“You’ve found the submarine?” Haynes asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” the president said. “Now explain it to the admiral, because the ball’s going to be in his court.”
“Yes, sir,” Adkins said. He set his attaché case down, opened it, and withdrew a moderately thick briefing book, which he handed to the president. “This is everything as of noon. As you’ll see, the situation has become somewhat more complex and urgent in the past twenty-four hours.”
The president laid the briefing book behind him on the desk. “I’ll look over the details later. For now bring us up to date, Dick. What’s the CIA found out?”
“Al-Quaida has managed to get its hands on a submarine, a crew of Iranian ex-navy, we think, and an experienced captain,” Adkins said, directing his remarks to Admiral Puckett.
“It’s the goddamned Russians and their Kilo boats,” Puckett said. “And I suppose the sub driver is a Russkie too.”
“It’s a Libyan boat, actually,” Adkins said. “A Foxtrot. And the captain is a Perisher-trained Brit by the name of Rupert Graham.”
The president, who had been contemplative, was angry all of a sudden. “That lying bastard Quaddafi,” he said. “Are you sure about this, Dick?”
“Yes, sir,” Adkins replied. He quickly brought them up to date on the Indonesian captain’s story about Graham, the sinking of the Distal Volente, and the Sixth Fleet’s confirmation that the freighter was at the bottom of the Mediterranean. “A British NATO frigate tracked a Foxtrot through the Strait of Gibraltar and out into the open Atlantic a few hours ago, then lost her.”
“Why the hell didn’t they follow her?” Haynes demanded.
“Not their area of operations, Mr. President,” Puckett responded. “Did they get a course?”
“Southwest,” Adkins said. “South America, perhaps.”
“The Panama Canal again,” Berndt spoke up for the first time. “They’re persistent. But it won’t be so easy for them this time to get into the locks to do any damage. They’ll have to run on the surface.”
“What about weapons?” Puckett asked.
“At this point we have no idea,” Adkins admitted. “We have some assets on the ground in Tripoli and at Ra’s al Hilal, one of their major naval installations, but it’s not easy to recruit the right people.”
“Your vetting standards for Arab speakers are too tough,” Puckett said. “You’re tossing out the baby with the bathwater.”
“We’ve been burned before, Admiral,” Adkins observed dryly. “But for now the situation is what it is.”
Puckett shook his head. “At least time is on our side. It’ll take them ten days, maybe longer, to get within striking range of the canal, or”—he glanced at the president—“our eastern seaboard.”
“What can we do in the meantime?” Haynes asked.
“Look for him in the open Atlantic, but that’ll be worse than finding a bug on a gnat’s ass. In the meantime we’ll set up a blockade off Limón Bay in case he’s trying for the canal again.”
“What about our coast?” Berndt asked.
Puckett shrugged, a bleak expression crossing his narrow features. “We can cover a few likely targets, but that’s about it,” he said. “The big problem will be his weapons load. If his boat has been retrofitted he could stand off a couple hundred klicks and fire the Russian Novator Club cruise missile. The weapon was designed as an antiship load, but it could do an appreciable amount of damage to the locks, or anything else, for that matter.”
“How about nukes?” Adkins asked. It had been one of Rencke’s chief concerns.
“There’re all sorts of nasty weapons that can be fired from a standard five-hundred-thirty-three-millimeter torpedo tube,” Puckett answered. “The Novator carries a four-hundred-fifty-kilogram payload. Usually high explosives. But that weapon can carry four hundred fifty kilos of just about anything.” He turned back to the president. “That’s up to the CIA, to find out what weapons the Libyans have got their hands on.”
Haynes looked to Adkins.
“We’re working on it, Mr. President,” Adkins said.
“What’s your best guess?”
Three days ago Rencke had voiced a vague concern that if Saddam Hussein had in actuality come up with nuclear weapons, either by Iraqi design and construction, or from the Russians, he might have spirited them out of the country before the U.S.-led invasion. If they had been Russian, then Putin would definitely have arranged for help getting them out of Iraq, and Libya was a possible destination.
But Adkins was not ready to stick his neck out that far. Not for this or any other president.
He shook his head. “We’re working on it,” he said.
“Where’s McGarvey?” the president asked.
Adkins glanced over at Puckett. This was one bit of information that no one in this room needed to know. “I’d rather not say, Mr. President,” Adkins replied. It was a matter of plausible deniability for the White House no matter what happened in Pakistan. The president and Berndt understood this.
“If he can be recalled, do it,” the president instructed Adkins. He turned to Puckett. “I want our armed forces to find and kill that submarine before it reaches this side of the Atlantic, if that’s at all possible. In the meantime I’m giving Kirk McGarvey carte blanche for the possibilities we can’t foresee or handle. If he comes to you I want him given whatever he asks for.”
It was obvious that Puckett wanted to object, but he nodded. “Of course, Mr. President.”
Crossing the Key Bridge to the Parkway, Adkins got on his encrypted phone to Otto Rencke. “Any word from Mac?”
“None. But Gloria Ibenez followed him to Karachi.”
“What?” Adkins demanded, coming half off his seat in the back of the armored Cadillac limousine.
“She’s on her own, and it’s just as well she’s over there, because Mac could be heading into a trap.”
“Tell me,” Adkins said, a tight knot forming in his stomach. He could think of any number of ways for this entire operation to go south in a heartbeat. No one would come out of it clean, and worst of all al-Quaida’s attack would have a much better-than-even chance of succeeding if Mac were to go down. A lot of Americans would lose their lives, and he wasn’t at all sure if the nation could handle another massive blow.
Rencke hurriedly explained what was happening in Karachi, especially the part about al-Turabi’s GPS chip that hadn’t moved in a day and a half. “Gloria’s on her way to Fish Harbor to pull him out.”
“What then?”
“We’ll get them out of Pakistan,” Rencke said. “I’m working on that part now. But afterwards, I don’t know.”
“The president wants him back to help stop Graham,” Adkins said. “The navy’s agreed to blockade Limón Bay, but I’ve got a very bad feeling that we’re missing something.”
“Me too,” Rencke said, and he abruptly broke the connection.
FIFTY-EIGHT
In the half hour that McGarvey had been watching from the shadows he’d learned that the compound was not deserted and that it was being seriously guarded. Whoever was inside had taken an extreme interest in security that went beyond the locked gate, and the razor-wire-topped wall.
The front of the enclave ran for fifty or sixty meters along the paved street before it disappeared around the corner at the end of the block to the west, and around back halfway up the hill toward the railroad embankment to the east. Every fifteen or twenty meters a closed-circuit television camera was perched in front of the coils of razor wire. At the nearest corner, a pair of insulators, each the size of a liter bottle, led thick electrical wires to a steel mesh that covered the stuccoed wall. And at each corner, powerful spotlights, dark at the moment, were perched well above the wall on aluminum stanchions.