Death Wave

12

Rubens waited as Lieutenant General Alexander Douglas finished reading the transcript. The director of the NSA had agreed to meet with Rubens on impossibly short notice. Rubens had secured the appointment by using the code word “Armageddon” in his request to Douglas’ secretary. Using that word meant that the subject of the meeting was nothing less than cataclysmic in scope, was an immediate threat endangering the entire nation, and was supremely credible. During Rubens’ eleven-year tenure as deputy director of the NSA and head of Desk Three, the code had been used exactly three times — twice when there’d been solid reports of nuclear weapons smuggled into U.S. ports, and on the morning of 9/11.

They sat at the small conference table in a private meeting room off Douglas’ office, with the morning sun filtering in through the tinted windows overlooking the sprawl of Fort Meade and the Maryland countryside. Brigadier General Howard Noelle sat to Rubens’ left, the two of them opposite Douglas. Noelle was deputy director of the Central Security Service and, according to the organization charts, the number three man in the Agency.

The CSS had been established in 1972 as a combat support agency within the Department of Defense. While Douglas double-hatted as chief of the CSS, it was Noelle who actually managed the partnership between the cryptologic elements of the various military services and the NSA. Anything coming over Douglas’ desk flying the Armageddon flag would sooner or later involve the U.S. military, so it was important that Noelle be present as well.

Douglas adjusted his round-framed glasses and looked up. “Bill … this is pretty raw. An overheard conversation in Spain? There’s not a lot to go on here.”

“This may be the break we’re looking for, sir,” Noelle said. He’d already read the transcript and discussed the high points with Rubens during their twenty-minute wait to see Douglas. “A solid link between Operation Haystack and a terrorist plan to attack the United States.”

“Yes … but how? What’s the target? According to this, there’s a … a shipment of something going somewhere, but no indication of where. And we don’t know for certain that ‘the shipment’ is comprised of the missing suitcase nukes.”

“Actually, sir,” Rubens said, “General Noelle is right. We have a pretty strong case here.”

“Would you care to enlighten me?”

“Of course. In the transcript, Feng mentions something called Operation Fire from Heaven. In Arabic, that’s Nar-min-Sama. We’ve been chasing that one since our friends in the Mossad tipped us off a couple of weeks ago. We think it may refer to a planned nuclear strike against Israel.”

“Yes …”

“Feng links that with another operation, Harakat Radab min Allah. Operation Wrath of God. Feng is insisting here that Fire from Heaven be delayed until well after Wrath of God is implemented. It sounds like a two-tiered attack.”

“Hit one target, then take out the second while the opposition is still reeling from the effects of the first,” Noelle put in.

“A diversion?”

“Possibly,” Rubens said. “From the tone Feng is taking here, it sounds like two different attacks by two different groups on two different targets, but either the chances of the second will be improved if the other attack is launched first, or launching the second attack too early will give something away, maybe make the first attack less effective.”

“It still sounds pretty thin,” Douglas said. “We have to know the target.”

“Feng also mentions a name, a nom de guerre, al-Wawi. The Jackal.”

“Carlos the Jackal? Big-name terrorist in the seventies? Isn’t he dead?”

“He’s serving a life sentence in Clairvaux Prison, in France, sir. We checked as soon as the name popped up.”

The original Jackal had been the rather pathetic, overweight Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a Venezuelan leftist revolutionary who’d made a name for himself back in the 1970s. Several names, in fact. He’d become known as “Carlos” when he joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A British newspaper, the Guardian, had nicknamed him “the Jackal” when The Day of the Jackal, a novel by thriller writer Frederick Forsyth, was found with his belongings.

In fact, Carlos had fallen far short of the myth-making and hype and was not at all the super-assassin of fiction. His most notorious escapades had been a raid on an OPEC conference in Vienna where three people had been killed, and a later string of bombings in France and Germany. The man eventually had been abducted by his own security guards in Sudan, then turned over to French intelligence, and was now in prison.

“So this is a new Jackal,” Douglas said, thoughtful.

“Yes, sir.” Rubens opened his briefcase and extracted a file folder, which he opened and passed to Douglas. “This is al-Wawi, the new Jackal. Ibrahim Hussain Azhar. He led a team of Mujahideen in the hijacking of an Indian Airlines A300 Airbus in 1999. The aircraft was taken to Kandahar, in Afghanistan, where it was closely guarded by the Taliban.

