Jack Ryan 9 - Executive Orders (137 page)

“Colonel Eddington?”

“Center of gravity is political, not military. We might want to keep that in mind, gentlemen,” the colonel from Carolina pointed out. “If they want to go for the coastal oil fields, we'll have a lot of strategic warning.”

“They do have us outnumbered, Nick. That does give them a certain degree of strategic flexibility. Sir, I see a lot of fuel trucks in these photos,” the American general noted.

“They stopped at the Kuwait border the last time because they were out of fuel,” the Saudi commander reminded them.

The Saudi army—actually called their National Guard—comprised five heavy brigades, almost all of it American equipment. Three were deployed south of Kuwait, with one at Ras al Khafji, site of the only invasion of the Kingdom, but right on the water, and nobody expected an attack from the sea. It was not unusual for soldiers to prepare to fight the last war, the American remembered.

For his part, Eddington remembered a quote from Napoleon. When shown a defense plan that had troops evenly spaced on the French border, he'd asked the officer if the idea was to prevent smuggling. That defensive concept had been given the patina of legitimacy by NATO's doctrine of forward defense on the inner German border, but it had never been tested, and if there were ever a place to trade space for time, it was the Saudi desert. Eddington kept his mouth shut on that one. He was junior to Diggs, and the Saudis seemed quite possessive about their territory, as most people were. He and Diggs shared a look. As the 10th Cav was the theater reserve for the Kuwaitis, so the 11th would perform the same function for the Saudis. That might change when his Guardsmen mounted their tracks at Dhahran, but for the moment this deployment would have to do.

One big problem with the situation was the command relationship in place. Diggs was a one-star—one hell of a good one, Eddington knew, but just a brigadier. Had C
ENT
C
OM
been able to fly over, he would have had the rank status to make firmer suggestions to the Saudis. Evidently, Colonel Magruder of the Buffalo Cav had done something like that, but Diggs's position was just a little ticklish.

“Well, we'll have a couple of days, anyway.” The American general turned. “Get additional recon assets in place. If those six divisions fart, I want to know what they had for dinner.”

“We'll have Predators going up at sunset,” the intel colonel promised.

Eddington walked outside to light a cigar. He needn't have troubled himself, he realized after a few puffs. The Saudis all smoked.

“Well, Nick?” Diggs asked, joining him.

“Beer'd be nice.”

“Just empty calories,” the general observed.

“Four-to-one odds, and they have the initiative. That's if my people get their gear in time. This could get right interesting, Diggs.” Another puff. “Their deployments suck.” A phrase acquired from his students, his senior thought. “By the way, what are we calling this?”

“B
UFORD
, Operation B
UFORD
. Pick a moniker for your brigade, Nick?”

“How's W
OLFPACK
grab you? It's the wrong school, but T
ARHEEL
just doesn't sound right. This damned thing's going pretty fast, General.”

“One lesson the other side must have learned from the last one: don't give us time to build our forces up.”

“True. Well, I have to see after my people.”

“Use my chopper,” Diggs told him. “I'll be here a while.”

“Yes, sir.” Eddington turned, saluted, and started walking off. Then he turned. “Diggs?”

“Yes?”

“Maybe we're not as well-trained as Hamm and his boys, but we'll get it done, y'hear?” He saluted again, tossed his cigar, and walked off to the Black Hawk.

N
OTHING MOVES AS
quietly as a ship. An automobile moving at this speed, a fraction below thirty miles per hour, made noise one could hear for hundreds of yards on a silent night, but for a ship it was the high-frequency swish of steel hull cutting through what were at the moment calm seas, and that didn't carry very far at all. Those aboard could feel the vibrations of the engine, or hear the deep sucking breath of the turbine engines, but that was all, and those sounds scarcely carried a hundred yards across the water at night. Just the swish, and behind every ship was a foaming wake, a ghostly shade of green in the water from tiny organisms upset by the pressure wave of their passage, and phosphorescing as some sort of biological protest to the disturbance. To those on the ships, it seemed hellishly bright. On every bridge, the lights were turned down, so that night vision wouldn't be compromised. Navigation lights were turned off, a rules-of-the-road violation in these confined waters. Lookouts used conventional binoculars and light-amplification gear to scan forward. The formation was just now turning the corner, in the narrowest part of the passage.

