by Joe Buff
Satisfied, Jeffrey made a final quick pass through his control room, now a pandemonium of focused activity. Toolboxes lay open on the deck, and tools were wielded everywhere by practiced hands. People — standing, kneeling, crawling under things — talked back and forth incessantly. The compartment was a mess of dismantled equipment, half-assembled display consoles, and dangling fiber-optic cables and wires; other cables in all different colors crisscrossed along the deck. Red DO NOT OPERATE and DO NOT ROTATE tags hung by the dozens. Jeffrey had to practically climb over folks to get through the narrow aisles. The crewmen and the yard employees, toiling side by side as usual during dockyard stays, scrunched to give him space to move.
Everyone seemed pleased by Jeffrey’s attention and encouraging words, then quickly and intently went back to work. There was an underlying sense of collective urgency, that this effort was a contest in deadly earnest, not merely against a schedule but against a hated enemy. Relations with the contractors had been unusually smooth, and their labors during Challenger’s stay were virtually flawless on the first try. Almost nothing had to be redone, and complaints from the crew — whose lives depended on quality product — continued to be surprisingly rare. This was a pleasant change from what Jeffrey had gotten used to in peacetime, when periods spent in a shipyard could be rife with tension and arguments between dockworkers and ship’s force.
As Jeffrey got set to leave to catch a helo back to Norfolk, he told his executive officer to have the propulsion plant in operation by nightfall; this was part of impressing the unnamed VIP. But Jeffrey’s exec — XO — Lieutenant Commander Jackson Jefferson Bell, had been with him in every battle Challenger had fought. Bell sensed something was up, way beyond a VIP visit, but knew better than to ask unwelcome questions. He was two years younger than Jeffrey, and two inches taller, but had a less muscular build. He was married, and his wife had given birth to their first child, a boy, at the very start of the year. Bell was Jeffrey’s interface with the rest of the crew on morale and discipline, on training and readiness — and what Jeffrey had seen this morning confirmed how increasingly effective Bell was becoming. He constantly exuded positive vibes.
“Expect a capacity load of ship’s stores to start arriving any minute,” Jeffrey told him. “Food, spare parts, everything…. At some point you’ll have to stop all hot work. We’ll be loading our torpedoes, missiles, mines, the works, right here. We’ve been given special clearance.” Hot work meant welding and cutting — much too dangerous when explosive ordnance was being handled. “Juggle how you think best, XO, but every last item has to be properly stowed by the end of nautical twilight.”
“Tight timing, Captain, on top of everything else that needs getting done.” This wasn’t a complaint. Bell was probing to learn the real deal.
“It’s a full-scale preparedness exercise. We’re supposed to get a SEAL team too. At least they can help on moving heavy objects around. The consequences if any aspect of the exercise fails will be… well… you don’t even want to know.”
Bell stood up straighter. “Understood, sir. I’ll have the weapons-loading ramp rigged out, soon as we get the pathway clear of work obstructions. That’s a top priority.” The hydraulically retractable ramp ran from a forward hatch, through removable interior deck plates, down into the torpedo room. Food and parts were stowed through other hatches, farther aft, to avoid conflicting traffic paths both outside and inside the ship. “Challenger will be ready for anything by the time the stars come out. Depend on it, sir.” Bell emphasized the word “anything,” and stifled a knowing grin.
Jeffrey firmly gripped Bell’s upper arm. An approaching enlisted man saw this, and promptly turned around and used a ladder to the deck below. “The crew and every witness has to think it’s an exercise. If there’s a security leak, that’s the story we want leaking…. And the less time the Axis have to react, to get a U-boat close and try to hit us with cruise missiles while we’re coming down the river….”
The muscles in Bell’s face tightened. “Understood, Captain.” Supplies could be sneaked in through tunnels and covered truck ways from nearby underground dumps.
But the moment the enemy notices too much odd activity, the clock starts ticking on Challenger’s life.
Jeffrey shook Bell’s hand. “See you late afternoon.”
