“That’s not out of the realm of possibility,” Adkins said. “It’s happened before.” He looked at the others. “We all remember the incident under the Golden Gate Bridge two years before 9/11.”
Al-Quaida had smuggled a small Russian-built nuclear demolitions device aboard a cargo ship bound for San Francisco. It had been set to explode while the presidential motorcade was crossing the bridge ahead of more than one thousand Special Olympians participating in a half-marathon.
“If it hadn’t have been for Mac, the president and a whole lot of people would have lost their lives.”
“There’s a lot tighter port security just about everywhere these days,” McCann said.
Rencke shrugged. “Okay, so maybe they could rendezvous with a private yacht somewhere offshore and load just about anything imaginable. From there they’d be virtually unstoppable.”
“We know the shipping lanes, we could watch them by satellite,” McCann argued.
“We know the shipping lanes, but they know our technical means schedules,” Rencke countered. “We can’t watch every piece of ocean 24/7. It just ain’t possible.”
Gloria’s gut was twisted into a knot. She’d been stationed at the UN, and was at her desk in the American Delegation’s headquarters across the street when the first airliner struck the World Trade Center. She’d been within a block of ground zero, helping with rescue operations when the first tower had collapsed. The following days and weeks had been made more surreal by the fact that she and a lot of other people had known that something big was on the wind.
They’d been so damned helpless. There was so much data coming in that it was impossible to process and evaluate even a small percentage of it in a timely manner. And in those days there hadn’t been nearly enough communication between the CIA and most of the other intel agencies.
“They could sail into New York Harbor and let it blow,” Rencke said. “A weekday, rush hour. They would kill a whole bunch more than twenty-seven hundred people, not to mention how badly another strike on Manhattan would demoralize the entire country.”
“How about something to cheer us up,” Patterson said to fill the heavy silence.
“Finding bin Laden is still the key,” Gloria said. “There’re still the three al-Quaida mujahideen hiding somewhere in Delta who might know where he’s hiding.”
“That, and finding a crew,” Rencke said. “Especially a freelance captain willing to work for al-Quaida. Those kinds of guys gotta be in short supply.”
“Have you come up with any names?” McCann asked.
“I’m working on it,” Rencke said. “But you know that Gloria is right, we have to find bin Laden this time and nail him. No shit, Sherlock. It’s gotta be done.”
“We’re working the problem,” McCann said. “We’ll go back to Guantanamo Bay as soon as the dust settles—”
“Now,” Rencke said. “And we’re going to need some outside help.”
“Do you think he’ll go for it?” Adkins asked. “And does anybody even know where he is?”
“I know,” Rencke said. “And all we can do is put it to him. He’s never said no before.”
“Will you go?” Adkins asked.
Rencke nodded. “I’ll leave this afternoon.”
“Who?” Gloria asked.
Rencke smiled at her. “Mac,” he said. “Kirk McGarvey.”
SIX
On the bridge a course-change alarm sounded on the main navigation systems coordinator. It was 0818 Greenwich mean time, 0318 local, under mostly cloudy skies, with an eighteen-knot breeze off the starboard beam, and confused two-meter seas.
“We’re coming on our mark, sir,” the AB at the electronic helm station called out softly.
Vasquez, who’d gone off duty at ten, had come back up to the bridge, not because he mistrusted their second officer, Bill Sozansky, but because this was the critical course change to clear Punta Gallinas, the northernmost tip of South America, and take them safely out into the open Caribbean for the run southwest to the canal.
He set his coffee down, and walked over to the starboard combined radar-course plotter display. The AB who had been looking at the radar returns stepped aside. Their current position was plotted on an electronic chart that was overlaid with a real-time image of what their radar was picking up.
“Have I missed anything?” Sozansky asked.
“Not a thing, Bill,” Vasquez said. “It’s your bridge, but it’s my ass if something goes wrong. I don’t think our new captain likes me.”
Sozansky chuckled. “I don’t think he likes any of us.”
Two large ships, probably tankers, were more than ten miles behind them and slightly to starboard, and one other was twenty-five miles ahead and already turning northeast out to sea, just passing the tiny Los Monjes island group.
The South American headland, fifteen miles to the west, appeared as a low green line that sloped from southeast to northwest across the radar screen.
Vasquez got a pair of binoculars from a rack and went out on the port-wing lookout. South America’s final outpost, the tiny town of Puerto Estrella, only a small dim glow on the indistinct horizon, was falling aft, leaving nothing but darkness ahead.
The evening was warm, nevertheless Vasquez shivered. His abuela would say that someone had just walked over his grave. He had a lot of respect for his grandmother, who had raised him from birth, and thinking about her now, dead for eight years, sent a chill of darkness into his heart. But he didn’t know why.
Back inside the bridge that was dimly lit in red to save their night vision, Vasquez checked both combined radars, but nothing was amiss. They were exactly where they were supposed to be, there were no hazards to navigation ahead, no other shipping on intercept courses, and yet he felt uneasy.
“What is it, Jaime?” Sozansky asked. “You’re getting on my nerves. Something wrong?”
Vasquez looked up, and slowly shook his head. “Not that I can see.” He’d been born in the slums of San Juan, Puerto Rico. His mother had died giving birth to him and he’d never known his father. If it hadn’t been for the strong hand of his grandmother, he would have turned out to be just another street kid. But she had made him finish school, and she had made him join the U.S. Merchant Marine, where after two years as an ordinary seaman he was offered a berth at the Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, New York, because he was bright and dedicated, and the service needed men of his caliber.
He’d graduated number three in his class, and since then his promotions had been very rapid. His superiors said that he was an officer with good instincts.
“If you’re going to act like our new captain and prowl around in the middle of the night when you get your own ship, you’re going to give your crew the crazies.”
“He was up here?” Vasquez asked.
“Twice.”
“What did he want?”
“The same thing as you,” Sozansky said. “Do me a favor, Jaime, go back to bed, let the computer run the ship, and let me do the babysitting.”
“Did he say anything?”
Sozansky laughed. “Not a word. Not one bloody word.”
Something about the captain wasn’t adding up in Vasquez’s mind, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure what it might be. He’d worked under a lot of sour, even angry masters before; men who were mad at the world. And they had the same smell about them, the same look. But with Slavin it was somehow different. Maybe because he was a Russian.
“I’m going to bed.”