Strike Force Alpha (9 page)

Aboard
Ocean Voyager

“It’s fruit….”

Ryder leaned over the technician’s shoulder and studied the blue-tinted TV screen. It looked a little fuzzy without his reading glasses.

“Fruit?”
he asked. “Are you sure?”

“One hundred percent…. Looks like lemons, oranges. Watermelons….”

Ryder was at the bottom of
Ocean Voyager,
inside one of the White Rooms. It wasn’t so much a room as a long, narrow chamber, the same size as the containers up on deck. Inside was definitely white, though, and spotless. It looked like the control room of a TV studio or something at Cape Canaveral. There were dozens of video monitors hanging off the walls and ceiling. Jammed in between them were banks of shortwave radios, satellite receivers, fiber-optic lines, faxes, and computer screens. Most of the TV monitors and PC screens were displaying not satellite imagery or IR read-outs but pornography. Streaming videos, Web sites, chat lines, Triple-X rated, all of it.

There were ten guys working inside the White Room. They looked like high school students, all lab coats and glasses. On first coming aboard the ship, Ryder had been told not to insult this group by asking if they were CIA. They were actually employees of the NSA, America’s largest, most secret intelligence agency. Their primary job was to eavesdrop on the terrorists and then try to locate them on a map. How good were these kids and their listening equipment? They could hook a suspected terrorist by the simple act of his turning on his pager. Once he was tagged, they could electronically tap his phone, intercept his E-mail, even hear messages on his answering machine. The trick was to connect what they were hearing to a warm body and then get a location so the Delta guys could go and grease the bad guys. Down here they called it Spooks versus Mooks.

And all that porn? Just like Bobby Murphy, the terrorists used Internet porn sites to communicate. They spoke on dirty chat lines and porn-based bulletin boards, and through erotic-picture newsgroups. Some of the most sensitive gear inside the White Rooms allowed the Spooks to monitor up to 1,000 of these sites, around-the-clock.

But this was not porn Ryder was looking at. In front of him was a 3-D photo analysis computer. The guy working the machine for him was Gil Bates, Head Spook, the top man down here in the White Rooms. He was tall and reedy, with tiny eyeglasses, spiked hair, a goatee, and earrings in both lobes. He’d been a child prodigy, earning a Ph.D. in Military (C-3) Theory from MIT at age 16. The government recruiters swooped in right away. By 18, he was a senior systems analyst for the NSA. He was now just 20 and had nine other eggheads working under him. He was supremely confident in his abilities but had a reputation for being a bit of a wiseass. He also had a thing for extremely bright Hawaiian shirts.

Displayed on the screen was a digitized version of one of the photos Ryder had taken over the Med the night before. It showed three of the seven ships he’d spotted in convoy formation during the encounter with the Arab warplanes. The Spooks had developed his film, run it through a computer enhancer, and then fed it into this 3-D imaging machine. Bates’s conclusion: Yes, the ships seemed to be following one another in a convoy. However, the crates on their decks and in their holds contained nothing more than fruit. In fact, that’s how all of the crates were marked.

“But how do you know that they aren’t just fruit crates with weapons or explosives inside?” Ryder asked him.

Bates shrugged. He was so young he made the Delta guys look like retirees.

“Materials used in weapons or explosives give off a heat signature completely different from organic matter,” he explained, slowly, so Ryder’s prehistoric brain could absorb what he was saying. “Even from belowdecks, we’d get a whiff of it. Now, we can’t get a real heat read off your photo, of course. But we are able to have the enhancer break down the spectro-magnetic image. Then, for every color in the spectrum we can assign—”

Ryder cut him off. “OK, Einstein, I believe you.”

This was a disappointment. Ryder had convinced himself the Arab aircraft were, for some reason, riding protection for the line of cargo ships. But if the ships were only hauling fruit, what would the point be?

“Tell me this then,” he asked Bates. “Why were those ships sailing the way they were? All in a line….”

“There’d just been a squall through the area,” Bates replied. “Small ships like to sail within sight of each other in bad weather. Safety in numbers….”

“But seven ships? All in a row? How big was this squall?”

