“She was just trying to be pleasant,” Vasquez said on the way down to the engine room.
Graham stopped and fixed his first officer with a hard look. “I’m not master of this vessel to be made pleasant with. I’m here to see that the product we have loaded transits the Panama Canal and makes a smart run to Long Beach, takes on ballast, and returns. So long as you and the rest of my officers and crew understand these simple facts, we will get along fine.” Graham stepped closer. “I’m not your friend, Mr. Vasquez. Nor do I wish to be. I’ll be pleased if you pass the word.”
“As you wish, Mr. Slavin.”
In the fifteen minutes before the Apurto Devlán was to slip her lines, Graham had returned to his quarters to quickly scan the personnel folders of his four officers, beginning with Vasquez. Standing now on the bridge, the ship’s engines spooled up, line handlers aboard and on the loading dock ready, an AB at the helm, his second officer ready to radio the exact time of their departure to Harbor Control in Maracaibo, and his first officer standing by for orders, Graham hesitated.
Conning a 280-foot submarine away from a dock was different than directing a fully loaded Panamax tanker away from her loading facility in the middle of a lake. Completely different.
His officers were looking at him.
“I understand that this is Mr. Vasquez’s last trip as first officer aboard a GAC vessel,” Graham said.
A cautious flash of pleasure crossed the first officer’s face, but then was gone. Like everyone else aboard he wasn’t sure about the new master.
“He’ll be given command of his own ship.”
“Yes, sir.”
Graham handed him the walkie-talkie used to communicate with the line handlers. “Take us out to sea, Mr. Vasquez. I want to see how you do.”
FIVE
CIA HEADQUARTERS
“They shot the men they came to rescue, and then blew themselves up,” Gloria Ibenez told Otto Rencke. They were on their way up to the DCI’s office on the seventh floor and Gloria was walking with a cane. The wound in her hip throbbed, but it wasn’t impossible.
Rencke held the elevator door for her. “I’m surprised they didn’t wait for the chopper to drop in on them. Could’ve bagged some of our guys.”
“I don’t think they were on a suicide mission. They just didn’t want to get recaptured.”
Just off the elevator they were subjected to a body scan with electronic wands, something that everyone visiting the DCI had to go through. Sometimes it felt like all of Washington had been on lockdown since 9/11 with no real end in sight. It was a couple minutes after 10:00 A.M., and the director had just finished his morning briefing via video link with Donald Hamel, the director of National Intelligence, and the heads of the other fifteen intelligence services. He had a few minutes for them, and in fact had specifically asked Rencke to bring her up when she got back from Guantanamo Bay. The incident at Gitmo was gaining momentum in the world press, and the White House was already beginning to feel the heat.
Down the plushly carpeted corridor, they entered the DCI’s office through glass doors etched with the CIA’s shield and eagle. The director’s secretary, Dhalia Swanson, a stern and proper white-haired older woman, looked up and smiled warmly. She’d been secretary to four DCIs now, and was practically a permanent fixture in the Company.
“My poor dear, how are we doing this morning?”
“It’s not bad, Ms. Swanson,” Gloria said, unable to stop from smiling, even though she couldn’t get Talarico’s death image out of her head. “Really.”
“Were you able to speak with Toni this morning?”
Gloria closed her eyes for a moment and nodded. “Yes.” It had been all the more horrible because Talarico’s widow had not blamed her for Bob’s death. Her husband had made her understand from day one that such a thing was ultimately possible.
Ms. Swanson picked up the phone. “Mr. Rencke and Ms. Ibenez are here.” She looked up. “Yes, sir.” She hung up and motioned them in.
The director of Central Intelligence, Dick Adkins, was sitting at his large desk in front of bulletproof floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the Annex building, beyond which were the lush green rolling Virginia hills that ran down to the Potomac a mile to the east. He was a slightly built man with thinning sandy hair, and a slight stoop from back problems. He’d been deputy director of the CIA under Roland Murphy and then Kirk McGarvey after a twenty-year career during which he had steadily risen through the ranks. When McGarvey had resigned last year, Adkins had taken over as acting DCI until his overwhelming confirmation in the Senate. His was a steady, if unimaginative, hand on the helm; a nearly perfect fit as a subordinate to Don Hamel.
