5 - Choker: Ike Schwartz Mystery 5 (24 page)

Chapter 46

As Ike had hoped, clouds closed in and blotted out the scant moonlight over Eastern Bay. The black converted river patrol boat, its engines muffled, ferried them to the bay’s center. This time Ike allowed the captain to use his own GPU. With the coordinates he’d determined from the mapping done by the ersatz DNR boat earlier, he put the craft directly over the path of submerged lightsticks.

The divers and SEALs, with call signs Tiger One through Four, signs generated by Charlie, went over the side and disappeared into the inky water. Ike and the agent from Dubai, Tigers Five and Six, dropped into the Zodiac and waited. Ike would have to talk to Charlie later about those dorky call signs.

After what seemed an eternity, they received the all-clear to move to the duck blind. The advance team indicated it would go ashore and scout for guards. Powered by an electric outboard, the Zodiac slipped silently through the wash toward the rendezvous.

Ike could barely make out his hand in front of his face.

“No one so far,” rasped one of the SEALs. Ike pointed toward the bulkhead, and the Zodiac moved at a speed just slightly faster than the outgoing tide. When the bow bumped against stones, Ike crawled out and secured the boat to a large boulder. The two men crept forward and waited.

“We’re ten yards in and clear so far.”

“Spread out. Take the garage first, then the barn. If you see anyone, I mean anyone, freeze. If you have to, bug out.”

“Roger that, Tiger Five.” Ike shook his head. If he weren’t so scared, he’d have laughed. Tiger Five! Charlie, what were you thinking?

Ike signaled to his Arabic speaker to come close. “You make your way to the house and listen. Call me if you need anything or there’s something I need to see.”

The agent gave him a thumbs-up and melted into the night. Ike worked his way through the underbrush to the shed. He could have moved faster had he taken the gravel path, but he didn’t know if it was watched or monitored with cameras and motion detectors.

A light shone through a window at the shed’s rear. He edged around to the back. Standing off to one side so that anyone inside would not see him, Ike scanned the left side of the interior. He ducked under the window and repeated the process on the other side. Nobody home. That’s good or it’s bad. The lights are on. Where are these guys?

He crept to the door and tried the latch. Not surprisingly, the door was locked. He fumbled in his pockets for his lock picks and hoped he would remember how they worked.

“Garage is clear except for a car, an old tractor, and a workshop.”

“What kind of tractor, you mean like a farm tractor or a rig that pulls a trailer?”

“Farm—big one, too.”

“Anything interesting in the shop?”

“No, sir, nothing unusual. There’s some welding apparatus, big air compressor, boxes of tools, things like that.”

“Roger,” Ike mumbled. “Do the barn.”

The lock yielded on his third attempt. I used to be better at this, he thought. The door swung open without a sound. Ike stepped in and searched the area for a surveillance camera. He saw none. He hoped he hadn’t missed anything.

A cluttered panel with switches sat against the wall on a table that faced the bay. The identifying marks on it had all been taped over, but he felt sure it was foreign. He removed his camera and photographed the array. He pivoted and took in the rest of the room. A map of the United States was tacked to the wall behind the table. He photographed it. He pulled out a drawer in the table with the console and retrieved a rolled-up paper, thin paper. He spread it out on the edge of the table, and photographed it as well. He froze in place at the sound of footsteps on the gravel path. He quickly replaced the roll, closed the drawer and, moved to the hinge edge of the door so that he’d be behind it, and out of sight, when it opened. He held his breath and waited. If the guy came in and saw him, the game was up.

The door swung back. He heard annoyed muttering. A hand reached into the room and switched off the light. The door snapped shut and the bolt was thrown. He was locked in. He exhaled.

“Nothing in the barn either, Tiger Five. What now?”

“We go home now. Out.”

Ike counted to twenty-five, unlocked the shed door and eased out into the darkness. He relocked the door and started toward the water.

“Everybody out,” he said, “slow and easy.”

He tripped and almost fell headlong into a clump of bushes. He glanced down at his feet and saw what he took to be a tree root. He stepped over it and then looked again. It was too smooth to be a root. He reached down and ran his hand along its length. A sheathed cable that ran from the shed toward the water. He tried to follow it but the underbrush was too thick. He gave up and resumed his trek back to the Zodiac.

