Counter Poised (3 page)

The bomb-squad leader turned to the other bomb-squad member. “Okay, that’s enough pounding. Give me the wire cutters,” he ordered.

“But the suspect said the bomb would detonate if we tried to disarm it,” said Officer Sales.

“So we wait for one minute for it to detonate on its own, or we take a chance that cutting one of these wires will disarm it…I choose the latter.”

12:29

Sales turned to Kennedy. “Jim?”

“Yeah, Tom.” Both had an eerie calmness, and their faces were relaxed and almost serene.

“I wouldn’t mind praying the Lord’s Prayer right now,” he said in a voice now uncontrollably shaky.

“That’s a good idea, Tom. You two care to join us?”

“Sure,” said the bomb-squad member, throwing his sledgehammer aside.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll keep working,” said the leader as he pulled a handful of wires through the access opening. “I ain’t quite ready to give up yet!”

Kennedy turned toward al-Bedawi and said, “I’ve heard that the
Qur’an
says that if a Muslim dies with the name of Jesus in his head, he will go to hell.”

Sales leaned close to Kennedy and asked softly, “Is that true?”

Kennedy whispered back, “I don’t know, but I’d sure like Ali Baba to die having doubts as to where he’s going.”

As the seconds counted down, with the civil defense sirens wailing in the background, al-Bedawi the terrorist stood on the National Mall handcuffed to a tree and cried out to Allah. The bomb-squad leader continued to sort through a tangled mess of wires extending from the bomb’s steel casing. The other three policemen knelt in the middle of the mall and began reciting together:

                     Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power,
and the glory for ever and ever.
                 Amen.

All four policemen then repeated for al-Bedawi’s benefit and their own, “In
Jesus’s
name, Amen. In
Jesus’s
name, Amen. In
Jesus’s
name, Am—”

The bomb-squad leader cut through a green wire. The weapon detonated ten seconds early.

Al-Qaeda gleefully claimed responsibility.

Chapter 2

May 15th, GenCon Oil Rig, Gulf of Mexico

George Adams spread the metal legs of his red, white, and blue canvas lawn chair onto the rough steel deck-plating, gently sat down, fishing pole in hand, and settled back for a relaxing morning. He was on leave from the U.S. Navy, enjoying a fishing and business trip with his cousin, Dwight Belevieu. Dwight stood next to him, dangling a line forty feet to the water below.

“Just think, George, here we are on a GenCon oil rig, a hundred miles south of New Orleans, on a beautiful spring day, and all we have to do is fish! This is the life!”

“I need the rest, that’s for sure,” responded George. “This tour of duty on the USS
Annapolis
has been murder. Sometimes it seems I go for months on end without a single day off, and the work
still
isn’t done! We just got back from our third monthlong patrol up and down the East Coast, and we finally get a little rest. The
Annapolis
is in the yards for a couple of months getting an electronics upgrade. When she comes out, we get to go do it again!”

“That’s what you get for being a big shot lieutenant commander.”

“
Me
the big shot? What about
you
? You started off building crew boats for transporting roughneck crews to and from oil platforms in the Gulf, and now you’re the president and principal owner of GenCon Construction Company, one of the largest oil rig manufacturers in the world. I have about a hundred and thirty crewmembers on my submarine. How many employees you got now, Dwight?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A couple of thousand, more or less. We subcontract out a lot. They deliver the big pieces to us, and we just bolt ’em and weld ’em together.”

“Yeah, right. You’re being pretty modest, Cousin. The engineering that goes into these rigs is phenomenal. And that was a brilliant business move developing that jack-up rig for use in deeper waters. GenCon would’ve been nothing without you, Dwight.”

“Well, it did enable us to get a lot of deep-water rigs on the market real fast. We’ve got more than two dozen of our rigs on long-term leases with major oil companies.”

“And the money just keeps flowing in!”

“So you’re glad you invested with me early on, George?”

“You’re darn tootin’! Thanks to you, I’m one of the few naval officers around with several million dollars put away for retirement. You’re not going to find George Adams trying to eke out a living on a navy pension!”

