Specter (13 page)

“By the way,” Coburn said. “Speaking of that, I saw Garcia at Bethesda before flying out here. Doctors say he's going to make it.”

They'd medevaced Garcia off the
Nassau
that same day, first to Naples, then back to the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, just inside the Washington Beltway. “That's good news, sir,” Murdock said.

“Yes. Yes, it is. Good work bringing him off the beach like that.”

“SEALs take care of their own, sir.”

“Yes, they do.” Coburn unfolded his arms and exchanged looks with several of the other officers. “Gentlemen? Any further questions for this young man?”

“Not on the last mission,” Garrett said, scratching his beard. “But I can't wait to hear how he's going to manage this next one.”

Coburn looked at the expression on Murdock's face and laughed. “What did you think, son? That we were going to court-martial you? Maybe keelhaul your ass out of the Navy?”

“Something like that, sir. We were supposed to go in quiet. In and out, no hear-um, no see-um. We screwed up. I screwed up.”

“Bullshit. The gods of war screwed up this time, if anybody did. You did everything right, Lieutenant. Sometimes even right just ain't good enough.”

“That's not to say there won't be some administrative fallout over this,” Monroe put in. “Like they say, shit runs downhill, and there are some very unhappy people at some very high levels in this affair. Right now, there is some very high-level ass-covering underway in Washington. I'm afraid you haven't heard the last of it.”

“But to get to you they have to go through me,” Coburn said quietly. “So don't worry about it too much. How have you and your men been getting on since your picnic on the beach?”

The abrupt change of tack in the discussion caught Murdock by surprise. “Eh? Fine, sir. We've been keeping them busy, cleaning weapons and gear, calisthenics, and so on.”

“Ready for a new assignment?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good.” He glanced across the compartment at the two enlisted men. “Pardon my manners. I should introduce these two. Lieutenant Murdock, this is Petty Officer Stepano, Petty Officer Papagos. They've volunteered for this operation, and if you agree to help us out here, they'll be assigned to your unit. Stepano speaks Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, and Macedonian. Papagos speaks Greek. You'll likely need both of them where you're going.”

“Welcome aboard,” Murdock told them.

“A pleasure, Lieutenant,” Stepano said.

“Yeah, Lieutenant,” Papagos added. “We heard a lot about your outfit.”

Coburn turned to the table and lifted the sheet off the maps. Murdock had expected them to be charts of the Adriatic coast and inland, where Blue Squad had been operating a few nights ago, but these maps covered an area farther south. He immediately recognized the convoluted coastline of northern Greece, the indentation of Thermaic Bay at Salonika, the rugged mountains inland that formed the natural border between the Greek and Slavic Mace-donias. A red line had been drawn on one of the charts, from the airport south of Salonika northwest. It ended with a roughly circled region in the mountains just south of the border, not far from the Greek towns of Orme and Edessa.

“Yesterday morning,” Coburn said softly, “a Greek passenger aircraft was hijacked. Olympic Lines domestic flight, a twin-engine turboprop. There were no radioed demands, no negotiations. Shortly after takeoff, the aircraft simply left its flight path and started flying toward the border with Yugoslav Macedonia. It was intercepted by a flight of Greek Mirage F-1s about here.” He pointed to the map halfway along the line, near the town of Arabyssos.

“My God. They didn't shoot it down, did they?”

“No. But the hijacked aircraft ignored all radio calls and all threats to shoot it down. It began flying very low, following the mountain valleys toward the border. They lost it somewhere north of Edessa.”

“Radar?”

“We were tracking the aircraft from a Hawkeye on radar picket duty off the
Jefferson,
but they weren't able to hang onto it. That terrain ...” He brushed his forefinger along the border. “The mountains aren't necessarily all that high. This one on the border is twenty-five hundred meters. But it's rugged. There was also some pretty heavy-duty jamming in the area by Macedonian forces.”

“Macedonians, sir? Or Serbians?”

