12

NOVILLERO, MEXICO

With thick clouds overhead, the night was extremely dark. Even the lights from the small village were barely visible, as the Cypriot fishing boat chugged slowly toward the pier.

For more than a week the boat had managed to avoid the American Navy and Coast Guard. The poor weather had helped.

Back in the shadows of an old wooden pilot house, Steve Nelsen, a huge man dressed in dark clothing with a zipper jacket with POLICIA stenciled in bright yellow on the back, peered around the corner, watching the boat make its way toward the dilapidated mooring. He was sure it was the right boat, yet it should have been here more than thirty minutes ago. Nelsen was pissed off even being in Mexico. When he had switched from the CIA’s operations directorate to the intelligence section six months ago, he had sought a nice assignment in Europe, after hopping around the Middle East and Turkey for the last ten years. But he had made too many enemies in his tenure there, and his boss, who was working on an ambassadorship of his own, wanted him out of the way. He knew too much.

Nelsen’s partner, Ricardo Garcia, was no stranger to night operations. He seemed to have the eyes for it, the whites shimmering in the darkness like an animal’s in a car headlight. He too was dressed in black, camouflaged in the darkness. He was a good foot shorter than his senior partner, but stocky, strong, and not afraid to mix it up with bigger guys. He had been doing it all his life. Garcia had only worked with Nelsen for a few days, having been reassigned from drug interdiction in Columbia a few weeks ago, and then two weeks of vacation in his home town, San Antonio. Garcia wasn’t sure what to think of Nelsen yet, or how he’d react in a tight spot. But he thought he was about to find out.

“Let’s go, Dick,” Nelsen whispered, as he headed toward the pier. “Remember, on my command,” he said softly into his headset.

Garcia cringed but was right on the man’s heels.

●

In a few minutes the boat was up against the pier, and the captain watched his crew members tie the boat fore and aft. The helmsman cut the engine. Cautiously, the captain made his way from the pilot house to the port side. Something wasn’t right. There were two men in dark clothes and heavy coats strolling slowly down the wooden planks. On another boat across the pier, two men were straightening a fishing net at the stern. It was nearly midnight, and at that hour, he would have suspected the entire pier to be empty.

Simultaneously, in chaotic seconds, the men walking down the pier, those on the opposite boat, and others who had been crouching out of sight, burst toward the Cypriot boat, their weapons drawn. One man yelled orders for the fishermen to hit the deck and keep their hands in plain view. Others swept through the boat searching desperately for anything unusual. Within a minute, the entire boat had been canvassed, with no weapon found. The four fishermen were taken into custody, and two officers remained onboard to guard the vessel.

●

Nelsen watched as his men escorted the fishermen to the van. He had been so certain. Something wasn’t right here. The captain of the boat had this knowing smirk, as a child would when he had just gotten away with something. It was definitely no fishing boat—with the hold converted to extra fuel tanks. His men had also reported finding an engine far more powerful than needed to fish. No, this was the boat that left Johnston Island with the nerve gas. But where was the bomb now?

Ricardo Garcia was next to him, wondering what had gone wrong.

“What do you think, Dick?” Nelsen asked.

Garcia hated that name. Dick. This is the only man who had called him that, since high school when he broke a kid’s nose for calling him it, and then softly adding “head” at the end. He didn’t want to make waves, having only been together for a few days. Besides, the man was gigantic. He wasn’t only tall, but his muscles, which he exposed as often as possible in tight T-shirts, were defined like Arnold Schwarznegger’s. Garcia shrugged. “It’s got to be the boat.”

“Exactly. Let’s see if we can’t have a talk with these boys,” Nelsen said, squeezing Garcia’s shoulder with his strong hand, and hauling him off toward the car.

●

Five miles up the coast, a small launch had just come ashore on a secluded beach. Four men, all dressed in black, strained to pull the boat out of the rising tide. When they finally had the boat completely on dry sand, they gently tugged the heavy metal case from the boat and set it on the beach.

Baskale ran to the tree line. Waiting there, as planned, was an American-licensed Chevy Suburban with wide tires and four wheel drive. The man drove the truck to the beach without lights, and in a few seconds, the weapon was loaded in the back and covered with blankets and camping gear. The four men headed off in the Suburban on an old dirt road.

