Weapons of Mass Deception

CHAPTER 20

Captain Rick Baxter pushed the rim of the ball cap up and swiped his forehead with his wrist, careful not to let any of the paint stripper touch his skin. The stuff stung bare skin like the dickens. He really wanted to rub his eyes, but settled with blinking them a few times in rapid succession.

“I didn’t agree to no break, sir,” came a rumbling wheeze from behind him.

Rick smiled at the extra emphasis on sir. “And I don’t recall volunteering for this gig, Master Chief.”

The rumble turned into a laugh, followed by a sucking sound as he drew on his pipe. The old man appeared at Rick’s elbow. He gestured at the yacht with the chewed stem of his pipe. “She’s lookin’ good, skipper. Shapin’ up nicely, she is.”

Rick stood to his full height and stripped off the rubber gloves he was wearing. The old man barely reached his shoulder. He’d known Master Chief O’Brien for almost thirty years, ever since he’d started at Annapolis. As a green, newly minted ensign from the Naval Academy, O’Brien had even been there to get Rick’s first salute, and the special silver dollar that went along with it. It seemed like the Master Chief had appeared somewhere in every sea tour Rick had done in his career. The old man was retired now, but he worked in the shipyard at the Naval Station across from the Academy. Rick had made a point of looking up the old codger when his work brought him to Annapolis.

He smiled down at the weathered face. He’d looked like that for as long as Rick could remember, so old that one of the wise-asses onboard his first ship had nicknamed him “The Ancient Mariner.” Rick shook his head. Say what they might, the old man had more energy than any sailor half his age and twice the experience. Oh, and he managed to flout every naval regulation on smoking.

The pipe stem still pointed at the hull, and O’Brien’s bushy gray eyebrows arched at Rick. “Are we havin’ a senior moment, sir? I believe I asked you a question.”

Rick laughed. “You’re right, Master Chief, she’s a beauty. She’ll be just perfect.”

The ship was a beauty, a forty-four-foot yacht he’d managed to wrangle from the Naval Academy sailing fleet. She was an old-style racer, a little wider in the beam and with a heavier keel than the latest models, and therefore a touch slower, but for his project, she was perfect. He touched the hole where they’d be placing the hidden hydrophone and stepped around the fuel cells that would power all the electronics he planned to cram into the hull.

The fuel cells had just arrived this morning, and they were even better than he’d hoped. The latest DARPA could offer him, the two blocks were the size of car batteries but could power a small apartment building for a week. Each.

He smiled to himself. This was going to work. All he needed to do was to get this ship through refit, find a crew, and get it to sea. Then they’d see what kind of intel he could bring in. He tightened the arms of the coveralls tied around his waist. Finishing the refit was the key. This morning, he’d even stripped off his uniform shirt and donned a pair of coveralls to help out.

He checked his watch: 1045. He needed to get ready for lunch with Vice Admiral Jake Abrahamson, the Naval Academy Superintendent, in a few minutes. Keeping close ties with the institution on the other side of the Severn River was key to his plan: the Naval Academy sailing team fleet was the perfect way to launder the sales of any future yacht purchases he’d need for his fleet of surveillance boats.

Jake Abrahamson knew what side his budget bread was buttered on. Rick’s plan — if it worked — was a boon to the activities funding for the rest of his term at the Academy. Jake was a shrewd operator, and he stayed close as Rick pitched his yacht surveillance project up the intelligence community chain of command. He’d been present when Rick secured about half of the “black” funding needed for the refit of the boat that stood before him now.

Rick tugged the coveralls higher on his waist. “Alright, Master Chief, let’s see how much of this we can get done before I have to break for lunch with the Supe.”

Master Chief O’Brien muttered something into his pipe about officers and working half-days, but Rick’s attention was drawn to a figure running in their direction. Lieutenant Michelle Malveaux puffed to a halt in front of Rick. The collar of her working khakis was rimmed with sweat and her face was beet red. Master Chief O’Brien’s bushy eyebrows angled toward her heaving bosom.

“Sir,” she gasped. “They’re on their way.”

Rick frowned. “The Supe’s early? We were on for noon—”

“It’s not just Admiral Abrahamson, sir, he’s got two others with him: OPNAV N2/N6 and the CO of ONI. I got a call from the Supe’s secretary, they’re on their way now.”

