Short Season

by DJ Scott

“Again,” Nikos said, “I am sorry for your additional costs, and for bringing you out here on a Sunday. But perhaps I can relieve you of at least some of your burden.”

  The older man raised his eyebrows slightly and smiled. “I am listening.”

  Nikos laid five fifty-euro notes on the desk. It was where the conversation had been heading from the beginning.

  The harbormaster scooped them up. “Yes, that would be a great help. Indeed, I will personally guarantee that the best local diesel mechanic will be immediately available when the part arrives.”

  They shook hands, and the skipper of the MV Milos Tethys left the grimy office and walked back along the wharf towards his ship. As he did so, he passed six twenty-foot standard shipping containers, three of which had originated in Tallinn, but due to an error enroute had been relabeled as originating in Lodz, Poland. Indeed, no record—paper or computer—now existed which showed their whereabouts prior to being loaded onto a railroad flatcar in Lodz. Their destination, he knew, would require a transit of the Suez Canal, something Theologides’ ships did infrequently in the era of Somali piracy. Most of those trips involved shipping containers which came to Theologides via freight forwarding agents with no address, only satellite telephone numbers, and whose payments were usually delivered to Piraeus by anonymous couriers bearing cash. It would not be unusual for Theologides Shipping, notorious for careless record keeping, to misplace all records involving those containers.

  Chapter 10

  August 20, 2017 1715Z (1315 EDT)

  The White House Situation Room

  The Directors of ONI, CIA, and Homeland Security were seated on one side of the long conference table, chatting amiably. Sonny Baker sat less amiably across from them next to Karen Hiller, with whom he traded short, clipped sentences. At the far end of the table was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Theodore Roosevelt Lennox, accompanied by several very senior officers. Politically astute, but operationally inexperienced, Lennox succeeded to his job at the same time Sonny Baker had succeeded to his. Standing behind each of the principals, along the wall, aides huddled to review updates and possible questions.

  Hiller would normally have come in with the President, but he’d sent her ahead largely as a way of putting her and Baker on an equal footing, at least for the duration of this crisis. As the President entered, everyone stood until he took his seat at the head of the table. After a few perfunctory remarks about the potential seriousness of this new situation, he asked Baker to begin.

  Baker felt more confident and rested than he had the day before in the Oval Office. “Mr. President, let me have Admiral Costello start with an update from Sweden.”

  Costello stood, looked briefly at the President and began. “Yesterday, members of the Swedish Coast Guard inspected the suspect containers at the port facility in Gothenburg. Each was emitting a significant amount of gamma rays, so they were removed by truck to a secure military warehouse. They found each had a patch of new paint concealed inside one of the lower lift brackets. The paint contained a small amount of cesium 137, a highly radioactive substance with several industrial uses. The amount of radiation was fairly small, not really dangerous except to someone standing right next to it for hours, but more than enough to give a strong reading on radiation detectors. The containers themselves were, as the manifests stated, filled with machine parts, mostly old rusted junk.”

  “What would be the purpose of this?” Wallace asked.

  “I was asking myself the same question, Mr. President, until I heard back from Rick Suarez, a nuclear threat expert from one of the NEST teams, who was sent to inspect the port at Tallinn. He found three more containers painted exactly the same way. Those containers were empty. I believe, sir, that the people responsible for the theft of the warheads have created a shell game. I wouldn’t be surprised if more of these containers begin turning up throughout Northern Europe.”

  The President leaned back in his chair and shook his head slightly. “So we know where the warheads aren’t. Any progress on where they are?”

  “Not yet, sir. CIA has radiation detectors in place on the Bosporus, and we are flying units to multiple ships operating south of the Suez Canal and along the Eastern and Western approaches to North Korea. We’ve quietly contacted the security services of all nations with ports along the Atlantic or Mediterranean to be aware of a possible radiation threat. We have not mentioned the warheads specifically.”

  “Good. We don’t need to get people too excited yet. General, what do we have in place to recover these weapons when we locate them?”

