America jg-9

by Stephen Coonts

  The worker bees at Hudson Security Services were glued to the television monitors, in awe of the breaking story. Zelda Hudson and Zipper Vance watched their reactions. If they knew that anyone there had anything to do with the Washington attack, they never let on. Of course, Zelda knew they didn't know, so she didn't pay much attention. Vance was not as sure, so at one point she called him over to her desk and told him to quit watching everyone else.

  As bad as the attack on Washington was, the workers' bitterest reactions were directed at the White House, which approved the Blackbeard operation, and the navy, which trained the perfidious bastards. The secretary, Zelda's only nontechnical employee, summed up the mood best. "Who the hell do they think they are, training people to steal submarines? Why, that submarine could blow up the whole East Coast, kill millions of innocent people. My God, people have a right to know!" After stating this opinion, she looked up at the ceiling, almost as if she expected a missile to come crashing through.

  So Kolnikov had pulled it off. Zelda was never sure if he would really do it. When she had told him what she wanted, he had just sat staring at her. "You're crazy," he said finally. "We can't get away with it."

  "Why not?"

  When he didn't reply, she said, "You think the United States Navy is going to look more diligently because you launched missiles?"

  "No," he admitted. He didn't think that. After a bit he asked, "Why?"

  "For thirty million dollars."

  "For you? Or me?"

  "You. I'll make a lot more."

  Kolnikov laughed then. "You should have been a Russian. You would have fit right in. The people at the very top are stealing the foreign aid, the money the IMF sends, washing it and accumulating vast fortunes and putting those fortunes in their pockets. Communism was nice, with all that crap about everyone being in the same boat, but it didn't make them rich. Now they are getting rich."

  "They're trying to catch up all at once."

  "Yes," he said.

  "So. Will you do it?"

  "You don't know what you are asking. Rothberg will be the only man who could program the missiles. They aren't like a rifle, just aim and shoot. It's a bit more complicated."

  She resented being talked down to, but she bit her tongue.

  "No promises," Kolnikov said finally.

  "Thirty million. You can split it up among the crew any way you like."

  "Willi Schlegel is not going to like this. The man in Paris wanted a satellite."

  "I'll handle Willi."

  "If you succeed, you'll be the very first. Rumor has it that three or four others who tried are dead. No one ever found the bodies."

  "Willi Schlegel wants something very badly. As long as he thinks he has a chance to get it, he'll behave."

  Kolnikov refused to promise anything. He wouldn't even say he would try.

  But the missiles flew.

  As the CNN talking heads went through the Washington disaster one more time, Zelda thought about Kolnikov. He was hard to fathom. A Russian, willing to fight and risk death in that steel coffin. For money, of course. Dead men can't spend money, though.

  Ah, who knew what drove him? Doubtlessly he didn't understand her either.

  She was sitting at her desk, staring blankly at the computer screen, when she realized that she had an encrypted message. She called it up, verified the encryption protocol, then decoded it: "An explanation is in order. Missiles were not part of our agreement. Willi."

  She took a deep breath, then typed her reply: "Kolnikov obviously has his own agenda. Let's hope he hasn't forgotten ours."

  She stared at the message, weighed it, then encrypted it. She got up, walked to the refrigerator and took out a Diet Coke. Sipping it, half listening to the CNN broadcast and the comments of her angry, frightened colleagues, she walked back to her computer and fired the message to Willi into cyberspace.

  When General Le Beau made it in to work, Jake was waiting in his outer office.

  Flap motioned with his hand that Jake was to follow him into the office. He told Flap about Cowbell, but the marine didn't seem too interested. "I've got to go to a Joint Chiefs meeting in a few minutes that General Alt called. This fucking submarine…" He dropped into a chair. "Gonna be a helluva day, any way you cut it. What can we do to make tomorrow better?"

