The Art of War: A Novel (35 page)

The navy brought in four SEAL teams. Each team was given a section of the anchorage to search, starting at the carrier piers and radiating outward. Their diving boats were navy dredges, which were used periodically to pull sediment from the bottom of the anchorage to keep it deep enough for the deep-draft carriers. Barges used to hold the dredged-up muck were rigged alongside with a sponson between the barge and dredge, leaving a gap that divers could use to enter and exit the water.

If the weapon was merely lying on the bottom, the dredges would of course pull it up eventually. Since the dredging went on year-around, presumably it wasn’t there.

The SEAL officer in charge stood on the small bridge of the dredge and used binoculars to scan the pier. It had to be there, somewhere, he thought, in an area that the dredges wouldn’t normally do. So he sent his men swimming in that direction after entering the water.

The SEAL commander, Captain Joe Child, and the commanding officer of the base, Captain Butler Spiers, had been personally briefed yesterday by the chief of naval operations, Admiral Cart McKiernan, in a guarded conference room in the base administration building. Sitting beside the admiral was a civilian; he wasn’t introduced, yet Child recognized him from newspaper photographs. The man was Jake Grafton, retired rear admiral and interim director of the CIA. It was the most amazing briefing Joe Child had ever attended.

After he had explained the threat, McKiernan laid it on the line. “As you know, we already have plenty of security precautions in place, including airborne fighters, a restricted area over the base, continuous helicopter patrols. Still, in light of this threat, we are going to do more. We are starting those patrols tomorrow, a week early. All commands have been notified.”

He paused to gather his thoughts. “We have a carrier at the pier now,
Harry Truman,
undergoing maintenance on her catapults and other gear, and she isn’t scheduled to leave until mid-February. The
Ford
will be towed over from Norfolk tomorrow. The next carrier will be arriving three days from now, the eighteenth. Two more will arrive on the twentieth and the twenty-second of December. All will be here with their task forces, which means some amphibious assault ships and about eighteen destroyers. There isn’t enough pier space for all their escorts, so they will make port up and down the East Coast.

“If we can’t find a bomb—because it isn’t there or we just can’t find it—I am going to have all those ships except
Harry Truman
and
Ford
stay at sea. The drop-dead date for that decision is four days from now, December twenty-second.”

“What if there are several weapons?” Captain Spiers asked.

“Even if we find one, we’re going to keep looking,” McKiernan replied.

“A nuclear weapon,” Captain Spiers said. His face looked a little pasty. “Sir, we should be evacuating this base right now. Hell, we should be evacuating this whole area.”

“That’s been discussed. The decision has been made to tightly hold this secret. It is entirely possible that there are one or more watchers who will detonate the weapon if they realize we suspect it’s here and we’re looking for it. Trying to move a million and a half people a hundred miles from here can’t be kept a secret. We’ll just have to find the weapon.”

Spiers licked his lips. “But if we don’t?” he asked.

“Then we’ll do what we can do, and hope for the best.”

“Admiral, I have leave scheduled on the seventeenth,” Spiers said. “My eldest daughter is due to deliver—”

“Cancel it. That’s an order. Your duty is here.”

“—our first grandchild,” Spiers finished belligerently.

“I want an acknowledgment that I have just given you a direct order, Captain.”

Spiers’ Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Finally he said, “Aye aye, sir.”

“Moving on, the SEAL teams will arrive tomorrow on transports. They have been told they are deploying to the Middle East. We’ll need barracks for them, with no one else in them. The day after tomorrow, you will announce a security exercise, close the base and search it. Every square inch. Your people will not be told about nuclear weapons, but will be told to look for anything—and I mean
anything
—that isn’t supposed to be there. All leave and liberty is canceled. No one, and I mean no one, goes on or off the base. The exercise will last until the twenty-second.”

“We don’t have berthing for all these people who can’t go home,” Spiers pointed out.

“Get cots and sleeping bags and porta-potties and berth your people in hangars. Set up chow lines. The ships’ crews will be staying aboard their ships. Figure out the details and get at it, Spiers. Get enough food on the station to last two weeks, for your people and the crews of the ships in port.”