Across from him were the Company’s General Counsel Carleton Patterson, and Rencke’s boss, Deputy Director of Operations Howard McCann. Patterson had been a lawyer with a prestigious New York law firm before coming to work, temporarily, for the CIA. That had been ten years ago, but he still dressed for work every day in British-tailored three-piece suits, with an old-world manner to match, and talked about returning to New York. McCann, on the other hand, looked and acted like a factory worker. Before McGarvey had resigned he’d suggested that the old DDO, David Whittaker, be bumped upstairs as deputy director of Central Intelligence, working directly for Adkins, and that McCann, a former standout field officer, director of the Eastern European Desk, and chief clandestine operations adviser to the Company training facility near Williamsburg, be appointed to run operations.
Adkins got to his feet when Gloria and Rencke walked in. “Here they are,” he said. “How are you feeling, Ms. Ibenez?”
“Sore, but I’ll live,” Gloria said. She and the director shook hands.
“I don’t know if you’ve met our general counsel, Carleton Patterson.”
“No, sir,” Gloria said.
Patterson got to his feet and they shook hands. “My condolences on your partner’s death,” he said. “But you’ve created quite a firestorm.”
Gloria tried to gauge the mood of the others, especially Adkins, but no one seemed to be gunning for her. With any luck she might not be the main course for lunch, after all, something she’d worried about on the flight up from Gitmo yesterday afternoon. She’d disobeyed a direct order not to go under the fence, she had violated Cuban territory, thus putting herself at high risk for capture and interrogation, and she had caused the death of her partner. She’d thought that a firing squad might not be too extreme a punishment.
“Yes, sir, I guess I have,” she said. “But I wasn’t going to let them get away. It was just too much of a coincidence to my way of thinking.”
Adkins exchanged a look with the others. “That’s the whole point,” he said. He motioned for Gloria and Otto to have a seat. “Coffee?”
“No, sir,” Gloria said, and Rencke shook his head.
“Bob’s funeral will be sometime next week, we’ll let you know,” Adkins said. He shook his head. “It’s a bad business.”
Gloria lowered her eyes. She would not cry. Not here. Not now. “Yes, sir.”
“Have you seen the Post this morning?” Patterson asked.
“They’re calling it a massacre,” Gloria said. “It’s the same on TV. We’re not giving any answers, so the media are having a field day. It’s going to get as bad as Abu Ghraib. Maybe even worse.”
“That’s because we can’t give them anything,” Adkins said. “You were right all along, it wasn’t a coincidence.” He turned to Rencke. “Have you briefed her?”
“I was in the middle of a couple of search programs when she came in, and I wanted to see where they’d take me,” Rencke said. He had folded his legs under himself on the chair and sat on his heels, fidgeting like a kid in church. “It’s gone pink, ya know, and it’s gonna get worse.”
Rencke had devised a mathematical system, using tensor calculus to work out the highly complex relationships in any given set of circumstances—between hundreds, even thousands of people spread around the globe; between governm
ents and intelligence organizations; law enforcement and military agencies; the weather; sea conditions; satellite and electronic intel; the historical record—to come to some predictions about what might be coming our way. He’d been able to reduce the mathematics to colors: Tan was safe, while lavender meant something very bad was looming on the horizon. Pink was a heads-up that something was going on that needed attention before it got out of hand.
Everyone who knew Rencke had a healthy respect for his abilities. He was a genius, and without him the CIA would practically cease to function as a viable intelligence agency. Under McGarvey’s quiet suggestion to Adkins last year, the Company was currently on an all-out manhunt for Rencke’s understudy, against the day he’d step down or have to be replaced.
