Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN BAITING THE TRAP

At a speed of three knots, the Ilia Mourmetz crept from its hiding place beneath the littoral shelf. Manilov was doing his best to keep the boat at a depth of seventy meters, where it was still concealed under the thermal layer. At this snaillike speed, the big bow planes of the Mourmetz were almost useless.

The risk was enormous. The Americans had displayed too keen an interest in the brief contact they had picked up when he last peeked with the Mourmetz’s periscope. For several hours they had bombarded the area with sound signals and sonobuoys, passing back and forth with their helicopters and S-3 Vikings equipped with magnetic anomaly detectors.

Finally they had given up the search.

Or had they? As he had done earlier, Manilov tried to place himself inside the mind of the American commander.

If you were unable to pinpoint the precise location of the enemy submarine, what would be your next course of action?

Elementary. You backed off and waited for the enemy submarine to emerge from hiding.

As he was doing now.

Of course, it was possible that the Americans had never confirmed a positive contact and were merely being cautious. That would be typical of the U.S. Navy, with their ridiculously overstuffed budgets, to waste tons of ordnance and fuel in such a stupid exercise.

Everything depended now on the Kilo class’s legendary stealthiness. The special single-shaft, seven-bladed screw was driven by the nearly silent Elektrosila electric motor. Anechoic rubber antisonar tiles covered the Mourmetz’s hull. The submerged vessel was as indistinguishable in the sea as a mackerel.

At the large three-paneled control console of the MGK- 400EM digital sonar, Warrant Officer Borodin tracked the enemy’s ships. The MGK-400 was one of the retrofits the Mourmetz had received in the Vladivostok yard. The new sonar was working in passive mode now, emitting no acoustical signals while it absorbed and plotted the signatures of every moving vessel in a thirty-kilometer radius.

Peering over Borodin’s shoulder, Manilov estimated that it would take two, perhaps three hours to reach the firing position he wanted. Each of the Mourmetz’s six torpedo tubes was loaded with a SET-16 torpedo containing a two-hundred-kilogram warhead. He had four more torpedoes in racks with the new fast-loader at the ready. More than he would ever need.

Manilov wished again he had the firepower of a Russian Navy submarine on routine patrol. He would have television-guided electronic homing torpedoes that he could manually switch to alternative targets if necessary. He’d be equipped with Novator antiship missiles in the event he was thwarted from firing his torpedoes. The Novators would deter the destroyers that would come racing like greyhounds to kill him.

Deterring aircraft was another matter. Before the voyage to Iran, he had insisted that the Mourmetz be armed with Igla SA-N-10 infrared-guided anti-aircraft missiles. Only after a bitter argument did the flotilla commander let him requisition three of the sophisticated missiles. Three! Nothing more than a flea bite against the overwhelming airpower of the Americans. Still, the presence of the missiles gave him a small comfort.

For two hours the Mourmetz crept southward, deeper into the Gulf of Aden. Manilov repeatedly checked the MVU- 110 combat information computer for updates on the target.

At least the enemy was predictable. The great acoustic mass of the target ship — it had to be the Reagan — continued to move in a large northeast-southwest oval pattern. It was probably in accordance with the wind direction, launching and recovering aircraft, then returning to the original position to repeat the operation. Smaller warships — the destroyer screen — seemed to be following random patterns, crisscrossing the path of the carrier.

Judging by the benign activities of the destroyers and the absence of sonar-dipping helicopters, Manilov was sure that they had not been detected. He uttered a silent thanks to the Mourmetz’s designers — the Rubin Central Maritime Bureau in St. Petersburg.

Russians had proven themselves to be inept at so many things. But they knew how to build submarines.

“I’m Commander Morse,” said Spook, forcing a smile on his face as he rose to shake hands with the members of the counterespionage team. “Welcome aboard the Ronald Reagan.”

The counterespionage team had landed aboard the Reagan on the 0700 COD — a C-2 Greyhound cargo hauler — from Dubai. Carrying their equipment in padded bags, the four men were taken directly to the flag conference compartment and introduced to Admiral Fletcher and Spook Morse.

Two were from the FBI — the bureau’s counterintelligence division — and two from the Central Intelligence Agency. Each was a civilian, wearing khakis with no insignia. Each had a guarded, suspicious manner about him.

As if they were investigating him.

Morse kept the smile frozen on his face. In truth, he despised these agents. As civilians, they operated outside the military chain of command. They were invariably abrasive, disrespectful of rank and authority.

These were no exception.

One of the FBI agents, an encryption specialist named Korchek, dropped his bag and looked at Morse. “What’s your job here, pal?”

