Operation Sea Ghost (8 page)

The agent ignored him. “I’m here because we’ve got a major problem in Asia and, as much as it goes against my nature to admit it, we require some expert assistance.”

“Just for the record, who’s ‘we?’” Nolan asked him.

The agent just stared back at him. “Who do you think?” he asked.

Then the agent began a strange story. Two months before, the wreckage of a C-130 cargo plane was unearthed in a remote area of Vietnam near the Laotian border. The aircraft had been shot down in 1968, crashing into a rice paddy. Apparently the paddy had become flooded soon after, as a result of heavy monsoons, causing the wreck to sink in the mud and hiding it for more than forty years. It was discovered only when local villagers looking for metal to make cooking pots began digging in the area.

Four skeletal bodies were found in the wreckage; the villagers quickly buried them. But they also found an unusual cargo container. This container was made of highly reinforced material and was marked only with a single “Z.” The villagers repeatedly tried to open it, but failed each time. Eventually they turned it over to authorities.

Old hands in the Vietnamese military recognized the container as an SMT, something the U.S. used during the Indochina War to carry anything from classified documents to secret weapons to hazardous materials. Because this one was marked with a “Z”, which they interpreted as meaning “hazardous,” the Vietnamese wanted nothing to do with it. Their military intelligence service asked Swiss intermediaries to contact the CIA’s Bangkok station and inform them of what had been found.

News of the container’s discovery rippled through the Bangkok office, where a couple of semiretired contract workers remembered what the Z-box mission was all about. In fact, the Agency had looked for the Z-box for years after the war, using satellite surveillance, infiltrating U.S.-Vietnamese body recovery teams, and even sending in undercover agents to scour the Vietnamese countryside.

Now that it had been found, the Bangkok office wanted to get it out of Vietnam and dispose of it as soon as possible. But they wanted to do it in such a way that no one in the CIA would actually come in contact with it. Their reason: The box’s contents were so potentially embarrassing, no one in the know wanted to get their fingerprints on it.

So they cooked up a plan. The idea was to have the Vietnamese put the container on a ship leaving Haiphong. The ship, called the
Pacific Star,
would also have a few tons of weapons stashed aboard, captured M-16s left over from the war that the Vietnamese also wanted to get rid of. These were referred to as “the bait.” After a few days at sea, and once the ship was approximately twenty miles off the west coast of Sumatra, it would be taken over by “pirates,” who were actually Filipino seamen in the CIA’s employ. At that point, a U.S. Navy warship would engage the vessel, battle the “pirates,” rescue the crew, and then sink the ship right over the Java Trench, sending it and the Z-box to one of the deepest parts of the seven seas.

“So, what happened?” Nolan asked the briefer. “I’m guessing it’s not a happy ending.”

The agent shook his head no.

“Our ‘pirates’ never made it onto the ship,” he said. “The freaking thing was taken over by
real
pirates before our guys could get into position. So now the ship, the old M-16s and this Z-box are floating around out there somewhere, but we’ve got no idea where.”

Nolan looked at the other Whiskey members. They were all on the verge of laughing. They’d all heard some crazy CIA stories before, but this one was crazier than usual.

The agent went on. “Now, this thing was hatched strictly by the Bangkok office. No one in the White House or the Pentagon has any idea the operation was going on. The cruiser we used is assigned to us for special ops, and ninety-nine percent of its crew didn’t have a clue what was up, either. But what was supposed to be a mission to avoid embarrassment for the Agency has now become an incident that could draw
huge
negative publicity for everyone involved. Just because no one ever counted on the ship being seized by
real
pirates…”

Finally the team burst out laughing—they couldn’t help it. Lamebrained didn’t come close to describing the scheme.

But the briefer surprised them by saying: “Let me finish, because it gets worse. The people in charge were so sure this would work, they’d prepared a press release to be sent out once the ‘pirate ship’ was sunk.

