Secret Justice

by James W. Huston

  The Sea Dragon continued to bear down on the Galli Maru, now within several hundred yards but still invisible. The concern on the bridge of the Galli Maru had grown to a panic. The radio calls were growing more insistent. They had slowed to three knots and yet the ship from the dark continued to come. It was as if the invisible ship was trying to collide with them. The captain grabbed his binoculars and studied the darkness. He couldn’t see anything. Not even the reflection of a bow wave. The captain spoke to his first officer without looking at him. “Has this ship changed course at all?”

  “Slight modification about fifteen minutes ago. Before that we weren’t tracking her closely.”

  “Maybe it’s disabled. The entire crew may have been overcome,” the captain said. “They may have lost power and only the engine is running. They don’t have any lights and they can’t respond to us on the radio. Turn on all our lights. Floods, everything. Light us up. Hold course, but slow down. If she’s unmanned, I don’t want her ramming into us.”

  Hotary watched the Galli Maru through his binoculars. He saw the floodlights come on. His job had just been made easier. The captain of the Japanese LNG ship was confused. He hadn’t even considered a malignant explanation. People rarely did. It was what Hotary relied on.

  As they closed to two hundred yards and looked as if they were going to pass by the Galli Maru on its port side, Hotary nodded to the helmsman, who turned the wheel sharply to the right and drove the Sea Dragon directly toward the LNG ship side to side.

  The Sea Dragon was now illuminated by the floodlights of its target as they were only fifty yards apart. The Galli Maru’s main deck was ten feet below that of the Sea Dragon. Hotary braced himself as the ships closed at a surprisingly rapid rate. The Japanese captain was running outside to the flying bridge then back inside. He was acutely aware of the near inevitability of a collision and what could happen to his cargo if his hull was pierced.

  The helmsman turned the wheel to the left just as they were about to touch and Hotary threw the engine of the large cargo ship into reverse to slow quickly to the Galli Maru’s speed. The two ships scraped together side to side with a sickening, metallic crunch. Hotary ran from the bridge down to the deck and gave the signal to the four men waiting there with large shotgun-like firearms. They aimed them high and fired. Titanium grappling hooks attached to half-inch-thick steel cables flew from the Sea Dragon over to the deck of the Galli Maru. The hooks jerked and hopped across the deck looking for anything hard to grab. Three set, then the fourth, hooking on railings, ladders. As soon as the cables were taut, the four men secured them to hard fittings on the Sea Dragon.

  Hotary looked over and saw the Japanese captain staring in disbelief. He was confused and furious. The captain disappeared inside the bridge of the Galli Maru. Hotary had hoped to get over there before they got back on the radio. One of his men yelled from the bridge, “He’s transmitting on emergency frequency that he’s an LNG ship being boarded by pirates.”

  Hotary turned to three men standing on the bow. He raised his hand to them, the signal he had hoped not to have to give. They raised the three rocket-propelled grenade launchers, the RPG-7s, and fired into the antennae on top of the Galli Maru’s bridge. They knew to avoid the radar antenna if at all possible. They fired almost simultaneously at the radio antenna nicely lit up in the Galli Maru’s attempt to be conspicuous.

  The rocket motors sent the warheads racing across and slaughtered the antennae over the bridge. The explosions amid the blend of metals, aluminum, steel, titanium, and other composites sent sparks and a multicolored fireworks display high into the dark night. The radio transmission stopped, but they had gotten off enough to complicate Hotary’s plan. He had expected it but had hoped to be quick enough to avoid it.

  Hotary ran for one of the cables holding the two ships together. He threw on the backpack that had been handed to him and threw the AK-47 strap over his head. His men handed him a stainless-steel device with two handles designed to accept a steel cable. He slipped it over the cable, and jumped off the deck of the Sea Dragon. He slid down the cable onto the deck of the Galli Maru. Three other men jumped onto the remaining cables while five more stood on the deck of the Sea Dragon, rifles drawn, waiting for the sure opposition.