“Tiger One on base.”

“Tiger Two and Three in, too.”

Where are you Four and Six?”

“Four here. I’m about thirty yards out. No sweat.”

“Six?”

No answer. Ike made it to the bulkhead and counted noses. Five accounted for.

“Hold your position. I’m going back for Six,” he said. “If I’m not back in ten, pull out. It will mean we took another bus home.”

The four men looked at each other uneasily. “That’s an order. Charlie, are you monitoring this?” Charlie, back at the marina, answered he was. “Okay, give me ten and then blow.”

Ike headed back toward the house. At the porch steps he saw Six who held up his hands for Ike to be silent. Enough light filtered through the window next to him for Ike to see the listening device he’d attached to a pane in the corner. Ike held out his hand with five fingers spread. Five minutes.

The agent nodded, detached the device, crept low past the window, and the two men quick-stepped to the boat. The other four were in and casting off when they clambered down the stones and joined them.

In silence they motored to the PBR, and once aboard, sped away to the marina.

They had not located the Sunburns, and Ike started to worry. Tomorrow would be two days down. Only three to go.

Chapter 47

There was no time to debrief before Charlie, Ike, and Clark Benson, the Arabic expert, boarded the chopper back to Langley. Ike checked the images on his camera, and Benson occupied himself in listening to the tape-recording of the conversations he’d recorded at the house. Charlie looked glum. They landed and hustled back to the conference room. A clutter of papers, photographs, and maps spilled out over the table and onto the floor. Ike thought he’d seen better organized landfills, and he would be the last person anyone would ask to organize a desk. The director waited for them.

“I gather you do not have any good news for me,” he said.

“Nothing yet. I still think we should have had radiation sensors, a Geiger counter, anything.”

“Ike, we’ve been over that. No nukes are missing.”

“They’d be warheads, Charlie. They might have been riding along with the Sunburns for years. You couldn’t possibly know—”

“Okay. We’ll send in someone, do a fly-over.”

“Get them to us. We’re going back, Charlie.”

“But we don’t have anything.”

Benson held up his hand. “It wasn’t a complete bust. I have some recorded conversation that is suggestive, and with some time to review and translate it, may give us a lead on the other sites or targets.”

“Get on it, then. It may be 3:00
AM
, but we haven’t time to take any R and R. Charlie, there are a pile of papers on your desk you need to sort through. Ike, what do you have for me?”

Charlie left to retrieve his documents, and Benson put his ear buds in place and began listening to his tape. From time to time he scratched notes in a small notebook.

“Some pictures and an idea.” Ike opened his camera and ran through the series of shots of the console map and the rolled paper. “I’ll need those blown up.”

The director motioned for a young intern to take Ike’s camera.

“Get these processed ASAP, Bob, and hustle back here. Okay, Ike, what’s your idea?”

“Wait for the pictures to be analyzed. I tripped over a cable in the woods near that shed.” Ike pointed to the blow-up. “It seemed to run toward the water. Then, over here,” he indicated a second point on the photo, “is a large tank. It’s too big to be propane, although I guess it could be, but it’s rather far from the house for that.”

“And all that means what, exactly?”

Charlie bounced into the room with sheets of paper.

“In a minute, Director. Charlie, the four ships?”

“We have them. They are, names liberally translated, the Sword of God, we know about that one; the
Allahu Akbar
, God is Great; the
Youmud Deen
, Day of Judgment; and the
Alhumdeullah
, Praise be to God. Who’d have thought anything that sounds so lilting in Arabic could be so lethal?”

“Do we know where they are?”

“Not yet, but we do have photographs. Three are old freighters like the
Saifullah;
the fourth,
Allahu Akbar
, is a small tanker. The geeks in the satellite surveillance unit say they are good enough for us to get a pattern recognition program set up. We have the Littoral Scan System running dawn to dusk on all our coastlines. If they get within one hundred miles of our shores, we’ll know it.” Charlie looked pleased.

“Director, can you contact the Navy and put submarines on alert? If they get anywhere near us, we should simply sink them.”

“They’re not going to like it, but I’ll give it a go.”

“Tell them about the Sunburns and that one of those ships is responsible for the death of an Academy grad. The Navy is funny about their own.”

