Ashes of Victory

— 17 —

Hartwell Prost sat alone at a corner table at his favorite eatery, in the historic Georgetown neighborhood on the northwest side of the capital. It was located just a stone’s throw away from the brownstone he had purchased in a short sale during the economic collapse of 2008. He’d had a moment of empathy for the seller, until he learned the seller had been an investment banker working in derivatives and thus responsible for the very crisis forcing him to sell.

The restaurant didn’t have the history of places like the Old Ebbitt Grill or Martin’s Tavern, but it did have great food. And after the day he’d had dealing with the near miss in the Suez Canal, tonight the DNI needed a decent meal and a drink… or three.

Prost looked around the place. He was used to eating alone, having done so for pretty much most of his life, minus the two years he had been married, at which he failed miserably. And that reminded him of the advice his old Langley boss had offered the moment Prost had put in for vacation to go tie the knot: you’re already married.

But at the time, he’d been in love, or so he had thought, and had gone through with it anyway. It took him two stormy years to realize that personal relationships did not mesh well with careers in espionage, especially one that took him to distant locales for months at a time. Two decades later, after traveling the world and finally getting called back to a permanent post at Langley, Prost had tried his hand with a dating service. But after the third date during which he’d had to jokingly say to a woman, “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you,” he realized “dating,” particularly outside of intelligence circles, wasn’t going to be for him.

He did know several women from Langley and Fort Meade — headquarters of the NSA — whose company he enjoyed privately, but none expected anything more from him than room service and what adults do when they meet in hotel rooms to have room-service dinners.

On the rare occasion he needed a public date, say for a White House event, he would extend an invitation to a genuine friend of his from college, whose career had also brought her to DC. Since she was a rather well-known advocate of LGBQT rights and very much “out,” no one ever made the mistake of connecting them romantically. Of course, some therefore made erroneous conclusions about his own preferences, but that more amused him than anything else.

So here you are, pal, eating all by your lonesome, he thought.

But a moment later, his encrypted phone vibrated twice, reminding him that he was never actually “alone.” Of course, at that very moment, his food arrived.

Glancing at the text message, then at his dinner, which looked and smelled delicious, the DNI frowned, then turned to his waiter. “Frankie, I need this to go, please.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Prost.”

A dark sedan waited for him at the curb outside the restaurant. It headed up Wisconsin Avenue before turning left on Massachusetts and right on Thirty-Eighth Street, coming to a stop in front of a nondescript three-story brownstone.

Climbing out with his takeout in hand, Prost walked to the door and entered a code in the keypad. A set of magnetic locks disengaged, and he faced a long corridor leading to another locked door. Again, he entered a code and this time it swung open automatically, revealing the cavernous interior of a room that resembled a mini version of NASA Mission Control in Houston, Texas. Wall-to-wall projection screens towered over three rows of consoles. A mix of military and civilian personnel busily clicked away, completely oblivious to him.

A woman in a blue US Army Service Uniform — commonly called a Class A uniform — came up to him holding a tablet computer. The name stenciled on her name tag identified her as Blake. Her shoulder straps showed captain’s bars.

“Right this way, Mr. Prost,” she said, regarding the DNI with steady green eyes. Technically, Captain Christine Blake reported to the head of the army’s Imagery Intelligence division, but at the moment, she reported directly to Prost.

They went into a glass-walled conference room off to the right, and he sat at one end of a table facing a seventy-inch LED screen.

While Captain Blake worked her tablet at the other end of the table, next to the screen, Prost reached in the bag and produced his to-go meal, carefully packed in a round-lidded plastic container.

Capt. Blake said, “At zero eight hundred local time, USS Lincoln came under attack by thirty-six Qader anti-ship missiles. As you know, we’re hitting the area where the missiles originated within the hour. Our potential HVT, however, is right here.” The army captain pointed to a large luxury yacht that appeared to be about a mile from shore. A helicopter sat on its stern deck. “This video was captured at the very edge of the range of a Reaper circling the region ninety miles from the carrier at twenty thousand feet. Good thing it had an ARGUS-IS, or we would have missed it,” she said, referring to the MQ-9 Reaper’s Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, the revolutionary wide-area sensor sporting 368 five-megapixel cameras to create images of about 1.8 gigapixels at the rate of twelve frames each second while covering an area of thirty-nine square miles. Conceived and built at DARPA, the DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARGUS-IS had the resolution to gather “pattern-of-life” data on individual people while operating at the Reaper’s maximum ceiling of fifty thousand feet.

