Ashes of victory, p.31
Ashes of Victory, page 31
“BUT WE ALREADY HAD an inspection.” Javier Ibarra waved the Recreational Boating Safety certificate he had been issued three days earlier.
“I realize that, sir,” said Petty Officer Second Class Mark Lassiter after reviewing it. He was a thin man in his early thirties with a wispy mustache. He and his team had just boarded the yacht from a Response Boat-Medium (RB-M), a utility Coast Guard vessel roughly half the size of Erasmus. “But we’re here on a PWCS,” he added, identifying the nature of his mission: Ports, Waterways, and Coastal Security.
Wearing a pair of white shorts, a blue T-shirt, and sandals, Ibarra made a face. “What does that have to do with us? We’re on a pleasure fishing cruise.” The PWCS was a far more thorough inspection than the RBS conducted by the cutter, which meant there was a risk that the inspectors might stumble onto the secret hatch for the compartment below the main salon—a risk he could not take.
“Just following orders, sir,” Lassiter said. “But we should be through in a couple of hours. Then you can be on your way.”
As the petty officer signaled two sailors to come aboard—each bearing the same model 9 mm Beretta 92FS hanging from Lassiter’s belt—Ibarra did his own signaling to his team.
Ever since his contact in Newport News had messaged Ibarra that she had to go dark after her cover was blown, the seasoned smuggler had noticed an increased level of activity on all the standard Coast Guard channels, as well as on his radar screen, indicating the possibility that the Americans might be onto them. Though the fact that Santo Erasmus had not been encircled by the US Atlantic Fleet—or just blown out of the water by a missile from an overhead drone—suggested to Ibarra that they did not yet know his vessel’s name.
For now.
That same radar screen had also told him that the Coast Guard RB-M was the only ship in the vicinity, and that, combined with the fact that dusk was less than three hours away, presented him with a unique opportunity to put an old smuggling trick into practice.
He shifted his gaze between the three armed inspectors moving across his yacht and the fourth sailor that remained on the Coast Guard RB-M, his arms resting on top of an M240B machine gun aimed his way. Ibarra then ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair.
It happened very fast.
A flash of orange and yellow flames from the RPG-32 Mario Mendoza had balanced on his right shoulder shot out toward the RB-M’s bridge with a muzzle velocity of 445 feet per second. The thermobaric shell engulfed the center of the Coast Guard vessel, including its gunner, in an almost blinding light as its warhead generated a very high-temperature explosion.
As Santo Erasmus rocked from the shock wave and a blast of heat swept across the deck, Ibarra produced a .45-caliber Sig P220 pistol from behind his back, where it has been pressed against his spine, and shot Lassiter in the back of the head, while Sammy Chen and Jorge Diaz handled the other two sailors.
After untying the mooring lines, Mendoza steered his boat away from the RB-M as the fire spread across the vessel’s stern. His crew tossed the three bodies overboard, and Ibarra ordered the diesels ahead two-thirds, on a bearing that would take Santo Erasmus toward the coast of North Carolina.
“There will be more coming, Javi,” Diaz said, pointing at the sky. “And they will fire first and ask questions later.”
“I’m counting on it,” Ibarra said.
GRAND HOTEL KEMPINSKI, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
PRINCE OMAR AL SAUD loved this enchanting gem of a city in the southwestern corner of the country, nestled in the Rhône Valley. A major center for financial activity, commerce, and the headquarters of many international organizations, it had been built in the classic pattern of many old European cities, radiating in an organized fashion outward from its original center.
Sitting on the large covered balcony of the penthouse suite of the luxurious hotel—just one of the rooms that had been reserved, along with the entire floor—Al Saud enjoyed a celebratory late-afternoon cappuccino while watching the news from America on an eighty-inch flat screen hanging from the wall. The White House press secretary stood behind a podium reporting on the damage done to Vinson. He smiled, imagining the chaos and destruction.
He shut off the TV and turned to look out the window at the mirror-smooth surface of Lake Geneva. The majestic Alps rose in the distance. He pondered the phone call he had had only two hours earlier with the Russian submarine captain.
