SeaGhost

Chapter 2

“Allah Akbar!” yelled the young man in the bow.

Ibrahim Badr kept his own exclamation to himself. He had more self-discipline than the young Muhammed Hakkar.

Still, the detonations were impressive. He gauged them to be almost two kilometers away, near the western coast. A boat or ship, of course. In the dark, the first explosion had been a flare, a blue-white visual crash that stunned eyes accustomed to the night, followed momentarily by deep thunder. The second explosion — fuel tanks, no doubt — was yellow-red. Flaming debris arced out of the center of the fiery maelstrom.

Badr turned the handle throttle of the outboard motor to full idle. The rubber Zodiak boat slowed, skewed about, and bobbed in the light chop of the Chesapeake Bay. Far away to his left, he could see the lights of Annapolis struggling through the fog.

The explosion receded and became simply fire on the water. The ship with the searchlight and siren — the one that had first caused him to retard his throttle — was slowing, moving in on the wreckage.

“We must leave,” Hakkar said from his seat in the bow of the rubber boat.

“It appears to be the best course,” Badr agreed.

Already, the lights of another ship had appeared in the north, coming toward the scene of the fire — and toward them — at a fast pace.

A night that had been so shining with promise had become a disaster.

“And we must hurry,” Hakkar urged.

“No,” the leader said. “We must think.”

Too many of his subordinates were disadvantaged in the matter of thinking. They promoted action without thought, reacting on impulse to outside stimuli. They thought little of consequences and almost never developed credible or practical alternatives.

“There is nothing to think about, Ibrahim Badr. We must try another time.”

“But time grows short, young Muhammed, and opportunity slips away. Instead, we must remember that at the eye of the hurricane there is calm.”

He could not see Hakkar’s face but knew there would be a grimace of disgust on it.

“I do not know what you speak of.”

Which is why it is I who am in command, Badr thought.

“The hurricane is over there, and we are in the eye. We will take advantage of this diversion,” Badr said.

He twisted the throttle grip and turned the bow of the Zodiak toward the west.

Commander Martin Holloway stood to the left of his helmsman in the wheelhouse and looked down on the bows of his gunboat. The decks were crowded with crewmen, but few were gawking. His crew was well trained.

Beyond, the flames were dying away as the flammable liquids were consumed. Tongues of fire reached a few feet off the surface. Several searchlights were in play now, their beams slicing the night, seeking whatever was left. The forward half of the civilian boat was still floating, but barely. As he watched, a deck hatch popped open from internal pressure, let the air escape, and the bow started sinking.

“Mr. D’Angelo, let’s come to five knots.”

“Aye sir, five knots.”

“And, Jones, we’ll circle counter clockwise.”

“Aye aye sir,” the helmsman said.

“Mr. D’Angelo, contact Lieutenant Dyer on deck. He’s to put two boats out. We want survivors, and we want anything that will identify the intruder.”

“Aye aye sir.” Chief Petty Officer Dennis D’Angelo turned to his intercom station.

The phone on the bulkhead in front of him buzzed, and Holloway picked up.

“Commander, Captain Norman of the Prebble wants to speak with you. He’s on Tac-Two.”

The Prebble was a destroyer, probably the ship converging from the north. She had been around the bay for months, and Holloway supposed she was being outfitted with some kind of experimental gear.

“Patch him through, then notify CINCLANT that we are investigating debris from an unknown civilian boat that exploded within restricted waters of the Research and Development Center. Explosion of undetermined origin. We did not, repeat, not, open fire.”

“Aye aye sir.”

Holloway waited for the two clicks, then said, “Captain Norman, Commander Holloway here.”

“We’re bearing on you, Commander,” a gravel-filled voice told him. “What have you got?”

“I’m not certain, Captain.” Holloway repeated the gist of the message that he had sent to the Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet.

“Pleasure boat?”

“Yes sir. Forty feet, at least, and fast. My radar man said she was doing fifty-two knots when she exploded.”

“Survivors?”

“We’re just starting to circle the area. There are none as yet.”

“All right, Commander. We’ll be joining you in about… four minutes.”

Holloway hit the intercom button for the communications room. “Comm, Bridge.”

“Comm. Milliken, sir.”

“Milliken, send a copy of the CINCLANT message to the commander, Naval Ship Research and Development Center.”

The center was the site of innumerable classified projects. Holloway had no idea what they were. His job was simply to patrol the area.

By the time Lieutenant Dyer had his boats in the water, the destroyer Prebble had arrived, and the flames were almost extinguished. The two naval ships flooded the scene with their lights, but there were no bodies, or parts of bodies, to be found.

