by Tony Bulmer
As an agent of the CIA’s Deep Five division, Karyn knew that she was a front line operator in the war against the dark new global hegemony. There were many outposts of hope of course, old enemies joining together to fight the pernicious tentacles of the New World Order. Trouble was, those tentacles were far reaching. There was no telling how deeply the U.S. Government and its partners had been penetrated by the supporters of the new elite; the evidence of the spreading cancer was everywhere—Congress, the Judiciary, even the FBI. The foot soldiers of the New World Order were on the march, insinuating themselves at all levels of society—they could be anywhere—everywhere—even aboard this ship.
Standing in the cargo lift now, with Senegar and a pair of smart-uniformed Marine Corps escorts, they were moving down, transported into the very depths of the giant Aircraft Carrier. Below decks, a fetid world of humidity welcomed them. The heavy, oiled throb of machines was all-pervasive. It was a menacing and oppressive world of endless corridors and screw down hatchways. Suddenly Karyn was transported back to a distant time when she was Lieutenant Commander Karyn Kane of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Co-opted to the Irregular warfare centre, her role as a command and control liaison for DEVGRU had meant long service on carriers like the HST. Long weeks and months of monotonous drudgery followed by crazed hours of the most brutal violence imaginable.
She had thought those days were gone forever, and now here she was again, trapped in the bowels of a giant nuclear powered city as it plowed through the oceans in search of enemies. Karyn watched, as the giant floor numbers rolled past the front of the elevator. She didn’t look at Jack Senegar—simply said, “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I am not here to answer your questions.”
“That’s what I thought. Fill in the dots. Well, wherever you are concerned Jack, those dots always join into a yes.”
Jack Senegar said nothing. His slate grey hair combed immaculate, like he had just walked out of a company board meeting, rather than a firefight with a gang of international terrorists.
“So what’s the big plan Jack? Which is the next city we are going to watch short circuit? London? Tokyo? Frankfurt? Or maybe another one of our Asian competitors—that would be real convenient wouldn’t it? I hear the NASDAQ and the NYSE have been free falling these past months. I am guessing a conveniently manufactured financial crisis would do wonders for the floundering US economy.”
“Stick to what you are good at Kane—wet work; blunt force trauma. Big picture thinking is way above your pay-grade. You turn your mind to that kind of activity, you are going to come up against truths that you just aren’t ready for.”
“I am ready for anything Jack.”
Senegar’s hard, wooden face remained inscrutable, but a sharp, line of annoyance arched upwards very slowly across his forehead. Finally, he turned to look at her. “I am pleased to hear that Kane, because you are shipping out Stateside on the next available transport.”
Karyn shot him a wild look. “You think you are dealing me out, just like that? This thing isn’t over, not by a long way, but you know that Jack, don’t you?”
“I think you better grab yourself some chow and a freshen up Kane. It’s a long way back to Langley, Virginia.”
“Langley? That’s not going to happen.”
“I decide what happens.”
“You think you are going to take out that Pakistani freighter Jack? Is that the kind of shooting war you are talking about?”
“You fumbled the ball on the Zhàn Tao play Kane. That means you get to ride the bench this quarter. Are you following me now?”
“I am not a bench player coach.”
“You don’t have options.”
Karyn’s molten eyes burned into him.
Jack turned to the Marines. “Would you boys show the lady to her quarters? And see she gets everything she needs?”
The Marines saluted in unison.
Karyn watched, as Jack Senegar walked away. She watched him go, saw as he disappeared from sight down the labyrinthine corridors. Then she turned to the Marines and said, “Anything I want, huh?”
43
USS Harry S. Truman, (CVN-75), Arabian Sea
The Cabin was real small, but that was okay, she wouldn’t need it anyway. Hell, no. Kayrn had bigger plans. She paused in the doorway, threw her Marine Corps escorts a charming smile and said, “The Special Ops briefing room, what level is that located on?”
They told her of course. No reason why they wouldn’t. Make sure the lady has everything she needs. That’s what the man from the government had said, wasn’t it?
