SeaGhost

Chapter 8

McCory didn’t get up until almost noon, worrying that he was falling into Ginger’s habit of sleeping late. He liked being a morning person.

He crawled out of the queen-sized bed in Kathleen’s master cabin, located under the stern deck, made the bed, then slipped into the small head to shower and shave. He dressed in Levi’s, deck shoes, and a blue T-shirt with a Dolphin’s logo on the left breast.

Taking the short companionway up to the salon, he started the pot with four cups of real caffeine, flipped on the stereo to catch the news, then got two strips of bacon, one egg, and two pieces of rye toast underway.

When his breakfast was ready, he scooped it all onto a plate, set it on the dinette table, and slid open the big window over the table. Windless day, temperature climbing. It felt good. His newspaper was resting on the side deck next to the window. He tipped the paperboy well for that service.

McCory took his time with breakfast, leafing through the paper, listening to Randy Travis, Reba McIntyre, and Ricky Van Shelton issuing from the Marantz stereo receiver. Nashville had a whole new generation of names attached to it, and he lamented the absence of Cash, Haggard, and Lynn from regular inclusion on the top forty.

From his vantage point in Slip 1, McCory could survey most of his minikingdom, primarily down the main dock. Bob Weston was fueling his sport fisherman, the Prime Mover, down at the fuel dock. Among his residents, McCory had an honor system of fueling. They topped off their tanks, listed the quantity on a clipboard, and signed it. He billed them. The inventory hadn’t come up a gallon short in a year.

Try that in Miami or New York.

His residents were a continual renewal of his faith in people.

Mimi Kuntzman came up the dock, whistling some song he didn’t know. She was seventy-one years old, looked fifty, and wore shorts and a pink-and-blue striped blouse. Strong, muscled, chorus girl’s legs. Ann Miller. Juliet Prouse. As she came alongside the Kathleen, she stopped and peered in his window.

“That smells suspiciously like breakfast.”

McCory leaned close to the window. “It is. Want some, Mimi?”

“I had mine at seven. You didn’t work so late, you could get up like normal people. It’s not good for you, Kevin, all that work.”

“I’ll try to slow down.”

“It’s another big boat, isn’t it? Like Mimosa?”

“What is?”

“The one you’re working on over at John Barley’s. Monte Harris saw the Kathleen tied up over there last night. And you didn’t get back until nearly six this morning.”

Mimi was what McCory imagined having a mother would be like. “I promise. I’ll slow down.”

“And I want you over for dinner on Saturday night. Six sharp. Bring your friend.”

She turned and went on down the dock.

McCory watched her through the front windshield until she started up the ramp. Shook his head. Secrets were difficult to keep around here. He was going to have to be more careful. And for the first time, he began to wonder what the reaction would be among his friends if they found out he’d stolen a Navy boat. They read the papers and watched TV. They weren’t stupid, and there was always the chance that a Mimi Kuntzman or a Monte Harris or a Bob Weston might start putting two and two together and come up with XMC-22. None of them had ever known Devlin, but he had mentioned his father to them from time to time.

He worried a little about firing the missile. The news media had yet to notify the public that missiles were missing from Navy inventories. What if one of his friends found out how McCory and Ginger spent their nights?

He didn’t want to lose any friends.

The dishes were almost done when the phone rang. He crossed the salon to the built-in desk — every tenon and mortise hand fitted by Devlin — and picked up.

“Kevin.” Gravelly voice.

“Yes, Marge.”

“There’s a couple gentlemen here would like to rent the Starshine. Two days.”

“What do they look like?’

“I can’t answer that.”

“Because they’re right there?”

“Yes.”

“Ages over thirty?”

“More than that,” she said.

“Clean and sober?”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about them?”

“Well, now… pretty good, I guess.”

“You think drugs?”

“Oh, no!”

“Go ahead, then. Standard rate. Ask Ben to check her over and top off the tanks.”

He went back to the galley, picked up a towel and a plate, and the phone rang.

Back at the desk, he lifted the receiver again.

“McCory.”

“Mac, you know Air Force General Mark Aspin?”

“No, Ted. Should I?”

“I had breakfast with him. He’s a client. Works at the Pentagon in some planning function.”

“You supposed to be telling me this?”

“I wouldn’t reveal anything of a professional nature, you know that. We small-talked about the news of the day.”

“And the news behind the news?”

“That, too. There’s a lot of pressure building up on the other side of the river. The White House and the Secretary of Defense are putting the screws on the Navy people. Jobs could hang in the balance.”