“Oh right! Eke out a livin’? Come on, I’m sure the navy takes good care of big shot officers like you. You’re the executive officer of one of the country’s most advanced attack submarines. They’re not gonna let you starve.”

“Well, I wouldn’t starve, but I wouldn’t exactly be living in the manner to which I would
like
to be accustomed!”

The two men laughed. For about an hour, they kept lowering and raising their fishing lines without catching a thing. There was nothing but the gently rolling waters of the Gulf as far as you could see in every direction. The sun was bright and hot, and the reflection off the surface of the water doubled its burning power.

“George, you oughtta go put on some sunscreen. That fair skin of yours is glowin’ bright red!”

“I know. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I keep thinking I’ll drop this line one more time and I’ll get a bite! Well, we’ve been at it all morning, and the fish aren’t biting.”

“I thought you were out here to relax. Don’t be so wound up.” Dwight teased.

“I can’t help it—it’s in my nature. Besides, I’m having a hard time relaxing and enjoying the fishing part of this trip because what I really want to see is the operational test of our new propulsion system.” George let his line down to the water one more time to make sure.

“What? You mean that little ‘sub-fighter’ thing?”

“Yeah, that little sub-fighter
thing!
”

Dwight laughed. “You know, when you came to me with that idea four years ago, I thought you were crazy. I thought, here’s my little freckle-faced, redheaded cousin, all five-foot nine of him, telling me he’s going to revolutionize submarine warfare. I thought you’d had way too much sun on top of that red head of yours!”

“Very funny, Dwight. I’m five-nine-and-a-half—closer to five-ten, actually,” George joked. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t too sure a swamp rat like you could comprehend the complexities of my plan!”

“Touché, George. You have to admit, though, it was pretty radical out-of-the-box thinking—turning a submarine into an underwater aircraft carrier!”

“Well, there’s no reason it won’t work. The sub-fighter will be an armed two-man fighter plane that we moor to the deck of a mother ship submarine until needed. Heck, on a ballistic missile submarine you could mount
two
sub-fighters on the deck, right over the escape hatches.”

“I know, I know. And then the captain of that sub can launch the sub-fighters to perform surveillance missions and to intercept and destroy enemy attack boats well beyond normal torpedo range.”

“That’s right. The sub-fighters would protect the mother ship and extend the range of its weapons just like fighter and attack aircraft do on an aircraft carrier.”

“Well, at any rate, your first design left a little to be desired—especially the part that had the fighter carrying a Mark 48 torpedo!”

“Yeah, I know. The Mark 48 was just too big and too heavy to haul around in a little two-man sub-fighter. Besides, after I thought about it some more, I decided that if the predicted speed and maneuverability of the sub-fighter were verified, the fighter would never need that much firepower to perform its intended mission anyway.”

“Yeah, and the stealthiness of it helps, too. Your later plans were a lot better.”

“Well, I got together with that naval architect you told me about, and he helped steer me in the right direction.”

“I have to admit, my skepticism faded when you showed me your revised plans and explained how this thing would work. In fact,
nothin’
can stop me now. I’m gonna build us a prototype come hell or high water!”

George laughed. “Well, if our radical new propulsion system works as expected, the speed of these fighters will be unheard of in submarine warfare.”

Dwight strutted proudly around the deck like a rooster guarding his henhouse. “Well the guys have been preparin’ the system for the test all mornin’. We’ll be ready in a few minutes. I think you’re gonna like it. From the looks of the preliminary results, this propulsion system is gonna make these fighters unbelievably fast!”

“And don’t forget maneuverable,” George added.

“That’s true. I think the maneuverability of this darn thing, with its dramatic new hull and wing design, would astound even the most far-thinking designers.”

“Remember, Dwight, after I retire from active duty, we’re going into business together to complete the development and sell sub-fighters to the navy. This test today is a huge part of that plan. If this test is successful, we’re pretty much guaranteed we’ll make more money than a dozen GenCons, maybe a hundred GenCons, put together.”

