Top Hook

by Gordon Kent

  “At the hands of agents—no, let’s not say ‘agents,’” a nervous blond man broke in, “um, representatives—of a foreign government—”

  “We don’t know that,” a woman in jeans and a Gap sweatshirt murmured.

  “We don’t have to know! We’re the CIA! We’re allowed to speculate!”

  “Speculation is dangerous,” she all but whispered.

  The chairman bent his magnificent head toward them. “Arguing among ourselves won’t get us anywhere. Karen, we don’t need dissent.”

  The woman gave the smallest of shrugs.

  The chair leaned back. “We’re in agreement, then? The play is that we’re afraid that Shreed, an Agency official with a long and distinguished record, may—may—have met his death through foul play. However, we’re able to say that no important American data has been compromised.”

  The woman smiled at him. “Absent three computers with missing hard drives.”

  “Goddamit! The computers are privileged information and won’t make the story! Agency officials aren’t allowed to have classified data on their home computers, therefore Shreed didn’t have anything on his home computers!”

  Clyde Partlow poured the oil of his voice on these troubled waters. “The missing hard drives could be looked at as confirmation that there was foul play—somebody killing poor George and taking the hard drives in the mistaken belief that there would be something there. Of course, as we all know, George wouldn’t break that rule in a million years, but, uh, a foreign power mightn’t understand that.”

  “The Chinese?” the coatless man said. “Can we say the Chinese?”

  A middle-aged woman across the table nodded. “They’re the buzz right now. They’re misbehaving like hell in the Indian Ocean.”

  “Let’s leave details for—” The chairman stopped dead. Menzes had slipped back into the room.

  Menzes stood at the corner of the table. The chairman was waiting for him to sit down. Impatient, he jerked his head.

  Menzes held up a piece of memo paper. “I’ve just received a message from the Chief of Naval Operations. I think you’ll want to hear it.” He paused. He looked around. The chairman scowled and prepared to point his pistol-grip finger again. Menzes, however, ignored him. “‘George Shreed was positively identified in Nicosia, Cyprus, as of yesterday. We have reason to believe that he may have defected to Israel and now be under the protection of Mossad. Refer all questions to this office.’”

  The chairman put his face in his hands. “Oh, shit!” he moaned.

  33

  Muscat, Oman 2030 GMT (2330L).

  Harry was at the hatch when Alan got it opened, flourishing a digital camera and a cellphone.

  “I got three photos of the boat. Let’s get him!”

  Harry had an enormous black bag sitting on the tarmac. His posture made it clear that he thought he was coming along. Alan opened his mouth to protest: you’re not navy any more, you’re not air-qualified.

  Harry read Alan’s thoughts.

  “I saw him board. I might give you an edge in identification. If you want to get a shot at him, you have to be rock-solid in your ID. Damn it, Alan, he killed one of my guys. I want a piece of him!” Alan reached out and put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Get in!”

  “Thanks.”

  Harry whacked Alan’s shoulder and turned back to the Jeep. He shouted something at Djalik, who shook his head ruefully and shouted back. Then Harry ran back to the hatch, lifting the huge bag effortlessly.

  “What’s that? Airport novels?”

  “Precautions.”

  When Harry came up through the hatch, Soleck stared openmouthed, and Stevens pulled off his helmet.

  “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “He’s coming with us.”

  “Like hell he is! He isn’t even in the Navy, for Christ’s sake. I’m not giving some fuckin’ civilian a joyride.”

  “Paul, I don’t have time to argue. He saw the target. He’s going with us.”

  Stevens looked out over the lights of the airfield and back at Harry, whose head and shoulders filled the entry hatch under the TACCO seat. He picked his helmet up off the dash and flipped it like a basketball, twice. Then he pulled it on sharply.

  “You’re the boss, cowboy.”

  Three minutes later they were in the air.

