The driveway was full with a BMW convertible, a Corvette, an older Porsche, and a plain gray Taurus with government plates, so McGarvey parked on the street and walked around the side of the house to the backyard.
A man in a chef ’s hat was tending to a built-in barbecue at the edge of a small brick patio while Dillon, seated at a picnic table, was engaged in conversation with two muscular men and an attractive young woman. All of them were in blue jeans and sweatshirts, and all of them, including the woman, were drinking beer from bottles. One of them said something, and they all laughed.
The man at the barbecue turned and spotted McGarvey. “Frank, the cavalry’s arrived.”
Dillon looked up and got to his feet. “Glad you could make it,” he said, coming across to McGarvey. They shook hands. “Let me introduce you to everyone.”
“Holy shit,” the woman said. “You’re Kirk McGarvey. You used to run the CIA.”
McGarvey chuckled. “I must be getting old. I never got that reaction from a woman before.”
“Don’t mind my wife,” the man in the chef ’s hat said, smiling. “Her handle is Lips, for more than one reason.” He came over and shook hands.
“Lieutenant Commander Bill Jackson,” Dillon said. “This is his house. “And Lips, Terri, is his wife. She’s a lieutenant.”
Terri laughed. “Half of it’s my house,” she said, shaking McGarvey’s hand. “I have a feeling this is going to be a real interesting party tonight.”
Her grip was firm and her eyes direct. McGarvey got the impression that she was in every bit as good physical shape as the men here. “Nice to meet you.”
“The other two are the chiefs, Bob Ercoli and Dale MacKeever,” Dillon introduced them.
All four of them appeared to be in outstanding physical condition, and like most of the instructors out at the Farm they exuded self-confidence. “You’re Navy SEALs,” McGarvey said.
“Does it show?” Jackson asked.
“I wouldn’t want to go up against any of you.”
“Then no hanky-panky with the boss’s wife,” Ercoli quipped. “Even we can’t get away with it.”
Terri leaned over and got McGarvey a beer from a cooler on the patio bricks beside her and tossed it to him. “Frank sure pulled a rabbit out of the hat this time,” she said. “You have our attention, Mr. McGarvey, what do you want with us that couldn’t have gone through channels?”
McGarvey opened the beer, took a deep drink, and sat down at the table. “Al-Quaida is on its way to the Chesapeake with a Libyan Foxtrot submarine and I think there’s a good chance they mean to hit Washington.”
“Holy shit,” Ercoli said softly.
“Because they didn’t hit the White House with the fourth plane like they wanted on 9/11?” Jackson asked.
“Something like that,” McGarvey said.
“How soon?”
“Five days, maybe less.”
“Send a couple of sub hunters out to look for them,” MacKeever suggested.
Dillon shook his head. “Their captain is a Brit, graduated from Perisher. The second he got wind that we were on to him, he’d launch and we couldn’t stop it.”
“He’s got missiles?” Jackson asked.
“We don’t know for sure,” McGarvey said. “But there’s a good chance he could have Russian short-range tube-launched missiles. And possibly even a small nuclear weapon or two.”
“That’s just peachy,” Terri said, and McGarvey shot her a startled look. It was the same expression Katy used sometimes. “What?” she asked.
“Another time,” McGarvey said. “This won’t be an official mission, and you won’t be getting any orders, so the shit could hit the fan.”
“But if we pull it off we’ll be heroes,” Terri said. She turned to her husband. “Gee, dear, looks like we might get our honeymoon after all.”
“This is serious,” McGarvey warned.
“We wouldn’t be much interested if it wasn’t,” she said, her smile gone. “I assume you have a plan.”
“They’re going to try to sneak into the bay and get as close to Washington as they can before they launch their missiles, if that’s what they have,” McGarvey said. “I want to be there, waiting for them.”
“Why not offshore?” Jackson asked.
“Because the sub driver wants to escape. Once they launch he can lock out of the boat, come ashore, and disappear,” McGarvey said.
“His crew won’t have time to get out,” Jackson pointed out.
“No,” McGarvey agreed. “We need to find the sub before they launch and stop them before they know we’re on to them.”
“We’d have to know where they’re headed,” Ercoli suggested.
“The York River,” Dillon said. “It’s less than one hundred miles from the White House so there’d be almost no warning time, it’s deep enough to hide a submarine, and it’s well out of Second Fleet’s way at Norfolk.”
“They’d have to get there first,” Jackson said.
“They will if we don’t warn anybody,” McGarvey said.
“You’re taking an awfully big chance.”
“I don’t want to react to an attack,” McGarvey said. “I want to stop it.” Jackson looked at his wife and the other two SEAL team members, then back at McGarvey. “I can get the equipment, including a boat, but we’ll need a non-navy staging area.”
“The Farm,” McGarvey said. “It’s on the York River and no questions that I can’t answer will be asked.”
“How soon do you want us there?” Jackson asked.
“The sooner the better. By this time tomorrow?”
Jackson nodded. He turned to Dillon. “You coming along on this one, Frank?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
It was morning topside when Chamran called Graham aft to the engineering spaces.
They had just finished running on diesel to recharge the batteries and were once again surging west-northwest at four hundred meters.
All the crew, the Iranians included, had become docile after Ziyax had shot his own first officer to death for challenging Graham. They’d not been told the details, except that the shot had been fired by the Libyan captain. It was enough for the time being to make them forget about the two sick crewmen who’d handled the nuclear packages.
Chamran and al-Hari, who’d been Graham’s original choice as exec, were waiting in the battery room, one of the floor grates open. Graham stopped a few feet away.
“More nuclear weapons?” he asked. He wasn’t about to get close enough to see for himself.
“No, these are the anthrax loads,” al-Hari replied. He was grinning. “We’re finding all sorts of little toys aboard. The good colonel must have been shitting in his robes to get rid of this stuff before somebody blew the whistle on him.”
“What do you want?” Graham asked.
He’d picked al-Hari to be his exec based on the file bin Laden had provided. The man had been born in Syria, but raised by grandparents in London where he’d joined the Royal Navy Submarine Service to earn his U.K. citizenship. He quickly rose in rank to warrant officer, but was finally kicked out of the service for “activities inconsistent with the status as a resident alien.”
He’d spent the next few years fighting the jihad against the Zionists for no other reason than the thrill of the hunt. He had developed a taste for killing people. When al-Quaida went looking for submarine crewmen, al-Hari’s name was near the top of a fairly short list.
“We’re seventy-two hours out,” al-Hari said. “When do you want to load the missiles into the torpedo tubes and get them ready to fire? I only ask now because the two guys who handled the nuclear packages will be too sick to work by tomorrow, and I don’t want to waste anyone else.”