  Hotary heard a commotion as men emerged from several hatches aboard the LNG ship. The captain was one of the first down to the deck and began screaming at Hotary in Japanese. He looked up at the burning wreckage in the superstructure of the ship, and back at Hotary. He just couldn’t believe this was happening on the high seas off the coast of the United States.

  The captain yelled for his men to grab weapons out of the arms locker. They scrambled back up the ladders as the men on the Sea Dragon opened fire on them. Their AK-47s barked loudly as sailors from the Galli Maru fell. The captain ducked back into the bridge, tried the radio, then a backup radio, both of which were disabled.

  Hotary jumped over the railing in one easy motion. He pulled his assault rifle over his head and ran toward the bridge. He raced up one ladder, then the next. The other men who had crossed with him were right behind him. He burst onto the bridge. The captain turned to him with fury and screamed at him in Japanese.

  Hotary put up his hand. “Speak English,” he insisted.

  “Get off my ship!” the captain demanded.

  “I’m not here to hurt you. But this is my ship,” Hotary said. He noticed movement on the bridge and fired at the corner. A man screamed and dropped a shotgun then fell to the deck with his arm bleeding profusely. Hotary walked to the man and shot him in the back where he lay. He went silent.

  The captain cried out. “Not here to hurt us?! You cannot do this! You are murdering my crew!”

  “If you want any of your crew to live you will tell them to do exactly as they are told! If they try to stop us, they will be killed,” Hotary yelled.

  The captain looked more closely at Hotary. “Who are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  The captain stared. “I have watched news from satellite. You look like the man that was on trial on U.S. Navy ship. But it wasn’t him.” He suddenly realized who he was dealing with. He gasped, “You are Wahamed Duar!”

  “You will tell your crew to do exactly as they are told.”

  The captain nodded slowly, terrified of what he was involved in, now knowing who had possession of his LNG ship.

  On the main deck below, three men ran from a lower hatch carrying twelve-gauge shotguns. They aimed at men crossing over on the cables but were quickly cut down by Duar’s men, who were waiting for them.

  Duar pointed to the helm and yelled at one of his men to take over. He yelled to the others to scour the ship and find the rest of the crew. They ran from the bridge and headed down one of the internal ladders. They knew the layout of the ship as well as they knew that of the Sea Dragon; they had studied a diagram of the entire ship for weeks. Duar pulled out a set of steel handcuffs and turned back to the captain. “Give me your hands.”

  “No,” the captain said.

  Duar hit him in the face with the barrel of his gun in a slashing movement. The gunsight cut the captain’s face and blood ran down his cheek. “Give me your hands!”

  The captain offered his hands.

  “Behind you,” Duar insisted.

  The captain turned and Duar handcuffed him behind his back. “Sit down,” Duar ordered. The captain sat on the deck of the bridge and stared at Duar and his men with palpable fear.

  Only six of Duar’s men were left aboard the Sea Dragon, three to handle the ship, and three to empty the contents of the special containers, bring them to the deck of the Sea Dragon, and transfer them to the Galli Maru. They hurriedly transferred the explosives, radioactive cores, and weapons across from the Sea Dragon. When all the equipment had been transferred, Duar grabbed the captain. “On your feet,” he said.

  The captain stood awkwardly and Duar pulled him to the ladder. He handed him over to one of his men, who dragged him do
wn the ladder and hooked him to the two-handled device. A line was tied to the end and he was pulled up and over to the Sea Dragon.

  Duar checked his watch, gave the signal, and the three men left on the Sea Dragon released the cables and turned away from the Galli Maru. They headed due east. The Galli Maru turned west for the Chesapeake Bay.

  * * *

  “Captain Pugh?”

  The submarine captain turned to the first-class petty officer, who was carrying a sheet of paper. “What?”

  “Here’s the text of that transmission on the international distress frequency. It’s not far from here at all.”

  Pugh frowned and grabbed the paper. He read it aloud, “This is Galli Maru, at thirty-two North and seventy-eight West. We are LNG ship boarded by pirates.” He looked up at the first-class petty officer and then at the Officer of the Deck. “You think he means being boarded by pirates?”