“Flag intelligence officer. You can call me Commander.”

Korchek seemed to find this funny. “Yeah, sure thing.”

Admiral Fletcher appeared not to notice the agent’s manners. “Make yourselves at home, gentlemen. You can set up your equipment here, if you like. Commander Morse will see to it you have whatever you need.”

More than ever, Morse was concerned about security. He had insisted that the briefing be restricted to those with an immediate need to know — himself, Vitale, and Morse. None of the air wing officers, especially the contentious Boyce, had been informed. Nor had Whitney Babcock, for reasons that Morse did not want to explain to Fletcher. Not yet.

“It will take us a while to get set up,” said Korchek. He had a pockmarked face and oily, slicked-back hair. “In the meantime, this room is off-limits to everyone except me and my agents, unless we specifically invite you to come in.”

“Now wait a minute,” said Morse. “This happens to be the—”

“Never mind,” said Fletcher. “We’re going to cooperate with these gentlemen. Tell us what you want us to do.”

The agents exchanged private nods. Korchek said, “First thing, I want the files on each of your suspects, plus the locations of their work and sleeping quarters.”

Fletcher nodded, and Morse handed a stack of files to Korchek.

“Here’s the way I see your situation,” said Korchek. “You’ve got encrypted data leaving this ship in one of two ways, maybe both. Somebody is transmitting with a satellite comm device. That’s an easy one to home in on, if we know when the guy is using it. Another way is over the intranet, which is a hell of a lot more complicated because there are so many goddamn computers on this boat.”

“How can someone be sending classified data via the ship’s intranet without our comm monitors reading it?” said Morse. “Everything that goes out is monitored.”

“That’s what you think. They could be using some kind of plain-language encryption. Like a how-are-you-I’m-fine note to their mom, but embedded in the language is another message.”

“You mean, something that can be decoded with a key?”

“You got it. Old-fashioned shit, but very sophisticated in the short term, especially if they change the key every time they transmit. The problem is identifying whose computer it comes from.”

Morse said, “Sorry, but that theory won’t wash. I happen to know that we can trace any e-mail on this ship to the sender.”

Korchek gave him a withering look. “What you happen to know happens to be flat-ass wrong, pal. There are tools out there — really magic shit — that can totally erase the origin of any Internet message. And there’s even newer stuff available that can undo the erasure. And so on. It all depends on who owns the latest stuff.”

“Do you people have the latest stuff?”

“Do you think we’d travel all the way out to this barge if we didn’t?”

“There it is,” said Korchek. Two hours had passed before he summoned Morse and Fletcher back to the flag conference room. “Anything in any bandwidth or medium that goes out from the Reagan — satellite phone, Internet connection, you name it — we should be able to identify and locate it.”

He pointed to a device that looked like a laptop computer. Depicted on its color screen was a schematic view of the O-3 level of the carrier. He tabbed a key, and the screen flipped through a series of displays showing each separate deck and level on the ship.

“This is a CRC-91 integrated location processor. We feed it data from whichever homing monitor first picks up the transmission. In less than a minute after we’ve intercepted the transmission, we get a plot here on the screen. We can tell within twenty yards where on the ship the signal is coming from.”

Fletcher peered into the screen. “This is amazing. Why don’t we have this equipment running full-time on our ships?”

“This is cutting-edge stuff,” said Korchek. “Still highly classified. The more exposure it gets, the sooner someone figures out a way to beat it. We don’t want any more people than absolutely necessary to know this exists.”

“Okay,” said Morse. “That takes care of satellite communcations. What about Internet traffic?”

Korchek pointed to a notebook computer with a flickering blue screen. “See this? This box is running a software package that can detect embedded encryption. If we feed this program a normal e-mail message, then encrypt it and hide it in other normal message traffic, this little package can go after it and track it down like a bloodhound.”

Fletcher was shaking his head. “You lost me. How is that going to help us?”

Korchek gave Fletcher one of his patronizing smiles. “Simple. We’re going to send a plain language message, one that we know how to read. Then we’re going to get your spy to send the same message, encrypted.”

Fletcher was frowning. “And then…?”

“And then this software — it’s called Omnivore — performs a million or so content comparisons, runs some very fancy algorithms that one of our borderline nutcases invented, and looks for a match. When it finds one, it shows up right here on this screen.”

“How will you know whose computer it came from?”

Korchek tapped the stack of files Morse had given him in the afternoon. “Every one of your suspects has a personal computer. Every one of them now conveniently contains an invisible command — a thing similar to the ‘cookie’ that on-line merchants sneak into your computers. It will respond to a query from our computer in this room. Then we’ll know who sent the encrypted message.”

