Deep Black
Authors: Stephen Coonts; Jim Defelice
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF STEPHEN COONTS
SAUCER
“A comic, feel-good SF adventure . . . [delivers] optimistic messages about humanity’s ability to meet future challenges.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Tough to put down.”
—
Publishers Weekly
AMERICA
“The master of the techno-thriller spins a bone-chilling worst-case scenario involving international spies, military heroics,
conniving politicians, devious agencies, a hijacked nuclear sub, lethal computer hackers, currency speculators, maniac moguls
and greedy mercenaries that rivals Clancy for fiction-as-realism and Cussler for spirited action . . . [Coonts] never lets
up with heart-racing jet/missile combat, suspenseful submarine maneuvers and doomsday scenarios that feel only too real, providing
real food for thought in his dramatization of the missile-shield debate.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“Fans of Coonts and his hero Grafton will love it. Great fun.”
—
Library Journal
“Coonts’s action and the techno-talk are as gripping as ever.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Thrilling roller-coaster action. Give a hearty welcome back to Adm. Jake Grafton.”
—
The Philadelphia Inquirer
HONG KONG
“The author gives us superior suspense with a great cast of made-up characters . . . But the best thing about this book is
Coonts’s scenario for turning China into a democracy.”
—Liz Smith,
The New York Post
MORE . . .
“A high-octane blend of techno-wizardry [and] ultraviolence . . . [Coonts] skillfully captures the postmodern flavor of Hong
Kong, where a cell phone is as apt as an AK-47 to be a revolutionary weapon.”
—
USA Today
“Entertaining . . . intriguing.”
—
Booklist
“Will be enjoyed by Coonts’s many fans . . . Coonts has perfected the art of the high-tech adventure story.”
—
Library Journal
“Coonts does a remarkable job of capturing the mood of clashing cultures in Hong Kong.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“Filled with action, intrigue, and humanity.”
—
San Jose Mercury News
CUBA
“Enough Tomahawk missiles, stealth bombers, and staccato action to satisfy [Coonts’s] most demanding fans.”
—
USA Today
“[A] gripping and intelligent thriller.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“Perhaps the best of Stephen Coonts’s six novels about modern warfare.”
—
Austin American-Statesman
“Coonts delivers some of his best gung-ho suspense writing yet.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Dramatic, diverting action . . . Coonts delivers.”
—
Booklist
FORTUNES OF WAR
“
Fortunes of War
is crammed with action, suspense, and characters with more than the usual one dimension found in these books.”
—
USA Today
“A stirring examination of courage, compassion, and profound nobility of military professionals under fire. Coonts’s best
yet.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)
“Full of action and suspense . . . a strong addition to the genre.”
—
Publishers Weekly
FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER
“Extraordinary! Once you start reading, you won’t want to stop!”
—Tom Clancy
“Coonts knows how to write and build suspense . . . this is the mark of a natural storyteller.”
—
The New York Times Book Review
“[Coonts’s] gripping, first-person narration of aerial combat is the best I’ve ever read. Once begun, this book cannot be
laid aside.”
—
The Wall Street Journal
“Kept me strapped in the cockpit of the author’s imagination for a down-and-dirty novel.”
—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Novels by
STEPHEN COONTS
Liberty
Saucer
Hong Kong
Cuba
Fortunes of War
Flight of the Intruder
Final Flight
The Minotaur
Under Siege
The Red Horseman
The Intruders
Nonfiction books by
STEPHEN COONTS
The Cannibal Queen
War in the Air
Books by
JIM DEFELICE
Coyote Bird
War Breaker
Havana Strike
Brother’s
Keeper
Cyclops One
(forthcoming)
With Dale Brown:
Dale
Brown’s
Dreamland
(Dale Brown & Jim DeFelice)
Nerve Center
(Dale Brown & Jim DeFelice)
Razor’s
Edge
(Dale Brown & Jim DeFelice)
STEPHEN
COONTS’
DEEP
BLACK
Written by Stephen Coonts
and Jim DeFelice
NOTE:
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold
and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
STEPHEN COONTS’ DEEP BLACK
Copyright © 2003 by Stephen Coonts.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except
in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175
Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 0-312-98520-7
Printed in the United States of America
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / May 2003
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedication
To the men and women at the National Security and
Central Intelligence Agencies, who do it better
than we could ever say
Author’s Note
The National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, Space Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security
Council, United States Special Operations Command, Air Force, Delta Force, and Marines are, of course, real. While based on
actual organizations affiliated with the intelligence community, Desk Three and all of the people in this book are fiction.