“I’d think so,” McCory said, “Losing a whole class of boat just isn’t done.”

“It may be to our advantage, come negotiation time,” Daimler said.

“I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Getting anxious?”

“Yeah. People around here might start catching on.”

“Well, there are some other things,” Daimler said. “One, I called Malgard.”

“Who’s Malgard?”

“I sent you a package. He’s the CEO of AMDI. I didn’t identify myself, but I suggested a deal for getting his boats back. Not boat. I implied the plural.”

“And?”

“He didn’t buy it.”

“What’s he like?”

“Instinctively, I didn’t like him,” Daimler said. “But then, I’d just read the background package myself. He’s an ambitious bastard.”

“The kind who’d steal a boat design?”

“Perhaps, but we’re going to have to prove it.”

“Ginger’s going to type up my notes. I’ll send them to you when she’s done.”

“Does she know that women’s prisons are separate from men’s prisons?”

McCory didn’t respond. He figured she knew.

“Then,” Daimler went on, “the primary reason for this call. Apparently, the Air Force had some of its recon planes involved in the search. I get the impression from Mark Aspin that the Air Force is trying to stay an arm’s length away from the debacle, but they’re contributing a little. They’re kind of laughing at the Navy, but only in private. How-some-ever, Mac, he tells me that the Navy has narrowed the search to one particular area of ocean.”

“How in hell did they do that?”

“Well, you and I know the boats have missiles aboard. I acted totally surprised, naturally, when Aspin told me about that.”

That was pure Washington. Secrets were only vague aspirations.

“What about the missiles?”

“That terrorist, Ibrahim Badr? He fired a missile last night. Some search plane picked up the active radar and the missile track.”

All McCory could say was, “No shit?”

“No shit, compadre. Cross your fingers, and hope for the best. If the Navy gets that boat back from Badr, our time has come.”

“I do see a problem,” McCory said.

“Problem? What problem?”

“I don’t know if you want to hear about it.”

“Try me.”

McCory was right. Daimler didn’t want to hear about it.

Justin Malgard’s Washington office was just as comfortable as the one in his home. Thick, plushy carpet in rust tones. Dark woods, heavy leather. There was a wall of bound books. Four hundred square feet supporting two couches and an oversize desk. A pedestal was topped with a computer terminal, to show he was state of the art. Next door was his matching conference room, with the bar built into the end wall. From the corner windows, he had a view down New Hampshire to Dupont Circle. He entertained senators, representatives, and important staffers in the suite.

The sun was starting a downward trek, and he had slanted his blinds against it. The office had a gloomy air about it, and he had turned on the overhead lights to wash it away.

His secretary stuck her head inside the doorway. “Okay if I leave now, Mr. Malgard?”

“Sure. See you in the morning, Cheryl.”

“Sorry I couldn’t raise Mr. Chambers for you.”

“That’s all right. He’s bound to call in.”

As soon as he heard the outer door close, Malgard went back to his pacing. He was going to wear a large circle in his rust carpet.

All afternoon, Cheryl had been calling up and down the Gulf Coast of Florida, looking for any motel that had a Richard Chambers registered.

Nothing.

He kept glancing at his telephone, willing the light for the private line to start blinking.

Nothing.

He had searched all of his telephone books, as well as telephone information for surrounding cities, looking for some law firm called Weirgard, Amos, Havelock, and Moses.

Nothing.

A probe, that’s all it was.

But it confirmed what he had been thinking all along. Kevin McCory had his boats. The damned Navy was off searching the world for wild geese, but McCory had the boats.

He sure as hell couldn’t tell the Navy about it. There was no way in hell that he could allow a Navy investigation to involve McCory.

All he could do is wait for that phone to ring and then shove a stick up Chamber’s ass.

Ibn el-Ziam no longer wore his arm cast.

He had abandoned it at Dulles International Airport, after four and a half hours of flights and waiting time, when he changed from his jeans and sport shirt to a conservatively cut blue-gray suit, white shirt, maroon tie, and highly polished black wing tip shoes. He detested ties but was convinced they helped make him invisible. In busy airports, people paid very little attention to yet another businessman in pursuit of American dollars.

