He braced himself on a console and prayed silently that they would find what they were looking for before the sea rose up and took them.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  THE TARGET

  "Oceano Baja del Mar!" Dana called out.

  The admiral strode across the Chart Room toward her work station with a pair of junior officers in his wake.

  "It's not a place. It's a ship," Dana said. "Belgian registry. A TI Class supertanker currently en route from Anchorage to San Diego."

  "What's its estimated arrival?" Admiral Dorrance said.

  Dana referred to a monitor displaying a map of California's Pacific Coast on a marine traffic website.

  "Today," she said. "On track to reach a berth at our naval base at Coronado to offload its cargo under contract to the Navy."

  "What's the cargo?" one of the junior officers asked while tapping his own tablet to bring up a map of San Diego Bay. A skinny kid who didn't look old enough to be carrying the rank of lieutenant commander. But Dana knew better than to measure his experience by his age. Fobbits like this LCDR moved up the ranks using sheer brain power. They weren't fleet material but the Navy couldn't operate without them.

  "It's an LNG tanker. One hundred and fifty thousand cubic meters of liquid natural gas."

  "A floating bomb," the admiral said.

  "Worse than that, sir," the skinny LT commander said without looking up from his tablet screen. "Homeland Security's Red Cell think tank worked up models of a catastrophic event like this for all major US ports. Ignited at the right spot, that amount of condensed natural gas could result in casualties reaching as many as fifty thousand with one hundred billion in property damage potentially."

  "Would this submersible do the trick to light that up?" the admiral said.

  "Without question, sir," the LCDR said with no hesitation. "It's actually overkill if the suspect craft were to be in actual contact with the tanker's hull."

  "That's the business these fuckers are in," the admiral growled. "Overkill."

  "What's our best guess for an ETA for the suspect craft?" Dana said.

  "At best speed it could make the trip from its home port to San Diego Bay in fifty two hours, ma'am," said the LCDR, tapping and sliding fingers on the screen of his tablet.

  "That places it within striking distance within the next six hours," Dana said.

  "Get me the skipper of the Freedom on the horn," said Admiral Dorrance. "Then I want to speak to someone on that tanker."

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  OCEANO BAJA DEL MAR

  The twelve hundred foot tanker was making best possible speed against a stiff head wind from the tropical system to the south. They were an hour out from the lighted bay approach buoy where they would slow and await the boat bringing the pilot out from Point Loma.

  Captain Lars Griegson was sipping strong tea up on the broad bridge and fighting a nasty cold. He looked through the wide rain-smeared windows at the low hanging sky to their south and hoped the weather would hold long enough to bring the big ship into port. If not, they'd be waved off to deeper water to wait while the wind died back and sea settled down.

  The Oceano Baja del Mar, named by the billionaire owner for a golf course in Mexico where he sank his first and only hole-in-one, was a broad beamed platform on which was situated four enormous globed-shaped tanks. Andrea Magianni, the first mate, said it always reminded him of a row of tits. And the skipper invariably answered, "that's because you're a horny dago bastard."

  Inside the globes were tens of thousands of cubic meters of liquid natural gas kept frozen and inert by refrigeration units below decks. The whole ship was an enormous deep-freezer in effect and the cooling mechanisms required as much attention and as many crewmembers as the ship itself. They were five days down from Alaska and it would be all of today and early in the morning tomorrow by the time the pilot drove the big vessel through the narrow channel and around the curve in the bay to her berth on Coronado for unloading. And that schedule would only hold as long as the weather stayed as it was.

  The skipper reached for his mike and set the FM transmitter for the proper frequency to call for a pilot. In seas like this they'd need a two hour warning.

  "Oceano Baja del Mar to San Diego pilot station," Griegson said into the mike. The head cold was wearing him thin. He wished he could put a slug or two of brandy in his tea but that would have to wait until they were in port.

  "Pilot station Point Loma to Baja del Mar," came a female voice over the radio. "State your current speed, course and position."