On the short helo hop back to Norfolk — above bridges snarled with Interstate traffic and rail yards bustling with rolling stock — one thing caught Jeffrey’s eye. On the jutting Virginia Peninsula that shielded the shipyard from the sea, a large group of heavy earth-moving vehicles, painted olive drab, were lined up in rows as if at a depot. He didn’t remember them being there this morning.
Chapter 6
Lieutenant Felix Estabo walked out of the hospital with a feeling of immense relief. The sun, nearing noon, glared hot, and the air along the Elizabeth River was humid — just the way Felix liked things. He’d grown up in Miami, the firstborn son of Brazilian immigrants, and Miami summers were baking and steamy. Pausing on the sidewalk twenty yards from the busy entrance, Felix took a few deep breaths to clear his lungs. The odor of wounds and antiseptic inside the tall, white building had been strong.
It still hurt, in his sides and around the left side of his collarbone, when he inhaled all the way. But Felix was very accustomed to intense and prolonged physical pain; it came with the exertions of his job as a U.S. Navy SEAL.
Telling lies was something he was much less used to. He’d been a good enough liar to convince the doctors that he had recovered from his broken ribs and bayonet wound and was fit for unrestricted duty. Felix patted the pocket of his crisply starched uniform shirt where he’d put the paperwork. His guilt at lying — about anything, to anyone — was more than offset by his excitement at being ready for action again.
Clearing his mind of the hospital visit was more difficult than clearing his lungs, because while here Felix had visited those of his men who were still confined to inpatient care. Virginia’s Naval Medical Center Portsmouth was a gruesome place to walk through, heavy with the sights and sounds of the human cost of war. Lost limbs in the orthopedic ward, serious head and spine injuries in the neurology department, the constant agony of treatments for third-degree burns, or of bone-marrow transplants for radiation sickness. Felix had forced a smile for each of his men, and offered encouraging words, but was totally drained in the process.
What do you say to a kid who was a Navy SEAL a month ago, and lost both legs at the knees? What do you tell another kid, still undergoing skin grafts, who’ll never want to be seen in public in short sleeves and shorts, let alone at the beach wearing nothing but swim trunks? And what do you do for a guy on life support, with grenade fragments through his skull and into his brain? How do you make it up to that guy’s parents, keeping a vigil for him to wake from a coma that’ll probably never end?
Felix turned and morosely looked back up at the building.
They’re in there because they took orders from me.
Felix tried not to notice the steady flow of civilian visitors into and out of the hospital. Those entering would try to be brave, the fathers especially. Family groups would leave, huddled together, dabbing their eyes, walking toward the covered short-term parking garage in a daze. Felix understood their torment, their helplessness, their rage.
Two months ago Felix had been a master chief in the SEALs, and was satisfied to remain so forever. U.S. Navy master chiefs, as a group, were the best social club in the world. They’d risen as far as an enlisted man could go, through years of hard work and tough hands-on experience, and even admirals paid attention when they had something important to say. Then Felix’s CO announced what to Felix seemed terrible news: a promotion to commissioned officer, with the rank of lieutenant. Felix tried to refuse — he loathed the make-or-break fitness reports and political crap that came with being an officer. His CO made it quite clear that a refusal would not be tolerated. With Felix’s proven field-craft skills and leadership ability, the prom
otion was thoroughly deserved. More to the point, it was necessary, because Felix had to be an officer to command an urgent mission….
The memories of that mission were still as painful as Felix’s wounds, inflicted by a German Kampfschwimmer commando who died with Felix’s dive knife deep in his guts. The memories haunted his dreams.
I got the Medal of Honor, doing what needed to be done, and I made my wife and kids and parents proud. I’d give it away in a heartbeat if it could bring my dead men back to life and restore my maimed teammates to health.
Felix had another knife scar, on his face, a jagged line from below his left eye down to the jaw — but that was from twenty years before, when he was a teenager and had gotten jumped by some punks from a gang in Miami. That old scar made Felix stand out in a crowd, and made him look much meaner than he was. Felix could be mean, but only when forced to be or provoked; he thought of himself as the archetypal happy warrior. He loved being in the SEAL teams almost as much as he loved his family or God.
