Rencke opened another package of Twinkies. Nothing in those files had been tampered with recently, except for the Ryan investigation in the spring. At least this part of Mac’s record seemed clean. Although what it represented in terms of suffering was horrible, nothing new had been added.
Time to start from square one, Rencke told himself, replacing the envelopes in the bin. Mac’s past, from the day he was born, up until his last operation in Moscow. If there was something there, Rencke would find it.
Kondo was a happy man. He had gotten the information he needed to accomplish the first of their objectives and had planted the seeds that would likely help accomplish his second. And all of that from two meetings that had lasted less than one hour. There’d been only one glitch, but he’d even worked that one out on the way back to the storage center. All it would take was some special equipment.
“Ingenious,” Sandy Patterson said. She was gathered with Kondo, Kajiyama and the other six men, all of them highly trained Japanese commandos and former soldiers of fortune, on the floor of the warehouse.
“Can you get what we need without arousing any suspicion?” Kondo asked. They’d inspected their weapons and night vision oculars and were studying the topographic maps of the area around the Cropley safe house.
“No problem whatsoever,” she said. “But if I can make one suggestion, it’d be better to come in from the river.” She pulled out a highway map of Maryland. “We could rendezvous at Whites Ferry. There’s a marina there and it’ll be no problem to rent the proper boat. Nobody will think twice about it at this time of year.” She looked up. “The problem will be getting you out.”
“Helicopter.”
She nodded. “I can arrange that too.” She looked frankly at Kondo. “You’re certain about the security precautions at the safe house?”
Kondo nodded. “My source is reliable,” he said. “But the helicopter will have to be capable of carrying us, plus the two women.”
“I thought we were going to kill them,” Kajiyama said sharply.
“It’s simply a contingency. Our main target is McGarvey. If he’s not out there, we’ll take his ex-wife and daughter with us.”
“He’ll come after us. The CIA, the FBI and every law enforcement agency in the region will be fully mobilized.”
“That’s right,” Kondo said with a look of satisfaction on his round face. “While that’s going on McGarvey will be distracted from doing his real job.” He looked at his people. “We’ll kill him if we can. But our primary objective is to buy some time. Four or five days at the most.”
“Why?” Kajiyama asked.
“You don’t need to know that yet,” Kondo told him. He turned back to Sandy Patterson. “I’ll need a light plane as soon as possible. I want to fly over the house.”
“Pick an airport, and by the time you drive out to it, your airplane and pilot will be waiting for you.”
“I’ll let you know when,” Kondo said. “In the meantime everybody get some rest. Inspect your weapons and equipment and familiarize yourself with the maps. All of them.”
“What about afterwards?” Kajiyama asked.
“We’ll leave the same way we came.”
“I mean about the women.”
“Kill them, of course.”
ELEVEN
The MSDF Improved Harushio class attack submarine Natsushio slowly rose to periscope depth forty miles off the North Korean coast. She’d run all night three hundred feet beneath the surface at her top speed of twenty-four knots on a northeasterly course from her home port at Maizuru, and everyone aboard was keyed up. All of Japan’s military forces were at a heightened state of alert since the nuclear event at Kimch’aek, but the sealed orders that Captain Akira Tomita had opened once they’d cleared the sea buoy were in his estimation lunacy. He did not share his views with his crew, not even with his XO, except to tell them that this was not an exercise and that all tactical situations would be met with weapons hot. He was a compact man who was an expert in kendo and a half-dozen martial arts, which had taught him, above all else, the ability to remain calm in all circumstances.
They were to look for targets, surface or submerged, attempting to approach either the downed submarine or heading for the Japanese home islands, and stop them with whatever force the captain deemed necessary. Stopping the North Korean navy was one thing, but the Chinese had deployed at least eight ships which were on their way, and in these waters it was assumed that the Americans had patrol submarines on station. In addition, the Seventh Fleet had been deployed from Yokosuka. He did not want to tangle with them, yet his orders were clear in that MSDF command was making no exceptions.
The only leeway Tomita had was identifying the target’s intent. The Sea of Japan was a large area, most of it international waters, in which ships of any nation had a perfect right to sail. On top of that, the Hayshio had gone down only ten kilometers off the North Korean coast, well within their territorial waters, which gave them the perfect right to conduct exercises there. Orders were orders, but before he set about to kill a ship and her crew he was going to make certain its action fell under the real meaning of his orders.
“Sonar, what are you showing besides our ships?” Tomita had been advised of the five MSDF warships that were in the area, including the submarines Sachishio and Fuyushio, the skippers of which he knew.
“Nothing ahead of us, kan-cho,” Seaman Tomifumi Mizutami reported.
“We’re now on station,” his executive officer Lieutenant Nobuyaki Uesugi reported softly from the plotting table. He was a delicately built man whose only passion was training bonsai trees.
“Very well, commence your pattern,” Tomita said. “Sonar, we’re ready to deploy the ZOR-one.” Similar to the American BQR-15, it was a low-frequency passive search sonar deployed at the end of a very long cable. Extremely sensitive, it would pick up more than the hull-mounted sensors could. If anything was moving within twenty miles anywhere except directly aft, they would hear it.
Tomita glanced over at his XO, who looked excited. Now the real battle began.
Seaman Fischer had been tracking a very quiet subsurface target picked up by one of the sea floor sensors they’d dropped yesterday, when he suddenly sat forward. He flipped on the tape recorders and held the earphones tighter. He was hearing a low-pitched, grinding sound that for the first few moments he could not identify, but then a big smile creased his features.
“Conn, sonar. Possible target designated Sierra nine, bearing one-nine-five, indeterminate range.”
“What’ve you got, Mel?” the XO, Lt. Cmdr. Rod Paradise, asked from the conn. He and the captain were splitting the watches, twelve on and twelve off. It was 0500 GMT, and the captain was in his quarters.
“Somebody down south is deploying a towed array. Sounds like a ZOR-one to me.”
“Stand by,” Paradise said, and he came forward to the sonar compartment.
Fischer switched the signal to the speaker so they could all hear the grinding noise. Moments later an analysis spit out of the computer. “ZOR-one,” Fischer said. “Probably being deployed from one of their new Harushios, but we’re too far out to tell for sure. That sub is a hell of a lot quieter than its towed array cable reel system.”
“Okay, they’re looking for something, which means they’ll be running a pattern. See if you can establish the time intervals between aspect changes. I’d like to get down there without them knowing about it, which we can do if we make our runs when we’re end-on to the array.”