In every combat information center, people hovered over scopes and charts, talking in whispers lest they somehow be heard. Those who smoked wished they could in the antiseptic spaces, and those who'd quit now wondered why. Something about a health hazard, they remembered as they contemplated surface-to-surface missiles mounted in emplacements about fifteen thousand yards away, each of them with a ton of explosives right behind the seeker-head.

“Coming left, new course two-eight-five,” the officer of the deck reported on Anzio.

On the main plot, there were over forty “targets,” as radar contacts were called, each with a vector showing approximate course and speed. The number of inbounds and outbounds was about the same. Some of them were huge, the radar returns of supertankers being about that of a medium-sized island.

“Well, we've made it this far,” Weps said to Captain Kemper. “Maybe they're asleep.”

“Maybe there really is a Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

Only navigation radars were turning now. The Iranian/UIR-ians had to have ESM gear over there, but if they were standing a patrol in the Strait of Hormuz, they hadn't spotted it yet. There were unexplained targets. Fishing boats? Smugglers? Somebody in a pleasure craft? There was no telling. Probably the enemy was a little reticent about sending their vessels too far over the centerline of the strait. The Arabs were as territorial as everyone else, Kemper imagined.

The ships were all at battle stations. All combat systems were fully powered up, but on standby. If somebody turned toward them, they would first try to get a visual. If somebody lit them up with a targeting radar, then the ship on the clearest bearing would step up her alert level somewhat and make a few sweeps with the SPY radars to see if there might be an inbound track. But that would be tough. Those missiles all had independent seeker-heads, and the strait was crowded, and a missile just might acquire something unintended. The other side couldn't be all that trigger-happy. They might even end up slaughtering a few thousand sheep, Kemper thought with a smile. As tense as this part of the mission was, the task for the other side wasn't all that easy.

“Course change on track four-four, coming left,” a quartermaster said.

That one was a surface contact just inside UIR-ian waters, seven miles away and passing aft. Kemper leaned forward. A computer command showed the contact's course-track for the last twenty minutes. It had been moving along at mere steerage speed, about five knots. It was now doing ten, and had turned . . . toward the trailing decoy group. That data was linked to USS O'Bannon, whose captain was the senior officer for the group. The range between the two ships was 16,000 yards and closing.

Things got more interesting. Normandy's helicopter closed on the track from behind, keeping low. The pilots saw a green-white bloom as the unknown craft increased power, stirring the water and disturbing more of the organisms which somehow survived all the pollution here. A sudden burst of power meant . . .

“That's a gunboat,” the pilot reported over the data link. “He just goosed it. Target has just increased power.”

Kemper grimaced. He had a choice now. Do nothing, and maybe nothing would happen. Do nothing, and maybe give the gun/missile boat the first shot at O'Bannon and her group. Do something, and risk alerting the other side. But if the enemy craft shot first, the enemy would know something anyway, right? Maybe. Maybe not. It was a complex set of data for five seconds. He waited five more.

“Target is a missile boat, I see two launchers, target steadying down on course.”

“He's got a direct line to O'Bannon, sir,” Weps reported.

“Radio chatter, I have radio chatter on UHF, bearing zero-one-five.”

“Take the shot,” Kemper said instantly.

“Shoot!” Weps said over the voice channel to the helo.

“Roger, engaging!”

“Combat, lookout, sir, I have a flash like a missile launch on the port quarter—make that two, sir,” a speaker announced.

“Give it a sweep—”

“Two more launches, sir.”

Shit
, Kemper thought. The helo carried only two Penguin antiship missiles. The enemy had gotten the first two off. And he couldn't do anything now. The decoy group was fulfilling its function. It was getting shot at.

“Two vampires inbound—target destroyed,” the pilot added, announcing the destruction of the missile boat—confirmed a moment later by the topside lookout. “Say again, two vampires inbound O'Bannon.”

