The Last Line (37 page)

“I don't think so,” Teller said. “This smells more like a major preemptive ass-covering.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think they're having trouble finding that Russian sub,” Procario said. “A
lot
of trouble. There's a very, very good chance that those bombs are going to make it into a couple of our cities.”

“Okay…” She sounded uncertain.

“What happens,” Teller said, “if they tell everyone, the president, the Pentagon, Congress, that a couple of suitcase nukes are on the way—and then the nukes go off?”

“I guess,” she said slowly, “I guess people would wonder why they didn't get the information sooner … or why they didn't do something to stop them.”

“Bingo,” Teller said. “Whoever is now in charge of what's left of the government begins looking for scapegoats. You
knew
those nukes were coming, and you did
nothing
?”

“And,” Procario added, “if they warn everyone and nothing happens, because it
is
a false alarm, the entire U.S. intelligence community looks like fucked-up shit.”

“Ah,” she said. “Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

“Right,” Procario said. “It's budget-cutting time in northern Virginia—and guess who's been crying wolf?”

“And,” Teller went on, “if they tell no one and the nukes go off … well,
damn
! I'm sorry! Our very best intelligence said there was no threat! But, you know, if you increase our budget a couple of hundred percent, we'll make sure this doesn't happen again next time.”

Dominique looked shocked. “Chris, that has got to be the most goddamn cynical thing I've ever heard!”

“This is D.C. It's a cynical town.” He shrugged. “It's happened before.”

“
What's
happened before?”

“Major, credible warnings getting ignored by the people in charge. Pearl Harbor. Tet. The World Trade Center—
twice.
In 1993 and on 9/11.”

“Those didn't involve nukes!”

“Doesn't matter.” He looked at Procario. “Hey, Frank. Whatcha want to bet they've already done statistical studies on the results of a five-kiloton detonation on the Washington Mall and decided it's survivable?”

“Could be. It wouldn't touch Langley, that's certain. Not five kilotons.” Procario frowned. “I do wonder, though, if the Mall is going to be ground zero.”

“Halfway between the White House and the Capitol Building.” Teller shrugged. “Seems logical to me.”

“There
are
other targets in this town, Chris. And five kilotons? It would wreck the Smithsonian buildings, yeah, and the Capitol Dome is so exposed it would be pretty badly damaged. But the D.C. Trade Center and the Washington Aquarium, the IRS Building, those would probably shield the White House pretty well.”

“So where do
you
think the nuke is headed?” Dominique asked.

“I'm wondering about the Pentagon,” Procario said.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Doesn't really matter, I suppose,” Teller said. “Either way, a lot of people are going to die.”

Dominique reached over and put a hand over his. “You're not giving up, are you, Chris?”

“No. No, I'm not. But I
do
think we need to shift tactics…”

 

Chapter Nineteen

USS
PITTSBURGH

42 NAUTICAL MILES SOUTHEAST OF ATLANTIC CITY

1745 HOURS, EDT

21 APRIL

Captain James Franklin Garret stood behind Sonarman First Class Ted Laughlin, studying the multicolored display popularly called “the waterfall,” a cascade of colored lines indicating intensity and bearing presented on a 42-inch plasma LED screen above the sonar workstation. There were a
lot
of targets out there. This stretch of the U.S. eastern seaboard was among the busiest sea lanes in the world, and the
Pittsburgh
's underwater ears were picking up the screws and wake wash of some hundreds of vessels, from speedboats and pleasure craft to a monster oil tanker slowly emerging from Delaware Bay. The sounds picked up by
Pittsburgh
's passive sonar system were also being played from an overhead speaker, a muted and unintelligible cacophony of growls, thumps, whirs, and chugging noises.

“If he's out there, sir,” Laughlin said, his right hand raised to his headphones, “he's masked by all of that background crap.”

“That's what I was afraid of,” Garret said. “The bastards
do
know how to hide.”