“Now, thank God the people on the Navy ship were smart enough not to issue it—but some dumb-ass in our Bangkok field office discovered his computer might have been hacked and now this press release might be out there, somewhere, too. At any moment, the world might hear the U.S. Navy sank a pirate ship off the coast of Sumatra, rescuing its Vietnamese crew in the process. The press release even says something like the ‘first full-scale U.S. Navy sea battle with pirates since the 1800s.’ But when it gets out that there was no battle, no heroes, no pirate ship sunk … it will be very bad for all involved.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

“So, why are you telling us this?” Nolan finally asked him.

The agent wiped some sweat from his forehead; he seemed a little out of his element here.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he replied. “You’re the Pirate Hunters. We want you to hunt down these pirates and get this Z-box back, before they realize what they have.”

“And what do they have exactly?” Nolan asked; it was the question on everyone’s mind. “What’s in the box?”

But the agent shook his head gravely. “I can’t tell you,” he replied. “In our own lingo, the box, and what it was doing on that plane that night, has been described to me as both ‘catastrophically compromising’ and ‘potentially horrific and beyond any plausible deniability.’ If you speak the language, you know what all that means. But
what’s
inside is no concern of yours. It could be feathers and popcorn for all you care. Just get it back and we’ll pay you handsomely.”

“OK—then can you define ‘handsomely?’” Gunner asked.

“How’s a hundred million sound?” the agent replied.

The team gasped.

“A hundred million
dollars
?” Gunner whispered.

The agent nodded. “You heard right … that’s how bad we want this thing back.”

The team was stunned into silence. It was an enormous figure.

“And that’s tax-free,” the agent went on. “But, there are guidelines you must follow or there will be no payment.”

“I knew there’d be a catch,” Twitch muttered, speaking for the first time. “There’s
always
a catch.…”

“Well, this is a big one,” the agent told them. “Like I said, no one in the Pentagon or in the White House is aware this Z-box has been found—and it
must
stay that way. This means no help can be asked of
any
U.S. military units or any
other
U.S. government agency in looking for this thing.
None.
If word of this leaks out from you guys, the whole thing goes down the drain—and I don’t care if your fingers are three inches away from grabbing the box. The lid on this has to be sealed tight and you should all go down fighting before anyone gets a peep out of you.”

Twitch raised his hand—his way of asking if he could ask a question.

“Why doesn’t the Agency just go after this thing itself? You got a worldwide network; you got spies, informants, satellites. It seems you could find it quicker than us or anyone else.”

Once again, the agent was shaking his head. He seemed anxious—and disorganized.

“I know that makes the most sense,” he said. “But again, this thing, the original ‘Z-box mission’ was so off-the-reservation, that even forty years later, the Agency can’t be seen anywhere near it. We can’t put our fingerprints on it, we can’t have a paper trail, we can’t even breathe next to it. Had we dug it up ourselves that would have been a different story. But now that it’s out of our control—well, that’s why we’ll pony up so much money for you guys to get it back.”

Another silence. Then Nolan summed it up: “So if we find the pirates, the hijacked ship, and get your box back without any outside help, you’ll pay us a hundred million dollars.”

The agent nodded. “And I don’t want to know how you are doing it, what methods you’re using, what happens to the pirates, nothing. In fact, I was never here. My name is Audette, but that’s all you have to know. I’ll give you two sat-phones, a number and a code word. Once you’ve found the box, or can confirm its whereabouts, call me and give me the code word. And that’s how I’ll know what’s happened. Agreed?”

Nolan looked at the team. They all nodded quickly. For a hundred-million-dollar payday, they’d swim to the moon and back.

The agent smiled nervously. “I’m hoping you guys hit gold right away, so this thing will be simpler than we thought.”

But no sooner were those words out of his mouth than his sat-phone started beeping. The agent did all the listening in the conversation that followed.

When he hung up, he had to wipe some newly formed perspiration from his brow.

“There’s been a development,” he said, slowly. “Not a pleasant one…”

He held up his sat-phone. “That was my contact in Bangkok. Apparently the Prince of Monaco is now involved in this thing.”

The team members laughed again.

