by Robert Gandt
“Goddammit!” Parsons yelled. “Who are you?”
The marine patted the officer down. “He’s clean.”
“What’s this all about?” Parsons’s voice was outraged.
“Cuff him,” said Korchek. “Hands behind the back.”
While the two marines put the plastic handcuffs on Parsons, Korchek pulled on a pair of latex gloves and began searching the stateroom. He went through each drawer, dumping the contents onto the deck. He found nothing.
Next he went through the locker, yanking clothes off the rack, going through the pockets of every garment.
“What are you doing?” Parsons demanded, wriggling against the firm grip of the two marines. “What the hell are you looking for?”
“Shut up,” said Korchek.
He continued ransacking the officer’s room. He lifted the mattress, looked under it, then yanked off the sheets and bedding. He pulled out the drawers beneath the bunk bed and hauled out the folded clothing, throwing it all onto the deck.
Nothing.
Korchek looked around. His gaze came to rest on the safe that was mounted on the steel desk. He turned to Parsons, who was staring at him myopically. “What’s the safe combo?”
Parsons glowered back at him. “Go fuck yourself.”
“Okay, smartass, have it your way. Watch how a professional does it.” Korchek pulled up the steel work chair and sat in front of the safe. From his satchel he produced a stethoscope.
Parsons stared in dismay as Korchek went to work. Even the marines seemed awestruck. After he inserted the earpieces, Korchek held the rubber listening cup against the dial of the safe. His brow furrowed in concentration, he carefully rotated the dial, listening for the tumblers to click into place.
He nodded, hearing a faint click. He reversed direction with the dial.
Another click. Back the other way.
It took less than two minutes. “Kid stuff.” He yanked off the stethoscope. “No challenge at all.”
He twisted the handle of the safe and the foot-square door swung open. Korchek reached into the safe and came out with a manila envelope. He set it aside, then reached in again. This time he came out with a vinyl case.
Parsons stared. “What the hell is that?”
A knowing smile spread over Korchek’s moonscaped face. He unsnapped the vinyl case and pulled out the device. He turned it over in his hand, studying the keys, the liquid crystal display, the retractable antenna.
The Marine sergeant peered at the device. “What is that thing?”
“Evidence,” said Korchek. “Enough to send some asshole to prison for the rest of his life.”
<>
“So we’ve got our man,” said Morse.
Korchek’s feet were propped up on the table in the conference compartment. He had a toothpick in his mouth. “Not unless he confesses.”
“What do you mean? We have enough to send Parsons to Leavenworth for a hundred years.”
“There’s still a thing called ‘due process,’” said Korchek. “The case against him so far is circumstantial.”
“We caught him sending an encrypted classified message. We found the SatPhone in his safe. What’s circumstantial about that?”
“All we know is that the message was on his computer. We don’t know how it got there, or whether he sent it. As for the SatPhone, that’s incriminating, but no one has actually proved that he owns the thing or that he used it for any purpose.”
“Look, Mr. Korchek, you sound more like a lawyer than an investigator.”
“I am a lawyer, pal. Don’t presume to tell me how to do my job.”
At this, Morse’s eyes widened and his chin tilted upward.
Korchek recognized the look. It was the same look the military intelligence twits always wore when they just lost a round with him.
Korchek was enjoying himself. Being a civilian, he made it a point not to take shit from officers, especially officers like this asshole Morse. Korchek was a Chicago cop before going to law school and being recruited by the FBI. He seized on the cryptology job when it came along because he loved messing with computers, and, besides, it got him out of the grunt work regular agents had to do.
Korchek said, “It isn’t an airtight case. Maybe Parsons is your guy, maybe not.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind,” said Morse. “Parsons fits all the profiles.”
“What do you mean by that?” said Admiral Fletcher, watching the exchange from the end of the conference table.
