Trident Force

by Michael Howe

  He looked up at the blazing sun, took a deep breath of the rich, hot, organic air—it tasted of salt and long-dead seafood and sun-baked salt hay—and gritted his teeth. How many more defenders lay ahead? he wondered. Were they all concentrated in the objective or had they established other little outposts on other hummocks? How many roving patrols did they have out?

  They never told you how big the other side was. That was supposed to be part of the fun.

  Ramon Fuentes, Captain, United States Marine Corps, tried hard to convince himself that he felt left out; that he’d rather be on the firing line with the rest of the Force than where he was, stuck inside the Force’s drab, windowless, concrete block facility, staring at a computer, surrounded by the smell of the wax on the floor tiles and waiting for something to happen. He tried, but he couldn’t do it.

  He could crawl through mud, fire an M-16—or anything else—and suffer the god damned horseflies as well as any man—or woman. Better, in fact. But the pleasures of the field—whether it be Paris Island, Quantico or Little Creek—couldn’t possibly compare with the pleasure of having a leisurely family lunch with your wife and daughter. Each of whom had taken time out of her busy day to join him for an hour or two in the admittedly under-decorated, but well air-conditioned and bug-free conference room.

  Sandy and little Jamie had left, but the glow continued as he stared at the snippets of news rolling down the computer monitor. They were much like newspaper headlines, except they were directed at a very select, need-to-know audience.

  The phone rang. “SecResGruTwo, Captain Fuentes speaking, sir.”

  “Ray, this is Alan. Give me Mike,” said the deputy secretary of defense who served as liaison between SECDEF, himself and the Force.

  “He’s out at the firing range with the rest of the team.”

  “I have to talk to him.”

  “Is this an emergency? I can alert him, have him break off the exercise.”

  “No. Not yet. Maybe not at all. Will he be coming back to the office today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have him call me then.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  Ray Fuentes didn’t really trust Alan Parker. He’d seen the bureaucrat change his story one too many times in order to protect his own ample ass. To be on the safe side, the marine officer relayed the message verbatim to the firing range, for delivery to Chambers as soon as possible. Half an hour later the firing range reported back that the message had been delivered and that Captain Chambers was going to take it at face value and return the call when he got back to his office.

  Fuentes was struggling halfheartedly with some paperwork when the security lock clicked and the outside door opened. In, out of the dark, marched Mike Chambers—mud-covered, sweat-soaked and looking slightly cranky.

  “How’d it go, sir?”

  “In the end it was a draw. They—whoever the hell they were—must have had at least twenty people at the objective . . . Ray, we missed you. Please open the garage door.”

  Ray pressed the garage door opener while Chambers stepped out in front of the building. “I want all the gear cleaned and restowed to Jerry’s satisfaction. Then you can shower.

  “And, Kudloe, most of what you did today was outstanding, but I can’t tolerate any team member losing control, so you turn in all your gear to Chief Andrews after you’ve helped stow the other gear. Tomorrow you report to SpecOpsGroup Four. Your orders will be there.” Normally he wouldn’t have delivered the rebuke so publicly, but the entire Force had seen the incident and knew what the result would be.

  “Aye, sir,” replied Kudloe. At least, he thought, he wasn’t going to storekeepers school.

  “Boss,” said Alex, who had walked over to Chambers and was even muddier, “am I going to be able to come up with some paperwork for Kudloe? I assume you want it done tonight.”

  “After you get a shower. For the authority, just cite the SECDEF directive that set us up. And while you’re at it, ask SpecOpsGroup Four to have Vincent, that SEAL who was second on our want list, report here tomorrow morning. Same authority.”

  While Alex showered and immediately got to work on her computer and the rest of the Force continued to clean and stow its gear, Mike collapsed into the chair behind his desk. My God, he thought, the air-conditioning is heavenly. After wiping his clean hand across his still muddy face, he picked up the phone and called Alan Parker.

  “How was the exercise?”

  “Satisfactory. Whoever we were going against had five times as many people as we did. What’s up?”

  “What do you know about Aurora Australis?”

  “She’s a cruise ship, isn’t she? Goes to the Arctic, or the Antarctic.”

  “The Antarctic. And at the moment she’s headed there with five hundred passengers to watch the ice melt. Many of those passengers are very important people, including a United States senator and a United States congressman.”

  “I can see she might be a target but . . .”

  “But there’re a thousand more just as tempting at any given time. I know. In this case, however, there are a few other odds and ends. The ship just completed a major overhaul at the Estaleira Tecmar shipyard in Rio. Tecmar belongs to a very wealthy sultan, a Moslem. And our sources report that two ship fitters seem to have disappeared in Rio along with the girlfriend of one. The men had worked at the Estaleira Tecmar. And then to complicate matters, the ship’s owners are Canadian and she flies the Ecuadorian flag.”

  Mike spent a moment digesting Alan’s words. None of the facts were in any way unusual in the twenty-first century world, but they made him a little uneasy. When you’ve spent a lot of time at sea, you tend to become very sensitive to little things—a vibration that shouldn’t be there, a line flapping when it should be secured, a ship rolling in a manner that isn’t “quite right,” a nagging squishing sound.