  The Chairman rose to address the Commander in Chief. “Mr. President, there are SEAL teams on two amphibious ships in the Arabian Sea. They can be in position to assault any ship within a few hours. PACCOM is making similar arrangements for the Korean Peninsula. In that case, the plan is to keep them on alert at Osan Air Base. A possible movement via Turkey presents more of a problem. The Turks are a bit sensitive about foreign ground troops there and have been walking a very fine line between us and the Iranians. If we thought those weapons were in Turkey or their territorial waters, they’d probably allow us to act—with Turkish participation, of course. To cover that possibility, we’ve moved the amphibious ship San Antonio, with two-hundred-eighty Marines embarked, along with the destroyer Bainbridge from the Eastern Med up towards the Bosporus. They should be in the Black Sea in two days.”

  “Good, General, thank you. Sonny, how much of a shit storm will we face if we board a ship in international waters?”

  “Not much, Mr. President, so long as the nukes really are aboard. If we’re wrong, then we have to announce the reason for the boarding, and whoever really has the nukes will know that we know.”

  “Then we better be right.” The President pointed back at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Ted, what if these things are going to a country other than Iran or North Korea—not some terrorist group, but someone with a real army to defend them?”

  The Chairman stood again and looked directly at the President. “Sir, there are a huge number of possibilities. In some cases, we could do an amphibious raid, but in others it would require a full-scale invasion of a now nuclear-armed nation. Right now we don’t have enough information to begin that kind of planning.”

  “Yeah, well start planning anyway. If these weapons can’t be intercepted at sea and end up in say, North Korea, then we’re screwed. We can’t mount a major invasion, and we’ll have to deal with it another way. If it isn’t Iran, which is still my best bet, then it’s probably some half-assed state like Somalia or even one of the Gulf States; they all seem mighty nervous these days. So put together a proposal for an amphibious operation somewhere between the Horn of Africa and the Persian Gulf.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  The President peppered his intelligence chiefs with additional questions about locating the Russian fugitives and received frustratingly vague responses. He was likewise unhappy with Harvey Lyon from Homeland Security, who told him that screening every incoming shipping container was physically impossible. His best recommendation was putting neutron detectors at the exits to the ports, a location through which most containers would pass. It would, he admitted, take months to acquire and deploy enough advanced neutron detectors and doing so would at some point come to the attention of the press.

  “We’ll deal with that when it happens. Karen, work with the Press Secretary’s office to prepare for any questions.”

  “On it, Mr. President,” said Hiller who was tapping furiously on a small, super-secure tablet.

  Without warning, Wallace rose and announced that the briefing was over. As he headed for the door, he motioned to Sonny Baker who stepped forward and walked out with the President.

  “Call me twenty-four hours a day if anything develops,” Wallace said, “and I mean anything. I know Karen’s touchy about access, but Sonny, this is potentially the biggest cris
is of my, or anyone’s administration. We’re not going to play politics with it.”

  Chapter 11

  August 28, 2017 1145Z (1245 BST)

  The Orange Public House, Pimlico Road, London

  It had been a week of little news. Finally, the break, when it came, came in London.

  Maxim Korshkin was seated at his usual table at his usual Pimlico Road restaurant and was enjoying his usual lunch of mussels steamed in Guinness, honey, and black pepper accompanied by a truly superb pinot grigio. Korshkin doubted there was another man in all of London enjoying life at that moment more than he.

  Maxim Korshkin was, as they say, living the dream. A mid-level logistics officer in the old Soviet Army, Korshkin faced, in 1991, decades of downward spiral in the new Russia before he decided to leave the motherland and to take with him compact discs loaded with every technical manual, parts list, supplier, warehouse location, and design specification of every weapons system in the Russian inventory. He then set himself up in London, a city which offered every possible advantage to a man dealing in arms—or more specifically arms-related information.

