Shadow Catcher (2 page)

PART ONE

GHOSTS

CHAPTER 1

Kuwait

March 18, 2013

A
lone Westerner weaved his way along the crowded sidewalk in front of the Souk Sharq in Kuwait City, suffering the uneasy glances and occasional loathing glares of the locals. They did not bother him; with his flaxen hair and fair skin, such looks were unavoidable. On another day, he might have indulged his audience by slowing to gaze up at the beautiful souk, playing the part of the wandering tourist, admiring the high towers and ornate arches that hearkened back to the glory days of the Persian Empire. But not today. There was no time.

For ten years, the objective had lain hidden, dormant. For ten years, the secret had remained sealed in its watery vault. Now that he was back, he felt like that seal had been broken, as if his mere presence in the Persian Gulf had started a race against an unknown enemy. And somehow he knew he was already behind.

Once inside the souk, Air Force major Nick Baron moved into the shadow of a pillar. Now free from the usual disdainful looks, he let his steel blue eyes slowly drift over the crowd, scanning the potpourri of faces for something much more dangerous: recognition. He found none. Finally satisfied that he was not being watched or followed, he turned his attention to finding his teammate. It did not take long.

Nick slowly shook his head and sighed.

Major Drake Merigold stood in the center of the Grand Corridor at the base of a beautiful two-story water clock, staring up at the Jules Vernian sculpture with his mouth slightly agape. He wore an orange and blue Hawaiian shirt that hung untucked over his khaki shorts. He could not have stood out more amid the drab garb of the locals if he had worn a fluffy red wig and big floppy shoes.

The two field operatives of the Triple Seven Chase squadron had arrived on separate flights, on separate carriers, under assumed names. Each had used a unique, indirect route to reach the souk, where they were supposed to quietly join up before heading out into the gulf to meet the rest of the team. The stakes of this mission demanded strict adherence to the principles of covert movement. But then how could Drake be expected to fully grasp the stakes? No one had told him the real reason they were here.

“Magnum PI called,” said Nick, joining his comrade at the water clock. “He wants his shirt back.”

Drake nodded, still looking up. “It's called hiding in plain sight, boss.” He was nearly a head taller than Nick, with broad shoulders to match and chiseled Greek features. With his flawless dark hair and obnoxious shirt, he looked like a movie star about to go on a cruise rather than a military operative. He glanced around the wide corridor, pulling the loud shirt away from his body and fanning it to take advantage of the air-conditioning. “They did a good job rebuilding. The last time we were here, an Iraqi missile had just crashed through the ceiling. You'd never know that there was once a huge crater right where we're standing.”

“They've had ten years to fix it,” said Nick. “We've been away a long time.”

For the first time since Nick had stepped out of the shadows, Drake looked him straight in the eyes. “So, why are we back?”

Nick dropped his eyes from Drake's to check his watch. “The others should be reaching the rendezvous point soon. It's time we got out there.”

Drake frowned. “You're starting to act like the colonel.”

“Just pick up your bag and let's go.”

Nick shifted the strap of the duffel bag that hung over his shoulder and started walking toward the central rear archway, the exit to the marina. Like Drake, he wore civilian clothes to hide his military affiliation, although his choices were a little more understated. His dark gray button-down shirt hung loose on his shoulders, masking the solid build beneath. Both men carried civilian duffel bags with enough gear to get them through a few days on the water, just as Colonel Walker had directed.

Warm salty air rushed over him as Nick pushed open the glass double doors. He started down the stairs to the wooden boardwalk, where several docks extended out into the gulf. Each had room for twenty small craft and each was nearly full, a forest of masts and canvas. Other than the whip and snap of the sails in the gentle breeze, all seemed quiet. Nick felt the temptation to relax.

The doors to the Grand Corridor clicked closed behind him, wrenching his senses away from the pleasant atmosphere. He paused halfway down the stairs. Scanning farther down the docks, he spied a pair of locals in the common white
thaub
s
and keffiyehs. He watched them for a few moments as they prepared to launch a blue and white runabout, probably for an evening pleasure cruise. They looked harmless.

At the end of the third dock, he found a black dinghy waiting at the prescribed slip. He held it fast and tossed in their bags while Drake jumped on board and prepped the motor.

Within minutes, Drake had the throttle fully open, accelerating out into the open waters of the Persian Gulf. Every so often, he steered into a wave, sending white spray over the bow and onto Nick.

“I know you're doing that on purpose,” said Nick, wiping the oily gulf water from his face.

“Just trying to lighten the mood,” replied Drake. “You gotta learn to relax, boss.”

