by James Phelan
“NSA Gold!” Kumar said, the pair breaking into in-joke laughter. “We had a big stash going on in the south radome, until we saw the spider.”
“Spider?” Beasley asked.
“Fiercest killers in the insect world,” Harold chimed in, the pair nodding.
“Biggest thing you ever seen,” Kumar said. “Some kinda yeti spider.”
“Okay, dude, this is some crazy shit…” Beasley said out of the corner of his mouth to Gammaldi.
“What kinda work do you guys do?” Gammaldi asked, finishing off his cocoa and smacking his lips together. Kumar got up and went to the fridge, pulling out a four-pack of Heinekens.
“The station’s automated,” Kumar said, passing around the beers. “We just debug stuff every now and then, upgrade and fix things when they go bung.”
“Why are these goons here?”
“Don’t know, Fort Meade sent them in, probably some kind of exercise.”
“Anything out of the ordinary happen lately…” Gammaldi blinked his eyes, shaking his head.
“Ha!” Kumar said, taking a big swill of beer, the surplus running down his chin. “NSA Gold, unlike any other!” Again the in-joke laughter.
The soldier at the door held up his hand to his helmet-mounted radio, and a moment later turned to the room.
“No one leaves this room!” he said, closing the door and disappearing down the corridor.
Harold and Kumar shared a brief look of panic.
68
THE WHITE HOUSE
“Still no luck in getting through to the NSA station, sir,” an aide told McCorkell.
“There are a number of options, Mr President,” Larter said. “From dealing with this frigate to a precision strike on their homeland military bases.”
“I suggest we go forward in blockading their coast lines, concentrating on the key ports,” Vanzet said. “We can have the Sixth Fleet put up a curtain of iron to stop all major shipping within twelve hours.”
“Bill?” the President asked.
“It sends the right message, Mr President,” McCorkell said. “Shows we mean business, yet it’s not aimed at bloodying their nose.”
“What would it involve?” the President said, looking over at his team of advisors.
“The remainder of the Sixth Fleet steamed out of Gaeta, Italy, last night. They’ll join up with the rest of the force any minute,” Vanzet said. “They own the Med by themselves, and considering most of the French Navy is in the South Pacific, the only threat would be from the French Air Force. The Second Fleet are already off their Atlantic coast, and the Brits are itching to come to the party.”
“What’s France’s air power?”
“Around three hundred combat aircraft, call it two hundred being operational from the mainland, all pretty damn capable but only a third are the latest gen Rafales,” Vanzet said. “We’ve got closer to seven hundred in the immediate European Command theatre and we can double that over a twenty-four-hour period. Hell, the amount of air power we have sitting unused in the Middle East right now…”
“Okay,” the President said, taking his time to consider his order. “Keep the fleets steaming to station, ready to impose a blockade. We get the confirmation of a threat from those subs, you roll. We get a confirmation of a clear and present danger to our nation, our air force bloodies their nose good.”
“Yes, Mr President,” Larter said, pointing to an aide to get things moving via the Pentagon. “Will we be staying at DEFCON Four?”
“I think we have to,” McCorkell said. A raise in the Defense Condition was something rarely undertaken; the last time it had gone beyond that was 11 September 2001. “At DEFCON Four we’ve got our European forces battle-ready to move in twenty-four hours.”
“That’s right. I’ve already got the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team waiting on the tarmac in Italy, and the 1st Armoured and Infantry Divisions are ready to roll across borders from Germany,” Vanzet said. “That’s a hell of a three-punch combo at your disposal, Mr President.”
“We got movement!” McCorkell said, the rest of the room turning their attention to the big LCD screen. The image of the frigate was shown, moving slowly off the Greenland coast.
“That’s an NH90, their standard heavy-lifter for the class,” the Navy JCS said. The helicopter was wheeled out onto the deck of the La Fayette, a load crew attaching cables to the snow-mobiles. “Carries twenty troops and close to a tonne of gear.”
“Where’s our deadline?” the President asked.
“Just on thirty-five minutes to go, meaning around thirty until the F-15s are in firing range,” McCorkell said, reading a digital timer on a wall re-tasked from its usual function of showing a world time. “They’ve been punching it the whole flight, balls-to-the-wall supersonic.”
“This will be touch and go,” the President said. “Perhaps we’ll get the chance to take them from the air, target the helo instead of the La Fayette?”
“We’ve got six Strike Eagles in that formation, we can take both targets,” Vanzet said.
“Losing real-time coverage in four minutes,” McCorkell said, looking at the fast-moving coordinate numbers on the bottom of the screen.
“Robert,” the President turned to the CIA Director. “Where the hell is your CIA man in Paris?”
69
NORTH ATLANTIC
The NH90 hovered slowly above the deck, a full complement of twenty heavily armed FORFUSCO commandos onboard. The ground crew steadied the two snowmobiles on the air-crate as the helicopter took the load into the air and dipped its nose, heading towards the white coast of Greenland to the north.
