“I’m a reporter. I get paid to be amazing.” She told him about Aden and San‘a and the noncombatant evacuation.
“What can I do for you?”
“Tell me what happened to Sam Maxwell. I know he was shot down.”
There was a long silence, and Claire’s anxieties started kicking in again. Please, God, let him be okay.
“Where are you now?”
She told him.
“I’ll be right down.” His voice seemed oddly casual, as if he were enjoying himself. “I have some news that may interest you.”
In accordance with Admiral Fletcher’s orders, the updated op plot was transmitted to all elements of the Reagan battle group.
Thirty minutes later, a figure emerged on the viewing deck, aft of the island superstructure on the Reagan. The carrier was slicing through the Gulf of Aden at a speed of fifteen knots, but the impression from high up on the island, 120 feet above the water, was one of motionlessness. The ship seemed suspended in a black void, swept by an invisible breeze.
For several minutes the man stood with his hand on the rail, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He wanted to be sure that he was alone. Sometimes at night he encountered strangers — sailors gazing at the stars or listening to music or, as he’d seen one night, sipping prohibited alcohol.
It was possible, he supposed, that he could be watched by observers using night-vision equipment. But all they would see would be a man using some sort of device — a tape or CD player, a radio, a stargazing scope. If danger was imminent, he could always throw the device over the rail.
Merely possessing the SatPhone, of course, did not implicate him in espionage. Even though the use of such a device was prohibited aboard Navy ships at sea, he could claim ignorance. The phone was a commercial product, manufactured in the United States. Ironically, it utilized the same constellation of satellites the U.S. Navy employed for the transmission of their own secret data. The only additional feature installed in his phone was the scrambling software, which was also a commercial product.
He extended the antenna and punched in a twelve-digit number. After fifteen seconds, he heard a sequence of beeps. He was connected.
From his inner pocket he retrieved the document. Using a red penlight, he read the data from the op plot into the phone. When he was finished, he waited until he received another series of beeps.
Received and acknowledged.
He tore up the document, then made balls of the shredded pieces and let the wind carry them into the blackness of the Gulf.
From the end of the table in the flag conference compartment, Fletcher glowered at Vitale and Morse. “This is unbelievable. Someone passing our op plots as soon as we write them? Explain to me how that can happen.”
Morse said, “The technicians down in surface watch who monitor the emissions from the battle group just alerted us. Their RF scan was picking up stuff in a format that didn’t come from us. The transmissions are scrambled, but there’s no doubt they contain classified data about our movements.”
“What ship is it coming from?”
“Right here. the Reagan.”
“What kind of transmissions?”
“Some kind of commercial phone, they think. Iridium, Global Star, SatPhone, one of those. We don’t know which yet.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Longer than we’d like to think. It might explain how Al-Fasr has anticipated our operations at every turn.”
Fletcher slammed a fist onto the table. “All this high-tech equipment we invent to protect our secrets, and someone can blab them to the enemy like they had their own goddamn private line.”
For a moment, the room was silent. It was not Fletcher’s style to use obscenities — he liked his image of a southern gentleman — but his anger was spilling over. “How can someone transmit secrets from one of our ships without our knowing it?”
Vitale and Morse looked at each other, neither having an answer. Vitale said, “I’ve instructed the surface watch officer to set up a scan that will alert us as soon as he transmits. In the meantime Spook has narrowed our list down to a handful of possibles — those with access to classified data — and we’re running checks on them.”
“That’s what you said before. You still haven’t caught anybody. What did ONI say when you reported the intelligence leak?” ONI was the Office of Naval Intelligence, located in Suitland, Virginia.
Vitale pulled a printout from the stack in front of him. “They passed it to NSA, and a counterespionage team is on its way to the Reagan. They should be aboard by tomorrow.” The NSA — National Security Agency — was the intelligence unit responsible for cryptology and security of sensitive information.
“What kind of team?” asked Fletcher.
“FBI, CIA, probably. Might include a cryptologist, a computer hacker, guys with special tools.”
Fletcher turned to gaze out the window of the flag bridge. He saw only blackness. No horizon, no distinction between the overcast sky and the dark void of the ocean.
Spies. Moles. Agents. The whole thing was incomprehensible to him. People aboard his ship with telephones communicating via satellite? What the hell had naval warfare come to?
Gritti looked at his defenses and nodded in approval. He didn’t have many advantages over the enemy, but at least the terrain was in his favor. The ground sloped away to the north, where the Sherji had their guns and armor concealed in a grove of trees. They were too far away to be reached with mortars, but he had a solution for that.
He guessed they had waited until nightfall, thinking the perimeter would be easier to breach. It was a blessing. Under cover of darkness he would deploy patrols outside the perimeter, including mortar teams. If the Sherji got to the perimeter, they could find themselves attacked from behind as well as frontally.
He finished his tour of the team’s positions and hunkered down beneath the boulder where he had established a command post. Inside the makeshift shelter were Master Sergeant Plunkett and Captain Baldwin.
“Snipers?” Gritti asked.
“In place, covered the best they can be,” answered Plunkett. “Two with M-forties and two Barrett teams.”
“Keep ’em moving. Two rounds max; then change cover.”
“Yes, sir,” said Plunkett. “They know their job.”
Gritti smiled at the mild rebuke. Plunkett was right. Marine snipers were not only professional marksmen, they were masters of camouflage and concealment. The snipers were essential to any chance they had of surviving another attack. If they could pick off the Sherji’s leaders and point men from a great distance, it might strike a little terror into them. Maybe change their minds about dying for Allah.
The M40A1 sniper rifle was a hellish weapon. The heavy-barreled gun could reach out a thousand yards and nail a ten-inch target. Even more hellish was the Barrett M82A1A fifty-caliber special-purpose rifle. In the hands of a trained marksman, the Barrett could stop targets as large as a truck.
Gritti saw that the wind, though light, was out of the south. Another advantage.
“Be ready with the smoke,” he told Baldwin. “If they start shelling, we lay the smoke and get the fire teams deployed. Maybe we can surprise the sons of bitches with mortars and a couple of ambushes.”
“Yes, sir.”
If the Sherji waited until sunrise and began their attack in broad daylight, Gritti would put down a thick blanket of smoke. Under the smoke, the marine fire teams would move out.