McCory had abandoned his shoes, then unbuckled his belt, slipped it through the handle of the plastic bag, and rebuckled it. Swimming with the bundle dragging at his midsection was hard work, but he was a good swimmer. He had grown up in and on the waters around Fort Walton Beach, Florida, where the elder McCory, Devlin, had operated his marina. Kevin McCory was built for swimming, lean and long, with elongated and sinewy musculature. He was firm and hard, but he wouldn’t be mistaken for Mr. Atlas by anyone.

The U.S. Navy was four hundred yards behind him, now two ships strong as they patrolled the spot where the Scarab had gone down. When he stopped to rest, dogpaddling in the oily water, he saw by their running lights that two launches were now cruising the waters closer to the western shore of the bay. The people commanding the small boats would naturally think that anyone who had lived through the explosion would head for the closest available land.

Which was why he had struck out for the eastern shore.

The bay waters were relatively calm, mediocre swells passing under him, bobbing him up and down a foot in either direction. To the east, the ships were clearly outlined against their own searchlights. To the west, the view was more forbidding. Dank. Mist hanging low. At the apex of a wave, he could see the diffused lights around the naval complex. It looked to be a long way off.

Voices from the ships floated across the water, but he couldn’t decipher any meanings. The sounds and the words overlapped.

He heard water slapping to his left.

“Ted?”

“Asshole.” Daimler’s voice was a stage whisper.

“Glad you made it, buddy.” McCory started swimming toward the whisper.

He found Daimler floating on his back twenty feet away and moved in close enough to see his friend’s face, a pale blob against the dark water.

“You all right?”

“Twisted my knee, I think. I’ll live, thank you. But I’m not sure I want to.”

“Sure you do.”

“Not in prison.”

“We’re not going to prison.”

“You son of a bitch. What’re you doing with grenades?”

“Souvenirs. Happened to have them along.” In reality, he had chased down an arms dealer in Miami. Arms dealers in Miami were easy to find.

Daimler mulled that over for a bit, then said, “You broke my boat.”

McCory grinned, but it probably went unseen. “Insured, wasn’t it?”

“You actually think I’d make a claim?”

“I’ll buy you a new one.”

“You don’t have any money.”

“I’ll figure out something.”

“Figure out how we’re getting out of here.”

“What we want,” McCory said, “is Pier Nine.”

“Pier Nine, what?”

“Pier Nine of the Ship R&D center.”

“You’re out of your everlovin’ mind, you know that?” Daimler continued to float on his back, taking deep breaths.

“That’s where I was going to have you drop me off.”

“Midnight boat ride, that’s what you told me. Just like college days, ol’ buddy, buddy.”

McCory and Daimler had attended the University of Florida together, then spent four years in the Navy SEALS together, mostly in San Diego. A long time ago, it seemed now.

“I could apologize, I guess,” McCory said.

“Good goddamned start, but far short of need.”

“Can you swim?”

“How far?”

“Less than a mile, looks like.”

Daimler swung his head to look to the northwest. “You’re lying to me again.”

“Maybe a little more than that.”

“Shit. How come I owe you so much?”

“You don’t owe me.”

“The sheet’s going to be even after this, for damned sure. Let’s get going.”

Daimler rolled over onto his stomach and launched himself toward an objective that could barely be seen in the dark and the fog.

McCory watched the remembered easy, slow, and strong stroke until Daimler disappeared into the darkness, then he swam after him. There had been uncounted night operations, albeit training operations, when the two of them had parachuted into a similar situation, then swum side by side for miles.

It took them nearly an hour, making four rest stops before they made landfall. And then it was the wrong place, Pier Seventeen. McCory figured out the right direction, and they swam parallel to the maze of docks and warehouses, a hundred yards offshore. The security lights spaced along the quay lit a skeletal array of cranes and booms, transfer platforms, and other equipment. They were eerie forms, almost alive in the writhing movement of the thin fog. Trucks and tractors were parked in haphazard fashion. Moored at the docks were a wide variety of vessels — a frigate, a missile cruiser, several destroyers, and smaller boats. Two hydrofoils. Something that looked like a miniature helicopter carrier, big enough to handle five or six choppers. He saw the glow of a cigarette near the bow of the cruiser, on board her.

Behind them, over a mile away, a third ship had joined the search for ex-passengers aboard Daimler’s ex-boat.

Through a gap between buildings, McCory saw a navy blue sedan pass by. Night patrol, maybe.