  The second MARI bird was twenty minutes from the rendezvous when they cleared Muscat air traffic control. Stevens put them into a shallow climb to give the system a wider view of the ocean’s surface while Alan reviewed the information in the datalink. Soleck began linking their MARI to that of the second plane. Harry sat staring at the laptop that Alan had handed him as soon as he had strapped in.

  “Show me the photos of the boat, Harry.”

  “Right. Next three images are his boat. Press this—”

  Alan looked through the viewport in the camera and tried to memorize the boat. It looked to be ten meters long and apparently had inboard engines. The beaked bow and swept sides looked like every cigarette boat Alan had ever seen. He counted three antennas on the stern.

  “Can I have a peek, sir?” Soleck asked from the front seat. Alan handed the camera to him.

  “CAG on the radio for you, sir.”

  Alan pressed the talk switch.

  “Ranger One, this is Ranger Two, over?”

  “Ranger Two, I copy. What’s our status?”

  “We have two F-18s within call. They’re on a tanker at point Charlie on the datalink.”

  “I see them, over.”

  “What we don’t have is permission to shoot. If we have solid ID and everything else looks good, we can ask. Do you copy?”

  “Roger that, Ranger Two. I took the liberty of bringing an eyewitness who’s seen the boat. Thought that might give us an edge.”

  “I have a feeling I don’t want to know. Is this witness air-qualified?”

  “I didn’t check, but he seems to be adapting. It’s Harry O’Neill, Rafe—Prowler AI during the Gulf War—you remember!”

  “I didn’t hear that. Don’t repeat it. Have you got link on the MARI?”

  “Roger. I’ve entered contacts one through fourteen. Based on position and vector, one of them should be the target. Which I assume is making for Pakistan.”

  “Concur.”

  “Unless he’s heading for that Chinese surface action group.”

  “That’s a long way in an open boat, bud. They were last located south of Goa.”

  “Roger. Let’s start looking.”

  MARI was cranky and the link dropped after every resolution. The first two boats they imaged were fishing boats with masts that showed clearly in the highresolution mode. As time started to slip away, Alan changed his image strategy and made the targets closest to Pakistan the priority. They got three in a row without dropping the link; better aspect and some change in atmospherics between the planes, probably. None of the boats met the parameters.

  Soleck sat in front with the digital camera. He compared each image they gained with the photo on the camera. After they imaged their sixth potential target, he came up on the intercom.

  “Sir, you want to look at this thing again? I want a second opinion.”

  Alan took the camera back and held it to his eye.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Look at the bow, sir. See anything?”

  “Too dark.”

  “I don’t want to influence you, but is that an antenna right on the point of the bow?”

  Alan stared at the photo until his eyes teared up, then put the camera down and closed them. He looked again.

  “Can’t tell.”

  Harry turned his head. “There was a whip antenna on the bow. It had a little flag at the top.”

  “Thanks, Harry. Anything else?”

  “There were two men aboard besides Shreed. There were antennas on the windscreen, too.”

  “Better than nothing, Harry.”

  “This is some kind of improved IS
AR?”

  “Better resolution and a 3-D image.”

  “But it still needs some movement in the target?”

  “Not always. We can get land-based contacts, but movement helps.”

  “Hence the antenna question.” Harry relapsed into silence, and Alan went back to the MARI. Image seven was a cigarette boat, her raked sides crisp on his screen, but the length and antenna array on the stern were wrong. Image eight seemed to take forever, as the system dropped link each time Alan hit the image button on his console.

  “Paul, give us a little altitude.”

  “Roger.”

  It was the first word that Stevens had spoken in an hour. Alan felt the plane climb and noticed that he was wet with cold sweat. His eyes felt swollen. He switched the intercom to limit it to the back end.

  “I blew the meeting with Anna.”

  Harry didn’t turn his head.

  “What’d you expect?”

  “She’s going to Shreed. I should have held her.”

  “For what, shoplifting?”

  “Look at the crap she dropped on me for ten thousand.”

  Harry smiled enigmatically. “I’m not sure it’s crap.”

  Alan stared at the screen in front of him, still dissat isfied, and murmured should have done something even as he cued his radio.