“Yes, sir, but we don’t have enough refrigeration—”

McKiernan’s fist smashed on the table. “Then you’d better get a shitload of MREs anywhere you can find them,” he roared. “Do I have to can you and find someone who can figure this out?”

“No, sir.”

In the silence that followed that exchange, Captain Child pointed out, “Everyone these days has cell phones.”

“The cell towers are going out of service even as we speak. We are sealing this base and searching every square inch of it. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The story is the base is holding a security exercise. Get it in the newspapers and on television today. A routine security exercise. If there is a watcher, he or she will expect us to take extra precautions since we are going to have all these ships in port. We would be idiots if we didn’t, and whoever planted this weapon knows that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Spiers had one last question. “How sure are we that there is indeed an armed nuclear weapon somewhere close?”

Jake Grafton spoke for the first time, his voice hard and flat. “Bet your ass it’s here and you may not lose it.”

“Who put it here?”

“You don’t need to know that,” Grafton said, staring Spiers straight in the eyes, almost as if he dared the captain to ask another question. Spiers lowered his gaze and rose from his chair.

Jake Grafton said, “Captain Child, one more word.”

Spiers left, and Child sat down again.

“I want you to bring your EOD people in and have a long talk with them,” Jake Grafton said. “As I analyze this problem, there are two ways this weapon, if it is here, can be triggered. First, it might be wired up to a clock mechanism and be merely ticking down to a certain date and time, perhaps Christmas Day. If so, it could be anywhere in the estuary or river or on the west side of the river in that Corps of Engineers storage depot. Wherever the thing is, it might have a triggering device that is waiting for a radio signal. This is the most likely prospect, I suspect, because it keeps all the bomber’s options open until the last possible second, when the button is pushed triggering the thing. We can also assume that the triggering device is on or beside the weapon. Almost has to be to keep the wire runs short.

“Be that as it may, if the triggering mechanism is waiting for a radio signal, it won’t be in ten or twenty or thirty feet of water. Or if it is, there will be a wire leading from it to some kind of metal structure that will act as an antenna and receive the transmission when sent and pass it on to the triggering device. If I were you, my first efforts would be to find an insulated wire attached to something metal. I’m no expert, but I suspect it could be darn near anything.”

Captain Child nodded.

“That’s it,” Jake Grafton said. “Talk to the EOD guys and get their opinion. Most radio waves can’t go through twenty or thirty feet of water. Perhaps the Chinese could use very low frequency waves that go through the water, but how will they know just when to trigger it, given that we can shut down the Internet or telephone networks at any time? I suspect it’s more likely that there is someone close, and at precisely the right time to do maximum damage he or she will use a higher-frequency, short-range encrypted radio signal that will not penetrate water. That gives them maximum flexibility regardless of what we do to thwart them.”

“The
Ford
is scheduled to be towed from Newport News to the carrier piers tomorrow,” Child said. “She’s been in dry dock for a year. The crew has been ashore. The media people want to film the arrival. Still, it’s a good excuse for us to search the waters around the carrier piers and inspect the bottoms of every hull there.”

The Chinese would know that, of course,
Jake thought.

McKiernan didn’t bat an eye. “Do it.”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Child said. He walked out and closed the door behind him.

*   *   *

The four-star admiral in command of the Fleet Forces Command, Sherman Fitch, was waiting when the CNO and Jake Grafton arrived at Base Ops to board the little executive jet to Washington. The CO of the base, Captain Spiers, was also there. McKiernan told him to dismiss the honor guard, which he did.

As Jake stood watching, Cart McKiernan took the man who owned the Atlantic Fleet aside for a private conversation on the ramp. It took ten minutes. Jake used the break to hit the head. When he got back, the admirals were shaking hands and saluting. Spiers saluted them both.

On the flight to Washington, McKiernan told Jake, “I told Sherm I wanted the orders drafted and ready for signature if and when I told him to send the ships elsewhere over the holidays. Didn’t give him a reason, but demanded Top Secret security. Had to give him a heads-up. You can’t turn a fleet on a dime. Without some prior planning, sending the ships elsewhere or keeping them at sea will be a fucked-up mess. Everyone will be talking, and it will be big news everywhere.”