The messenger, Bob, returned with the developed photos and spread them out on the table. Benson took the buds from his ears and joined them. “That’s Arabic,” he said pointing to the photo of the rolled document Ike had taken from the drawer.

“What’s it say?”

“This is good. The conversation I recorded was mostly about how unhappy these guys are here. The food is bad, blah, blah, blah, and they think the restaurant is serving them pork in their burgers. But then there is a mention to something called ‘Choker’ and they start sounding, I don’t know, pumped.”

“And this is related to this document how?” Ike felt his heart beat quicken. He had it.

“This word at the top of this thing,, is
choker
. The other glyphs are the names of the ships Charlie just discovered.”

The director studied the document for a moment. “What the hell is all this to do with anything? So,
Choker
, ship names. Now what?”

“Bob,” Ike said, “Go back and have these two pictures developed the exact same size. This one,” he held out the latter document, “have them print up on transparency film. And hurry.”

“What are you up to, Ike?” the director said.

“Charlie, get that SEAL team and that DNR boat back to the marina. Tell the SEALs to bring some UEDs, a bunch of them.”

“A bunch of UEDs?”

“Underwater explosive devices. Yes, a bunch. What time is it?”

“Four
AM
.”

“Too early to call Bunky.”

“What…”

“You’ll see. Where’s Bob?”

“Ike, this had better be good,” the director muttered.

“Or what, Director? You can’t fire me. I don’t work here any more. And you’re going to like this. Have you called the Navy?”

“At four in the morning? Not likely.”

“Call them. Call them now. We have three days to shut this down. Tomorrow we can spike at least one of those missiles, I hope, but the other five…” his voice trailed off.

“The other five?”

“I’m assuming your guys were right that six Sunburns have gone missing. If I’m right, I know where at least one of them is. That means the others are aboard those ships. While you worry about disturbing the beauty rest of the chief of Naval Operations, they are heading toward their targets. The Navy is the only outfit that can effectively stop the ships.”

“We don’t know where they are and won’t until they come into view on the satellites, assuming the pattern recon works.”

“We’ll narrow it down in a minute.”

“How?”

“That document you all saw with the Arabic script was on thin paper. I didn’t see the significance at the time but, tracing paper, Director. It was tracing paper. The map on the wall is of the United States. The first has to be an overlay for it. When Bob gets back we’ll know for sure. Where the hell is he? We will put one on the other and know where the ships are headed and their probable or potential targets.”

Chapter 48

Ike stared at the photograph of the console, or panel, he’d seen in the shed. “Charlie, what else did those people buy from the Indian salvagers?”

Charlie shuffled through the pile of papers on the table, extracted one, and read, “Miscellaneous hardware thought to have come from a decommissioned Chinese corvette which included large, ten meter long tubes and cables…ah…an instrument panel, also from the corvette.”

“That was very careless of them.”

“Who?”

“The Chinese. You’d think they’d want to scrap weaponry hardware themselves.”

“Maybe they didn’t think the Indians would notice.”

“Are you kidding? India is on their border and is developing, or has developed, missile capabilities as well.”

“What exactly do you think they let go?”

The director re-entered the room. “I talked to the Navy. As I predicted, they are not happy. They said they will put submarines at the ready at 0500 and will wait to hear from us. If we’re wrong on this—”

“You mean, if I’m wrong—”

“I said we, I meant
we
, Ike. So what do you have now?”

Bob came in with the two newly developed sheets. Ike laid the clear plastic over the map blow-up.

“There you are boys and girls, your ship positions and, by inference, your possible targets.”

The men leaned over the table and looked. The overlay showed the ships in four predictable locations and an oval circled Washington, D.C.

“Okay, now you know where to dispatch the submarines and, as a back-up, put an antimissile team on alert. The damned things will be coming in from the sea and low to the surface from one or all of these points, so it should be easy.”

“You are taking a lot for granted, Ike.” The director looked disturbed.

“What’s our alternative, sir? If we’re wrong on the date, no big deal as long as it isn’t moved forward. If we’re wrong about location, the havoc that will ensue will be so great, no one will care about how we missed the boat, no pun intended, until later when the pooh-bahs in Congress begin posturing and finger pointing. And if the strikes are really successful…well, we’re up the proverbial creek anyway.”

