The boat leapt forward before he could get the hatch closed.
Replacing the headset on its hook, McCory went back to the main cabin and sat in the radarman’s seat.
“You think it’s going to work?”
“Of course it’s going to work,” he told her, mentally crossing his fingers.
Between the helm and radar positions on the bulkhead was a small control panel. It was contained in a box about three inches deep, as if it had been added as an afterthought. The face was flat black, translucent plastic except for one red switch. He tried it, but it wouldn’t move.
Leaning forward, he examined the box more closely and discovered a key slot on the side.
Ah, hah.
He went to the captain’s desk, found the key ring, and brought it back. The second key he tried in the slot fit, and he turned it.
Nothing happened.
He tried the red switch button again.
The panel lit up. Blue lettering.
On top, it read: “ARMAMENT: ACTIVE.” Next to the designation “AVAILABLE,” was one green LED.
He had a guidance selection. Radar, infrared, or optical. He pressed the pad for radar.
Missiles were not new to McCory. He had observed firings of several types while aboard naval ships. Personally, he had used the handheld Stingers and Redeyes a number of times.
He had a choice of computer-controlled or manual launch and tracking. He selected the former.
In the middle of the panel was a set of five pads, the center one marked “CNTR” and the others marked with arrows for the four cardinal compass points. It was obviously used for manual control of a missile in flight.
Below the direction controls were four more buttons, and he assumed they were all interlocked with one another. One controlled the opening of the cargo hatch, another the elevation of the launcher. The third armed the missile, and the fourth was ominously named “LAUNCH.”
He went back and selected optical as the guidance system, then pressed the number seven pad under his monitor. He had a sudden view of the front of the cargo bay.
“Try number seven on your CRT, Ginger.”
“All right! That’s a view from the missile?”
“Yes, but we’re not going to use it now. I’m just experimenting. Bring her back to thirty knots.”
There was no way to select one of four missiles that could be mounted on the launcher, so McCory presumed that, due to stresses on the launcher itself and maybe the mounting to the boat, only one could be launched at a time.
As the boat slowed and steadied in the water, McCory went back to the radar mode on the missile, then opened the cargo doors and pressed the button to raise the launcher.
He was rewarded with two green LEDs. Which he didn’t trust, so he got up and went aft to check for himself. Opening the cargo hatch, he found the doors retracted and the launcher fully extended. The missile head was about five feet above the upper deck. It looked menacing as hell. The cool night air poured into the bay.
He went back to the cabin.
“It’s up.”
“Great! Shoot it.”
“Don’t get antsy.”
On the radar panel, he selected the radar mode for the monitor, then found a switch for armaments-to-radar link and activated it.
An orange target circle appeared on the screen. He found that it was controlled by a set of keypads similar to the guidance pads on the armaments panel.
He went active on the thirty-mile scan.
On the screen a dim blip showed him his target about four miles behind them. He moved the orange circle until its cross-hairs were centered on the target, then pressed a pad labeled, “TARGET LOCK.”
The sound of electric motors came through the deck. The launcher was rotating, aiming the missile aft.
Blue letters appeared in the upper right corner of the screen, “LOCK-ON.”
McCory heard something droning, looked under the instrument panel, and saw another headset. He put it on and heard the long-ago sound of a missile’s message to its operator. The low tone sounding in his earphones told him the missile’s brain had locked onto the target selected by the radar.
“Ready?” he asked.
“I’m ready.”
McCory looked to the armaments panel and pressed the launch keypad.
Nothing happened.
For one second.
All he had done was commit the launch. The computer selected the optimum launch time.
WHOOSH!
The ignition and launch could be heard through the skin of the SeaGhost.
But only for an instant. Outside the windows, the night went white for a second, then winked back to black.
The missile was gone, gone, gone.
“Look, look, look!” Ginger shouted.
McCory glanced at her primary CRT, still on the optical view. All he saw were dancing stars.
Back to his own screen. Close in, the radar sweep left two blips behind it. Four miles away was his poor rubber boat. A mile away was a streaking dot.
Two miles away.
Three.
“God! Look!”
McCory flicked his eyes to the helm screen. Out of the night, a yellow blur appeared.
Grew.
And grew into a real yellow rubber boat.
Expanded.
And disappeared into blackness.
On the rearview screen, he saw a momentary blossom of red-yellow light. The image remained on his retina for several seconds.
“We got it!” Ginger said.
“Yeah. Maybe we did.” He had no way of knowing if he’d hit the target. From the optical view delivered by the missile, it seemed certain, however.
It seemed like a puny explosion on the direct rearview screen, but then it was over four miles away.
Ginger sighed. “Now, I’m tired. Us night people have to get our sleep.”
“Did you want to sleep alone?”
“Of course not.”
McCory retracted the launcher and cargo doors, then supervised as Ginger set up a course for the mainland on the automatic pilot. She left the throttle settings for thirty knots of speed.
He set up the radar computer for random search and alarm.
And they went aft to the port bunk cabin to see if they both fit in one bunk.
They did.
*
1000 hours, Washington, D.C.
