Patriot

by A S Bond

  “It shouldn’t be too risky, they have no reason to look in the tender while we’re still at sea.” Dex looked at Brooke with a mixture of concern and fear. “But I’m going to have to lock you back in the cupboard.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “But we talked about - “

  “I’ll lock myself back in the cupboard,” Brooke said, firmly. “Where did you get the keys?”

  He told her

  “That’s okay, then. The head guy has his own set, so if I take the key to the cupboard off this ring, I can let myself out.”

  “You can’t take the store key too, the cook would be suspicious.”

  “Well, I have a plan if you can’t get to me.”

  With a nasty feeling of betrayal pricking at his conscience, Dex left Brooke in the cupboard with some more food and listened as she turned the key. Turning off the light in the storeroom, he eased open the door. All remained still. Moving as silently as possible, he replaced the keys in the galley and walked swiftly towards the door to the aft deck, and comparative safety.

  Stepping outside, the chill of the night air cleared his head. He breathed in deeply, the salt tingling at the back of his throat. The storm had passed over. Although there was still a heavy swell, the sky was clear and the stars were out. Dex stared at the sky. Stars were, after all, his business. They were certainly travelling south. It seemed Brooke was probably right about their destination.

  It was too dangerous to linger where he was, so he quickly hauled himself back into the shelter of the tender. He had nothing to write with, so he closed his eyes and thought through their situation. He estimated it was roughly 1200 miles from the part of the Labrador coast they had left behind yesterday, to the Chesapeake Bay. Dex wasn’t particularly familiar with the geography of that part of the country; he’d been raised on the Mississippi coast. But, from memory, he calculated another 200 nautical miles from Chesapeake up the Potomac to Washington. How these people planned to get past the military and naval installations, he couldn’t imagine.

  Dex still figured his original estimate of 20 knots was accurate, now that he’d been on deck. This was a new, high-end yacht, capable of moving through big seas with barely a shudder. He imagined that was why the Marie Louise was almost certainly stolen. A quick calculation, including the time they had already spent sailing south, put them in D.C. in maybe two days.

  Two days to stop a catastrophe.

  The sun was beginning to mark the horizon with a dirty smudge of grey as Dex heard the first signs of men moving on the decks above. It was time for some rest. Tonight he would start the search for their weapon of mass destruction.

  The following night, the seas were much calmer, the bad weather having passed over them. The temperature was rising slightly as they motored south, too. That was just as well, because Dex was finding living in the cramped tender fairly challenging. His life in Chile, where he enjoyed a spacious apartment with housekeeping service overlooking the sea, and a comfortable office near the space telescope, seemed like it belonged to someone else. Someone who didn’t know the terrible things he knew.

  He was now getting a clear sense of the layout of the ship. He was fairly certain that the weapon, if indeed it was onboard - was not on the main deck, or on the crew’s deck. That left the bridge, which Brooke had already explored, and the engine room and storage spaces in the very bottom of the hull. After another unappetizing breakfast of crackers and tinned beef (the penknife came in handy again), Dex watched and waited for darkness to come and for the men to finally go to their beds. He knew for certain that there was at least one man on watch, but unless it was the foreman - he supposed he ought to think of the man now as the captain - the watchman spent most of the time in the warm bridge, chatting with whoever was left on navigation duty, rather than patrolling the exposed decks.

  Every so often, over the past two days, a supertanker or other large vessel had passed by them in the far distance, but Dex realized that their course must have been designed partly to keep them as far away as possible from the main shipping lanes. No one hailed the ship, no plane buzzed overhead. If he hadn’t known Brooke was barely thirty feet away, Dex would have felt very alone.

  As it was, he forced himself to focus on the job at hand: finding the weapon. It was past eleven when he again lowered himself down from the tender as quietly as possible. He hadn’t seen the watchman pass in over an hour, so Dex guessed the man had stopped patrolling. Dex was unsure where the entrance to the lowest deck was; the designer of the ship had hidden the engineering room and access from its future millionaire owner’s sight.