He did get a few appreciative glances from several women, ranging from a blonde, blue-eyed young lady in designer jeans and a short fur jacket to a well-kept and stylish woman in her sixties. That kind of attention was expected, for el-Ziam had always been attractive to women. He was only 178 centimeters tall, but his body was well proportioned. His hair was dark and moderately long, combed back over the ears, with a forelock allowed to drape over his forehead. His skin was smooth, and his smile was white and frequent. He suspected that his eyes were his best feature, laughing eyes with a hint of adventure, and perhaps violence, in them. Set slightly wide to either side of a fine, straight nose, they were a limpid brown. Various women had described them as sensuous, sympathetic, or bedroom.

Quite often, the women he met on his travels for the Warriors of Allah had been quite useful. On his arm, they got him through security checkpoints or into restaurants and hotels that contained his targets.

Immediately after changing clothes in the men’s room, el-Ziam had gone to a telephone booth and looked up Advanced Marine Development, Incorporated. There was an address for a manufacturing facility in Baltimore, Maryland, and an address for an office in the District of Columbia.

He chose the District of Columbia.

Outside the terminal, the heat had been oppressive, much more humid than that to which he was accustomed. He had flagged a taxi and told the driver in flawless English that he wished to be taken into the District, to the address on New Hampshire Avenue.

He spoke Arabic, Farsi, English, French, German, and Italian with ease. He could get by in Spanish and Greek, also. His facility with languages was what had first drawn the attention of Colonel Ibrahim Badr.

The highways were choked with noisy, erratic traffic, and the taxi driver fought and cursed his way into the city, taking the Key Bridge north to Theodore Roosevelt Island to cross the Potomac River.

It was almost seven o’clock by the time the taxi driver let el-Ziam and his suitcase out in front of the office building. It appeared nearly deserted, the workers gone home for the day. A few people were running late, emerging from the twin glass doors with harried expressions on their faces. El-Ziam entered, looked about, and sauntered over to the directory.

There was a security desk in front of the elevators with a uniformed man, who did not seem exceptionally busy. He was only checking those who were coming into the building.

El-Ziam scanned the directory. Advanced Marine was on the fifth floor. He chose a message service on the second floor, crossed to the security desk, and said, “I am to meet the manager of Capitol Convenience Services.”

“Just sign the log, there, mister.”

El-Ziam signed Francisco Cordilla’s name with a flourish, then added the time. He passed around the desk and entered an open elevator.

After the short ride, he stepped out on the second floor, found the nearby stairway door, then descended to the basement. He had to use picks to open the lock of the steel door into the basement, but it only took him two minutes.

And then it only took twelve minutes to locate the telephone panel, find the leads for Suite 510, and connect the transmitter to the first of several sets of telephone terminals. El-Ziam was back on New Hampshire Avenue shortly after that, looking for a nearby restaurant.

It was becoming compulsive behavior. Every time he had a few straight hours of free time, McCory found himself in Dry Dock One of Barley’s Refitters.

He would sit at the banquet table, studying manuals. He would wander around the boat cabin, touching. He would stand near the forward bulkhead, staring through the windshield at nothing, at the sea door.

I see, I feel, your dream, Devlin. 

Just being aboard the SeaGhost made him feel closer to his father. When he was at the helm, feeling the slight vibration of the rotary engines in his fingertips, it was as if he had contact with… the soul of his father. It was the same sensation he found with the Kathleen. Or maybe it was Kathleen Moran McCory with whom he shared an illusive contact. Many, many times, McCory had wished he had known his mother beyond the image in old photographs.

Ginger was right, of course. McCory was something of a romantic and a dreamer. He liked old things. Old boats, old desks, old pictures, old books, old morals. True craftsmanship and integrity seemed to wither with each passing year. He wanted to hold onto it for as long as he could.

There were ironies. The SeaGhost was as high tech as could be found, and it hadn’t even been built by Devlin McCory, but the essence of his thought, his craftsmanship, and his thoroughness were in her. Devlin’s rough and tender hands might as well have smoothed her beautiful hull.

McCory had stocked the pantry and the refrigerator, then eaten a dinner of home fries and a chopped sirloin steak. The refrigerator contained twelve bottles of Dos Equis. He was making a home out of her, becoming familiar.

The interior lights of the dry dock were extinguished. There was only blackness outside the SeaGhost’s windows. The cabin lights were turned low. McCory had left the hatches open and had a ventilator operating. Warm, slightly salty air permeated the cabin.

He got a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and went forward to sit in the sonar operator’s seat. Propped his Top Siders on top of the instrument panel.

“Shit,” he said aloud to himself and maybe the SeaGhost. “I’m hooked.”