He kept looking for SPs on foot, working the docks, but didn’t see any. Except for a possible personnel contingent aboard the cruiser, the place was as deserted as he had hoped it would be on a Friday night. He could hear the wave motion against the nearby concrete docks. There was a high level of fuel oil in the water. It burned his nostrils and made his hands feel slippery.

Pier Nine was long and wide, about five hundred feet by a hundred feet, and enclosed. There were windows in the corrugated steel sides, but they were high above the surface of the bay. A faint glow from inside suggested someone had left a night-light on for them.

“This is it?” Daimler whispered.

“Yup.”

“What is it?”

“Follow me.”

McCory breaststroked his way to the corner of the dock, studying the wall facing the bay. There was a large rollup door in the center of it, indicating that the pier was actually two fingered, with open water between the fingers, inside the building.

It was.

He had to dive six feet down to find the bottom edge of the door, pull himself under, then rise slowly until his head broke the surface inside.

McCory used his left hand to wipe the polluted water from his eyes. His eyes were stinging badly. The inside of the building was partially lit from half a dozen ceiling-mounted bulbs.

And there it was.

Daimler’s head emerged soundlessly from the water beside him — the SEAL training had stayed with both of them.

“Jesus Christ!” he whispered. “What in the hell is that, Mac?”

“That’s mine.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“Come on.”

McCory swam quietly toward a ladder mounted on the right side of the pier. The ladder rungs were of steel bar, bent into U-shapes, and sunk into the concrete of the pier. When he reached the ladder, he worked his way slowly out of the water, aware of the greasy water sluicing off of him. He moved slowly, diminishing the noise, alert to the movement of any guard. But there was no guard. This was a classified project, but not a high priority one.

When he reached the top, five feet above water level, he rolled out onto the pier. His muscles yelled damnations at him, complaining about over-utilization. As Daimler climbed up beside him, dripping loudly, McCory unbuckled his belt and freed the plastic bag.

“How’s the knee?”

“Hurts like hell. You’re going to get a stack of medical bills, too.”

They stood up, and Daimler tested his weight on his knee. He could hobble along, but he, too, had lost his shoes. Unlike McCory’s feet, Daimler’s were no longer accustomed to barefooting it on alien surfaces. Ted Daimler’s feet were normally encased in lovingly hand-fitted leather appropriate to a Washington, D.C. attorney, who acquired large fees for introducing one set of influential people to another set of influential people.

Daimler looked daggers at him.

“Okay, I’ll spring for a pair of Reeboks, too.”

“Those maybe you can afford.”

With Daimler leaning on him, the two of them worked their way along the dock toward the boats. As outside the building, there was a lot of equipment parked on or bolted to the pier. Winches, bollards, welders, lathes, drill presses. Set against the walls were large, metal-clad cabinets that McCory guessed were ovens and casting machines. Everything inside the building was clean and appeared to be well maintained.

There were two boats backed into the slip, moored one behind the other on the right finger of the pier.

They appeared identical from the exterior view.

McCory’s practiced eye measured each of them at forty-four feet in length and about fourteen feet in width. Exactly as on the preliminary drawings. The bow was blunt, curving in abruptly from the sides, sharply angled toward the back and downward on the lower side. Along the gunwale edges, the deck also curved downward to meet the sides of the hull, the stern, and the bow. There wasn’t a sharp angle visible. No railings, no safety lines. Chocks and bitts were countersunk into the deck, hidden when sliding doors were closed over them.

There was no cockpit and no apparent cabin.

Instead, from the stern forward, the deck angled upward, curving to level at midships, flowing forward, then rolling into the compound-curved, black Plexiglas windshield eight feet back from the bow. Along the sides, more curved, black Plexiglas had been molded into the plastic sides. The sun would not reflect off of those windows, and nothing of the interior could be seen through them.

Nothing protruded from the sleek surface. No radio or radar antennae, no stanchions, no masts. The top of the craft was almost level with the dock, making its above-surface profile about five feet above waterline.

The night-lights sixty feet up didn’t provide much illumination, but there was enough to tell that the boats were finished in a flat medium blue that seemed to absorb light. On a sunny day at sea, they would be all but invisible. On a cloudy day, they would also blend into the ocean.

And that was the idea.

“It is a fucking boat, isn’t it, Mac? I mean, I’m just taking a wild guess.”

“Sure enough.”

“Not a sub?”

“Wasn’t planned that way.”

“How’d you know it was here?”

