By Dawn's Early Light (18 page)

0400 GMT
SEAWOLF
ANDAMAN SEA

Dillon couldn't sleep. He sat at his desk writing the day's letter to Jill, even though it was very early morning.

The poem for the twelfth day out was something really obscure by Yeats. But bits of it were among his all-time favorite lines. Something about exiles who wandered over the land and sea.

Sometimes he felt just like that, like an exile wandering over the sea; he and the other COs of every submarine that sailed. In some ways they
were
what Yeats called renegades. Planning and plotting for the day when they would launch their nuclear weapons.

He sat back with his cocoa, his eyes closed, listening to the Sade CD that Jill had sent with him, and seeing Yeats's words.

Someone knocked at his door. Dillon opened his eyes. “Come.”

A signalman from the radio shack came in. “Sorry to bother you, sir. But we received a four group ELF message for-your-eyes-only.”

Dillon took the message flimsy. “Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Ask Mr. Bateman to join me, would you?”

“Yes, sir.”

The first three-letter extremely low frequency code group, SSS, had been decrypted as FOR-YOUR-EYES-ONLY, COMMANDING OFFICER.

Dillon opened the captain's safe and using his code book decrypted the second grouping, LQT, as GROUP SEVEN.

If there was to be an ELF message from COMSUBPAC, he figured it would be something like this. The first group was for the radio shack personnel to decrypt. The second group told Dillon that whatever groups three and four turned out to be would involve either a top secret message of a special nature, or a nuclear command authority authorization to release weapons. In either case it would take two keys, and two code cards—his and his executive officer's—to decrypt.

Bateman showed up a couple of minutes later with a cup of coffee for himself and a cup of hot cocoa for the captain.

“What's up, Frank?”

“A group seven just came in.”

Bateman pursed his lips as he put down his cup. “We're less than twenty-four hours from clearing the Andaman Ridge,” he said. He took his key from around his neck and inserted it into the left slot of the second, much larger safe in the aft bulkhead.

Dillon inserted his key in the right-hand slot, and they turned them together. “This could be it.”

“Yeah.”

Dillon took out the first loose-leaf notebook and went through the plastic bound pages until he came to PXY, the third ELF group. A pocket in the page contained a pair of stiff plastic packets. He and Bateman cracked open the packets to reveal two cards on which were printed a series of code groups. Bateman used his and a codebook from the safe to decrypt his part of the message with a letter grouping key that only he knew. Dillon used a page marked ASD, which was the fourth ELF group, to decode his part of the message, again using a letter grouping only he knew.

It took nearly an hour for them to finish. When they were done they combined messages, which gave them the final text. It was a cumbersome system, one that seemed to get worse each year when some Pentagon whiz kid figured out a new layer of confusion. But the system was secure. It helped prevent some CO from running amok and start launching nuclear weapons on Moscow, or even Des Moines.

“They must have put this in the safe along with the launch codes for the Tomahawks when we went back to Pearl,” Bateman said. He was relieved it wasn't a war order.

“That's what I figure,” Dillon agreed, replacing the codebooks in the safes and latching the doors. “They must have been waiting for something to happen. Something they couldn't even tell me about until it did.”

“Like what?” Bateman asked. His brain was going just as fast as Dillon's. Out-of-the-box orders got everybody's attention.

“I don't know, but I expect we'll find out when we get there.” He and Bateman turned their keys and removed them.

“Now what, skipper?”

“Have Teflon and Ski meet us in the control room. I want to plot a best possible speed course to the
Vinson
, and I want Ski to give his people the heads-up. Wouldn't do to bump into anything. The admiral said the shuttle mission was being
delayed,
not canceled. So we're still going to have to come back and finish the job.”

1930 LOCAL
KANDRACH, PAKISTAN

Scott Hanson hunched his knees up to his chest as he huddled in the corner of his cell listening to the inhuman shrieks of agony coming from down the corridor.

It was his turn next in “the room.” It had been that way since they'd arrived here two—or was it three?—days ago.

As red warren team leader he went last. First was Mike Harvey. Next was Bruce Hauglar with his badly burned back and neck. Then Don Amatozio, and finally himself.

They were allowed little or no sleep, only a thin gruel of rice or wheat paste with a few pieces of rotted fish and a lot of curry powder twice a day, and one cup of dirty, tepid water a few hours after each meal.

Hanson was wearing down. He expected the others were wearing down too, though he couldn't know for sure. They hadn't seen each other since they'd gotten here. The food provided very little in the way of nourishment and it gave him violent diarrhea, which further weakened him.

His only clothing was a filthy pair of cotton shorts, soiled by his own excrement. His body was a mass of cuts, bruises, welts, and large blood blisters from the big pliers they used to pinch his inner thighs, the backs of his arms, and the small of his back on either side of his spine.

His four front teeth had been knocked out in the first interrogation session, and then his nose had been broken, and a couple of ribs cracked. It made it hard to breathe deeply.

Amatozio's screams abruptly stopped, and Hanson looked up. He shivered violently for several seconds before he could bring his body back under control.