“I'll relax when the mission is complete and the team is safely back at Romeo Seven.”

“You know that ain't true.”

Nick refused to respond. He was in no mood for friendly ribbing, and he feared that in a few hours' time, Drake's usual jovial temper would sour as well. Before the day was over, Drake would accuse him of betrayal, and he would have every right to.

Twenty minutes later, another craft appeared on the horizon. Despite his fears, Nick managed a thin smile. The commander of the Triple Seven Chase was well known in the covert ops community as an acquisitions wizard. Colonel Richard T. Walker had just pulled another rabbit out of his pointy hat, and this time she was a big one.

Nick estimated the vessel to be at least 250 feet long with a 50-foot beam. She looked fresh from the dry dock, with unblemished white paint and a thick red stripe along the rails. She was well equipped too, with three golf-ball-style radomes amidships and a docking station jutting out from the rear beneath two heavy salvage cranes.

“
Illustro ex Caliga
,” read Nick, squinting at the black lettering near the bow of the craft.

“It means ‘Illustrious Sea Monkey,'” said Drake.

“I don't believe you.”

“Good call.” Drake scratched his chin in thought. “If I remember my Latin correctly, it means ‘Illumination out of Darkness.'” He guided the dinghy to the aft station, cutting his speed to a crawl and then inching into position in an agonizingly slow attempt at docking.

“Well, that was ugly, Merigold,” said a booming voice from above. An imposing figure leaned against the rail of the upper deck. With his gray crew cut and perpetual scowl, Colonel Walker carried the aura of a man in full US Army service dress, even when wearing a golf shirt and khakis.

“Hey, I fly airplanes, not boats,” retorted Drake, slapping the tubular black hull of the dinghy. “I'm used to touching down on a solid surface at a hundred and fifty knots, not wallowing in to a moving target at five. You should be glad I didn't ram this thing into your little rental here.”

Walker ignored Drake's attempt to bait him. “Hurry up, gentlemen,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do before dark.”

“And what work is that, sir?” asked Drake, hopping onto the ship's dock to secure the dinghy.

The colonel's usual scowl faded into a grim smile. “Preparing to raise a ghost from our past, Major Merigold,” he said. “Preparing to raise a ghost from our past.”

CHAPTER 2

T
he sun burned a dull orange hue into the hazy gulf horizon as the
Illustro
finally slowed to a drift. Leaning against the rail next to Drake, Nick could see nothing but green water in all directions, a seductive illusion of solitude. In truth, the Iranian coast lay less than fifty miles off the port bow, far too close for his comfort. A soft whirring drifted up from below. Down at the waterline, he saw a small section of seawater bubbling and frothing against the hull like a hot spring.

“What's that?” asked Drake, following his gaze.

“It's a subsurface thruster,” said Nick. “The ship's dynamic positioning system will hold our coordinates within a couple of meters. It looks like we're over the objective.”

“That's right.” Walker emerged from the pilothouse. “But we don't want to hold this position any longer than we have to, so let's get started.”

The three of them abandoned the warm glow of the Arabian sunset for the cold fluorescent light of the ship's main lab. White powder-coated cabinets and counters stretched the full length of the room, except for the forward wall, where the Triple Seven's lead engineer labored before a wide bank of black computers. Above him, a large LCD monitor displayed a steadily growing mosaic of tiny black and gray squares.

“Are we nearing completion?” asked Walker.

Dr. Scott Stone looked up from his keyboard and reseated the glasses that had drifted down his sharp nose. “The submersible is covering the final section now, sir. It will complete its run momentarily.” With the last word, a tiny burp escaped his lips. The engineer grimaced and raised a hand to cover his mouth. His face turned green.

“How ya doin', Scott?” asked Drake, perching himself on a stool at the long central table.

Stone did not answer. Instead, he stood up from his workstation, stumbled out the portal, and leaned over the rail.

Drake grinned. “That good, huh?”

“Does he realize there's another deck below that rail?” asked Nick.

“I had Doc Heldner give him some meds,” said Walker. “She even gave him some gingersnaps.”

They heard Scott let out a heaving belch, followed by a series of sickening splats from the deck below.

“I think he just gave 'em back,” said Drake.

Walker frowned at the pilot. He took a sip of black coffee from a foam cup, paused to savor the black liquid, and then turned and stretched a hand toward the large screen. “Gentlemen, this jumble of mass confusion is a photo-map. We dropped off an autonomous ROV yesterday and then moved off-site while Dr. Stone monitored its progress. It doesn't look like much now, but once Stone's program unscrambles the mess, we'll get a detailed look at our objective.” He focused his scowl on Scott as the seasick engineer trudged back to his workstation. “At least that's what he tells me.”