  “Ranger Two, I need a better aspect on contact eight.”

  “Roger. Turning to zero four zero.”

  “We’re going to need gas soon.” Stevens sounded bored.

  “How soon?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “You copy that, Ranger Two?”

  “I copy.”

  Alan settled the cursor on the moving dot that represented contact eight and hit the image button again. The image danced on the split screen, a tiny, throbbing blob that bore no resemblance to a boat. It crept around the screen like a creature in a video game.

  “Looks like a periscope,” muttered Soleck.

  “Stern aspect. Heading straight away, or close enough.” Alan felt a little rise of hope. If it was a stern aspect, this contact had the required number of antennas on the stern.

  “Ranger Two, I need a broadside aspect on contact eight, over?”

  “Roger. Wait one.”

  Alan held the image and watched it rotate slowly as the other MARI bird, fifteen miles to the north and east, gradually gained on the contact.

  “Bow antenna!” Soleck shouted. “Bet you that’s our guy. Bet anything!”

  It would take minutes to get a full, side-on picture and get the computer to measure the length. Alan looked at the coastline on the datalink, put into the system by Soleck while they planned Opera Glass. Alan wished he had Craw in the other seat to spell him or to pull up the electronic detection gear and watch for Pakistani SAM sites on the coast. They were close, now—less than one hundred miles from Pakistan. Contact eight was less than twenty miles from the coast.

  “Ranger Two, do you have anything on ESM?”

  “Roger, Ranger One. We have multiple radar hits from associated SAM sites around Karachi.”

  “Ranger Two, contact eight is probably the target.”

  “‘Probably’ won’t cut it, Alan.”

  He knew that. The Indian Ocean was balanced on the fine edge between local violence and all-out war. An American plane shooting at a Pakistani ship would probably push the conflict over the edge.

  “He’s about thirty minutes from land.”

  “Ranger Two, we have six more contacts we haven’t imaged.”

  Alan watched the green outline grow on his screen, pixel by pixel. The image was a fair match to the photo, and the length looked as if it would be about right.

  “Ranger Two, the antenna count is right.”

  “Length?”

  “I don’t have it yet. Ranger Two, if we don’t call in the guns now, they won’t get to him in time.”

  “I’m aware of that, Ranger One.” So shut up, Rafe was saying.

  Alan saved the image on his screen and imaged contact nine, which proved to be a fishing boat with an obvious net derrick amidships. Contact ten had the same configuration and was moving parallel, the two probably dragging a net between them. Then they lost the link for long seconds and Soleck could be heard cursing in the front end until the resync program functioned and lights came back to green.

  Ranger Two had a good broadside aspect on contact eleven, a cigarette boat about ten meters in length. The antennas weren’t easy to count, but she appeared to have at least one on the bow and several on the stern. Contact eleven was a good deal farther out from the coast than contact eight but appeared to have roughly the same goal. Alan cycled back to contact eight and got a good broadside image. Contact eight seemed a little longer. When he set them side by side on the screen, neither he nor Soleck could find enough points of difference to sort them out. Alan cursed.

  “Ranger Two, contact eleven also matches search criteria.”

  “Roger, Ranger One.”

  Alan looked over at Harry and pressed his intercom switch.

  “Any ideas?”

  Bahrain 2045 GMT (2345L).

  Dukas landed at Bahrain’s Manama airport two hours late. Changing planes at Riyadh had been a mess, with delay piled on delay, but at least it had given him time to check the disk that Sally Baranowski had given him. It seemed years ago that she had put it in his hand at BWI. On the screen of his laptop in the Riyadh business center, George Shreed’s comm plans for Chinese Checkers had come up with an almost offensively new crispness—crafted years ago in Washington, now ageless in Saudi Arabia.