At moments like this, making phone calls like this, Ted Daimler remembered going to Harvard Law School. He and McCory were just out of the Navy, and McCory was going back to Fort Walton Beach to work with his father. Daimler had been accepted to several law schools, and he very much wanted Harvard. His accumulated Navy education benefits, however, were insufficient for Harvard. He told McCory about it.
“When my mother died, she left me an insurance policy worth a thousand dollars,” McCory had said. “Devlin put it in a savings account for me. There’s about five thousand in the account now.”
“You haven’t touched it?”
“No. I’ll loan it to you.”
“I can’t do that, Mac.”
“Sure you can. As long as you have a chance at Harvard, take it. I want interest, though.”
“Nine percent?” Daimler had offered.
“Call it seven,” McCory had said.
Daimler had long ago repaid the loan, but the offer itself was just one of the things he owed McCory.
He heard the phone ringing.
“Advanced Marine Development.”
“Justin Malgard, please.”
“May I say who is calling?”
“Weirgard, Amos, Havelock, and Moses,” Daimler made up on the spot.
“Please hold on.”
While he held on, he thought about the information his paralegal had dug up on Malgard. From the time he had taken over AMDI, it was apparent that Malgard wanted to be a big-time defense industry wheeler-dealer. He had drastically expanded his plant facilities located in Baltimore, at the cost of som
e heavy-duty loans. He and his wife had moved into an upscale house in Glen Burnie and purchased matching Mercedes 550 SECs. He was laying out stiff rentals for the office suite on New Hampshire Avenue. He could have operated out of the factory offices, but Malgard wanted to be in the thick of Washington intrigues.
“Hello. This is Justin Malgard.”
Without offering a name, Daimler said, “Mr. Malgard, I represent a person who has a special and personal interest in the XMC-22.”
“What! What are you talking about?”
“Let’s just say this person is possibly interested in seeing that the boat is returned to your control.”
“You’re saying you know who stole the Sea Spectres?”
“I’m saying that maybe we should discuss the problems.”
“Bullshit! You’re asking a ransom.”
“No. But we’d like to discuss the history of the boat and its design. With proper compensation…”
Malgard hung up on him.
Which was about what Daimler might have expected.
*
1222 hours, 35° 29’ North, 68° 7’ West
For almost ten hours, the Prebble had been making flank speed to the south. She had left the Mitscher to keep tabs on the plethora of freighters and tankers working into and out of the northeast sector.
CINCLANT had ordered Barry Norman to join with Task Force 22 coming up from the Caribbean. The order had come twenty minutes after one of America’s AWACS aircraft had spotted what it believed to be a missile launch.
Short-lived, but a missile launch.
Coming out of nowhere.
No source identified.
No target identified.
CINCLANT was convinced the event suggested one of the stealth boats was experimenting with the Mini-Harpoon.
Norman was on the bridge, listening in on Task Force 22’s command net. According to the navigator, they were still eleven hours away from joining the task force. He was urging the clock to go faster.
When they ran down that boat, Norman wanted to be there. In fact, utilizing the gear aboard the Prebble was probably the only way they would corner the Sea Spectre.
His executive officer entered the bridge.
“Commander?”
“We’ve completed the drill, sir. It went very well.”
“Do it again, XO.”
“Sir?”
“I want these guys sharp as hell on that equipment. When we have to use it, there may be lives hanging in the balance.”
“Aye aye sir. We’ll do it again.”
Norman had read the coded cables describing the Warriors of Allah and their leader, Ibrahim Badr. That son of a bitch was someone he would like to get his hands on, personally.
*
1240 hours, 28° 6’ North, 72° 21’ West
Ibrahim Badr had compromised with Captain Abdul Hakim. The Hormuz had to appear as if it were going somewhere if it were picked up on someone’s radar, or by the Americans’ aerial reconnaissance. Circling about in the western Atlantic would be suspicious, although a breakdown of the vessel’s single steam turbine engine could be faked at some point, if necessary. Judging by the ship’s appearance, in fact, a breakdown could be expected.
At the moment, they were about 300 miles from the Bahamas, after fifty hours of steaming to the west, and were again headed north. They could have been transporting Venezuelan crude to Nova Scotia, creeping along at the Hormuz’s standard twelve knots of speed.
It was hot on the deck, just forward of the tanker’s superstructure, when Badr gathered his Warriors for a short meeting. The heat brought out the worst odors from the deck — acrid oil, spoiling garbage.
Badr leaned against a ventilator and surveyed his men.
Omar Heusseini’s eyes were dark and baggy. He had been studying radar and sonar manuals for four days almost without break. Heusseini was somewhere in his fifties — he had never been certain of his birthdate. There was a great deal of gray in his dark brown hair, and his eyes had a washed appearance. The desert had lined his face heavily and brought a slope to his shoulders, making him stoop a little. Heusseini had learned the trade of radar operation and maintenance as a member of the Shah’s armed forces and had fled Iran a few days after the Shah had been deposed.
“Omar?” Badr asked.
“I am ready, my colonel.”
When he had formed the Warriors of Allah, Badr had promoted himself to colonel. The rank seemed appropriate and not as self-serving as that of general.
