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The Last Line

Page 28

by Anthony Shaffer


  He increased the magnification on the digital periscope camera, zooming in a bit closer on the young woman who was spreading a blanket out on the beach. The image was blurred and wavering, but the watching crew was certainly enjoying the show.

  Basargin, in fact, was not an officer in the Russian Federation Navy—not any longer. Money for that organization was extremely tight, had been tight since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2009, Basargin had been forced to retire—“beached,” as his British colleagues so quaintly put it. Three years later, some former comrades of his had approached him with an offer. They were working with the mafiya—one of the dozens of criminal networks that were about all in the rodina, the motherland, that worked any longer. They’d managed to secure a diesel submarine, one of the older Project 877 Paltus boats, and they were going to rent it to certain clients in Mexico for one year. A crew of former submariners with 877 experience had already been gathered in St. Petersburg. All they needed was a captain.

  The operation was fairly straightforward: to take the boat to a designated point in northern Belize, and there take on board two men and a small cargo. He was then shown two locations on a chart where those men and their sealed crates would be deposited—at night and on deserted beaches.

  The journey would be made slowly and submerged, using the snorkel all the way. Secrecy was absolutely vital. Basargin knew that drugs were involved. What else could it be? It didn’t matter. The Americans, hungry for an inexhaustible supply of drugs, were what kept the drug lords in business—and there would always be people willing to move those drugs, for a percentage of the fabulous profits involved.

  The two clients stood silently a few meters away, watching the monitor. The Arab, Hamadi, watched the display of skin with unbridled disgust, the Mexican with dull disinterest.

  “We will go in tonight, as planned,” Basargin told them. “You will be able to watch for your signal on that monitor.”

  “I no mind tell you,” Hamadi said in heavily accented Russian, “I happy to go in shore. You submarine ship … is crowded, and is stink.”

  Basargin smiled at the Palestinian. “Crowding and the stink one can get used to,” he said. “For most of us, the problem is boredom.”

  A sudden burst of cheering sounded through the control room, and Basargin looked up, then smiled. The young woman had just removed the top of her swimsuit.

  He let them watch a moment more, then gave an order. “Conn! Bring us around and take us away from the beach. Dead slow! If you kiss the bottom I will fine you your wages for the voyage!”

  Despite the view, he sought the safety of deep water.

  They would return after dark, when Bethany Beach was deserted.

  CAFETERIA

  CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

  MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

  1532 HOURS, EDT

  Teller collapsed into a seat at a table in one of the Langley headquarters cafeterias. Jackie Dominique was there waiting for them, a tray in front of her.

  “God,” she said, looking at his face. “That bad?”

  “Worse. Why do you ask?”

  “They’ve completely reversed course,” Procario said, joining them. “One-eighty. There are no nukes in Mexico.”

  Teller gestured hypnotically with his hand. “These are not the nukes you’re looking for. Move along.”

  “Shit.”

  “How about you?”

  “They questioned me about James’s murder,” she said, “and about my conversations with de la Cruz. Oh, and they asked me a lot of questions about you two.”

  “Yeah,” Procario said. “They’re scared we’re going to tell someone that the nukes are already on the way to Washington.”

  “But why?” Dominique asked. “Did someone get to them?”

  “I don’t think so,” Teller said. “This smells more like a major preemptive ass-covering.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think they’re having trouble finding that Russian sub,” Procario said. “A lot of trouble. There’s a very, very good chance that those bombs are going to make it into a couple of our cities.”

  “Okay…” She sounded uncertain.

  “What happens,” Teller said, “if they tell everyone, the president, the Pentagon, Congress, that a couple of suitcase nukes are on the way—and then the nukes go off?”

  “I guess,” she said slowly, “I guess people would wonder why they didn’t get the information sooner … or why they didn’t do something to stop them.”

  “Bingo,” Teller said. “Whoever is now in charge of what’s left of the government begins looking for scapegoats. You knew those nukes were coming, and you did nothing?”