“After a standoff lasting seven days, India released three prisoners to secure the Airbus and its passengers. Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar. Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. And Maulana Masood Azhar.”

“Azhar?”

“Yes, sir. Ibrahim Azhar’s brother. A radical Muslim cleric who went on to found Jaish-e-Mohammad, the Army of Mohammad, in 2000.”

“The JeM is just involved with Kashmir, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, but they’ve increasingly been taking an international stance. Especially since they bombed the Indian Parliament in New Delhi.” That had been in December of 2001.

Kashmir was the disputed territory currently divided between Pakistan, India, and China. Since their original partition in 1947, three wars had been fought in the region between India and Pakistan, the most recent in 1999, and a fourth war had been fought between India and China over the northeastern area in 1962. A number of extremist Muslim groups like the JeM had been created over the years — usually with help from Pakistan’s ISI — with the goal of forcing the Indians out of Kashmir and Jammu, the southern portion of the region now controlled by New Delhi.

“The Army of Mohammad has been closely tied to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda since the beginning,” Rubens went on. “Especially through the Binoria Madrasah, in Karachi. The message preached there calls for global jihad, claiming it’s the duty of all Muslims everywhere to join together and destroy both Israel and the United States. Kashmir is just a first step toward an Islamic world state.”

“Well, we’ve heard that before,” Douglas said. “There are too many internal differences for the Muslims ever to get their act together and take on the whole world. Shi’ites against Sunnis. Radicals against conservatives. Different interpretations of the Qur’an. It’ll never happen.”

“Not unless someone comes up with a really dramatic demonstration,” Rubens observed. “Something that proves how powerful the extremist arm of Islam actually is. Or … maybe a high-profile demonstration of how powerful Allah is. I remember there were concerns that there might be a global jihad in the wake of 9/11. That attack, the sheer scope of it, proved the radical extremists could hurt even a giant like the United States.”

“The bastards were dancing in the streets from Morocco and Great Britain all the way to Indonesia,” Noelle said sourly.

“But the more moderate Muslims, the Islamic mainstream, they didn’t join in,” Douglas pointed out. “There was no global uprising.”

“Which makes me wonder about these operations we’ve tapped into,” Rubens told him. “Wrath of God. Fire from Heaven. Tactical nuclear weapons, maybe planted in a dozen different cities? That kind of widespread destruction might be just the universal rallying cry the extremists are looking for. Something to make all good Muslims see that the triumph of the extremists is inevitable. It is God’s will.”

“Possibly.” Douglas didn’t sound convinced. He tapped the transcript lying on the desk. “You think Feng is suggesting a timetable when he says the drilling has to be done next week?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Okay. Drilling where? By whom?” He looked at Noelle and chuckled. “We don’t have any reports of covert drilling operations on the Mall in downtown Washington, do we?”

“Not that I’ve heard, sir.”

“He mentions drill bits from Dhahran. And these two people he was meeting with, Shah and Chatel. What’s their part in it?”

“Shah is a minor executive with Saudi Aramco. That’s the largest oil company in the world. And Chatel is a salesman with Petro-Technologique, a French company that provides specialized drilling equipment to, among others, Saudi Aramco. He mentions drilling through basalt, though. You don’t generally find oil beneath basalt, sir. That’s volcanic rock. You find oil in pockets beneath sedimentary rock, and ocean sediments.”

“You think they’re drilling holes for suitcase nukes? Underground detonations? Why? Setting the things off on the surface in the middle of a city would be more destructive, I would think. One-kiloton tactical nukes wouldn’t make much of a bang at the bottom of an oil well.”

“We’re still studying that one, sir,” Rubens said. “I suspect they have something bigger in mind than just wrecking twelve city centers.”

“But you don’t know what.”

“No, sir. But we do have one more clue.”

“The writers Feng mentions. Pender and … who?” Douglas picked up the transcript and scanned through it quickly.

“Carlylse, sir,” Rubens said. “Vincent Carlylse. And Jack Pender.”

“Who the hell are they?”

