Weapons of Mass Deception

CHAPTER 24

Hashem lit another cigarette even as he crushed the last one under his heel. In the glare of the pier lights, he could see the bullet holes in the bulkheads of the Be Gae Bong.

How could this have happened? Pirates operating that far out in the South China Sea? It was rare, but not unheard of. Still, as an intelligence officer, it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

The merchant ship had pulled alongside the pier more than fifteen minutes ago and the dock crew was still fussing with the lines on the massive white-painted bollards. The men moved at a snail’s pace, clearly not accustomed to working this late at night.

Hashem made a rolling motion with his index finger to Mansour, the head of his security detail. His team was outfitted as working men, in dirty green coveralls, and as their foreman he wore an open-necked polo shirt and trousers. He wished for a breast pocket to stow his cigarettes.

Mansour drew the crew leader of the dock workers aside and was reaching into his pocket. Hashem smiled. Mansour had learned that greed is a better motivator than fear. The pace of work on the dock increased, and within minutes the crane lowered the gangway into place. Hashem crossed before they had even disconnected the crane hoist lines.

The North Korean ship captain met him on the main deck, a short, thin man with a shaggy gray crew cut and black-framed glasses. The man bowed and extended his hand. “You must be—”

“Not here,” Hashem answered curtly. “Inside.”

The captain’s smile vanished and he nodded. That was the one thing Hashem liked about working with North Koreans: they understood how to obey orders.

He followed the captain’s painfully thin shoulders into the superstructure of the ship and up three flights of steep steps. The man’s cabin was about the size of Hashem’s walk-in closet at home, with a narrow bunk, a fold-down desk, a washbasin, and a picture of the Great Successor. Hashem looked from the pudgy jowls of Kim Jong-un to the skin stretched sharply over the captain’s jawline, and he shook his head.

The captain offered Hashem the only chair and sat on the edge of his bunk.

“Tell me,” Hashem said, in English. “Everything.”

The captain spoke in passable English, describing the pirate attack. Hashem interrupted him immediately and demanded to see the chart. The captain scurried from the room and returned with a dog-eared nautical chart. Hashem drew out a tablet and compared the latest intelligence reports with the captain’s information.

He grimaced. The location was a bit beyond the operating area for pirates in that region, but not improbable. “How did they board your ship?”

The captain squirmed. “They boarded from the stern, where the lookouts could not see them,” he said finally.

Hashem frowned. “What about radar? Did you have radar operating?”

The captain nodded.

“Well?” Hashem said. “Why didn’t you see them?”

“The radar operator was asleep on watch.” The captain hung his head.

“Asleep? Are you serious? What did you do to him?”

The captain squirmed again. “He is the son of a central committee chairman… there is nothing I can do.”

Hashem lit a cigarette. “Show me where you were confined.”

The captain led him to the galley and the dry stores area. Hashem tested the strength of the door. “How long were you held?”

The captain shrugged. The pirates had taken their wristwatches. “Maybe two hours,” he said.

“And then what happened?”

“We heard helicopters, then the sounds of gunfire — heavy caliber — then small arms fire on board. After about twenty minutes, we were freed by the Americans, Navy SEALs.” The captain extended his arms and flexed his muscles as he recalled them. “They were taking body bags off and two of the pirates were in handcuffs. And one SEAL was injured. He was in a stretcher being lifted off by the helicopter.”

Hashem flicked his cigarette into a nearby sink and tapped another out of the package. The captain was clearly infatuated by the Americans, and even worse than that, he believed every word of what he was telling Hashem.

“And all of your men were accounted for?”

The captain shook his head. “We lost one. A mess cook, just a boy. I didn’t even realize he was missing until after we were locked up.”

“Dead?”

“The pirates killed him. That’s what the Americans said. We stopped in Singapore to ship his body home. It delayed us almost two weeks.”

“And the Americans, they looked at your manifest?”

The captain puffed out his chest. “My documents are the best. Your buyer made sure of that. The stupid Americans matched the manifest to the cargo and left.”

“Did they do anything else?”

Captain Kim shrugged. “They took pictures.”

“Nothing else?” Hashem pressed him. “Were they alone with the cargo for even a few minutes?”

The captain shook his head emphatically. “Absolutely not!”

Hashem’s phone rang. “Cargo on the dock?” he said into the receiver.

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ll be right down.”

Hashem smoked in silence as the captain shifted from foot to foot. His hand touched the knife at the small of his back. His years of experience told him the captain was telling the truth. Using more forceful measures would only cause the North Korean to try to tell him what he thought Hashem wanted to hear, and it would take a long time. Even as he sat staring at the captain, the Americans might have a satellite overhead taking photos of his newly acquired TELs, the final piece in his decade-long plan to bring nuclear strike capability to his beloved Iran.

No, the captain was telling the truth. This had been a pirate attack.

The crane hoist lines were just lifting away from the third TEL on the pier. Glistening black in the harsh glare of the overhead lights, the units looked deadly. Hashem smiled to himself when he thought about how they would look with his missiles loaded onto them.

Mansour met him at the base of the gangway. “We’ve been over all three and found nothing that could be a transmitter. We’re fueling the trucks now. We’ll be ready to leave in another fifteen minutes.” He handed Hashem a small briefcase, and then hesitated. “Should I hand out the GPS units, sir?”

Hashem pursed his lips. The GPS units were programmed to guide them to the bunker location — or he could store the launchers locally and do a more thorough search, maybe one with x-ray capability. But then he would have to move the TELs again, increasing his exposure to the American satellites.

Captain Kim seemed to understand that Hashem was making a significant decision. His eyes grew wary and he stepped back, away from the gangway.

