Luke Stone 04 - Oppose Any Foe

by Jack Mars

  “Beautiful. Nice work. I owe you some drinks for that.”

  “Twist my arm,” Swann said.

  “Can you give me Mika?”

  “Sure. She’s right here.”

  There was a pause as Swann passed the phone.

  Mika’s small voice came on the line. “Luke?”

  “Mika, hi. Look, I’ve got some intel I need you to track down. We talked to the prisoner, and he told us a couple of things. This is sensitive stuff, so be careful who you talk to, and make sure Swann has you on an encrypted network, okay?”

  “Sure, Luke.”

  “Okay, here goes. The prisoner claims that a Colonel Hassan Musharaff was behind the infiltration of the base. He said there was an extensive tunnel dug from the city to the base, and Musharaff not only allowed it to happen, but supervised it and covered it up. Get me everything you can on Musharaff. We’re going to want to bring him in for questioning, but it may be difficult because he’s apparently a guy with protection at high levels. See if you can find out where he is at this moment, and anything that might tie him to the coup attempt. We’re going to need some leverage to take him into custody. The Turks will not want to give him to us.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Got it. What else?”

  “Just this,” Luke said. “Something a little less clear. The prisoner said that a jihadi known as the Phantom, and in some circles by the first name Jamal, was involved in the theft. He either organized it or was actually onsite when it happened, or both. Apparently he’s a secretive guy, and he operates in deep cover and under various aliases. I need to know more about him—country of origin, age, combat or terrorism experience, who he’s working for. Have we, or has anybody else, had him in custody before?”

  “Got it, Luke.”

  “Okay. Be as thorough as you can, but keep in mind I need that stuff today.”

  After Luke hung up, he looked at Ed and Bill.

  “Swann’s got some satellite imagery. He thinks the nukes may have gone by boat to Syria, a port town called Jalmeh.”

  Bill nodded. “I’ve been there.”

  “How is it?”

  “A rat hole, filled with scum and villainy. But the weather’s not bad this time of year. I think you’ll like it.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  8:05 a.m.

  The Situation Room

  The White House, Washington, DC

  The room was out of control.

  Susan walked in carrying her coffee, Kat Lopez with her step for step, two Secret Service agents—a woman and a man—one step behind them. Susan had barely slept. The heavy paper cup in her hand was her third dose of java in the past half an hour. Kat looked about as bad as Susan felt—Susan had given her the Lincoln Bedroom to sleep in, and Kat had sent a car to her home for clothes and personal items.

  “Order!” Kurt Kimball shouted as Susan came in. “Everybody, let’s come to order!” He clapped his big hands. Even that didn’t impose quiet right away. The sounds of frantic conversations trailed off instead.

  “Order,” Kurt said, calmer now. “The President is here.”

  “What do you have for me, Kurt?” Susan said. She slid into her customary chair. The room was packed. Young aides who were men all looked like they needed shaves. The place was starting to smell like everyone needed a shower. Eyes were tired, and some of them were nearly closed.

  “We’ve got eight stolen nuclear warheads still at large. Luke Stone and his people have been in Adana for a couple of hours. Apparently they hit the ground running.”

  “Why don’t you tell her who’s with him?” Haley Lawrence said.

  Susan looked quizzically at Kurt. “Who’s with him?”

  Kurt shrugged and sighed heavily. His body language suggested this was about what he’d expect. “Stone contacted a former CIA agent living in Greece. His name is Bill Cronin, and he was a Middle East operative for close to thirty years until his retirement a few years ago.”

  “He was drummed out of the Agency,” a square-jawed, crew-cutted man in a dress green uniform to Susan’s right said. “He didn’t retire.”

  Susan glanced at the man.

  “Madam President, I’m General Frank Loomis of the United States Army. I’m a liaison to the Pentagon from JSOC—the Joint Special Operations Command. The Secretary of Defense asked me to attend this meeting.”

