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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass
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“The advantage might be ours for once. If we're reading our signals right, the kidnappers may not be on the island yet.”
“Explain.”
“The Italian customs people reported that a Swiss medevac ambulance crossed their border last night above Torino. It was carrying two cancer patients, identified as Yugoslavian
nationals. Women. The ambulance was found abandoned near the waterfront in Venice this morning.”
“They're going by sea the rest of the way.”
“Only one ship sailed from the port of Venice this morning, and she was the Greek freighter
Thaxos,
a vessel we've long suspected was used by the STASI for contract work.”
“It could be them.”
“Yes, sir. We have a satellite shot several hours old showing the
Thaxos
entering the Mediterranean past Brindisi. I'd like to intercept them before they land on Santorini.”
“How?” the President asked.
“The Sixth Fleet is nearby. I'd like authorization to use a unit of SEALS to board the
Thaxos,
without warning, under the assumption that McGarvey's ex-wife and daughter are aboard, held by Spranger and his people.
“That's piracy,” Cronin blurted.
The President ignored him. “There'll be casualties.”
“Yes, sir. Almost certainly.”
The President thought about it for a moment or two. “What about McGarvey?”
“He'll be on the island a few hours ahead of time. If something should go wrong, he'd act as backup.”
“Unknowingly.”
Murphy nodded. “Yes, sir. For the time being I would leave him out of the operation.”
“Not very fair.”
“No, sir. But I believe that we have very high odds of success if we act now. Any move against Spranger once he got to the island could complicate our relations with the Greek government.”
“Do it,” the President said. “But keep me informed, General.”
“Will do, Mr. President. What about the Japanese?”
“I'll stall Ambassador Shir
this afternoon, but I'm going to have to have some results. And damned soon.”
THE WEATHER SYSTEM THAT HAD MOVED IN OVER WESTERN Europe was sinking unexpectedly to the southeast, and U.S. Navy meteorologists were predicting thickly overcast skies and rain by midnight over the entire Aegean Sea.
Moving silently, almost as if phantoms in the deepening twilight, the
CVN Nimitz
and her abbreviated task force were on station fifty nautical miles south-southwest of the island of Crete. They had spent the better part of the past eight months sailing back and forth just off the coast of Lebanon, showing the American flag during the latest round of fighting in the ongoing civil war there. It was time to be rotated home and they'd been steaming for Gib when they'd been given their temporary mission orders.
Lieutenant Edwin Lipton stood hunched over a weather radarscope in operations with the Nimitz group's chief meteorologist Lieutenant Commander Brent Eastman, and the chief of Air Operations, Commander Louis Rheinholtz.
Lipton was a SEAL, a fact that would have been obvious to the most casual observer, even if he hadn't been dressed all in black. Physically he stood out. Although he was only of medium height, his body was in perfect athletic condition, and with the way he held himself like a boxer ready to spring it was clear that his reflex speeds, coordination and endurance were probably very good. The look in his eyes and the expression at the corners of his mouth were those of a man utterly and totally committed to the task at hand, and completely devoid of any nonsense whatsoever. He and the
five men in his elite strike group were highly trained professionals in the highest sense of the word.
“What are the chances for a break in the weather?” he asked. “We're under a full moon tonight.”
“Less than ten percent, Lieutenant,” Eastman said. “In fact the cloud cover will begin moving in over the region within the next hour. In two hours moonlight will not be a significant factor at all. Your real problem is going to be the next satellite overpass. It'll be blind.”
Lipton studied the screen for a moment longer, then turned and crossed to the chart table where their present position was electronically updated on a continuous realtime basis.
The last known position of the
Thaxos
was about sixty miles southeast of Piraeus. She'd made a shortcut through the Gulf of Corinth and the Corinth Canal.
“On that course and speed she'd make Santorini around oh-one-hundred hours,” Commander Rheinholtz said. “Another five hours, if that's where she's heading, if she doesn't change her speed, and if she takes the best direct-line course through the islands. There's still a lot of sea out there between us and them.”
“Yes, sir,” Lipton said.
“We'd attract too much notice if we sent out patrols to find them. You do understand that.”
“Yes, sir,” Lipton nodded. He stabbed a blunt finger at a spot just north of the island. “We'll wait here. When she passes, we'll get aboard.”
“You're betting they won't put in at either the old port of Thira or the new port of Athinos.”
“I don't think so. They'd have to figure they might run into some trouble with the authorities. I'm told that these people are sharp, and I'll have to go with that until it's proved differently. But it's my guess they'll disembark five miles offshore and come in here, or here.” He pointed to the island's only two beaches. Everywhere else tall cliffs plunged into the sea, making a landing next to impossible.
“What if you miss them?”
Lipton shrugged. “Then it would be out of our hands. My
orders are that we are not to conduct any operation on Greek soil. But we won't miss them, sir.”
Commander Rheinholtz studied the chart. “We'll put up a couple of LAMPS III choppers to give you a steady over-the-horizon radar coverage to the north, and we'll splash you down around midnight.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“These two women are VIPs, but there's no telling what condition they'll be in.”
“My people are briefed.”
“Very well, Lieutenant,” Commander Rheinholtz said, and he glanced over at the plotting board they were using for this operation. “Where is Brightstar at this moment?” he asked. Brightstar was McGarvey's operational codename.
“He's just approaching the port of Thira, sir,” the plotting board rating replied.
“No telling what he'll do when he finds out the
Thaxos
hasn't docked yet,” Rheinholtz said. “I'll be glad when this night is over.”
“Yes, sir,” Lipton said, and it was clear that he meant it.
 