“A writing team. They’ve coauthored seven books over the past three years. Weird, fringe-element stuff, mostly, but pretty popular. Ancient astronauts, UFOs, the lost continent of Atlantis, stuff like that.” He handed another file across to Douglas. “Yesterday, Pender was found dead in a motel room in New Jersey. It looked like suicide, but the police are calling his death suspicious.”

“Suspicious how?”

“A few hours after they found Pender, they found a prostitute dead in another motel, a few miles away. Cynthia Jane Cramer. Naked, tied to the bed, and strangled with a length of rope. Looked like one of her johns got too rough. Her purse was there. The cash was gone, so it looked like a robbery, but whoever it was didn’t take the credit cards. When the police checked, it turned out that one of the cards belonged to Pender.”

“Ah …”

“We’re exploring the possibility that the bad guys used Cramer to get access to Pender’s room. She set him up, stole the credit card … and still had it when the bad guys killed her later, just to wrap up the loose ends.”

“They killed Pender and made it look like suicide.”

“Yes, sir. Pender was more or less successful. A book he and Carlylse wrote together about Atlantis actually hit the bestseller lists, which is pretty unusual for that kind of pseudo-science book — and he was scheduled to appear on a TV talk show broadcast out of New York City yesterday afternoon.”

“In other words, he had no reason to kill himself.”

“I’m told that between divorces, depression, and alcoholism, writing novels is a pretty high-risk profession — but Pender was doing well. Plenty of money in the bank, and the promise of more to come. Pender and Carlylse had just come out with another hot title, this one on 2012. In fact, he was going to be plugging it on that TV show.”

“So how is this guy connected with the Army of Mohammad?”

“We’re not entirely sure yet, sir. But yesterday afternoon, GCHQ intercepted an encoded cell phone transmission from Masood Azhar, in Karachi, to al-Wawi. When we ran it through crypto, it said that Pender was dead, and that Carlylse was on La Palma, in the Canary Islands. It also said that Carlylse should be dealt with next.”

“Good God. But why two scribblers? Why these two?”

“We have an analysis team going through their books now, sir, looking for a motive. Most of their stuff is pretty far out, alien abductions and crap like that. But that newest book, the one they wrote on 2012, might turn out to be the key.”

“Really? Twenty twelve. That’s … all of that doomsday stuff, right?”

“Yes, sir. The end of the ancient Mayan calendar and the end of the world. It sounds apocalyptic enough that al-Qaeda or the JeM might have taken an interest.”

“So why kill the authors?”

“We’re not sure about that either, yet. In the conversation our operative bugged yesterday, Feng was concerned that their deaths might give away the game. So we’re researching their books with that in mind.”

Douglas nodded. “I see why you’re concerned. Twelve loose tactical nukes, two extremist Muslim operations with apocalyptic code names, and a murdered author who writes about doomsday. And Feng here is talking about next week.”

“Exactly.”

“What’s the Chinese role in all of this?”

“Probably opportunistic. In the transcript, Shah mentions concerns that Saudi Arabia is going to lose a major trading partner. Looking at the context, that could well be the United States. Al-Khuwaytir is probably Mohammad Sayeed al-Khuwaytir, the Saudi foreign trade minister. Feng points out that the PRC could step into the vacuum. If Wrath of God is designed to cripple the U.S. economically somehow, I can see how the Saudis would be concerned.”

“No more solid silver Rolls-Royces.”

“And another bad stretch for the global economy,” Rubens pointed out. “We’re just climbing out of one economic crisis. Something on the scale these guys are talking about might put the whole world into a financial tailspin. Again, we’re still carrying out the investigation, but we think that Feng was the money man. Best guess? He provided the money for JeM to buy twelve stolen suitcase nukes from the Russian mafiya.”

Douglas pursed his lips. “Ouch. What do you want from me?”

Rubens looked at Noelle. This was his department.

“When Desk Three gets this sorted out,” Noelle said, “we’re almost certainly going to need military action. Fast. Our people are tracking the nukes at Karachi now.” He looked at Rubens. “A freighter?”

“Russian freighter,” Rubens agreed. “The Yakutsk. Maltese flagged. Destination Tel Aviv.”

“The Yakutsk. We may need to put a VBSS team on board her.”