It flew low and fast, the main rotor blades whipping up plumes of ice and snow in its wake. Fifty kilometres south of the NSA station, it came to a hover, the air-crate with the snow-mobiles touching the ground, then unhooked by the loadmaster.
The pilots went a further twenty metres forward and hovered the helo just clear of the ground, the side doors sliding open and the commandos dropping out onto the frozen surface and running to the snowmobiles.
As the NH90 lifted into the air and banked back to the direction of the La Fayette, the commandos muscled the snow-mobiles off the air-crate and started the diesel engines.
All but four commandos donned skis that clipped into their arctic combat boots, and picked up the water-ski-like handle of the tow cable. With two commandos riding on each snow-mobile and eight towed behind, they took off slowly and powered up to forty kilometres per hour. Resembling two motorised dog-sled teams, the French commandos raced across the surface of Greenland with deadly intent.
70
GREENLAND
“We’ve got the comms back online!” a Delta soldier said.
“Sir, incoming from Washington for you.”
“Fort Meade?” the commander asked, walking over to the communications desk.
The soldier shook his head, passing the headset.
The commander took it with an annoyed look.
“This is Major Thornbury,” he said, picking up the line.
“Thornbury, this is Admiral Donald Vanzet,” came the reply. “You hear me, son?”
The commander swallowed hard. He certainly could hear the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Vanzet was as high as the chain of command went, mere paces below God Himself.
“Crystal, sir,” Thornbury said.
“What are your orders there?”
“To stand fast and defend the base until otherwise instructed, sir,” Thornbury said, a little confused that the Chairman of JCS was not aware of his brief.
“Okay, now listen to me closely,” Vanzet ordered. “We have real-time sat coverage of a French frigate disembarking SF troops, heading fast from the south of your location. They’ll be at your door in minutes.”
Thornbury instinctively squeezed the pistol grip of his M4 tighter.
“Say that again, sir?”
71<
br />
THE WHITE HOUSE
“I have your CIA man in here now,” the French President said over the speaker phone.
“His monitor has the same real-time satellite footage that we are viewing,” McCorkell said over the line. “The footage is only up for another minute or so but you can clearly see your ship is receiving its helicopter back from an incursion run.”
There was a moment of silence, and then, to accentuate the point, a replay of earlier footage showed a stream of fast-moving figures disembarking from the superstructure and loading into the helicopter as the rotors started up.
Before anyone in the Situation Room could speak, talking came over the phone at the French end of the connection. Frantic, loud, then silence.
“Mr President,” the French President said. “I have just been informed that my Chief of the Navy appears to have committed suicide.”
“He committed treason,” McCorkell said matter-of-factly. “There may be more members of your military in on this, Mr President.”
There was silence for a while, the gravity of the situation settling on everyone.
72
FORT GAUCHER
“Sir,” the female tracking technician said on entering Danton’s office. “We picked up another connection, from the NSA station at Puerto Rico.”
“Excellent!” Danton said. He slammed the palm of his hand down on the desk. “Be ready to pick up the NSA key data from the submarine transmission.”
The technician left and Danton thought about Secher. Finally, the young officer had proved as capable as he always knew he could be. Such a pity things would have to end like they would.
He picked up the military phone and called through to the Chief of the Navy. Twice the line rang out, and he hung up the phone and typed into his military email system:
Another connection made. Call off La Fayette.
Danton pressed send and got up from his desk, putting on his jacket and leaving his office. He walked through the power plant on his way to the supercomputing room. The massive gas turbine whirred like the sound of a billion bees, the output enough to power a large town. Past the shielding doors, he entered his thumbprint into the biometric door lock. The room beyond was a cavernous expanse of concrete columns supporting the carved-out granite.
In here it was like a fridge. Fans vented the cold air from the basin in, keeping the temperature low. Cut into the mountain, the football-oval-sized expanse currently housed the most numerous collection of supercomputers in the world. Technicians were milling about, connecting hoses that held liquid nitrogen to cool down the conductors. It didn’t look pretty but he had been assured countless times it was up to the task.
“We are ready,” the chief tech said as he joined Danton in taking in the view. “What you see before you is now the most impressive array of computing power ever assembled in Europe. To have it linked like this … I have impressed even myself.”
“Well we have our hardwired connection,” Danton said. “We’re piggybacking on the NSA data feed now. I will notify you the instant we have the activation key.”
“We will be waiting.”
“I want to be here when you do the transfer.” Danton checked his watch, smiling. “Sometime within the next twenty-four hours.”
73
GREENLAND
“Sir, multiple contacts! Bearing fast from the south, ETA three minutes.”
The commander called in reports from the rest of his spotters, and ordered his fire teams to prepare to hold fast against the invading force.
He looked out the small glass window heading south. The sky was darkening and the snow was settling in hard and heavy, the severe elements eerily quiet in the concrete building.