  "Induce a four-mile error in the global positioning system," Jake Grafton replied. GPS, as they well knew, allowed anyone on Earth with a little black box to receive signals broadcast by a small constellation of satellites and thereby fix their position within several meters. The satellites' signals, however, could be tweaked, subtly altered, thereby fooling the little black boxes.

  Flap looked startled. "I hadn't thought of that."

  "An accurate position is essential to launching a successful Tomahawk attack. The pirates will use the GPS to update their inertial. Let's lead them down the primrose path."

  "And mislead every airliner and ship in the world?"

  "The stakes are high, General," Jake acknowledged. "Real high."

  "Why not just shut the system down?"

  "Then they will update their inertial position with a star sight. If the GPS works, there is a good chance that these guys will merely push the update button without checking to see how much the inertial position disagrees with the GPS position. That's an easy mistake to make, and this equipment is new to all these guys. They're feeling their way along."

  "What if an airliner full of people goes into a mountain?"

  "That's the risk," Jake acknowledged.

  "Jesus, you are a hard-ass."

  "Sir, I've been told that more than four hundred people died here in Washington last night. They were killed. Murdered. It's time to take the gloves off. If the pirates put a four-mile error into their inertial, their Tomahawks will miss their targets. The latest versions of the missiles will self-destruct or dive into the ground when the computer determines that the missile is lost. Sometimes we must risk lives to save lives."

  "You are assuming they will shoot more missiles."

  "These guys didn't steal a submarine just to wreck the Lincoln Bedroom."

  "I'll suggest it," Flap Le Beau said. "The decision will have to be made by the president. Just between you and me, I don't think the folks at the White House have the cojones for a move like that."

  In London, Tommy Carmellini awakened from a nap to find the American media circus on most of the channels of his television. He watched the White House burn, horrified and fascinated at the same time.

  He left the tube on while he showered and shaved, dressed, hung up his clothes in the closet, checked the attache case the CIA man who met him at the airport had handed him when he dropped Tommy at the hotel. After looking over the contents of the case very carefully, he closed and locked it.

  He turned off the television only when dusk had fallen and he was ready to go find something to eat. He took the attache case with him.

  At ten o'clock he walked two blocks to a pub. He ordered a cider and was sipping it in a booth against the back wall, making it last, when the door opened and Terrell McSweeney walked in. He saw Tommy, ordered a pint, then brought it over to the booth.

  "Good to see you," McSweeney said. "What's it been, three months?"

  "Something like that."

  "Seen any television today?"

  "A little, before I left the hotel."

  "Holy damn. Sounds as if somebody declared war on the guys in the white hats. They shot the shit outta Washington last night. A stolen submarine, no less. Beats the hell outta me what the world is coming to."

  McSweeney was CIA, of course, attached to the London embassy. He was over fifty, balding, porking up, with a braying voice. If the Brits didn't know he was a spook they were complete, utter incompetents.

  "Maybe terrorists, you think?" Carmellini asked.

  "Iraqis, I bet. Before it's over we'll find Saddam had his eye glued to the periscope."

  "I always wondered, McSweeney. Tell me, do the Brit
s know you're a spook?"

  McSweeney snorted. "Of course they know. I go to conferences with them all the time. When they want something from us, they call me. Every Brit spook has me on his Rolodex."

  "Umm."

  "I know, you're thinking that maybe we should have had a covert officer contact you. Well, hell, I know what the book says, but this is the real world. I mean, who in the hell are we fooling anyway."

  "I saw the barkeep give you the high sign when you came in. You ever use this pub before?"

  "I have a pint here a couple times a week, sure."

  "You're a real horse's ass, McSweeney, a professional joke. I've half a mind to walk out that door and grab the next plane back to the States."

  "Don't give me any of your shit, Carmellini. I'm in charge in London. Me! This is my turf."

  "You're compromising me, asshole!"

  "Hell, we're only doing burglary tonight, not espionage."

  "That's a relief. I was so worried! But if I get caught and charged with anything, I'm taking you down with me. I'll squeal like a stuck pig. I'll even make stuff up."

