Top Hook (16 page)

Instead, he dialed O'Neill's hotel in Nairobi. It was a little after seven a.m. there, what the hell?

“
Jambo!”
The voice was O'Neill's, alert and full of juice.

“I wake you up?”

“Hell, no, I been out for my run before the muggers get up. What's doing?”

“I just Miranda'd Rose.”

“Oh, shit, Mike—!”

“Her computer's full of bad stuff.”

“Yeah, but Mike—Rose! Hey, man, you can't believe she—? Hey, you sober?”

“Not particularly.”

O'Neill led him through it with several questions, got to Valdez and what Rose had said about him, went over that part again, and then O'Neill said, “Leave this Valdez to me.”

“To do what?”

“To have him look over that goddam computer. You get it down there where he can take it apart if he has to, Mike—I'll provide this Valdez.”

“Shit, why?”

“Because Rose thinks he can save her and I think he can save you. Okay? Now put the bottle away and go to bed, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

Dukas thought that over. The telephone was still in his hand, the dial tone buzzing because O'Neill had hung up. After thirty seconds, he decided that O'Neill's judgment was probably better than his own just then, so he put the bottle away and went to bed.

In Nairobi, O'Neill e-mailed his Dubai office and told them to contact a former US Navy computer specialist named Enrique Valdez, now in the computer world in America. “Hire him and have him meet me for breakfast Monday morning, Willard Hotel, Washington, and don't take no for an answer! Harry”

Stevens had brought 902 back from Sigonella and made no public comment about the “operational” mission he was missing, but Alan sensed that he had said something elsewhere, because some of the sense of purpose seemed to slip away from the aircrew. Late in the day, Cohen came to him in the ready room and said, “How come Stevens isn't on the sked for this?”

Alan was very bland. “Mister Cohen, please tell Mister Stevens that when he has a question, he should ask it himself.” He smiled. “Meanwhile, you have enough to do with your own responsibilities.”

Stevens showed up thirty minutes later. His sullenness had become outright anger. “All right, how come I'm not on the sked?” he shouted. People at the back of the room were working the sim; they looked around, then began to move out.

“You don't need to shout; I'm right here.” Alan looked at him. “You know why.”

“I'm the best pilot in this goddam det—maybe on this boat!”

“Maybe you are. You did a hell of a job in Sigonella, and I told you so. But I didn't get your attention with that, and now I'm trying to get your attention with the flight sked—it's the two-by-four with which I'm hitting the jackass.” He looked at his watch. “I have a brief, but you and I need to talk. When we've talked, you'll fly.”

“I got nothing to say to you!”

“Think of something.”

Alan had put himself in a crew with Campbell, Soleck, and Craw for the first anti-fast-mover flight. He wanted to make the operation work, and he wanted his best people. Deep down, he realized that he had also chosen a crew of men who liked and respected him, and that 902 had Cohen and Reilley, who didn't, in the front seats. He told himself that he couldn't hide from them forever without starting to play favorites—knowing from experience where that command path could lead. But this time, the first time, he wanted no distractions from the mission, no comments, no edge.
No Stevens
, he admitted to himself.

The preflight brief went well. The aircrews were a little sleepy, but, even though Cohen and Reilley kept their distance, they seemed up and even eager. They got their televised brief and then Soleck got up and gave them a quick peek at some expected “smugglers,” based on photos from Rota and some imagination. Alan had stood over his shoulder while he drafted them. Soleck could be a pain in the ass, but he was smart, and he understood computers and computer graphics better than any pilot Alan had ever met.

They were launching with the first event, so there were no planes launching or landing before them. The flight deck was quiet. Dawn was three hours away, and quiet ghosts in flight deck jerseys moved around the deck, pulling hoses, spotting planes, moving ordnance. Alan checked his seat and watched Soleck check the outside of the plane and discuss the chaff and flare load and react with surprise to the port wing's rocket pod, which Alan had ordered in case they had to show
teeth to a fast mover. Rules of engagement forbade him to fire at a suspected smuggler, but he wanted the pods in case—in case he had to fire at a suspected smuggler. He also wanted them for the effect on the aircrew. No one in ordnance questioned the load.

Soleck got the mandatory lecture from Craw on chaff and flare loading and got into the plane, while Campbell stuck his whole arm into the engine intakes and checked the fan blades with a flashlight, like a man buying a horse and checking its teeth. Alan approved. He also saw Cohen run a finger over the struts on 902's landing gear, checking for a recurrence of the hydraulics leak. They were thorough, and his spirits rose. Maybe this was going to work.