“I’d say they would have switched the comms on by now, my quick sabotage work would have only stalled them a couple of hours.” Harold said, hoisting Beasley up and out the window above the sink. They had been going on in this nervous fashion for ten minutes now. Gammaldi had seriously considered knocking their heads together.
“Think they’re here about our stash? I think we better go into the north radome and clean it up, I don’t wanna go to gaol,” Kumar said. “I just paid off my MIT loan, I wanna start enjoying life when we get back to civilisation.”
“All clear!” Beasley said from outside, as Gammaldi climbed onto the sink and the techs helped push him up and out.
The French commandos shut down their snowmobiles two kilometres south of the station and skied the remaining distance. They split into two teams, one digging in to provide cover-fire positions while the other advanced towards the station. The lead pair of the group raced fifty metres ahead, bolt-cutters out and working fast on cutting a walk-through hole in the wire fence.
“South sniper to command, multiple contacts, make that two squads maybe three, humping it in double-time,” the southern Delta sniper said. “I have two targets at the perimeter fence now.”
“Got a clear shot, South?” Thornbury asked, making sure all lighting in the base was switched off, night-vision goggles on.
“Roger that. Clear shot at two contacts at the south fence,” the sniper said, his finger resting on the trigger as he kept his breathing regular and steady. He had his zero mark on the left eye of the attacker working the bolt-cutters.
“I’ve got one target in my sight about eighty metres south,” another soldier called.
“Engage on my command and keep things silent,” Thornbury said, readying himself by the airlock with two soldiers beside him. “Fire!”
The French commando working the bolt-cutters flew away from the fence and slid back on the snow as if yanked from behind by a bungee cord. Registering the growing pool of blood from his comrade’s headshot, the other commando whipped back to face the station, raising his FAMAS assault rifle—and he too was blown backwards.
“The base is crawling with targets,” Gibbs said, looking through the massive thermal scope attached to her rifle.
“How many?” Sefreid asked, holding his night-vision binoculars up, the late twilight conditions not quite dark enough to use them effectively.
“At least twelve in view,” Gibbs said. “Wait—we got movement, all targets moving, heading around to the south of the station.”
No sooner had Gibbs announced this than there came the sharp report of 5.56 mm assault rifles filling the air from the south.
“Where to?” Gammaldi said. He had Kumar by the arm, separating the pair from their argument over whether they should run or stay.
“This way!” Kumar replied. He led the four of them into the entry of the northern radome, punched in a code on an electronic keypad, and the magnetic locks on the heavy steel door clunked open.
Gammaldi was the last through the door, gunfire tearing through the air.
“That’s not the Delta soldiers firing,” Gammaldi said to Beasley. “Their weapons had suppressors.”
“And it’s not GSR,” Beasley said as they watched Harold and Kumar disappear behind the base of the massive satellite dish. “They’re not M4s, sounds like a Steyr or FAMAS.”
“FAMAS?” Gammaldi asked.
“French army assault rifle,” Beasley said. “I’d wager the French have arrived.”
“Jesus, we’re in the middle of World War Three here!”
74
NEW YORK CITY
Fox fell asleep with Kate’s head on his shoulder, her arm across his chest, a leg over his.
The warm night breeze cooled from the river as it blew in from the open sliding-glass door of the bedroom, the ceiling fan revolving slowly above them and their sweaty sheets.
“Ahh!” Fox said, startling himself awake and sitting up on his elbows, his face beaded with sweat.
“Hey, what is it, babe?” Kate asked sleepily, sitting up and stroking his head.
“A nightmare,” he said. He blinked the images away, and took his glass of water from the bedside table. “It’s all
right. Sorry.”
“Shh, it’s okay,” Kate said. She waited as he drank and lay back down, rested a hand on his chest. “I’m here. I’ll save you…”
Within seconds he was asleep again, and his nightmares were not far behind.
Fox was watching the scene, something he’d played in his mind a hundred times or more, looking down from above. He watched as he walked into a boat’s stateroom where a man held a gun to a woman’s head. Somehow he knew this wasn’t exactly how it happened, and he knew it changed slightly every time. But the result was always the same.
Until now.
Fox watched as his view shifted from that of a bird’s eye to through his own eyes, down there in the thick of the action. He was looking at the woman, who he knew to be Alissa Truscott. Her face was always going through the same kaleidoscope: sad, unflinching, knowing. That much never changed.
The man behind her with the gun was in silhouette, as always. This time he came forward, and the gun in his hand disappeared, to be replaced with a hand on Truscott’s shoulder. His face became clear. It was Leading Seaman John Birmingham. Never in Fox’s dreams had the two of them come together in the same scene. Their expressions were different too. The look of them. The looks they gave.
The two faces that had haunted Fox’s nights over the past year were clear, calm. They didn’t speak, didn’t offer anything. The setting changed, they were all outside now, and the scenery slowly came into focus. They were on the beach, a long, deserted expanse on Christmas Island, the Indian Ocean pouring out to the horizon. It was a perfect day and Fox could feel the warm sand under his feet. Could smell the salty water as the breeze blew over him.