“Excuse please,” someone said to Felix in a thick accent he didn’t recognize. “Is this for shuttle van to navy base?”
Felix nodded. He too was waiting for the van. The Norfolk base was eastward, across the river from the hospital. Felix usually lived and worked at the separate amphibious warfare base, but had business now at the main navy base, where big ships including cruisers and supercarriers tied up, some nuclear subs were home-ported — and major command headquarters was located.
The foreigner, in casual civilian clothes, was Felix’s height, five feet five, not tall. Unlike Felix, built like a tree trunk, muscled as heavily as ever thanks to physical therapy plus hard daily workouts he did on his own, this stranger was skinny, almost malnourished looking. He sported a black mustache so bushy it looked as if it needed a serious trim.
The man opened his mouth to start to say something.
Felix didn’t feel like idle chitchat. He turned halfway away and tried to scowl.
The white navy shuttle van pulled up, and Felix boarded. He flashed his ID to the marine who was riding shotgun. Felix worked his way to the back of the van and sat in the far corner of the last bench seat.
The foreigner was the only other passenger, and he followed Felix and sat right next to him. The van drove away from the curb.
“I know your face,” the other man said. “I bet you not know mine.” The man caressed his own chin. “A nice new face, no?”
Felix sighed distractedly; the guy was talking nonsense. This comes with the publicity of being a Medal of Honor winner who didn’t get the thing posthumously. “Please don’t ask for my autograph. Not today. Please.” But then his radar went off. Who the hell is this person?
The other man laughed, and his laugh was infectious. He winked at Felix. “If you knew things what I do, you want my autograph too, maybe.”
The man reached for his wallet and showed Felix a smart ID card, bright blue with a gold stripe down the middle. It showed the man’s recent digital photo, not as a still but a video that panned from full face to profile and back again while Felix watched. This ID verified its owner as a U.S. government employee with a very high security clearance. The man’s name was listed as “XXXX” and the card gave little further information — at least without being plugged into a computer reader.
Very few people have such cards. Only very special people.
“You can call me Mr. Smith, or Mr. Brown, or Johnny Appleseed.”
“Johnny Appleseed doesn’t fit you, somehow.” Felix was already engaged by the man’s irresistible charm. He seemed only slightly older than Felix, who was in his mid-thirties, but he moved and talked with an assurance that normally came with many more years.
The man leaned close to Felix. “I think, you, me, we go to same meeting now.”
Felix was suddenly cautious again. He didn’t comment.
“I know another name. Friend of yours. He’s a good friend of mine also.” The man leaned close and whispered in Felix’s ear, “Jeffrey Fuller.” Then he started rolling up his shirtsleeve. Felix expected him to show off a tattoo.
Felix was unimpressed, and impatient. Everyone knew the name Jeffrey Fuller. And it was an occupational hazard, being a Navy SEAL, to be accosted by people who wanted to either adore or impress you, or buy you a beer, or sometimes — foolishly — pick a fight. The gold officer’s Special Warfare qualification badge on Felix’s khaki uniform, centered above his spread of colorful ribbons, was enough to guarantee that much.
Then Felix saw the man’s bare arm. There was no tattoo, but the scars from shrapnel and a bullet wound. They looked about six months old, judging by the state of healing.
The man stared Felix right in the eyes, and suddenly the stranger’s eyes were hard, cold, killer’s eyes. “Our mutual friend will be at the meeting. I got these standing next to him. Other good men died.” The man rolled down his sleeve. For a moment his gaze was a thousand miles away.
Felix was able to place the man’s accent now. He was a Turk, definitely, yet his speech bore hints of a German upbringing too. I don’t like where this is going.
The Turk whispered in Felix’s ear again, and used a hand to mask his mouth. “We all three go on big trip soon. You’ll enjoy.” The man gave Felix a puckish grin, and his eyes were softer now. Then he flashed that harder look, as if flaunting the fact that he could turn it on and off at will.