  “And,” Procario added, “if they warn everyone and nothing happens, because it is a false alarm, the entire U.S. intelligence community looks like fucked-up shit.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

  “Right,” Procario said. “It’s budget-cutting time in northern Virginia—and guess who’s been crying wolf?”

  “And,” Teller went on, “if they tell no one and the nukes go off … well, damn! I’m sorry! Our very best intelligence said there was no threat! But, you know, if you increase our budget a couple of hundred percent, we’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again next time.”

  Dominique looked shocked. “Chris, that has got to be the most goddamn cynical thing I’ve ever heard!”

  “This is D.C. It’s a cynical town.” He shrugged. “It’s happened before.”

  “What’s happened before?”

  “Major, credible warnings getting ignored by the people in charge. Pearl Harbor. Tet. The World Trade Center—twice. In 1993 and on 9/11.”

  “Those didn’t involve nukes!”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He looked at Procario. “Hey, Frank. Whatcha want to bet they’ve already done statistical studies on the results of a five-kiloton detonation on the Washington Mall and decided it’s survivable?”

  “Could be. It wouldn’t touch Langley, that’s certain. Not five kilotons.” Procario frowned. “I do wonder, though, if the Mall is going to be ground zero.”

  “Halfway between the White House and the Capitol Building.” Teller shrugged. “Seems logical to me.”

  “There are other targets in this town, Chris. And five kilotons? It would wreck the Smithsonian buildings, yeah, and the Capitol Dome is so exposed it would be pretty badly damaged. But the D.C. Trade Center and the Washington Aquarium, the IRS Building, those would probably shield the White House pretty well.”

  “So where do you think the nuke is headed?” Dominique asked.

  “I’m wondering about the Pentagon,” Procario said.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Doesn’t really matter, I suppose,” Teller said. “Either way, a lot of people are going to die.”

  Dominique reached over and put a hand over his. “You’re not giving up, are you, Chris?”

  “No. No, I’m not. But I do think we need to shift tactics…”

  Chapter Nineteen

  USS PITTSBURGH

  42 NAUTICAL MILES SOUTHEAST OF ATLANTIC CITY

  1745 HOURS, EDT

  21 APRIL

  Captain James Franklin Garret stood behind Sonarman First Class Ted Laughlin, studying the multicolored display popularly called “the waterfall,” a cascade of colored lines indicating intensity and bearing presented on a 42-inch plasma LED screen above the sonar workstation. There were a lot of targets out there. This stretch of the U.S. eastern seaboard was among the busiest sea lanes in the world, and the Pittsburgh’s underwater ears were picking up the screws and wake wash of some hundreds of vessels, from speedboats and pleasure craft to a monster oil tanker slowly emerging from Delaware Bay. The sounds picked up by Pittsburgh’s passive sonar system were also being played from an overhead speaker, a muted and unintelligible cacophony of growls, thumps, whirs, and chugging noises.

  “If he’s out there, sir,” Laughlin said, his right hand ra
ised to his headphones, “he’s masked by all of that background crap.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Garret said. “The bastards do know how to hide.”

  The Flight II Los Angeles class attack submarine, SSN-720, carried a number of sophisticated sonar systems: an AN/BQG-5D wide-aperture flank array, an Ametek BQS-15 close-range high-frequency active sonar, a BQQ-5D low-frequency passive and active attack sonar, SADS-TG active detection sonar, and, now trailing far astern of the slowly moving vessel, a TB-29 thin-line passive towed array. The system was tied into the vessel’s BSY-1 integrated sonar/weapons control suite, known affectionately by those aboard as “Busy-one.”

  A half billion dollars or so of Buck Rogers high-tech packed into the Burgh’s 362-foot hull, and they couldn’t locate a single diesel-electric boat that wasn’t that far removed from its ancestors, the U-boats and Gato class subs of sixty years ago.

  “Can I assist with maneuver?” Garret asked. The Pittsburgh currently was cruising southeast, her towed array positioned to pick up noise radiating from the southwest—down the coast of the Delmarva Peninsula. By turning to a different heading, Garret could fine-tune the sensitivity of the directional sensor suites.

