SeaGhost

Chapter 9

The activity in the Operations Center was considerably more controlled than what was taking place in Camp Lejeune, Monahan thought.

He had made the trip from his home to the Center in record time, arriving a few minutes before Admiral Clay. Fortunately, he had had fresh khakis on hand, and he felt and looked better than either of the admirals. Matthew Andrews had had his last Chivas and water not too long before he had received his call. He appeared a bit unsteady in his chair at the table, talking earnestly to someone in North Carolina.

Bingham Clay came into the Center under full steam, tossing a briefcase toward one corner of the room. He came to a stop against the table, leaning into it, staring at the plotting board.

“Tell me, Jim.”

Monahan had come to his feet as soon as Clay appeared. “Not good, Admiral. The reports are still coming in, but it looks like they were hit with six missiles.”

“Casualties?”

Andrews, with a telephone pressed against the side of his face, responded. “I’ve got the hospital on the line, Bing. Ambulances are still coming in, but so far, we’re counting forty-two dead and one hundred and twelve wounded. Some of those are damned serious. The fatality count is going to climb. I’ve ordered aircraft to transport burn cases to San Antonio.”

“Son of a bitch!” Clay snorted.

One of the things that Monahan had always respected about Bingham Clay was the man’s concern for people. He worried about the men and women assigned to his command first and everything else second.

“Matt,” the admiral said to the intelligence deputy, “you see if they need more medical help down there. If they do, you get it to them.”

“Aye, aye,” Andrews said, and went back to the phone.

“We got Washington in on this?” Clay asked.

Monahan nodded. “Lieutenant Commander Horan is the duty officer. He called the CNO’s office right away, and they’re monitoring our board.”

Monahan had a mental picture of the staff cars converging on the Pentagon. Someone would have gotten the President out of bed by now.

“Targets, Jim?”

“From what I’ve got right now,” Monahan waved the telex he was holding, “it looks sporadic. One wing of the headquarters building; a warehouse full of soft goods — bedding, uniforms, and the like; and a motor pool — fifty-six vehicles damaged at last count. Three barracks buildings were hit, and that’s where we took most of the casualties.”

“Shit, shit, shit! Any doubt in your mind that it was the Sea Spectres?”

“No sir,” Monahan said. “I think, though, that only one of the boats was involved.”

“Why?”

“Elapsed time of the attack. With both boats, we’d have had eight missiles launched in the first wave. There were only six total, and there was almost a five-minute pause from the first salvo to the second.”

“They’re holding one of the boats in reserve, then?”

“Yes. Or they’ve sent the other boat on to the Persian Gulf.”

“Give me an impression, Jim.”

Monahan took a minute to sift through the images in his mind. “I think the primary objective was shock value, sir. They didn’t go in with preset targets. The impact pattern is too random. There were other targets available that would have been more spectacular. Fuel and ammunition storage sites, for example.”

“Matt?” Clay looked to Andrews.

Andrews nodded while continuing to talk on the phone. His expression said he did not necessarily want to agree with Monahan but did not have a better alternative prepared at the moment.

Clay pointed at the plotting board. There were so many symbols converging on the coast of North Carolina that it was difficult to read. “What the hell’s going on there?”

“Task Force 22 is three hundred miles southeast. America has sent Tomcats and Intruders. Langley Air Base has put up F-15s. There’s some Coast Guard cutters in the area. Every naval installation within four hundred miles has scrambled air and sea search craft.”

“Who in the fuck ordered that?”

Monahan held off on an answer, and Andrews finally spoke up, “I did, Bing. We’ve got to pin that SOB down while we’ve got him in a known sector.”

Clay frowned, slipped out of his uniform blouse, and tossed it on the chair next to him. He sat down.

“Well, let’s get some order injected into it. Commander Horan, get a headset and stand by. Jim, you go find an airplane and get down to Lejeune.”

The Prebble had joined up with Task Force 22 just after midnight. The flagship had stationed her three miles ahead and one mile to the port side of America.

Since 0220 hours, Barry Norman had been pacing his bridge, pausing frequently to watch the flights of aircraft taking off from the carrier. Their afterburners streaked the horizon behind the destroyer.

He was angry and frustrated. He was mad as hell about the success of the attack on the Marine Corps base. It made a statement, not only about the value of the Sea Spectre as an assault craft, but also about the complacency of American troops in a peacetime garrison.

His frustration was a result of being stationed within the task force, when he should be closer to the scene. The Prebble had the best, if not the only, chance of locating Badr.

“Bridge, CIC.”