  His first, and most lucrative, sale was to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. His army decimated by the American-led Gulf War, Saddam needed to restore his military power at any cost. With his Soviet backers gone and the new Russia in chaos, Korshkin was able to offer technical information, arrange contacts for replacement parts, and even provide recently-unemployed Russian technical experts. The proceeds of that transaction went to the purchase of several flats in the Chelsea area of London, one of which he occupied and two he rented. Though income from his arms deals waned, Korshkin’s real estate skills allowed him to accumulate holdings worth millions of pounds. Nonetheless, he still enjoyed the cachet of being an international arms dealer and maintained his contacts. If nothing else, arms dealers—even short pudgy ones—seemed to attract a more exciting class of attractive young women than landlords.

  There was just one problem.

  “Maxim, so good to see you.”

  Commander Neville Cathcart of the Counter Terrorism Command, formerly known as Special Branch, sat down across from him. He was the problem. Twenty years ago Cathcart had patiently explained that arms deals with Saddam simply wouldn’t do. His choice was simple, cooperate or come to a very bad end. From that moment on Korshkin had become an unwilling employee of the Counter Terrorism Command. As the years passed and Korshkin moved more and more from arms to real estate, he saw the annoying Cathcart less and less. This suited Korshkin very well, for every time he betrayed the name or location of some new group of smugglers, he risked having his throat cut or his car blown up—with him in it! But now, here he was.

  “Commander,” Korshkin said, “I heard you’ve been promoted.”

  “Yes. So I have.” Cathcart, looking very smart in an impeccably-tailored Saville Row suit, ironically from the same tailor Korshkin used, signaled the waiter and ordered tea. “Maxim, I really am terribly busy so let me get right to it.”

  “A situation involving Russian nuclear warheads has come to our attention. It goes without saying that this is all very—and I mean very—confidential. Have you heard anything?”

  Korshkin always thought very carefully before answering Cathcart. Sharing information could be dangerous, but so could withholding information, so he had to find just the right balance. “Several months ago a very . . . specialized dealer known as Janos contacted me. Are you familiar with him?”

  “Only by name; operates somewhere in Eastern Europe. That’s about all we know.”

  “He is very specialized indeed. High class merchandise, very expensive, and with an appropriately small client base. I happen to know he brokered the sale of that stolen German Type 212 submarine to Iran. I believe the cost was eighty million euros of which he received ten percent.”

  Cathcart was surprised and angry. “And you didn’t see fit to inform me of this at the time?”

  “Commander, our arrangement was that you would ask me questions now and then. I never agreed to ring you up with every piece of gossip that comes my way. Besides, that’s old news. The Americans destroyed that sub earlier this year.”

  “Very well then.” Cathcart took a sip of tea. “What about Janos?”

  “His first contact was rather vague—an encrypted email telling me to call a certain number. I purchased a throwaway mobile and called. Using very circumspect language, a man who identified himself as a close associate indicated Janos would soon have some very expensive special weapons. When he mentioned the sum of a hundred-fifty million euros, I knew they must be nuclear. I had no interest in getting involved in that kind of deal and told him so. I was also skeptical, to be honest, as these stories crop up now and then and later turn out to be, what do the Americans call them? Scams.”

  Cathcart was intrigued by this and nodded as he listened. “You said that was his first contact?”

  “Yes,” replied the Russian. “Two days ago a messenger delivered a small package to me while I was having a beer a few blocks from here. I was naturally surprised to have a package delivered to me at a pub. I opened it when I got home and found an encrypted satellite phone. A note said to call a number already programmed in its memory at eight that evening and then deposit the phone in the river.”

  “And?”

  “I did. I walked across the Thames over to Battersea Park and called. The man on the other end answered, ‘Janos.’ I had not heard his voice in over ten years, but I’m sure it was him. He wanted to know if I could refer him to sources for Russian military circuit boards. I gave him one name in Kiev whom I recalled, Nicolai Pelevin.”

  Cathcart wrote the name in a notebook.

  “This seemed to be a secondary issue, though. The real reason for his call was to find an operating manual for a Russian permissive action link encoder. I knew then he actually had access to nuclear weapons. Why else would he need a PAL encoder?”