The technology depicted here either exists or is being developed.
Liberties have been taken in describing actual places, organizational structures, and procedures to facilitate the telling
of the tale.
CONTENTS
Taxiing on the ramp at Novosibirsk in southwestern Siberia, Dashik Flight R7 looked like any other tired Russian jet, weighed
down by creditors as well as metal fatigue. Anyone glancing at the exterior of the Ilyushin IL-62 as it bumped toward the
runway would easily see that the craft was preparing for its last miles. Aeroflot’s faded paint scheme was still visible on
the fuselage though the Russian airline hadn’t operated or even owned the craft for nearly a decade and a half. Shiny metal
patches lined the lower wing and fuselage where repairs had been made, and there was a rather conspicuous dent next to the
forward door on the right side of the plane. Though converted from passenger to cargo service aeons ago, the plane retained
its windows. About half had been painted over halfheartedly; the rest were still clear, though a third of these were blocked
by shades, most stuck at odd angles. A close inspection of the four Soloviev D-30K engines below the tail would reveal that
they had recently been serviced, but that was clearly an anomaly—the tires on the landing gear had less tread than the average
Hot Wheels car.
According to the details of the flight records filed with the authorities, the onetime airliner was now used primarily to
fly parts west of the Ural Mountains. Tonight its manifest showed three crates of oil pumps and related machinery were aboard.
They were bound for Vokuta, from which they would be trucked to their final destination, about thirty miles farther east.
The crates had been duly inspected, though as usual the inspector had been somewhat more interested in the unofficial (though
definitely mandatory) fee for his services than in the crates themselves.
Perhaps because of the weather, the inspection had been conducted in the airport cargo handling area before the plane was
loaded. Had the inspector ventured into the aircraft itself, he would have found nothing unusual, except for the sophisticated
glass wall of flight instruments lining the cockpit. Such improvements were out of place in an aged and obviously worthless
craft, though since the inspector knew little about airplanes it was doubtful he would have drawn any such conclusion. Nor
would he have been surprised to find that the door on the compartment aft of the flight deck could not be opened. Such doors
and compartments were the rule rather than the exception. On discovering the door, his next step would have been to elicit
an additional fee for overlooking it.
Dashik R7’s locked compartment held neither
mafiya
cash nor drugs, as the inspector would have guessed. Instead, a small fold-down seat and a long metal counter dominated the
space; on the countertop were two large video screens, stacked one atop the other. They looked as if they had been taken from
a home theater setup, but in fact the thick bundle of fiber-optic cables extruding from the sides was attached to a computer
system whose parallel processing CPUs and flash-SRAM memory lined the full floor of the cargo bay. This computer system had
no keyboard, accepting its commands through a special headset that could be used by only one person in the world. The beaked
band at the top of the headset included sensors that analyzed both the operator’s voice and retinas; it would only communicate
with the computer if they matched the configuration hard-wired into the computer’s circuits.
By no coincidence at all, the man the headset had been designed for sat in the locked compartment, waiting patiently as Dashik
R7 gunned its finely tuned and subtly modified Solovievs a touch more aggressively than a casual observer might have expected.
For the first thirty yards down the runway it might properly be described as lumbering; from that point on, however, it moved
with the efficiency of a well-tuned military jet, leaping rather than faltering into the sky.
Stephan Moyshik—more accurately known as Stephen Martin, though only to his ultimate employer—breathed slowly and deeply as
the plane took off, willing his consciousness to remain locked in the Zen meditation exercise he had practiced for months.