Morse tossed a thick manila file folder onto the table. “This is Parsons’s background file. Top of his NROTC class at Michigan. Ditto at the Navy postgrad school in Monterey. BS in electrical engineering, master’s in industrial management. Served two previous shipboard tours as comm officer—one aboard the South Carolina, then a WestPac cruise on the Lincoln. Here’s an interesting part: He put in a long tour—four and a half years—at NATO Forces South Command in Naples as a liaison officer. Had top secret clearance and, according to this report, had contacts with foreign military counterparts all over southern Europe.”
“Is that when you think he was compromised?” Fletcher asked .
“Nothing turned up in any of the security checks they ran on him—except one glaring susceptibility. He’s subject to blackmail.”
“Because of. . . ?”
“His sexual orientation.”
Fletcher nodded. “He’s gay, you mean?”
“It came to light back when he was at post grad school. Seems he’s always had a companion. Several, actually.”
Fletcher shook his head. “How did he get a top secret clearance? I thought homosexuals were considered a security risk.”
“Not in the new military. There was a legal challenge to that one back in the last administration, and the Defense Department backed off. You can’t yank someone’s clearance for that specific reason.”
Fletcher looked at Morse, then Korchek. “That makes a pretty good case that Commander Parsons is our spy.”
“I’m certain of it.” said Morse.
Korchek lowered his feet to the floor. He spat his toothpick on the deck and left the room.
<>
“Babcock?” said Boyce.
He sat at the small conference table in the air wing office, gnawing on a cigar. Claire had finished telling her story. “You mean that’s what this circus in Yemen is all about? Whitney Babcock and Yemen’s oil?”
“That was Vince Maloney’s take on it. The same oil reservoir that Saudi Arabia is tapping apparently extends somewhere past Yemen’s border, wherever that is. He said that no one has ever officially determined the border.”
“But you’re saying that someone will? Like Al-Fasr, if he takes over the country?”
“Not if. When. It’s supposed to happen very soon.”
“And it’s supposed to happen with the collusion of—” He left the sentence unfinished.
She nodded.
He removed the cigar and stared at the bulkhead for a moment. “I’m not saying that I believe it—not yet—but if it’s true, it means our battle group is being used not to fight a terrorist, but to accommodate the sonofabitch.”
“Worse than that,” said Maxwell. “It means we’re letting him keep our marines in Yemen just so he can have a bargaining chip.”
Boyce thought for a second. “Claire, we have to get this guy Maloney out here and report this to—”
“Too late.”
“He won’t talk?”
“He was killed by a car bomb.” As Boyce listened in amazement, she told him about the Toyota and the killers in the street.
“Holy shit.” He shook his head. “You nearly went with him.”
She nodded.
“You know, Claire, without your guy to give us testimony, all we have is conjecture, nothing more.”
Maxwell spoke up for the first time. “We can pass it to Admiral Fletcher.”
Boyce snorted. “You mean Babcock’s lap dog.”
“Ma
ybe he doesn’t know the real story about what Babcock.”
“There’s no limit to what Fletcher doesn’t know.”
“He’s still a naval officer. He’s the guy who’s supposed to be our boss.”
“He’s supposed to be a lot of things that he’s not.” Boyce couldn’t contain the disgust in his voice. “Just what do you think Fletcher’s going to do?”
Maxwell shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible that the man has a tiny speck of integrity left in him.”
“I doubt it. But what the hell, I’ve been wrong about everything else in this operation.” He picked up the phone on the yeoman’s desk. He punched a number, listened for a moment, then said, “This is Captain Boyce. I need to speak with Admiral Fletcher.”
<>
Manilov hated moving at this slow speed. Even though they were ninety meters deep, the Mourmetz was swaying like an unsteady barge.
He stood behind the two technicians—Borodin, the sonar operator and Keretzky, the combat information computer specialist. By the heavy acoustic mass in the sonarman’s screen, Manilov knew he was seeing the passive return of the aircraft carrier. Cruising between the Mourmetz and the Reagan were two escort vessels. Frigates or destroyers? He couldn’t tell. Beyond the carrier he saw the shape of another heavy ship. A supply ship? A cruiser?
