Death Ship
Page 10
The men and women in the Special Operations Center silently stood, or sat, or moved around. The only sounds—the humming of electronic equipment. Then Bob’s voice intruded.
“I left the message. Was NRO able to identify the location of the phone on the other end of the call?”
Marge Brew said, “The receiving phone for all three calls is a satellite device in the middle of a piazza in Rome. The calls from Saber Teams One and Two came from locations in the Ionian Sea and went to that same telephone.”
“I need the coordinates of that piazza,” Frank said.
Marge recited the coordinates. Frank wrote them on a slip of paper, which he handed to Ray, and said, “Call the chief of station in Rome and have him send a team to that location.”
“Would you do it, boss? I have something else to do.”
“And what is that?” Frank asked.
“Pee!”
“Who’s there?” Bob said.
“I’m here, Bob,” Tanya answered. “Frank is on another line and Ray stepped out for a moment. The NSA and NRO are still conferenced in.”
“Was the NRO able to pinpoint the locations of the two Saber Teams?”
“Mister Danforth, this is Conrad Demetruk with the NSA. We’ve got two locations off the southern Sicilian coast. We’ll have eyeballs on those locations in a minute or two.”
“I would assume the two calls came from some kind of water craft,” Bob said. “I would track those two boats for a while. See if they move in the same direction. I’d have the Zoe Mou move in that same direction. They may be executing a combined operation. If the two boats come together, then I’d board them.”
Tanya said, “Good idea. I’ll call you when I know more and give you an update.”
“Tanya, I’m sure you can do whatever needs to be done without my involvement. It’s late here and I’m tired.”
Bob cut off his cell phone and relaxed on the couch for a few minutes. His whole body seemed to tingle. Action, he thought. Nothing like it.
CHAPTER 26
Tanya, Frank, and Raymond watched the videos down-linked from the NRO satellites. The infrared cameras on the satellites zeroed in on the coordinates identified off the two sat phone calls made to the phone in Rome. At those coordinates, the satellites had filmed two boats twenty-one miles apart near the southeastern coast of Sicily. They had then tracked the progress the two boats made. One of the boats was near Pachino, south of the second boat.
Frank said, “You see there’s a third boat north of and moving toward the boat near Pachino?”
Conrad Demetruk, who watched the same video down-links at the NSA Operations Center, said, “Looks like a fishing boat.”
It was a beautiful, starry, moonlit night. A slight breeze blew off the water behind them and the sea was relatively calm. Transferring the cargo would be easy, Luca Galante thought.
At a few minutes after 11:30 p.m., Galante stopped the Rosalina and maintained position off the southeast coast of Sicily. The fishing boat’s running lights had been off for the last half-hour. He monitored his GPS to ensure he maintained the correct position. Satisfied he was where he was supposed to be, he looked toward shore, at the glittering lights of Pachino seven miles away, and waited.
“No smoking,” he told his crewmen.
Galante paced the boat and repeated over and over again a silent prayer to Santa Rosalia, the patron saint of Sicilian fishermen, that the first boat with which he was to rendezvous would arrive on time.
He had just checked his watch again when he heard the low rumble of high-powered engines, which grew louder by the minute. The bright blue paint on the prow of a sleek cabin cruiser soon came into view and slowly approached. Two crewmen on the yacht deployed fenders over the side to protect the topside of the luxury craft when the two boats came together. Galante’s crew had already deployed fenders on the Rosalina. The yacht glided up against the Rosalina’s port side so that the yacht’s foredeck was opposite the Rosalina’s port quarter. Galante’s three crewmen caught lines tossed to them by the men on the cruiser and secured the lines on cleats along the Rosalina’s gunwale.
One of the Rosalina’s crewmembers, Giuseppe, reached over the side and grabbed the hand of a man who stood by the cruiser’s rail.
“Captain Galante?” the man said as he landed on the Rosalina’s deck.
Galante stepped forward. “I’m Luca Galante. You’re right on time.”
The man said, “Are you ready to make the transfer?”