  “You have anything really solid?”

  “Not exactly. At this point it might be a political problem as much as anything else. The president’s going to be all over SECDEF if something happens—especially with the senator and the congressman and countless politically active environmentalists aboard.”

  “Why don’t you just suggest the ship return to port or even evacuate the politicians?”

  “Because SECDEF doesn’t think we know enough to justify it. Some of our allies, even our closest ones, are starting to make rude remarks about our trigger fingers and ‘boots in their faces’ policies.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “There are three media teams aboard broadcasting live.”

  “Three!”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn.”

  “You’re being tasked to do something about the situation. Make sure nothing bad happens. And make sure we don’t piss anybody off unless absolutely necessary.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Haven’t the faintest idea at the moment. I will by tomorrow morning.”

  “Get back to me.”

  “Roger.”

  Mike hung up, walked into Alex’s office and described the conversation to her. “I want everybody here tomorrow. Zero six hundred. Including Vincent.”

  “Aye, aye, Boss,” replied Alex with a fixed look. She’s tired, he thought. They’re all tired, except Ray. He didn’t like having to tell them to come in early, but it wouldn’t hurt them. And they’d all volunteered to join the Force.

  “And would you dig around in you magical way and see if you can come up with anything useful on Aurora or the shipyard or the ship fitters or anything else relevant.”

  “You’ve got it, Boss. I’ve already canceled the one date I’ve been invited on this year.”

  Mike looked at her again and knew she was just zapping him. Alex had no trouble finding men, although she was something of a loner and tended to keep her own counsel.

  “I can only find eighty-six of these concussion grenades,” growled Jerry Andrews, his head and shoulders jammed
down into a box of grenades. Jerry, the oldest member of the Trident Force, was a navy chief boatswain’s mate and master diver. In addition to being in charge of all things nautical and of ensuring the rest of the team didn’t kill themselves diving, Jerry was also in charge of all the group’s gear and weapons.

  “Sorry, Jerry,” replied Alex, who was sitting on a box of half-pound TNT charges, “but your inventory says there should be ninety-one . . .”

  Jerry grumbled something then stood up. “Okay, I found ’em in a small box on top of the flash-bangs. What’s next?”

  “Morning, guys,” said Mike Chambers cheerfully as he stood in the door between the “playroom”—where boats and other non-explosive toys were stored—and the Force’s small magazine. “You certainly got an early start.” It was a few minutes after six A.M.

  “Morning, Boss,” they replied almost in unison.

  “Jerry smelled something in the air and wanted to get this done before he was unable to do it because you had him doing something else,” added Alex. “And I was already here anyway.”

  Mike nodded, realizing she was telling him she’d spent the night researching for him. “Thanks, Alex,” he said, thinking she really did look like she could use a little sleep. “Is Vincent here yet?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the voice of the unit’s newest member, Rick Vincent.

  “Can you relieve Alex here or are you all wrapped up in something really important?”

  “I’m on my way, sir.”

  “Alex, after you get Rick up to speed on that inventory, will you please come over to my office?”

  “Five minutes.”

  Alex stepped into Chambers’s Spartan office and found the captain seated behind his desk chewing on a cup of black coffee. He motioned her to one of the two not-very-comfortable guest chairs.

  “I’ve been thinking all night about that cruise ship. Alan’s right, it’s an uncommonly tempting target.”

  Alex smiled. “So what do you want to do?”

  She’s back in the groove, he decided as he scanned the walls of the office, his eyes settling briefly on photos of various ships and friends—more than a few of whom were now dead. Unless she was busy circulating her résumé. “Initially I want to do a little very quiet research. I want to send Ray and . . . Ted down to Brazil for a day or two to look around.”

  “Ted doesn’t speak Portuguese.”

  “But he does know a little Spanish and that will have to do. Anyway, we both know Ray will want to do most of the talking.”

  “You have a cover in mind?”

  “I spent a little time on the Web and noticed there was a fire in that yard two months ago, while Aurora was still there. Nobody was injured but there was a certain amount of property damage.”

  “Was it anywhere near the ship?”

  “About half a mile away, as far as I can tell, but Ray and Ted should make sure. What’s important at the moment is that it’s just the sort of thing one of their insurance underwriters might want to know a little more about.”

  “Between primary and extended coverage and reinsurance, an operation like that, especially a maritime one, is bound to have half a dozen underwriters.”

  “Exactly! And you’re bound to have a contact at one of them who can provide us with some credentials. I want you to find out who all the underwriters are while I call Alan and get him to okay the plan.”

  After Alex had headed off to her office, Mike picked up the secure phone and called Alan Parker.

  “Yes, Mike?” asked Alan, a career bureaucrat who had the amazing ability to remind you, by the tone of his very first word, that he was your superior.

  “I’ve come up with a plan, at least a start, on this Aurora Australis business and a little direction, a little focus, would help.”

  “Okay?”

  “Is there anybody, any group, who your people believe might be especially tempted by Aurora and her passenger list?”