Again Manilov wished that he had a full arsenal. With wake homing torpedoes or, even better, the new video-guided weapons, he could steer the warhead around the interfering ships, select his target, punch the hull of the big carrier at any place or depth he chose.
Not today. Not with his complement of torpedoes. But even though the SET-16s were old, they possessed the same advantage as the aging submarine—stealth. For the first portion of their journey, the SET-16 emitted no signal, gave no clue to its presence. Even its low-noise propulsion system was difficult to detect, especially at its initial running dept of a hundred meters. Not until the torpedo was within a thousand meters of the target would Manilov activate its active sonar homing system.
He had another reason to like the SET-16. He had fired dozens of them in training, and by now he understood each foible of the torpedo. As with every primitive weapon, the trick was to get close. Very close.
They were eight kilometers from the Reagan. Close enough for a shot. He didn’t want to rush and miss. A torpedo meandering through the midst of a battle group only meant quick and certain death for the submarine.
All these years he had waited. Another twenty minutes didn’t matter. The Reagan was coming to them.
No one in the submarine’s control room was speaking. Borodin and Keretzky were hunched intently over their consoles, filtering and refining their data. Popov, the former dissident and newly-promoted executive officer, was supervising the planesman, monitoring the boat’s progress.
Manilov felt a surge of pride. It was just as he had always imagined actual undersea warfare. They were creeping into the heart of the enemy’s fleet. The danger was more real and immediate than any submariner had faced since World War II.
The doubts of yesterday had evaporated, as if the dead Ilychin had taken the crew’s fears with him. The men were ready for whatever happened. True Russians. They had assigned their lives and fortunes to fate.
The minutes ticked by. Everything depended on the Reagan’s adhering to the original point of intended movement, which they had received, via Al-Fasr, over twelve hours ago. Since then the Mourmetz had been unable to extend its antenna to receive or transmit any new information.
Manilov was concerned. What if the weather had caused a change? What if a new operating plan had been ordered? What if—
Remain focused, he ordered himself. No more what ifs.
He could see by the MVU-110 display that the largest acoustic mass—it had to be the Reagan—was still coming toward them. It meant that the ship’s point of intended movement had not changed, at least not yet.
Ten minutes.
He had delayed the last and most critical decision of the mission. He could fire torpedoes from this depth, ninety meters down, aiming on the Reagan’s passive sonar return and using the MVU-110 to calculate the firing solution. At a close enough range, the kill probability was acceptable.
Or he could be more certain. He could ascend to periscope depth, obtain a positive visual bearing and range on his target—and raise the kill probability by several percent.
He would also raise to a hundred percent the chances that they would be located.
Manilov turned away from the console for a moment and massaged his temples with his fingertips. He didn’t need to calculate the odds again. During the first few minutes after the sub hunters obtained a track on his periscope, their initial search area would be tiny. But if they were denied a precise starting point, the area to be searched swelled exponentially. With each passing minute, the submarine’s radius of movement expanded.
Safety or certainty? It was the submariner’s dilemma.
Manilov’s dream of destiny was thundering in his Russian soul like an ancient refrain. How long had he waited for this moment? Had he come this close so that he could take the safe course? Miss the target, then run like a fox fleeing from hounds?
Five minutes. The Reagan’s course was unchanged. The acoustic mass was still coming toward them.
“Ascend to thirty meters,” he ordered in a quiet voice.
Every pair of eyes in the control room swung toward him.
“Ascend?” asked Popov.
“You heard correctly,” said Manilov. “Thirty meters. When we’re stabilized in firing range, we rise to periscope depth.”
Popov was staring at him. So were Borodin and Keretzky. They understood the decision he had just made. Manilov looked at each of them, a gentle smile on his face. They could refuse to follow his orders and there was nothing he could do about it. After this moment, nothing else mattered.
