Seaghost

by William H. Lovejoy

  “They can pick up the stealth boats?”

  “They were testing it when you stole the boat.”

  “It works. They found me Sunday morning.”

  “But you got away, right?”

  “Cut the speed way back. Must have reduced my heat signature.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay, up north of us, and to the east, is the task force headed by Mitscher. That’s Safari Charley. To their east is a task force led by the Knox and attached to Charley.”

  “MITS” appeared in a box near the lead ship. On the screen, it looked to be about twenty miles from the Prebble and forty miles from the SeaGhost.

  “PERR” flashed onto the screen next to a cluster of ships to the south.

  “One of those, and I don’t know which one, is the Oliver H. Perry,” Monahan told him. “She’s heading up Safari Delta.”

  McCory put his finger on the screen and pointed out about nine blips that seemed independent. “These are commercial vessels?”

  “I’d think so. They’ll be under observation by either Charley or Delta. We’ve been dogging most of these ships for six days, McCory.”

  “Is that right? Then, if Badr didn’t make his meet before daylight, he’s going to have to hide out until nightfall?”

  “That would be my guess. There’ll be aircraft watching those ships all day long.”

  “So we’ll just play tag ourselves. Stay out of everyone’s way and maybe take a look at those commercial ships.”

  “Perhaps,” Monahan said. “It’ll depend on Admiral Clay. And I’m already in defiance of my orders.”

  The message came soon thereafter.

  ENCODED, TOP SECRET MSG 07120607

  TO: CMDR J E MONAHAN, NIGHT LIGHT

  COPY: SAFARI ECHO, SAFARI CHARLEY, SAFARI DELTA

  FROM: CINCLANT

  INSTRUCTIONS MSG 04170607 CONFIRMED.

  Chapter 15

  0800 hours, CINCLANT

  Justin Malgard had received a call at his motel in Norfolk at 4:15. A lieutenant asked him to report to the Operations Center.

  His taxi arrived at the main gate by five, and he was somewhat excited about being part of the operation. That wore off quickly when the cab was stopped by Navy SPs and Marine guards at the barricaded gate. The base was closed down, and he had to get out of the taxi and wait for an escort.

  An ensign in a Navy sedan pulled up a few minutes later, cleared him with the Marines, and put him in the backseat. The ride to the Operations Center relieved him of any excitement he still had.

  The destruction was random, and he did not get to see much of it, since it was spread all over the base. In a couple of spots, buildings, vehicles, shrubbery, and landscaping were merged in nearly unrecognizable heaps, still smoking. He could see fires several blocks away that still raged. Ambulances and trucks and jeeps cut around corners and sped down streets in a frenzy. With the window rolled down, he heard the cacophony of sirens, yells, and racing engines. Passing one building on fire, he heard the crackling of flames, the hiss of water directed at it by pumpers standing in the street. Everything was soot covered. Emergency lights were pulsing all around him. A major conflagration near, or on, the Navy docks lit up the early-morning sky.

  When he arrived at the door to the Operations Center, Rear Admiral Matthew Andrews passed him by the checkpoint. Inside, Andrews pointed at a chair in the corner.

  “Sit there, Mr. Malgard. If we have a question, we want you nearby.”

  He sat there for almost three hours, drinking coffee and eating donuts passed around by a seaman. He studied the intricate electronic map on the wall and began to identify the movements of some selected ships.

  He could not quite figure out what was going on. Messengers came in and left. Console operators talked into their headsets, signaled officers milling around the room, took orders. The dots on the map changed. Andrews seemed to be in charge until around seven o’clock, when Clay came back. Clay’s uniform was filthy with soot and dirt, and he and Andrews had a heated exchange on the far side of the room. Malgard guessed that Andrews prevailed, because the intelligence officer was smiling when they broke up the discussion.

  Clay barely acknowledged Malgard with a nod. His attitude seemed to have changed significantly. He left the room, and when he returned, he was in a fresh uniform. There was an angry bruise on his forehead, and his eyebrows had been singed.

  He came directly across the room to Malgard.