To be honest, the Saudi prince could not figure out how the Russian had been able to badly damage one aircraft carrier, sink an attack submarine, and then disable a second carrier, with the latter operating on high alert in the crowded waters of the Taiwan Strait. And then he had managed to escape with only minor damage to the sub after enduring a night of depth charges.
Amazing, he thought, thinking about the press conference. Vinson was damaged, drifting in the Taiwan Strait, just as China continued its military buildup along the coast.
Al Saud had immediately transferred the promised funds to Sergeyev and his crew. After all, a deal was a deal. And besides, he probably could use their services again in the—
Someone rang the suite’s bell.
Al Saud turned at the intrusion, looking through the half-opened sliding glass doors that separated the balcony from the living area.
He motioned to one of the five guards scattered throughout his suite to check it out. Al Saud had another dozen men covering every access point to his top-floor retreat, three more in the lobby by the elevators, plus six more guarding his brand-new Bell 525 helicopter on the roof, with a pilot standing by. After the narrow escape from Azzam, he wasn’t taking any chances.
Holding a Mac-10 pistol in his left hand, the guard used his right one to inch the door ope—
And that’s when a cylindrical object flew through the opening, skittering inside.
Before his mind could register what was happening, the concussion grenade went off.
Al Saud fell to the ground stunned, half-blinded by the intense flash, his ears ringing.
He tried to move, to get up, to make a run for the stairs leading to the helipad. But instead, a figure forced him on his belly and secured his wrists and ankles with flex-cuffs, while another one placed a bag over his head.
“Stop . . . who . . . are you?” he mumbled, fighting the urge to vomit.
“Room service,” a man replied before hoisting him over his right shoulder with incredible ease.
“For one,” added another.
Then he felt the pinch of a needle and quickly lost consciousness.
CMDR. JAKE RUSSO HAULED his high-value target up the stairs to the roof, followed by three other members of his SEAL team, and pushed through the door just as a Super Stallion thundered from the lake and took up a position hovering beyond the prince’s Bell 525. Two other SEALs waited there. The bodies of the prince’s guards and pilot lay near the helicopter.
The transfer took less than a minute, and before the authorities descended on the luxury hotel, the Sea Stallion was already back out over the water, cruising at two hundred knots on its way to Panzer Kaserne Marine Corps Base in Boeblingen, Germany.
Russo strapped the prince into a seat in the rear of the cabin before removing the black bag. He nodded to a navy corpsman, who took the prince’s vitals, and then gave him another injection.
Slowly the man’s eyes fluttered open. His head moved side to side as he tried to orient himself. After a minute, his gaze came to rest on the SEAL commander.
Russo watched the man’s face transition from surprise to anger.
“Do you know . . . who you just kidnapped?” Al Saud growled.
Russo smiled and then asked, “The biggest dick to ever walk the earth?”
Then he took an encrypted satellite phone from a cargo pocket and dialed a number. “Package en route,” was all he said before he hung up and turned to join his men.
USS MISSOURI (SSN 780), TAIWAN STRAIT
“LOOK AT THE POSITIVE side, sir,” Lt. Cmdr. Robert Giannotti said. “Pretty soon we’re bound to run out of ammo and have to head home.”
“I’d settle for forty-eight-hour liberty in Subic Bay,” Marshon Chappelle chimed in from the sonar station. “Don’t know about you guys, but I’m starting to forget what a girl looks like.” Although the navy had allowed women on submarines since 2010, there were none aboard this tour of the Mighty Mo.
“Tired of your whales, Chappy?” Giannotti asked.
At the moment, Missouri cruised eleven thousand yards from the starboard side of Vinson at a depth of sixty feet. The high-definition cameras mounted on the photonic masts fed the flat screens with the surrounding surface activity—or lack thereof. Aside from the distant flattop silhouette of the carrier, he saw no traffic on the dark waters southeast of Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and nothing floating in the vicinity of the submarine. The stars were shining brightly, and the moon hung low in the western sky.