Seconds ticked past. A silence as heavy as the grave hung over the control room.
“Aye, Captain,” answered Popov, breaking the spell. “Ascend to thirty meters.”
Chapter Eighteen
Target Reagan
Gulf of Aden
0920, Thursday, 20 June
“Range?”
“Six thousand meters, Captain. No change.”
Manilov peered at the console and nodded. The waiting was over. It was as close as the Reagan would come on its present course, passing them broadside, then opening the distance again as it cruised to the southwest.
“Ready tubes one, two, three, four.”
“Tubes one, two, three, four loaded and ready.”
Theoretically, two torpedoes were enough. If he could get two into the hull of the Reagan, he had a chance to sink her. He would fire a salvo of four, fanning them to account for any evasive maneuvering the giant ship might attempt. The remaining two tubes—the Mourmetz had six available—he would save for defense while the fast loader replenished the first four tubes.
The Mourmetz’s survival depended on the magnitude of surprise. If they detected his periscope on their radar—and he was certain they would—he might fend off incoming destroyers with his remaining torpedoes. Anti-ship missiles would be better. Those were left behind in Vladivostok.
Without doubt, aircraft would come after them too. For that he had a solution. “Igla batteries on stand by,” he ordered.
“Aye, sir. Already done.”
The SA-N-10 Igla was a short-range, heat-seeking anti-aircraft missile that could be launched from beneath the surface. With only three of the missiles on the Mourmetz, Manilov knew he couldn’t wage a sea-air battle with the sub-hunting aircraft. But the enemy wouldn’t know how few he had. When they saw one of the vicious little killer missiles bursting from the sea, it might hold the helicopters and S-3 Vikings at bay long enough for the Mourmetz to break out of the search envelope.
Manilov felt the eyes of his crewmen on him. He saw no rancor, no hostility, just determination and faith. For this tiny speck in time, the li
ves of Yevgeny Manilov and his fellow submariners were intertwined.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’d like you to know it has been a privilege to serve with you. Remember that we are Russians. We will fight with honor.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” said the executive officer. Each man in the control room nodded in agreement.
“Ascend to periscope depth.”
<>
Petty Officer Third Class Wanda Rainey, the nineteen-year-old radar operator in the Arkansas’s Combat Information Center, was the first to see it. Fresh from the Navy’s “A” school, she had arrived on the Aegis cruiser two months ago.
“Contact, bearing 290, range seven thousand yards,” Rainey called out.
The watch supervisor, Lieutenant Commander Walt Finney, walked over and stood behind her. “Track?”
“Track 2672,” she said, reading the number that appeared on her screen.
“Link it to flag ops on the Reagan,” said Finney.
“I was just about to—Whoops.” She peered intently at the console. “It’s gone.”
Finney leaned closer, also peering into the display. “Damn!”
“Just like the one the other day. Four sweeps, then nothing. No course, no speed.”
Finney shook his head. “Here we go again. We spend the rest of the day chasing another damn ghost—a whale or some piece of floating junk.”
“Do you still want me link it over to flag ops?”
“Wait a sec.” He continued to watch the screen, just in case the contact reappeared. Like most Anti-submarine Warfare Officers, he knew you could get yourself branded as a hipshot if you were too quick to jump on spurious targets, sending ships and airplanes running off after shadows. With experience and a cool head, you evaluated these things. You made a judgment call before you called in the hounds.
Half a minute later, he was still evaluating when the sonar operator called out, “Sonar contact, screws in the water, bearing 310, range—” The operator’s voice went up an octave. “Oh, man! It’s a. . . it’s a torpedo! Range five thousand yards. No. . . make that two torpedoes!”
As he called out the contacts, his voice rising in pitch, he punched a mushroom-shaped button that sent an alert to the combat information rooms of every vessel in the battle group.
