SeaGhost

Chapter 12

Badr thought that his strategy was working well. It was evident in the radio traffic that had not been encoded between the Second Fleet headquarters and the ships of the task forces seeking him.

The United States Navy was converging on the southern coast of the continent, as they were expected to do.

The Hormuz, commanded by a reluctantly admiring Abdul Hakim, was still steaming steadily to the north. Hakim had faked breakdowns of his steam turbine twice in order to slow his pace, but he was now several hundred kilometers to the north and nearly a hundred kilometers off the coast.

Ibrahim Badr had ranged far ahead of the tanker, beginning his attacks in North Carolina, then working his way south. He had set up a direction for the United States Navy, and they were following it. They were so predictable. He judged the main task force to be about 150 kilometers north of them.

Now, there was the naval air station in Florida. This one did not even require that they move in close.

In the dark of the night, the Sea Spectre was ten kilometers from the coast, at rest. The sea swells were heavy, suggesting an oncoming storm, and the boat bobbed up and down, rising several meters, then dropping. Amin Kadar sat at the dining table, gnawing on chunks of lamb left over from their meal. He stared out the window at the night, looking for whatever it was he longed for.

Heusseini and Kadar, after their assessments of the previous attacks, were certain that the small missiles had a range far greater than ten kilometers.

Because the search was concentrating toward the south, a great many Navy and Air Force search aircraft had been deployed from their normal bases into the area. Many of them were parked on the tarmac at the Mayport Naval Station.

Omar Heusseini sat at the commander’s desk, grinning to himself.

Badr said, “Are we clear on the sequence?”

“Of course,” Heusseini said. “We will launch eight missiles, utilizing the electro-optical targeting. At this distance, I will have the time I need to line up a missile visually, lock it on, then launch the next. After four missiles have been launched, we will move to another position, then launch four more. Then we will make our triumphant return to the Hormuz.”

“Allah willing,” Rahman said.

“Allah has been more than willing,” Ibrahim Badr reminded him.

“But now we have dozens of hostile vessels and aircraft all around us.”

“If they should get in our way, we will sink them,” Badr said.

Kadar swung around from his view of the night and whatever was out there in it. “I would like that.”

“Perhaps we will have the opportunity,” Badr said. “Still, we must be careful. A confrontation with a major warship is not in my plans.”

“Planning!” Kadar snorted. “It is planning that gets in the way of our cause. There is too much planning.”

Like so many of his followers, the young Kadar was too accustomed to reaction. Violent reaction, of course, but unthinking.

“There are a great many targets available to us. Targets that do not shoot back. We serve Allah far better by seeking out such targets, Amin.”

The young man frowned and turned back to his contemplation of the sea.

Badr waited a moment, nodding to himself, then said, “Let us begin.”

The first four missiles launched without a single problem. American weapons had far fewer mechanical and electronic problems than did those of the Soviets.

Ibrahim Badr particularly enjoyed watching the video monitor as it gave him a view of the first missile homing in on an Air Force E-3 Sentry parked on the base. That was one Airborne Warning and Control craft that would never be loaned to the Saudis or the Israelis.

As a hundred million dollars disappeared into blackness, he thought that the American taxpayer should be screaming loudly. The admirals and generals should face offensives from without and from within.

Allah worked in countless ways.

The radio traffic out of CINCLANT had been hectic for the last minute. McCory hunched over the desk with headphones on, trying to decipher messages with coded words.

“Safari Bravo, Safari Echo to Safari Sector Four, code Pearl-Four-Six. Repeating. Jackhandle under attack, target reference grid Baker Two, two-four, nine-eight.”

Shit.

They were using a distinctive map grid overlay to determine their coordinates, and it wouldn’t correspond to anything McCory had on a chart or in the computer.

“Ginger, let’s go north. See how fast you can go.”

“Got it, Kevin.”