Karyn thanked her escort, gave them another flash of her smile and very gently closed the door of the cabin. She moved fast then. There was very little time, if there was any at all. Luckily the Navy, with their characteristic efficiency, had been expecting her and the locker in the cabin was filled with a selection of less than stylish fatigue clothes that just about matched her size. Karyn didn’t care. The mundane look would be an essential part of achieving her goal.
She undressed quickly. In less than two minutes she was out of her civilian clothes. Three minutes later, she was kitted out in a drab olive deck suit and a HST ball cap emblazoned with a crossed cannon logo and the legend Give ’em Hell. That was the kind of motto she could identify with every day of the week. The crew of CVN-75 had ripped off that line from HST himself, his catchphrase from the 1948 reelection campaign. The motto couldn’t be more fitting, HST’s Nimitz class namesake had kicked ass from Suez to Afghanistan and back again. The boys and girls in this floating fortress specialized in bringing the hurt to the enemies of democracy wherever they might be.
Karyn pinned her hair back and tucked it beneath her ball cap in the regulation Navy style. She slid spare ammo in to every pocket and adjusted her DeSantis shoulder rig, until there was zero show through. There was no way she was going to get pulled up by some nosy E-6 on a uniform violation. Her fine tuned agenda was time sensitive. No time for explanations, only action. She took a last look at her face in the locker room mirror. An unusually pallid face stared back at her and the darkness around her eyes shocked her for a brief moment. She slammed the locker door shut. But the image remained. There was no time for vanity. The giant container ship Maharashtra was heading full steam ahead towards its next objective. In its hold yet another EMP weapon, capable of destroying an entire city in seconds. The ship had to be stopped, taken out at any price. If it succeeded in its mission the consequences were too awful to contemplate.
The adrenaline was pulsing through her now. There was no way Jack Senegar was going to freeze her out on this job. Riding with the reserves just wasn’t her style. Karyn had had a nose for the big play. There was a game plan going down, a fast-roping mission to intercept the Maharashtra and take it down. If Senegar figured he could bench her out of the action he was plain crazy. There was no way she was going to ride this one out. She was going to run with the play all the way to the end zone.
As Karyn considered the implications, her adrenaline rush peaked—it was the kind of hit that beat out anything. Jack Senegar would not like her plans of course, but by the time he found out, it would be way too late for him to get involved. His boss man opinions would be good for nothing but a tirade of impotent fury. So he would get mad, what then? It wasn’t like he could do anything—She was D5—a ghost. There wasn’t a disciplinary procedure yet invented that could hold sway over the supernatural world.
Walking the labyrinthine corridors of the HST, Karyn kept her head down and moved with purpose. She moved like she belonged, passing through the ship like she owned it. The journey took her longer than expected; even with her long years of Navy experience the HSTs maze like corridors provided a major navigational challenge.
By the time she found the Special Ops briefing room, the meeting was in full swing. Karyn had known there would be a meeting of course; the very second Senegar gave her the brush-off. If he thought he was going to shut her out of the game, w
hile the rest of the team headed for the play-offs—well, old slate-eyes had to be even crazier than he looked didn’t he?
Karyn slipped into the briefing room unnoticed. She recognized faces from the Special Operations Group, straight out the gate, but there were others too—the fearsome battered faces of men from DEVGRU—The U.S. Navy Seals. Karyn stood against the wall and melded into the background. A team from ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, were chairing the briefing and from the fine-tuned details they were running through, it looked like they were getting ready for the go. Karyn looked at the charts on the wall and filled in the gaps real fast—A three-chopper landing with two birds running backup. DEVGRU would run a small boat perimeter. Radar on the target vessel would be suppressed from the air by an EA-18 Growler, using next generation AESA jamming technology. It was a textbook takedown for sure. But this was no Somali pirate vessel, or some drunken mutineers on a joyride through the international shipping lanes. This was a Panamax sized super freighter packing a sub-nuclear EMP device. If the crew aboard the Maharashtra got wise to the takedown, they might well trigger the bomb. Karyn frowned hard—if that bomb went off, it would take out the whole of Carrier Strike Group Ten. Twelve ships and one $5billion nuclear powered aircraft carrier, gone in the blink of an eye.