CIA HEADQUARTERS

“What the hell do you mean there was nothing on it?” the Director of Operations, Kurt Jenkins, screamed into the secure phone. He was talking to the Mexico City station chief who had just gotten word from his officers in the field that the Cypriot fishing boat appeared to be just that. A fishing boat. Although it had been modified with extra fuel tanks. His men, who were sure it was the right boat, were heading out now to interrogate the fishermen.

Jenkins swiveled in his chair with the phone propped against his ear and shoulder. He motioned for his assistant Bradley Stevens to hand him the satellite photos that had picked up the fishing boat coming ashore at Novillero. He adjusted his tiny glasses on his nose, and then flipped through the photos, listening to the station chief.

“You hold those men,” Jenkins demanded. “Interrogate them thoroughly. You know what I mean.” The director stopped on a photo to scrutinize it more carefully. Kurt Jenkins had worked his way up the old CIA chain. He had started his career as a satellite analyst, so he could read the obscure markings that to some appeared as specks of dust, but could be a hidden missile site, artillery, or really a speck of dust. “What is this?” The DO pointed to a spot on the dark photo.

The photo analyst, who had joined the assistant DO in briefing their boss, moved to the desk for a closer look. With a magnifying glass, the analyst crouched over the photo. “I don’t know, sir. It could be another boat. A smaller vessel, perhaps.”

“Just a minute, Walt,” Jenkins said to the Mexico station chief, placing him on hold. The DO flipped to an earlier photo. “Why did the Cypriot boat vector down the shore like this?”

The assistant and the analyst shrugged. Then Bradley Stevens, the DO’s most trusted assistant, a gangly man, reluctantly answered, “Maybe the captain was off course a little.”

Jenkins glared at his assistant. “Bullshit. He’s an experienced captain, yet he approaches shore nearly five miles from his intended course. I don’t think so.” The DO switched to the previous photo. “This is why.” He poked his finger at the photo with the stray mark. The satellites had penetrated heavy clouds, so what was there was somewhat blurred.

His two men looked at each other.

The DO punched the secure hold button. “Yeah, Walt. We just found out the Cypriot boat might have dropped someone ashore five miles up the coast. Get your officers there ASAP.”

He listened carefully to the man on the other end.

The DO continued, “Yeah, we’ll need some assistance from the locals on this one. Close down the roads in the region and check all flights from every dinky strip of dirt a plane can take off from. Need to know only. Call it drugs if you will.”

He slammed the phone down and let out a heavy breath.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Sitting in plush, uncomfortable leather chairs in the Oval Office, members of the National Security Council had been convened for a special session by the president. Present were the president and vice president, secretaries of state and defense, the national security advisor, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the chairman of the joint chiefs.

The president, a large foreboding figure, swiveled around in his high back chair behind his large oak desk, his hands clasped together as if praying. In his short presidency, this was his first major crisis. It had been over a week since the incident on Johnston Atoll and the tension of not finding the bomb showed in each face.

“What do you have, John?” the president asked the CIA Director. As a former assistant in the operations directorate of the old CIA while on loan from the Navy, the president had come to respect and understand his intelligence briefings like no other president in recent history. Since he and John Malone had served in the Navy together, they had a special rapport.

The Director flipped open a folder. “We’ve been combing the Pacific for any boat that could have left Johnston Atoll, but we haven’t found anything definitive yet. Just after the incident, it took hours for our satellites to reach proper positions. We assumed a maximum and minimum speed in any direction. The Navy has currently stopped and boarded twenty-one boats. Nothing. We also thought about a smaller craft hiding out on one of the islands or even picking up an airplane somewhere, but we’re still looking into those possibilities. As you know there were a few major storms in the north Pacific just after the incident on Johnston, making it nearly impossible for our satellites and the Navy and Coast Guard radar. We positioned more satellites to track and photograph the entire region after the storms, and our analysts are continuing to study those as we speak.” He hadn’t been thoroughly briefed on the fishing boat seized in Mexico, and wasn’t about to bring it up half-cocked.

“Have any terrorist groups claimed responsibility?” the president asked.

“No, sir,” the director said. “Our Naval Intelligence people are still checking the backgrounds on the four vendor employees found executed in the walk-in freezer in Pearl Harbor. Nothing extraordinary, yet. They all appear to be victims.”