If they could locate one fast mover and pass it to the Italian coast guard, the effect on morale would be incredible. All they needed was some cooperation from the smugglers.

Nine thousand feet over the Adriatic, Alan felt a sag in his energy as he saw the volume of traffic down on the water. Even with both MARI systems up and running, even with datalink support from all of NATO to deconflict white contacts (merchant ships), he was looking at hundreds of unknowns in a huge expanse of water.

Soleck had put in the smugglers' corridor parameters as an overlay on the screen, but the corridors were hypothetical at best. The system lacked the ability to ignore selected contact parameters, so the aircrew couldn't direct it to ignore, for example, all westbound contacts. They could only watch the patterns, sip coffee, limit their search areas, sip more coffee, and wait.

Sunrise crept closer. The coffee got bitter, then vanished.

Each plane found likely contacts every few minutes, but by the time the possible smugglers gunned their engines and turned into the west coast of Dalmatia, it was too late to give a vector to any of the Italian coast guard ships. The experience was maddening, and Alan began to fear that they would not only fail, but that the frustration would exacerbate the squadron's troubles.

MARI worked like a trooper, however. Cohen kept his plane well off Campbell's axis on every sweep, and, with fiddling, the two crews had almost constant link. They were able to add several distinct images of speedboats to their onboard libraries for future comparison. Soleck seemed obsessed with finding a way to identify individual boats with the MARI system, convinced that he could see slight differences in hull pattern even with one-meter resolution. Alan wasn't so sure. The system had been designed to locate and accurately identify warships, not bass boats.

By 0600, interest was flagging in both planes, except for Soleck, who was focused on small-boat antenna arrays. The eastern sky was pale, and they were almost against the Yugoslavian coast. Away to the west, the link showed Canadian F-18s returning from a sortie over Kosovo.

“Jaeger Two, this is Jaeger One, over.” One more sweep and time to head for home, Alan thought.

“Roger, this is Jaeger Two.”

“Jaeger Two, let's turn to 270 and sweep west one more time.”

“Roger, Jaeger One. Turning to 270.” Reilley's voice sounded bored even through the encrypted comms. In front, Campbell turned slowly to the west.

Alan raised the Italians in clear and told them where he was turning. He had spoken with them several times,
and knew that they had little faith in his ability to find their needles in the Adriatic haystack. Communication with them was limited, too. They didn't have the encryption to keep comms secure, and Alan had to be vague as a result. As well, their English wasn't much, and he was the only Italian speaker in the aircraft.

They bored holes in the water for ten minutes. Suddenly, Craw said, “Got one,” his first words in an hour.

Thirty miles away, the pale light of the eastern sky had worried someone else. Well off the coast, a twelve-meter arrowhead with two distinct returns from powerful engines suddenly jumped from ten knots to nearly forty and headed due east. Alan marked it and imaged it. An identity code appeared next to the image—PG1221.

Craw called it to AW1 Denton in Jaeger Two. Alan located the nearest coast guard ship, almost fifteen miles away to the south and probably too far behind to intercept. They still seemed unimpressed, but they turned toward the contact. According to
Jane's
, the Italian vessel could make thirty-two knots. If their contact was a cigarette boat, it could put on bursts of nearly eighty.

“Jaeger Two, descend to angels 15 and turn to 180. I want you to set up for a bow-on intercept, but stand off until I give the word.”

Alan leaned forward into the cockpit. “That bastard is going to outrun the Italians without even knowing they're there.” He held on to the frame as Campbell turned toward the contact. Once, he had been nervous about unstrapping in flight. Long time ago.

“I hear you, skipper.” Campbell was dead calm, the archetypal pilot.

“I'm going to put 902 ahead of them and have you come in from abeam, from the north.”

“No problem.”

“Then we order them to stop and be boarded.”

“No problem, unless they don't stop.”

Soleck whooped. “Then we shoot 'em!”

Alan whacked Soleck's helmet. “We don't shoot anybody. We call in 902 to buzz them real, real low, right down the throat. Okay? Brian, you're the mission commander.”

“Sure, skipper. Strap in, here we go.”

Alan scrambled for the familiar straps while the plane nosed down and powered for the deck, her turbofans suddenly changed from distant vacuum cleaners to avenging furies. Craw had his head pressed almost to the glass of his screen despite the acceleration, intent on his target. Alan got the second clip into his harness and called an update of the contact's position to the Italians. They took a second to respond. Their comms officer reported that they were too far away to intercept. Alan wanted to scream at him but paused, counted to three, and explained that the Jaeger patrol would stop the contact.