He felt the SeaGhost heel over as she made the turn. The thrum of the rotary engines vibrating in the deck picked up tempo.

McCory scanned the sheet he had copied and taped to the bulkhead.

No Jackhandle.

He flipped through the pages of the frequency listings. There wasn’t a Jackhandle identified there, either.

The sheet on the bulkhead listed all of the major Georgia and Florida naval installations. The target could have been Air Force or Coast Guard, but he didn’t have information on them. He picked the southern Georgia and northern, east coast Florida bases and began entering the digits for their radio frequencies into the radio, tapping away almost feverishly.

Mostly gibberish.

The scrambling and encryption modes had all been changed, and it took time to try each of the four modes on his black boxes. Anytime something came in clear, that he could identify with some certainty, he entered the new modes and codes on his cheat sheet.

From his momentary contacts, he figured out that aircraft were being scrambled all over the Eastern Seaboard.

He found Safari Echo talking to Safari Bravo. “… all three Deuces ranging at seventy miles.”

The Deuces were probably helicopters. ASW, he guessed, sowing sonar buoys.

Twenty minutes later, he found Jackhandle. The code names and the modes for the encryption machines were different, but the frequency was for the Mayport Naval Station. He jotted the new data on his chart.

The excited, almost nonstop chatter also gave them away as the target site. The radio operator couldn’t keep the tension and adrenaline out of his voice.

McCory pulled the headphones off, dropped them on the desktop, and went forward to stand behind Ginger. Looking at the back of her platinum head, watching the intensity with which she peered through the windshield or scanned the instrument panel, he damned himself for letting her become involved.

“Well, do something,” she said. “Find the bastard.”

“We’re looking,” McCory said, though he was thinking that he wouldn’t look too hard.

Leaning over her right shoulder, he tapped the “NAV MAP” pad on the keyboard, then entered upper left and lower right coordinates. Pressed “EXC.”

Ginger automatically hit the monitor’s number four selection, and the map came up on the screen. She was getting pretty good with the systems.

Along the gray-shaded coast, Jacksonville was shown, but Mayport was not. He reached out and tapped the city with his forefinger.

“They’ve attacked Jacksonville?” Ginger asked.

“Mayport. It’s a Navy base. I don’t know what the damages are, but it sounds as if they were hit by eight missiles.”

“It’s what? Eighty miles away?”

“About that, hon. But we don’t know where Badr launched from. He could be fifty miles out.”

McCory scanned the seas ahead. They were thirty miles off the coast in a clear, starry night. Running lights on the right oblique suggested a ship of some size, maybe six or seven miles away. The sea was choppy, but the SeaGhost leveled it. She was riding smoothly, the visual sensation of her speed of sixty knots difficult to pin down.

In the far distance, he saw the lights of a few aircraft. As they neared the scene, he thought the air traffic would become congested.

Moving over to the radar/fire control station, McCory settled into the seat and studied Ginger by the glow of the panel lights. She gripped the wheel with determination. Her face and long throat were in profile, and though she seemed very intent, she also appeared particularly vulnerable.

Jesus, this is stupid.

“You know, Ginger, when we reach Mayport, about all that’s going to happen is that fifty or sixty ships and aircraft looking for a terrorist will have a chance to spot us. We happen to look exactly like the terrorist.”

She jerked her head toward him. “You don’t think they’d shoot at us?”

“I suspect they’re mad enough.”

“But you said we have the best chance of catching Badr.”

“I did say that. We can match him for speed and weaponry, if we locate him. In my zeal, however, I overlooked the fact that the Navy won’t care who’s driving the boat, as long as it’s a SeaGhost.”

“If they can’t see him, they can’t see us,” she said logically.

“Maybe. But they’ve got an awful lot of people looking.”

“What’s the body count now?” she asked.

McCory sighed. His resolve was wavering. “The risks are damned high, hon.”

“Go see if you can pick up a newscast.”