The Flight II Los Angeles class attack submarine, SSN-720, carried a number of sophisticated sonar systems: an AN/BQG-5D wide-aperture flank array, an Ametek BQS-15 close-range high-frequency active sonar, a BQQ-5D low-frequency passive and active attack sonar, SADS-TG active detection sonar, and, now trailing far astern of the slowly moving vessel, a TB-29 thin-line passive towed array. The system was tied into the vessel's BSY-1 integrated sonar/weapons control suite, known affectionately by those aboard as “Busy-one.”

A half billion dollars or so of Buck Rogers high-tech packed into the
Burgh
's 362-foot hull, and they couldn't locate a single diesel-electric boat that wasn't that far removed from its ancestors, the U-boats and Gato class subs of sixty years ago.

“Can I assist with maneuver?” Garret asked. The
Pittsburgh
currently was cruising southeast, her towed array positioned to pick up noise radiating from the southwest—down the coast of the Delmarva Peninsula. By turning to a different heading, Garret could fine-tune the sensitivity of the directional sensor suites.

“I don't think so, sir,” Laughlin replied. “If you want to nail this guy, you're going to have to go active.”

Garret had been considering just that for hours now. It went against the grain; sub drivers were thoroughly conditioned to maintain silence—to
listen
rather than to actually reach out and tag an unseen opponent. Passive sonar simply listened, picking up the ambient sounds around the submarine. The
Burgh
's onboard sonic library of collected sounds could actually identify an individual vessel by the distinguishing characteristics of its screw and engine noises, and the joke was that a good sonar operator—and Laughlin was one of the best—could eavesdrop on the conversations in an enemy sub's wardroom. The disadvantage was that it was not discriminatory; you heard
everything
out there that might be making noise, including whales, shrimp, a bewildering zoo of talkative fish, and the thunder of waves breaking on the shore.

Active sonar, on the other hand, sent out a powerful burst of sound, precisely like the echolocation chirp of a bat or a dolphin, and listened for the reflection back from the target. Active sonar gave a precise bearing and range to a target but had two disadvantages. Their direct range was limited to about 20,000 yards—roughly eleven to twelve miles—and sending out an intense pulse of sound was like sending up fireworks, a declaration to everyone in the water who might be listening, saying “here I am.”

Garret had received his current orders from COMSUBLANT that morning, and he still wasn't certain whether this was an unscheduled preparedness exercise or the real deal. A Russian Kilo was reported somewhere along the East Coast between Cape Lookout and Cape May and inside the 200-nautical-mile line. Three L.A. boats had been in position to intercept;
Pittsburgh
was the most northerly of the three, returning to Norfolk from a long deployment in the Med.

If this
was
for real, it was a potential nightmare scenario: Kilos were damned quiet—holes in the water, as the sonar team called them—and the U.S. Navy was concerned that someone might one day use one to slip a nuclear weapon into a U.S. port. For this reason, the scenario was practiced frequently, usually with other American submarines broadcasting Kilo noises from their library databases.

His orders, though, had specified a Kilo possibly operating in the service of either Mexico or Colombia, which meant a Bigfoot—a sub hired by one of the drug cartels to smuggle their damned merchandise into the United States.

The implication was almost insulting—using navy assets for drug intercepts. That was the Coast Guard's job, after all. Garret was a thorough-going professional, though, and that meant he followed orders. Drug boat or not, he was going to nail this bastard.

He picked up an intercom handset. “Conn, this is the captain.”

“Conn, aye.”

“Come to new heading, two-zero-zero, maintain speed ten knots.”

“Come to new heading, two-zero-zero, maintain speed ten knots, aye, aye, Captain.”

“Okay, Laugh,” he said. “We're going to go active. How are we fixed for CZs?”

KILO CLASS SUBMARINE

35 NAUTICAL MILES OFF BETHANY BEACH

DELAWARE

1828 HOURS, EDT

“All stop,” Captain Second Rank Basargin said. “Maintain silence throughout the boat.”