“The ROV is on its way back up,” said Scott weakly, dabbing his face with a small white towel. He sank into his chair. “Let me run the resolution software. We should have an image in under a minute, sir.”

Nick gazed expectantly at the screen. At first, the picture remained an incomprehensible collage of black and gray photos. Then the hundreds of individual boxes began to move. They shifted, rotated, and adjusted until finally they merged into a single, coherent image: a massive B-2 stealth bomber, the Spirit of Kansas, lying in the silt at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

Nick glanced at Drake. Realization washed over his teammate like an angry flood. His eyes grew wide, his jaw tensed. “That's our jet,” he exclaimed. “
My
jet.”

Looking back at the crisp ROV image, Nick could clearly see the blown hatch where Drake had ejected from the aircraft ten years before. Memories of their first combat mission together came racing back.

HUMINT had predicted a meeting between Saddam Hussein and Tariq Irhaab, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Triple Seven Chase, then just a test squadron, had the only reconnaissance asset that could get to the target, an experimental stealth jet called Dream Catcher. Just hours before the Shock and Awe campaign began, Drake had slipped through the enemy radar fence in the Spirit of Kansas, carrying Nick and Dream Catcher in the B-2's weapons bay, and Danny Sharp, one of the Dream Catcher's developers, in his copilot seat.

The mission was supposed to be a cakewalk.

It wasn't.

The bay doors jammed half open during deployment, ruining the bomber's stealth and sending Nick and the Dream Catcher tumbling toward the desert floor. Nick had no choice but to eject, right in the path of a platoon of Republican Guard. Drake could have left him. He should have, to save the B-2. Instead, he came back for his teammate, taking out the platoon's missile launcher so that a rescue chopper could get in close enough to grab him. Unfortunately, the launcher got off a shot before Drake's bomb took it down. The last time Nick saw the bomber, it was limping south toward the gulf, trailing smoke and fire.

Drake tore his eyes away from the monitor to glare at Walker. “Of course, that
can't
be my jet,” he said, tilting his head. “While medevac took Nick, Danny, and me back to the States, you salvaged my jet and towed it out to deep water. You scattered it into a thousand pieces over the Arabian Basin.” He gestured at Nick, his volume beginning to build. “Nick and I sat next to you while you testified before the oversight committee. We corroborated everything you told them!”

Nick winced. Drake still hadn't put it all together, that Nick had kept the truth from him almost as long as Walker had.

“Stand down, Major,” Walker fired back. “What would you have me do, tell a pack of two-bit politicians that we left a stealth bomber at the bottom of the Persian Gulf?” He folded his arms and snorted. “They can't keep their mouths shut. The Iranians would have picked the wreck clean by now, two billion dollars' worth of stealth technology out in the open. We had to keep it need-to-know.”

The colonel's scowl deepened as he took another sip of coffee. “The first salvage op went bad, very bad. We started to bring her up, but one of the main cables snapped, then the other one. Two divers were killed immediately. The third was pinned under the bomber. I went in to get him out, but there was nothing I could do. I lost the entire team.” He cast a glance at Nick. “After that fiasco, Major Baron and I decided it was better to leave the bomber where it lay.”

Drake turned to Nick in shock, suddenly grasping the full truth. “You knew about this the whole time?”

Nick opened his mouth to respond, but after a decade of knowing this day would come, he could not find the words to say.

“I brought Major Baron into the loop as soon as I returned to Washington,” said Walker. “I needed a sounding board, and I wanted a member of the ops team to be prepared in case word got out about the asset. Baron is the team lead. He had the need to know. You didn't.”

The revelation that even Nick had kept the secret from him robbed Drake's anger of its fire. He shifted his gaze to the floor. “Did Danny know?”

“No,” answered Nick quietly. And he would never know. Danny had died the previous September. This lie was only a small part of the guilt that Nick still harbored in the wake of his death.

“If it's been safe this long, then why recover it now?” asked Drake.

“An Italian marine science group is planning to map the gulf floor,” said Nick. “We can't wait any longer.” He hesitated. “I'm sorry we kept you in the dark.”

“Get over it, both of you,” said Walker coldly. “We need to get this done. I don't like digging up graves in the Iranian's backyard. We've kept that bomber quiet for a decade, but now that we're out here, I feel exposed.”

Nick placed a hand on his teammate's shoulder and looked up at the ghostly image of the B-2. A chill swept over him. He thought of the horror that lay beneath: the crushed body of a forgotten patriot and two fully armed five-thousand-pound bombs.