VBSS was the naval acronym for “visit, board, search, and seizure.” It meant a SEAL team taking down a Russian ship and grabbing the nukes on board.

Douglas made a face. “That is not going to fly well with the Oval Office.”

“No, sir. And that’s why the request is going to have to come from your office.”

“We can enlist Johnny James,” Noelle added. “He’s sympathetic to us.”

“We’ll need to brief him.” Douglas arched an eyebrow in Rubens’ direction.

“I can handle that, sir. This afternoon, if I can get an appointment.”

“Use my priority code for the request.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“It occurs to me that we have some people here we might want to talk to. It sounds like al-Khuwaytir may be in on this scheme, whatever it is. And your sources in Spain — Feng, Shah, and this French guy, Chatel.”

“Already on that, sir. Al-Khuwaytir may be someone for State to look at. But my people in south Asia are checking on both the ship and on other forms of transport out of Karachi.”

“Good. Anything to stop us from picking up the three in Spain immediately?”

“Just one thing,” Rubens told him. “Al-Wawi, apparently, is the guy running Operation Wrath of God. Right now he’s on the island of La Palma, Canary Islands. He’s the one we really want, and we don’t want him tipped off ahead of time. If he disappears, he might take the suitcase nukes with him, and we’ll have to start all over from scratch.”

“Any ideas?”

“Yes, sir. One of my best Desk Three operators is with Feng now, in Spain. I’m sending her to La Palma this afternoon.”

“To save Carlylse?”

Rubens hesitated. “If possible. But Carlylse might lead us to the Jackal. That’s our first priority.”

“Bait,” Douglas said.

“Hate to say it, but yes. I don’t know how else to flush al-Wawi into the open without spooking him.”

“Well, I’ll leave that in your hands, Bill. Keep me up to date. Let me know if anything changes. And I’ll let you know what the President says. He may insist on deniability.”

“That might not be possible, sir. It is imperative that we recover those nukes.”

“I agree. But in this business, imperatives aren’t always possible.”

“I know that, sir. All too well.”

Lia DeFrancesca walked into the luxurious, light-filled lobby of the Almirante, holding Feng’s arm. She was wearing a brightly colored beach wrap now — she didn’t mind going three-quarters naked in public, but only where such exposure would be natural and unremarkable, like on the beach. She wasn’t about to emulate the couple she’d seen a few years before in Madrid.

“You know, Ms. Lau,” Feng told her as they waited for the elevator to arrive on the lobby floor, “you could share my room.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Feng,” she replied. “It is tempting … but what kind of a message would that send to your business associates?”

“How would they know? Besides, they would merely think of me as very fortunate indeed.”

“I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “Mr. Shah has the traditional Muslim scorn for women who expose themselves in public. I’m sure he thinks of me as a ‘fallen woman.’ If he learned you were sleeping with me, he would be convinced that you are as decadent and degraded as I am.”

He looked at her sharply. “How do you know he called you a fallen woman? Do you speak Arabic?”

“No, but I know what bintilkha-ta means. And associating with such a person would taint you as well. Unless you’re trying to scandalize the poor boy?”

He smiled and patted her arm. “I do like … how is it you Americans put it? To yank on his rope?”

“His chain. You like to yank his chain.”

“Just so.”

The elevator arrived; the door slid open. They stepped inside and she pressed the button for her floor, then for his.

“Mr. Feng, I’m delighted that you appreciate my skills and my experience enough to hire me. But I submit that you need to decide just what it is you are hiring me for. As a consultant knowledgeable in foreign cultures? Or as a playmate in bed? The one gets in the way of the other.”

“And what would you say if I told you I wanted you for my bed?”

“I would say no, Mr. Feng. I would tell you that I was flattered … but no.” The elevator stopped at her floor, and she walked out. “Until later, Mr. Feng.”

“Very smooth, Lia,” Rockman told her over her implant. “I’m not sure how you keep him at arm’s length with all the drool on the floor, though.”

“He wants me for eye candy,” she murmured. “I think the job is just an excuse to show off a pretty woman hanging on his arm.”

“Are you okay with that?” Bill Rubens asked.

“Oh, sure. He’s putty in my hands.”

“You’re going to want to wash your hands, then,” Rubens told her. “I’m pulling you out.”