  “Yes, sir. He had a heavy accent.”

  “Boarded by pirates? An LNG ship? Are you shitting me?” He looked at the chart. “Where are they?”

  The petty officer leaned over with a pen and pointed to the location. “Right about here, sir.”

  “Thirty miles or so from here,” Pugh observed. “How long ago was this transmission?”

  “About five minutes.”

  “Do we have anything on the ship itself?”

  “We’re not sure, sir. Last time we did a radar scan there were about thirty ships in the area. They’re sort of lining up to go into the Chesapeake. Hard to tell which one it was.”

  “How strong a signal was their mayday call?”

  “Not very, really.”

  “Get a message off to the Coast Guard. Retransmit that mayday call in case they missed it. Tell them we’re on the way. They need to get a cutter or helicopter out there right away. Send it to Washington and Norfolk as well.” Pugh paused and thought. “Why the hell would pirates want to take an LNG ship? They think they’re going to break it up into little pieces of natural gas and sell it on the black market? It’s not like you can unload one of those ships just anywhere.”

  Lieutenant Commander Terry Foss, the Officer of the Deck, a clever officer that Captain Pugh found annoying but incredibly insightful, asked, “Did you see that message that came in a little bit ago?”

  “Which one?” Pugh asked.

  “They think the ship we’re looking for, the one that sailed from Africa, has Wahamed Duar himself aboard.”

  Pugh looked at him. He didn’t remember seeing such a message. He might have missed it if it started talking in depth about terrorism. Not a lot of terrorists in submarines. “So you’re thinking maybe this is his work.”

  Foss nodded.

  “This LNG ship is ahead of us. And if the ‘pirates’ are led by Duar, that means the ship he is on went right by us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t know. But if we get there right away, maybe we’ll see.”

  “Get us to that LNG ship, now.” To the petty officer, “Tell the comm officer I want to get a message off to Washington right away. Tell them we’re near an LNG ship which we believe may have been attacked by the ship they’re looking for. Tell them we’re requesting instructions on what to do when we get there. Are we cleared to sink her? Go, go! Get that message off!”

  * * *

  Sarah St. James could feel the acid in her stomach. Things were starting to happen too fast. They had had no information for weeks, and now it was pouring in from all sources, mostly in agreement, but some in conflict. Wahamed Duar had been acquitted, although it wasn’t Wahamed Duar. He was probably on a ship that no one could find heading for United States. The entire United States Navy, Coast Guard, NSA, and Air Force could not locate one lousy ship. And now a liquefied natural gas ship, which had the explosive power of a small nuclear device, was being taken by “pirates.” This had been heard by the Coast Guard, and the Navy, and was confirmed by a submarine, which was thirty nautical miles away.

  The Office of Navy Intelligence, ONI, and the Director of Central Intelligence both believed that Wahamed Duar was the one taking the LNG ship.

  Sarah St. James thought they were probably right. The President was so concerned he had called yet another emergency meeting of the National Security Council. He was livid. The situation room felt unusually cold. Someone had turned the air conditioning down to bring the room temperature into the high sixties, probably expecting a lot of heat to be generated in the meeting.

  President Kendrick dispensed with the niceties. He turned to Woods. “It’s your belief that Wahamed Duar was aboard the ship that we couldn’t find, and that he has now somehow taken a liquefied natural gas ship off the coast of Virginia. That about sum it up?”

  “Yes, sir. I can’t explain how he got by the pickets, but he did. And he is now probably on board that LNG ship.”

  President Kendrick said, “I don’t know much about explosives, but I’m prepared to guess that the large ship full of liquefied natural gas is extremely volatile and if it went up it would be a very bad thing.”

  Woods looked at Robinson, the Chief of Naval Operations, for an answer. The admiral replied, “It would be very difficult to get it to explode instead of just burn, but if done right, it would be the equivalent of setting off a small nuclear device.”

  St. James added, “And if Rat is right, then the ship probably also has a bunch of radioactive cores aboard, which would make this into a very large very dirty bomb that could take out an entire city. Is that about right?”