  There were, as she had told him, three plans—Indonesia, Colombia, and Pakistan. Nothing was there for Dubai, although that was where Shreed had been seen by O’Neill. Shreed had now to be in transit—no matter where he was now, he was in transit until he found a protector and settled somewhere. Dukas figured that it was protection that he had been seeking in Nicosia, hoping to trade a lifetime’s knowledge for a new identity in Israel. An odd end for a spy, perhaps, but not necessarily a bad one: he would get a new life in a warm country, and the Israelis would get a fund of information, which they would cajole and bully from him for the rest of his life. They would hoard what they could use, shop the rest around the world for whatever it would bring.

  Coming into Bahrain, Dukas’s mind was on the chase ahead. Or at least he hoped that there was a chase ahead: if Shreed had been lost, all that they could do was try to cover the three comm plans with NCIS people in the locality and hope that he would turn up. More likely, the CIA and the FBI would recover from the shock of Shreed’s flight and take over the investigation, and Dukas and Alan and Harry would be out in the cold. Thinking of being shut out, he realized how much he wanted Shreed: the investigation hadn’t been only about Rose, he understood now. It had always been about her betrayer, too. And it had become personal.

  The flaps came down and the aircraft turned into its final approach. Dukas, sitting in an aisle seat, merely glanced at the window to see the blue waters of the Gulf for a few seconds; then they straightened, and he looked ahead. He was planning his moves. He had called NCIS Bahrain from Nicosia and told them to meet him and to have an international, satellite-connected cellphone for him. He had asked for the ten thousand dollars for the detective, Khouri, and an additional ten thousand for himself. The duty officer at the other end must have been a stoic; he had said only, “Okay—okay—” and not reacted otherwise. Not his money, seemed to be the attitude.

  The wheels banged and the tires screeched and the engines revved. He was on the ground in Bahrain.

  He was met first by somebody from a VIP welcoming firm (thirty bucks per greeting—not so very VIP) who escorted him through passport control and customs, waving a hand and rapping out terse Arabic at the personnel as if he were a government VIP himself. Then he steered Dukas through a side door into a corridor lined with departure gates, and there was a cheerful, light-skinned African-American named Buse from the local NCIS off
ice. When he saw the VIP guide, Buse shouted, “You got Dukas?” He held up a cellphone. “You got mail!”

  Dukas pushed past his escort. He was reaching for the phone before he got to Buse, then pressed it against his ear with both their hands still on it. “I got a car!” Buse whispered. He started to lead Dukas along the corridor.

  “Dukas!”

  Static, a high-pitched hiss, squeals and glurps as if he was listening to somebody’s gut. A voice said thinly, “…not very good—”

  “Can’t hear you! Hello!”

  More hissing. Dukas looked at Buse. Buse shrugged. “It was okay a second ago. Somebody named O’Neill—” He was steering Dukas through the passing travelers.

  Dukas mashed the little phone against his ear. “Harry? Harry?”

  “Mike?” The voice was thin and faint.

  “Where are you?”

  “Flying in a Navy S-3…Alan. We’re over the—”

  “What?”

  “—Ocean, Indian Ocean. We’ve got the target on the…”

  “Target?” Shreed?

  “…radar array. Whiz-bang stuff. He’s headed for Pakistan, Mike—Pakistan—did you get me?”

  It clicked for Dukas. “Harry, listen! He has an old comm plan for—!” Dukas was ready to say Northern Pakistan! North of Islamabad, a place called Jolcut, and then he remembered that the line wasn’t secure.

  Hiss, gurgle. “…Pakistan?”

  “I’ll send it to Valdez. You hear me? Harry, I’ll message Valdez. Okay?” Goddamit, goddam the cellphone, goddam the airplane, goddam Shreed! He was afraid he was blowing their secrets sky-high if anybody was listening. E-mail was a lot safer than an open cellphone. Harry must have an encrypted link from Valdez; that was the way to go. He glanced at Buse, then looked around them in frustration and backed against a wall between a men’s and women’s toilet.

  “Harry—?”

  It was then that he saw her. She was just handing her passport to the gate attendant. Radiantly beautiful, dressed to kill, as seemingly relaxed as if she were heading for a holiday.