He had been intent upon righting a few wrongs, then relinquishing the boat. If he were halfway smart, he’d do it within the next few days, before too many of the local people started catching on. He had even driven over in the truck that evening, so Monte Harris or someone wouldn’t spot one of his boats tied up alongside the dock.

Now, he didn’t want to give her up.

Daimler was going to squawk.

Hell. I can’t even take you out in public, girlie.

Not too many pleasure boats were outfitted with scramblers, targeting radar, cannon, and missiles.

Strip it all out and ship it to Norfolk.

Anonymously.

C.O.D.

Damned missiles would get him in trouble, yet. In his mind, he could see several fleets of battlewagons converging on that four-mile stretch of Atlantic where he and Ginger had sunk a tattered rubber boat.

He was really screwing it up. By showing off for the girlfriend, he had aimed the Navy in his own direction.

While the bad guys slipped over the horizon with SeaGhost II. It was like having Devlin held hostage.

Christ, Devlin. You taught me better.

New River Inlet slipped by unseen except for the buoys marking the passage. Only an occasional light marked dwellings of some kind on the coastal islands. The moon had set over an hour before. It was a clear night, and the stars were hard points overhead.

The Sea Spectre barely whispered. Her engines could not be heard at her speed of fifteen knots. In the rearview screen on the panel, Ibrahim Badr could see only the mild twin-legged vee of the wake designating her trail, the water not churned enough to create a damning whiteness.

Any small noises within the cabin were dampened by the cushioned earphones he wore.

To his left, Omar Heusseini sat at the radar console. He looked more haggard than he should have, and Badr suspected he had not been sleeping well. The green glow of the screen tinted the unshaven whiskers on his face sickly gray.

To the left of Heusseini, at the sonar position, Amin Kadar sat rigidly in his seat, his tension betrayed by the set of his shoulders. He was leaning forward, his head resting against the hood of the sonar screen. His hand rested on the control panel, his thumb poised over a keypad, ready to switch his headset from the sonar-listening mode to the intercom.

Ahmed Rahman was back in the missile bay. The times that he had spoken to Badr in the past few hours, he had sounded completely at ease, fully relaxed. Rahman was comfortable with his missiles and his role.

A click sounded in the headset.

“I have a contact,” Kadar said, his voice squeaky with his fear.

“Location?” Badr asked.

“Ahead, to the left. You had better bear to the right, Colonel.”

Badr eased the helm slightly to the right.

“Do not go too far,” Heusseini warned. “The depths are deceptive. I will need an active radar, soon.”

Heusseini had learned about the mapping system available in the Sea Spectre’s computer but had also discovered some limitations. The maps of a few major harbors and bays were stored in the computer, but small waterways inland were not. The New River Bay in North Carolina was not. In fact, only the northern Atlantic and the Caribbean maps were accessible. Heusseini suspected that only the maps for the boat’s planned area of operations were input to the machine. The computer mapping function would have been useless to them in the Arabian Gulf without access to the appropriate software.

It was also useless for most waterways inside the American continent. Badr had told them that the Americans had not planned on attacking their own installations with the boat. It brought a laugh.

“How large is the contact?” Badr asked.

“A medium-sized boat,” Kadar relied. “Two propellers.”

“Range?”

“Two thousand meters. Yards. This equipment thinks in yards. I do not.”

Badr studied the night-vision screen. Soon, a set of running lights appeared, moving slowing toward them, but on the other side of the stream. They would clear each other by half a kilometer.

Without permission, Heusseini went active on the radar, using only the forward antenna. He shut it off within seconds.

“I see no other traffic,” he said.

Badr thought it unwise to chastise the man about following orders at the moment. An argument would only disrupt the concentration of them all.

Give me strength, Allah.

“You must turn now,” Heusseini said.

Badr could see for himself. The river took a ninety-degree turn to the right, past a point littered with trees. The shore on his right appeared swampy. The camera lens did not provide him with a decent view of the opposite shore. Through the windshield, the river’s edge was only a band of dense shadows against blackness.

He made the turn, maintaining a steady speed of fifteen knots. Four kilometers later, he made a left turn, continuing inland. Ten minutes after that, the lights of the Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base appeared.

It was a large base located at the head of the bay. Geometric lines of streetlights defined it well, and a glow of more lights beyond would be the city of Jacksonville. As they closed with the base, the night-vision lens gave Badr a view of barracks, training fields, large maintenance-type buildings, and other unknown structures.

