“They probably got one at the Air Force Academy too.”
Boomer felt uncomfortable with all this talk of plots and assassination. It just didn’t jive with what he believed and had seen in his time in service. But he also remembered pulling the trigger and killing those two men the other night and that didn’t jive either. If he took away the blinder that told him the military would never do such a thing, then anything was possible.
Vasquez pulled out some satellite photos.
“The sub ain’t all, sergeant major. Take a look at that.”
“What the blazes is that?” Skibicki said.
A massive ship floated in the middle of an empty sea.
What appeared to be a huge oil-drilling derrick took up the entire center of the ship, towering over it. An Army helicopter sat on a landing pad on the stern. A broad wake behind it indicated the ship was moving.
Vasquez smiled.
“I had to go to the library and do some research to find out. It’s not listed in the current ship’s logs down at Pearl. It’s the Glomar Explorer.”
“And what’s the Glomar Explored” Boomer asked.
“You ain’t gonna believe this,” Vasquez said.
“It was built in 1973 by Howard Hughes for the CIA.”
“Say again?” Skibicki exclaimed.
“To do what?”
“To recover a Russian sub that sank northwest of here.”
“Start from the beginning,” Boomer said, unsure of where, or even if, this new piece fit in the puzzle.
Vasquez consulted the notes she’d scribbled.
“The Glomar Explorer was built by Hughes to mine minerals off the ocean floor. Or at least that’s the cover story he told the press and even the people building it. It was constructed at York, Pennsylvania, and is over 200 meters long. They spent about 400 million of the tax payers’ dollars on the thing without the taxpayers knowing about it. To get it to the Pacific, they had to sail it around South America because it wouldn’t fit through the Panama Canal.
“Anyway, it was actually built to be part of a secret CIA mission called Project Jennifer. While the ship was built on the East Coast, they built a companion craft called the HMB-1, Hughes Marine Barge, in California. It’s about a hundred meters long and built like an underwater aircraft hangar.”
“Underwater?” Boomer asked.
“The barge is submergible. It’s got a giant claw, remote TV camera, and lights. It can dock with the Glomar in the well of the ship underneath the derrick. They went after the sub in 1973, and I couldn’t find out whether they got it or not. One report says they got part of it. Another says they didn’t. Whichever, the whole thing had to be scrapped after the press got a hold of the story.”
“Why did they spend 400 million dollars trying to get a Soviet sub?” Skibicki asked.
“You could build your own sub for that much back then.”
‘ “They wanted the cipher codes that sank with the submarine.”
“What for?” Skibicki asked.
“The Russians would have changed their codes once they realized they lost the sub.”
“Apparently, the CIA wanted to decode back traffic that they’d recorded over the years but been unable to break.
Get information on how the Soviet missile fleet operated.”
“What a crock,” Skibicki muttered.
“Fucking CIA.”
“So what’s it doing now?” Boomer wanted to know.
“Is it still working for the CIA?”
“I don’t know,” Vasquez replied.
“I don’t know if the barge is underneath the Glomar” she said, pointing at the imagery.
“The wake looks funny, but I’d have to consult a Navy expert at wake interpretation and since there’s only one guy who does that at Pearl and it’s a Saturday and I’m doing this unauthorized—”
“I get the message,” Skibicki said.
“The important thing is, what is the Glomar Explorer up to now?”
“It’s been docked out at Sausalito, California for over a decade. I read one account where the government, after the Cold War ended in’ eighty-nine, even tried to sell or lease it to the Russians to help recover their other lost subs. There was one newspaper report saying that it was bought by. some civilian corporation and refurbished a year and a half ago.”
“Who bought it?” Boomer asked.
“I couldn’t find the name of the company.”
Boomer looked at the picture one more time.
“Again, the question is, what’s it doing?”
“I don’t know, but it looks to me from the imagery like it’s heading for a rendezvous with that unidentified sub,” Vasquez said.
“Not the Sam Houston?”” Skibicki asked.
“No, the bogey,” Vasquez replied.
“Possible explanation?” Skibicki snapped.
Vasquez paused, then gave her thoughts.
“This unknown friendly sub, obviously it’s highly classified, even more so than the Special Operations sub. I’d say this Glomar Explorer would make an excellent at-sea tender for a sub that never wanted to enter a harbor or even surface at sea where it could be seen. If the Glomar Explorer is carrying the HMB-1 barge, they could berth this sub with the barge underneath and carry out maintenance and resupply totally out of view of satellites or aircraft.”
“The question is, what’s so classified?” Boomer asked.
“Some sort of cutting-edge technology stealth submarine?
I heard the Navy was using some sort of floating barge out of San Diego to cover up their testing of a stealth surface ship.”
“This sub isn’t so stealthful,” Vasquez pointed out.
SOS US picked it up. And this barge is underwater, not floating.”
“Then what is it?” Boomer repeated.
“I’ll try to find out,” Vasquez volunteered, “but it isn’t going to be easy.”
Boomer turned to Skibicki. “What now?”
“Maggie can monitor the phone in case Trace calls,” Skibicki said.
“Let’s take a ride up to the North Shore and poke our noses around where the Vice President is. Maybe we can trip over something. If not, then we can go by the tunnel this evening and see what we can dig up. They have a copy of the President’s classified itinerary in the vault.
We can also see if we can get some more information on these vessels ourselves.”
Special Agent Stewart had chased the sun from the east and lost only a little ground with a delay in Dallas-Fort Worth. He was met at Arrivals by Mike Newman, a member of the Second Team, the security detail for the Vice President.
Newman hustled him out of the airport and into one of the Service’s vans, which had been flown to Hawaii aboard an Air Force C-5 transport.
As he pulled out of the parking lot, Newman pointed at a file folder tucked into Stewart’s side panel.
“Got all your information there. We’ve already screened the threat list. Honolulu PD will pick up the four A’s today and give you a call to confirm. They’ll detain them for the duration of the Boss’s trip.
“I’m taking you to the Royal Hawaiian. You’ve got one of the rooms on the fourteenth floor. The entire floor is reserved for the President.
We’re staying up on the North Shore at the Turtle Bay Hilton. The VP is taking in the golf course.
“The name of the Hawaii PD point of contact is in there,” he continued.
“He’s a good guy. So is the local FBI rep. It’s been pretty quiet.”
“What about the military?” Stewart asked.
“I’ve got to do the prelim for’ the President’s speech at Pearl and I need to get a hold of whoever is in charge of security there.”
He was uneasy about General Maxwell’s request and had pondered it during the flight. He wasn’t sure whether Maxwell was concerned about a physical threat to the President, which was the Secret Service’s area of responsibility, or a political threat in terms of an embarrassing incident, which was the purview of the President’s advisers. There was no doubt that there was bad blood between the military and the President, but Stewart had no idea what could come of it.