“What have you come up with?” McCann asked. He was fairly new to the DDO’s desk, and he still hadn’t made his peace with Rencke. He didn’t understand the man.
“Well, first off, they knew the Frontier Brigade’s patrol schedule and they knew when the probe would start, which means they had Cuban help. And then they went to the weakest point in the perimeter at just the right time.” Rencke’s head bobbed back and forth as if it were on springs, his features animated.
“Do you think they had help from inside?” Gloria asked.
Rencke shrugged. “It’s starting to look that way, especially with what I came up with this morning just before you got here.”
“Whose system did you hack this time?” McCann asked, but Adkins held him off.
“You have our attention, Otto,” the DCI prompted.
“The five guys they sprung had been transferred from the main prison population in Delta to minimum security outside the fence at Echo that morning,” Rencke said.
“Whoever signed the order is our man,” McCann said.
“It ain’t that easy, kimo sabe.” Rencke shook his head. “Those guys weren’t al-Quaida, at least they weren’t directly fighting our troops in Afghanistan. They were Iranians that a Marine patrol ran into just across the border a few klicks inside Afghanistan. Way south, near the Pakistani border. They said they were lost.”
“It’s no secret that the Iranians sent people to help the Taliban,” McCann said.
“Navy officers?” Rencke asked. “Four hundred miles from the Gulf of Oman?”
All of a sudden it was beginning to make sense to Gloria. The Cuban help, the Gitmo contact, the transfer of prisoners. Even what they’d been doing inside Afghanistan, but very near to Pakistan.
“What the hell were they doing there?” McCann demanded.
Gloria interrupted. “Which way were they headed?”
“Northwest,” Rencke said.
“I’ll tell you what they were doing there,” Gloria told them. “Trying to get back to Iran after meeting with bin Laden.”
McCann and the others had skeptical looks on their faces, but Rencke was beaming, practically bouncing off the chair.
“Continue,” Adkins said.
“Either bin Laden called them across to parley, or the Iranians offered, but it was just plain bad luck on their part that they were caught,” Gloria said. “They were so important that al-Quaida was willing to risk its assets in Gitmo to get them out. But if something went wrong they had to be killed.”
It dawned on everyone else what she and Rencke were getting at.
“Are you trying to say that the bastards want to hit us by sea?” McCann asked.
“It’s something we gotta think about,” Rencke replied. “They could hijack a container ship after it’s cleared its outbound port.”
“That’s not out of the realm of possibility,” Adkins said. “It’s happened before.” He looked at the others. “We all remember the incident under the Golden Gate Bridge two years before 9/11.”
Al-Quaida had smuggled a small Russian-built nuclear demolitions device aboard a cargo ship bound for San Francisco. It had been set to explode while the presidential motorcade was crossing the bridge ahead of more than one thousand Special Olympians participating in a half-marathon.
“If it hadn’t have been for Mac, the president and a whole lot of people would have lost their lives.”
“There’s a lot tighter port security just about everywhere these days,” McCann said.
Rencke shrugged. “Okay, so maybe they could rendezvous with a private yacht somewhere offshore and load just about anything imaginable. From there they’d be virtually unstoppable.”
“We know the shipping lanes, we could watch them by satellite,” McCann argued.
“We know the shipping lanes, but they know our technical means schedules,” Rencke countered. “We can’t watch every piece of ocean 24/7. It just ain’t possible.”
Gloria’s gut was twisted into a knot. She’d been stationed at the UN, and was at her desk in the American Delegation’s headquarters across the street when the first airliner struck the World Trade Center. She’d been within a block of ground zero, helping with rescue operations when the first tower had collapsed. The following days and weeks had been made more surreal by the fact that she and a lot of other people had known that something big was on the wind.
They’d been so damned helpless. There was so much data coming in that it was impossible to process and evaluate even a small percentage of it in a timely manner. And in those days there hadn’t been nearly enough communication between the CIA and most of the other intel agencies.