  “Welcome, General.”

  “Thank you. I know Big Daddy Cronin. He worked with our people in the Middle East many times. Much of that history is Top Secret, but I can say that Cronin and Luke Stone worked together in Iraq when Stone was with Delta Force. Cronin was a good agent. The problem is that over time, he became a little… what? Unhinged, shall we say? That environment will do it to anyone. His methods would make your Luke Stone look like a choirboy.”

  “In what way?”

  “He initiated and oversaw the systematic torture of prisoners at various sites in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Egypt.”

  “And Luke contacted him?”

  Kurt sighed. “Stone did more than contact him. He sent a small jet to the Greek Islands to pick him up. Agent Stone interrogated a prisoner at Incirlik Air Base sometime in the past hour, and despite not having any official reason or clearance to be involved, Bill Cronin participated in that interview.”

  Susan was careful to make no sign. She had sent Luke over there, and this was what you got when you sent Luke Stone somewhere. Unpleasant surprises tended to pop up. Was it worth the trade-offs? So far, it certainly had been, and in spades.

  “Is anyone alleging torture?” Susan said.

  “No one is alleging anything,” Kurt said. “Stone has apparently declined to release the prisoner back to the Turks. And he has with him a man who has no official position with the United States government, and who appears to have been relieved of his duties because of possible human rights violations.”

  “Big Daddy Cronin is a burnt-out case,” General Loomis said. “He’s seen too much, and he’s done too much. He has no business being in a war zone, or in a sensitive situation of any kind. He should probably be in a mental hospital.”

  “That’s just dandy,” Susan said. She found that she wanted to move past this Big Daddy person. Stone brought him on board—the same Luke Stone who had been right again and again and again. Luke didn’t do what the data suggested—he went on instinct, like a wild animal. So far it had worked.

  “What else?” she said. “Let’s leave personnel issues aside until we can talk with Agent Stone. What about the warheads?”

  Kurt nodded. “Amy, can you put up those satellite stills from Mark Swann?”

  On the screen, an overhead zoom image of an old, middle-sized freighter appeared. It was followed by several more. In the first image, the ship was at anchor in port, then there were a few of it at sea, and then once again at anchor, this time in a different port. It was docked at what looked like a long concrete wharf, lined with low buildings with green peaked roofs. A couple more images materialized on the screen, these of what might be the same ship, except from a ground-based perspective. The ship might have been red once, now it was a sort of decrepit orange—the color of rusted steel. It had Greek lettering along the bow.

  “Agent Stone’s systems person is a data analyst from the NSA named Mark Swann. He has traced the trucks to the Turkish port of Karatas. He believes they went from there to the Syrian port of Jalmeh. He sent us these images, of a ship called the Helena. He believes, but not with one hundred percent uncertainty, that the stolen warheads were driven onto this ship. The ship made the crossing from Turkey to Syria early this morning. The warheads, if they ever were aboard that ship, may still be.”

  “Can we send someone to intercept them?” Susan said.

  “Difficult,” Kurt said. “That port is held by ISIS. The Syrians and the Russians are trying to dislodge them, but they’re dug in.

  “If you look closely at the port images, you can see there are between a dozen and twenty men on the docks, likely guard
ing the ship. Those images are only about thirty minutes old. The city, and the port, are surrounded by Syrian government troops, and are under constant bombardment by Russian jets and helicopter gunships. It’s basically a siege situation, with thousands of non-combatants caught in the crossfire. Between the ISIS fighters, the Assad troops, and the Russians, that dock is a hard place to reach.”

  “The ship made it in there,” Susan said.

  Kurt shrugged. “The ship is flying three flags—a white surrender flag, as well as the flags of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent. It came in camouflaged as an aide ship.”

  “Madame President,” General Loomis said. “We have teams of special operatives, highly trained, well-rested, and fit for service, waiting right now at our embassy in Baghdad. Within an hour, we could present you a plan for getting them on the ground near those docks. The plan would include air cover and possible softening bombardment of the vicinity.”