Rick swore under his breath. An ambush? Abrahamson was an experienced bureaucracy guerrilla, maybe he was the culprit. He knew Rear Admiral Cork, the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Cork was the one who’d given them the funding for the refit, and he seemed supportive, but Rick was not good at the Beltway shuffle. Maybe giving him half funding and letting him fail was Cork’s way of telling him no without saying it.

He took a deep breath. “Alright, Michelle, let’s get lunch moved up and staged in the conference room. I’m going to need the latest program overview and funding proposal — the one I used at ONI — up on the projector. Lots of Diet Cokes, that’s the only thing the Supe drinks and he likes ’em nice and cold.” Malveaux nodded once and hustled off.

Rick turned to O’Brien. “Master Chief, I need—”

“One inspection coming right up, skipper.” The old man stuffed his pipe into his pocket.

Rick took his time walking back to the office. He had fifteen, maybe twenty minutes if traffic was bad; no sense in getting all sweaty, and he needed to think this through.

Maybe he’d judged Abrahamson and Cork too harshly. Maybe this was OPNAV’s doing. Vice Admiral Jack Daugherty had gotten his third star and the OPNAV N2/N6 job about six months ago, about the same time Rick had met with Cork for his program funding. Daugherty had a reputation as a no-nonsense kind of guy with a big job to do — maybe an impossible job.

Working for the Secretaries of the Navy and Defense, Daugherty was charged with merging all the information-related fields of the US Navy into a single Information Dominance Corps, or IDC. The very size of the task made Rick’s head hurt. Cryptology, meteorology, computer networking, oceanography — any data stream now fell under his purview. Daugherty was the test case for the rest of the services. If he succeeded, they would all go the same route.

Rick reached his office and stripped off the coveralls, leaving them in a heap on the bathroom floor. He splashed water on his face and inspected his reflection in the mirror. He could use a haircut, but no time for that now. He automatically reached for the shaving cream and lathered his face, still thinking through the problem.

So he had a go-getter admiral with a huge job and little margin for error. His budget was probably underfunded and he was being picked apart by the Washington bureaucrats, so he needed money and a winning program that gave him new data streams for the IDC.

Rick dried his face and settled his uniform shirt over his shoulders. He pulled a tight tuck on his khaki uniform shirt and aligned the seam of the shirt with his belt buckle.

He opened the door from his office into the conference room just as the three men were being led in by Malveaux. Rick surveyed the scene. Abrahamson had a hangdog look on his face and shot Rick a glance that said “I’m sorry.” Rear Admiral Cork’s lips were pressed together in a thin line of white flesh, but the rest of his face was flushed. Clearly a man who was holding his tongue. From the looks of the two men that he knew, Rick guessed the car ride across the river had been less than pleasant.

Vice Admiral Jack Daugherty looked young for a three-star, closer to Rick’s age than either of the other two men. His close-cropped brown hair was only lightly peppered with gray, and the chest of his uniform shirt was a wall of ribbons over the round OPNAV emblem that covered his breast pocket.

Rick stuck out his hand to Daugherty. “Rick Baxter, Admiral. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.” Normally, this was the part in the conversation where the senior officer took the meeting formality down a notch with something like, “Call me Jack.”

The eyes that met Rick’s were blue, steely, and cold. “Likewise, Captain.” He took the seat at the head of the table. Rick hastily shook hands with Cork and Abrahamson, receiving another apologetic look from the Supe, before he made his way to the front of the room. While the projector warmed up, Lieutenant Malveaux placed a tray of sandwiches on the table and a silver tureen filled with ice and Diet Cokes. The Supe pulled a soda from the pile.

Daugherty waved at the sandwiches. “Captain, I’m not here for the food, I’m here to defund your silly sailboat project. You have fifteen minutes to convince me why I shouldn’t.”

Abrahamson did not open the soda. The silver can sweated onto the table.

Rick gulped. This was worse than he’d thought, the man had already made up his mind. He flashed up a cross-section of the Naval Academy yawl, the cabin packed with electronics.

“The program is tentatively called ‘Feisty Minnow’ and is modeled after the Soviet AGI program from the Cold War, when the Soviets disguised surveillance boats as fishing vessels and stationed them outside ports such as—”

“I’m familiar with the Soviet AGI program, Captain. Move on.”