Norman recognized Perkins’s voice and crossed the deck to the intercom mounted on the bulkhead. “Bridge. Go ahead, Commander.”

“Message just in, Captain. CINCLANT’s suggesting that only one boat was involved in the attack. All Safari elements are to continue observation of commercial vessels while simultaneously mounting the search in the North Carolina sector.”

Norman had figured out sometime before that only one boat was involved. It was about time the commands figured it out, too. On the task force radio net, broadcast from the overhead speakers, he heard the flagship detaching some ships to continue surveillance of the tankers and freighters they had been dogging. The rest of the task force was given a new course heading.

“Commander Perkins, send a message to CINCLANT, copy CINC TF22. ‘Commander, Prebble recommends her detachment at flank speed to scene of crisis. Rationale, Prebble mounts anti-stealth gear.’”

“Right away, sir.”

Twelve minutes later, Perkins called him back, unsuccessfully disguising the jubilation he felt. “Captain! We’ve been released from the task force! We’re now Safari Echo.”

“It’s about damn time somebody started thinking,” Norman said. “Instructions?”

“Wide open, sir. ‘Proceed at best possible speed. Engage search at your discretion.’”

“Thank you, Commander.” Norman turned to the second mate, who had the watch. “Susan, give us a course for Onslow Bay. And we want every knot we can get out of her.”

“Aye aye sir.”

Norman went below to his quarters to catch a few hours of sleep but found himself spread out on his bunk, eyes closed, wide awake.

He felt the vibrations as the turbines met the challenge of full power. The chief engineer would have all of his people on duty, watching those shafts.

He kept thinking about that one boat.

A damned terrorist could cause a lot more havoc using both boats. Since when did someone like this Ibrahim Badr think rationally?

He did not want to underestimate Badr or anyone like him. As far as Arabic logic went, Norman was the first to admit he did not fathom it, but still…

Terrorist groups were not known for holding back. Hell, if Norman was directing a similar operation and had both boats available, he would have used them.

Devlin McCory.

Norman had looked up his old correspondence with Devlin. Clear back in 1985, he had mentioned a design he was working on for a stealth boat. Twice more, in later letters, he had referred to it. There was nothing specific, but he had sounded excited about it.

But Devlin was gone. Only the boy was left, and Norman had no idea what had become of him. Kevin, that was the name. From the tone of Devlin’s letters, he suspected that father and son had been close.

Maybe Kevin had Devlin’s drawings? Could he be helpful in tracking down the Sea Spectre?

No.

But Norman could not let go of it. He ought to tell someone.

He sat up on the edge of his bunk and pressed the intercom button. “Comm, this is the Captain.”

“Comm, Captain.”

“Find me someone to talk to at CINCLANT. Somebody who’s working on Safari.”

Rick Chambers had driven the full length of Florida, on the Gulf side, and he was getting tired. He hoped to hell that Malgard was right about this. By the time he found Kevin McCory, he was going to be in a mean mood.

Since February of 1987, when the old man died, McCory had worked, or holed up, in six different marinas. So far.

He was living aboard an old home-built cruiser named the Kathleen, and he worked a few charters or got himself a job on the docks for a few weeks before moving on.

It hadn’t been easy. Chambers had followed a dozen false leads. “Guy named McCory? The Kathleen? Damn, seems to me ol’ Cap’n Eddie said he’d seen him over ’round Siesta Key. Might try there.”

It got so Chambers didn’t know whether the good old boys were putting him on or not. Most of them kept their jaws clamped tight. They didn’t talk to Northerners who weren’t buying a charter. He was certain some of them had sent him on deliberate wild-goose chases.

After a while, though, he learned to chat up the younger women hanging around the marinas. More often than not, Becky or June or Melinda would remember the handsome young master of the Kathleen and be happy to talk about him. More often than not, also, Chambers would see the yearning in their eyes. Pissed him off, is what it did.

He took the Tamiami Trail across the city to the Atlantic side, turned north on Biscayne Boulevard, and pulled into the first convenience store he found. He got out of the green Taurus, stretched, and headed across the parking lot for the public telephone.

Chambers had learned to search out the low-end marinas. McCory didn’t go for the world-class stuff. The trouble was, the yellow pages didn’t tell him what was first class and what was crumbling. Every advertisement pictured or narrated a state of the art marine operation.

He ripped the pertinent pages from the telephone book, folded them, and stuffed them in the pocket of his beige suit jacket. It was pretty wrinkled, he decided. He was going to have to stop somewhere along the way and get both of his suits pressed.