Bates clicked his mouse button. A weather map showing the area the night before popped onto the screen. Another click and Ryder could see what looked like a microscopic hurricane about sixty miles off Tunisia. He scratched his graying head. He hadn’t seen any bad weather up there last night.

“OK, I give up,” he said finally. “But can you keep all this on a file or something? You know, hang on to it for me?”

Bates clicked his mouse again and said: “Forever and ever,
sir….
”

Ryder left the White Rooms and began the long climb back up top.

He’d really thought he’d had something, with the ships and the two planes from two different countries—a movement of weapons or the like. But he had to concede that just because it
looked
funny didn’t necessarily mean that it was. Sometimes his gut
could
be wrong, he supposed, though in all those black ops he’d been involved in years ago he really couldn’t remember his gut being wrong about anything.

Maybe it was another sign of age. Maybe he was losing his touch.

He reached the seven deck—just five more to go—when his cell phone rang. It was Martinez.

“Find your little buddy and meet me on the fantail,” the Delta boss told him. “There’s something I’ve got to show you.”

Ryder hung up and trudged up the next three levels. Something seemed different, though, when he reached the upper decks. He could hear a lot of activity on the ship. Voices, carrying down the passageways. People shouting. People laughing. And was that someone singing? This was very strange. Usually the ship was as quiet as a convent.

Phelan’s cabin was just four doors down from his own. They’d still not had a substantive conversation since the young pilot came aboard. After the bizarre encounter the night before, both Harriers were recovered and brought below, even before their engines were turned off. Martinez met them in the ready room and did a so-called ship’s debrief, a verbal report of actions taken by the team, the details of which would never meet a pen or paper.

When this was over, Phelan went directly to his cabin, as did Ryder—only to fall into another troubled sleep, with another visit from Maureen, this time casually saying hello to him as she passed by in the rain with a bunch of Arab kids in tow, many wearing bandages, a harbinger, Ryder was sure, of many bad dreams to come. Phelan had not been out of his room since. So after 24 hours, Ryder had not talked anything but business with the young pilot, and it had been very little of that. Orders or not, this was very unusual. Even on the most secret of missions, a pilot and his wingman were supposed to be tight. Like the way two cops on the beat were tight.

Or at least that’s the way it used to be.

He reached Phelan’s cabin and knocked twice. No reply. He tried again. Still, nothing. Ryder toed the door open and peered inside. Phelan was lying on his bunk, amid a pile of CDs, headphones on, writing a letter. A strange way to pass the time, Ryder thought. There was no way to mail anything off the ship.

The young pilot finally saw him. He took off his headgear and Ryder told him they were wanted up on the tail. Phelan asked what it was about. Ryder said he didn’t have a clue. Phelan quietly put his letter away, closed his CD player, and grabbed his hat. While he waited, Ryder’s eyes floated down to a framed picture Phelan had attached to his cabin wall. It was a photo of a beautiful woman, blond, sweet eyes, shy smile, great body, taken on a beach somewhere.

Unconsciously Ryder said: “Nice rack. Is this your girlfriend?”

Phelan looked at Ryder, then at the photo, and then back at Ryder again. He was clearly appalled.

“Dude,” he said. “That’s my mother….”

They walked up to the fantail in silence.

It was almost sunset. The horizon was bright orange; the sun looked like an ember, falling into the water. A great abundance of cumulus was scattered around, making the sky almost heavenly. They were heading east again. Back toward the Suez.

Martinez was leaning against the rail, puffing on his cigar. He was smiling, for a change. It was odd that the Delta boss wanted to meet them up on deck, and especially at this time of day. Team business was usually conducted in the morning, down in the ship’s combat planning room.

There were no salutes as the two pilots approached. Ryder simply asked him: “What’s up?”

Martinez gave them both the once-over. “Can you two keep your mouths shut?”

“Of course,” Ryder told him.

“I’ve done nothing but,” Phelan added.

Martinez never stopped smiling. “OK—but this is
really
top-secret, right?”

He was standing over a metal grate. It covered a steel tub sunk about three feet into the deck. This was the aft line locker. It was used to store extra bull rings and rope, the products of the spiderweb crisscrossing the cargo deck.