Galante turned and walked to the open hold. He pointed down and said, “Whenever you’re ready.”
“Let’s do it.”
“Marco, Giorgio,” Galante shouted, “hook the crane cable to one of the crates in the hold.”
Galante’s men swiveled the crane arm so that the hook on the end of a chain dangled over the hold. Then Marco and Giorgio climbed down into the hold, while Giuseppe operated the motorized winch and lowered the hook and chain.
The hook and chain landed on the fish catch.
“More slack,” Marco shouted.
The winch motor whined for thirty seconds before Marco shouted, “Okay. That’s enough.”
“Put the hook through the metal band at the top of the crate,” Galante yelled.
When the hook had been attached to the crate, Galante turned to Giuseppe and told him to reverse the winch, which slowly took up the slack in the chain, dragged the crate against the iced storage box, and then lifted it. The crate scraped against the storage box and then was lifted over it. The winch motor groaned as the crate rose. The crewmen, with the assistance of the man from the cruiser, pushed the winch arm out toward the cruiser’s starboard side. It took another five minutes to lower the crate onto the cruiser’s foredeck.
The man from the cruiser leaped from the Rosalina back onto his boat and waved at Luca Galante, while Giorgio and Marco slipped the lines that held the two boats together.
The Rosalina shuddered as the cabin cruiser’s engines revved and the luxury craft peeled away.
“Ray, has Sigonella been alerted?” Frank asked.
“Yes. The base is on alert, including the Air Force’s tactical squadrons there. They’ve got F-14s and A-6 Intruders on standby.”
“Tanya,” Demetruk said, “I’ll link in the U.S. Coast Guard Base on Isola di Lampedusa.”
“The Coast Guard? Why?”
Demetruk laughed. “Isola di Lampedusa is one of our eavesdropping and communications bases. It’s a rocky spit of land between North Africa and Sicily. It never hurts to have redundant capabilities in case the satellites go down.”
“Maybe the NSA is listening to the telephone calls of North African and Middle Eastern leaders from there,” Frank whispered to Ray.
“I heard that,” Demetruk said.
Tanya blurted a laugh when she saw Frank’s surprised look.
“Okay, Conrad,” Tanya said. “Please stay on top of the NRO. We don’t want to lose satellite coverage. We need to follow the fishing boat and the two yachts.”
TUESDAY
JUNE 24
CHAPTER 27
Laila Farhami stood on the tarmac outside an airplane hangar on Sigonella Naval Base and watched a transport plane land and taxi toward her. The aircraft turned one hundred eighty degrees and stopped fifty yards away. The loading platform at the rear of the plane lowered and eight men deplaned. They all wore black soft-soled shoes, jeans or khakis, polo shirts under light-weight zippered jackets, and baseball caps. The men appeared to be in their twenties and early thirties, except one who was older. They each carried a duffel bag.
Laila stepped forward. “General Danforth?”
“I’m General Danforth. Your credentials?”
Laila pulled a small leather folio from a jacket pocket, opened it, and held it up. The general snatched it from her hand and turned toward a beam emanating from a hangar security light. He looked at the ID card, turned back to Laila, and returned her folio.
“It’s good to meet you,
Miss Farhami. Please call me Michael. I understand you’ll brief us on our mission.”
“Yes, Gen . . . sorry, Michael. I’ve arranged for a conference room at the other end of this hangar. If you and your men are ready, we can go there now.”
The team congregated in the conference room. Some took seats around a long metal table; others stood against the walls. Laila stood at one end and briefed the team about the yacht hijacking.
One of the team members asked, “Was this an isolated incident?”
“Based upon SIGINT provided by NRO, there appear to be at least two other hijacker teams in the area. We checked with the company that provided contract crews for three yachts in the Ionian. One of their crews was assigned to deliver the Zoe Mou to Syracuse. They have been unable to contact two other crews. We suspect those boats were also hijacked and their crews killed.”
“Why do you think that?” Michael asked.