  “You sure you don’t know a Devlin or a Kevin Mc-Cory?” the admiral asked.

  “I can’t say as I’ve ever heard of them, Admiral. Is it important?”

  “Very. Kevin McCory has a Sea Spectre out there.” He pointed in the direction of a bunch of blips on the map. “He’s a fucking cowboy who thinks he can take out Ibrahim Badr.”

  Damn. No wonder he had not heard from Chambers.

  “I don’t understand, Admiral. This is an American who’s been attacking the coastal bases?”

  “Not according to my aide, who is on board the boat with McCory.”

  For Christ’s sake! “You’ve got a man with McCory?”

  “I don’t believe it was planned that way, but yes.”

  “So you’ve got one of the boats back?”

  Clay grimaced. “We’re not certain. It doesn’t look like they’re responding to orders.”

  “Well, can’t you force them?”

  “You’re forgetting, Mr. Malgard. We can’t even find them.”

  Clay spun around and headed for one of the consoles. Malgard’s head felt as if it were spinning. McCory did have a boat, but apparently, so did this terrorist. McCory and some naval officer wanted a confrontation.

  He could only hope that Badr would put a missile right up McCory’s ass.

  *

  1530 hours, 37° 32’ North, 71° 15’ West

  The Hormuz had not been where it was supposed to be.

  Ibrahim Badr suspected that it had broken down in reality and required repairs. By this time, he thought that Abdul Hakim was frightened enough of him, as well as taking some pride in the accomplishments of the Warriors of Allah, so that he would not abandon them.

  If it came down to it, he could abandon Hakim. The stealth boat had been fully fueled before beginning the attack on Norfolk. With conservation, he thought he could make North Africa, perhaps even Tripoli for refueling. The idiot Colonel would want to take the boat away from him if he did that, of course.

  All day long, they had been drifting south, keeping the engines barely idling at six or seven knots. Badr was certain that the Hormuz could not be north of them. It was supposed to be on a direct northerly heading along the seventy-one-degree, fifteen-minute track. If he continued south, he would run into it.

  Then, one more attack. Against the City of New York. Oh, the panic that would create!

  Allah, rejoice!

  And then they would return to the camps in southern Lebanon, heroes of the cause. Heroes with a fabulous weapon to be used against the infidels.

  “I have a sonar reading,” Amin Kadar said from his place at the console. “Twin propellers, ten thousand meters.”

  “Bearing?”

  “I cannot yet tell.”

  “Let me know if it comes closer. We will alter course to avoid it.”

  “We should attack it,” Kadar said.

  “Not just yet,” Badr told him.

  As he had been doing regularly, Badr scanned the seas through the windows, then glanced down at the rearview screen. For all intents, they were alone on the ocean. The day could not have been better. The overcast had lowered, perhaps to a four hundred meter ceiling. The swells had shortened, the troughs had deepened, and the boat sometimes tilted alarmingly as it drifted. The bouncing was endless and becoming more abrupt. Omar Heusseini had become sick in midmorning.

  His vomit was still drying on the back of the dining table bench and the deck. The deck was also littered with candy wrappings, chicken bones, pieces of meat and bread. A plastic water glass wandered ba
ck and forth beneath the table. His crew was not a disciplined one.

  It did not matter. They were good at what they did. Heusseini had taken active readings on the radar twice during the day. Despite the appearance of emptiness, the sea around them contained a surprising number of ships, many of which he suspected belonged to the United States Navy.

  Caution was called for. They would drift, and they would avoid any contact. Soon, the Hormuz would come into view.

  *

  1450 hours, 36° 12’ North, 72° 51’ West

  Night Light also drifted, but aimlessly. McCory was trying to keep her in the area, while still eluding any probes by the Safaris Charley, Delta, and Echo.

  Several times, he had gone aft and opened the hatches to let fresh air enter the cabin. The salt tang tasted good on his tongue. The waves were capping higher, a few washing over the stern deck. Once, he heard a helicopter pass by to the east.