Martinez lifted the grate with his foot. There was no rope or rings inside. Instead the tub was filled with ice and cans of Budweiser.

“Wow!” Phelan cried.

Ryder was caught speechless. He hadn’t had a beer in nearly three months.
“There’s been beer onboard?”
he finally exploded.
“All this time?”

It really was a beautiful sight. Ice cold. The red-and-white cans gleaming in the glorious sunset.

“Where did it come from, Colonel?” Phelan asked anxiously.

“The Spooks,” Martinez replied. “They found it this morning at the back of one of their supply containers.”

Ryder did a quick count. He could see at least four dozen cans chilling down. There were 42 people on the boat. That was one can per man, with a few left over….

But Martinez saw what he was doing and just shook his head. “They found more than a
hundred cases,
” he revealed. “All of them wrapped in long-term cool-paks.”

“Wow…” Phelan said again, this time in a whisper.

“The Spooks gave a bunch to the Marines,” Martinez went on, proudly, like a miner who’d just struck gold. “And the Marines gave a bunch to me.”

From behind them came the unmistakable sound of one of the ship’s forklifts. The propane-fired engines gave off a very distinctive hiss. One was heading in their direction along the rail, carrying two men and a metal toolbox on its fork. This box was also filled with beer; two cases, still wrapped in cool-paks. Riding on the little truck were Red Curry and Ron Gallant, the U.S. Air Force Special Operations pilots. They were the guys who drove the Blackhawks. Both were captains.

Curry was an odd duck. He was from Staten Island, real New York Giants country, yet he was a die-hard fan of the Oakland Raiders, a team located a continent away. He was never seen without his black-and-silver ball cap and matching T-shirt, appropriate, as he had the face of a linebacker. He was early thirties, married, with three kids, rugged, and stocky. He always seemed on the verge of throwing a punch at somebody, anybody. The last angry man syndrome.

Gallant on the other hand was real cool. He looked like he’d fallen off a brochure for the Air Force Academy. Tall, rock-jawed, clean-cut, blemish-free. Except for the throw-back 1950s-style glasses, he was a real Clark Kent type, as restrained as Curry was volatile. He had an air of hipster sophistication, too. His hero was Miles Davis, not Al Davis.

They made for an odd couple. Yet both had been brilliant so far in handling of the team’s helicopters.

They screeched to a halt in front of Ryder, Phelan, and Martinez. They looked into the rope tub and saw the stash of Bud and ice.

“You guys, too?” Curry asked.

“And ours is colder than yours,” Martinez replied with an amusing puff of cigar smoke. “And we got more of it. So, lucky us.”

“Colonel, the whole ship is floating,” Gallant told him. “Your guys are jammed into the forward anchor chamber with about ten cases of this stuff. And the Marines are down in their locker room with even more. The Spooks spread it around to everyone.”

On cue, they heard a burst of laughter from the front of the ship. Then a blast of awful music from down below.

Gallant turned to Ryder and said: “The Marines are really into their Metallica.”

“Who?” Ryder asked.

Phelan spoke up. “Excuse me, but moving around all this beer—is it really authorized?”

The Air Force pilots laughed at him. So did Martinez.

“What makes you think
anything
we’re doing out here is authorized?” Curry asked him. “Shit, man, if we were any blacker we’d be picking cotton.”

Again, from the forward decks came the sound of many voices raised in laughter. And more music was blasting from below. The ship itself seemed to be rocking, most unusual.

“But what about ‘the order’?” Phelan insisted. “About not fraternizing with each other. This won’t help that situation.”

It
was
a quandary. They had all this beer; it was found in one of their supply containers. But did that mean they could actually drink it?

“What else would it be here for?” Gallant reasoned. “It isn’t like we’re going to drop it on the mooks.”

“And it ain’t poison, because half the ship would be dead by now,” Curry added. “Besides, you can’t plant a couple thousand cans of Bud onboard and not expect people to drink it. And you’d be crazy to think they won’t blab about anything while they’re doing it.”

“I’ve always thought the ‘no-talking thing’ might be a test,” Martinez revealed. “They told us to stay quiet just to see how long we could keep it up.”

Ryder caught himself licking his lips. He’d heard enough.