“Extrapolation. The men who hijacked the Zoe Mou had ID that identified them as the original crewmembers. They also knew the passwords the contract company uses when they check in with their crews. The only way they could have acquired that information—the names of the crew members and the pass codes—was from someone inside SVT Crews, the contract company. The company’s IT department did a forensic search of its database and discovered that one of its employees, a woman whose family was originally from Syria, had accessed the company’s personnel files and its pass code file. The woman confessed that she passed on information about all three crews.”
Lieutenant Lewis Campbell asked, “Who’d she give the information to?”
“The woman didn’t know, other than to say he spoke Arabic. Whoever it was had kidnapped her younger sister in Brussels and threatened to kill her if the woman at SVT Crews didn’t cooperate.”
Master Sergeant Burt Winfield asked, “Do we know if the three crews have communicated with one another?”
“Not that we know. But they all called a number in Rome at around the same time over the past two nights.”
“How do we know all the callers were part of a team?” Lieutenant Campbell asked.
“They all identified themselves as Saber Teams,” Laila said. “The calls were definitely made from boats in the Ionian. The NRO confirmed that. Despite the fact that the two boats’ AIS systems are not operating, we think they are the other two SVT Crews’ boats because their configurations match the missing SVT boats. One is a cabin cruiser that rendezvoused with a fishing boat off the southern coast of Sicily at around midnight last night. A crate was offloaded from the fishing boat to the cabin cruiser. The other boat is a luxury yacht on a direct course to meet that same fishing boat. What we need to do is intercept the two luxury craft and the fishing boat, find out what was offloaded from the fishing boat, and determine what these guys are up to.”
“So, there were three boats besides the fishing boat?” Master Sergeant Burt Winfield asked.
“That’s right.”
“Won’t a red flag go up if the fishing boat doesn’t rendezvous with the third yacht?”
Farhami nodded. “We’ve thought about that. The assumption is that status calls from all three yachts are expected between now and 2330 hours tonight. So far, there appear to not have been other calls made outside that 2330 window. But if the third yacht and the fishing boat don’t rendezvous, our guess is the fishing boat captain will have to notify someone. We can’t allow that to happen.”
“What’s the plan?” Michael asked.
“Your team will board the Zoe Mou and pretend to be the hijackers. You’ll take delivery of the fishing boat cargo and then capture the fishing boat crew and their craft. After we get whatever information we can from the fishermen, we’ll finalize an op plan regarding the other two boats.”
“You’re certain there are only three yachts and the fishing boat involved?” Master Sergeant Burt Winfield asked.
“As certain as we can be. There were no other calls intercepted by the NRO.”
“What do you think the fishing boat is transporting?” Lieutenant Campbell said.
Laila waggled her hands. “The only thing I can tell you is that the Zoe Mou hijackers had a metal case with them that contained detonators.”
That piece of information seemed to suck the oxygen from the room. The DELTA team members looked around at one another but remained silent.
Winfield said, “These guys are stone-cold killers.”
“Yeah, there’s little question of that, considering what they intended to do to the Zoe Mou’s passengers, and what we think happened to the original crews of the other two boats.”
“Do we have any idea where the Zoe Mou hijackers were from?” Michael asked.
“They all knew English like native speakers, but one of the men spoke Serbo-Croatian. And we know the status calls to the contact number in Rome were spoken in Arabic.”
CHAPTER 28
The Rosalina’s GPS data displayed on the chart plotter told Luca Galante he was still about fifteen minutes away from the second rendezvous location east of the town of Avola. Then he checked his AIS system, which displayed the locations, names, headings, and speeds of other boats in the immediate area around the Rosalina. There were a dozen boats showing on the AIS screen, but they were each at least five miles from the rendezvous location. He looked at his watch. He was running late. Maybe ten minutes behind schedule. He cursed as he peered over the bow and tried to spot a boat in the distance, in the direction of the meeting point. There was nothing all the way to the horizon.
Galante opened up the Rosalina’s engines to full power. Although the sea was calm, there were still enough waves to make the clunky boat bounce over the water.