  Jim Monahan had apparently accepted his fate. He seemed to have signed on for the duration. He might even use McCory’s strained rationale — his claim on the SeaGhost and his rights as captain — to alibi himself later. McCory had slept for three hours in the afternoon, and when he climbed out of the bunk, he found that Monahan had not taken control and headed for Norfolk.

  Monahan had grabbed a couple hours of bunk time in midmorning, but for the better part of the day, he had been listening to the radios, switching frequencies often, jotting notes at the communications desk. He understood the bulk of the code words being utilized.

  McCory fried four hamburgers for dinner, stacking them high with Swiss cheese, onions, and dill pickles. He brought two of them and a bottle of Dos Equis to the communications console.

  “Thanks,” Monahan said, pulling the right side of his headset back.

  “Anything new?”

  “Not particularly. I wish we had a copy of the Baker Two map grid. Best guess is that the area is becoming congested. None of the search ships are moving very fast. Safari Echo has identified three ships they’re keeping a close eye on.”

  “What three?”

  “A Panamanian container ship named the Morning Glory, a Colombian freighter called Nem Andes, and a Kuwaiti tanker named Hormuz.”

  “Any particular reason?” McCory asked.

  “Damned if I know. Probably, they’ve been on a track that makes them accessible to the Sea Spectre for the past nine days.”

  “Why don’t they just board them?”

  “It’s called piracy. You should know about that.”

  “You sound like my lawyer.”

  “Theodore Daimler?”

  “Shit.”

  “Hey, you didn’t think you were going to get away with it, did you?”

  “I did. And I still do. This is my boat.”

  Monahan took a bite out of his hamburger, but his eyes showed his disbelief.

  McCory was off his rocker. Short a full deck. One elevator stop from the top floor. McCory thought Monahan was running through all the clichés.

  All of them can go to hell, Devlin.

  He ate one of his hamburgers while checking the sonar. Nothing. He sat in front of the radar screen, eating and wishing he could go active. He hated being blind.

  The SeaGhost purred along, climbing the swells, sliding down the other side.

  Monahan continued checking the frequencies. CINCLANT had tried to contact them a dozen times, but McCory had nixed any replies.

  Once before noon, the Prebble had tried to reach them on the frequency Monahan called Tac-Three. They had not responded, but Monahan left the Tac-Three on standby.

  When he had finished his second hamburger, McCory said, “I vote we go active on the radar and get a more recent reading.”

  Monahan got up from his chair and moved forward, bracing himself against the rocking deck.

  “You drive. I’ll shoot the picture.”

  McCory slid over behind the wheel, disengaged the autopilot, and rested his hand on the throttles. As soon as Monahan had his sweep, McCory would scoot for a new position.

  Two seconds later, Monahan said, “Hit it!”

  He slammed the throttles forward.

  The speaker beside his shoulder blared, “Safari Echo to all Safaris. We had an active radar at Baker Two, six-one, seven-eight.”

  As the SeaGhost came on plane, McCory said, “Damn, they’re fast.”

  “They want us pretty bad, McCory.”

  “We’re on their side.”

  “They don’t know who they just saw.”

  “Yeah, I suppose that’s right.”

  *

  1700 hours 36° 15’ North, 71° 49’ West

  It was going to be an early night, Monahan thought. Already, the daylight was fading fast, deepening into gloom. The seas were rougher than before, he thought. He had listened in on some weather forecasts, but nothing scary was predicted.

  He had now been aboard the Sea Spectre for almost twenty-four hours, and he thought it was a hell of a boat. Monahan knew damned well that the Prebble was within fifteen miles of them, and helpless. He didn’t know what he would do in Norman’s place. This thing was just ghostly.

  A couple of times, he had daydreamed his excuse to Bingham Clay. He tried out McCory’s argument. I didn’t feel I had the authority to countermand a captain’s orders, Admiral.

  The response to that was a gritty, Bullshit!

  Finally, he had decided to use the truth and try to ride out the storm that followed. Probably, he would face a court-martial.

  Why did you not follow your orders, Commander?

  I didn’t want to follow them. I wanted to get the goddamned terrorist. Sir.

