Huston, James W. -2003- Secret Justice (com v4.0)(html) (47 page)

Sarah St. James could feel the acid in her stomach. Things were starting to happen too fast. They had had no information for weeks, and now it was pouring in from all sources, mostly in agreement, but some in conflict. Wahamed Duar had been acquitted, although it wasn’t Wahamed Duar. He was probably on a ship that no one could find heading for United States. The entire United States Navy, Coast Guard, NSA, and Air Force could not locate one lousy ship. And now a liquefied natural gas ship, which had the explosive power of a small nuclear device, was being taken by “pirates.” This had been heard by the Coast Guard, and the Navy, and was confirmed by a submarine, which was thirty nautical miles away.

The Office of Navy Intelligence, ONI, and the Director of Central Intelligence both believed that Wahamed Duar was the one taking the LNG ship.

Sarah St. James thought they were probably right. The President was so concerned he had called yet another emergency meeting of the National Security Council. He was livid. The situation room felt unusually cold. Someone had turned the air conditioning down to bring the room temperature into the high sixties, probably expecting a lot of heat to be generated in the meeting.

President Kendrick dispensed with the niceties. He turned to Woods. “It’s your belief that Wahamed Duar was aboard the ship that we couldn’t find, and that he has now somehow taken a liquefied natural gas ship off the coast of Virginia. That about sum it up?”

“Yes, sir. I can’t explain how he got by the pickets, but he did. And he is now probably on board that LNG ship.”

President Kendrick said, “I don’t know much about explosives, but I’m prepared to guess that the large ship full of liquefied natural gas is extremely volatile and if it went up it would be a very bad thing.”

Woods looked at Robinson, the Chief of Naval Operations, for an answer. The admiral replied, “It would be very difficult to get it to explode instead of just burn, but if done right, it would be the equivalent of setting off a small nuclear device.”

St. James added, “And if Rat is right, then the ship probably also has a bunch of radioactive cores aboard, which would make this into a very large very dirty bomb that could take out an entire city. Is that about right?”

Robinson replied, “I don’t know if take out an entire city is really accurate. The explosion would certainly take out an area of about four or five city blocks, and the radiation would contaminate everything for a long way. It would take an unbelievable amount of money and a very long time to clean up whatever city this hit.”

Kendrick looked at each person individually. “Where is he going?”

Robinson answered, “We don’t have a heading since the attack. Who knows now what he’ll do. Pretty clear his whole Africa ship thing was just to get him to the
Galli Maru
.”

St. James said, “He took the ship off the coast of Virginia for a reason. He would know that if he takes it a long way from his destination, we’ll find him and get him one way or the other before he has time to do what he has come here to do. What’s really close to him now? Nothing really. Maybe Virginia Beach, but that’s not a very sexy target. I think he’s headed into the Chesapeake. To come right here, to Washington. Or maybe Baltimore, even Philadelphia.”

Kendrick looked horrified. “Here?” He looked at Robinson. “Could he get that big a ship to Washington?”

Admiral Robinson hesitated. “I’m not sure, sir. There are a lot of bridges and it narrows considerably. I’m also not sure what the
Galli Maru
draws, or how high the Potomac is right now. But it is theoretically possible.”

“They’ll never get into the bay,” Stuntz said confidently.

Robinson hesitated, then said, “How would you suggest we stop him?”

Stuntz was surprised by the question and who had asked it. “Why wouldn’t we be able to stop it?”

Robinson replied, “The
Louisiana
is trailing him at periscope depth. Captain Pugh. Very capable. He’s starting thirty miles away though, from the South. If Ms. St. James is right, and Duar turns the LNG ship west to the Chesapeake, it’s going to be hard for the submarine to catch him, depending on the speeds. And the faster the
Louisiana
goes, the harder it is to hear the sonar contacts around her. We’ve sortied every destroyer that could get its engine going and had at least a skeleton crew. Anything that could sail is away from Norfolk, not sitting there waiting to be called.

“The good thing is the LNG ship, if headed for the Chesapeake, has to go to the mouth of the bay. We can wait for them, or set up a picket line, if we can get the ships lined up in time. We’re going to be very hard-pressed to get more than two additional ships to sea before sunrise. Based on my quick calculations, if the
Galli Maru
makes twenty knots—which I’m told it can—it will be across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel and into the bay before dawn. That means we have to find the ship at night. I think we will find it, I’m sure we will find it. But it won’t be simple, and stopping it is a different matter entirely.”