  “The Russians are already bombarding the vicinity,” Haley Lawrence said. “They control the skies above that port. We’d need to communicate our intentions to them in order to—”

  Kurt waved a hand. “I don’t think we can talk to the Russians about this. Not right away. These are American nukes. We need to try to get them back before we say a word to anyone. The Turks let them get stolen, but we are hardly blameless. I don’t think we want to advertise that we’ve lost control of our own nuclear weapons.”

  “Eight, one-hundred-fifty-kiloton warheads,” Haley Lawrence was saying. “It doesn’t bear thinking about. Maybe we should tell the Russians, and have them sink that ship right at the dock. That seems like the—”

  “Could we just bomb it?” Susan said.

  “Dicey,” Kurt said. “There’s the threat of contamination, for one. A bigger issue is that if we bomb it, that doesn’t tell us if the warheads are on board. We’re still at square one.”

  “Within four or five hours from now, we could have the drop teams onsite,” the general said, cutting Haley off. “All we have to do is say go. At the very least, they’d be able to determine what’s on board that ship, and possibly even take possession of the warheads if they—”

  “Kurt,” one the young aides said, cutting off the general in turn. “We’ve got Agent Stone patching through right now from Adana.”

  Kurt gestured with his head at the strange black speakerphone device in the center of the conference table—it had five or six protuberances that stabilized it. Staffers invariably called it the octopus. “Put him on the speaker system.”

  A long moment passed. Susan sipped her coffee. She had been living here for less than twenty-four hours, and she’d hardly had a moment to think. Perhaps that was for the best. She didn’t like it here. She wanted her house back.

  Stone’s disembodied voice came from the octopus. “Hello?”

  “Agent Stone?” Kurt Kimball said.

  “Yes. Kurt? Is Susan there with you?”

  “I’m here, Luke,” Susan said. “We’re all here, but I’m going to save the introductions for another time. What have you got for us?”

  “Swann sent you the images of the ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what we’ve got. Also, hearsay from a prisoner that we’re trying to get some verification on. This very much looks like an inside job, which is no surprise, but it also appears to go as high as at least one officer involved in the command of the base. I don’t want to divulge too much at this moment, and I want to caution you that we don’t have confirmation.”

  People around the room were silent. “Are you saying that a rogue element in the Turkish military—”

  “I’m not saying anything yet,” Stone said. “Maybe your people can figure that out. Another person we’re interested in, and I have one of my people looking into it right now, is someone known alternately as Jamal or the Phantom. He might have been here when the nukes were stolen, and that’s all we know. I’ve never heard of him, and I’ve been around the block a few times. It wouldn’t hurt to get a bunch more eyes looking for this person.”

  “Agent Stone,” Kurt said, “have you been to the Turkish-controlled side of the base?”

  “Negative. They’ve got it locked down. The only reason we even have the prisoner is because an American military police patrol caught him on our side of the field. Apparently, the Turks were looking for him, beat him pretty bad, and were about to execute him when our guys got there. What does that tell you?”

  “They didn’t want him talking to anyone?”

  “Bingo,” Stone said.

  “So what are your plans?” Kurt Kimball said.

  “Plans? Well, first I’m going to take a little power nap, and then we’re going to Syria. It’s two p.m. here, and we should have sunset just before five p.m. It’s about ninety miles from here to Jalmeh. By helicopter, we can be there in forty-five minutes. We’ll go in under cover of darkness, flying low over the water, lights out. I’ve already got a couple of Night Stalker chopper pilots willing to—”

  “Stone, General Frank Loomis of JSOC.”

  There was a pause. “Yes, hi, General, I’m familiar with your work.”

  “Son, do you have Bill Cronin with you?”

  “Uh… yes, General. I do.”

  “Do you intend to bring him with you to Syria?”

  “I hope not, General. He’s a little out of shape.”