He figured he could reach Malgard in his Washington office that time of the afternoon, so he used his credit card number and dialed the AMDI office number. Malgard didn’t often go out to his manufacturing plant. Chambers figured him for being more interested in being a wheel around Washington than in building boats for the Navy.

“Advanced Marine Development.”

“Cheryl, this is Rick Chambers. The boss around?”

“Hold on a moment, Rick.”

It took nearly four minutes for Malgard to drop whatever he was doing and pick up the phone.

“Where are you at, Rick?”

“Miami.”

“Christ! You haven’t found him, yet?”

“Hey, I just got here. I’ve got maybe a hundred marinas to check out. You sure McCory stole your boats?”

“Not on this phone, damn it! Yes, I’m sure.”

Chambers sighed and patted the yellow pages in his pocket. “Okay, Justin. I’ll get on it.”

“Get on it fast, damn it! He’s had damn near six days now.”

“Maybe he sunk them?”

“He didn’t sink them. He’s got them somewhere, and he’s going to want big bucks for them. I’m not paying.”

“Yeah, okay. You can pay me instead.”

Chambers hung up the phone and turned around to stare at Biscayne Bay. Jesus, there were a lot of boats.

But what he needed was to find a young lady.

He found her three hours later, in the twelfth marina, up near the northern end of the bay. Her name was Elaine, and she was relaxing in the cockpit of a small sloop named Lainie’s Choice. She was in her mid-thirties, tanned the color of cashews, and dressed in pink shorts and a man’s white shirt. Chambers didn’t think there was anything under the shorts and shirt but Elaine.

He leaned on the railing of the dock and looked down at her. A big cruiser moving out of the marina created ripples that rocked the small sailboat.

She looked up at him, frowned.

“You Elaine?” he asked.

“Who’re you?”

“Name’s Davis. Harold Davis.” He pointed his thumb toward the shore end of the dock. “The manager back there said you might know a man named McCory.”

There. That little shift in the eyes, thinking back on pleasurable thoughts.

“Why you looking for this McCory?”

“I’m with Marathon Equitable Insurance. We’ve been trying to find Kevin McCory so we can pay him a settlement.”

“What kind of settlement?”

“It has to do with his father. Can’t say much more than that.”

“I haven’t seen him in almost two years,” she said, her blue eyes remembering every lost day. She used the back of her hand to flip the long, bleached blonde hair away from the side of her face,

“You have any idea where he went?”

“Not really. He talked about Tampa Bay, once.”

Chambers had already been there. “Anywhere else?”

“Fort Lauderdale, maybe.”

“Has he still got that cruiser? The old one?”

“It’s a motor yacht. Custom-built. The Moran. Yes, he still had it when he was here.”

That explained a couple of big gaps in McCory’s itinerary. He’d changed the name of the boat.

“Well, thanks, Elaine.”

“Sure. I hope you find him.”

“Oh, I will.”

Ted Daimler felt sick, but it was not the flu.

It was the carnage he had viewed on television.

All of the networks had abandoned their scheduled programming, which was not much of a loss, and gone to North Carolina, first with affiliates, then with their own reporters as they arrived on the scene. The twisted wreckage of armored personnel carriers and trucks was a favorite scene. Gaping holes in structures and burned barracks came in second. Subreporters were stationed at the doorways to hospitals in Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, Wilmington, and Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where a number of bad burn cases had been flown.

The government had been noncommittal for most of the day, but finally in the early afternoon, the Navy conceded that the stolen stealth boat was likely behind the attack. Ibrahim Badr was profiled.

The fatality count stood at sixty-one. There were 194 wounded.

Daimler had gone to the office in the morning but was back home by ten o’clock. He called McCory a dozen times but only left a message with Marge Hepburn.

Finally, just as Reba started talking about a dinner he did not feel like eating, McCory called back.

“Worst possible scenario, Ted.”

“Do you really think so?” Daimler asked. The sarcasm could not be more evident.

“Shit, I’m aching, man.”

“Oh, hell, I know you are.” Daimler found himself pushed into his counseling role. For most of the day, his world had been self-centered, knowing that he had a part, however small, in the whole drama. “We have to keep in mind, Mac, that this isn’t us. It’s not our script.”

“I appreciate your use of ‘our,’ Ted, but it’s me. I started this thing.”

“Not necessarily. If we hadn’t knocked on the door of Pier Nine first, this Badr asshole would have two boats.”

“Maybe.”

“What surprises the hell out of me,” Daimler said, “is that the SOB hung around. I thought he’d be knocking off supertankers in the Persian Gulf by now.”

“Which offends your Republican sense of justice.”