Suddenly, the aircraft rolled sharply to starboard and Alan could see waves, close waves, off the starboard wing.

“
Va bene
,” said the Italian, as though making an enormous concession.

“Soleck, get me Jaeger Two.”

Craw looked up. “Should be visual any second.”

“Got him!” yelled Soleck from in front.

“Don't close yet. Soleck?”

“Oh, yeah.” He punched the comms console. Alan switched his comms.

“Jaeger Two, this is Jaeger One, we have visual on the contact, over.”

“Roger, copy. In position.”

“Jaeger Two, hold your position.”

“Roger, copy.”

Alan's hands were tight, his adrenaline running. He slammed the comms switch to bring up the guard frequency and said in Italian, “Twin-engined boat with blue hull, this is AH 901, over.” Alan cycled through three Italian guard frequencies and got no response.

“Buzz him.”

Again, the furies screamed. AH 902 turned her aging bulk on a dime and seemed to ride the tops of the waves. Alan leaned forward to peer out of the windscreen and saw the contact, a low, powerful boat that was leaping along the waves. Campbell took them just astern of it.

“He's up to sixty knots,” Craw said.

“Stern reads Sierra Oscar Papa Hotel India Alpha!” Soleck said. Soleck seemed to be having the time of his life. “Sophia—it's named the
Sophia.
”

“
Sophia
, this is AH 901, over. Cut your engines and stand by to be boarded.”

Sophia
continued to race for the Yugoslav coast, now only twenty miles away. The Italian ship was still nine miles to the south.

“Make the next pass up his stern. Jaeger Two, engage!”

“Roger.” Cohen had a little color in his voice. Good.

“Right down his throat.”

“Watch for 901, we're on the opposing radial.”

“I copy, Jaeger One.”

And there they were. As Campbell lined 901 up on the wake of the
Sophia
, they saw Jaeger Two fall from the skies ahead of the contact and all but disappear.

“Fuck,” muttered Soleck, in front. “Fuck, he's low.”

Alan couldn't see Jaeger Two over the console from his seat in back.

“Contact's turning,” said Craw.

The
Sophia
, apparently terrified by the sudden appearance of the big gray plane, turned sharply south, her turn giving them a view of the boat's cockpit as she banked hard. There were four men aboard.

“Circle to port and get in behind them again!” said Alan, willing himself to sound as calm as the pilots. “Nice pass, Jaeger Two!”

“Saw a yellow puddle, there, Jaeger One. Want me to do it again?”

“Negative, Jaeger Two. We want him to stay south. Get back east.”

“Roger.”

“He's turning. Oh, shit. We've dropped link.”

“Too many fast turns. Screw it. Soleck, have you got him?”

Soleck's head whipped back and forth.

“Yeah, two o'clock. Headed east. He's got rooster tails! Man, is he moving.”

“Got him on ISAR.” Craw had withdrawn to an early technology, one that didn't require two aircraft to work. “Seventy knots.”

Alan looked at the positions. The Italians were on the southern horizon, six miles away. Not close enough. Jaeger Two was circling north and east to get ahead. Too far away.

“Campbell, how good are you with rockets?”

“I thought you said we couldn't shoot him?” Soleck was beside himself.

“I want to scare him. If we hit him, we've broken the law.”
Even if we don't hit him, we're probably breaking the law. The admiral will have my head.

“Oh, I think I'm good enough to hit the
water
,” said Campbell, in the best traditions of naval aviation. “I was afraid you wanted me to hit the
boat
.”

“Do it.” Campbell lined up the plane with the new course of the
Sophia
and throttled down, riding well above the waves and moving slowly up from behind.

“Jaeger Two, this is Jaeger One, over.”

“Roger?”

“Jaeger Two, Jaeger One is firing a rocket over contact's bow. Stand clear.”

“Ballsy move, Jaeger One.”

“Break, break. Small boat
Sophia
, this is AH 901. Heave to or we will be forced to fire. You have five seconds. Four, three, two, one—”

“Shoot!”

“One away.” The contrail appeared to curve, describing a lazy swirl to the right before hitting the water hundreds of meters in front of the contact. The
Sophia
, still well ahead of them, turned south again, heading for a low fog bank.

“Italians on two, skipper.”

Alan looked at the link. The coast guard patrol was close now. He told them of the contact's position and left out the part about the rockets. They didn't sound so skeptical now, but they still didn't have visual contact. Alan thought they were on the other side of the fog bank. And now
Sophia
was turning back to the east.