  There was a burst of laughter in the room behind Stone. Susan bit the inside of her mouth so as not to smile. Cronin must be there, listening to this call.

  “That was my little joke. Bill has a lot of experience in-country, General. He’s fluent in Arabic. He’s been to Jalmeh. He doesn’t look like much these days, but I think he’ll be invaluable on the ground.”

  “Stone,” Loomis said, “under whose authorization are you operating?”

  “The President of the United States, sir. That’s why I’m in Turkey right now, and that’s why I’m calling. To ask my boss for the green light. I believe I have the best team for the job. We can be in and out of there very quickly. If the nukes are on that boat, we’ll scuttle it. If they’re not on the boat, we’ll know they haven’t left Turkey.”

  “And the war criminal Bill Cronin?” the General said. “He’s on your team?”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  There was another long pause over the line. Susan watched General Loomis. He was clearly concerned about the man that Luke had brought on. He was also clearly interested in having his own team go in there. His motivation could be as simple as showing his stuff, and making this visit to the Situation Room a regular thing. Or it could be something deeper.

  “Madame President?” Stone said. “Obviously this is your decision. What do you want us to do?”

  Rare for Stone to ask for permission. If she gave him the green light, whatever happened was no longer his fault. It was hers. You break it, you own it.

  So be it.

  “You’ve got eight hours, Agent Stone. I want regular updates on your whereabouts and activities. And if you find the warheads, I want to know that as soon as it’s safe for you to tell me.”

  “Very fair,” Stone said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  * * *

  “Susan, we’ve got a problem.”

  Susan had noticed Kat Lopez slip out of the meeting when her phone rang. Now they were walking back through the West Wing to the Oval Office, their shoes clacking on the marble floor. Two big Secret Service men trailed them.

  “Tell me inside.”

  Once in the Oval Office, Susan shut the door. She didn’t need any more problems, but of course there was no end to them. She looked at Kat up and down. Long black hair, pretty face, dark almond eyes, and a tall, voluptuous body hidden inside a blue business suit. Her eyes were tired, though, and were starting to show crow’s feet at the edges. Susan also had a hunch she colored her hair to keep it that dark. Kat was young, but getting old before her time.

  “Let me have it.”

  Kat shook h
er head. “The news is out.”

  “What news?”

  “The stolen nuclear warheads.”

  “Tell me you’re joking,” Susan said.

  “I wish I could,” Kat said. “A Turkish-language tabloid, a scandal sheet, got wind of it sometime in the past couple of hours. A leak from inside the base, I imagine. They went with a short, our-sources-say piece, running it up the flagpole to see who would salute. In no time, it was picked up by a couple of far-left websites associated with the Communist Party in Greece. After that, it spread across Europe. The National Enquirer and Drudge were in a race to get it online here—it was neck and neck, and both stories went up about fifteen minutes ago. Our press people are already feeling the heat. We’re going to need a response, and quickly. Marybeth Horning has an appearance at Franklin Middle School at ten a.m., and you can bet it’s going to be a media circus. Marybeth hates nukes, and we need her on our page.”

  “Cancel it,” Susan said without hesitating.

  Kat raised an eyebrow. “Cancel the new Vice President’s meeting with inner-city schoolchildren? The appearance is in less than an hour.”

  Susan nodded. “Cancel it. Tell her I’m sorry. We need to circle the wagons. We can’t leave her naked out there—the sharks will go into a feeding frenzy. And what’s she going to tell them—that she doesn’t like nuclear weapons anyway? That’ll show ’em. And we’ll all look like idiots.”

  The phone on the desk in the middle of the room began to ring. Susan pressed the speaker phone button.

  “Susan, it’s Kurt Kimball.”

  “Hi, Kurt.”

  “The Russian embassy just called. The ambassador would like to know if there’s any truth to the news reports he’s seeing about unsecured American nuclear weapons being stolen from an air base in Turkey.”