The screams were bad enough. But it was the silences afterwards that got to him the most. It meant that Don was unconscious. Or dead. But it also meant that his turn was next.

They had not found out any of their names yet. Or at least their interrogators had shown no special interest in Hanson. It was only a slim hope for now. But sooner or later he figured someone would recognize him. Or one of the team, maybe even himself, might crack and identify him.

Each session was the same. There were three questions, the accusation, and then the torture, which was followed by the same three questions, the same accusation, and then more torture. The only variation was in the torture. Sometimes it was pliers, sometimes rubber hoses, sometimes electrical shocks to the testicles. But always the excruciating pain.

The steel door to Hanson's concrete cubicle banged open. Two ISI guards waited in the corridor for him to struggle to his feet and stagger out to them. The first time they had come for him, he had resisted. That's when they had dragged him out and knocked out his front teeth.

He didn't resist anymore.

The cell was six feet by six feet with a low concrete ceiling in which was set a very strong light that never went out. There were no windows, no bed or mattress, not even a blanket. He had to relieve himself into a small stinking hole in the floor.

In the corridor he automatically turned left and tottered to the open door at the end. The guards did not touch him, nor did they speak.

The small, rat-faced interrogator in an ISI uniform, his collar open, leaned against the bare concrete wall in the room. The only furnishing was a three-legged stool made out of steel.

Hanson sat down, the door behind him was closed, and the two guards took up positions on either side of him.

“Good evening,” the interrogator said. He was ISI Captain Javid Amin, although Hanson didn't know his name. “We're finally beginning to make some progress. Really splendid. And in such a short time.”

Someone came in the room and handed Amin the satellite comms unit they'd used to contact Kuwait City. Hanson didn't turn so he couldn't see who brought it.

“This is what you call an SSIX mini. A communications unit that not only scrambles the signal, I'm told, but squeezes it into a very tiny burst of static and then bounces it off an orbiting satellite.” Amin smiled and shook his head. “The infidel are ingenious. We must give them that,” he told the man standing behind Hanson.

He held the mini in front of Hanson's face. “All I am asking is that you verify my information. What did you pass to your handler? Did you tell them our little bomb secret? A simple nod of the head will do. Yes, or no.”

Hanson remained stock-still. He wondered which of the other three had given the answer to question number one. Amatozio, maybe. It'd be a living hell to be in this situation
and
blind.

Amin handed the mini back to the one who'd brought it in. “Well, we now know about the communicator. Can you tell me how the weapons and supplies were delivered to your mountain hideout?”

Someone from behind Hanson handed the captain a Sterling submachine gun. Amin cycled the bolt, pointed the weapon at Hanson's head, and pulled the trigger.

The firing pin snapped on an empty chamber, but it felt to Hanson like someone had stabbed a giant needle into his brain. He flinched so hard he almost fell off the stool.

Amin smiled faintly, and handed the gun back. “You came here to spy on us. What message did you send to your control officer?”

Hanson was at his limits. He hung his head. He shouldn't have reacted to someone dry firing a weapon at him. He'd been there, done that, in BUD/S training, basic underwater demolition/SEALS, in San Diego.

He looked up after a moment or two and returned Amin's smile. “Fuck you,” he said good-naturedly. The sonofabitch was going to call him a terrorist now, and then the torture would begin. He might as well make it worth their while.

Amin's face turned red. “You are nothing but dogshit!” he screamed. “You are a common criminal! You are an international terrorist!”

“Fuck you
and
your mother,” Hanson said.

Someone handed Amin an electric cattle prod. This was something new. Hanson's muscles bunched up.

The steel door opened. “Captain, there is a telephone call.”

“Not now,” Amin shouted. He was insane with rage.

“Yes, Captain, now.”

Amin looked beyond Hanson, and hesitated for a moment. Then he came down, and nodded. “Yes, I understand,” he said. He looked at Hanson, then jammed the cattle prod into Hanson's chest.

A bolt of white-hot lightning hammered Hanson's body, careened up his neck, and burst inside his head like a Patriot missile coming out of its box, and he fell off the stool, his head crashing onto the concrete floor.

 

Amin hurried across the compound to his office in the ranger camp administrative wing. He was still seething. The bastard Americans were all alike. Allah had visited His wrath on them. They were frightened. And it would happen again. Another day of rejoicing would come.

He picked up the telphone. “Captain Amin speaking.”

“This is Asif.”

Amin stiffened. “Yes, General. Good evening. We are making great progress already.” Major General Jamsed Asif was the director of the ISI.

“I am glad to hear that, but you have very little time to finish the job, Captain.”

“I understand—”

“You do not understand. The Americans may try to mount a rescue attempt.”

“Here, General?”

“Yes. We just learned of the possibility. If you are alerted I want you to be ready to execute the spies, and burn their bodies. Do you understand that, Captain?”

“Yes, of course, General,” Amin replied. “But what about the woman?”

“Her as well. They must not be allowed to be taken away by the Americans. At all costs. If you cannot defeat the rescue team, kill the prisoners.”