The moon was blood red on the horizon as the aging 37-foot fishing boat
Dhodh
ni
chugged into the dramatic harbor of Thira. Once the crater of a volcano, the cliffs rose a thousand feet out of the sea, and from across the water McGarvey could hear the sounds of music echoing off the rock faces.
“You are looking for somebody,” the grizzled old captain said, his broad grin nearly toothless. He'd been drinking ouzo most of the way over, but he didn't appear to be drunk.
“Two ladies,” McGarvey said.
“Ah, the ladies. Not from this island. So they have come by water.”
There were several boats in the harbor, but nothing McGarvey thought Spranger would have used. Of course the East Germans could have landed at Athinos, if they had already arrived and if the black diamond had not been a false clue, or if he had not misinterpreted it.
“Who do I see about them?” McGarvey asked.
The old man's grin widened. “If you are a policeman it may be difficult, you see.”
McGarvey shook his head. “I'm not a policeman.”
“But there is a stench of … trouble on you.”
McGarvey was certain the old man had been about to say death, instead of trouble. “This is important to me. One of the ladies is my daughter, and the other my ex- wife.”
The captain nodded. “When you find them … ?”
“Someone may have brought them here.”
“Then you will kill this someone?”
McGarvey stared at the old man, and after a long time he nodded. “Yes.”
“I thought so,” the captain said triumphantly. “In that case I will help you.”
“You?”
The captain laughed out loud. “Yes, me. You didn't think that I was a Piraiévs pig, did you? I am Spyros Karamanlis from Santorini. This is my island. You will see.”
THE JAPANESE AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES MADE HIS official call on the President and left. The President's Press Secretary Martin Hewler called Murphy with the news.
“The man is not happy, but he's agreed to wait.”
“How long?” the DCI asked. It was a little after three in the afternoon, Washington time, and after nine in the evening in the Aegean Sea.
“Not very long, General. We're going to need some action on this soon. Like first thing in the morning. Better yet, this evening.”
“With any luck we should have something within the next three or four hours.”
“With any luck,” Hewler said. “Which translates into: We've got our fingers crossed, and should a miracle happen, we'll pull it off.”
“Do your job, Martin, and let us do ours,” Murphy replied sharply.
“Do that, General. Just do that much, and we'll all come out smelling like roses.”
 