“Different?” Kendrick asked.

“Will you give us permission to sink it right now if we identify it?”

Kendrick shook his head. “We have to assume they’re holding the entire crew of the LNG ship hostage. Until we have no other option, we can’t kill a bunch of innocent people.”

Robinson disagreed. “I sure as hell would, sir, if you don’t mind. If we don’t, this LNG ship with radioactive material will just steam into the Chesapeake Bay. Just like shooting down an airliner full of innocent people that is about to fly into a building.”

Stuntz had been shaking his head. “How sure are we of what exactly has happened? We
think
we know that Duar is aboard a ship that we can’t find because some FBI agent claims to have seen someone who looked like him in Liberia. Of course we now know there’s at least one other person who looks like Duar—we just put him on trial on a Navy ship. How do we know this isn’t just
another
look-alike? And we
believe
the LNG ship has been boarded by ‘pirates’ based on a weak radio transmission that has not been confirmed. Fair enough that the only LNG ship in the area is now not responding to the radio.
Something
has happened. But we couldn’t even find the ship that Duar was supposedly on, and now we’re assuming that he is not only on a ship from Africa with radioactive material—which was never confirmed—but that he has somehow boarded this LNG ship at night, transferred radioactive material, and is now in charge of the ship. We’re so sure of that we’re prepared to sink it? I don’t think so.”

Kendrick snapped at Stuntz. “What would you do, Mr. Secretary?”

“I’d find the ship, send out some Special Forces in helicopters, and board it.”

St. James responded. “I’d send airplanes with antisurface missiles, or get the submarine up there, and sink it now.”

Stuntz frowned. “And cause a nuclear-size explosion full of radioactivity fifty miles off the coast of Virginia? If the wind is from the east you’ll radiate the entire Eastern seaboard!”

“Not if we do it now, while he’s a hundred miles out. We
have
to take the chance. To let it get any closer simply means we’re increasing the risk of something worse happening. He’s taking this ship somewhere, near something, and setting it off. If he gets near the Chesapeake, he could set it off at any time. If he gets to a city it’s just gravy. I say get the submarine or an airplane to sink it.”

President Kendrick looked at Admiral Robinson. “Could the submarine sink the LNG ship?”

“Yes, of course. Assuming we can identify it clearly. He has Mark 48 torpedoes, which would sink it easily. But he would have to catch up with it first.”

Stewart Woods cleared his throat. “Would that set off the gas? Would it blow the ship up and spread the radiation?”

“That torpedo is intended to open a ship up like a can opener. I’ve got to assume that all the natural gas would go. I kind of doubt it would blow up, but it would burn until the ship went down. It would go down pretty quick, especially if he put four fish into her side.”

“Would that put the submarine at risk from the explosion or radiation?”

“Not really. I wouldn’t be concerned about the submarine, but with twenty-four nuclear-tipped ICBMs of its own, we’d have to be sure first. I’d want to talk to some people.”

“I think our course is pretty clear, Mr. President,” Stuntz said.

Kendrick looked at Stuntz with impatience. “And what might that be?”

“The first thing we have to do is find the ship. I think we’ve established here that it could be at the mouth of the Chesapeake before daylight. That means we have to identify it at night. Our ships and airplanes are doing their best to accomplish that, and with a few Coast Guard ships out there, we ought to be able to check every ship coming into the Chesapeake. Let’s make this hard for him if he decides to come into the bay. We ought to get every tug that’s available to be ready to drive him onto a sandbar if he shows up. Then I still think we can stop the ship without blowing it up or killing a bunch of Japanese hostages. We either run it aground, or send our Special Forces, or both.”

St. James reacted. “We can’t
do
it like that. If we run this thing aground in the mouth of the Chesapeake, he’ll set it off and radiate the entire southern Chesapeake Bay for years to come. It might even cause the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to cave in, and it could radiate all of Norfolk. We can’t take that risk. We have to get to him before he gets into the mouth of the bay.”

Kendrick sat down and leaned back in his chair. He put two fingers to his mouth and considered his options. “If we sent in Special Forces, who would it be?” he asked Stuntz.