“Amazing,” said Fletcher.

“No,” said Korchek. “Pure fucking magic.”

Fletcher finished writing the message, then handed it to Korchek. “There. The revised point of intended movement amounts to about seventy miles. Normally, it would go to all the escorting vessels in the battle group.”

Sitting at his computer, Korchek quickly pecked the message onto the screen using two fingers. When he was finished, Fletcher gave the message to the flag office yeoman, who delivered it to the ship’s communications center for transmission to the battle group.

The counterespionage team members had their remote monitoring gear set up at three different stations — on either side of the island and one on the fantail. Korchek waited in the flag conference compartment to see if the spy took the bait.

It took four hours. Korchek and one of the CIA agents, Dick Mosely, were alone in the compartment.

“Gotcha!” yelled Korchek as the data began streaming into his computer. Encoded, the message didn’t make sense, not without going through the laborious computer decryption process that sometimes worked quickly and sometimes didn’t. Korchek didn’t care. The match was positive. Omnivore had detected an encrypted version of Fletcher’s message.

It also identified the computer from which it was sent.

Korchek jotted down the information on a steno pad. Then he reached into his briefcase and pulled out the holstered Glock semiautomatic. He shoved a full magazine into the grip, then slipped the pistol into the holster in the small of his back.

Korchek summoned the two marines who were stationed in the passageway. They wore BDUs, helmets, and flak jackets. Each carried an M16A2 combat rifle.

“Where we going, sir?” said one of the marines, a burly sergeant.

“Big-game hunting, Sergeant.”

Cmdr. Lou Parsons had been in his stateroom for five minutes when he was startled by the pounding on the door. He replaced his spectacles and went to the door.

“Yes?” he said, peering into the passageway.

It was the last word he could utter. The door slammed into his face, knocking his spectacles off, sending him reeling backward into a steel locker.

Korchek went in first. He seized Parsons’s arm, spun him around, slammed him against the locker. He bent Parsons’s arm up into the middle of his back.

“Ahhhhh!” Parsons screamed in pain.

“Frisk him,” Korchek ordered the marine sergeant.

“Goddammit!” Parsons yelled. “Who are you?”

The marine patted the officer down. “He’s clean.”

“What’s this all about?” Parsons’s voice was outraged.

“Cuff him,” said Korchek. “Hands behind the back.”

While the two marines put the plastic handcuffs on Parsons, Korchek pulled on a pair of latex gloves and began searching the stateroom. He went through each drawer, dumping the contents onto the deck. He found nothing.

Next he went through the locker, yanking clothes off the rack, going through the pockets of every garment.

“What are you doing?” Parsons demanded, wriggling against the firm grip of the two marines. “What the hell are you looking for?”

“Shut up,” said Korchek.

He continued ransacking the officer’s room. He lifted the mattress, looked under it, then yanked off the sheets and bedding. He pulled out the drawers beneath the bunk bed and hauled out the folded clothing, throwing it all onto the deck.

Nothing.

Korchek looked around. His gaze came to rest on the safe that was mounted on the steel desk. He turned to Parsons, who was staring at him myopically. “What’s the safe combo?”

Parsons glowered back at him. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Okay, smart-ass, have it your way. Watch how a professional does it.” Korchek pulled up the steel work chair and sat in front of the safe. From his satchel he produced a stethoscope.

Parsons stared in dismay as Korchek went to work. Even the marines seemed awestruck. After he inserted the earpieces, Korchek held the rubber listening cup against the dial of the safe. His brow furrowed in concentration, he carefully rotated the dial, listening for the tumblers to click into place.

He nodded, hearing a faint click. He reversed direction with the dial.

Another click. Back the other way.

It took less than two minutes. “Kid stuff.” He yanked off the stethoscope. “No challenge at all.”

He twisted the handle of the safe and the foot-square door swung open. Korchek reached into the safe and came out with a manila envelope. He set it aside, then reached in again. This time he came out with a vinyl case.

Parsons stared. “What the hell is that?”

A knowing smile spread over Korchek’s moonscaped face. He unsnapped the vinyl case and pulled out the device. He turned it over in his hand, studying the keys, the liquid crystal display, the retractable antenna.

The marine sergeant peered at the device. “What is that thing?”

“Evidence,” said Korchek. “Enough to send some asshole to prison for the rest of his life.”

“So we’ve got our man,” said Morse.

Korchek’s feet were propped up on the table in the conference compartment. He had a toothpick in his mouth. “Not unless he confesses.”

“What do you mean? We have enough to send Parsons to Leavenworth for a hundred years.”

“There’s still a thing called ‘due process,’ ” said Korchek. “The case against him so far is circumstantial.”