  On a hunch, Dex followed the corridor past Brooke’s storeroom and continued to the end of the passageway. Another door opened onto the deck here, and a flight of internal steps ascended towards the staterooms. Under these steps, however, there was an unremarkable, unmarked door. Dex put his ear to it. The sound of the engines pulsated through the marine plywood. He tried the handle and, to his surprise, it opened, filling the passageway with the throb of the engines. He slipped quickly inside and closed the door behind him.

  It was dark, but there was a light in the room below, which cast a faint glow up the short flight of stairs in front of him. Another step forwards and he would have taken a tumble.

  Licking his lips, Dex flattened himself against the walls and walked sideways down the staircase. If there was someone below, he didn’t want to be seen. The engines became louder, but as he reached the final step, Dex heard something else; the sound of voices. Damn. There were people down here.

  At least two men were talking, or at least one was giving orders, to which the other responded in monosyllables. Thanks to the sound of the engines and his shaky Arabic, Dex could catch only the occasional word, such as generator, ship and, easiest of all, Washington. So they were heading for D.C.; Brooke was right. Dex closed his eyes for a moment, sickened. He opened them again when the voices become less distinct. Carefully, he placed one foot on the lowest step and listened hard. The voices were no more than a vague murmur now. Dex eased his head around the corner, just enough that he could scan the room.

  It was empty. Empty of people at least. They had obviously walked through the far door into what Dex assumed was the engine room proper. This was the equipment room, with areas for tools, life preservers, an inflatable Zodiac, scuba gear, windsurfing boards, safety equipment and two jet skis. Directly in front of him at the bottom of the staircase was a door marked Control Room. Stepping quickly across and through the open door, Dex closed it behind him and looked around. An electrical panel filled one wall and heating ducts ran across the ceiling.

  What Dex really needed was to take a look inside the engine room. At that moment, though, the voices became louder again. He opened the door to the control room a crack and looked out. The Captain walked past the door and up the stairs, coming so close that Dex could smell his sweat. The AK47 slung across his shoulder rattled against the door as he turned the tight corner. That left just one man on guard.

  Dex crept out of the control room and ran across the equipment room to the surfboards, just outside the engine room now, where the door was ajar. There was a guard in there, his hand resting lightly on the handgun strapped to his side, and so was one of the scientists Dex had seen in the mine. The thing that drew Dex’s attention however, was a cylinder of what looked like some sort of epoxy composite, over a foot in diameter and about a yard long. It was strapped to a workbench in the center of the room between the twin, 3,000-horsepower engines, which were in turn fed by two large generators on either side of the room.

  Shocked, Dex realized the tube housed a simple EMP weapon. He knew he shouldn’t be shocked, but the sight of the weapon, its physical presence and the inherent threat within, gave it a malevolent air. It would be easy to disable, but just as easy to re-enable, if you knew what you were doing, and Dex had to assume that was why the lab guy was there. Timing was critical, then. If he was to attempt anything now, the crew would be
alerted to his presence. Maybe they would suspect Brooke—or, more likely, they would just beat the answers out of her.

  Dex found he was sweating, despite the cold. The scientist appeared to demand something from the guard, who replied in a bored manner, until the scientist repeated the same command more loudly. No love lost there, then, Dex thought. The guard spoke into a radio, but Dex wasn’t waiting to find out who he was speaking to; he was already halfway back up the steps.

  He understood now why the presence on the external decks had been minimal. They had work to do below. Once the corridor was quiet, Dex slipped out and across to the galley. This time, the galley door was closed and locked. For a moment, Dex panicked, but then he tried the storeroom door. It opened.

  Brooke was awake and waiting for him.

  “Thank goodness the cook is so sloppy; he left this door open tonight,” he said, perching on a sack of rice.

  “He didn’t leave it open,” Brooke said. “I fixed it so it feels like the key has turned, but it isn’t locked.” She looked smug. “Just a little trick I’ve picked up.”