Stuntz glanced at Admiral Robinson for confirmation and answered Kendrick. “I think it would be Dev Group. They’re very close. They’re based in Little Creek, right at the tip of Virginia at the mouth of the Chesapeake.”

The admiral nodded.

St. James jumped in. “We should use Lieutenant Rathman.”

Stuntz nearly choked. “Why in the hell would we want to use him? Isn’t he still in trial as a criminal defendant?”

“He was assigned to Dev Group before he went to the CIA. And he’s not a criminal. He knows more about Wahamed Duar than anyone. He’s the one who tracked them into Georgia, into the Pankisi gorge, he’s the one who figured out that it was probably Duar who took the radioactive cores from the Russian power generators, he’s the one who tried to stop the ship through the Dardanelles. He briefed us. And yet all this time we’ve been prosecuting him—don’t get me started on that again.”

“Where is that prosecution now?” President Kendrick asked.

“The jury is out.” St. James replied with a touch of spite.

“So we’re going to ask this guy to save the East Coast at the same time we’re asking a jury to put him in prison?” Kendrick asked.

“Yes, sir,” St. James said.

Kendrick was skeptical. “Does anyone agree that it should be Rathman either with his CIA people or with Dev Group?”

“Hell no,” Stuntz said. “That guy is a criminal. He’s probably going to be convicted. Is that the guy that we want leading this operation? Why would anyone think we don’t have other men who can do as good a job as Rathman?”

“Because he is the best, and everybody knows it. Ask Admiral Robinson. Ask Stewart,” she added. “Who would they send?”

Stuntz asked Robinson, “How long would it take Dev Group to get ready?”

Robinson replied, “They’re always on standby. They’re all on beepers and can be ready to go in minutes. I’m quite sure that the officers currently assigned to Dev Group can do a fine job.”

“There you are,” Stuntz said triumphantly. “Let’s get them activated. Get them ready to go. Soon as we locate the ship, they can hit it. The farther out, the better.”

President Kendrick looked at St. James, then responded. “It should be Dev Group. And I think Rathman should lead it. He knows this Duar character. He knows how he thinks, and he’s the one who dropped down on him in Sudan. And he’s the one who
failed
to get him last time. Let him fix it. Let him finish the job.” He turned to the admiral. “How should they do it?”

“We’ll activate them right away. Somebody needs to get ahold of Rathman. We’ll need to get a jet to fly him down to Little Creek immediately. I want him and the others from Dev Group on a helicopter ready to go right now. As soon as we locate the ship, we can vector them in. Going at night will actually be to our advantage.”

One of Duar’s men, who had cut his hair so short that he looked almost bald, held a large handgun to the head of the Japanese captain. They stood in the radio room of the
Sea Dragon,
heading east as fast as the ship would go. The
Galli Maru,
the LNG ship, was twenty miles behind them heading west at the same speed.

He pointed to the transmitter button and nodded. The Japanese radioman looked at his captain with the gun against his head and pressed the button. He spoke as he had been instructed, in a loud whisper. “This is Ichiro Tanaka, radioman of the
Galli Maru
. We have been boarded by terrorists, and are being taken out to sea. They have killed two of the crew and threaten the rest of us. I heard them telling our captain that they are to rendezvous with another ship somewhere to the east, tonight. Our current position is latitude thirty-two degrees fifty minutes North, longitude seventy-four degrees twelve minutes West. I do not think I will be able to transmit—”

Duar’s man pulled Tanaka’s hand off the transmitter. “Good.” He put the handgun to Tanaka’s chest. Tanaka looked up at him in disbelief. He had done exactly as he had been asked. The handgun looked large and menacing and he could feel the coldness of the steel through his shirt. Duar’s man pressed the gun hard against his chest. He hesitated. “Maybe we will need you on the radio again. Come with me.”

Rat found himself drifting off on his comfortable couch. He knew it was rude, and he knew that Andrea would be angry, but he couldn’t help it. The trial had been more exhausting than he had expected. The idea that a few jurors stood between him and a decade in prison—or fleeing the country—was enough to cause him to lose sleep, lose confidence in himself, and question everything. He had his arm around Andrea, who seemed to be pondering the meaning of life. They hadn’t spoken in fifteen minutes.