  Robinson replied, “I don’t know if take out an entire city is really accurate. The explosion would certainly take out an area of about four or five city blocks, and the radiation would contaminate everything for a long way. It would take an unbelievable amount of money and a very long time to clean up whatever city this hit.”

  Kendrick looked at each person individually. “Where is he going?”

  Robinson answered, “We don’t have a heading since the attack. Who knows now what he’ll do. Pretty clear his whole Africa ship thing was just to get him to the Galli Maru.”

  St. James said, “He took the ship off the coast of Virginia for a reason. He would know that if he takes it a long way from his destination, we’ll find him and get him one way or the other before he has time to do what he has come here to do. What’s really close to him now? Nothing really. Maybe Virginia Beach, but that’s not a very sexy target. I think he’s headed into the Chesapeake. To come right here, to Washington. Or maybe Baltimore, even Philadelphia.”

  Kendrick looked horrified. “Here?” He looked at Robinson. “Could he get that big a ship to Washington?”

  Admiral Robinson hesitated. “I’m not sure, sir. There are a lot of bridges and it narrows considerably. I’m also not sure what the Galli Maru draws, or how high the Potomac is right now. But it is theoretically possible.”

  “They’ll never get into the bay,” Stuntz said confidently.

  Robinson hesitated, then said, “How would you suggest we stop him?”

  Stuntz was surprised by the question and who had asked it. “Why wouldn’t we be able to stop it?”

  Robinson replied, “The Louisiana is trailing him at periscope depth. Captain Pugh. Very capable. He’s starting thirty miles away though, from the South. If Ms. St. James is right, and Duar turns the LNG ship west to the Chesapeake, it’s going to be hard for the submarine to catch him, depending on the speeds. And the faster the Louisiana goes, the harder it is to hear the sonar contacts around her. We’ve sortied every destroyer that could get its engine going and had at least a skeleton crew. Anything that could sail is away from Norfolk, not sitting there waiting to be called.

  “The good thing is the LNG ship, if headed for the Chesapeake, has to go to the mouth of the bay. We can wait for them, or set up a picket line, if we can get the ships lined up in time. We’re going to be very hard-pressed to get more than two additional ships to sea before sunrise. Based on my quick calculations, if
the Galli Maru makes twenty knots—which I’m told it can—it will be across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and into the bay before dawn. That means we have to find the ship at night. I think we will find it, I’m sure we will find it. But it won’t be simple, and stopping it is a different matter entirely.”

  “Different?” Kendrick asked.

  “Will you give us permission to sink it right now if we identify it?”

  Kendrick shook his head. “We have to assume they’re holding the entire crew of the LNG ship hostage. Until we have no other option, we can’t kill a bunch of innocent people.”

  Robinson disagreed. “I sure as hell would, sir, if you don’t mind. If we don’t, this LNG ship with radioactive material will just steam into the Chesapeake Bay. Just like shooting down an airliner full of innocent people that is about to fly into a building.”

  Stuntz had been shaking his head. “How sure are we of what exactly has happened? We think we know that Duar is aboard a ship that we can’t find because some FBI agent claims to have seen someone who looked like him in Liberia. Of course we now know there’s at least one other person who looks like Duar—we just put him on trial on a Navy ship. How do we know this isn’t just another look-alike? And we believe the LNG ship has been boarded by ‘pirates’ based on a weak radio transmission that has not been confirmed. Fair enough that the only LNG ship in the area is now not responding to the radio. Something has happened. But we couldn’t even find the ship that Duar was supposedly on, and now we’re assuming that he is not only on a ship from Africa with radioactive material—which was never confirmed—but that he has somehow boarded this LNG ship at night, transferred radioactive material, and is now in charge of the ship. We’re so sure of that we’re prepared to sink it? I don’t think so.”

  Kendrick snapped at Stuntz. “What would you do, Mr. Secretary?”

  “I’d find the ship, send out some Special Forces in helicopters, and board it.”