by Tom Clancy
“Another couple of days would have been nice,” Ben Goodley thought aloud.
“How ready are our people?” Ryan turned to the J-3.
“The 10th’s ready to rock. The 11th needs at least a day. The other brigade doesn’t even have its equipment yet,” Jackson replied.
“How long before contact?” the President asked next.
“At least twelve hours, maybe eighteen. Depends on where they’re going, exactly.”
Jack nodded. “Arnie, has Callie been briefed in on all this?”
“No, not at all.”
“Then let’s get that done. I have a speech to make.”
ALAHAD MUST HAVE gotten bored running a business with no customers, Loomis thought. He left early, walked to where his car was parked, and drove off. Tailing him on such empty streets would probably be fairly easy. A few minutes later, the subject was observed to park his car and enter his apartment building. Then she and Selig walked out of the unit they’d been in, crossed the street, and walked around the back. There were two locks on the door, which caused the junior agent to take ten minutes to defeat them, much to his own annoyance. Then came the alarm system, but that was more easily accomplished. It was an old one with a socket key and a very simple disarming code. Inside they found a few more photos, one, probably, of his son. They checked the Rolodex first, and there was the card for J. Sloan, with the number 536-4040, but no address.
“Tell me what you think,” Loomis said.
“I think it’s a new card, not dog-eared or anything like that, and I think there’s a dot over the first numeral four. Tells him which number to change, Sis.”
“This guy’s a player, Donny.”
“I think you’re right, and that makes Aref Raman one, too.”
But how to prove it?
THE COVER MIGHT or might not have been blown. There was no knowing. Kemper assessed the situation as best he could. Maybe the missile boat had gotten off a broadcast and received permission to fire ... Maybe the young commander had decided to shoot on his own ... probably not. Dictatorial countries didn’t give much autonomy to their military commanders. If you were the dictator and you started doing that, it was a sure way to find your back to a wall sooner or later. The score to this point was USN 1 and UIR 0. Both groups were continuing, going southwest now into a widening gulf, still doing twenty-six knots, still surrounded by merchant traffic, and the electronic environment was alive with ship-to-ship chatter wondering what the hell had just happened north of Abu Musa.
Omani patrol boats were out now, and they were talking back and forth with somebody, perhaps the UIR, asking what was going on.
In confusion, Kemper decided, there was profit. It was dark out, and identifying ships in darkness was never an easy business.
“When’s nautical twilight?”
“Five hours, sir,” the quartermaster of the watch replied.
“That’s a hundred fifty miles to the good. We continue as before. Let them sort things out if they can.” Getting as far as Bahrain without detection would be miracle enough.
THEY LAID IT all out on Inspector O’Day’s desk. “It all” amounted to three pages of notes and a couple of Polaroid photographs. The most important-looking tidbit was a printout of the phone records, duplicating Selig’s scribbling. That was also the only legal piece of evidence they had.
“Not exactly the thickest pile of proof I’ve ever seen,” Pat noted.
“Hey, Pat, you said to move fast,” Loomis reminded him. “They’re both dirty. I can’t prove it to a jury, but that’s enough to start a major investigation, assuming we have the luxury of time, which I don’t think we do.”
“Correct. Come on,” he said, rising. “We have to see the Director.”
It wasn’t as though Murray weren’t busy enough. The FBI wasn’t exactly running the epidemiological investigation of all the Ebola cases, but the Bureau’s agents were doing a lot of legwork. There was the ongoing, and practically new, case on the attack on Giant Steps, which was both criminal and FCI—and an inter-agency case to boot. And now this, the third “put everything else aside” situation in less than ten days. The inspector waved his way past the secretaries and walked into the Director’s office without a knock.
“It’s a good thing I wasn’t taking a leak,” Murray observed.
“I didn’t think you’d have time for that. I don’t,” Pat told him. “There’s probably a mole in the Service after all, Dan.”
“Oh?”
“Oh, yeah, and oh, shit. I’ll let Loomis and Selig walk you through it.”
“Can I take this to Andrea Price without getting shot?” the Director asked.
“I think so.”
58
THE LIGHT OF DAY
IT WASN’T SONETHING TO celebrate, but for the second day in a row, new Ebola cases had dropped. Of the new cases identified, moreover, about a third were people who tested positive for the antibodies but were asymptomatic. CDC and USAMRIID rechecked the data twice before reporting it to the White House, also cautioning that it was too preliminary to be released to the public. The travel ban, it seemed, and the spinoff effects it was having on interpersonal contacts, was working—but the President couldn’t say it was working, because then it would stop working.
The Giant Steps case was also ongoing, mainly a task of the FBI laboratory division. There, electronic microscopes were being used for something other than the identification of Ebola strands, and were narrowing in on pollen and other tiny particles. This was complicated by the fact that the Giant Steps attack had been made in the spring, when the air was full of pollens.
Mordecai Azir, it was now firmly established, was a quintessential unperson who had sprung into existence seemingly for a single purpose and, fulfilling it, had disappeared. But he had left behind photographs, and there were ways of dealing with that, Ryan learned. He wondered if there might be some good news to end the day. There wouldn’t be.