He slowed the speed of the Sea Spectre three kilometers away from the base and glanced down at the armaments panel. It was active, its blue letters clear in the darkness of the cabin. Four green indicators at the top of the panel suggested that four missiles were in place on the launcher and that they were prepared for ignition.

“Ahmed?”

The confident voice responded at once. “Four missiles available, Colonel Badr. I have two more on the cranes, ready for reloading. I am clear of the missile bay.”

“Omar?”

“I am ready, Colonel. Targets?”

“Choose large buildings. There is a truck park.”

“Opening missile bay doors.” Heusseini touched a keypad.

A green light.

“Doors clear,” Rahman reported.

Badr pulled the throttles all the way back. The boat slewed to the side a little as it slowed.

Heusseini pressed another pad.

“Launcher elevating. Locked in place,” Rahman said.

“I am using electro-optical targeting,” Heusseini said.

“You may fire when you are ready,” Badr told him.

He switched his primary screen to the optical-tracking function. A green view of the Marine base appeared on the monitor, low on the screen, seen from the nose cone of the missile. A pair of automobile headlights snaked along one of the streets.

WHOOSH!

The missile launched directly ahead, the white-hot trail of its exhaust attacking his eyes through the windshield. He blinked his eyes, and when he opened them, the missile was a white dot dancing in the sky far ahead.

He looked down at the screen. The view was jumping all about. Flashing lights sliding. Sky. Water. Lights again.

Heusseini was having difficulty directing the missile with the directional keypads on the armaments panel. His fingers frolicked on the keys, pressing one, then another, as he sought to stabilize and direct the missile. He kept his eyes on his own screen.

“You must relax, Omar,” Badr said.

He heard the man take a deep breath.

The picture steadied. An equipment park. Badr had a fleeting glimpse of large military trucks, personnel carriers, fuel tankers, and jeeps.

The words “LOCK-ON” appeared in the upper right corner of the screen.

The screen abruptly blinked to black, then to a new view from another missile as Heusseini abandoned his control of the first.

WHOOSH!

The second missile launched.

Badr closed his eyes just in time.

When he opened them, it took a half-second to locate the missile trail.

The first missile drew his attention to it when it exploded. There was a brilliant yellow-red flash that was soundless in the night.

The dull whump of the detonation followed a second later, very likely heard only because of the open missile bay doors. Most others sounds were filtered out by insulation and the headsets.

He looked at his screen. A large building with a peaked roof.

LOCK-ON.

Blackness.

WHOOSH!

White-out through the windows.

Another yellow-red flash on the shore as the second missile struck.

At the truck park, orange-blue flames were starting to rise high. Smaller explosions peppered the view and the windshield as automotive gasoline tanks exploded.

On the screen, another building. A barracks?

LOCK-ON.

Blank screen.

New view.

WHOOSH!

“Retracting launcher,” Heusseini said. His voice was steady now, calm with the knowledge that he had met the challenge.

“Launcher retracted,” Rahman reported. “I will reload with two missiles.”

Badr felt the pride welling in himself. This was magnificent!

The fourth missile slammed into a building and detonated. Four fires were raging around the base, spread across a three-kilometer arc. Heusseini’s accuracy was nothing he should boast about. He had merely locked his missiles onto whatever happened to be in view. Badr suspected that the first target, the truck park, was either a lucky fluke or had been under the guidance of Allah.

He quickly switched his primary screen to the boat’s video camera view and eased the throttles forward to gain headway and control over the camera. Manipulating the computer keys, he found the formula to magnify the view by seven.

In the enhanced view, he could see that dozens of trucks, jeeps, and personnel carriers were on fire. More of them exploded as he watched. Hoods and doors leaped into the air. The canvas coverings on troop carriers were aflame.

Most of the buildings were made of wood, and structures adjacent to targeted buildings began to catch fire. The skyline was taking on a rosy hue.

Panicked men were running everywhere. They were dressed in white underwear, streaking across the streets, around the corners of buildings. Lights were coming on in most of the buildings. A few of the men pulled fire hoses behind them.

It was all very quiet. Within the insulated cabin of the Sea Spectre, with the headsets in place, they could not hear the screams and the agony. That much was disappointing.

“Missiles in place,” Rahman reported.

“Raising launcher,” Heusseini said.

Within three minutes, the last two missiles detonated in yet two more areas of the base.

There was fire everywhere. Fire trucks were now responding. Red and blue strobe lights blinked against the six separate infernos.

“Retract the launcher, and close the doors,” Badr ordered. “We will now go see if Abdul Hakim has deserted us.”