“Article in The Washington Post. There’s nothing like a hungry reporter delving into the Pentagon’s secrets, Ted. They’re better at revealing classified data than the KGB. They even had a fuzzy picture of it, taken during sea trials.”

“And you liked it, huh?”

“Hell, the minute I saw it, I knew it was mine.”

Daimler gave him a look that McCory knew was searching for his sanity.

“Not mine, really. It belonged to Devlin.”

“Your dad?” Daimler was beginning to get the picture. The attorney had met Devlin first in 1972.

“That’s right. He called it the SeaGhost.”

“What does the Navy call it?”

“I’m dammed if I know. X-twenty-two, I think.”

“So now you’ve seen it,” Daimler said. “What do we do about it?”

“I’m going to take it home.”

“Bullshit.”

McCory shook his head. “Nope. And I’m going to get myself a few spare parts, too.”

He pointed to the far corner of the building where three oddly shaped gray blobs rested on wheeled dollies.

Daimler sighed. “I’m not going to be surprised anymore. What are those?”

“Engines. They’re made from ceramic castings.”

“No shit? No radar echo?”

“You got it, my friend.”

McCory left Daimler standing on the dock, walked past the bow of the first boat until he found the hatchway, then sat down and dangled his feet just above the curved outer gunwale. Leaning way out, he was able to reach a recessed latch and pop it open. The hatch rose with hydraulic silence, like the doors on a classic Gull-wing Mercedes. Reaching out with his left foot, he wrapped his toes around the surgical rubber weather stripping at the bottom of the doorway, then pushed off the dock.

The interior wasn’t laid out quite like he had expected. A short, steep flight of three steps took him down to the inside deck level. He was in a narrow cross passage with another hatch on the starboard side. Several coiled lines hung on the bulkheads on either side, secured by Velcro loops. A couple of flashlights and two fire extinguishers were also mounted on the bulkhead. He noticed they were made of plastic. Midway across the corridor, there was a door leading aft and a corridor leading forward. The overhead was low, barely two inches above McCory’s six-two stance.

Dropping his vinyl bag on the deck, McCory tried the door. It opened easily, and he felt around until he found a light switch.

Flipped it. Bright light from several recessed overhead and bulkhead bulbs.

Cargo bay.

Or weapons bay. It depended upon the mission for which the boat was outfitted. Somebody was testing this boat as a weapons platform. Part of the cargo bay was taken up with a collapsed missile launch platform of some kind. Locked into racks along both sides were about forty slim, short missiles. They didn’t look like any missile he had ever seen before.

Oh well. Something new to play with.

There was a control panel next to the light switch, protected by a clear plastic door. Opening the door, he located a toggle identified as “CRGO DRS” and flipped it upward. He heard the repetitive clicks of bolts being drawn, then the decking above him began to lift. The whine of electric hydraulic pumps could be heard. The molded plastic doors each served as half of the outer deck and opened initially like the clamshell doors of the space shuttle, then slid downward into recesses between the hull and the cargo bay’s inner lining.

He went back through the corridor and scrambled up onto the dock.

“You’re actually going to do this?”

“Damned right.”

“I’m an unwitting accessory,” the lawyer told him. “Jesus! Grand theft, boat. Boats. Let’s count mine. Classified DOD secrets. Probably traitorous activities. Conspiracy. When the rookie lawyers at Justice get done with me, I won’t have anything left. Won’t need it in maximum security, though.”

“You worry too much,” McCory said.

“I’d worry less if I’d never met you.”

“Go on aboard, and see if you can figure out how we start her.”

While Daimler grimaced and shuffled his way aboard, McCory went to the far corner and moved two dollies out to the edge of the dock. The strange engines were big, about twice the size of a Caterpillar diesel, but flattened, the major component standing about sixteen inches high. They appeared to be complete, with compressor, starter, pumps, tubing, and other accessories already attached. A wiring harness led to a black box resting on top of each engine. That would be the controlling computer. The design was similar to that of the Wankel rotary engine, which McCory expected. They were rotary engines, though they were fueled by diesel. They were also heavy as hell, requiring a great deal of effort to get each dolly underway, then just about as much effort to stop it before it went over the edge of the dock.

Fortunately, he had powered assistance available. An electrically driven block and tackle, suspended from an overhead track, was parked near the wall. McCory grabbed the cable, moved it out from the wall, snapped its hook into a lifting yoke attached to the first engine, then pressed the lift button on the suspended control box. The electric winch whined, the engine lifted clear of the dolly and of the foot-high exposed edge of the cargo door, and he pushed it gently out over the cargo bay.