The submarine drifted gently to a halt thirty-five meters beneath the surface in water sixty meters deep. They should be safe enough here, at least for the time being. Sunset was at 1943 local time—about another hour and a quarter. Two hours after that should see darkness enough to again approach the shore, and to surface when they saw the signal; it would take three hours, traveling at twelve knots, to return to Bethany Beach. They might have to wait a few hours more, however, if a periscope scan of the shoreline showed people enjoying the beach at night.

So 2200 hours at the earliest, and midnight would be better. Putting a raft into the water and waiting for its return might be an operation of two hours or so. Dawn at this latitude was at 0616 hours; they would need to be well clear of the shore by 0430.

Plenty of time.

He picked up a hand mike. “Sonar, Captain. Report.”

“Normal traffic, Captain,” the sonar officer's voice came back. “Nothing closer than fifteen thousand meters.”

“Very well.” He looked at the two passengers, who were hovering nearby, clearly anxious. “And now,” he told them, “we wait.”

CHESAPEAKE BAY BRIDGE

KENT ISLAND, MARYLAND

1815 HOURS, EDT

Officially it was the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge, but everyone knew it simply as the Bay Bridge, a double, four-mile span crossing the Chesapeake Bay between Annapolis and Kent Island, tucked away behind the west side of the Delmarva Peninsula. Teller was at the wheel as they paid the four-dollar toll, then accelerated smoothly onto the southern lane, steadily climbing until they were soaring out over the waters of the bay 186 feet below. The sun had just set behind them in a blaze of yellows and scarlets, and Teller switched on his headlights.

It had taken them over two hours to get clear of the Washington Beltway, then thirty miles more on Route 50 to Annapolis. They still had a long stretch of highway in front of them, another sixty miles or so to Ocean City.

“I never got to ask you, Jackie,” Teller said, “just what Maria told you on the flight this morning that convinced you she was telling the truth.”

“Our ‘girl talk'?”

“Frank didn't mean anything bad by that.”

“Yeah, and it really pissed me off,” she told him. “It was condescending and sexist.”

“I think,” Teller replied slowly, “that often women will tell women things that they would never tell a man. Doesn't that constitute ‘girl talk'?”

“Only when it's saturated in testosterone, Chris.” She sighed. “But … yeah. Women do talk. And she told me that our friend Escalante liked to beat her up. She'd been looking for a chance to get out—but Escalante had money and she didn't. She was trapped.”

“You trusted her because of that?”

“I've been there.”

“Oh? How was that?”

“I was married ten years ago—”

“
I
didn't know that!”

She shrugged. “Never came up. Hey, I didn't tell you
everything
.”

“Obviously not.” Teller smiled at her.

“I was a kid, okay? Stupid and in love, which is another way of saying stupid. I was married for one year, five days, and ten hours—but, hey, who's counting? When the VCR bounced off the wall next to my head, I decided it was time to cut my losses and get out.”

“Sounds like a good choice.”

“It was. And that's how I know Maria was telling the truth. She was scared and she was stuck.”

“Until we came along.”

“Until we came along. She saw an opportunity to get out of Iztacalpa and off to
el norte.
”

“Except that if the Agency decides they don't need information from her, they'll send her packing straight back to Mexico.”

“I know. They'll kill her. It stinks.”

“It'll stink more if those nukes get to where they're going.” He concentrated on the driving for a moment, as the support girders flashed past with a monotonous rhythm. “You're really convinced she was telling the truth?”

“I'd stake my career on it.”

“Well, we're both staking our careers on it, then.”

“You think we'll find them in Ocean City?”

“One of them, anyway. I figure if we do prove someone's trying to off-load a nuke in Delaware, they'll be a bit hotter to find that sub before it reaches New York.” He smiled at her. “Maybe they'll even let Maria stay in America.”

“Maybe they'll let
me
stay with the Agency.”

“Is that important to you?”

She was silent for a moment. “I don't know,” she said finally. “Not anymore. I thought I was doing good, once. Helping to save the world. Saving the American way of life. But lately it's all been politics and game after game of cover-your-ass. There are times…”