“Silkworms are big targets,” Weps said.

They watched the mini-battle imperfectly. The navigation-radar display showed O'Bannon changing course to port. That would be to unmask her point-defense missile system, located far aft. It would also provide a huge radar target to the inbound missiles. The destroyer did not fire off her decoys for fear that spoofing the in-bounds would only divert them to the replenishment ships she was guarding. An automatic decision? Kemper wondered. A considered one? Ballsy either way. The destroyer's illumination radar came on. That meant she was firing her missiles, but the navigation radar couldn't tell. Then at least one of the frigates joined in.

“All kinda flashes aft,” the topside lookout said next. “ Wow, that was a big one! There goes another!” Then five seconds of silence.

“O'Bannon to group, we're okay,” a voice reported.

For now, Kemper thought.

T
HE PREDATORS WERE
up, three of them, one each for the three corps encamped southwest of Baghdad, motoring through the air at only twice the speed of a tank. None of them got as far as planned. Thirty miles short of their objectives, their look-down thermal cameras showed the glowing shapes of armored vehicles. The Army of God was moving. The feed to S
TORM
T
RACK
was instantly cross-loaded to KKMC, and from there all over the world.

“Another couple of days would have been nice,” Ben Goodley thought aloud.

“How ready are our people?” Ryan turned to the J-3.

“The 10th's ready to rock. The 11th needs at least a day. The other brigade doesn't even have its equipment yet,” Jackson replied.

“How long before contact?” the President asked next.

“At least twelve hours, maybe eighteen. Depends on where they're going, exactly.”

Jack nodded. “Arnie, has Callie been briefed in on all this?”

“No, not at all.”

“Then let's get that done. I have a speech to make.”

A
LAHAD MUST HAVE
gotten bored running a business with no customers, Loomis thought. He left early, walked to where his car was parked, and drove off. Tailing him on such empty streets would probably be fairly easy. A few minutes later, the subject was observed to park his car and enter his apartment building. Then she and Selig walked out of the unit they'd been in, crossed the street, and walked around the back. There were two locks on the door, which caused the junior agent to take ten minutes to defeat them, much to his own annoyance. Then came the alarm system, but that was more easily accomplished. It was an old one with a socket key and a very simple disarming code. Inside they found a few more photos, one, probably, of his son. They checked the Rolodex first, and there was the card for J. Sloan, with the number 536-4040, but no address.

“Tell me what you think,” Loomis said.

“I think it's a new card, not dog-eared or anything like that, and I think there's a dot over the first numeral four. Tells him which number to change, Sis.”

“This guy's a player, Donny.”

“I think you're right, and that makes Aref Raman one, too.”

But how to prove it?

T
HE COVER MIGHT
or might not have been blown. There was no knowing. Kemper assessed the situation as best he could. Maybe the missile boat had gotten off a broadcast and received permission to fire. . . Maybe the young commander had decided to shoot on his own. . . probably not. Dictatorial countries didn't give much autonomy to their military commanders. If you were the dictator and you started doing that, it was a sure way to find your back to a wall sooner or later. The score to this point was USN 1 and UIR 0. Both groups were continuing, going southwest now into a widening gulf, still doing twenty-six knots, still surrounded by merchant traffic, and the electronic environment was alive with ship-to-ship chatter wondering what the hell had just happened north of Abu Musa.

Omani patrol boats were out now, and they were talking back and forth with somebody, perhaps the UIR, asking what was going on.

In confusion, Kemper decided, there was profit. It was dark out, and identifying ships in darkness was never an easy business.

“When's nautical twilight?”

“Five hours, sir,” the quartermaster of the watch replied.

“That's a hundred fifty miles to the good. We continue as before. Let them sort things out if they can.” Getting as far as Bahrain without detection would be miracle enough.

T
HEY LAID IT
all out on Inspector O'Day's desk. “It all” amounted to three pages of notes and a couple of Polaroid photographs. The most important-looking tidbit was a printout of the phone records, duplicating Selig's scribbling. That was also the only legal piece of evidence they had.

“Not exactly the thickest pile of proof I've ever seen,” Pat noted.