Coburn gave a hard smile. “Good question, and one we don't really know the answer to yet. Former Yugoslav Macedonia is technically independent. We still have a small peacekeeper force there. But the Serbs still think of the place as theirs. The Macedonians themselves aren't Greeks, like most people think. They're Slavs, like the Serbs. It's entirely possible that Serbia is mixed up in this.”

Murdock studied the map for a moment. “If you never had radio contact with the aircraft, how do you know it was a hijacking?”

“We know.” Coburn paused, staring at the largest topo map, one that showed the entire stretch of Macedonia, from the Kosovo-Serbian border to Salonika. “Lieutenant, what I am about to divulge is classified top secret. My orders were to keep you in the dark about certain aspects of this mission until you had already accepted the assignment. That's why the nonsense with the sheets when you came in.

“I'm going to stick my neck out a bit on this one, though, and tell you something that must remain within these four bulkheads. God knows, it'll come out soon enough anyway. ACN is probably drawing up its special news bulletin logo right now.”

“Yes, sir?”

“One of the passengers on that aircraft was Congresswoman Ellen Kingston from California, a member of the House Military Affairs Committee.”

“My God . . .”

“Her plane was a chartered VIP special, nobody aboard but her, her entourage, and both Greek and American security. This wasn't just a random one-of-the-passengers-has-a-gun hijacking. They were clearly after her in particular.”

“This is starting to sound a little crazy,” Murdock said, shaking his head.

“We've received a list of the people who should have been on board,” Chief Hawkins said. He handed a computer printout across the table to Murdock. “Besides the distinguished lady from California, we have nine congressional staffers, five males, four females. Two U.S. Secret Service men assigned to Ms. Kingston more or less permanently. A U.S. Army colonel, a military liaison officer out of the American embassy staff in Athens. Three other American military personnel, two males, one female, all officers of the colonel's personal staff. Six Greek DEA men. And the crew of the aircraft, of course, all Greek. Pilot, copilot, engineer, three female attendants, one security man.”

“With all of that security aboard,” Murdock wondered, “how the hell did the bad guys get aboard in the first place?”

“That, Lieutenant, is a question we would very much like answered. Since there is no evidence that anyone forced their way aboard at the airport at Salonika, there really are only two possibilities. A number of armed terrorists could have been hidden aboard the plane before the passengers boarded.”

“Or it was an inside job,” Murdock said, reaching out and picking up a deck plan schematic of an NAMC YS-11 lying on the table among the maps. “Either the aircraft's crew or the Greek security element.”

“That's what we think. Right now, the CIA and Army Intelligence are probably going over the personnel folders of those security men with microscopes. Meanwhile, we've been given a mission alert and told to start planning an immediate op.”

Murdock laid the aircraft schematic down and turned his attention once again to the map of the Greek border. “Question, Captain.”

“Yes?”

“Why us? I mean, I'm delighted, I'm sure ... but that aircraft's last known heading is taking it into a country that's completely landlocked. According to this map, there are exactly two airfields that handle commercial traffic, one up here in the capital at ... what is that? Skopje?”

“Pronounced ‘Skop-yay,' Coburn corrected him gently.

“Skopje
, right. And the other one's down here, tucked in between the mountains, these lakes, and the inland border of Albania.”

“Ohrid,” Commander Garrett said. “Used to be a heavy tourist area, until the war sent the tourist trade to hell. Then it was the site of a round of Balkan peace talks that failed.”

“And you're wondering why the SEALs are in on this,” Coburn said.

“The question had crossed my mind. This looks like the sort of dreamsheet op the Delta boys would kill for.”

“And the Army Rangers, and Airborne, and the Army Special Forces, and the Marines, and the Air Force 7th Special Operations Squadron up at Rhein-Main, and probably half a dozen special-warfare commando groups you and I have never even heard of. Right now, I imagine there's something very like a feeding frenzy going on back at the Pentagon, as all of the services line up for a piece of this one.

‘‘The one advantage we have right now over all the rest is, we're here. And they aren't.”