  “I don’t think so, sir,” Laughlin replied. “If you want to nail this guy, you’re going to have to go active.”

  Garret had been considering just that for hours now. It went against the grain; sub drivers were thoroughly conditioned to maintain silence—to listen rather than to actually reach out and tag an unseen opponent. Passive sonar simply listened, picking up the ambient sounds around the submarine. The Burgh’s onboard sonic library of collected sounds could actually identify an individual vessel by the distinguishing characteristics of its screw and engine noises, and the joke was that a good sonar operator—and Laughlin was one of the best—could eavesdrop on the conversations in an enemy sub’s wardroom. The disadvantage was that it was not discriminatory; you heard everything out there that might be making noise, including whales, shrimp, a bewildering zoo of talkative fish, and the thunder of waves breaking on the shore.

  Active sonar, on the other hand, sent out a powerful burst of sound, precisely like the echolocation chirp of a bat or a dolphin, and listened for the reflection back from the target. Active sonar gave a precise bearing and range to a target but had two disadvantages. Their direct range was limited to about 20,000 yards—roughly eleven to twelve miles—and sending out an intense pulse of sound was like sending up fireworks, a declaration to everyone in the water who might be listening, saying “here I am.”

  Garret had received his current orders from COMSUBLANT that morning, and he still wasn’t certain whether this was an unscheduled preparedness exercise or the real deal. A Russian Kilo was reported somewhere along the East Coast between Cape Lookout and Cape May and inside the 200-nautical-mile line. Three L.A. boats had been in position to intercept; Pittsburgh was the most northerly of the three, returning to Norfolk from a long deployment in the Med.

  If this was for real, it was a potential nightmare scenario: Kilos were damned quiet—holes in the water, as the sonar team called them—and the U.S. Navy was concerned that someone might one day use one to slip a nuclear weapon into a U.S. port. For this reason, the scenario was practiced frequently, usually with other American submarines broadcasting Kilo noises from their library databases.

  His orders, though, had specified a Kilo possibly operating in the service of either Mexico or Colombia, which meant a Bigfoot—a sub hired by one of the drug cartels to smuggle their damned merchandise into the United States.

  The implication was almost insulting—using navy assets for drug intercepts. That was the Coast Guard’s job, after all. Garret was a thorough-going professional, though, and that meant he followed orders. Drug boat or not, he was going to nail this bastard.

  He picked up an intercom handset. “Conn, this is the captain.”

  “Conn, aye.”

  “Come to new heading, two-zero-zero, maintain speed ten knots.”

  “Come to new heading, two-zero-zero, maintain speed ten knots, aye, aye, Captain.”

  “Okay, Laugh,” he said. “We’re going to go active. How are we fixed for CZs?”

  KILO CLASS SUBMARINE

  35 NAUTICAL MILES OFF BETHANY BEACH

  DELAWARE

  1828 HOURS, EDT

  “All stop,” Captain Second Rank Basargin said. “Maintain silence throughout the boat.”

  The submarine drifted gently to a halt thirty-five meters beneath the surface in water sixty meters deep. They should be safe enough here, at least for the time being. Sunset was at 1943 local time—about another hour and a quarter. Two hours after that should see darkness enough to again approach the shore, and to surface when they saw the signal; it would take three hours, traveling at twelve knots, to return to Bethany Beach. They might have to wait a few hours more, however, if a periscope scan of the shoreline showed people enjoying the beach at night.

  So 2200 hours at the earliest, and midnight would be better. Putting a raft into the water and waiting for its return might be an operation of two hours or so. Dawn at this latitude was at 0616 hours; they would need to be well clear of the shore by 0430.

  Plenty of time.

  He picked up a hand mike. “Sonar, Captain. Report.”

  “Normal traffic, Captain,” the sonar officer’s voice came back. “Nothing closer than fifteen thousand meters.”

  “Very well.” He looked at the two passengers, who were hovering nearby, clearly anxious. “And now,” he told them, “we wait.”