Ilse Reebeck was pissed off. She sat in a small, windowless meeting room, at Headquarters, Commander, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, where she served now on Admiral Hodgkiss’s staff as a combat oceanographer. She wore her workaday blue uniform as a lieutenant in the Free South African Navy, including the ribbon for her Legion of Merit, awarded by her country’s grateful government-in-exile.
Across the little table from Ilse, near enough to be in her face, sat a pair of male FBI agents. They called themselves special agents. The only things special Ilse saw about these two was their pushy arrogance, and their eagerness to invade her privacy. Ilse had gotten her Ph.D. from Scripps, outside San Diego; she knew a lot about American culture and conversational idiom.
One of the men leaned forward, even closer. “When did you first start having sex with Jeffrey Fuller?”
Ilse was outraged. “That’s none of your damned business.”
The FBI agent didn’t blink. His partner sat there, silent. In their dark gray business suits, clean shaven, tall and fit and earnest, the pair of them might as well have come from a cookie cutter. Close my eyes, Ilse thought, and switch the two, and I don’t think I’d notice a difference. Except, the silent one keeps fiddling with his suit jacket, and he’s too careful about how he sits. He’s probably the one wearing the recording device.
“Commander Fuller was your commanding officer at the time.”
“Only nominally,” Ilse shot back. “He was acting captain, and I was a civilian then.”
“So you do admit to having sex.”
The agents had asked for this interview, claiming it involved routine inquiries on something in which Ilse was only tangentially involved. She’d told them she’d be glad to help. They’d said they’d explain more in person. Obviously, they’d lied.
“This is absurd. I’m not answering any more personal questions.”
The agent who’d been doing the talking was undeterred. He reached into his briefcase and triumphantly pulled out a sheaf of papers.
“We have it all logged.”
“You have what logged?”
“Phone messages left for you at your quarters from numbers that can’t be traced. ‘Don’t overfeed your cat. He’s getting pudgy.’ We know you don’t have a cat…. Here’s another. ‘The full moon looks beautiful tonight,’ on a night when the moon was just a thin crescent.”
“I thought they were wrong numbers or something. Everybody gets strange things on their voice mail now and then.”
“Who’s your control? When did they turn you?”
“I have no idea who left those messages! I ignored
them!”
“Ignored them? Shouldn’t you have reported them?”
“I work twenty-hour days, sometimes seven days a week. When I get back to my quarters, I’m zonked. Voice mails that don’t make sense I delete. Come on.”
“How did they first recruit you? Was it with money?”
“Look. All phone usage is monitored by base security anyway. Artificial intelligence, expert-systems programs, I don’t know. Why should I report what’s being screened and archived already? That’s where your so-called log comes from, isn’t it?”
“Hiding in plain sight. Plausibly deniable. Clever, but we’re on to it.”
“Jesus.”
The agent pulled photos out of his briefcase. They were pictures of Ilse, shopping, running errands, as other people in the crowd of a sidewalk or mall bumped into her. “Explain these. What did you hand off to them?”
“And you’ve been following me?” Strange men had been brushing past Ilse, or walking into her, more than seemed normal recently. She’d sometimes wondered if they were pickpockets, or gropers.
“Why do you buy things off base when the exchange and commissary have everything at better prices?”
“I like brands they don’t carry here, okay? I like to get away from the job now and then. So what?”
The special agent pointed to the message log and the photos. “Who taught you tradecraft? How did they get you the comm plan?”
“You can’t possibly be serious…. Wait, are you two trainees? Using me for practice in some kind of exercise? You think you can get away with it because I’m a foreign citizen? Get lost. Go back to Quantico. I’m much too busy for this. And I intend to file a complaint.”
“Oh no, young lady. This is not an exercise.”
The two men stood abruptly, as if on cue. “Subject remains evasive and hostile. Interview terminated at eleven forty-three A.M.” The FBI agent spoke as if to the air. Getting it on the recording. Not even making a pretense now. The pair of them gathered the papers and photos and walked out the door.
