We all nod and Chambers heads off, leaving the four of us huddled together. Wallis moves over to one of the desks further down the room. It has three monitors and two keyboards set up on it. He pulls the chair out and gestures to Clark.
“Do what you need to do,” he says.
Clark sits down without a word and takes out his phone. We all step away, leaving him to work his magic, and congregate around another unoccupied desk nearby. Wallis logs onto the computer and starts typing.
“So, what are you thinking?” asks Josh.
“I’m thinking, if I was going to mount an attack against an old warship docked in the San Francisco Bay, how would I do it?” I say.
“Do I wanna know how you’d do it?” asks Wallis, looking up from the screen.
“I doubt it. I just hope Pellaggio doesn’t think the way I do.”
“Well, he’s certifiably insane,” says Josh. “So if he does, it says more about you than him.”
Wallis laughs. “Yeah, I‘ve got his medical records right here from when he got shot,” he says, reading from the screen. “After his wounds healed, he showed signs of post-traumatic stress, so they referred him to a psychiatrist following his discharge from hospital. He only went twice, and the notes from those sessions detailed, and I quote, a rapid decline in mental stability.”
“So you shot him and made him crazy?” says Josh to me. “Nice going there, Chief!”
Before I can respond with something equally sarcastic, Clark shouts over to us.
“Guys, we’re hot.”
Josh practically runs over to the computer, barely giving Clark chance to stand up before sitting down in front of the screen, tapping away on the keyboard.
I smile to myself. He looks like a kid at Christmas.
“How does it feel?” I ask, walking over to join him.
“Ah, man — I’ve missed being part of the team,” he says.
“Well, you can start making up for lost time right now,” I say, standing behind his chair and leaning on the back of it. Clark’s on my right and Wallis has joined us, standing on my left. “Get me a live feed of the Jeremiah.”
“So, what are you looking for?” asks Clark, as Josh does what he does best.
“Not sure yet,” I say. “But I’ll know it when I see it. Wallis, have you got that shopping list of hardware I took from Turner’s laptop?”
He fumbles around with the few papers he has with him, and then hands a sheet to me.
“Here it is,” he says.
I scan down the list, hoping I won’t find something in particular. But I do.
Shit.
“Okay,” I say, looking at Clark. “The bad news is that Pellaggio has one of your FIM-92 Stinger missiles.”
“Christ…” he mutters, mostly in disbelief.
“What’s the range on one of those things? About three miles, isn’t it?”
“That’s about right, yeah.”
“Okay, Josh — can you give me a three-mile radius from the ship on the screen? If I’m right, Pellaggio is going to fire the Stinger missile at the ship, but he’ll have to be within that radius to do it. At least we might be able to narrow down our search; try to find where he’s going to be.”
“Is that what you’d do?” asks Wallis, curiously.
“Absolutely. A big target needs big firepower to damage it. And he’s not going to be able to get close enough to set any charges or anything physically on board, so a ranged assault is the only real option.”
“I’d hate having the ability to think the way you do,” Wallis says, his slight laugh humorless with disbelief.
I simply shrug. “It’s not my job that makes me think this way,” I say. “It’s my military training. I’m no different than any other soldier.”
“Here you go,” interrupts Josh, pointing to the screen.
We all lean forward and look at the monitors. A blue circle, like a radar screen, is visible over the top of the live feed.
“That’s a three-mile radius from the Jeremiah,” he continues. “Not much to go on, as the ship is mostly surrounded by water. Looking at what land there is, there aren’t many viable options for a strategic ranged assault.”
I sigh. “There’s one,” I say.
I hate being right sometimes. But logically, it makes perfect sense. I point to the screen and everyone groans and sighs as they see what I’ve just seen.
It’s roughly one and a half miles away from the Jeremiah. It’s secluded, and it gives Pellaggio perfect line of sight to launch the Stinger.
I really hate being right sometimes…
Danny Pellaggio’s on Alcatraz.
22
We’re all sitting in silence around the big table in the conference room, waiting for Chambers. I’m at one end, with my back to the TV screen, facing the door. Josh is on my right with Clark next to him. Wallis is on the left side, opposite them.
The room is quiet, a palpable tension between us.
I hope Chambers has better news than we do.
Alcatraz is pretty much impossible to approach unseen. I have to assume Pellaggio’s already there and preparing his assault. Josh said there had clearly been some recent activity on the island when he’d looked at the satellite feed. All the regular ferry tours are postponed due to the celebrations on the Jeremiah, so it had to have been him…
It’s not the first time I’ve been up against it. Hopefully, it won’t be the last.
Chambers walks in and closes the door before sitting down at the opposite end of the table to me.
“I’m guessing you have something?” she asks, looking at the subdued expressions on our faces.
“We’re almost certain that Pellaggio is on Alcatraz,” says Wallis. “And he intends firing a Stinger missile at the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien.”
“Christ!” she exclaims.
“Please tell me you have better news?” I say to her.
She has a file in her hand which she puts down on the table and opens. “That depends on how you define good news,” she replies, somewhat cryptically.
Everyone looks on patiently as she sifts through the papers in the file to find what she wants.
“I have two pieces of news,” she says, after a moment. “The first didn’t seem that relevant to begin with, but now you’ve mentioned Alcatraz, it makes more sense.”
“Go on,” I say.
“Remember those two naval officers we found murdered near Pellaggio’s warehouse? Well, we ran their names through the system to see what they were doing in the city on active duty. And, you guessed it — they were assigned as security liaisons to the Jeremiah.”
“And you think Pellaggio’s got men on board using their ID’s?” I say, not so much asking, but confirming.
“I think that would be a justifiable assumption at this stage, yes.”
I nod. “If he’s got men on that ship, then there’s every chance he’s got bombs on there too,” I say. “You need to get word to the team you’ve got on the ground there to relay that to the Secret Service. That’s another thing you can use to convince them to call this whole thing off.”
“I agree,” she says. “But it won’t be getting postponed no matter what we do.”
The room falls silent for a moment.
“What else did you find out?” asks Wallis.
“This is where your definition of good news comes into play,” she says, looking at me specifically. “I ran the name Gregovski through every database we have access to,” she continues. “Ivan Gregovski — born 1965 in Nevelsk, Russia. Served eight and a half years in a Siberian prison for war crimes in the eighties. Kept a low profile upon release, married in the early nineties, no children. Became active again in early 2001, working alongside mercenary groups under various aliases…”