A Deeper Blue

Chapter Two

Adams stepped off the plane and breathed deep. Humid as hell and about seventy degrees. Ah, Florida winter.

Homestead Air Force Base was located just south of the city of Miami near the town of Homestead, Florida. The base had once housed a variety of bombers from Strategic Air Command, back in the days when “pad alert” had teeth. But the end of the Cold War had caused various reevaluations of the base, especially given the pressures from the burgeoning Miami area.

However, its strategic location — it was the only base that really had a lock on the Caribbean — had kept it at minimal status. Demoted to an “Air Force Reserve Base” it, nonetheless, maintained a squadron of “reserve” F-16s as an antiterror Combat Air Patrol over the Miami area as well as supported the antidrug planes that patrolled the region.

The old girl was getting a little weary, but hanging in there.

“Mr. Adams?” the officer waiting for them asked, holding out a hand. “I’m Lieutenant Mike Himes, sir. I’m your liaison officer.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant,” Adams said. The officer was tall and almost skeletally thin, maybe weighing one-fifty if he was soaking wet. A shock of red hair was apparent under the beret. Adams had learned to read Army doo-dads over the years, though, and the LT was wearing a CIB and a combat patch from the Third ID.

“I’ve arranged billeting for your personnel on base,” the LT continued, waving to the terminal building.

“I think we’ve got a hotel set up,” Adams said. “Sorry about that. The usual clusterfuck. But we’ll need someplace to store our gear.”

“About that… yes,” the LT said. “We’ve got a meeting just about to start you probably should attend. The joint headquarters for the action teams is here on base. You’ll be able to meet all the movers if you know what I mean, sir. And there are some issues to resolve.”

“Ain’t there always,” Adams said with a sigh. “I swear that’s why the colonel stayed behind; he didn’t want to sit in the meetings.”

“Possibly, sir,” the LT said. “I’ve got escorts for your personnel and a truck is on the way to pick up their gear. We’ll arrange transport to town. If you could follow me?”

“Hello, my old friend,” Kurt said in perfect German. It was, after all, his native language.

He was sitting in an open air bar in Bimini, listening to some really awful rap music. But the view was spectacular since some Canadian girls were down on vacation and seemed to quite enjoy the caterwauling.

“Hello,” the man on the phone said. “I thought you should know that your friends are arriving today.”

“Is that so?” Kurt said. “Then I think we should make plans to receive them well, don’t you think?”

“Arrangements have already been made,” the man said. “I was just informing you. They will be well taken care of.”

“Wonderful,” Kurt said, hanging up the phone. “Just perfect.”

The meeting room featured a long table with seats at it and along the walls behind. Most of the seats were filled when Adams arrived.

“This way, sir,” Himes whispered, leading Adams to one of the chairs, then taking the one behind him.

“Who are you?” the guy next to Adams asked, leaning over. He was a heavy-set guy wearing a FEMA jacket. In fact, most of the people in the room, males and females, wore jackets denoting their agencies. Maybe he should have Mike make up jackets for the Keldara so people would know who they were. No, fuck Mike. After this one he was gone.

“I’m not sure I get to tell you that,” Adams said.

“Or you’d have to kill me?” the man joked.

Adams turned and just stared.

“Been there, done that.”

“Oookay,” the man said, turning back to the table.

“This meeting is in order.”

The man at the head of the table was a Navy admiral. Adams vaguely recognized him but he wasn’t a SEAL admiral, not that there were many of those. Flyboy, if Adams recalled.

“We need to start by signing the standard form,” the admiral said, unsealing the briefing document in front of him with a letter opener.

Adams looked at the folder, puzzled, for a moment then pulled out his Spyderco folding knife and slit open the top. Inside was another envelope with a form on the front. He perused it for a moment, shrugged, then signed the bottom.

“Collect them,” the admiral said when everyone had finished signing the forms. It was apparent that some of them had taken the time to read the fine print. Slowly.

His aide circled the room, picking up the forms, then took them back to the admiral. The admiral then proceeded to read each of them.

“CBP,” the admiral said, looking over at the representative from Customs and Border Protection. “You have an objection to Clause Two?”

Adams had long before learned the technique of sleeping at the drop of a hat. He wasn’t sure how long it was before someone poked him the back.

