The highways were choked with noisy, erratic traffic, and the taxi driver fought and cursed his way into the city, taking the Key Bridge north to Theodore Roosevelt Island to cross the Potomac River.
It was almost seven o’clock by the time the taxi driver let el-Ziam and his suitcase out in front of the office building. It appeared nearly deserted, the workers gone home for the day. A few people were running late, emerging from the twin glass doors with harried expressions on their faces. El-Ziam entered, looked about, and sauntered over to the directory.
There was a security desk in front of the elevators with a uniformed man, who did not seem exceptionally busy. He was only checking those who were coming into the building.
El-Ziam scanned the directory. Advanced Marine was on the fifth floor. He chose a message service on the second floor, crossed to the security desk, and said, “I am to meet the manager of Capitol Convenience Services.”
“Just sign the log, there, mister.”
El-Ziam signed Francisco Cordilla’s name with a flourish, then added the time. He passed around the desk and entered an open elevator.
After the short ride, he stepped out on the second floor, found the nearby stairway door, then descended to the basement. He had to use picks to open the lock of the steel door into the basement, but it only took him two minutes.
And then it only took twelve minutes to locate the telephone panel, find the leads for Suite 510, and connect the transmitter to the first of several sets of telephone terminals. El-Ziam was back on New Hampshire Avenue shortly after that, looking for a nearby restaurant.
It was becoming compulsive behavior. Every time he had a few straight hours of free time, McCory found himself in Dry Dock One of Barley’s Refitters.
He would sit at the banquet table, studying manuals. He would wander around the boat cabin, touching. He would stand near the forward bulkhead, staring through the windshield at nothing, at the sea door.
I see, I feel, your dream, Devlin.
Just being aboard the SeaGhost made him feel closer to his father. When he was at the helm, feeling the slight vibration of the rotary engines in his fingertips, it was as if he had contact with… the soul of his father. It was the same sensation he found with the Kathleen. Or maybe it was Kathleen Moran McCory with whom he shared an illusive contact. Many, many times, McCory had wished he had known his mother beyond the image in old photographs.
Ginger was right, of course. McCory was something of a romantic and a dreamer. He liked old things. Old boats, old desks, old pictures, old books, old morals. True craftsmanship and integrity seemed to wither with each passing year. He wanted to hold onto it for as long as he could.
There were ironies. The SeaGhost was as high tech as could be found, and it hadn’t even been built by Devlin McCory, but the essence of his thought, his craftsmanship, and his thoroughness were in her. Devlin’s rough and tender hands might as well have smoothed her beautiful hull.
McCory had stocked the pantry and the refrigerator, then eaten a dinner of home fries and a chopped sirloin steak. The refrigerator contained twelve bottles of Dos Equis. He was making a home out of her, becoming familiar.
The interior lights of the dry dock were extinguished. There was only blackness outside the SeaGhost’s windows. The cabin lights were turned low. McCory had left the hatches open and had a ventilator operating. Warm, slightly salty air permeated the cabin.
He got a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and went forward to sit in the sonar operator’s seat. Propped his Top Siders on top of the instrument panel.
“Shit,” he said aloud to himself and maybe the SeaGhost. “I’m hooked.”
He had been intent upon righting a few wrongs, then relinquishing the boat. If he were halfway smart, he’d do it within the next few days, before too many of the local people started catching on. He had even driven over in the truck that evening, so Monte Harris or someone wouldn’t spot one of his boats tied up alongside the dock.
Now, he didn’t want to give her up.
Daimler was going to squawk.
Hell. I can’t even take you out in public, girlie.
Not too many pleasure boats were outfitted with scramblers, targeting radar, cannon, and missiles.
Strip it all out and ship it to Norfolk.
Anonymously.
C.O.D.
Damned missiles would get him in trouble, yet. In his mind, he could see several fleets of battlewagons converging on that four-mile stretch of Atlantic where he and Ginger had sunk a tattered rubber boat.
He was really screwing it up. By showing off for the girlfriend, he had aimed the Navy in his own direction.
While the bad guys slipped over the horizon with SeaGhost II. It was like having Devlin held hostage.
Christ, Devlin. You taught me better.
New River Inlet slipped by unseen except for the buoys marking the passage. Only an occasional light marked dwellings of some kind on the coastal islands. The moon had set over an hour before. It was a clear night, and the stars were hard points overhead.
The Sea Spectre barely whispered. Her engines could not be heard at her speed of fifteen knots. In the rearview screen on the panel, Ibrahim Badr could see only the mild twin-legged vee of the wake designating her trail, the water not churned enough to create a damning whiteness.
Any small noises within the cabin were dampened by the cushioned earphones he wore.
To his left, Omar Heusseini sat at the radar console. He looked more haggard than he should have, and Badr suspected he had not been sleeping well. The green glow of the screen tinted the unshaven whiskers on his face sickly gray.
To the left of Heusseini, at the sonar position, Amin Kadar sat rigidly in his seat, his tension betrayed by the set of his shoulders. He was leaning forward, his head resting against the hood of the sonar screen. His hand rested on the control panel, his thumb poised over a keypad, ready to switch his headset from the sonar-listening mode to the intercom.
Ahmed Rahman was back in the missile bay. The times that he had spoken to Badr in the past few hours, he had sounded completely at ease, fully relaxed. Rahman was comfortable with his missiles and his role.
A click sounded in the headset.
“I have a contact,” Kadar said, his voice squeaky with his fear.
“Location?” Badr asked.
“Ahead, to the left. You had better bear to the right, Colonel.”
Badr eased the helm slightly to the right.
“Do not go too far,” Heusseini warned. “The depths are deceptive. I will need an active radar, soon.”
Heusseini had learned about the mapping system available in the Sea Spectre’s computer but had also discovered some limitations. The maps of a few major harbors and bays were stored in the computer, but small waterways inland were not. The New River Bay in North Carolina was not. In fact, only the northern Atlantic and the Caribbean maps were accessible. Heusseini suspected that only the maps for the boat’s planned area of operations were input to the machine. The computer mapping function would have been useless to them in the Arabian Gulf without access to the appropriate software.
It was also useless for most waterways inside the American continent. Badr had told them that the Americans had not planned on attacking their own installations with the boat. It brought a laugh.
“How large is the contact?” Badr asked.
“A medium-sized boat,” Kadar relied. “Two propellers.”
“Range?”
“Two thousand meters. Yards. This equipment thinks in yards. I do not.”