“I’ll call the Navy back.”

“What now?” Charlie asked.

“What does this array remind you of?”

“You mean the console thing?”

“Yes.”

“I saw something like that twenty years ago. We had pictures of the Russian boomer we raised from the ocean. It was part of the…oh, shit. It was part of the launch system for their missiles.”

“It wasn’t exactly like this, but close enough.”

“I’ll pull back the SEALs and dispatch the boat.” He moved to the door and then paused. “But in broad daylight? They’ll see us and push the button.”

“Throw the switch, you mean. That’s what Bunky’s for. We didn’t need him last night, but today, he and his friends will come out to harass us as Department of Natural Resources personnel. They will stay between us and that duck blind and cover the SEAL team’s entrance into the water.”

“To do what? I don’t get it.”

“Patience, Charlie, patience.”

The director put down the phone and turned to Ike. “I’ve called in a lot of markers, Ike. Let’s hope this is for real.”

“Unless one of you has a better idea, it’s all we’ve got right now. We’ll know more this afternoon.”

“We have one submarine cruising off Guantánamo that’s being ordered into the Caribbean off Galveston. It will be there tomorrow—maybe. Two more have been diverted from their return to Bangor, Washington, and sent to the San Diego and L.A. area. And the fourth will sail from Groton, Connecticut, for New York City. They will be in position on time, assuming we have that right. Yom Kippur? You’re sure about that?”

“It’s a calculated guess, boss. What can I say?”

“I hope you’re right. The Navy has also put its entire fleet on high alert in case we’re off on the targets. They will try to form a necklace around the country by Wednesday with the antiship missile systems up and running.”

“It has to be sooner, but I like the imagery of a necklace to stop a choker.”

***

By eleven they had moved their base of operations from Langley to the Holiday Inn Express on Kent Island. The fake DNR boat had returned to the marina, and the SEALs were back. Ike filled them in on what they’d learned and what he expected to find in the water near the property they’d searched the night before. The SEALs nodded. They placed the five UEDs on the floor of the room and explained to Ike how they would be detonated. Remote, they said, would be risky. The best would be to feed a wire back to the boat and attach a hand detonator to it. Ike didn’t like the thought of having to stay out in the bay for hours, maybe overnight. Someone could tumble to them.

“We could borrow a sailboat, sail in, and anchor. Then we transfer the detonator to it. There are a dozens of sailboats on the bay on any given day.” Charlie said. He seemed enthusiastic, and Ike thought the idea had merit. More than merit: it would work.

“Okay, Charlie, get us a sailboat and some sailors. You can’t have these…,” he waved toward the SEALs, “they’re going to be hunting for me.”

“I will sail the boat.”

“Director says you’re to stay dark. He needs you in place and this could ruin that. By the way, guys,” he said to the SEALs, “you didn’t hear any of this.”

“I am a well known and acknowledged bay sailor, Ike. I used to own an eighteen-footer and raced it out of Annapolis all the time. Everyone on station knows that. I’m going sailing.”

“We’ll look for you about 1200 hours or a little later. Take a radio and tack around or whatever you sailors do to pass the time, until we call.”

“Just so I don’t sound like a complete idiot when the director asks me what you were doing when you blew yourself up—what
are
you doing?”

“These fine gentlemen are going to swim to the duck blind where, unless I am suffering from early dementia, they will find some of that hardware removed from the Chinese corvette, specifically, a launch tube, and…they will use the radiation sensor to tell us if the damn thing is hot.”

“Can’t be.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. You want to take the chance? And when they find it, they will affix these handy-dandy devices, feed the wire back to you, and you get to blow up a Sunburn when the time comes.”

“If they’re hot? Blowing them up could be a problem.”

“You said they weren’t, and anyway they won’t have the warhead armed. Perhaps not even in place. They’ll wait to do that just before the shoot.”

“You hope. And when would that be?”

“As soon as we know the ships with the rest of the damned things are under the waves, we bust this one.”

“And if we’re wrong?”

“You lose your pension. Mine’s from Picketsville, and unless the town is funding the plan with bad mortgages, I’m good to go.”

“Ike, there’s a problem with the launch mechanism.”