“Mr… Adams?” the admiral said.

“Sir?” the master chief replied, sitting up.

“You’re heading the… Georgian contingent?” the admiral asked. “I see that you have clearance for this briefing but I’m not sure what your part in all of this is.”

“We’re just here to help out, sir,” Adams said. “We have both a team of intel specialists and a team of shooters. If you localize anything, we can take it down. Guaranteed.”

“Excuse me?” the FBI rep said, leaning over to look down the table. “What did you just say?”

“I think it was pretty obvious,” Adams replied. “I mean, why else did we fly all this way?”

“We have two tac teams, highly trained tac teams I might add, standing by,” the FBI rep said. “If anything needs to be ‘taken down’ it will be licensed officers of the United States government.”

“Fine,” Adams said, pulling out a cigar. He wasn’t much of a smoker, but there were times… “Then I’ll just sit here and nap.”

“There is no smoking in this room,” the admiral snapped.

“Admiral, you wanna check where my authority comes from?” the master chief replied, lighting up. “Because I could give a rat’s ass if this is a non-smoking area. Or what anyone in this room cares about it.”

The aide leaned forward and whispered in the admiral’s ear at which point the officer nodded.

“Sorry, Mr. Adams,” the admiral said. “Smoke your cigar by all means. In fact, smoke a dog turd if you so wish.”

“Those things will kill you, you know,” the FEMA rep said. But he wasn’t waving the smoke away, which was something.

“I’ve got the life expectancy of a gnat anyway,” Adams said, tapping an ash into the water glass in front of him.

“They’re not that great for me, either,” the FEMA rep pointed out.

“Yeah, well, I don’t really care about your life expectancy much, either,” Adams said. “And it would go up a bit if you’d lay off the fatty foods, Heart Attack Boy.”

“Gentlemen and ladies, open your briefing documents, please,” the admiral said. “The situation is this. We have highly credible intelligence that Al Qaeda is moving a shipment of VX gas into the United States.”

“Fuck,” Adams whispered.

“You didn’t know?” the FEMA rep asked. He didn’t seem too put out over the “Heart Attack Boy” thing.

“All I got was that it was WMD,” Adams whispered back.

“VX, as most of you know, is a binary nerve agent,” the admiral said, reading off notes. “That means that it has two chemicals that are combined to make VX in the field. In systems such as artillery shells they get combined after they’re fired but the materials can be combined up to a week before use and still retain full potency. Each of the chemicals is dangerous by itself, defined as Class Four Hazardous Material. However, when combined they are lethal in very small doses. It’s referred to as odorless and tasteless. What that actually means is that if you taste it or smell it you’re already dead.

“VX, like all nerve agents, works by interfering with neurotransmission. I’m sure I’m covering old ground for most of you but the first sign of exposure is involuntary muscle movement, dizziness and nausea followed by convulsions, respiration failure and death. What it does not do, despite the movie about the stuff, is bubble your skin off. Twist you up like a dying bug? That it does.

“The best method of insertion is via the eyes followed by inhalation, especially through the sinuses, and then skin contact. The material is not a gas at normal temperatures so it is normally distributed as droplets. One droplet, smaller than a drop from an eyedropper, on the skin is lethal. For that matter, it only takes a few picograms in the eyes. That’s smaller than you can see.

“There is a cargo container of VX believed to be bound for the South Florida area,” the admiral continued. “Insertion method is unknown at this time. We have located and seized the suspect ship but it was empty of all such cargo. The crew has admitted, under questioning, that it veered from the sea-lanes and that there were others aboard who left sometime during that change of course. The numbers are unclear. The ship is a tramp freighter owned by shell companies probably connected to Al Qaeda. That is where we’re at.”

Adams actually managed to stay awake through most of the meeting. He wished he hadn’t, but what the hell. And the situation was definitely under control. Definitely. The FBI had two thousand agents in place or on the way. The Coast Guard was redeploying. The CIA was “hot on the trail.” The FBI was “developing leads.” Customs and Border Protection had the ports “locked down solid.” FEMA was “fully prepared,” courtesy of the guy in the seat next to him. The Coast Guard was “all over the situation.” Hell, the Navy had a “solid lock on all action items.”

“And what do the Georgians have for us?” the admiral asked after about an hour of ritual chest-beating.