  "I've got immunity, man, and three years to go to retirement. Tell 'em any goddamn thing you want."

  Tommy Carmellini rubbed his forehead. Why, Lord, why?

  "Every other guy in the company is some kind of asshole," he said to McSweeney. "Does this work appeal only to assholes, or did working for the company turn you into one? Has there ever been a study on that?"

  "They got you, didn't they?"

  Carmellini drained his cider and slid out of the booth. He reached for the attache case. "I'll be outside when you get finished swilling that beer. Take your time. I don't want to talk to you any more than absolutely necessary." "Fuck you."

  "Thanks, but I've been fucked before."

  "And a good job they did of it, too."

  Working with idiots, he thought. They have me working with flaming idiots. It's been like that on and off since the day I got into this outfit. Oh sure, there are a few good people, and every now and then you find a gold nugget in a pile of dirt.

  Almost an hour passed before Terrell McSweeney came strolling from the pub. From the smell of him, he had had a couple more beers. "I thought the bobbies would get you out here for soliciting." He led the way to his car, which he unlocked with a button on his key ring.

  Once they were in, McSweeney said, "Let's cut the friendly crap and get serious here. The target is the computers of the Antoine Jouany firm. Washington wants to know how big this guy is betting against the dollar and who is behind him. Anything you can get that answers that question will be appreciated. Get it and get outta there. And use one of those E-grenades in the attache case on the security computer."

  "I got a brief in Washington."

  "I don't know why they always say Jouany's betting against the dollar," McSweeney continued. "What he's really doing is betting on the euro. He probably just thinks euros are gonna pop. I do. Stuff ain't cheap over here, but Europe is jumping. Euros got nowhere to go but up. France and Germany aren't going in the crapper."

  "Thank you, Chairman Greensweeney."

  "I'll just find a spot to park this buggy and wait for you."

  "This an embassy car?"

  "Yeah."

  "Why don't you get a couple of those magnetic signs for the doors that say CIA in big bold letters? Or maybe a logo, an eye peeping through a keyhole?"

  "We already got a bumper sticker."

  Jake Grafton didn't expect to find anyone in the liaison offices in the Crystal City Tower, across the parking lot and street from the Pentagon. Many of the commuters had driven in from the suburbs — a trek from hell, avoiding disabled vehicles — only to find that without electrical power or telephone service, nothing could be accomplished in the inner city. Jake went to the office to change clothes and think about the entire situation before he walked home. Toad had already set out for his house, worried about his son and the nanny. Jake hadn't heard from Callie — without telephones he was not going to— and he was exhausted and anxious to go home and sleep. Still, he thought he should check the office.

  It wasn't empty. He found two secretaries and a staff officer in the warm, stuffy spaces. No one else. They were debating emptying the refrigerator of leftover lunches before things started to rot. Blev-ins, they said, hadn't been in.

  In the closet of his office Jake kept a jogging outfit. It was cleaner than his uniform, which he had worn for two days and a night. He put it on, yet was so tired he had to sit to tie the laces on the tennis shoes. He didn't know if he had the energy to jog the three miles home.

  He was trying to work up energy to get started when the door opened and Helmut Mayer walked in. "Are you still here, Admiral? I was expecting no one."

  "Getting ready to run home."

  "I will drive you, if you wish. A friend in the suburbs brought me a car earlier today."

  Jake was genuinely grateful. He put his feet up on the desk and talked over the situation with the German. While they were talking Janos Ilin arrived. He too had a car. "I am a believer now," Ilin said. "You must have a car in America. Everyone."

  The foreigners were full of news. Power in Washington would take at least ten days to restore, the telephone system perhaps a week, the men reported. Their embassies had hardened electrical systems and emergency generators, so they had been listening to the cable news networks.