  The skipper consulted a screen on the console and read off the numbers and bearings in order. It was a redundant process as each cargo ship was required to broadcast a GPS location while at sea. The dispatcher at Point Loma could see the big tanker on a map on her monitor represented by a little green arrow off the coast of California and pointed shoreward.

  "Hold for instructions," said the woman.

  Instructions? What instructions? They would come to a full stop and maintain position by the buoy until the pilot boat reached them just like a hundred times before. If they delayed much longer the weather was going to catch up to them and then there would be further delays.

  "I have orders for you to hold at Forty Mile Bank."

  "Orders?" the skipper said and wiped his nose with the back of his hand and searched about the bridge for the tissue box that never seemed to be there.

  "Orders, Captain. You are to stop your approach and maintain position at Forty Mile Bank."

  "Orders from who?" He was annoyed now. Was it customs? Was it the weather? What kind of pussy let a fifty-mile wind change their plans?

  "Just orders. Maintain position and await further contact. Point Loma out."

  "From who?" he snarled but the connection was broken.

  An hour passed while he leaned on the console up on the bridge. The skipper ordered the engines slowed enough to maintain position and the bow pointed into the weather. He thought of all the reasons for a delay and eliminated them one by one. He ran a tight operation. He was paid well to do so. He liked rules and he liked procedure. The rules made it so things ran smooth and safe and when you were captain aboard what amounted to a floating firebomb those things were sacred to you. If this was one of his crew trying to bring something into the lower forty eight they shouldn't then he'd hang the man himself.

  The radio came to life with a new voice.

  "United States Navy transport N-one-one-nine to Oceano Baja del Mar. Do you read us?"

  The skipper acknowledged.

  "We are five minutes out from your position, Captain. Swing your bow into the wind and prepare your helipad to receive us, sir."

  A US Navy helicopter on its way to him? Not the Coast Guard? Not ICE?

  Maybe he'd give that tot of brandy a second thought.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  NEW IRON

  The reach of Operation Maximum Vigilance expanded.

  Anti-submarine aircraft scrambled all along the California coast, flying out of Naval Air Stations at North Island, China Lake and Lemoore and making all speed for a search area designated Hot Box. The search would be conducted over two thousand square miles of storm-ravaged sea and target a vehicle no wider than an SUV and no longer than a school bus and powered by a diesel engine if surfaced and batteries if submerged.

  Two P-8 Poseidons dropped Sparton sonobuoys from one thousand feet in a pre-determined pattern over the water west and south of San Diego. Called "listening sticks," the buoys were four feet long and a hand's breath across. They were dropped on parachute rigs into the Pacific. Once in contact with salt water their batteries would activate and inflate CO2-filled rings that would keep them afloat and transmitting. The batteries would also provide two weeks of power to an array of advanced electronic surveillance gear that would sweep the seas for things that go bump and send a constant stream of intel to other Poseidons that were already crisscrossing the sky in set patterns forty thousand feet above the search area.

  The sonobuoys' menu of submarine-locating options was beyond impressive; active and passive acoustics were fed into sophisticated hydrophones with a range of five hundred miles. The buoys could also detect electric fields and magnetic anomalies created by surface or submerged craft. They were sensitive enough to interpret concentrations of bioluminescence; light emitted by microscopic organisms disturbed by the passage of a submarine no matter what its size.

  Within hours, the Navy was building a surveillance web around the entire ocean approach to the southern California coast to determine the range, speed and bearing of any craft on or under the water and localize whatever bogey did not belong.

  All this technological wizardry was a direct result of that Chinese boomer breaking surface in the middle of a fleet exercise only five years before. The Navy didn't run to close the below-surface detection gap; it sprinted.