The Dramamine he had taken a half hour ago calmed his stomach, but there was no cure for the claustrophobic feel of the small
compartment, nor the sensation of helplessness that crept across his shoulders as the Ilyushin climbed. Martin knew that his
anxiety would pass; it always did. But knowing such a thing could not completely erase his fear. When Martin had come to Russia
at the start of the Wave Three missions three months before, he felt mildly agitated at takeoff and landing. Now his heart
pounded and sweat poured from every part of his skin, his breath the erratic cacophony of a dozen pneumatic drills firing
at once. Ironically, he was himself a pilot, though not qualified on multiengined craft.
Martin spent the first twenty-seven minutes after takeoff tonight in high panic. Two large blades, one black, one white, twisted
in the middle of his chest, their dagger points entwined around his heart.
Twenty-eight minutes after takeoff, a low tone sounded in his headset. Martin took a long breath, then reached his fingers
to adjust the mouthpiece. His fingers trembled so badly that he had a great deal of difficulty setting it in place.
Yet once it was there, the panic ebbed. “Readying startup,” he told the pilot over the interphone.
“Roger that. We are fifteen minutes from Alpha.”
Martin looked up at the blank screens for a moment, then reached to the counter and placed his hand on a highly polished rectangle
at the right. The sensors below read his fingerprints; red dots appeared in the middle of the screens.
“Command: System activate. Diagnostics One,” said Martin.
The computer did not acknowledge directly. Instead, a pink light flickered at the center of both screens, and then their dark
surfaces flared with a barrage of color. A mosaic of different shades—actually a diagnostic screen for the video components—materialized
in mirror images, one atop the other. Martin settled his hands into his lap, thumbs together over his thighs. The computer
spent the next five minutes testing itself and the discrete-burst communication system it used to communicate with the outside
world. When that was done, it turned its diagnostics to the intricate grid embedded in its wings, fine-tuning the induction
device so that it could pick up the presence of a discarded compass magnet at 50,000 feet.
The computer had to get considerably closer to the ground to pick up the magnetic patterns on a spinning disk drive—15,000
feet, though they would fly at 12,000 to give themselves a margin for error.
“Alpha in zero nine,” said the pilot just as the tests were complete.
“Yes,” said Martin, his eyes focused on the pattern of colored dots on the top screen. The computer could easily filter very
strong magnetic fields as Dashik R7 passed over them; the great difficulty was dealing with subtle sources. For some reason,
discarded telephones presented the greatest difficulty; all of Martin’s tweaks—delivered as voice commands and prods on the
touch-sensitive screens—barely screened 50 percent of the devices from their net. Given that they had a limited capacity to
transmit the data to the collection satellites above, and the fact that they had to fly without arousing suspicion, every
mistaken capture was costly. On their last flight, Martin had recorded the data of a fax machine apparently belonging to a
dentist; he suspected that colleagues would now refer to him as “the Periodontist” in derision.
Martin pointed to a magenta cluster at the right-hand side of the screen and made a circular motion with his index finger.
The cluster zoomed into a white-lined box with a black legend at the edge—a twenty-megabyte hard drive, probably belonging
to a laptop. Had they been transmitting, a tap in the middle of the cluster would have uploaded all of the magnetic patterns
into the capture satellite above; from there it would have been beamed back to the U.S. for analysis. Within twelve or fifteen
hours, depending on the shift, the contents of the drive would be available for detailed inspection.
Satisfied that he had the gear tuned as well as he could, Martin ordered the computer to display a sitrep map on the lower
screen. The map, using GPS input and an extensive map library updated by daily satellite input, showed Dashik R7’s position
on a simulated 3-D image as it approached the Iachin commercial complex, the small R and R facility west of Kargasok operated
by Voyska PVO that was tonight’s target. Martin was neither privy to the intercept nor briefed on the precise significance
of his target, but he would have been dull indeed not to know what the high-tech NSA sniffer was looking for. The Russians
had lately been trying to perfect their long-range laser technology, creating a weapon that could conceivably replace conventional
antiair and perhaps antisatellite missiles. Two complexes containing laser directors—the units that actually emitted the high-energy
beam—either were being constructed or had been constructed east of the Urals. Not only had Martin seen them on the satellite
images included in the flight briefs, but also their instructions included strict language to avoid those areas. The facility
they were targeting was located about halfway between them; he assumed that the computers were connected by dedicated fiber-optic
cable to the facilities and contained information about the tests. (Had the connection been more conventional, it could have
been penetrated by easier means.)