In the CIC, the plotting screen had the grid code-named Baker Two overlaid on it, the thin green lines identifying the coordinates they were working from. Norman studied the plot, copying the new positions of ships to the picture he maintained in his mind.

Prebble had a slight lead over the rest of TF22. America and her escorts were nine miles behind them. From the south, the Oliver H. Perry and her task force were moving toward them at flank speed, but they were over three hundred miles away.

A steadily expanding yellow stain was centered on the plot.

A P-3 Orion out of Mayport, flying the coast at 30,000 feet, had observed the missile launch. Backtracking the tapes of their infrared sensors, they had identified the ignition points, located some nine miles off the coast of Mayport. That was the starting point, the center of the pale yellow area on the plot.

In the twenty-five minutes since the missiles were launched, figuring the Sea Spectre’s speed of sixty-five knots, the target boat could have moved almost twenty-nine miles in any direction, except inland. And maybe even that, Norman thought. The Sea Spectre seemed to have too damned many outrageous capabilities.

Already, the search area covered around 150 square miles. Within the yellow half-circle were two Coast Guard cutters and fifteen search aircraft, including the Prebble’s helicopters. The Prebble herself was still sixty miles north of the search area.

Albert Perkins shook his head in resignation as he crossed the CIC from a communications console. His red hair absorbed the red light of the center.

“Commander?”

“Twenty-two aircraft damaged or destroyed, Captain. They hit a fuel depot, and the fires are still out of control. No firm numbers on fatalities yet, but they expect it to go over fifty.”

One goddamned boat, Norman thought. In the hands of a madman.

Perkins looked at the plot, and his face exuded his sadness. “We’re going to miss him again, aren’t we?”

“We’ll intercept the target area in another hour, Al, but by then we’ll have over three hundred square miles of possibility. It’ll be up to the choppers.”

Perkins checked his watch. “We’ll have to bring them back for refueling in another hour and a half.”

Norman nodded absently, thinking about something else.

“Al, we had early morning strikes on the second, third, and fifth. He skipped the fourth for some reason.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lejeune, Kings Bay, and now Mayport. It’s three hundred and fifty miles from Lejeune to Kings Bay, but only about fifty between Kings Bay and Mayport. There’s no pattern in the distance between targets. Not yet, anyway.”

“No, sir. Random selection.”

“Except that they tend to go south,” Norman said. “That’s a mild trend. The only other pattern is that he goes away somewhere during the day and hides, then makes his move in the early morning.”

“Perhaps, Captain, Badr wants us to feel the randomness, yet focus on the time and the southern movement. That’s why he skips a day, that’s why he makes a big jump, then a small one.”

“What would you do next, Al? If you were Badr?”

“Southern Florida, sir? Even around into the Caribbean?”

“Keep in mind we’ve set up a mild pattern. We’re leading the U.S. Navy into our thinking.”

Perkins closed his eyes for a moment. “Maybe I’d shoot back to the north.”

“Uh-huh. Me, too, Al. Then there’s one other thing.”

“Yes, sir. Where does he go during the day?”

Norman studied the plot. There were vast, empty spaces available to Badr. “That boat could park on the surface somewhere lonely and go unnoticed during daylight hours, Al. But, at minimum, with the distance he’s covered since June twenty-seventh, he’d have used half his fuel load. I’d think it was more than that, unless he’s alternating the use of the two boats. And unless that sunken Zodiak had a few floating containers of food, Badr and his buddies would be damned hungry by now.”

“He’s got a support ship somewhere.”

“What we need to do, Al, is find us a suitable ship that’s been in the area since June twenty-seventh.”

“I could request the plot tapes from CINCLANT, Captain.”

“Good idea, Al. Do that.”

Kevin had taken the Colleen, a forty-foot fiberglass sportfisherman that McCory had designed and built in 1982 on a week-long fishing cruise into the Gulf. He had two well-heeled couples on board, who McCory suspected were less interested in fishing than in other games.