Daimler emerged into the hold and guided the descent clear of the missile launcher to the far, starboard side of the bay, then disengaged the hook. The boat settled in the water a little, canted to starboard. Six minutes later, they had the second engine loaded and the boat back on an even keel. McCory walked back to the tall metal shelves in the corner, picked up a couple of empty cardboard boxes, and began filling them with odds and ends from the shelves. He didn’t know what he was grabbing, since they were in clear plastic bags identified only with part numbers, but he wanted at least two of each — gaskets, seals, bearings, valves, solenoids, filters, and the like. He had to get another box when he ran into sets of large turbine blades that appeared to have been cast in carbon-impregnated plastic. Then he reboarded to stow the boxes and help Daimler rope the engines in place, tying them down to nylon loops sunken into the deck.

As McCory was closing the cargo hatches, Daimler asked, “You realize, of course, that this son of a bitch is armed? With missiles?”

“Yeah, I saw that.”

Daimler shook his head sadly. “Now we can leave?”

“Now we can leave.”

McCory went back to the pier to release three of the four mooring lines, then walked out to the end of the dock, looking for the switches controlling the roll-up door.

He found them easily enough and was about to try a momentary test, checking on the noise level, when he heard an outboard motor.

He froze in place, listening, but the sound died away, replaced by the whir of an electric motor and the whistle of moving air as Daimler blew the bilges.

Pressing the UP button, McCory raised the door six feet, just enough for clearance, then stopped it. He walked back to the SeaGhost, released the last line, then stepped aboard and closed the hatch.

In the corridor leading forward, he found a small storage compartment, opposite a narrow head that included a shower. Forward of those spaces were two tiny cabins, each with two bunks stacked against the outside bulkhead. Storage drawers were built-in under the lower bunks. A pair of narrow hanging lockers were the only other amenities in each of the cabins.

The main cabin was dimly lit with red light. It contained a small galley and a banquette-type booth on the port side, aft, and a complicated radio console and a desk on the starboard side. Daimler was in the helmsman’s seat, a heavily cushioned, gray Naugahyde, bucket-type seat bolted to the deck. It was located on the starboard side behind an ultra-tech instrument panel with an amazing array of red and blue digital readouts. Opposite the helm side were two more of the bucket seats, situated behind electronic consoles mounted in the forward bulkhead. Vision through the tinted windows was good forward and to the sides but blind toward the stern.

The boat rocked a little, and McCory could see that they were drifting away from the pier. He looked around again at all of the electronics and estimated that there was a couple hundred thousand dollars tied up in the SeaGhost. Hell, he thought, given that it was the Department of Defense, double the dollar estimate.

He began to have doubts about what he was doing but quickly brushed them aside.

“I’m going to try ’em,” Daimler said.

“Go.”

The lawyer hit an ignition switch, but McCory didn’t hear anything.

“That one’s alive,” Daimler said.

“You’re shitting me.” McCory leaned over his shoulder, found a blue readout labeled “PORT RPM,” and saw that it was registering 825.

Daimler started the starboard engine, and the RPM indicator quickly came to life on that one, too. McCory became aware of a minute vibration in the deck, just a shiver under his bare feet.

“They’re jets, Mac.”

“I thought they would be.” The propulsion system sucked water from vents in the lower hull, channeled it through the rotary engine-driven turbines, and streamed it out the transom through steerable nozzles.

Daimler crawled out of the seat and moved to the port side. “I don’t know from jets, Mac. You run it. Besides, you have to remember that I’m a hostage.”

McCory grinned at him and dropped into the seat. He found that the throttles were the two longest of four short levers mounted in the front of the right armrest. The two outboard, short levers were marked for “Forward” and “Neutral.” Beyond those controls were two even shorter levers marked “Reverse.” He suspected that they would drop cuplike devices over the jet nozzles, channeling the thrust forward.

He tried the throttles and ran the RPMs up to 4000. The result was a baritone whine rising from the stern quarters. The power-rumble of a typical V-8 was absent.

Pulling the throttles back, McCory slapped the shift levers into forward, then eased the throttles back in.

The SeaGhost responded immediately and headed for the gap under the overhead door. They slid under the door, into the thin light from shore-based lamps, and McCory felt free.

As soon as he was clear of the pier, he pushed the throttles forward some more. The boat reacted, leaped forward.

“Jesus Christ!” Daimler shouted.

McCory squinted his eyes and saw the rubber boat in the darkness.

Just as he hit it.