  "The networks have learned the name of the pirate captain who stole your submarine," Ilin said, making a steeple of his fingers. "Vladimir Kolnikov." He said it in the Russian way. "The reporters are besieging our embassy, wanting to know whatever it is we know about him, which is of course nothing at all."

  "Did your government know that Kolnikov was being trained by the CIA?" Jake Grafton asked conversationally.

  "So the story is true?" Ilin replied.

  "Today we deal only in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. You knew that before the news broke, didn't you?"

  "Ah, Jake, you overestimate the capabilities of my government. Once we were very capable, there is no argument about that, but now, with the political situation such as it is and the destitute condition of the government, we are not so capable."

  "What a storyteller you are, Ilin," Mayer said in his flavorful Germanic English.

  "So answer me a question," Ilin continued, looking at Grafton and ignoring Mayer. "Did the CIA really intend to steal a Russian submarine, or is that only a tale for the children's hour?"

  "Is that what the television dudes say?"

  "Yes."

  Jake Grafton spread his hands and shrugged. "I don't go to meetings at that level. I have heard a rumor to that effect. I cannot swear to its veracity."

  Ilin went to the window and looked out. There were other cars on the street now, almost as many as there usually were, and most of the disabled vehicles had been pushed up onto the sidewalks or towed. "There are many accidents at intersections," he told the two men behind him. "Americans need traffic lights."

  "Let us call it a day, gentlemen," Jake said. "Herr Mayer, I will accept your kind offer of a ride home. But before we go, let me leave you two with something to think about. May I do that?"

  Mayer and Ilin nodded.

  "The White House was the target of a guided missile last night, with our head of state in residence. The Secret Service hustled him and his family out of the building, so they weren't hurt, although at least two people were killed by the fire. Several airliners crashed, killing all aboard, and people died all over the city when pacemakers and defibrillators and hospital equipment were knocked out.

  "Gentlemen, the attack on this city last night resulted in at least four hundred deaths at last count. Four hundred twenty-nine was the last number I heard. That attack could well be construed as an act of terrorism. Or war! Perhaps both. The blood of innocent people is on the hands of the people behind this attack and cannot be washed off. Prophet that I am, I foretell a bad end for the people responsible for last night's at
rocities. They will pay the ultimate price."

  Neither man said anything.

  Jake continued: "A threshold has been crossed. There is no going back. Regardless of what the politicians say later, the public will demand that those responsible pay in blood."

  "I will pass your views to my government," Ilin said.

  "You do that," Jake Grafton shot back. "I don't make American policy, but you can take it to the bank: When the identity of the culprits is known, the pressure on the politicians for revenge will be irresistible."

  "I hope no government is behind this attack," Mayer said. "That would be a great tragedy."

  "Indeed it would," Jake said. "Indeed it would."

  The guard in the lobby of the Jouany building in the old City of London had been bought, according to the Langley briefer. Just say the magic words and he'll let you by and forget you ever existed.

  Carmellini had winced when he heard that. After a suspected security breach, the lobby guard was the very first person an investigator would question. Any decent investigator would wire the guard to a lie detector. And giving a guard a wad of cash before the entry… of course the guy was going to spend it and attract attention. It was almost as if the agency didn't care if Carmellini got caught.

  Two weeks. Then he would bid this silly band of paper-pushing bozos good-bye and be off to bigger and better things. If he wasn't in jail somewhere awaiting trial.

  The guard was reading a newspaper when he walked in. There was a security camera behind him aimed across the desk at Carmellini, another above the arch over the elevator, and a third above the door where he had entered.

  Carmellini nodded at the guard and spoke: "Someone told me you are a fan of American baseball."

  "I like the Yankees," the guard replied as he looked Carmellini over.

  "I'm a Braves fan myself," the American said. He noted that the monitor behind the desk was automatically cycling from one camera to another every ten seconds. No doubt there was a recorder somewhere, probably in the basement security office, capturing this gripping drama on videotape.

  "The bank of elevators on the left. Ninth floor."