44
USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75)
The Marines outside the door were wearing full dress uniform and sporting M4 Carbines. They snapped to attention as Jack Senegar approached. Senegar gave them a taught look and made no attempt to salute. Instead, he rapped purposefully on the grey metal door and entered, without waiting to be invited.
The figure inside the room stood before a panoramic window overlooking the carrier flight deck, watching very carefully, as an F18 Hornet burned away into the night sky. The explosive roar of jet engines firing on full power rattled the triple thick windows and the figure made a guttural rumble of approval, before turning to greet his visitor.
“Ah, there you are laddie, with us at last. I was beginning to think you had gotten lost in the land of the Hindu-huggers. A grisly fate at the best of times—” The admiral paused. He looked both resplendent and forbidding in his double-breasted uniform, heavy-swathed in gold-braid and a comprehensive collection of medal ribbons. He also looked dangerous—like a mean-faced version of presidential legend Dwight D. Eisenhower. The admiral gave his visitor a shrewd, hawkish stare. “Well, look at you laddie. You have the death-stink of field combat about you,” The admiral settled behind his desk, an elaborate mahogany affair, whose carved frontage resembled the majesty of an ancient Greek temple. The admiral pointed to the leather chairs positioned in front of the desk. “Why don’t you pull up a pew and tell me all about it?” His tone was commanding, laced with a heavy lilt of Boston Irish. Admiral William Arthur Kane narrowed his eyes, watching carefully as Jack Senegar sank slowly into the battered leather club chair.
Still examining his guest, the admiral moved over to his desk, where he flipped open an aromatic rosewood box and reached out a bottle of 69 Macallan. He pointed it at Senegar very casually and said, “So what progress have you made laddie?”
Jack Senegar looked at the bottle of Scotch and wet his lips. The admiral reached out a pair of lead crystal glasses from his desk draw and filled them three fingers deep. He paused, gave Senegar a knowing look then said, “This is what happens when you coddle the sensibilities of the heathen East laddie. I blame those spineless bureaucrats in Washington, always paying mind to the touchy-feely world of diplomacy. Gutless appeasement is what it is. We need to act decisively and now. The admiral slid the glass of scotch toward his guest then sat back in his presidential sized desk chair.
Jack Senegar reached the glass off the table and held it up to the light. The swirling golden liquid reflected across his face. He savored the moment, swilling the booze around the chilled glass before taking a hit. A smooth burning flame rose within him. He didn’t smile, but the hard lines around his eyes grew suddenly deeper.
“The ship belongs to Pakistan. We cannot allow anything to happen to it.”
“The hell we can’t. Incase you haven’t noticed, it is monsoon season, these are treacherous waters at the best of times.” The admiral snapped his fingers dramatically. “Misfortune can happen at sea just as quick as you please.”
“If we allow a state of the art pulse weapon to go rolling free on the ocean floor, some salvage hawk with a mini-sub and a sea-winch will drag it to the surface in a matter of weeks and then what? They sell it on to the highest bidder—some radicalized pseudo-state, or worse.”
The admiral narrowed his eyes. “When I sink things laddie, they stay sunk. By the time my boys have finished with that tub, it will be burning hotter and brighter than a goddamned supernova. We will melt that floating wrecker’s yard through the ocean floor. Send it on a non-stop ride to Hades. How do you like the sound of that Jack?”
Senegar gave the admiral a tight look. “You are quite right Bill. We could unleash the dogs of war, but then we would never know would we?”
The admiral’s eyes burned an incandescent blue. He raised a saber like finger and swung it at Jack Senegar accusingly. “You don’t know for sure that those sneaky Commies and their Koran-coddling compadres have stowed that EMP bomb on board, do you Jack?”
“Precisely. That is why we have to make a safe play on this.”