  “Excellent, Maxim.”

  “There is one other thing. He asked that if I found one, to have it translated into Arabic. I told him again that I wanted no part of this deal and ended the call. I walked back to my flat and on the way dropped the phone from the Albert Bridge.”

  Cathcart stood and laid a business card on the table. He added, “Call me any time twenty-four hours a day if you hear from him again. Next time, if there is a next time, agree to provide whatever he wants.” With that Commander Neville Cathcart hurried towards the door and out to his car, which was illegally parked.

  As he drove away Maxim Korshkin said to himself, “Good to see you too Commander. Certainly, I’ll be happy to pay for your tea.”

  Chapter 12

  August 30, 2017 1430Z (1030 EDT)

  The White House Situation Room

  Brendan Wallace had just finished a long meeting with his military advisors on the stagnating situation in Iran. The level of fighting had dropped, but there was no end in sight. Now his intelligence chiefs were telling him the only progress made on the missing warheads was that someone wanted a PAL manual in Arabic.

  He wanted to crack their heads together, but that probably wouldn’t help

  “Arabic covers a hell of a lot of ground, Alex.” He pointed an accusing finger at CIA Director Alexander Clarkson. “They speak Arabic from Morocco to the Turkish border, do they not?”

  “Yes, Mr. President, that’s true, but most of those North African countries are broke and could never afford to buy those warheads. Libya is generating some cash from its oil now, but their new government is pretty moderate by regional standards. Besides, their security services and military are riddled with agents—ours, the Brits’, and the Israelis’. East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula are still the best bets.”

  “What about Syria?”

  “We can’t rule it out, but none of the factions still fighting has the funds to buy them, the means to deliver them, or for that m
atter a target worth using one.”

  “Dammit.” Wallace brought his fist down on the table. “You’re all stovepiped into you own little worlds. Look at the larger picture; who would benefit most? I cannot do all your jobs,” though Wallace admitted to himself that he wished he could and was confident he could do each of them better.

  “Sir,” Karen Hiller said. “May I remind you of your meeting with the Senate Majority Leader? You know how he leaks to the press when you’re late.”

  “Yes, yes. Don’t want to keep the old geezer waiting. I do want to hear about the plans for that amphibious action, though. Someone was supposed to be here to brief me.”

  “That would be me, Mr. President.” A trim, good-looking African-American Navy officer wearing aviator’s wings stepped forward from the gaggle standing behind the principals. “Captain Neil Washington, sir. I’m representing NAVCENT and Fifth Fleet Operations. Admiral Dawkins directed us to prepare a contingency amphibious operation to recover special weapons in an arc from East Africa to the head of the Persian Gulf.”

  “Okay,” said the President. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Operation Ocean Reach,” he began, “will consist of two amphibious task groups which, for security, will remain separate until it is time to execute the operation. Because 5th Fleet amphibious assets are currently engaged in operations in the Persian Gulf, two amphibious groups will be transferred as follows. ” The officer then pointed to a graphic on the large flat screen display.

  Task Force 58: Expeditionary Strike Group

  Task Force 58.1 USS Essex (LHD 2)

  group transferred from 7th Fleet (Pacific)

  USS Essex, USS Stockdale

  (DDG-106), USS Lake Erie (CG-70)

  Task Force 58.2 USS Iwo Jima (LHD 7) group

  transferred from 6th Fleet (Mediterranean)

  USS Iwo Jima, USS Dewey (DDG-105), USS Bowman (FFG-62)

  “In addition, the auxiliary oiler Yukon will be forward deployed to Diego Garcia and tasked with supporting TF 58. Air support will be drawn from the embarked AV-8 Harriers. Depending on the location, additional air support may be possible from the three carrier strike groups currently operating south of the Strait, or we can move a squadron of Marine F-18’s down from the Med to Djibouti. Finally, the USS Jimmy Carter, a Seawolf Class submarine, will be moved west to provide additional anti-submarine cover.”