The sitrep showed Dashik R7 over a wasteland about two minutes from the stretched elliptical cone where information could
be swept into the net. Martin raised his head from the screen, a wave of relief flooding over him. It was downhill from here,
just a matter of punching buttons.
“Shit,” said the copilot over the interphone. “Company.”
“Bogey at twenty thousand feet, coming right over us,” explained the pilot, his voice considerably calmer than the copilot’s.
“MiG-29 radar active. No identifier.”
Martin ignored them, concentrating on the top video screen. He pointed to a bright red cluster in the left-hand quadrant.
This belonged to a rather large disk array a few miles from their target area. It had the sort of profile he’d seen from units
used by banks for financial records, but since their briefing hadn’t identified any large computer systems here—and the sitrep
showed they were still over a largely unpopulated area—Martin decided it was worth starting the show a little early.
“Command: Transmit. Command: Configuration Normal One.”
The computer gave him a low tone to confirm that it had complied.
The copilot drowned it out. “That son of a bitch is targeting us!”
“Keep your diaper clean,” said the pilot. “He’s only going to hit us for a bribe. He’s alone. He’s obviously a pirate. Hail
him. Tell him we’ll agree to terms. His squadron probably ran out of whore money—or jet fuel.”
“Nothing on the radio. He thinks we don’t know he’s here.”
“Hail him.”
Martin once more tried to ignore the conversation. Air pirates were rarely encountered by Dashik since they freely paid the
protection fees in advance, but there were always new groups muscling in. Legitimate PVO units obtained quite a bit of “supplemental
funding” through their Air Security fees; occasional freelancers got in the act for a few weeks or as long as they could get
away with it. The agreement to make a certain credit card payment to a specific account upon landing generally precluded being
diverted; if that didn’t work, naming a specific PVO general as their protector inevitably got the pirate to break off. Russia’s
chaos had grown considerably over the past few months; the country’s economy, never strong, was once more teetering. Part
of the problem had to do with an increase in military expenditures to develop new weapons and deal with insurgencies in the
southern parts of the country, but Martin thought the country would have been far better off putting the money into things
such as housing or even subsidizing agriculture.
Not that anyone would have been interested in his opinion.
The red clusters on the video screen pulsated as their contents were transmitted. A white dialogue box opened to their right,
the computer sniffing a significant sequence. A run of hexadecimals shot across the screen; Martin tapped them to stop the
flow of numbers, then pointed below the box.
“Command: Open Delphic Fox translator. Access: Compare.”
The computers took the intercepted sequence and examined them for signifiers that were used in the current Russian military
telemetry and data storage. As smart as they were, Dashik’s onboard computers did not have the capacity—or time—to translate
the information, let alone hunt for cipher keys or do anything to “break” an encryption. But that wasn’t the point. By identifying
the way the information was organized, the system helped operators decide what to capture. Its significance was determined
elsewhere.
FOX BLUE, VARIATION 13, declared the computer.
Martin had no idea what Fox Blue, Variation 13, was, only that it was on his list to capture. He directed the system to concentrate
all of its energy on tapping the source rather than continuing to scan for others. He debated asking the satellite image library
for a close-up of the target building, which looked like a small shed on the bottom screen. But the library wasn’t kept onboard,
and requesting the information from SpyNet and having it beamed back down would narrow the transmit flow.
An overflow error appeared—clearly this was a very large storage system; the plane’s equipment couldn’t keep up with the data
it was stealing.
“Slow to minimum speed,” Martin told the pilot. “We may have to circle back on this one. This is something interesting.”
“Impossible. Hold on—”
In the next second, Martin felt his stomach leave his body. The aircraft plummeted, twisting in the air on its left wing.
As it slammed back in the opposite direction, the seat belt nearly severed his body. The computer sounded a high tone that
meant it was losing its ability to reap magnetic signatures; the signal grew sharp and then was replaced by a hum—they were
no longer collecting.