Prost was still angry at himself for having missed the trucks, but they had parked close to the periphery of his surveillance area set at ninety miles from Lincoln, encompassing more than twenty-five thousand square miles of terrain — which should have been plenty.

Only it hadn’t.

As Murphy’s Law would have it, the damn trucks, which looked like civilian vehicles, had been parked another eight miles out, and they had apparently traveled there at night.

Can’t catch a damned break, he thought with a sigh, staring at the ARGUS-IS high-resolution video showing a man standing on a platform using binoculars pointed precisely toward the hill crowded with the TEL trucks.

Blake worked her tablet, and the screen zoomed in, capturing the man’s facial features clearly as he spoke on the phone. Then an instant later, the missile firing began. Before the last Qader went airborne, blazing toward Lincoln, the man had boarded the helicopter and flown away.

“Who is he and where the hell did the bastard go?” he asked around a mouthful of veal.

The captain looked down at her tablet, and the screen zoomed in even more. “The yacht’s name is Unbridled, and it’s registered to the International Bank of Riyadh. Three-dimensional facial recognition identifies him as Prince Omar Al Saud. He is the bank’s CEO.”

Prost put down his fork and pushed away his food, suddenly losing his appetite. “Have we tracked him yet?” he finally asked, grabbing the bottle of water and twisting the cap.

“Yes, sir. The helicopter flew to King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he went inside a private terminal. Thirty minutes later, he boarded another helicopter, a Sikorsky S-76C, and flew directly to a much larger yacht, the Azzam a few miles off the coast of Abu Dhabi.

The video fast-forwarded to a megayacht that made Unbridled look like a lifeboat.

“Must be nice to be rich,” Prost whispered to himself, before asking, “Did we figure out who owns it?”

Capt. Blake shook her head. “I have three guys working that now, sir.” She pointed at three men, two in ACUs and a civilian in jeans, a white T-shirt, and running shoes tapping away at their consoles wearing headphones. “All we know at the moment is that it’s registered in Saudi Arabia and that it was built by Lürssen Yachts out of Bremen-Vegesack, Germany.”

“What about the blueprints.”

“We’ve contacted the BND, and they’re working it real time,” Blake replied, referring to the Bundensnachrichtendienst, the German Federal Intelligence Service, that country’s version of the CIA. “What we do know, is that the owner of Azzam is also the entity who acquired the majority of the assets of the Sino-Eastern Group, which owned the planes that attacked Truman as well as the ones we bombed in Guatemala.”

He leaned back. “And that’s as clear as it gets in our line of work, Captain.”

“Speaking of that… he’s been standing by, sir,” she said.

“Yeah,” Prost said. “Put him through.”

A moment later, a man of medium stature but muscular appeared on the screen wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt. His brown hair and matching beard were a tad long and unkempt.

“Evening, Commander,” Prost said.

“We’re ready to roll, sir. What’s the word?”

“Operation Night Out is a go,” he said.

“Will do.”

“And good luck,” Prost said.

The man frowned, then said, “I’d rather have the blueprints on the target so I can make my own fucking luck… sir.”

“Absolutely,” Prost said. “You should have them in—”

The screen went blank.

Prost frowned. “How long before we can get that to him, Captain?”

“Within the hour, sir.”

“Let me know if I need to call the BND director. He owes me for last year’s tip on ISIS that kept those crazy bastards from blowing shit up in Munich.”

“Will do, sir.”

As Blake went off to work with his team, Prost sat back and contemplated the activity beyond the glass panels. His team with no name represented the pick of the litter from the CIA, the DIA, and the NSA, plus his special ops guys on the other side of the world.

He stared at this operation of his own creation that didn’t exist, following orders that were never given to execute a battle plan that could fall apart — in spite of Russo’s best efforts — the moment the first bullet was fired.

And that made Prost think of a comment made long ago by former author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. after the alleged CIA failed plot to assassinate Indonesian president Sukarno in 1957: It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed everybody in the room except Sukarno.

Javier Ibarra and his crew worked quickly, with efficiency, lowering the three reinforced sails and preparing the motorsailer for rough seas and stormy weather.

They cleared the scuppers, battened down the hatches, removed all extra weight from the vessel’s bow, and secured the gear aft as the onslaught of gale-force winds struck Erasmus with impressive force.

Working the twin engines, and assisted by Mario Mendoza while the other two crew members remained in the engine room, the seasoned captain knew that survival depended on keeping the vessel’s bow facing the incoming twenty-five-foot swells. And that required the Cummins to continue delivering their respective 220 horsepower of thrust.

Heavy rain peppered the thick windscreen, and continuous lightning flashed across angry seas as Ibarra glanced at the GPS showing them roughly six hundred miles west of Lisbon.