It wasn’t until after Kevin came home from the Navy that they got into chartering. McCory preferred being around the marina, working on the boats, to putting up with novice fisherman, but Kevin seemed to like it. So McCory had turned the Kathleen over to him until the new boat was finished.

Kevin wanted to build a couple more boats and hire some captains to run them, but McCory was resisting. He didn’t want to infringe unduly on the trade of the charter boats that home-ported in Marina Kathleen. 

As was his custom, McCory took a late turn through the marina, checking the locks on the maintenance buildings, making certain kids hadn’t gotten into the boats sitting on cradles in the storage yard and cautioning the party boats to keep the noise within limits.

The new floating docks were complete on the west end, jutting out from the central, raised dock, and most of the permanent residents had been re-installed in their old slips. The crane had been moved to the east side of the marina, and the barge tied alongside it was piled high with old planks, piers, and railings.

The renovation was expensive as hell, more than he’d first guessed, and he’d had to float a couple large loans. Still, the results would keep Marina Kathleen in competition with the bigger outfits. He’d had four or five offers for the marina, since good beach-front property was skyrocketing in price, but he’d turned them all down. McCory didn’t want money, he wanted the freedom to be himself.

McCory walked along the new central dock, patting the steel railing with his hand. It didn’t have the character of the old two-by-four railings, but it didn’t have the splinters either. Out at the end of the “E” floating dock — McCory had placed the younger, louder crowd on “E” — the Darkins were hosting thirty or forty of their neighbors aboard their fifty-foot Hatteras. Tinkly laughter and the guitar of Chet Atkins wafted on the air.

As he walked by the base of “C” dock, McCory looked down to see Jefferson, a young black writer, sitting in the cockpit of his elderly sloop, Muse. He had a yellow light hung from the boom, and he was drinking wine and writing in a legal-size tablet.

McCory stopped and leaned on the railing. “Hope you’re not writin’ about me, Jeff.”

“Oh, hi, Devlin. I’d like to write about you.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Not enough flash.”

“Bet there’s more than you let on. How’d you get that Navy Cross?”

“Short story. My destroyer went out from under me at Midway.”

“That’s it?”

“Well, the lifeboat me and twenty other guys were in was holed pretty bad, and the engine wouldn’t run. I just fixed it before it sank completely. That was my job, that’s all.”

“Hell, Devlin, I think there’s a whole novel in that. Why don’t you and I… ”

McCory was suddenly aware of red-yellow light behind him. He spun around and looked toward shore.

Maintenance Building One was on fire.

The flames leaped from the windows, licked at the old siding, climbing high. Strange shadows flickered on the ground.

“Jesus Christ!” Jefferson yelled.

McCory pushed off the railing and ran toward shore. Damn, there were flammables…

The explosion rocked the marina. The structure disappeared in a yellow holocaust. The concussion knocked McCory into the railing. He rebounded off the steel and landed on his side on the dock.

Shaking his head, trying to clear it.

Up onto his hands and knees.

The flames roared, surprisingly loud, fed by drums of solvents and paint. He could feel the heat.

He regained his feet and stumbled toward the office, thinking telephone.

At the end of the dock, he reached for the screen door handle.

The whole screen door came off as the office exploded.

McCory saw a microsecond of white flash before the door handle embedded itself deep in his chest.

The SeaGhost rocked a little, from side to side, as she cruised eastward at an angle to the swells of the sea. She was making twenty-five knots.

The radio was set to Safari Bravo’s command net, and the chatter between vessels and aircraft was heavy, but terse and vague as a result of all the coded words. McCory had gone active on the radar for one sweep, freezing the screen picture into computer memory. That one sweep on active had intensified the radio traffic. He interpreted some of it to mean that aircraft were moving in on them and had told Ginger to go to top speed for five minutes, removing them from the scene of his radar emanation.