The drone of airplane engines could be heard to the west, and Badr turned to look but could not see the aircraft.
“We will lift the boat from the tank again tonight, so that you may practice,” Badr told him. Within the steel hull of the tanker, the Sea Spectre’s electronics performed dismally.
“That is good,” Heusseini agreed. “There are some new computer routines I need to rehearse. It is truly magnificent equipment.”
Badr felt comfortable with Heusseini’s expertise. He was less comfortable with Amin Kadar, who would operate the radios and the sonar system. Kadar was in his early twenties, a very intent and focused young man. His gaze was clear, but as often as not, concentrated on some unknown objective just beyond the bounds of reality. A dreamer.
“Amin?”
Kadar turned away from his study of the sea and said, “Yes, Colonel?”
“The sonar?”
“It is fine. Much better than I have used in the merchant marines.”
“And the radios?”
Kadar shrugged. “Who will we talk to?”
“I am less interested in talking to anyone than I am in listening.”
The young revolutionary smiled. “The manuals in the desk were invaluable. I have given you the locations of the American naval forces, have I not?”
“That is true.”
When the Sea Spectre rested above the deck at night, suspended from the crane, Kadar scanned the naval frequencies, using the encryption and scrambling devices. He estimated that they had intercepted perhaps twenty percent of the Second Fleet’s directives to the task forces searching for the Sea Spectres. The search effort was called Safari, and the search area had been broken up into sectors, but they had not been able to determine where, or what size, the sectors were. Heusseini had charted many of the ships that might belong to one search force or another. He had used active radar with some impunity, since its use could be attributed to the Hormuz.
Badr was still bothered by the missing second boat. From the Navy intercepts and the newscasts, it, too, had disappeared from the face of the earth.
The aircraft engines became louder, and low on the horizon, Badr saw the amphibian approaching. It was a twin-engined Canadair CL-215.
“Ahmed?”
Ahmed Rahman had been a missile specialist in the Iraqi army. He was thirty-four years old and appeared somewhat studious behind thick spectacles and a bushy black mustache. His fundamentalist Sunni beliefs made him a dedicated soldier. Badr had brought him along originally to direct the tanker’s defense, with handheld Stinger missiles, in the event that pursuit led to the tanker. With the acquisition of the Sea Spectre’s missiles, Rahman’s mission had changed. His task was made difficult by the lack of manuals regarding the missiles, their launcher, and their relationship to the other systems on board.
“From the missile that I have disassembled, I suspect that it is a small copy of the McDonnell Douglas RGM-84A Harpoon, Colonel. The electronics are miniaturized beyond belief. There is a solid boost motor for launch and a small turbojet for cruise. The warhead consists of a depleted uranium armor penetrator and approximately two hundred pounds of high explosives.”
“We can make it work?” Badr asked.
“I will know that only after I am able to try it. Target acquisition is accomplished from the boat, but I do not know the effective range or speed. Once airborne, the missile either follows active radar or infrared emissions to the target or may be guided from the boat by way of the el
ectro-optical scanner or radar targeting. It will be interesting,” Rahman concluded.
“Yes. It will be interesting.”
The amphibious airplane had circled the ship, then settled to the sea and was approaching the ship quickly.
Badr signaled el-Ziam, and the two of them crossed the deck to the railing where Hakim’s sailors had attached a transfer basket to the crane.
Ibn el-Ziam was a Bedouin, and looked uncomfortable in his western clothes and newly smooth-shaven face. His discomfort, however was more likely derived from his role as a sailor. El-Ziam was quite at home in the west. He wore Levi’s, running shoes, a plaid shirt, and a heavy cast on his arm. The cast contained the tools he would need on his mission and provided the cover story. Injured at sea, he was being transferred to the Bahamas for medical attention. He carried a small valise.
“Do you have your papers?” Badr asked.
“Yes, Colonel. I am Francisco Cordilla. I have American dollars and Spanish pesetas.”
Badr held the valise while el-Ziam scrambled into the basket.
“You know what you must do?”
“Of course. As soon as I reach Washington, I will seek out this manufacturer, this Advanced Marine Development, Incorporated.”
“You must find the other boat.”
“I will find it, Colonel. Do not fear.”
Of all his men, Badr trusted el-Ziam the most. The man had proven over and over again his ability to slip unnoticed into foreign countries — Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and others — and deliver lethal parcels.
The man enjoyed his tasks, and he smiled at Badr as the crane groaned and the basket lifted from the deck.
Chapter 8
1120 hours, Edgewater
McCory didn’t get up until almost noon, worrying that he was falling into Ginger’s habit of sleeping late. He liked being a morning person.
He crawled out of the queen-sized bed in Kathleen’s master cabin, located under the stern deck, made the bed, then slipped into the small head to shower and shave. He dressed in Levi’s, deck shoes, and a blue T-shirt with a Dolphin’s logo on the left breast.
Taking the short companionway up to the salon, he started the pot with four cups of real caffeine, flipped on the stereo to catch the news, then got two strips of bacon, one egg, and two pieces of rye toast underway.
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