Middle of nowhere, he thought as the turbulent sky rapidly turned a shade of black and dark pea green and some waves crested at almost thirty feet. Mierda.

Everyone wore life preservers in case they needed to abandon ship, but Ibarra almost laughed at the thought. No way could anyone survive a minute drifting out there.

And forget the Whaler, he thought. Their twenty-three-footer also wouldn’t stand a chance against the towering swells.

They would either get Erasmus through this or they all died. There would be no calling anyone for help in the middle of the North Atlantic. Besides, the moment he had accepted Al Saud’s lucrative contract, the only contact he was allowed to have was with one of Al Saud’s spies. Operating out of the Virginia Beach area, the spy monitored movements of Coast Guard and US Navy vessels to help ensure that Erasmus got to its destination.

He stared at the encrypted satellite phone strapped to the console, realizing he was a bit overdue for his initial call, but at the moment Ibarra had more pressing issues, like the view beyond the thick windowpanes, ominous even to the veteran sailor. There was something unnatural about staring up at the white tops of waves as tall as the motorsailer’s masts.

You can do this, Javi.

Ibarra settled behind the controls as his father’s voice echoed in his mind. He had done everything by the book, shifting cargo to improve the boat’s balance and securing all hatches to make Erasmus impermeable.

Keeping the throttles at one-third power, he guided the vessel at a minimum speed into the jaws of the mounting waves, pounding headfirst against breakers as the storm gathered strength.

When the windblasts topped fifty-two miles per hour, and the torrential rainfall reduced visibility to zero, Ibarra briefly lost his sense of direction.

“Javi!” Mendoza shouted as the windscreen cleared for a moment — enough for Ibarra to see a towering rogue wave crashing over the bow. The impact rolled the heavy yacht over on its starboard side and tossed both men onto the deck.

He struck something hard as the mainmast went underwater for a few moments before the sturdy Cheoy Lee righted herself.

Get up, Javi.

Get up!

He did, scrambling back to the helm, the side of his face feeling warm, almost burning.

“You’re bleeding!” Mendoza shouted as he staggered toward him with a towel.

But Ibarra only cared about one thing: the engine gauges. He breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of both tachometers still showing the Cummins humming away at eleven hundred RPM.

Grabbing the wheel, he steered the bow directly into the next wave, adjusting the dual throttles and crashing through it.

Only then did he allow a quick glance at his feet and see the blood dripping down his legs and onto the teak floor. Mendoza tried to keep the towel pressed against his head, but the lurching of the ship made it near impossible.

His heart pounding like a drum, and his own watery blood running down the side of his face, Ibarra used the flashes of lightning to help him see through the squall.

The churning sea constantly changed direction as thunder clapped. He used just enough throttle to make headway, fighting panic as breakers crashed over the boat and the wheel fought his attempts to hold course.

All thoughts of money disappeared as he contemplated the real possibility of dying at sea, and the thought made him think of his father again, of the feelings that must have swept through him during his final moments.

But Erasmus was almost five times the size of that old fishing rig, and it had been designed specifically for transoceanic journeys. It had even been constructed to roll completely and straighten herself out.

So, he persisted, wave after explosive wave. Foam and surf engulfed them as he guided the motorsailer, its bow stabbing the waves again and again, confident in his training, in his watertight vessel, and in his experienced crew.

Slowly the yacht punched through to the other side of the front, as visibility steadily increased and the winds gradually declined, along with the size of the swells pounding his hull, leaving the storm behind and once again accelerating through calmer seas.

He decided to keep it simple and just stick to the diesels until they were completely away from the front, steering west.

Mendoza pulled out a first-aid kit beneath the console and started working on the side of his head.

“Nice one, cabrón,” the native from San Sebastian mumbled, applying first several Steri-Strips and then a dressing over the wound. “Definitely an improvement. The chicas back home will go crazy.”

Ibarra chuckled as the first sign of sunlight pierced through the clouds.

Leaving the helm in Mendoza’s capable hands, Ibarra headed two levels belowdecks to the engine room. He found Sammy Chen, his chief mechanic, crawling between the rumbling Cummins. The slim native of Taipei, dressed in oil-stained coveralls with the sleeves rolled up above his elbows, looked up from his work. He pointed to the side of his forehead, exposing a heavily tattooed forearm.

“You should see the other guy!” Ibarra shouted over the engine noise, and Chen gave him a thumbs-up before vanishing behind the diesels.