“The
Prince
of
Monaco
?” Gunner exclaimed. “How the fuck…”

The agent explained: “We just got word that not too long after that target ship was hijacked, a sat-phone on board made seven calls, all within five minutes. One was to a number in Germany, a place called Bad Sweeten. Ever hear of it? It’s a dumpy little city, some place still stuck in the old East Germany. But it’s also a hotbed for al Qaeda types, as well as people who in the past have brokered ransom deals for Somali pirates. We believe many of these brokers are ex-Stazi agents—you know, the old East German secret police?”

“That’s not good…” Gunner said.

The agent went on. “Another call from the same cell phone went to the Prince’s Palace in Monaco. Then the rest went to other phones at unknown locations within Monte Carlo.”

“Monaco? Monte Carlo?” Gunner said. “What could all that possibly mean?”

The agent shook his head. “I’ve got no idea—but we were able to track down the phone by satellite. They found it, still turned on, left adrift on a small raft not far from where the target ship was hijacked.”

Whiskey groaned as one. There was no mystery to this part of the story. It was an old spy trick. By setting the sat phone adrift, the pirates were trying to confuse anyone in pursuit. It also confirmed they were smarter than previously thought.

“This means
they
know they have something more important than a bunch of old M-16s in their possession,” Nolan said. “They must have found the box and determined it has value to somebody. But how?”

The agent shook his head. “Who knows? Those Vietnamese sailors might have mentioned the Agency in the confusion. That’s all it would take, maybe.”

Nolan said, “Well, for whatever reason, if they’re talking about it to money brokers in this Bad Sweeten place, and in Monte Carlo, then I’m guessing they’re trying to sell it somehow. I’m also guessing they’ll try to get rid of that ship they hijacked as quickly as possible.”

At this, the team nodded as one; the agent detected something.

He studied them for a moment and then asked, “So now that you have all this information, is there any chance you guys know where these mooks might be heading?”

Nolan shrugged. “Nothing is exact in our business,” he said. “Most pirates are drug addicts and drunks. Few of them have ever been educated. But—if they think someone is out there looking for them, someone with the resources of the U.S. Navy or the CIA? Yes, they’ll want to dump that ship quick, quiet and permanently. And for that there’s only one place they’ll go.”

“And where is that?” the agent wanted to know.

“Ever hear of Gottabang?” Nolan asked.

*   *   *

GOTTABANG WAS A place where old ships went to die.

It was a vast scrap yard located on a beach in northwest India.

The place had unusual tide changes, thirty feet from high to low, which made it an ideal place to “break” ships.

An old ship destined to be broken—that is, cut up and sold for scrap—would appear off Gottabang and ride in on the high tide at full speed, intentionally beaching itself. As soon as the tide ebbed, a small army of workers would descend on the beach and, armed with cutting torches and sledgehammers, would tear into the ship like vultures, carrying it away one piece at a time until there was nothing left.

Many of the ships that met their end like this were thirty years old or more. This meant they were full of hazardous materials such as asbestos, PCBs and highly toxic hydraulic fluids and fuel.

When a ship was gutted, a lot of these harmful contents spilled out onto the beach—and most of them stayed there, to be eventually burned, which simply spread their toxicity over an even larger area. In fact, fires big and small burned along Gottabang’s beach day and night, providing a poisonous atmosphere for the 20,000 people who worked and lived there.

As a result, Gottabang looked like a doomed landscape where industrialism and pollution had run rampant. On any given day, more than 100 ships sat offshore, waiting to be called to their death.

There were a few other places in Asia where ships could be broken, larger places. But Gottabang had a special distinction: It was the least regulated of all the ship-breaking operations. If pirates or anyone else wanted to get rid of a ship with no questions asked, Gottabang was the place to go.

The procedure was simple: A typical-size 500-foot cargo transporter could produce enough scrap metal to see a million-dollar profit or more. But if a pirate band wanted to quickly lose evidence of a hijacking, they could bring a ship to Gottabang and get it broken in return for a mere fraction of that amount, if anything at all, letting the bulk of the profit go to the millionaires in Bombay who owned the ship-breaking operation.