“Why?” She was genuinely startled. Surprise was followed immediately by a flush of anger. “Mr. Rubens. I can take care of myself, you know.”

“I know you can, Lia, but we need you in La Palma. The sooner, the better.”

“La Palma? Why?”

“Because that’s where al-Wawi is. It’s also where a writer named Vince Carlylse is about to be murdered by al-Wawi’s people. When you went off to get those drinks this afternoon, they were discussing it.”

“They’re killing writers? Why?”

“We don’t know yet, but it’s wrapped up with a terrorist op, and it’s big.”

“Feng wants me to fly with him back to Germany. Shah and Chatel are going to La Palma.” She had a new thought. “Shah and Chatel. They’re involved with the terrorist op?”

“That’s part of what we want you to learn, Lia.”

“Feng will be suspicious if I quit now and fly off to the Canary Islands with those two instead.”

“We’ll take care of your legend, Lia. We want to preserve your relationship with Feng in case we need to penetrate his COSCO operations later. But right now, we can have you on Grand Canary in six hours … and it’ll be closer to twenty-four if I send someone out from the States.”

“You got it.”

“I’ll send along the file information on the writer, and what we know about the Canaries. We’re also sending Ms. Howorth down there. She’ll be your backup.”

CJ had been left behind in Berlin to wrap up some loose ends there.

“Very well. When do I leave?”

“We have a ticket for you at the counter at Alicante Airport. Your flight leaves in eighty-five minutes.”

“Then I guess I’d better pack and get over there.” She laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“Feng, sir. He’s going to be so disappointed. Or pissed. I can’t decide which.”

“What is the ship’s position now?” Rubens asked.

Marie Telach checked one of the Art Room displays. “Twenty-three forty-five north … sixty-five thirty-three east,” she replied. “One hundred three nautical miles southwest of Karachi. Course two two three degrees, speed seventeen knots.”

“A week to Haifa.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the Lake Erie?”

“Still shadowing the target, sir. Ninety nautical miles to the south and on a parallel course.”

Rubens frowned at one of the monitors, which showed an aerial view of an aging, plodding merchant ship, tiny against the endless blue of the Gulf of Oman. The image was being relayed from a tilt-rotor Eagle Eye UAV remotely piloted from the Lake Erie. The Erie was a Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruiser, CG-70, part of the Constellation carrier battle group. The CBG had been tasked with following the target freighter without crowding her too closely.

A CIA agent in Karachi had come up with the information that a number of containers supposedly carrying small nuclear weapons had been transported yesterday from Jinnah International Airport to a Russian freighter, the Yakutsk, moored on the Karachi waterfront. The agent had been unable to say how many containers had been transferred to the ship, but if the suitcase nukes were on board, even one was too many.

In fact, there was no reason to suppose that the twelve weapons had been split up.

Rubens wondered just how much they could trust the CIA’s source. This agent was a young Pakistani named Haroon who’d purportedly been turned after the ISI had arrested his sister and his father a year before, accusing them of being Taliban. Both were still in prison; the State Department was supposed to be making inquiries about the two, a part of the package that had brought Haroon to the U.S. Embassy and the CIA’s senior resident there.

It felt convenient to Rubens, and he didn’t trust convenient.

Still, the man was the only hard source they had at the moment regarding the whereabouts of the stolen nukes. If they were on board the Yakutsk, the United States needed to verify that — and secure them.

If they could get the authorization to do so. The administration was — as General Douglas had pointed out that morning — reluctant to board a foreign ship on a suspicion, especially a ship belonging to the Russian Federation. Freedom of the sea was a vital principle in both American and international law. Hell, the War of 1812 had started with the British boarding and searching American ships at sea.

What if the ship couldn’t be stopped, and nuclear warheads reached the Israeli port?

Operation Wrath of God. Operation Fire from Heaven.

American targets? Or Israeli?

It scarcely mattered. Millions of people might die. Those warheads had to be found and secured, one way or another.

To that end, he’d already ordered Dean and Akulinin to Karachi, where they would be working with the CIA to get confirmation of Haroon’s information.

And there was, perhaps, one other thing he could do …

“I’ll be in my office, Marie.”

“Yes, sir.”

He had a phone call to make.