  Dex looked at her. Was there no end to the list of her unusual accomplishments? She smiled. Then, becoming serious, she said

  “Did you find it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it what you thought?”

  “Yes. It’s a simple design, on an explosively pumped flux compression generator - “

  In English, please.”

  “It’s a large cylinder, filled with conductive metallic discs and high explosives. When an electric current passes through it, it creates a magnetic field, which is compressed by the explosives. At maximum compression, the load switch is opened and a massive pulse, a shock wave, is produced, maybe a thousand, even ten thousand times greater than a lightning strike.”

  “Where does the current come from? I’m guessing they don’t just plug it into an outlet.”

  “Actually, they do, kind of. They’ve been very clever. It’s hooked up to the ship’s generators, with a couple of extra ones piggybacking, probably to make sure they get the right current level. That should give them enough power to jumpstart the bomb.”

  “Can this thing be used more than once?”

  “No, it’s a one-trick pony. Once it’s started, it will destroy itself from the power of the forces it produces.”

  “And this ship, too.”

  “Probably. It’s almost certainly a suicide mission.”

  Brooke began pacing in the tiny storeroom. Then she stopped and said, “Can you disable it?”

  “Of course. Disabling it is no problem, but getting to it will be.”Hhe explained about the guards and the scientist. “Even assuming I could get to it, anything I did will be noticed, and our cover will be blown before we even get close to the target.”

  “I’m thinking we’ll have turned into Chesapeake Bay by tomorrow evening.”

  “I agree,” Dex said. “Although we don’t know how they plan to pass all those military bases, not to mention the Coast Guard and Homeland Security.”

  “And we don’t know how close they plan to get. It may be that their target is the military...”

  “So they’ll want to drop the payload before they’re stopped. If we can’t get to the bomb to disable it, we could prevent them from detonating it.”

  “How?” Brooke said. “I thought you said it was heavily guarded?”

  “It is, but since it depends on the generators for its power, if we shut those down, they’ll have no way of initiating detonation.”

  “Won’t the generator controls be on the bridge? The place we can’t get to?”

  “There will be controls up there, but on a ship this size, there should also be a manual shutoff, for safety. Sometimes it’s in the engine room itself, or we might be lucky and find it in the control room. Damn. I didn’t think to look when I was in there.”

  “Won’t they just restart them?”

  “I can make sure they can’t,” Dex said, grimly.

  Brooke looked at him for a moment. Then she said, “Okay. We should make a significant change in direction, around 80 degrees or so when we reach Cape Charles. Once we’re into the bay, there’ll be lots of boats, and we may even be able to see the shoreline, depending on which channels they use. There are a lot of military police and Coast Guard vessels there.”

  “But we need to find some way to communicate with the outside world,” Dex said. “If we can get to the radio and call for help, the Coast Guard should be down on these guys before they can get back into open water. We can try for the bridge, I guess, there may be only one man on duty in there...”

  “Maybe,” Brooke said with a little smile. “But if you want to attract attention without storming the bridge, I have an idea.”

  They discussed their plans for hours, turning them around and around; worrying, questioning, speculating. They would only get one shot at this. Finally, Dex glanced at his watch. It was almost dawn on what would almost certainly be their last day on board, one way or another.

  “Oh, Dex?” Brooke called after him as he was leaving the storeroom “There will be a mechanical release for the tender somewhere. Find it.”

  He just hoped it would be that easy.

  Chapter 30

  It was a gray, chilly day, and the tourists on the Mall scurried between museums or walked, heads down and coats buttoned up to their necks, to meetings in the surrounding buildings. It was a short walk for Scott across the Ellipse and up the Mall towards the Capitol. He had a grandstand view of D.C. life as he waited in an unpleasantly gusty wind that blew litter down the street.

  “You’re late,” he said as Mike came around the corner, out of breath. “How did it go?

  “Vernon was only too pleased to get the jump on Roberts with a potential new lead. He went into a meeting with the NSC this morning.”