  Lieutenant Andrew "Angie" Tataglione piloted a Navy P-8A Poseidon out of North Island at forty thousand feet. The big plane was a flying nightmare for any submersible craft under its footprint. It was loaded nose to tail with every brand of detection technology available and upgraded constantly as new programs and systems came on line. Built on a highly modified Boeing 737 platform, the Poseidon could do more than find his prey. Armed with wing mounted SLAM-ER cruise missiles and a bellyful of torpedoes, the plane could find, fix and fuck any enemy it came across over a thousand mile target area.

  Off his starboard wing he could see the top of swirling, angry mass of the tropical depression twenty thousand feet below. It was making for some unforgiving wind effects even at the altitude he was maintaining.

  Behind LT Tataglione and his co-pilot, LT Junior Grade Joanne Pendelton, was a seven-person crew who sat elbow-to-elbow at a bank of stations along the port side of the fuselage monitoring all data being returned from the growing net of sonobuoys scattered over the water far below. Infrared, electronic, hydrophone and magnetic findings were sifted through redundant programs within the rows of computers lining either side of the plane's body and analyzed by the crew to separate marine life, authorized military, commercial and private craft and common ocean anomalies in search of STDNB: Shit That Does Not Belong.

  In addition to the intel transmitted back by the Spartons, the aircraft had its own array of AN/APY-10 radar along with a shitload of other detection and countermeasure options.

  Two hours into their flight and halfway through the fuel allotted for their time on station, the prey broke cover.

  "I have a hit," said W-5 Thomas Schowater from his seat before a bank of monitors. "Light cluster in search sector...Bravo one nine."

  "Confirmed," said 0-1 Lionel James seated to the left of CWO Schowater and touched a finger to his screen where a tiny shimmering blob of greenish-yellow was superimposed on the area map. "It's within the box. Range two-five-eight. Bearing south-southwest."

  "I have it too," this from W-2 Diane Tripp standing now and hunched over a console with noise-reduction headphones to her ears. "Heading north. Fifteen knots. Depth ten feet."

  "Target acquired and confirmed," Schowater again. "We have our target isolated. It matches the profile, Lieutenant."

  "Roger that," LT Tataglione responded from the pilot cabin. "It's Show and Go from the top. You call the shot, Tommy."

  "Bank left, sir," Schowater directed. "Just circle back around toward Cali to maximize effective range. Data to torpedo. Check. GPS locked. Check. Deploying torpedo."

  There was nothing as dramatic as a "bombs away!" With a click of the mouse at his console, Schowater opened the bomb bay doors in the belly of the Poseidon and an MK 54 MAKO Lightweight Torpedo dropped from the plane and fell away behind. The torpedo was equipped with a Longshot Wing Adapter Kit, a pair of delta wings that would give the seagoing weapon the same capabilities as an aircraft until it was within its effective target area. It was an off-axis launch weapon that could be deployed even if its mother craft was faced away from the target. It banked tight and swung right in a screaming, almost vertical dive before leveling out one hundred and twenty two seconds later at five hundred feet over the roiling Pacific. At that altitude the HAAWC wing array was released and the torpedo dropped nose-first into the dark water.

  Its weight plunged it down into the water to a depth of four fathoms before the on-board batteries fired up and the weapon remembered what it was here for. Its driving motor snapped on and it lowered its stern and raised its nose and powered through the water at an astonishing sixty knots. It moved at a ten degree upward angle until it settled at its minimum target depth of six feet to meet its quarry on a northerly course at a range of twenty miles. The conventional warhead was packed with almost one hundred pounds of Torpex. And, like its namesake, the MAKO could find what it was looking for over a wide area of sea no matter what conditions prevailed. Find it and consume it.

  Estimated impact: under three minutes.

  Two minutes and thirty seconds away and closing fast, Jawdah Matar was dizzy from improperly vented diesel fumes as he sat at the lever controls of the cramped mini-sub. Three days within the shell of the wobbling, motorized bomb was making himself and his adopted brothers alternately punchy and cranky.