“Sure, but losing oil is better than losing Marines. But, Mac, what I called about. I think it’s time I approached the Navy. We’re not going to get anywhere with this Malgard. Let’s lay the whole thing out — the drawings and your notes, and give them the boat back.”

“There’s just one thing, Ted.”

“There would be.”

“I’ve decided to keep the boat.”

Daimler groaned. McCory did things like that. Always the unexpected. When he was younger, Daimler had been able to take it.

McCory wore his gray slacks and a blue blazer. He wore a white dress shirt and a conservatively striped blue tie. Except for his single suit, it was the best combination in his wardrobe.

Ginger Adams was a knockout in a white sheath that was just a little taut in the right places. She had her hair up in a carefully sculptured style that, counting her three-inch heels, made her over six feet tall. He figured she could stop traffic better than any cop.

It was a festive occasion, the annual summer dinner party for the bank’s employees. McCory didn’t feel very festive, and he knew that Ginger didn’t either. Still, she kept a bright smile in place, and she appeared very comfortable in the company of her tellers and the members of her board of directors. She was good at small talk.

McCory had never been invited into her banking family before, so this was kind of a formalization of their relationship, he supposed. If it hadn’t been planned for three weeks, he might have begged off.

The lights in the ballroom of the Adler Hotel had been dimmed to a level that competed with the flickering candles on the tables. A multi-faceted, mirrored ball rotated over the dance floor, like something out of the forties, and the raised bandstand was outlined with white Christmas tree lights. It felt like Tommy Dorsey or Guy Lombardo.

The dinner came off well, with the president and vice presidents making gratefully short speeches, though McCory could have listened to Ginger for a while longer. They passed out awards to outstanding employees. They served roast beef contributed by a very lean steer. Afterward, a trio of guitar, bass, and piano, fronted by a college-girl singer, played music that had been mostly recorded before the band members were born. They were heavy on Eddy Arnold’s stuff, and McCory guessed that Ginger had not been on the selection committee.

She came back to their table from a gab session and said, “Dance with me.”

“That didn’t sound like a question.”

“It wasn’t.’

“I’m a terrible dancer.”

“I’ll judge that.”

After he got into the rhythm of “Turn the World Around,” feeling her close to him, her fingers keeping time against the back of his neck, he figured he wasn’t too bad.

She agreed. “You’re only half-terrible.”

“That’s what all my friends say.” He pulled his head back to look into her eyes. There were golden sparkles among the hazel. “I’m afraid I’ll spoil your night.”

She pulled his head back and rested her forehead against his cheek. “No, you won’t. I understand. The Marines.”

“I’d like to find the son of a bitch.”

“Maybe you will,” she said. “Maybe I’ll help you find him.”

Ibn el-Ziam deplaned and walked through Miami International’s teeming terminal into a hot, moist night. From a dispenser, he bought a copy of The Miami Herald. The headlines, and practically the whole front page, were devoted to the terrorist attack on Camp Lejeune. It was all he could do not to throw his arms up and shout, “Rejoice!”

He looked at the first taxi in the line, rethought his needs, and went back inside to rent a car. The lady told him he would like a Pontiac.

He did not like it. Americans were too soft, surrounded themselves with unnecessary luxuries. He had not liked the Mercury he had had to rent in Washington, either. Sitting in a restaurant or hanging around the alley near the office building on New Hampshire Avenue drew too much attention to himself, so he had rented the car and parked it successively in different spots around the block, staying within range of the transmitter attached to the Advanced Marine Development telephone.

The company had a large number of telephone lines coming into it, and el-Ziam had selected the first one. He had almost gone back into the building several times in order to change the tap to another line, because the calls made to the first number were so infrequent.

But finally, in midaftemoon of the second day, his patience had been rewarded. He had two names. Rick Chambers and McCory. He did not know what either of them looked like, but he did know that Chambers was searching for McCory among the marinas of Miami. The Justin on the telephone in Washington seemed certain that McCory was responsible for taking the boat. Of interest to Ibrahim Badr, too, would be the fact that this Justin assumed that McCory had taken both boats.

As he pulled into one of the multiple lanes of the Airport Expressway, el-Ziam wondered if the man named Chambers had been exaggerating when he said that he had a hundred marinas to search.

Surely, he must have been.

But then, el-Ziam had never been in Miami before. Even if it were true, it should not take him long to locate someone who had seen Chambers. If the man had asked many questions, he had probably left a broad trail behind him.

A trail that would lead el-Ziam directly to McCory.

Ala bab Allah. Whatever will be, will be; let us leave it to Allah.