  “Aside from the Business Round Table we haven’t been able to identify any specific group that especially dislikes environmentalists . . .”

  Alan paused as Mike laughed dutifully at the joke.

  “If anybody really is targeting that ship, they probably don’t care who the victims are as long as there are a lot of bloody bodies lying around and a few survivors screaming into a sea of TV cameras.”

  “Especially with the media already on hand to provide instant exposure. You have nothing else?”

  “No.”

  “Very well. I’m going to send two of my men to Rio to snoop around for a day or two.”

  “You going to use any cover?”

  “Insurance investigators. There was a small fire there a month or two ago.”

  “If they find something?”

  “We’ll go from there.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “We’ll go from there.”

  “No incidents!”

  “No incidents.”

  “Will they be armed?”

  “Since they’ll be flying commercial, I’ll have to arrange for one of Alex’s friends to deliver sidearms to them after they arrive.”

  “If there aren’t going to be any incidents, why are they to be armed?”

  “Because half the country is armed.”

  “Okay, I’ll take it to SECDEF.”

  “Roger.”

  Mike hung up and walked into Alex’s office. “Find anything?”

  “Yup. Eight underwriters in all, two of which I can get to. I’ve already arranged for Ray and Ted to represent Anglo-Swiss Re.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Ted’s here. Ray called to say he’ll be a few minutes late. He has to pick up some medicine for his kid and I told him a few minutes would be okay.”

  “Anything serious?”

  “No. He seemed to think it was just one of those kid things.”

  “Very well. As soon as Ray gets here, I want the four of us to go over all of this.”

  “Roger, Boss.”

  Six hours later, Ramon Fuentes, captain of marines and very talented linguist, boarded a flight from Tampa to Miami. Along with him was Ted Anderson, the wiry, fast-moving black SEAL petty officer. Once in Miami, the two boarded a direct overnight flight to Rio de Janeiro.

  3

  The South Atlantic

  Captain Arthur Covington, sparkling in his immaculate white uniform—short-sleeved shirt, knee-length shorts with kneesocks, and black shoulder boards with four gold stripes—stood on the bridge of Aurora Australis. Below him, the white and Day-Glo cruise ship sliced through the choppy waters of the immense estuary at the mouth of the Rio de la Plata. Astern, to port and over the horizon, lay Montevideo, Uruguay. Even farther behind, and to starboard, lay Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they’d loaded their passengers. Although they’d yet to pass Cape San Antonio, they were, for all intents and purposes, out in the South Atlantic.

  “It’s a beautiful day, Captain.”

  Covington turned and smiled at his chief mate. “Yes it is, Mr. Winters.”

  The two officers stood in silence a few moments, savoring the salt air, the glint of the afternoon sun on the foam-speckled blue sea and the very gentle rise and fall as the ship’s bow met that sea. “The overhaul seems to have gone extremely well, unless there’ve been problems you or the chief engineer have neglected to tell me about.”

  “As far as I know, there haven’t been any. It appears to me the Brazilians did very good work for us. The ship’s far from new, but she’s acting pretty frisky at the moment.”

  And neither of us is particularly new either, thought Covington as his sense of well-being began to drift away. But we both know our business. “This is what? Our thirty-somethingth Antarctic voyage . . .”

  “Thirty-second, I figure, Captain.”

  “So we should have it all down pretty damn well by now. And we do. Ice in all its forms, storms such as are rarely seen anywhere else in the world, passengers on ego trips—we both know how to handle
them. But still, I’m not comfortable about this particular expedition.”

  Arthur Covington’s mind was far from inflexible. He couldn’t have survived thirty years of highly varied service at sea if it weren’t. Still, he found the current expedition both unusual and a little unsettling. He’d never before commanded a politically driven expedition, especially one on which the sponsor—Greenpeace—had selected and even subsidized so many of the passengers and had demanded so much control over the itinerary. And he was expected to provide an experience that would serve a highly specific objective: to convince the passengers that Antarctica was melting and, therefore, by extension, that we the people were causing the melting.

  As for the basic premise, Covington had no doubt the globe was warming at the moment. His mind remained open, however, about the precise mix of causes.

  “It’s too damn political, Mister,” continued the captain. “We—you, I and Aurora—are being set up in the middle of a culture war.”

  “You’re not the only person who thinks we’re a target, Captain. They keep sending us those special warnings.”

  “Useless warnings, Mr. Winters. ‘Your ship might well be an attractive target for terrorists. Special care should be exercised at all times.’ They keep saying it over and over, but I haven’t the slightest idea what we can do that we’re not already doing—except return to BA and forget about the whole damn thing.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more, Captain. We’ve searched the ship twice as it is, just in case they’re talking about bombs, rather than guided missiles or six guys wearing ski masks.”

  “What more do we do to ensure nothing happens? Strip-search everybody—starting with Senator Bergstrom—twice a day?”

  Winters closed his eyes slightly and shook his head.

  “And all this media, Mister,” continued the captain. “Crews from three different networks. Some of the passengers have even brought their own media advisors to deal with the media persons, and they’re all getting under my skin before we’ve even gotten out of the Plate Estuary.”