  His body deprived of required oxygen, Jawdah surrendered to fantasies of the paradise that awaited him when they reached their destination, when the very vessel they arrived in would bring death to the enemies of God and the Prophet on a scale that would eclipse even the events of eleven years before.

  And Jawdah's father wanted him to stay in medical school in Riyadh. For what reason? So that he could spend his life looking up the asses of fat oil heirs? Instead his name would be known to all the faithful for a thousand years to come.

  Then, all in an instant, Jawdah joined the universe ahead of schedule.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CARACAS, VENEZUELA

  Whoring was a job but no one ever told her it was work. He was insatiable today. Her arm was getting tired. She lowered the leather quirt and took a step back from the bed.

  "No le dije pararse," said the green eyed man lying prone on the bed, hands gripping the bars of the steel headboard. His buttocks were striped with welts. Sweat smeared with blood ran in streaks to the mattress.

  "Mas! Mas!" he shouted and she raised her arm to bring the braided leather strap down again and again on his ass. He was pissing her off now with his perverse demands. This lisping musulmán was a cheap bastard and only paid her the price quoted by her man and not a centavo more even after she literally whipped his ass into a frenzy followed by a violent simulated rape that left her sore for days. She bitched to Ricardo, her money man, about it and he told her to shut her lying mouth. Senor Spanky was some kind of persona especial to el Presidente and got the premium treatment with no complaints and no extra charges.

  Maybe she'd empty his wallet when he finally fell asleep. It was always fat with American currency. Maybe even enough to get her back home to Panama and away from this work. After all, she'd be sixteen next month and didn't have to take this kind of shit any more.

  The cell phone on the side table buzzed and juddered and the man rose to shove her aside and grab first his eyeglasses and then the phone. He frowned at the number on the display before flipping it open. He stood whispering questions into the phone and listening for the response. She took a seat on the bed to enjoy the welcome respite.

  He hissed words in a language foreign to her and his knuckles turned white as he breathed through his nose, lips pressed tight, and listened to the caller. At last he slammed the phone down hard enough to send pieces of the plastic shell flying across the room.

  "Bad news?" she said to him with a sweet smile.

  The man with green eyes tore the leather quirt from her hand and pulled her back by the hair to straddle her. He beat her while holding her fast to the bed, knees pinning her arms to the mattress. She screamed for help but no one was coming to answer her. Someone told her later that he went on striking her long after she could feel anything.

  In the end, she was returned to her mother in Panama with a face that no man would ever again pay to see.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  SILVER STRAND BEACH

  It was just a conditioning run for the two men. An easy lope from North Island Naval Station south along the causeway to the wildlife refuge and back. They ran side by side, keeping pace on the hard sand left by the receding tide. It was a wolf dawn; the sky taking on grayish reflected tones that heralded the day. The sun was still hiding behind the mountains but its light was rising to catch the mist coming off the peaks as the ground warmed.

  Manny ran the harder to keep pace. He didn't have Heath's long, mile crunching legs. They ran without speaking. The two men were closer than brothers. Words weren't needed. Manny could sense his friend was hurting. It was there in the set of the big man's jaw; the way his eyes darted when no one was looking and the quick flashes of anger. That wasn't the Heath he knew. He'd talk when he was ready. For now he just wanted to run hard and run with someone who understood.

  They ran in t-shirts and shorts and were soon drenched with sweat that felt icy on their skin. Beneath that was the familiar fire of muscles being strained and joints worked. It was a cleansing fire that took away all thought and brought a blissful amnesia; the world shrunk to the rhythm of their breathing and their pounding feet flying over the sand.

  The sun was clear of the peaks and turning the water beyond the surf into a field of diamonds when they came to rest at Manny's beat-up old Jeep Wagoneer parked along the shore road. They stripped out of their shirts and toweled off. Heath's torso was a landscape of yellow patches against his dark skin. There were still-fresh sutures including one down the middle of the UBL headstone tattoo. Manny yanked some tallboys from the slush of a cooler.