Dwight was a true American success story. He was born in the Atchafalaya Swamp, or at least that’s what he liked to tell people. When people from other parts of the country were around, Dwight would brag about rasslin’ gators when he was six years old and polin’ a pirogue through the water moccasin-infested waterways of the Atchafalaya when he was seven. In actuality, his birth certificate said Baton Rouge Charity Hospital. His father, a shift operator at the huge Exxon oil refinery in Baton Rouge, had met and married a Scottish-Irish Mississippi girl—George’s Aunt Tillie—and Dwight had been born a year later. He was raised middle class and graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in Petroleum Engineering. Dwight was a stocky, solidly built Cajun (well,
half
-Cajun anyway). He was proud of being Cajun and proud of being in the oil business.

Dwight strolled over to where George was, once again, letting his line down to the water forty feet below. He snickered at George’s persistence. “All right, all right. If you insist, and since you aren’t catchin’ anything anyway, let’s go see how they’re comin’ with the SQID. If they’re on schedule, we should be able to give her a quick test before lunch. How about it?”

SQID was their acronym for the Super-cavitation Quantified Injection Drive. The sub-fighter would have two propulsion systems. The main propulsion system would use an electrically driven impeller inside a tube running from the bow to the stern of the fighter. This system was to be used for normal cruising, and their calculations showed it would push the fighter along at speeds up to fifty knots. That’s fast, but the SQID was the real surprise. The SQID was based on the way a real squid accelerates. The squid has an internal “bladder” that holds water, and when he needs to accelerate in a hurry, to escape a shark for example, the squid expels a water jet that accelerates him at tremendous speed in the opposite direction. Similarly, the fighter would have a water chamber, which filled when the SQID drive was activated. A hydraulically driven piston would then force the water out of a nozzle on the stern at tremendously high pressure and speed. The blast would only last about seven seconds, but they estimated the fighter would accelerate during that time to over one hundred fifty knots!

“Let’s do it!” George quickly reeled in his line and set the fishing pole aside.

Dwight turned around and motioned George to move back as a couple of GenCon deckhands wheeled up a contraption that, to George, was a beautiful sight. The SQID was about ten feet long, tubular, with a bell-shaped nozzle at the back end. It expanded at the front end to form the water chamber, and a large hydraulic actuator was attached there to force the piston through the chamber. The SQID was welded to a test stand, which Dwight and the deckhands locked into position at the edge of the platform with large tie-down chains hooked into tie-down points on the deck. The nozzle pointed out over the Gulf at a slightly elevated angle. One of the deckhands pulled over a two-inch fire hose and began filling up the water chamber while the other hooked up electrical power to the hydraulic actuator.

When they were all set, Dwight looked at George. “You ready?”

“Hell, yes!”

With a grandiose gesture, Dwight reached over to a panel welded to the SQID test stand and flipped up a red switch guard, revealing a simple chrome switch in the down position.

“Are you ready? Are you
really
ready?”

“Get on with it, man.”

Dwight flipped the switch to the on position. The hydraulic actuators started to whine. Suddenly, there was a tremendous roar as a jet of water blasted from the nozzle. George covered both ears with his hands as he watched the trajectory of the water jet in amazement as it flew through the air for a thousand feet or more before dissipating in the air over the Gulf of Mexico. The test stand strained against the large tie-down chains as the momentum of the water jet pushed the stand in the opposite direction. In seven seconds, it ended as abruptly as it started. The silence was deafening!

“Holy cow, Dwight! That’s not a propulsion system—that’s a directed energy weapon! Hell, if you turned that thing skyward, I’ll bet you could shoot down an aircraft!”

George walked around the SQID, admiring it as an outstanding bit of engineering, and kneeling down to examine the nozzle. He looked up at Dwight. “Well I’ll be! You did it, Cousin.”

“
We
did it, Cuz. It was all your idea, I just built it.”

“Let’s try it again, and see if—”

George was interrupted by Dwight’s foreman shouting something from the control shack. He ran across the deck toward them. His urgency and the ashen look on his face unsettled both George and Dwight. They glanced at each other.

“Uh-oh,” said Dwight. “This can’t be good.”

“Dwight!!” the foreman shouted. “You gotta come listen to the radio.
Now,
man!”