Off to the side, working an electrical panel, stood Jorge Diaz, his back to Ibarra. A former lieutenant with the Armada Española, or Spanish Navy, Diaz knew the North Atlantic better than anyone, plus he also held a degree in electronics from some online university Ibarra couldn’t remember.

Leaving them to their duties, Ibarra headed one level up to the main salon, just below the bridge, and looked around quickly to make sure nothing had gotten loose before pulling on a handle hidden behind a sofa.

A three-by-four hatch swung open on the teak floor between the galley and the lounge, nearly invisible until now, exposing a set of steps dropping into the vessel’s secret cargo area custom built by Girón between the forward and stern cabins one level below. Turning on the light, he stepped down to the spacious compartment used by his old mentor to smuggle drugs around the globe before Ibarra had continued the tradition and added arms to his list of clandestine services. He inspected the assortment of rifles, submachine guns, pistols, and RPGs secured to the walls before his eyes converged on the metallic case still fastened to hard points on the floor with yellow heavy-duty ratchet straps. This was, by far, the most critical — and most lucrative — object he had ever smuggled.

Kneeling by it, Ibarra entered the code on the digital keypad given to him by Al Saud, and lifted the hinged lid.

The weapon appeared undamaged — at least as far as he could tell. Breathing a sigh of relief, the Basque sailor headed back up to the bridge, where he found Mendoza still at the helm.

Angry cumulous clouds had given way to an orange-stained sky that filled Ibarra with the renewed hope that maybe, just maybe, he might be able to fulfill this contract and live to enjoy the fortune sitting in his account in Costa Rica.

Satisfied that all was once again in order, Ibarra reached for the satellite phone. But as coincidence would have it, the gadget beeped twice.

Mendoza looked over from the helm. “That is strange, sí?”

“Indeed.”

He read the message twice, frowned, then turned to Mendoza and said, “Flank speed. We need to reach the entrance to Chesapeake Bay as soon as possible.”

The time had come to part ways with the oil tanker that had been their lifeline, providing them with a stealthy ride away from the carnage they’d caused in Singapore.

Yuri Sergeyev hated to leave its protective baffle, but the tanker had started a northwest turn, and Sergeyev’s rendezvous coordinates required him to steer east, toward the Philippines. But rather than breaking off and continuing on their preordained course at their current speed and depth, Sergeyev had an old Cold War trick up his sleeve. One he knew better than most.

The trick called for a brief period of silence to give the sonar operator a chance to listen for enemy contacts. Although the baffle from the tanker’s screws had kept them safe from enemy vessels, it also blinded their sonar arrays. For all Sergeyev knew, the entire US Pacific Fleet could be steaming right alongside his boat.

“Rudder amidships,” he said. “All stop. Hold bearing. Set depth six-zero-zero feet. Not a sound, Anatoli.”

“Rudder amidships. All stop,” Anatoli Zhdanov replied. “Setting depth to six-zero-zero feet. Quiet everyone.”

Sergeyev reached for an overhead pipe to steady himself. The submarine went completely silent and began to descend through the thermal layers as water entered the bow ballast tank.

“You’re up, Leonod,” he whispered to Popov.

Covering a yawn, stretching, and rubbing his eyes, the sonarman reached for his headphones and secured them over his ears for the first time since they’d begun tailing the tanker.

A few minutes later, as they settled at six hundred feet, Popov sprang forward on his chair.

“Contact!” he hissed, obviously struggling to keep his voice down. “Bearing three-two-zero. Range zero-eight miles. Depth one-five-zero feet. Captain, it’s a Virginia class. And it is behind us!”

Sergeyev inhaled sharply in true surprise, unable to explain that one.

“Have they flooded their tubes and opened their torpedo doors, Leonod?”

Eyes closed now, Popov listened before replying, “Negative, Cap’n. Torpedo doors closed. Tubes not flooded.”

“Captain,” Zhdanov whispered. “The Americans are right—”

“I know where they are, Anatoli. The question is, can they see us?”

“But how did they find us?”

Sergeyev wished he had an answer. “What’s their position, Leonod?”

“No change in bearing, depth, or speed, Cap’n. Zero-six miles behind us. They will cruise right over us in another four minutes.”

Sergeyev grinned as Zhdanov whispered, “They can’t see us, Captain. The Americans can’t see us.”

For an instant, Sergeyev was tempted to take on the sub. He had six torpedoes left and could fire them at a very short range, catching the sub by surprise.

Doing so, however, would not only be a gross deviation from his very strict orders, it would telegraph his position to the entire US Navy if the Americans managed to send out a distress signal. It would also expose him and his crew unnecessarily

So, instead, he just kept his sub silent and deep, standing in the control room alongside his men quietly waiting for the Virginia-class sub to pass them by.

