“Take it out, Captain,” Prost said.
Blake looked up from her screen. “But the Coast Guard will get there in—”
“Now, Captain. Put a Hellfire through its bridge, and order the cutter to back off, just in case.”
“In case of what, sir?”
He shrugged. “In case it’s carrying enough explosives to damage a carrier. I don’t want the cutter anywhere near it.”
Blake did a double take on him, then she said, “Yes, sir,” and worked her tablet for a few seconds before announcing, “Stand by for missile shot.”
It took about forty seconds for one of the Reaper’s AGM-114 Hellfire missiles to reach its target. One moment, the yacht was coasting through pristine waters and the next it vanished in a white-and-red explosion that filled the screen. When the image returned, the large yacht had stopped and fire billowed from its bridge just as one of its masts toppled over. But it was still afloat and largely in one piece.
Prost frowned. “What type of warhead was that?”
“MAC, sir,” Blake replied, referring to a metal-augmented charge. “Eighteen pounder.”
“Then something’s wrong,” Prost said, staring at the vessel drifting beneath a rising column of smoke.
“No secondaries?” Blake offered, reading his mind.
“Right,” Prost said. “If there was indeed a large bomb or missiles or torpedoes aboard — enough to damage a carrier — their charges should have gone off, vaporizing that yacht.”
“Unless…they somehow got the explosives off,” Blake said.
“You think it met up with another boat?”
“There was that gap of more than two hours from the time we lost contact with the Coast Guard patrol boat to the time we started tracking it,” Blake said. “So, it’s possible.”
Prost made a face, then asked, “Captain, do you have a copy of the Coast Guard’s RBS inspection report from three days ago?”
She tapped her screen, then tilted it toward him. “What are you looking for?”
“What’s no longer there,” he replied, staring at the screen for a moment before looking away in disgust.
“Damn,” Blake said. “They had a Boston Whaler secured to the yacht’s forward deck.”
“And I don’t recall seeing one a moment ago,” Prost said.
Blake immediately reversed the video. “You’re right, sir,” she said, zooming in on the vessel’s bow. “No Whaler.”
“We’ve been conned,” Prost said, closing his eyes as he thought of one type of bomb that could be hauled aboard a Boston Whaler, yet capable of damaging a carrier. “That’s our new target, Captain,” he added.
“Sir,” Blake replied. “That’s a very popular boat. There have to be hundreds of them in these waters, and the RBS doesn’t specify model or size. And we’re almost out of daylight.”
“Then we’d better hustle,” Prost said. “Send out an emergency broadcast to all Coast Guard vessels, law-enforcement patrol boats, and every available aerial asset. Find and stop every last Boston Whaler on the Eastern Seaboard and prioritize those within a hundred miles from Virginia Beach. Also send word to Ford… and pray to God we’re not too late.
The old-school con required three elements. First, the victim had to suspect they were the target of a con. Second, the victim had to think they had figured out how to beat the con. And third, the victim had to be wrong about the true nature of the con.
Javier Ibarra had learned the old trick — immortalized by American jazz pianist and bandleader Bennie Moten in his 1926 song — from his mentor in the smuggling business.
In this case, he had begun the ruse by openly destroying that patrol boat, signaling his presence to American assets in the region. He then had sacrificed his beloved Santo Erasmus by dispatching it on a southwesterly course, away from his expected target, prompting coastal defenses to rush in the wrong direction, and making them think they had figured out his alternate plan. Finally, Ibarra had steered the very nimble Boston Whaler at almost forty-five knots toward their real target, while being ignored by a number of patrol boats and cutters speeding toward the North Carolina coast.
And now they’re about to find out how wrong they were, he thought.
They had stopped in near darkness beneath the last span of the bridge by South Thimble Island, the small body of land where Highway 13, running north from Virginia Beach via a two-lane bridge, transitioned into a tunnel beneath the bay. Continuing north for nearly a mile, the highway resurfaced at North Thimble Island, transitioning back to a bridge all the way to Cape Charles. The bridge-tunnel-bridge design spanning the twelve-mile entrance from the Atlantic Ocean allowed easy access for carriers and other large vessels in and out the bay without the need for a tall bridge.
Ibarra remained in the Boston Whaler, while his deckhands launched an Intex Excursion 5 inflatable dinghy with room for up to five adults. He entered the code for the weapon’s case and opened it carefully. Though completely stable, he couldn’t help but feel any wrong move would cause it to detonate.
Next, he lifted the plastic cover on the device’s keypad and entered the authorization code he’d committed to memory. This armed the device and brought him to a screen requiring him to set a timer. He entered fifteen minutes — long enough for the speedboat to reach its target in Hampton Roads less than ten miles away.
From here on out, he would rely on the Whaler’s Raymarine autopilot — which he slaved to the course plotted in the boat’s Garmin GPS — to complete the mission.
Closing and locking the metallic case secured to the stern, Ibarra started the engine and engaged the autopilot, before glancing over at his team on the dingy floating a few feet off starboard. Slowly he advanced the throttle to the two-thirds’ setting.
As the boat surged from beneath the concrete bridge span under the power of its Mercury engine, he dove off the side and swam toward the Excursion, where Mario Mendoza and Jorge Diaz helped him aboard. Sammy Chen then turned on the Minn Kota Endura trolling motor secured to an Intex motor mount, since the Excursion lacked a transom.
Slowly, and remaining within the protective night shadow cast by the bridge, the foursome began to make their way to the shores of Virginia Beach less than three miles away as the growl of the Boston Whaler’s engine vanished in the distance.
The whaler cruised uninterrupted for nearly twelve minutes at thirty knots under a star-filled night, passing dangerously close to a pleasure yacht and two fishing boats. Though everyone aboard the three vessels heard the rumbling engine, no one actually saw it. A Coast Guard Defender-class patrol boat finally spotted it skimming the waters south of King-Lincoln Park before turning to a northwesterly heading into Hampton Roads along a course less than a quarter of a mile from the shores of Newport News.
The Defender gave chase, focusing a spotlight on the boat’s stern. The moment its captain realized it was unmanned, he ordered the sailor manning the bow-mounted M240B to open fire.
Two miles away, on a pier near the intersection of 33rd Street and Sunset Terrace, Cmdr. Jeff Weathers, the executive officer of USS George H. W. Bush, had kept his ship on general quarters since receiving the alert less than thirty minutes prior of a possible rogue Boston Whaler approaching the Virginia coast.
He turned toward the petty officer manning the radio console as chatter exploded; the crew of the Defender had engaged an unmanned Whaler headed its way. Weathers didn’t even need his binoculars to see the distant flashes of machine gun fire.