“Dammit,” the president said. “Who in the hell took the weapon? And, how much damage can they do with it?”

The Director shifted nervously in his chair. “We don’t know who took it, sir. And the problem with the weapon they took is that it’s a cluster bomb. They could crack it open and pull out individual bomblets. There are over a hundred bomblets, each over four pounds.”

“How much damage could one bomblet do?” the president asked.

The director gazed at concerned faces around the office. “It’s Sarin, a nerve gas. It could take out all of us in this room, the entire building, actually, assuming they had a method of dispersal.”

“Don’t they have an explosive charge built in?” asked the chairman of the joint chiefs, an army general.

“Yes, Bill. But they’d have to set it off with another charge. Unless they could drop it from a plane, which is possible, considering one of the terrorists had to fly the plane to Johnston.”

“So, now you’re telling me someone has a hundred little nerve gas bombs that they could conceal in their pocket?” The president shook his head.

“Yes, Mr. President. A big pocket. And this could be significant as well.” The CIA director rose and placed a one-page message in front of the president.

The president quickly read the message. “How reliable is this officer?”

“Tully O’Neill is one of our best,” the director said emphatically. “If he thinks there’s something more to that Ukrainian scientist’s death than meets the eye, we should listen. Yuri Tvchenko designed some of the Soviet Union’s most horrid chemical and biological weapons.”

“You think his death might be related to Johnston Atoll?” asked the secretary of state, skeptically.

“Anything’s possible,” the Director said. “Tully O’Neill, the Odessa station chief, checked Tvchenko’s apartment in Odessa. He had a complete laboratory set up in a back room. But more importantly, the entire place had been ransacked. Furthermore, we’ve pinpointed the time his apartment was trashed to after the man’s death. Just as our man was leaving, the place was bombed. He was nearly killed.”

The president, uncertain what to think, looked at his other advisors in the room. “Does this mean anything, people?”

They all answered with blank stares.

The Director continued. “Sir, it could mean that the man was killed prematurely. Tvchenko was under investigation by our officers, and an agent we had recruited at the university there. The agent said Tvchenko was about to make a breakthrough with a new chemical insecticide. Very deadly. Sarin, the older nerve gas taken from Johnston, is basically a strong insecticide. Which is why we think Tvchenko was still working for the Russians. Or someone else. It seems that Tvchenko was also hurting for money and could have been looking for a buyer.”

“Dammit,” the president said. “Anything else?”

The Director shifted his eyes. “No, sir.”

“What are you going to do about this?” the president asked openly.

The Director waited, and when nobody said a word, he took the question. “Sir, we’re in a bit of luck. One of our former officers, Jake Adams, is in Odessa. In fact, he was with O’Neill when the bomb went off at Tvchenko’s apartment. He saved my man’s life.”

“What’s his background?” the president asked.

“Adams was in Air Force Intelligence before he joined the old Agency. He was an expert in chemical and biological weapons. He helped verify the withdrawal and destruction of them from the Ukraine after the break-up of the Soviet Union. He holds a bachelor’s in geopolitics and a master’s in international relations.”

“He’s private now? What does he do?”

“He runs a security business out of the Portland, Oregon area. Computers mostly. But companies hire him to accompany them overseas, where they are trying to establish new companies or overseas subsidiaries. You may have heard about the computer chips he safeguarded from German and Hungarian companies over a year ago.”

“He did that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’s not a damn intellectual idealist is he?” the president asked.

Malone smiled. “Not really, sir. Adams was a trapper in Oregon in his youth. He spent his summers guiding canoe trips deep into Canada. He’s more of an outdoorsman than an intellectual. During the Iran-Iraq War he was on the ground behind enemy lines checking for chemical weapons use. He’s tough and can handle anything that comes his way.”

The president appeared reassured. “Very well. You’ve sold me, but will he help us out?”

“You’re the president. If you want, you can reinstate his commission.” The director smiled.

The president laughed. “Let’s not start by pissing him off. Just ask your man, O’Neill, if he’ll help us out. Give him whatever he needs. Let him lead if it’ll make him happy. And find that chemical weapon from Johnston Island.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll make it happen. And we’ll find the bomb.” The director left, and the other council members followed him out the door.