“We caught him sending an encrypted classified message. We found the SatPhone in his safe. What’s circumstantial about that?”

“All we know is that the message was on his computer. We don’t know how it got there, or whether he sent it. As for the SatPhone, that’s incriminating, but no one has actually proved that he owns the thing or that he used it for any purpose.”

“Look, Mr. Korchek, you sound more like a lawyer than an investigator.”

“I am a lawyer, pal. Don’t presume to tell me how to do my job.”

At this, Morse’s eyes widened and his chin tilted upward.

Korchek recognized the look. It was the same look the military intelligence twits always wore when they had just lost a round with him.

Korchek was enjoying himself. Being a civilian, he made it a point not to take shit from officers, especially officers like this asshole Morse. Korchek was a Chicago cop before going to law school and being recruited by the FBI. He seized on the cryptology job when it came along because he loved messing with computers, and, besides, it got him out of the grunt work regular agents had to do.

Korchek said, “It isn’t an airtight case. Maybe Parsons is your guy, maybe not.”

“Parsons fits all the profiles,” said Morse.

“What do you mean by that?” said Admiral Fletcher, watching the exchange from the end of the conference table.

Morse tossed a thick manila file folder onto the table. “This is his background file. Top of his NROTC class at Michigan. Ditto at the Navy postgrad school in Monterey. BS in electrical engineering, master’s in industrial management. Served two previous shipboard tours as comm officer — one aboard the South Carolina, then a WestPac cruise on the Lincoln. Here’s an interesting part: He put in a long tour — four and a half years — at NATO Forces South Command in Naples as a liaison officer. Had top-secret clearance and, according to this report, had contacts with foreign military counterparts all over southern Europe.”

“Is that when you think he was compromised?” Fletcher asked.

“Nothing turned up in any of the security checks they ran on him — except one glaring susceptibility. He’s subject to blackmail.”

“Because of…?”

“His sexual orientation.”

Fletcher nodded. “He’s gay, you mean?”

“It came to light back when he was at grad school. Seems he’s always had a companion. Several, actually.”

Fletcher shook his head. “How did he get a top-secret clearance? I thought homosexuals were considered a security risk.”

“Not in the new military. There was a legal challenge to that one back in the last administration, and the Defense Department backed off. You can’t yank someone’s clearance for that specific reason.”

Fletcher looked at Morse, then at Korchek. “That makes a pretty good case that Commander Parsons is our spy.”

“I’m certain of it,” said Morse.

Korchek lowered his feet to the floor. He spat his toothpick on the deck and left the room.

“Babcock?” said Boyce.

He sat at the small conference table in the air wing office, gnawing on a cigar. Claire had finished telling her story. “You mean that’s what this circus in Yemen is all about? Whitney Babcock and Yemen’s oil?”

“That was Vince Maloney’s take on it. The same oil reservoir that Saudi Arabia is tapping apparently extends somewhere past Yemen’s border, wherever that is. He said that no one has ever officially determined the border.”

“But you’re saying that someone will? Like Al-Fasr, if he takes over the country?”

“Not if. When. It’s supposed to happen very soon.”

“And it’s supposed to happen with the collusion of…” He left the sentence unfinished.

She nodded.

He removed the cigar and stared at the bulkhead for a moment. “I’m not saying that I believe it — not yet — but if it’s true, it means our battle group is being used not to fight a terrorist, but to accommodate the sonofabitch.”

“Worse than that,” said Maxwell. “It means we’re letting him keep our marines in Yemen just so he can have a bargaining chip.”

Boyce thought for a second. “Claire, we have to get this guy Maloney out here and report this to—”

“Too late.”

“He won’t talk?”

“He was killed by a car bomb.” As Boyce listened in amazement, she told him about the Toyota and the killers in the street.

“Holy shit.” He shook his head. “You nearly went with him.”

She nodded.

“You know, Claire, without your guy to give us testimony, all we have is conjecture, nothing more.”

Maxwell spoke up for the first time. “We can pass it to Admiral Fletcher.”

Boyce snorted. “You mean Babcock’s lapdog.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know the real story about Babcock.”

“There’s no limit to what Fletcher doesn’t know.”

“He’s still a naval officer. He’s the guy who’s supposed to be our boss.”

“He’s supposed to be a lot of things that he’s not.” Boyce couldn’t contain the disgust in his voice. “Just what do you think Fletcher’s going to do?”

Maxwell shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s possible that the man has a tiny speck of integrity left in him.”

“I doubt it. But what the hell, I’ve been wrong about everything else in this operation.” He picked up the phone on the yeoman’s desk. He punched a number, listened for a moment, then said, “This is Captain Boyce. I need to speak with Admiral Fletcher.”