Jake Grafton said nothing. The decision was McKiernan’s whenever he wished to make it.

The CNO changed subjects instantly. “Could the bomb be triggered from a satellite?” he asked.

“Not without an antenna, the experts tell me.”

“An underwater acoustic receiver,” the admiral mused, “waiting for a sound, like a sonar. Or a fish or depth finder.”

“Perhaps,” Jake agreed. “But those devices all have limited range and will require the triggerman to get relatively close, which would be difficult or impossible if we limit access to the anchorage, as you intend to do. Simple is usually better; less chance for a technical breakdown or unanticipated events blowing your preparations.”

“That means a clock.”

“Maybe. But let’s let the SEALs search a while before we get esoteric.”

“And how long will that be?”

“I don’t know.”

The CNO eyed Grafton. “Can you find the watcher?”

“We can try, Cart. That’s all I can promise. It could be a civilian or sailor. The FBI and Homeland Security will give us some agents, a few dozen. The cover story is the security exercise at the base; our guys will do some discreet whispering about a terrorist threat. That’s the best story because it allows us to question everyone about themselves and other people and look at ID. I’ve cleared it with Sal Molina. If the news breaks, the pundits and politicians will get their undies in a twist, and we’ll just have to live with that. Still, don’t get your hopes up. We’ll need some breaks. And some luck.”

“Why do I have this feeling our luck is running out?” Admiral McKiernan mused.

“Better have every ship in the fleet searched. If a bomb goes off in Norfolk, half the people on earth will think it was one of ours. We’d better make sure it isn’t.”

“The orders were issued yesterday.”

Jake Grafton nodded and scratched his head. What if they didn’t find the bomb in time, or the watcher got worried and triggered it? Or the Chinese somehow used a satellite to trigger it? It would be, he knew, the end of the America he had known and loved.

Or what if the news—or rumor—got out that the sailors searching ships and the SEALs searching harbors and buildings were looking for a bomb? Mass panic in southeastern Virginia. Packed roads, car wrecks, people driving like maniacs. Dozens would die. Moving some of the medically fragile might kill them. Those without transportation would shout that they were being abandoned to be cremated alive. Even if there was no bomb, the political repercussions of a panic disaster would make massive waves for years. That was Sal Molina’s nightmare.

Jake glanced at the admiral. “What about that incident a few days ago in the South China Sea? The Poseidon that had a close encounter with Chinese fighters?”

“We can’t back off,” McKiernan explained. “Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam can’t go it alone.”

“A carrier in the South China Sea to intercept the fighters?”

“We are going to escort patrolling Poseidons with air force fighters for a while. Truth is, we can’t spare a carrier there right now. Our ships are committed to the hilt. We just don’t have enough carriers if China presses harder.”

And if five of America’s carriers are wiped from the board
, Jake thought,
America will face an impossible task of trying to juggle assets between the Middle East and western Pacific. There won’t be enough anywhere.

*   *   *

The FBI was on the Chinese guy in apartment 209 like stink on a skunk. They had a van parked in back of the place that could pick up any electronic emissions from the building, and two cars with two agents each in front and back. In addition, there was a car with two agents across the street at the McDonald’s and one a half block to the right of the apartment house at a gasoline station/convenience store.

I went to the van from the building on the next street, so anyone watching out the window wouldn’t see me enter it. The sign on the side of it said it belonged to a plumbing firm, one with the slogan “We fix it up so it goes down.”

Inside, I introduced myself and displayed my CIA card. They glanced at it and said, “They told us you might be by.” Cooperation between federal agencies is a wonderful thing.

“Got something for you to look at,” the guy introduced as Nate said, and passed me several photos. Sure enough, they had him. Taken from a surveillance camera that I doubted that he had seen, the blown-up photos were of an Asian man about fifty-five, with a distinguished haircut and even features, dressed well in a suit and tie, wearing a dark topcoat. No hat. “We got those this morning when he went out for a bagel and newspaper,” Nate said.