  CHESAPEAKE BAY BRIDGE

  KENT ISLAND, MARYLAND

  1815 HOURS, EDT

  Officially it was the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge, but everyone knew it simply as the Bay Bridge, a double, four-mile span crossing the Chesapeake Bay between Annapolis and Kent Island, tucked away behind the west side of the Delmarva Peninsula. Teller was at the wheel as they paid the four-dollar toll, then accelerated smoothly onto the southern lane, steadily climbing until they were soaring out over the waters of the bay 186 feet below. The sun had just set behind them in a blaze of yellows and scarlets, and Teller switched on his headlights.

  It had taken them over two hours to get clear of the Washington Beltway, then thirty miles more on Route 50 to Annapolis. They still had a long stretch of highway in front of them, another sixty miles or so to Ocean City.

  “I never got to ask you, Jackie,” Teller said, “just what Maria told you on the flight this morning that convinced you she was telling the truth.”

  “Our ‘girl talk’?”

  “Frank didn’t mean anything bad by that.”

  “Yeah, and it really pissed me off,” she told him. “It was condescending and sexist.”

  “I think,” Teller replied slowly, “that often women will tell women things that they would never tell a man. Doesn’t that constitute ‘girl talk’?”

  “Only when it’s saturated in testosterone, Chris.” She sighed. “But … yeah. Women do talk. And she told me that our friend Escalante liked to beat her up. She’d been looking for a chance to get out—but Escalante had money and she didn’t. She was trapped.”

  “You trusted her because of that?”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “Oh? How was that?”

  “I was married ten years ago—”

  “I didn’t know that!”

  She shrugged. “Never came up. Hey, I didn’t tell you everything.”

  “Obviously not.” Teller smiled at her.

  “I was a kid, okay? Stupid and in love, which is another way of saying stupid. I was married for one year, five days, and ten hours—but, hey, who’s counting? When the VCR bounced off the wall next to my head, I decided it was time to cut my losses and get out.”

  “Sounds like a good choice.”

  “It was. And that’s how I know Maria was telling the truth. She was scared and she was stuck.”

  “Until we came along.”
/>   “Until we came along. She saw an opportunity to get out of Iztacalpa and off to el norte.”

  “Except that if the Agency decides they don’t need information from her, they’ll send her packing straight back to Mexico.”

  “I know. They’ll kill her. It stinks.”

  “It’ll stink more if those nukes get to where they’re going.” He concentrated on the driving for a moment, as the support girders flashed past with a monotonous rhythm. “You’re really convinced she was telling the truth?”

  “I’d stake my career on it.”

  “Well, we’re both staking our careers on it, then.”

  “You think we’ll find them in Ocean City?”

  “One of them, anyway. I figure if we do prove someone’s trying to off-load a nuke in Delaware, they’ll be a bit hotter to find that sub before it reaches New York.” He smiled at her. “Maybe they’ll even let Maria stay in America.”

  “Maybe they’ll let me stay with the Agency.”

  “Is that important to you?”

  She was silent for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Not anymore. I thought I was doing good, once. Helping to save the world. Saving the American way of life. But lately it’s all been politics and game after game of cover-your-ass. There are times…”

  “What?”

  “There are times I want out as badly as Maria wanted out of that relationship with Escalante.”

  “I know what you mean. They tell you to go save the world. Then they say you have to do it with your hands tied behind your back.”

  “So how are you going to find the Delaware nuke?”

  “Cellmap’s going to help us.”

  “Your virus has spread to the Delmarva Peninsula?”

  “There are some targets, yeah. The big concentrations are around the big cities, of course, especially D.C., Philly, and Baltimore—but there are a few in Dover, a few in Salisbury and Ocean City. I figure we’re seeing the end branches of the supply network.”

  “Low-end dealers?”

  “Right. Most of them, anyway, dealers and some street gangs that deal. But somewhere out here, there are some people waiting to take delivery on a suitcase nuke and transport it into Washington.”

 

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