  Monahan was post-Vietnam. The closest he had ever come to battle was service aboard a backup frigate during the Grenada invasion.

  He had the training; he needed the action.

  Bullshit, again.

  The son of a bitch killed a lot of my colleagues. I wanted to wrap his head in a plastic bag and slowly fill it with water.

  All right. Let’s go with that.

  Monahan didn’t know all of McCory’s motives. There were probably several grains of truth behind his comment about his father. Then, too, McCory had had the SEAL training. Those people tended to be very good, very disciplined, and very loyal.

  All right. Let’s buy that, too.

  Monahan was at the commander’s desk, plotting on the Atlantic chart.

  McCory came up behind him. “Figure it out?”

  He pointed out his markings. “Extrapolating speeds from our two radar readings, I can’t tell much about the military ships. They seem to have changed courses and speeds from time to time. They’re kind of milling around.”

  “Like ourselves.”

  “And like Badr, if we’re thinking right. Over here, we’re showing the six commercial vessels we spotted this morning. They’re not all on the same course or track. With only two readings, we have to assume they’ve maintained their same tracks. If they have, I’ve got an approximate speed on each of them. Here, this one is making twelve knots. This one, sixteen knots. This one, eleven knots, and so on. The dotted lines project their future positions should they maintain course and speed.”

  “One of the six is our bogey,” McCory said.

  “I’d bet a steak dinner on it.”

  “They serve steak in the brig?”

  “With luck, somebody will sink us, just after we blow the fucker out of the water.”

  Twenty minutes later, the Tac-Three channel sounded off.

  “Night Light, Safari Echo.”

  Monahan was seated in the radar position, and instinctively, he picked the microphone off its clip.

  McCory, at the helm, looked over at him. “They might try to get a radio fix on our position. There are enough ships out there to triangulate us five times.”

  He sat quietly.

  “Night Light, if you’re monitoring, give me a click.”

  He looked at McCory, who shrugged.

  Monahan cli
cked the transmit button twice.

  “Night Light, my money’s on the Hormuz. She’s tracking north on seven-one, one-five.”

  Monahan clicked twice again.

  Within fifteen seconds, CINCLANT was broadcasting on the command net.

  “CINCLANT to all Safari elements. Both stealth boats are to be considered hostile. This is not a guessing game, and we will not take chances. By order of the president, through the Chief of Naval Operations, weapons systems are freed for Safari Charley, Safari Delta, and Safari Echo. Written confirmation to follow. Upon contact, Target One and Target Two are to be given one minute to capitulate. Failing that action, they may be fired upon.”

  “Who’s Target One?” McCory asked.

  “I believe we’ve been included,” Monahan told him. “You want to put this son of a bitch in gear?”

  “Careful how you talk about my girl.”

  McCory eased the throttles forward until the readout showed fifteen knots.

  *

  2110 hours, 36° 21’ North, 71° 15’ West

  “All right, Omar. One sweep only.”

  Heusseini activated the radar, then quickly shut it down.

  “It is the Hormuz, Colonel Badr. Six hundred meters dead ahead.”

  “Very well,” Badr said.

  The night-vision screen was blurry, coated with salty water splashed against it by the heavy waves.

  Several minutes passed before Badr made out the tall black shape rising from the sea. A few minutes later, he concluded from the silhouette that it was indeed the tanker.

  “All of you may secure your stations. Amin, open the cargo doors and prepare to attach the lifting cables. Allah has done well for us.”

  *

  1730 hours, 12Jan87, Fort Walton Beach

  McCory and his son sat in back of the marina office in the late afternoon, drinking Budweiser, and looking out at the new main dock. Fifty yards offshore, a barge was unloading sections of the new floating docks. Over on the left edge of the marina, the floating crane had shut down for the day. The boats had all been moved out of the area, and the crane was pulling old, rotten pilings.

  They were both in cut-off jeans and T-shirts, the shirts stained with the sweat of a hard day. McCory had some lines in his face, and his hair was mostly gray, but the damp shirt conformed to bulging muscles that hadn’t lost their tone. Kevin was a lot leaner but just as hard.