Within minutes, there were three airplanes overhead, but the search pattern drifted away from them after a while.

He put the computer-stored image on the screen and studied it. Thirty miles to the north were at least a dozen ships. Two hundred and fifty miles to the south were another half dozen in a cluster. Sporadically aligned to the east were independent ships, probably commercial, in the normal sea-lanes. Again, he had not had the antenna aimed upward, so he had probably missed most of the aircraft. Along the coast, the ground clutter feedback obscured what were probably additional ships. Coast Guard, maybe.

If he were able to identify a couple of those blips as specific ships, then pinpoint their coordinates by radio reports, he might have been able to recreate the Baker Two map grid. He didn’t, however, think that it was going to happen in this lifetime.

They cruised eastward, again at twenty knots.

McCory had a vision of his sonar signature being picked up by some submarine in the region. Conning tower rising suddenly from the sea, water sluicing off it. Gun crews spilling out of the hatches.

He got up and went to the sonar station, which was set on passive. Pulling the headset on, he listened for a while to sea noises. Big fish, maybe. Nothing that he could identify as man-made.

When he took the earphones off, Ginger asked, “Getting nervous?”

“Hell, yes. You?”

“I’ve been nervous since Ponce de Leon. You want to take the helm while I try out your bathroom?”

They switched places. McCory tried all of the modes on the primary screen. Night-vision video showed him a lot of sea. A few running lights and anti-collision strobe lights on aircraft in the distance. Infrared was cool, except for distant hot spots which he suspected were generated by aircraft exhaust pipes.

There was nothing of particular interest out there.

Badr could be, and probably was, sixty miles away. Getting further away.

The only thing closing in was the United States Navy. If they spotted the SeaGhost, they would probably shoot first and talk later, if there was anything left to which they could talk. If he was in a listening condition, he would be listening to charges of treason.

Ginger came back as he was turning to a heading of 190 degrees. Moving into the swells, the ride evened out.

“Trying another direction?”

“Yes. A direction for home.”

She sat in the radar operator’s seat. He didn’t think there was any disappointment showing in her face.

“It does seem a little futile,” she said.

“If I’m going to do this, I’m going to have to plan a little better,” McCory said. “Racing off to where Badr was doesn’t do much good.”

He shoved the throttles in, felt the SeaGhost rise to the power.

“Should I make some coffee?”

“It’s almost breakfast time, why not?” McCory said.

Ginger moved back to the galley, and McCory half-concentrated on the empty sea ahead. The star shine gleamed on wave caps.

He wasn’t paying much attention to the radio, which was channeled through a speaker in the bulkhead next to his right shoulder. Only the excitement in the voice jarred him awake.

“Safari Echo, Deuce Three. I’ve got a hot target.”

“Three, this is Echo. Target coordinates?”

The pilot read off some Baker Two numbers. “I’m not getting a radar return on the target, but the infrared’s screaming. It’s the same picture we’ve had during sea trials up north.”

“Let’s have some sonobuoys as soon as you get in close, Deuce Three. And go to Tac-Two. Let’s get off the command net.”

The voices disappeared as they moved to another frequency, replaced by cryptic messages among ships of the task force.

From what McCory could deduce, Safari Bravo had themselves a target.

Ginger had been listening. “They found him!”

“They found us.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

McCory pulled the throttles back as he made a 180-degree turn. He didn’t know where the helicopter was, but he thought it would be tracking on the heading he had shown them.

He settled on a heading of 355 degrees. The speed came down to twelve knots, and he held it there.

Two minutes later, he saw the helicopter sliding by on his left. It was several hundred feet high and a half mile away, and it obviously didn’t see him as it went by. A minute after that, he picked up its lights on the rearview screen.

He sighed.

Ginger came up behind him and rested her hands on his shoulders. “That was close, I guess.”

“Yeah. It may take us a while to get home.”

“I thought this thing was invisible.”

“So did I, but apparently we leave an infrared trail at speed.”