“I don’t like it Jack. We roll over on this like those wishy-Washingtonians are so fond of doing. It sends a message. From prayer-mat Islamistan to the Maoist jungles of the Korean north, they will gain comfort from our weakness. Every one of those jackals sitting this one out on the sidelines will become stronger and more confident. They will think that the United States of America is an easy touch when it comes to terrorist blackmail. Now, I don’t know about you Jack, but I am not riding the helm of the greatest naval power in the world so as I can stand idly by and let that happen.”
“So what you are saying is you are going to drag both our asses through the political wringer again? JSOC won’t like it. Neither will the president.”
“Joint Special Operations Command are singing from my hymn sheet on this laddie, and as far as the president is concerned—well, he is counting down his days in office on his World of Golf calendar isn’t he? Two months tops he will be riding out of office on his fairway fun chariot.” The admiral took a swallow of whisky and smiled widely, “I will of course be deeply saddened at his inevitable departure and After pummeling him comprehensively around eighteen holes of that Virginia dog track he calls a golf course I will explain—as kindly as possible—that it takes bigger men than him to keep America #1.”
Senegar blinked. “I am sure he will appreciate that Bill.”
“He better, or I will give him a five-iron finisher around his ungrateful little neck. See how he explains that to the true patriots at the nineteenth hole.”
Senegar blinked again. “So you send the ship to the bottom, but I want every inch of that tub combed down from top to bottom first. I want that bomb and I want it intact. If they detonate that thing we are looking at the kind of mess we will never be able to jam the lid back on.”
The admiral gave Senegar a wild look. “You need another drink laddie.”
Jack Senegar smiled then, “I think you will too Bill. I brought your girl with me.”
The admiral almost choked, “What? Here? On board this ship?”
Jack Senegar finished off his Scotch, slid his glass across the desk for a top up. He nodded. “You were quite right Bill, I did need a drink.”
45
Karyn Kane
Filing out of the Special Op’s briefing, he moved in step beside her. The big, bearded guy in the Detroit Tigers cap. Karyn didn’t eyeball him directly, just kept walking. “I am guessing you aren’t a form filler and you sure as hell ain’t SOG, so that must make you NCS.”
Karyn pulled a face.
“You thinking you are going to make a ride along Ms. Clandestine? Because this is my oper
ation and if you have got even an inkling you want to wave us off on this mission, you are going to need paperwork for that.”
Karyn sniffed.
“You ain’t too talkative, are you lady?”
She stopped then, turned, looked at him and said, “Now lookee here Detroit. I appreciate you are trying to be charming, but it has been a real busy week. So why don’t you do save the team-leader talk for someone who gives a damn.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. The very first time I had you in the crosshairs of my laser scope I figured you for a badass. What are you, the DCI’s private little stoolie or something?”
Karyn rolled her eyes. “That what you think huh? You are a real genius with the interpersonal relations, aren’t you Detroit?”
He frowned then, “Hey don’t patronize me lady. I don’t care if you are sucking face with the Director of Central Intelligence, or the president himself. Nobody pulls a ride along on one of my missions without my say so.”
Karyn threw him a narrow screw you kind of smile then said, “I totally get it. You are the big bad boss man of bullshit Island. But here’s the thing Detroit, there is a whole world of activity happening just over the horizon from your tiny little fiefdom. Now, in case you didn’t know, the dark lords of the seventh floor take a very dim view of anything that becomes between them and their mission objectives. So, if you want to stand around here all day shooting the breeze, while one of your beardy-weirdy boyfriends faxes over Federally mandated paperwork to Langley, then be my guest.
“You got yourself some kind of poisonous little mouth on you lady.”
“Huh-huh. You want your pecker pulling, call the State Department soldier.”
“Wow, you are a real princess aren’t you? With an attitude like that you just got to be riding the range with those assholes from the National Clandestine Service. Well hear this, and hear it good, I got no time for passengers in my crew. You want to ride with us—you ride up back and stay the hell out of my way. I wouldn’t want to catch your head in my crosshairs again.”