“They could sail into New York Harbor and let it blow,” Rencke said. “A weekday, rush hour. They would kill a whole bunch more than twenty-seven hundred people, not to mention how badly another strike on Manhattan would demoralize the entire country.”
“How about something to cheer us up,” Patterson said to fill the heavy silence.
“Finding bin Laden is still the key,” Gloria said. “There’re still the three al-Quaida mujahideen hiding somewhere in Delta who might know where he’s hiding.”
“That, and finding a crew,” Rencke said. “Especially a freelance captain willing to work for al-Quaida. Those kinds of guys gotta be in short supply.”
“Have you come up with any names?” McCann asked.
“I’m working on it,” Rencke said. “But you know that Gloria is right, we have to find bin Laden this time and nail him. No shit, Sherlock. It’s gotta be done.”
“We’re working the problem,” McCann said. “We’ll go back to Guantanamo Bay as soon as the dust settles—”
“Now,” Rencke said. “And we’re going to need some outside help.”
“Do you think he’ll go for it?” Adkins asked. “And does anybody even know where he is?”
“I know,” Rencke said. “And all we can do is put it to him. He’s never said no before.”
“Will you go?” Adkins asked.
Rencke nodded. “I’ll leave this afternoon.”
“Who?” Gloria asked.
Rencke smiled at her. “Mac,” he said. “Kirk McGarvey.”
SIX
APURTO DEVLÁN, LOS MONJES ISLANDS
On the bridge a course-change alarm sounded on the main navigation systems coordinator. It was 0818 Greenwich mean time, 0318 local, under mostly cloudy skies, with an eighteen-knot breeze off the starboard beam, and confused two-meter seas.
“We’re coming on our mark, sir,” the AB at the electronic helm station called out softly.
Vasquez, who’d gone off duty at ten, had come back up to the bridge, not because he mistrusted their second officer, Bill Sozansky, but because this was the critical course change to clear Punta Gallinas, the northernmost tip of South America, and take them safely out into the open Caribbean for the run southwest to the canal.
He set his coffee down, and walked over to the starboard combined radar-course plotter display. The AB who had been looking at the radar returns stepped aside. Their current position was plotted on an electronic chart that was overlaid with a real-time image of what their radar was picking up.
“Have I missed anything?” Sozansky asked.
Sozansky chuckled. “I don’t think he likes any of us.”
Two large ships, probably tankers, were more than ten miles behind them and slightly to starboard, and one other was twenty-five miles ahead and already turning northeast out to sea, just passing the tiny Los Monjes island group.
The South American headland, fifteen miles to the west, appeared as a low green line that sloped from southeast to northwest across the radar screen.
Vasquez got a pair of binoculars from a rack and went out on the port-wing lookout. South America’s final outpost, the tiny town of Puerto Estrella, only a small dim glow on the indistinct horizon, was falling aft, leaving nothing but darkness ahead.
The evening was warm, nevertheless Vasquez shivered. His abuela would say that someone had just walked over his grave. He had a lot of respect for his grandmother, who had raised him from birth, and thinking about her now, dead for eight years, sent a chill of darkness into his heart. But he didn’t know why.
Back inside the bridge that was dimly lit in red to save their night vision, Vasquez checked both combined radars, but nothing was amiss. They were exactly where they were supposed to be, there were no hazards to navigation ahead, no other shipping on intercept courses, and yet he felt uneasy.
“What is it, Jaime?” Sozansky asked. “You’re getting on my nerves. Something wrong?”
Vasquez looked up, and slowly shook his head. “Not that I can see.” He’d been born in the slums of San Juan, Puerto Rico. His mother had died giving birth to him and he’d never known his father. If it hadn’t been for the strong hand of his grandmother, he would have turned out to be just another street kid. But she had made him finish school, and she had made him join the U.S. Merchant Marine, where after two years as an ordinary seaman he was offered a berth at the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York, because he was bright and dedicated, and the service needed men of his caliber.
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