“Delta Force will probably get their tickets punched on this one,” Monroe said. “They have a team ready for immediate deployment, and local caches of arms and equipment. They were alerted as soon as we got word that the aircraft was off course and are probably working out scenarios right this moment. And you're right, of course. While the SEALs' combat responsibilities do extend inland, Skopje is one hundred sixty kilometers from the Adriatic. That's pretty dry, even for a SEAL.”

“What Navy Intelligence is interested in,” Coburn said, “is what went down at Salonika International two days ago. Even if this was an inside job, there had to be people at the airport who were in on it. Greek Military Intelligence is following that angle. And we're going to help them. But diplomatically.”

“Sir?”

“To start with, we want your team to go into Salonika. Have a look around. Work with the Greek DEA. That's why we dug up Papagos here. Speaks Greek like a native.”

“That's me, Lieutenant,” Papagos said with a bright grin. “Nick the Greek Papagos.”

“Where you from, Papagos?”

“Chicago. South Side. But my parents was from the old country, see? Patrai, down on the Peloponnisos.”

“You ever been to Greece?”

“Me, sir? Never. I joined the Navy t‘see the world, y'know? But I speak the lingo okay.
Milao ellenika.”

“How about you, uh, Stepano?” Murdock asked.

“I am Serb,” the blond ET replied. Murdock could hear a fairly thick East European accent. “From Pittsburgh now, sir. Originally Belgrade.”

“Josip Stepano was Yugoslavian,” Coburn said. “Got into some trouble with the local police and had to skip the country. Naturalized citizen.”

“I have been American fifteen years now,” Stepano said, and Murdock could heard the pride in his voice.

“Well, I'm real happy to meet both of you,” Murdock said. “Looks like we're going to need you guys. Salonika, huh?”

“That's right,” Coburn replied. “How much do you know about our relations with Greece just now?”

“Prickly. That's about all I know.”

“Prickly describes it quite nicely. Greece is a member of NATO, of course. So is Turkey, though, and Turkey and Greece are bitter blood enemies. Ottoman Turkey ruled Greece until the early 1800s. There were lots of massacres on both sides, and believe me, both sides have long memories.

“Then there's the Macedonian problem. You see, when Yugoslavian Macedonia voted independence for itself and applied for UN recognition a couple of years ago, we supported it, while Greece opposed it. The whole Macedonian question is very, very touchy so far as Athens is concerned. They'd like nothing better than to see the Serbs control Yugoslav Macedonia. An independent Macedonia might give their
own
Macedonians some unpleasant ideas.”

“Like independence?”

“Exactly. Our relations with the Greeks have not exactly been pleasant lately. When the Pan-Hellenic Socialists came to power under Papandreou in 1981, the government went pretty far to the left, anti-European Community, anti-U.S., anti-NATO. The center-rightists took a slim parliamentary majority in 1990, but they've been just barely hanging on. The Greek economy is in a shambles. There have been threats of another military coup, like the one that ended the monarchy back in '67.”

“I'm afraid the current Greek government has no particular reason to love us,” Garrett explained. “There have been some unhappy incidents. One of our ships accidentally fired a missile into a Greek destroyer in 1992, during some joint maneuvers. Bad business, that. Besides, Washington has been leaning pretty hard on them for a long time to keep the lid on the Turkey-Greece conflict. Lately we've been leaning on them some more, trying to get them to bend our way over Yugoslav-Macedonian independence and to keep imposing sanctions against Serbia. And last year, Greece slapped an embargo on Yugoslav Macedonia, which, of course, is landlocked. Most of their oil comes in through Salonika. We've been at odds with Athens over that too.”

“At the moment,” Coburn said, “Greece tolerates us and is willing to cooperate on most matters, at least at a distance. But that toleration probably won't extend to allowing a major military presence in their territory. If Washington pulls its typical big-brother act, sends in the Marines or a division or two of Army troops, most Greeks are going to see that as the ugly Americans throwing their weight around, impugning their military's abilities—”

“Impugning their manhood,” Presley put in. The others laughed.