It was a one in three chance, and Cmdr. Frank Kelly was beginning to wonder if he had chosen the wrong tanker. But at the time, it had seemed like the logical choice. The Type 212A reported by Marshon Chappelle had vanished while approaching three massive baffles, so logic suggested it had followed the closest one.

But after following it from a respectful distance for nearly twenty-four hours, he was starting to wonder if requesting this deviation from his orders to escort Stennis to Honolulu had been the smartest choice.

“What do you think, Bobby?”

Lt. Cmdr. Robert Giannotti shrugged. “Chappy? Anything?”

“Negative, sir. Just the tanker. No other contacts.”

“Well, crap,” the XO said, crossing his arms. “Now what?”

Glancing at his watch, Kelly replied, “Stay the course for three more hours, then we call it a day and join Stennis.”

“So much for our little hunting party,” his XO said.

“Yeah,” Kelly said. “It was a long shot, anyway.”

The captain headed aft, toward the crew’s living space. A set of metal steps took him down to the ship’s galley, mess hall, and ward room, and just past it, the junior officer’s quarters right across the narrow hallway from the XO’s and CO’s cabins. He went inside the latter, a room just barely large enough to accommodate a bed, a small desk and chair beneath a pair of metal bookcases, and a built-in cabinet containing his clothes, a few personal items, and a safe.

Lying down, Kelly tried to get some shut-eye, but he couldn’t get the damn ghost sub out of his mind. And besides, every time he closed his eyes, he could hear the final scream of his nephew and the rest of the sailors as their bodies were crushed by the catastrophic change in pressure when North Dakota’s hull broke up.

He sighed, somehow taking solace in the fact that it had happened suddenly.

Still… by now the news would have reached his brother living in Danbury, Connecticut. And the thought made him glance over at the five-by-seven framed photo on his desk of his twin girls, now sophomores at UConn.

How do you recover from something like that?

And how the hell did it fool us? he thought before trying to put himself in the shoes of its captain.

“What would you do?” he mumbled at the overhead pipes and wires lining the ceiling. After severely damaging an enemy aircraft carrier, evading ASW assets, and escaping out to sea, would Kelly have sailed back to his home base and keep his head down until things cooled off? Or…

He frowned. Would its captain be greedy enough to attempt another strike?

The report from COMSUBPAC indicated that the ghost sub had fired six torpedoes at Stennis, and the Type 212A could carry a maximum of twelve, meaning its captain still had half its load — enough to take on another carrier.

But if so, which one?

The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group was up in the Sea of Japan, Vinson was headed for the strait, Lincoln was trying to make it to the Arabian Sea, and Stennis was limping toward Honolulu.

He shook his head, deciding that he’d leave Stennis alone and focus his remaining ordnance on the closest ones: Vinson or Roosevelt. To do so, he’d have to accelerate to at least at two-thirds speed to catch them. And that meant enough noise for Chappy to pick him up.

Kelly sat up and reached for the intercom phone next to his desk.

“Boss?” Giannotti said.

“Put us on a racetrack pattern, Bobby. Bearing one-four-zero. A hundred and fifty miles long, ten miles wide.”

“But… that’s going to take us down toward Manila. I thought we’re supposed to be heading toward Honolulu to escort Stennis.”

“Not yet, Bobby. I’ll square off with the COMSUBPAC on our next cycle. Meanwhile, get Chappy and his crew to pull a double shift. Bastard gotta be out there somewhere. Find him.”

“Aye, sir.”

Lying back down, Kelly exhaled heavily as his eyes drifted back to the five-by-seven framed photo.

He sighed. The good Lord had indeed been merciful, blessing them with their mother’s looks. His ex was one classy lady, and Kelly was glad they’d remained friends after the divorce ten years before, if anything for the sake of the girls. Marisol and Kelly may have not always agreed on certain aspects of their marriage, especially on his long absences, but they’d always agreed when it came to protecting the girls.

Protecting the girls.

The commander of the Mighty Mo closed his eyes, thinking of them, picturing his last visit with them. They’d played touch football, and he remembered them chasing him down, two on one. No mercy for the old man. How many birthdays had he missed? How many school plays? How many swim meets?

He had spent his entire adult life in service to his country. He’d missed so much at home. But so had many others. And now so many of his brothers and sisters were gone. They would never have the chance to see their families again.

Right now, at this moment, seeing his girls again would be his greatest joy. But first he had to do his job. Not just protecting his girls, but every American. So for his girls, and his brothers and sisters, and their families, he and his crew were going to find this ghost submarine.

And kill it.