“Yes, sir, I’m sure you are, but there’s a big difference here. The Soviets made no attempt to hide the fact that their AGIs were surveillance vessels. The ships had every radio antennae known to man on them, and some didn’t even have fishing gear. We’ve taken the opposite approach. The provenance of every boat is clean and crewed with a mix of sexes posing as rich dilettantes. All of the electronics and the antennae are hidden.” He showed schematics and 3-D mockups of the cabin with electronics stowed and then opened.

Daugherty chewed his lip. Rick took that as a good sign.

“Through the use of fuel cells, the latest DARPA is willing to allow us to use, we were able to reclaim the space normally used for fuel tanks as additional space for electronics—”

“What about data streams?” the admiral interrupted him again. “What can you give me that I can’t get elsewhere?”

Rick pulled up the slide that showed the signal-gathering capability. The admiral made a note in his steno book. “I can send your office a copy of these slides, sir,” Rick said.

Daugherty stared at the screen for a second and nodded absently. “Continue, Captain.”

Rick flashed the slide with the world map showing red dots were he planned to place the surveillance fleet. “As a private yacht, we’ll be able to penetrate a number of ports where any type of naval-flagged vessel could not normally enter, or would be under constant surveillance if they did. We have plans for a direct uplink back to DC so we can make best use of the intel on a real-time basis.” Rick let his gaze slide toward Rear Admiral Cork, but the man who had already funded the first ship in the program stared at the table and said nothing.

“How much?” Daugherty said.

Rick drew in a deep breath. “Well, sir, it depends on a lot of factors. We’re hoping to partner with the Naval Academy to use some of their older yawls—”

“Don’t bullshit with me, Captain. How much is the line item in my black budget?”

Daugherty’s eyes had narrowed to slits and Rick gritted his teeth. He fast-forwarded through the budget buildup slides to the final tally.

The admiral let out a hiss. “No fucking way, Captain.” He turned to Cork. “You funded a pilot of this bullshit scheme, Steve? There’s some useful intel, I’ll grant you, but where do you think we’ll find the money?”

Cork’s voice was tight. “It’s a good program, Admiral, and it gives us stuff we can’t get anywhere else—”

“Why don’t we take a tour?” said Abrahamson in a bright tone. “Rick’s got the first boat on blocks out in the yard and the interior’s roughed out for the electronics. You should see the first article, Jack. It’ll help you see what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Rick stared at the Supe. What the hell was he doing? The ship they were working on was no more than a shell; there was nothing to see at all. Malveaux, a look of panic in her eyes, slipped out the door to alert O’Brien.

Daugherty checked his watch, then stood. “Alright, Jake, we still have a little time. If you think it’ll make a difference, I’ll give you another few minutes.”

Rick led the way out of the conference room and into the yard. The sweltering humidity of an Annapolis summer enveloped the group, and Rick sweated under his uniform shirt. He wondered to himself whether the admiral would at least let him finish the pilot boat or pull all funding immediately. They rounded the final corner before they reached the boat. With a quick scan, he could see that O’Brien had done a nice job cleaning up the work site. The old man stood at some semblance of attention next to the hull, his pipe nowhere in sight. Rick nodded at the master chief and turned to face the tour group.

“This is the vessel, Admiral. She’s not much to look at yet, but as you can see…”

He did not have Daugherty’s attention. The admiral was looking past Rick. Rick turned around to find O’Brien saluting.

Admiral Daugherty had stopped in his tracks. “Master Chief? Is that really you?” He snapped a quick salute, then strode forward and grabbed O’Brien’s hand. The sternness had drained away from his face, and he smiled broadly. “How long has it been, Master Chief?”

“Long time, Admiral. You’ve done well for yourself, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so. I always knew you’d make flag.”

Daugherty blushed. “It’s all because of you, Master Chief.”

Rick cleared his throat. “Admiral—”

Master Chief O’Brien spoke up. “Sorry to interrupt, sir. Do you mind if I give the admiral the tour of our project? It’ll give us some time to catch up.”

The Superintendent answered for Rick. “I’m sure that would be fine, Master Chief. We’ll meet you back in the conference room. Take your time.”

Rick stared at Abrahamson, who smiled and gave him a slow wink.