“Andiamo,” he muttered, exhorting his old boat to go faster.
Fifteen minutes passed as though they were an hour. He checked the GPS again and vented a huge sigh when he confirmed he had arrived at the rendezvous point. But there was no other boat in sight. He had been instructed to wait no more than one hour beyond the rendezvous time at any of the three locations. His problem, he knew, was that if he waited until 4 a.m. for this boat to show, there was no way he would be on time to meet the third boat off the coast near Syracuse. He mumbled curses as he cut the Rosalina’s engines and paced the deck. A bad feeling came over him as he visualized the money he expected to receive and the influence that money would bring with it begin to float away.
“What’s up, Luca?” Giorgio asked.
“Shut up!” Galante shrieked. “All of you shut up and listen for the boat.”
While Galante maniacally paced the deck, his three crewmen used binoculars to try to spot the yacht. Fifteen minutes passed and Galante’s pacing became more frenetic. He mumbled Italian curses. At 3:30 a.m., Galante felt pain build in his chest and stomach.
“Aagh,” he screamed. “What did I do to deserve this bad luck?”
Then a thrumming sound seemed to vibrate right out of the water and wash over him. He lurched to the portside rail and stared. The thrumming turned to the outright roar of powerful engines, and then he saw a sleek yacht plow toward him.
Galante climbed back into the pilothouse and turned over the Rosalina’s engines. “Be ready to bring her alongside,” he shouted. “Put out the fenders. Marco, get the crane ready. We need to make this transfer as quickly as possible.”
Tanya Serkovic pointed at the picture downloaded from the satellite over the Ionian Sea. Frank, Raymond, and she had been in the Ops Center at Langley for over six hours.
“Looks like the transfer’s been made,” she said.
Tanya said, “Ray, call General Danforth and tell him to board the Zoe Mou and take it five miles out from Syracuse. We’ll follow the fishing boat and try to triangulate him onto its course.”
While Ray made the call to Michael, Tanya answered a call on her cell.
“Serkovic.”
“Tanya, it’s Bob.”
“What are you doing up? It’s the middle of the night over there.”
“I thought you said I could handle this without you.”
“You can. But that doesn’t mean I’m not interested.”
Tanya smothered a laugh. “We spotted a fishing boat that has met two luxury boats and offloaded a crate to each of them. We assume the fishing boat expects to rendezvous with the Zoe Mou next.”
“Will you let that happen?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Then what?”
“We’ll board the fishing boat after it meets the Zoe Mou. In the meantime, we’ll track the other two yachts.”
“Whose ‘we’?” Bob asked.
“What?”
“You said, ‘We’ll board the fishing boat.’ ”
“Figure of speech. We have a Lone Wolf Team on site.”
“Who’s the team commander?”
“That’s probably more information than a retired guy should know. Suffice it to say that the team is top notch, as is its commander.”
“Good luck,” Bob said.
“Thanks. I promise I’ll let you know the outcome. But first you need to do something for me. I was about to call you anyway. I need you to deliver the hijackers’ sat phone to the commander of the Lone Wolf Team. He should be on the Zoe Mou in less than an hour.”
CHAPTER 29
Bob felt energized. An operation was in the works. He badly wanted to be part of it, but he knew how unrealistic that was.
He picked up clothes and carried them into the sitting room. He dressed in a pair of black jeans, black running shoes and socks, a dark-blue polo shirt, and a black windbreaker, and then checked on Miriana and Robbie in the suite’s other bedrooms. They both appeared to be asleep. He scowled at the mess the boy had made of his room—clothing strewn about the carpet; an open suitcase on the floor beside the bed; two pillows and the bed spread thrown into one corner. He returned to the sitting room, wrote a note to Liz, and placed it on the table next to her side of their bed. Then he picked up the hijackers’ sat phone, stuck it in a jacket pocket, and took an elevator down to the lobby, which was as quiet as a graveyard. One sleepy-looking clerk stood behind the front desk.