Hashem smiled suddenly and handed the briefcase to the North Korean. “For your trouble, Captain Kim. I want you to leave this port as soon as possible, but make sure you get the bullet holes in your ship repaired before you return to North Korea. Have a safe trip home.”

The captain accepted the case with trembling hands. “Thank you, sir.”

Hashem nodded as he tapped out another Marlboro. His lighter flared up, and he focused on the glowing tip of the cigarette.

“Hand out the GPS units, Mansour. I will ride with you.”

Victor Warren fingered the bump under his chin. It felt to him like the start of another pimple. He pressed down hard on the little bump until it hurt. He’d read somewhere that the pressure would suppress the swelling and prevent a pimple from forming. Probably one of the old Cosmo magazines that Gloria had left stacked next to the toilet when she moved out. She’d be back.

He heard the door to the command center open behind him and saw the square of light reflected in his computer screen. Victor sneaked a glance behind him. They didn’t often get visitors down here in the bowels of the CIA on a Friday night unless there was something going on.

The visitor was a naval officer, a rangy black guy with his broad back facing Victor. When he turned, Victor caught a glimpse of a sizeable patch of medals on the front of his service dress blues, and the four gold stripes of a captain.

Victor sat up straighter in his seat and adjusted his headset. Maybe this shift wouldn’t be boring after all.

The officer and his shift supervisor were taking a long time conferring. They broke off as the supervisor put up a time-lapsed satellite feed on the big screen. Victor’s eyebrows went up when he saw it was Iran. Now this was getting interesting. They were discussing a beat-up merchant ship that had docked next to the pier. Victor called up a tab on his screen and typed in the lat-long: Bandar Lengeh, Iran. He ran his eyes over the port details. Small port on the Persian Gulf. Nothing unusual about the port or the ship.

He flicked his eyes up to the big screen again, where the supe had thrown up some new images. Holy shit! TELs! Even he could tell they were North Korean models.

“Warren,” the supe called.

“Yes, sir.”

“We’re going to do an activation sequence on one of the devices for the captain here.”

Victor twisted around in his chair. “I’m ready whenever you are, sir.”

The officer snagged a chair from one of the vacant stations and rolled it over to Victor’s desk. The man had a square face that looked deadly serious until he smiled. He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward, holding a single sheet of paper. His hands were huge, with scarred knuckles.

“How ya doin’, son?”

“Fine, sir. How about yourself?”

“Ask me after we see if this friggin’ thing works or not,” he growled. “We went to a lot of trouble to get it in place.”

Victor tried not to show the surprise he felt. They had a tracking beacon on a North Korean TEL that was being off-loaded in Iran? He cursed the fact that he couldn’t talk about his job outside of work. Gloria would definitely take him back if he could talk about this kind of shit.

Victor called up a sensor activation screen. “Standing by, sir.”

“Alrighty then. Let’s do this. Xray, Delta, Xray, Seven, Niner, Papa, Romeo, Xray.”

Victor repeated the letters as he typed them in, then again reading them off the screen. The captain confirmed, and Victor toggled the box that said ACTIVATE.

The status changed from INACTIVE to STANDING BY with three dots that ran on and on.

“How long does this take?” the officer asked.

“Well, sir, these are low-energy signals and are very sensitive to shielding, so it might not pick up on the first pass. I’ve seen it take only a few minutes or a few hours.” He hesitated. “Or not at all.”

The captain made a face.

Victor switched screens to the satellite map. “We’ve got a bird coming over the horizon in a few minutes that has a good angle of attack. If they’re still in the clear, I’m sure we’ll see your sensor, sir.”

The officer fidgeted next to him, folding and unfolding the paper.

The sensor status went to ACTIVE.

“Supe, we’re live on the captain’s sensor,” Victor called out. “Getting parameters now.”

“Acknowledged.”

“We’re okay?” The officer crowded next to Victor’s chair.

“I’ll tell you in a minute, sir. Just as soon as the sensor tells me.” Victor’s fingers flew over the keyboard. He called out again. “Supe, sensor is active, and location correlates with the satellite feed. Programmed for hourly location pings, battery at ninety-nine percent, no radiological emissions present.”

A nuke detector! If only Gloria could see me now.

“Acknowledged, Warren.”

Victor turned to the captain. “Is that what you were looking for, sir?”

The smile said it all. “That’s perfect,” he said. “How does this thing work?”

Victor turned in his chair. “The sensor puts out a low-energy ping that can be picked up by any friendly satellite in range. It’s a simple binary string on a header. That piggybacks on any available comm signal, then the NSA strips it off in processing and it comes to us. I’ll warn you, this is not real-time comms. The sensor sends out a signal once an hour, but it has no idea if it’s connecting or not. It might take us another hour to get the signal from processing. If the launcher is stored in a big metal hangar or underground, you may not get a signal at all.”

The captain blew out a long breath. “Okay, I guess that’s all I need for now.”

“Warren, let’s put that new sensor on the watch list.”

“Yes, supe.” Victor made the necessary adjustments. Adding the sensor to the watch list meant that all locational data would be collated daily and released to a preset distribution list. He looked up at the officer. “I assume you want to be added to the distribution list for this sensor, sir? I’m going to need your name.”

“Baxter, Richard,” the officer replied. “But you can call me Rick.”

Victor looked up the name in the database. He clicked the check box with a flourish. “You’re all set, Rick. If this puppy activates, you’ll be one of the first to know.”

Victor settled in for a long shift after Baxter left. He periodically toggled back to check on the new sensor. The TEL was on the move, heading north for two hours, then due west into the desert.