  “Did the President chair it?”

  “No, I think it was Johnson.”

  “Okay, good,” Scott said. “Let’s see what that scares up.”

  “I hope it doesn’t backfire. Whoever is involved in this knows what they’re doing.”

  “I know, but what choice do we have? Maybe when we haul in Maynard, we’ll get some answers. I need a coffee.” The two friends strolled a block south, towards a cart on Madison.

  “Talking of hauling in Maynard - that’s what I wanted to tell you.” Mike stirred his coffee and tossed the plastic spoon into a trash can. He led Scott away from the cart, until their conversation was drowned out by traffic. “He used a foreign passport, but we found him.”

  “Where? Dubai?”

  Mike laughed. “No, a bit closer to home that that. He was crossing into Canada at a small border post in Maine. He was using a Canadian passport in the name of Marchant.”

  “His mother’s maiden name?”

  “Yes, he gave her address in Quebec as his destination to border control, so they’ve got some officers up there now. It’s only a matter of time before we pick him up.”

  “That should answer a lot of questions.”

  “It sure shoul - “

  “Watch it!” Scott yanked Mike back to the sidewalk in midstep, as a dark blue Lincoln ran the light and roared past.

  “Hell, that was close.” Mike was a little pale, and Scott put a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “If I was a suspicious kinda guy, I’d say someone was out to get us.”

  They laughed and, crossing the road, walked out onto the Mall. A weak sun fought the clouds, and the lunchtime rush was in full swing.

  As they strode down the sidewalk among the crowd, they instinctively parted slightly as a pedestrian, lost in his own world, forced his way through a nonexistent gap between them.

  “Watch it,” Mike said, as the man shouldered him aside, then disappeared in the wake of bodies behind them. A warning flashed across Scott’s mind; a memory. Was there something familiar....? Then Mike gripped his shoulder hard.

  “Scott!” he gasped. Scott turned and stared in
to his friend’s face. Mike’s pupils were constricted to the size of pinheads, and he was gasping for breath.

  “Mike! “Jesus, what...” Before he could finish, Mike sank to the ground, pulling Scott down with him. His eyes were open and staring, and a white froth spilled from his mouth. Then he began to convulse, his body bucking and writhing on the concrete.

  Scott flipped out his phone, called 911. He heard himself bark out their location and Mike’s symptoms as though on autopilot, dimly aware of the widening circle of onlookers. With paramedics on the way, he tried to help his friend, loosening his shirt and tie, trying to hold him steady as his limbs shook uncontrollably. Mike tried to speak, but he was engulfed by spasms and he vomited onto the sidewalk.

  “Mike, hang in there buddy, help is on its way, you just got to stay with me you hear, just hold on, stay with me”

  “G - Ga - “

  “I’ll call Gail.”

  Scott cradled his friend as best he could, trying to keep him from flailing. Fear ripped through him as a dark wet patch appeared on Mike’s trousers, not just urine but blood, too. Again, he called dispatch. It seemed unbelievable, but he knew what he was seeing.

  “We need Atropine, repeat Atropine - this is a suspected nerve agent case. Get Homeland Security’s Chemical and Biological Division down here.”

  The onlookers moved back quickly; some hurried away, fearful that whatever was happening could be contagious.

  Mike’s movements became less frantic and his eyes dilated slightly, but his breathing came in short, shallow gasps.

  “Damn it, where’s the fucking medics?” Scott kept his fingers pressed against Mike’s neck feeling for a pulse, but it was barely there. Suddenly, Mike went completely limp and his breathing stopped.

  “No you don’t!” Scott positioned his friend for resuscitation, but then he hesitated. Could the poison get him, too? Then he said, “Fuck it” and began CPR.

  The siren’s wail parted the onlookers and two men in hazmat suits loaded Mike onto a gurney instantly, not even stopping to check his vital signs. Scott stood beside his friend as they got him into the back of the ambulance.