Additionally, he added to his store of tools and repair items — epoxy glues and powder, fiberglass cloth, engine and pump seals and bearings, oil, and grease. There was a portable electric pump, wiring cables, hoses. McCory liked to be prepared for anything, and he liked to have it stowed away neatly.
He had also brought additional maps and charts for inland waterways. From the classified code book, he had made up a sheet of frequencies and encryption and scrambler modes for the naval and air force installations in the immediate vicinity. He taped the sheet to the bulkhead next to the communications console.
At 9:15, he opened the sea door and backed the SeaGhost out into the waterway.
Ginger sat down in the radar seat next to him. “Thank you.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“But we’re a team. You’d never get a missile off by yourself.”
As they crept down the waterway, the night’s fireworks displays erupted at Edgewater and New Smyrna Beach. Exploding star shells cascaded rivers of white fire, violet blossoms, and red and blue clusters.
“Pretty,” Ginger said.
“Unless you get in real close,” McCory told her.
Chapter 12
Badr thought that his strategy was working well. It was evident in the radio traffic that had not been encoded between the Second Fleet headquarters and the ships of the task forces seeking him.
The United States Navy was converging on the southern coast of the continent, as they were expected to do.
The Hormuz, commanded by a reluctantly admiring Abdul Hakim, was still steaming steadily to the north. Hakim had faked breakdowns of his steam turbine twice in order to slow his pace, but he was now several hundred kilometers to the north and nearly a hundred kilometers off the coast.
Ibrahim Badr had ranged far ahead of the tanker, beginning his attacks in North Carolina, then working his way south. He had set up a direction for the United States Navy, and they were following it. They were so predictable. He judged the main task force to be about 150 kilometers north of them.
Now, there was the naval air station in Florida. This one did not even require that they move in close.
In the dark of the night, the Sea Spectre was ten kilometers from the coast, at rest. The sea swells were heavy, suggesting an oncoming storm, and the boat bobbed up and down, rising several meters, then dropping. Amin Kadar sat at the dining table, gnawing on chunks of lamb left over from their meal. He stared out the window at the night, looking for whatever it was he longed for.
Heusseini and Kadar, after their assessments of the previous attacks, were certain that the small missiles had a range far greater than ten kilometers.
Because the search was concentrating toward the south, a great many Navy and Air Force search aircraft had been deployed from their normal bases into the area. Many of them were parked on the tarmac at the Mayport Naval Station.
Omar Heusseini sat at the commander’s desk, grinning to himself.
Badr said, “Are we clear on the sequence?”
“Of course,” Heusseini said. “We will launch eight missiles, utilizing the electro-optical targeting. At this distance, I will have the time I need to line up a missile visually, lock it on, then launch the next. After four missiles have been launched, we will move to another position, then launch four more. Then we will make our triumphant return to the Hormuz.”
“Allah willing,” Rahman said.
“Allah has been more than willing,” Ibrahim Badr reminded him.
“But now we have dozens of hostile vessels and aircraft all around us.”
“If they should get in our way, we will sink them,” Badr said.
Kadar swung around from his view of the night and whatever was out there in it. “I would like that.”
“Perhaps we will have the opportunity,” Badr said. “Still, we must be careful. A confrontation with a major warship is not in my plans.”
“Planning!” Kadar snorted. “It is planning that gets in the way of our cause. There is too much planning.”
Like so many of his followers, the young Kadar was too accustomed to reaction. Violent reaction, of course, but unthinking.
“There are a great many targets available to us. Targets that do not shoot back. We serve Allah far better by seeking out such targets, Amin.”
The young man frowned and turned back to his contemplation of the sea.
Badr waited a moment, nodding to himself, then said, “Let us begin.”
The first four missiles launched without a single problem. American weapons had far fewer mechanical and electronic problems than did those of the Soviets.
Ibrahim Badr particularly enjoyed watching the video monitor as it gave him a view of the first missile homing in on an Air Force E-3 Sentry parked on the base. That was one Airborne Warning and Control craft that would never be loaned to the Saudis or the Israelis.
As a hundred million dollars disappeared into blackness, he thought that the American taxpayer should be screaming loudly. The admirals and generals should face offensives from without and from within.
Allah worked in countless ways.
The radio traffic out of CINCLANT had been hectic for the last minute. McCory hunched over the desk with headphones on, trying to decipher messages with coded words.
“Safari Bravo, Safari Echo to Safari Sector Four, code Pearl-Four-Six. Repeating. Jackhandle under attack, target reference grid Baker Two, two-four, nine-eight.”
Shit.
They were using a distinctive map grid overlay to determine their coordinates, and it wouldn’t correspond to anything McCory had on a chart or in the computer.
“Ginger, let’s go north. See how fast you can go.”
“Got it, Kevin.”
He felt the SeaGhost heel over as she made the turn. The thrum of the rotary engines vibrating in the deck picked up tempo.
McCory scanned the sheet he had copied and taped to the bulkhead.
No Jackhandle.
He flipped through the pages of the frequency listings. There wasn’t a Jackhandle identified there, either.
The sheet on the bulkhead listed all of the major Georgia and Florida naval installations. The target could have been Air Force or Coast Guard, but he didn’t have information on them. He picked the southern Georgia and northern, east coast Florida bases and began entering the digits for their radio frequencies into the radio, tapping away almost feverishly.
Mostly gibberish.
The scrambling and encryption modes had all been changed, and it took time to try each of the four modes on his black boxes. Anytime something came in clear, that he could identify with some certainty, he entered the new modes and codes on his cheat sheet.
From his momentary contacts, he figured out that aircraft were being scrambled all over the Eastern Seaboard.
He found Safari Echo talking to Safari Bravo. “… all three Deuces ranging at seventy miles.”
The Deuces were probably helicopters. ASW, he guessed, sowing sonar buoys.
Twenty minutes later, he found Jackhandle. The code names and the modes for the encryption machines were different, but the frequency was for the Mayport Naval Station. He jotted the new data on his chart.
The excited, almost nonstop chatter also gave them away as the target site. The radio operator couldn’t keep the tension and adrenaline out of his voice.