Manilov hated moving at this slow speed. Even though they were ninety meters deep, the Mourmetz was swaying like an unsteady barge.

He stood behind the two technicians — Borodin, the sonar operator, and Keretzky, the combat information computer specialist. By the heavy acoustic mass in the sonarman’s screen, Manilov knew he was seeing the passive return of the aircraft carrier. Cruising between the Mourmetz and the Reagan were two escort vessels. Frigates or destroyers? He couldn’t tell. Beyond the carrier he saw the shape of another heavy ship. A supply ship? A cruiser?

Again Manilov wished that he had a full arsenal. With wake-homing torpedoes or, even better, the new video-guided weapons, he could steer the warhead around the interfering ships, select his target, punch the hull of the big carrier at any place or depth he chose.

Not today. Not with his complement of torpedoes. But even though the SET-16s were old, they possessed the same advantage as the aging submarine — stealth. For the first portion of their journey, the SET-16 emitted no signal, gave no clue to its presence. Even its low-noise propulsion system was difficult to detect, especially at its initial running depth of a hundred meters. Not until the torpedo was within a thousand meters of the target would Manilov activate its active sonar homing system.

He had another reason to like the SET-16. He had fired dozens of them in training, and by now he understood each foible of the torpedo. As with every primitive weapon, the trick was to get close. Very close.

They were eight kilometers from the Reagan. Close enough for a shot. He didn’t want to rush and miss. A torpedo meandering through the midst of a battle group only meant quick and certain death for the submarine.

All these years he had waited. Another twenty minutes didn’t matter. the Reagan was coming to them.

No one in the submarine’s control room was speaking. Borodin and Keretzky were hunched intently over their consoles, filtering and refining their data. Popov, the former dissident and newly promoted executive officer, was supervising the planesman, monitoring the boat’s progress.

Manilov felt a surge of pride. It was just as he had always imagined actual undersea warfare. They were creeping into the heart of the enemy’s fleet. The danger was more real and immediate than any submariner had faced since World War II.

The doubts of yesterday had evaporated, as if the dead Ilychin had taken the crew’s fears with him. The men were ready for whatever happened. True Russians. They had assigned their lives and fortunes to fate.

The minutes ticked by. Everything depended on the Reagan’s adhering to the original point of intended movement, which they had received, via Al-Fasr, over twelve hours ago. Since then the Mourmetz had been unable to extend its antenna to receive or transmit any new information.

Manilov was concerned. What if the weather had caused a change? What if a new operating plan had been ordered? What if —

Remain focused, he ordered himself. No more what-ifs.

He could see by the MVU-110 display that the largest acoustic mass — it had to be the Reagan — was still coming toward them. It meant that the ship’s point of intended movement had not changed, at least not yet.

Ten minutes.

He had delayed the last and most critical decision of the mission. He could fire torpedoes from this depth, ninety meters down, aiming on the Reagan’s passive sonar return and using the MVU-110 to calculate the firing solution. At a close enough range, the kill probability was acceptable.

Or he could be more certain. He could ascend to periscope depth, obtain a positive visual bearing and range on his target — and raise the kill probability by several percent.

He would also raise to a hundred percent the chances that they would be located.

Manilov turned away from the console for a moment and massaged his temples with his fingertips. He didn’t need to calculate the odds again. During the first few minutes after the sub hunters obtained a track on his periscope, their initial search area would be tiny. But if they were denied a precise starting point, the area to be searched swelled exponentially. With each passing minute, the submarine’s radius of movement expanded.

Safety or certainty? It was the submariner’s dilemma.

Manilov’s dream of destiny was thundering in his Russian soul like an ancient refrain. How long had he waited for this moment? Had he come this close so that he could take the safe course? Miss the target, then run like a fox fleeing from hounds?

Five minutes. the Reagan’s course was unchanged. The acoustic mass was still coming toward them.

“Ascend to thirty meters,” he ordered in a quiet voice.

Every pair of eyes in the control room swung toward him.

“Ascend?” asked Popov.

“You heard correctly,” said Manilov. “Thirty meters. When we’re stabilized in firing range, we rise to periscope depth.”

Popov was staring at him. So were Borodin and Keretzky. They understood the decision he had just made. Manilov looked at each of them, a gentle smile on his face. They could refuse to follow his orders and there was nothing he could do about it. After this moment, nothing else mattered.

Seconds ticked past. A silence as heavy as the grave hung over the control room.

“Aye, Captain,” answered Popov, breaking the spell. “Ascend to thirty meters.”