“Hi, Dan.” He was back in his office. The Situation Room was just one more reminder that his next major order was to send people into combat.
“Mr. President,” the FBI Director said, entering with Inspector O’Day and Andrea Price.
“Why do you look so happy?”
And then they told him.
IT WAS A BRAVE man who awoke the Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei before dawn, and since those around him feared his wrath, it took two hours for them to summon the courage to do so. Not that it would help matters. At four in the morning in Tehran, the phone by the side of his bed rang. Ten minutes after that, he was in the sitting room of his private apartment, his dark, sunken eyes waiting to punish those responsible.
“We have a report that American ships have entered the Gulf,” the intelligence chief told him.
“When and where?” the Ayatollah asked quietly.
“It was after midnight at the narrows. One of our missile-patrol boats spotted what it reported to be an American destroyer. It was ordered in to attack by the local naval commander, but we’ve heard nothing more from the boat.”
“That is all?” You awakened me for this?
“There was some radio traffic in the area, ships talking back and forth. They talked about several explosions. We have reason to believe that our missile boat was attacked and destroyed by someone, probably an aircraft—but an aircraft from where?”
“We want your permission to commence air operations to sweep the Gulf after dawn. We have never done this without your word,” the air force chief pointed out.
“Permission is given,” Daryaei told them. Well, he was awake now, the cleric told himself. “What else?”
“The Army of God is making its approach march to the border area. The operation is proceeding as scheduled.” Surely this news would please him, the intelligence chief thought.
Mahmoud Haji nodded. He’d hoped for a decent night’s sleep, in anticipation of being up long hours for the next few days, but it was his nature that, once awakened, he could not retu
rn to sleep. He looked at his desk clock—he didn’t wear a watch—and decided that the day would have to begin.
“Will we surprise them?”
“Somewhat, certainly,” Intelligence responded. “The army is under strict orders to maintain radio silence. The American listening posts are very sensitive, but they cannot hear nothing. When they reach Al Busayyah, we must expect detection, but then we will be ready to jump off, and it will be at night.”
Daryaei shook his head. “Wait, what did our patrol boat tell us?”
“He reported an American destroyer or frigate, possibly with other ships, but that was all. We will have aircraft up to look in two hours.”
“Their transport ships?”
“We don’t know,” Intelligence admitted. He’d hoped that they were past that.
“Find out!”
The two men took their leave with that order. Daryaei rang his servant for tea. He had another thought just then. All would be settled, or at least solved, when the Raman boy fulfilled his mission. The report was that he was in place, and had received his order. Why, then, hadn’t he fulfilled it! the Ayatollah asked himself, with a building anger. He looked at the clock again. It was too early to make a call.
KEMPER HAD GIVEN his crew something akin to a stand-down. The automation of the Aegis ships made that possible, and so, starting two hours after the incident with the gunboat—missile boat, he corrected himself—crewmen were allowed to rotate off their battle stations, to relieve themselves, to get something to eat, and in many cases to pump a little iron. That had lasted an hour, with each officer and man having had fifteen minutes. They were all back now. It was two hours to nautical twilight. They were just under a hundred miles from Qatar, now heading west-northwest, after having dodged behind every island and oil platform that might confuse an enemy radar post. COMEDY had been through the tough part. The Gulf was far wider here. There was sea room to maneuver in and to make full use of his powerful sensors. The radar picture in Anzio’s CIC showed a flight of four F-16s twenty miles north of his formation, their IFF codes clear on the display—his people had to be careful about that. It would have been better if there could be an AWACS aloft, but, he had just learned an hour before, all of those were deployed up north. Today, there would be a fight. It would not be the sort of thing Aegis had been designed for, or quite what he’d been trained for, but that was the Navy for you.
The decoy group he ordered south. Their job was done for now. With the sun up, there would be no disguising what COMEDY was and where they were going, he thought.
“HOW SURE OF this are you?” POTUS asked. “Christ, I’ve been alone with the guy a hundred times!”
“We know,” Price assured him. “We know. Sir, it’s hard to believe. I’ve known Jeff on and off—”
“He’s the basketball guy. He told me who was going to win the NCAA finals. He was right. His point spread was right on.”
“Yes, sir.” Andrea had to agree with that, too. “Unfortunately, these items are a little hard to explain.”
“Are you going to arrest him?”
“We can’t.” Murray took that one. “It’s one of those situations where you know, or think you know, but can’t prove anything. Pat here had an idea, though.”
“Then let’s hear it,” Ryan ordered. His headache was back. No, that wasn’t right. The intervening, brief period without a headache had ended. Bad enough that he’d been told of the vague possibility that the Secret Service was compromised, but now they thought they had proof—no, worse, he corrected himself, not good enough for proof, just more fucking suspicion!—that one of the people trusted to be around him and his family was a potential assassin. Would this never end? But he listened anyway.
“Actually, it’s pretty simple,” O’Day concluded.
“No!” Price said immediately. “What if—”
“We can control that. There won’t be any real danger,” the inspector assured everyone.