“Set our depth one-two-zero. Ahead one-third. Rudder amidships.”
Cmdr. Frank Kelly watched the crew carry out the order to get the submarine into firing position, and a few minutes later, he said, “Fire one.”
“Fire one, aye,” Giannotti repeated.
The weapons officer worked his keyboard before reporting, “Missile away.”
On the screen, a burst of cold gas shot the BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) out of its Vertical Launching System forward of Missouri’s sail and toward the surface, before it accelerated to its cruise speed of 545 miles per hour in the direction of the lower coastline of China.
“Fire two.”
A second TLAM shot out of an adjacent VLS and shadowed the first one.
The eighteen-foot-long missiles stabilized in flight at low altitude as they streaked toward their target, relying on Global Positioning System for time-of-arrival control and navigation capability.
“Set depth three-zero-zero. Ahead two-thirds,” Kelly ordered before leaving Giannotti in command and retiring to his cabin, where he grabbed the five-by-seven photo and gazed into the smiling faces of his twin girls in a feeble attempt to avoid thinking about the souls that would be dead at his hand within the next ten minutes.
GUANGDONG PROVINCE, THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
THE THREE GUARDS ON duty at the missile site were enjoying an evening of freedom from their humorless sergeant of the guard, who had taken ill late in the afternoon.
The two corporals and a private first class were playing Da Bai Fen, a popular Chinese card game, while eating dried fish snacks and looking forward to breakfast.
The men were joking and laughing when they heard an odd sound in the distance and immediately stopped talking, carefully listening to the eerie screech. But none of them recognized the high-pitched noise.
The strange sound grew louder. The men looked at one another blankly before the obvious conclusion dawned on them, and they scrambled over one another to reach the nearby bomb shelter.
The first Tomahawk missile exploded in the middle of the compound, injuring the three guards and trapping them in the debris. In shock and disbelief, the three men heard the terrifying sound again. One of the men tried to crawl away, just as the second missile landed eight feet from the first point of impact, instantly killing the guards.
The back-to-back blasts, a combined two thousand pounds of high explosives, reached not only a dozen ballistic missiles on their fixed launching stations, but also an adjacent two-story concrete and steel structure fed by a small power station.
The fireball ignited the solid-rocket propellant in the missiles, triggering secondary explosions that licked the sky, the crimson glow of the resulting fire visible for miles. Sparks flew from severed electrical cables, and then the power station exploded, taking with it the entire structure it served: a state-of-the-art, ground-based anti-satellite laser system.
— 28 —
THIRTY-EIGHTH STREET BROWNSTONE, WASHINGTON, DC
BEARING TWO-ONE-ZERO. SPEED ONE-SIX knots,” reported a sailor who sat behind a console on the first of three rows of operators working in the mission-control-like room.
Capt. Christine Blake stood with Hartwell Prost at the end of the front row. The DNI stared at the rightmost projection screen, which showed a beautiful motorsailer yacht cruising through calm seas.
“A Reaper started tracking it an hour ago,” Blake said, referring to a General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle. “It’s coming from the suspect HVT grid and also the same location where we spotted the burning Coast Guard patrol boat, who reported approaching this specific vessel for inspection almost three hours ago. A cutter is on an intercept course. We want to reach it before it gets dark.”
Prost frowned at the fact that it had taken his “supposedly” nimble task force more than two hours from the time the patrol boat had been attacked to the time they were able to locate and start tracking the runaway yacht. And while inside their “supposedly” focused search area.
We have to do better than that, he thought, staring at the video feed from the UAV flying a racetrack pattern off the Virginia coast. The yacht had been identified as the Santo Erasmus.
“It left Lisbon six days ago headed for Newport News. One of our deep-sea cutters ran a routine boat safety inspection on it three days ago.”
Prost nodded. “And?”
“It says here that it was issued an RBS certificate for seaworthiness.”
“Of course,” Prost said.
“It’s currently headed southwest,” said Blake. “Away from Ford and the naval station.”