“What speed?”

“I wish I knew.”

McCory waited another five minutes, then turned to a heading of 270 degrees. He would hold that for ten minutes before again aiming toward the south.

Through the left-side windows, he saw the dance of the strobe light as the helicopter began circling.

All around them, in fact, he could see more aircraft lights approaching.

Rick Chambers was wearing his silver-gray suit. He hadn’t had a chance to have it dry-cleaned, and it was wrinkled badly, though not as badly as his only other choice. The shirt was fresh, a blue cotton with a spread collar.

He was tired, and he was getting hungry again, though he didn’t feel like having another hamburger. He’d grabbed one yesterday, after getting into town. It was probably the reason why he’d missed McCory.

The girl in the office hadn’t known where he’d gone, only that he taken his boat, now renamed the Kathleen, and gone somewhere. She had no idea in the world when he’d be back.

He’d had another hamburger for breakfast, when he called Malgard. He called the office and got referred to a Virginia number.

“I found him, Justin.”

“It’s about damned time. Where?”

“He’s got a marina in Edgewater. Funny thing, it’s named the Marina Kathleen, just like the old man’s was.”

“You find the boats?”

“No. In fact, though, McCory’s not around. He left sometime last night and wasn’t back when I checked at five this mornin’.”

“Well, you hang around until he shows up.”

“And then?”

“Just what we discussed.”

“I can do it like I did the first one. Accidents will happen.”

“No, damn it! That turned out to be a hell of a mess. The newspapers didn’t let it die for a long time. You just locate the boats, then take him out. Very clean, now, Rick. He just disappears.”

“Gotcha, chief. Write out my bonus check.”

When he’d gotten back to the marina, the Kathleen was back in its slip. Chambers parked across the street, down half a block from the marina office, under a stand of palm trees, and waited.

He waited forever.

He fumbled with his binoculars from time to time but saw no movement aboard the boat.

He pulled the Beretta from its holster and double-checked the nine millimeter loads in the magazine.

He fidgeted.

At eleven, he left the car and walked down the street to buy two hamburgers, fries, and a milkshake.

At 11:40, McCory appeared on the deck of his boat. He messed around for a while, hosing it off and polishing some of the chromework.

A little after noon, he went up to the office and disappeared inside. He didn’t reappear until after five, going back down to his boat. Chambers left the car several times, taking walks along the street, but staying close to the marina.

Boring, boring, boring.

Chambers had another pair of hamburgers.

At a quarter of seven, McCory left the boat, dressed in Levi’s and a blue T-shirt. He walked up the ramp, bypassed the office, and got into an old pickup in the parking lot.

Chambers started the Ford.

McCory left the lot, headed south.

Chambers let a Volkswagen and a Camaro get between them before he pulled away from the curb.

It was a short trip, maybe four or five miles.

He almost missed it. As he went by a place called Barley’s Marine Refitters, a conglomeration of old boats and old structures, he saw the blue pickup pulling up to a dilapidated building on the shore.

He drove on by and, a mile later, found a place to make a U-turn.

Coming back, he stopped short of his destination by a quarter-mile, pulling off the road to park in a clump of palmetto.

He checked the Beretta again, then got out of the car and walked along the road verge.

There was a gate in the chain-link fence at the refitting place, but it was open.

Chambers scanned the yard but didn’t see any movement inside. The pickup sat nosed up to the boat house. He couldn’t see any lights on inside, then noticed that all of the windows were filled with plywood.

Good place to hide a stolen boat. There were a couple more of the boat houses to the south, also.

He looked up and down the road. A few cars moved along it, ignoring him as they shot by. Down the way, a pizza joint was doing a brisk business. Hot rods and custom trucks were parked all around it.

He walked through the gate and started down the slope toward the boat house. It was still light out, but he figured, what the hell? It was isolated, and if Malgard’s boats were inside, it was as good a place as any other.