“Hold it,” SWORDSMAN said. “You say you can smoke the guy out?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I actually get to do something instead of just sitting here like a goddamned king?”
“Yes, sir,” Pat repeated.
“Where do I sign up?” Ryan asked rhetorically. “Let’s do it.”
“Mr. President—”
“Andrea, you’ll be here, right?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Then it’s approved,” POTUS told her. “He doesn’t get near my family. I mean that. If he even looks at the elevator, you take him down yourself, Andrea, got that?”
“I understand, Mr. President. West Wing only.”
With that, they walked downstairs to the Situation Room, where Arnie and the rest of the national-security team were watching a map display on a large-screen TV.
“OKAY, LET’S LIGHT up the sky,” Kemper told the CIC crew. On command, Anzio and the other four Aegis ships flipped their SPY radars from standby to full radiated power. There was no percentage in hiding anymore. They were right under a commercial air route designated W-15, and any airline pilot could look down and see the small box of ships. When one did, he’d probably talk about it. The element of surprise had its practical limits.
In a second, the three big screens showed numerous air tracks. This had to be the busiest hunk of airspace outside O’Hare, Kemper thought. The IFF scan showed a flight of four F-16 fighters deployed northwest of his formation. There were six airliners aloft, and the day had scarcely started. Missile specialists ran practice tracks just to exercise the computers, but really the Aegis system was designed to be one of those supposedly all-powerful things that could sit still one second and raise hell the next. They’d come to the right place to do that.
THE FIRST IRANIAN fighters to head into the sky that day were two aged F-14 Tomcats from Shiraz. The Shah had purchased about eighty of the fighters from Grumman in the 1970s. Ten could still fly, with parts cannibalized from all the others or procured on the world’s lively black market in combat-aircraft components. These flew southeast, overland to Bandar Abbas, then they increased speed and darted south to Abu Musa, passing just north of it, with the pilots driving and the backseaters scanning the surface with binoculars. The sun was plainly visible at twenty thousand feet, but on the surface there was still the semidarkness of nautical twilight.
One doesn’t see ships from aloft, a fact often lost on both sailors and airmen. In most cases, ships are too small, and the surface of the sea too vast. What one sees, whether from a satellite photo or the unaided human eye, is the wake, a disturbance in the water much like an arrow with an oversized head—the bow and stern waves generated by the ship’s passage through the water—and the foaming a straight line caused by the propellers is the arrow’s shaft. The eye is drawn to such shapes as naturally as to the body of a woman, and at the apex of the V-shape, there one finds the ship. Or, in this case, many ships. They spotted the decoy group first, from forty miles away. The main body of COMEDY was identified a minute later.
THE PROBLEM FOR the ships was positive identification. Kemper couldn’t risk killing an airliner, as USS Vincennes had once done. The four F-16s had already turned toward them when the radio call went out. He didn’t have anyone aboard who spoke the language well enough to catch what they’d just said.
“Tally-ho,” the F-16 flight leader called. “Looks like F- 14s.” And he knew the Navy didn’t have any of those around.
“Anzio to STARFIGHTER, weapons free, splash ’em.”
“Roger that.”
“FLIGHT, LEAD, GO Slammer.” They were too busy looking down instead of looking around. Recon flight, Starfighter Lead figured. Tough. He selected AIM-120 and fired, a fraction before the other three aircraft in his formation did the same. “Fox-One, Fox-One!” And the Battle of Qatar was under way.
THE UIR TOMCATS were just a little too busy for their own good. Their radar-warning receivers were reporting all manner of emitters at the moment, and the air-to-air rada
r on the Vipers was just one of many. The leader of the two was trying to get a count of the warships below and talking on his radio at the same time, when a pair of AMRAAM missiles exploded twenty meters in front of his aging fighter. The second pilot at least looked up in time to see death coming.
“ANZIO, STARFIGHTER, SPLASH two, no ’chutes, say again, splash two.”
“Roger that.”
“What a nice way to start the day,” commented a USAF major who’d just spent sixteen months playing against the Israeli air force in the Negev. “Returning to station. Out.”
“I’M NOT SURE that’s a good idea,” van Damm said. The radar picture from John Paul Jones had been uplinked from the new ship via satellite to Washington. They were seeing things less than half a second after they really happened.
“Those ships cannot be stopped, sir,” Robby Jackson told the chief of staff. “We can’t take chances.”
“But they can say we shot first and—”
“Wrong, sir. Their missile boat shot first five hours ago,” the J-3 reminded him.
“But they won’t say that.”
“Save it, Arnie,” Ryan said. “My order, remember. The rules of engagement are in place. What now, Robby?”
“Depends on whether the Iranians got the word out. That first kill was easy. The first one usually is,” Jackson said, remembering the ones he’d made in his career, nothing at all like what he’d trained for at Top Gun, but there were no fair-play rules in real combat, were there?
The narrowest part of the passage was just over a hundred miles between Qatar and the Iranian town of Basatin. There was an air base there, and satellite coverage said there were fighters sitting on the ramp.