Prost tilted his head at her and said, “Probably has to do with our missing Newport News spy giving its crew a heads-up before going dark.”
“It’s currently forty-one miles northwest of Wilmington, North Carolina, on a bearing that will take it fairly close to MCAS New River,” Blake added, referring to the large Marine Corps air station in New River, North Carolina.
“We can’t let it get anywhere near our coast, Captain,” Prost said, his eyes on the yacht as it reflected the setting sun’s orange light.
“The cutter’s five minutes out.”
“Has it made contact with the yacht?”
Blake shook her head. “Negative, sir. Nonresponsive. And we can’t see anyone.” She tapped her tablet, and the image zoomed in over the bridge as she added, “Though it’s hard to see through its windows reflecting the sunset.”
“Take it out, Captain,” Prost said.
Blake looked up from her screen. “But the Coast Guard will get there in—”
“Now, Captain. Put a Hellfire through its bridge, and order the cutter to back off, just in case.”
“In case of what, sir?”
He shrugged. “In case it’s carrying enough explosives to damage a carrier. I don’t want the cutter anywhere near it.”
Blake did a double take on him, then she said, “Yes, sir,” and worked her tablet for a few seconds before announcing, “Stand by for missile shot.”
It took about forty seconds for one of the Reaper’s AGM-114 Hellfire missiles to reach its target. One moment, the yacht was coasting through pristine waters and the next it vanished in a white-and-red explosion that filled the screen. When the image returned, the large yacht had stopped and fire billowed from its bridge just as one of its masts toppled over. But it was still afloat and largely in one piece.
Prost frowned. “What type of warhead was that?”
“MAC, sir,” Blake replied, referring to a metal-augmented charge. “Eighteen pounder.”
“Then something’s wrong,” Prost said, staring at the vessel drifting beneath a rising column of smoke.
“No secondaries?” Blake offered, reading his mind.
“Right,” Prost said. “If there was indeed a large bomb or missiles or torpedoes aboard—enough to damage a carrier—their charges should have gone off, vaporizing that yacht.”
“Unless . . .they somehow got the explosives off,” Blake said.
“You think it met up with another boat?”
“There was that gap of more than two hours from the time we lost contact with the Coast Guard patrol boat to the time we started tracking it,” Blake said. “So, it’s possible.”
Prost made a face, then asked, “Captain, do you have a copy of the Coast Guard’s RBS inspection report from three days ago?”
She tapped her screen, then tilted it toward him. “What are you looking for?”
“What’s no longer there,” he replied, staring at the screen for a moment before looking away in disgust.
“Damn,” Blake said. “They had a Boston Whaler secured to the yacht’s forward deck.”
“And I don’t recall seeing one a moment ago,” Prost said.
Blake immediately reversed the video. “You’re right, sir,” she said, zooming in on the vessel’s bow. “No Whaler.”
“We’ve been conned,” Prost said, closing his eyes as he thought of one type of bomb that could be hauled aboard a Boston Whaler, yet capable of damaging a carrier. “That’s our new target, Captain,” he added.
“Sir,” Blake replied. “That’s a very popular boat. There have to be hundreds of them in these waters, and the RBS doesn’t specify model or size. And we’re almost out of daylight.”
“Then we’d better hustle,” Prost said. “Send out an emergency broadcast to all Coast Guard vessels, law-enforcement patrol boats, and every available aerial asset. Find and stop every last Boston Whaler on the Eastern Seaboard and prioritize those within a hundred miles from Virginia Beach. Also send word to Ford. . . and pray to God we’re not too late.
ENTRANCE TO CHESAPEAKE BAY, VIRGINIA
THE OLD-SCHOOL CON REQUIRED three elements. First, the victim had to suspect they were the target of a con. Second, the victim had to think they had figured out how to beat the con. And third, the victim had to be wrong about the true nature of the con.
Javier Ibarra had learned the old trick—immortalized by American jazz pianist and bandleader Bennie Moten in his 1926 song—from his mentor in the smuggling business.
