington said.
“Nobody’s waking the captain over a fishing boat,” Bryce said.
The Operations Room Officer’s voice rumbled the speaker again. “Bridge—Operations Room. We have six inbound Bogies. I repeat, we have six unidentified aircraft inbound! We are initiating Level One challenges at this time. Recommend we take the ship to Action Stations.”