“This is the Captain. We were a little late in getting underway, but I want to thank everyone for doing a find job on shore. Sixteen of our shipmates and friends who came down with this illness are now in the hospital being cared for. We don’t yet know the source of this illness or how it got on board. We have been disinfected by the Naval Medivac Unit, and all of our new stores have been carefully checked by a Navy hazard control unit and repacked and sealed. We should be okay with our food stores. Intelligence is looking into different possible identifications for this illness, but until further testing is done, I’m not going to speculate. I’ll be receiving regular updates on our shipmates’ condition and will pass information along to you as it comes in.” Captain Hodges briefly pauses.
“For those of you who don’t know it yet, we’re fortunate to have a partial replacement crew from New Orleans who will be helping us, along with our six members of SEAL Team Two from Key West, who have also agreed to jump in and help with boat operations. I want our regular crew to welcome our new members. We’re still short-handed with our crew. We lost fourteen crew members and two officers and only have six replacement crew from New Orleans, plus our SEAL team. Everyone is going to be pulling extra duty and may be asked to do things they haven’t done before. This includes our SEAL team.”
“The one thing I will tell you is this boat is full of the latest and most up-to-date electronic and sonar gear available, and much of it is extremely sensitive. If you don’t know what a piece of equipment is used for or are not familiar with what a lever or button does, don’t touch it until you get permission. We’re headed back to the area where we encountered our Russian Target. I think we have a pretty good idea where that Target is, and the XO is calculating those intercept coordinates now.”
“I want to remind everyone when we run silent, it means silent. When we are in Silent One I don’t want any of you so much as talking or taking a footstep. If you have to communicate, you put your mouth to the person’s ear and whisper softly. I also better not hear a flush sound from the head. Silent means silent, and our lives will depend on maintaining that condition.”
“For those of you in the forward and aft torpedo rooms we will be running hot on our fish. Our orders are to follow and track, and not engage the target unless we are in imminent danger of being fired upon. I don’t want any happy triggers. You wait until you clearly hear the command to fire from me or the XO. The duty schedules are almost ready and will be passed out as soon as the Ensign finishes. Good sailing, gentleman.”
After the captain’s announcement, Wade drifted off into deep sleep, not even hearing the dive horn in the early morning hours. When he awoke for duty, his boat was 80 meters below the Gulf.
26
The Task Force was in full swing when Marks and Simon returned to Washington from their meeting with Captain Hodges. A meeting of Task Force members was called to discuss and analyze the Soviet submarine data collected by Hodges. After the meeting, Marks and Simon discussed their next strategy.
Simon felt strongly that it was now time to take custody of one or more of the three undercover agents released by the Russian submarine. Since their arrival in Mississippi, the three Soviet trained operatives had been followed by Simon’s agents.
They were now in Miami and had joined the organizations they were assigned to infiltrate. Each had already become active members of three separate Cuban organizations. Marks and Simon were in agreement. After Simon reviewed the intelligence reports on the three Russian-trained subjects, he selected two to be picked up for interrogation. Simon’s operatives selected the best time to pick up each man.
After one of the subjects finished a meal at a fast food restaurant with other members of his new Cuban organization, he proceeded to walk back to his apartment three blocks away. He was overtaken by Simon’s operatives and injected with a mild drug. He was loaded into an unmarked white van that had been following two blocks behind. The subject’s hands were cuffed and a blackout hood put over his head.
The second man was apprehended in a similar fashion. Each subject was brought to a separate empty warehouse, in a quiet, older industrial development on the outskirts of Miami. Simon immediately left Washington for Miami to supervise the interrogations.
Simon was no stranger to interrogation. He had run his own covert operations in Central America, which included extensive interrogation for the CIA. Simon knew well the captive’s mental state. When Simon was a CIA undercover operative, he had been held captive by a Central American guerilla group with Russian advisors for nine months. During that experience he was beaten, interrogated, and tortured. He had a keen sense of a man’s breaking point, and he knew when pressure had to be applied.
Each subject was interrogated alone in separate locations with a different interrogation team. At first both subjects gave the standard responses taught in course 101 on “How to answer questions in the event of capture.” Simon wasn’t playing that game and turned up the heat.
After twelve hours of straight interrogation, Simon came into the room where one of the captives was detained and sat in front of the captive with a file. He spoke only in Spanish. Simon told the captive he wanted him to see what he had in his file and slowly opened the file in front of the witness. There were recent pictures of the captive’s wife, children, brothers, sisters, and parents.
Simon stressed that no harm would come to any family members if he cooperated. In turn Simon described in great detail what would happen in the event of non-cooperation. He emphasized that his men were already in place in their country, and paused to show the captive the addresses of loved ones and photographs of their homes. Simon then got up and left the room for his men to continue the interrogation in English.
Simon proceeded to address the second captive in the same manner.
The two captives finally broke, within three hours of each other. Simon was called in by his operatives to attend this part of the interrogation in the hope that critical information would be forthcoming. He kept the two men separated so he could compare details and determine if they were telling the unrehearsed truth. Simon’s wish for critical information from the subjects was granted. The new information also confirmed his worst expectations.
Both men admitted having been brought to the U.S. by the same Russian submarine. One boarded three miles off the coast of Ecuador, the other off the coast of Nicaragua. Both boarded in the middle of the night, as the Russian sub headed north for U.S. waters.
The two men gave detailed descriptions of the interior of the Russian submarine, including where certain operations were performed. One of the subjects even drew a diagram of the sub’s interior and identified the location of various electronic devices and operating systems. The other man was given the same diagram without the identifying names and asked to fill in and name the various systems.
The second subject’s response was identical to that of the first. Simon was focused on details. He knew a slip-up would come in the details if the captive’s stories had been rehearsed. Simon found out where they ate and what they ate during their voyage. He obtained where they slept and even how the toilets worked. Simon had enough interrogation experience to know whether a suspect was telling the truth.