“Dick all,” Adams said. He’d finished off the cigar long before and was wondering when the damned meeting would end so he could get a beer and wash the taste out. “Oh, we do have a top-flight intel team that doesn’t give a rat’s ass how it collects the intel. And one of the best WMD experts on the face of the earth. And a group of shooters who could probably wipe your Fibbies in about two seconds. And a record of doing this sort of shit and succeeding. Other than that? Not much.”

“If you violate privacy there’s no way we can get a conviction,” the FBI rep pointed out, angrily.

“These guys are all going to Guantanamo, anyway,” Adams said. “Who cares? You do, that’s who. So you’re going to go around ‘developing leads’ right up until you hit that constitutional protection thing. Then give it to us.”

“Chief Adams,” the FBI rep said diplomatically. “This is the United States. There are laws. While I’m sure you’re very good at what you do, if you do any of those things, federal and local law enforcement would be forced to detain you pending charges.”

“Fine, fine,” Adams said, holding up his hands. “In that case, got nothin’. We done? I need a beer.”

“I think we’re done,” the admiral said. “Could I speak to you, Mr. Adams?”

“I need a beer, too,” the FEMA rep said, getting up and taking the documents he could exit with. “But good luck. My job is just to clean up the mess. This is too much mess to want to think about.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Adams said. “Hey. You want some real beer?”

“Sure,” the FEMA rep said, frowning.

“Get with the LT and we’ll arrange a meet,” Adams said, standing up. “Don’t worry, you’ll like it.”

He made his way through the crowd to the admiral, who was talking to the CIA rep. Another guy wearing a DEA jacket was apparently part of the pitch.

“They’re not used to smuggling into the U.S.,” the CIA guy was saying. “It’s almost sure to be containers. We’ll probably catch those with the sniffers, but I think the main angle of attack is on the shipping company. They are going to have transferred to another ship.”

“So what do you need?” the admiral asked.

“More support,” the DEA guy replied. “Especially from the FBI. They’re trying to find the inside groups. Let’s stop it before it gets here. Seriously, South Florida used to be a smuggler’s haven but we’ve got it locked down pretty tight these days. I don’t think they’re coming in here. I think the ship was a feint; they’re probably going through Mexico. The ship probably transferred on an out-island or at sea and another ship is carrying it to Mexico. And to crunch the numbers, run down those leads, we need to get the FBI to quit dicking around with opening doors all over Miami. The guys they’re talking to my guys already know. They do drugs, not VX. Hell, they’re ruining a dozen cases and stepping all over us!”

“I’ll talk to the FBI,” the admiral said. “But you guys are the outside. So get outside. If it’s not coming in here, find out where it is coming in. You should be arranging that right now, not moaning to me. So go do it.”

The two left, leaving Adams alone with the admiral and his aide.

“Master Chief,” the admiral said, sitting down and waving to a seat.

“I wasn’t sure if the admiral remembered me, sir,” Adams said, taking the seat.

“I didn’t,” the admiral said. “I finally read the briefing document. But there are problems.”

“Aren’t there always,” Adams said.

“I don’t particularly like the way the FBI rep phrased it, but he was on point,” the admiral said. “This is the U.S. We have laws. And, face it, we own the waters around this area. So I’m not sure what you’re here for.”

“I’m not sure, either, sir,” Adams said. “But we’re here. Turn us loose.”

“And that’s the other problem,” the officer said, sighing. “Your intel group. I suppose you want to go around tapping phones and listening for intercepts and trailing suspects. The FBI can do all of that and I would suspect better. And they’ll do it legally. Slowly, unfortunately. The fastest I’ve ever personally heard of one of them getting Title III clearance was seven days. And that can only be used for drug cases. FISA… longer. However, what you would be doing is illegal. As would be the case if you fire a weapon in anything other than self-defense. Now, given your pull, you could probably escape justice. If we could keep it off the news. You see where this is going?”

“We sit on our hands?” Adams asked angrily. “You want us to just sit on our hands?”

“I’ll try to find something for you to do, legally,” the admiral said. “But right now I’m not sure what.”

“Yes, sir,” Adams said, taking a deep breath.

“And Master Chief?”

“Yes, sir?”

“If you fuck me over on this I will put your ass in Guantanamo and throw away the key.”