McCory pulled the headphones off, dropped them on the desktop, and went forward to stand behind Ginger. Looking at the back of her platinum head, watching the intensity with which she peered through the windshield or scanned the instrument panel, he damned himself for letting her become involved.
“Well, do something,” she said. “Find the bastard.”
“We’re looking,” McCory said, though he was thinking that he wouldn’t look too hard.
Leaning over her right shoulder, he tapped the “NAV MAP” pad on the keyboard, then entered upper left and lower right coordinates. Pressed “EXC.”
Ginger automatically hit the monitor’s number four selection, and the map came up on the screen. She was getting pretty good with the systems.
Along the gray-shaded coast, Jacksonville was shown, but Mayport was not. He reached out and tapped the city with his forefinger.
“They’ve attacked Jacksonville?” Ginger asked.
“Mayport. It’s a Navy base. I don’t know what the damages are, but it sounds as if they were hit by eight missiles.”
“It’s what? Eighty miles away?”
“About that, hon. But we don’t know where Badr launched from. He could be fifty miles out.”
McCory scanned the seas ahead. They were thirty miles off the coast in a clear, starry night. Running lights on the right oblique suggested a ship of some size, maybe six or seven miles away. The sea was choppy, but the SeaGhost leveled it. She was riding smoothly, the visual sensation of her speed of sixty knots difficult to pin down.
In the far distance, he saw the lights of a few aircraft. As they neared the scene, he thought the air traffic would become congested.
Moving over to the radar/fire control station, McCory settled into the seat and studied Ginger by the glow of the panel lights. She gripped the wheel with determination. Her face and long throat were in profile, and though she seemed very intent, she also appeared particularly vulnerable.
Jesus, this is stupid.
“You know, Ginger, when we reach Mayport, about all that’s going to happen is that fifty or sixty ships and aircraft looking for a terrorist will have a chance to spot us. We happen to look exactly like the terrorist.”
She jerked her head toward him. “You don’t think they’d shoot at us?”
“I suspect they’re mad enough.”
“But you said we have the best chance of catching Badr.”
“I did say that. We can match him for speed and weaponry, if we locate him. In my zeal, however, I overlooked the fact that the Navy won’t care who’s driving the boat, as long as it’s a SeaGhost.”
“If they can’t see him, they can’t see us,” she said logically.
“Maybe. But they’ve got an awful lot of people looking.”
“What’s the body count now?” she asked.
McCory sighed. His resolve was wavering. “The risks are damned high, hon.”
“Go see if you can pick up a newscast.”
In the CIC, the plotting screen had the grid code-named Baker Two overlaid on it, the thin green lines identifying the coordinates they were working from. Norman studied the plot, copying the new positions of ships to the picture he maintained in his mind.
Prebble had a slight lead over the rest of TF22. America and her escorts were nine miles behind them. From the south, the Oliver H. Perry and her task force were moving toward them at flank speed, but they were over three hundred miles away.
A steadily expanding yellow stain was centered on the plot.
A P-3 Orion out of Mayport, flying the coast at 30,000 feet, had observed the missile launch. Backtracking the tapes of their infrared sensors, they had identified the ignition points, located some nine miles off the coast of Mayport. That was the starting point, the center of the pale yellow area on the plot.
In the twenty-five minutes since the missiles were launched, figuring the Sea Spectre’s speed of sixty-five knots, the target boat could have moved almost twenty-nine miles in any direction, except inland. And maybe even that, Norman thought. The Sea Spectre seemed to have too damned many outrageous capabilities.
Already, the search area covered around 150 square miles. Within the yellow half-circle were two Coast Guard cutters and fifteen search aircraft, including the Prebble’s helicopters. The Prebble herself was still sixty miles north of the search area.
Albert Perkins shook his head in resignation as he crossed the CIC from a communications console. His red hair absorbed the red light of the center.
“Commander?”
“Twenty-two aircraft damaged or destroyed, Captain. They hit a fuel depot, and the fires are still out of control. No firm numbers on fatalities yet, but they expect it to go over fifty.”
One goddamned boat, Norman thought. In the hands of a madman.
Perkins looked at the plot, and his face exuded his sadness. “We’re going to miss him again, aren’t we?”
“We’ll intercept the target area in another hour, Al, but by then we’ll have over three hundred square miles of possibility. It’ll be up to the choppers.”
Perkins checked his watch. “We’ll have to bring them back for refueling in another hour and a half.”
Norman nodded absently, thinking about something else.
“Al, we had early morning strikes on the second, third, and fifth. He skipped the fourth for some reason.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lejeune, Kings Bay, and now Mayport. It’s three hundred and fifty miles from Lejeune to Kings Bay, but only about fifty between Kings Bay and Mayport. There’s no pattern in the distance between targets. Not yet, anyway.”
“No, sir. Random selection.”
“Except that they tend to go south,” Norman said. “That’s a mild trend. The only other pattern is that he goes away somewhere during the day and hides, then makes his move in the early morning.”
“Perhaps, Captain, Badr wants us to feel the randomness, yet focus on the time and the southern movement. That’s why he skips a day, that’s why he makes a big jump, then a small one.”
“What would you do next, Al? If you were Badr?”
“Southern Florida, sir? Even around into the Caribbean?”
“Keep in mind we’ve set up a mild pattern. We’re leading the U.S. Navy into our thinking.”
Perkins closed his eyes for a moment. “Maybe I’d shoot back to the north.”
“Uh-huh. Me, too, Al. Then there’s one other thing.”
“Yes, sir. Where does he go during the day?”
Norman studied the plot. There were vast, empty spaces available to Badr. “That boat could park on the surface somewhere lonely and go unnoticed during daylight hours, Al. But, at minimum, with the distance he’s covered since June twenty-seventh, he’d have used half his fuel load. I’d think it was more than that, unless he’s alternating the use of the two boats. And unless that sunken Zodiak had a few floating containers of food, Badr and his buddies would be damned hungry by now.”
“He’s got a support ship somewhere.”
“What we need to do, Al, is find us a suitable ship that’s been in the area since June twenty-seventh.”
“I could request the plot tapes from CINCLANT, Captain.”
“Good idea, Al. Do that.”
Kevin had taken the Colleen, a forty-foot fiberglass sportfisherman that McCory had designed and built in 1982 on a week-long fishing cruise into the Gulf. He had two well-heeled couples on board, who McCory suspected were less interested in fishing than in other games.