Paul Shircliff stepped up to tier B of the Special Operations balcony and plugged his headset into Patsy Connor's console. Shircliff was early swing shift OD at the National Security Agency's headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland.
Patsy was just entering data from the latest KH-15 pass over the Mediterranean, picking out the EPIRB signal from McGarvey's transmitter and isolating it against an area overlay map.
“Bring up more detail,” Shircliff said softly.
Without looking up, Patsy punched a series of buttons, which expanded the map view displayed on her terminal. In this instance the scale was such that the island of Santorini barely fit on the screen. A tiny but very bright cross with a series of identifiers to its right indicated the EPIRB's realtime position. At this scale the cross seemed to be located in the harbor area of the port of Thira.
“Expand,” Shircliff said.
Patsy hit another series of buttons, and now the map scale expanded so that the port of Thira itself mostly filled the screen. “This is the last enhancement,” she said.
The EPIRB was transmitting from a location near the harbor, but not on the water. It was definitely ashore.
“How long has he been at that location?” Shircliff asked.
“About an hour.”
“No movement?”
“None. He's remained within a three-yard radius the entire time.”
“It's possible he'd ditched the transmitter then,” Shircliff said, reaching for the folder of Greek maps on top of the console.
“Could be a hotel, I was about to check it out,” Patsy suggested. “The transmitter could be with his luggage.”
Shircliff opened a large-scale map showing the port town in detail. It took him a few moments to orient the computer's perspective with the printed chart. “Looks like a waterfront taverna.”
Patsy looked up. “What do you suppose he's doing there, sir?”
“I don't know,” Shircliff said shaking his head. “I don't know anything about the man except that he's damned important.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me know the moment he makes a move,” Shircliff said, replacing the chart folder but keeping the Thira map out. “I'll be at my console.”
 
 
Clouds were already starting to roll in from the west as Lieutenant Lipton and his five men clambered aboard the SH-3D Sea King that would take them out to the intercept point one hundred miles to the north. The wind was rising and the smell of rain was heavy on the night air. The weather system was developing faster than the meteorologists had predicted, but so far as the SEALS were concerned the weather couldn't have been better.
“No moon, overcast skies and choppy seas. The
Thaxos
crew won't know what hit them until it's too late,” Lipton told his number two, Ensign Frank Tyrell.
“If we don't miss them in the darkness.”
“You worry too much.”
Tyrell, who was a deceptively thin and mild-mannered man, grinned. “It's a bitch, but somebody's got to do it.”
Lipton started to strap in as the helicopter's engines came to life and the main rotor began to turn, but a runner from Operations came across the deck to the open hatch and motioned for him.
“Stand by,” Lipton shouted up to the pilots, and he scrambled over to the hatch.
“Commander Rheinholtz wanted you to have the latest on Brightstar, sir,” the rating shouted over the noise.
“Is he on the island?”
“Yes, sir. Apparently he'd been holed up at a waterfront bar for the past couple of hours.”
“What's he doing there?”
“Unknown, sir.
Lipton thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Get word to us the moment he moves.”
“Aye, aye, sir. And good hunting.”
 
McGarvey sat across from a very well-dressed man by the name of Constantine Theotokis, whom Karamanlis had identified as his uncle. Theotokis was a member of the Greek Mafia, and Santorini was
his
island in almost every sense of the word.
During the couple of hours they'd been together at the
crowded, smoky taverna, a constant stream of runners came to their corner table with messages for him which they whispered into his ear. Afterwards he'd send them off on other errands.
“These people you seek are almost certainly the very same ones who have done business here previously,” Theotokis said. He fingered the black diamond stick pin in his tie. “Unfortunately they are not on the island at this moment.”
“They will arrive by sea,” McGarvey said.
“Of course they will.”
“Soon. Probably this evening. Late.”
Theotokis nodded sagely.
“Will they land here or at Athinos? Or, considering what they are bringing with them, is there another less conspicuous place for them to come ashore? Let's say in a dinghy?”
Again the Greek gangster nodded wisely. “They have taken a deconsecrated church in the north. It is on a cliff above the grottoes within sight of Oía and the volcanic island of Akrá. The only good approach is by sea. Overland …” He spread his hands. “It is a very difficult track, not to be advised in the darkness.”
“But one could wait with a small boat.”
“Yes. Such boats are available. Of course one would need a guide, perhaps two. They would have to be … paid.”
“I understand,” McGarvey said. “They would have to be discreet men. And men of a certain talent.”
Theotokis mentioned a price. It was high, but it would guarantee professionalism. Yet there was something bothersome about the arrangement. About Karamanlis and his uncle. About the entire setup.

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