“The Kilo normally carries a crew of sixty men and officers, but it can be sailed with as few as eighteen men, if all of them are officers,” Graham said.
“All the men I recruited are officers,” Mysko said. “Russian navy pay is very bad, and prices are high. Even an officer has a hard time supporting himself.”
“Then what?” Graham prompted.
“Security at the weapons depot there will also be nonexistent during those twelve hours. Time enough to load two missiles.”
“That will create a lot of attention,” Graham said. “There’ll be heavy lifting machinery and a lot of lights. Someone is bound to ask questions.”
“I’m assured that won’t happen. But we must be done and out of there before the twelve hours is up,” Mysko said. “That means we must be at sea and submerged by then.”
There had to be much more than a simple breach in security for the plan to work. At the very least, U.S. surveillance satellites would pick up the submarine’s move out of the pens and then the loading of weapons. The bay emptied into the Sea of Japan, which was constantly monitored and patrolled by the U.S. Seventh and the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, but Graham let those considerations pass for the moment. “Where am I in all this?”
“Standing by aboard a North Korean fishing boat five hundred kilometers to the east. Within twenty-four hours the submarine will rendezvous with you and surface,” Mysko said. “After that she’ll be your boat.”
“How long to reach Panama?” Dahduli asked.
Graham was working it out in his head. “Can’t go straight there from Vladivostok, Japan’s in the way,” he said. “I expect we’ll have to sail north along the inside passage between Sakhalin Island and the Russian mainland. That’s about a thousand miles north, and another thousand south before we could head through the Kuril Islands and then southeast.” He shrugged. “It’s a long trip. Seventy-five hundred miles perhaps, right at the Kilo’s extreme range at seven knots. I’d need a schedule of U.S. satellites so I could know when to run on the surface.”
“How long?” Dahduli pressed.
“If we were lucky, it’d take a month and a half, maybe six weeks,” Graham said. “And you realize that once the Russians figure out that one of their subs is missing they’ll come looking for us. Just like The Hunt for Red October, only for real.”
“Are you saying now that you are incapable of doing this?” Dahduli demanded.
“Not at all,” Graham responded sharply. “But it may take much longer than six weeks if I have to spend time submerged, evading detection. It’s even possible that we’ll need to take on diesel fuel somewhere.”
“Where would that be?” Dahduli pressed.
“At sea in the middle of the night. Probably somewhere north of the Hawaiian Islands.”
“That’s the U.S. Navy’s Third Fleet,” bin Laden said.
“Yes, it is,” Graham responded. “But I know someone who could bring the fuel out to us.”
“Trustworthy?” Dahduli asked, sneering.
Graham raised his left hand, a gesture very rude to an Arab. “I am beginning to tire of your lack of faith, Ghassan. Take care that you do not cross the line after which I would have to take action.”
Dahduli’s eyes bulged. “Infidel—” he said.
Bin Laden silenced him with a glance. “We have much to do before we can strike this blow. Get on with it.”
“I’ll need a timetable, and personnel files on my crew,” Graham said.
“Remain here, and we will discuss your role,” bin Laden said.
The other three men clearly wanted to remain, they felt that their positions as inner circle al-Quaida advisers had somehow been usurped by an infidel, but they got up and left the chamber.
“You have reservations about this plan,” bin Laden said to Graham when they were alone. “Tell me.”
“It’s far too risky,” Graham said. “Getting away in the middle of the night with a submarine from Rakushka is possible. I’ve actually been there, I know the waters of Vladimir Bay. But I don’t care what assurances Mysko gives us, loading a pair of weapons aboard would never happen unnoticed. At the very least, we’d be spotted by an American satellite, and before we ever got out of the bay and into the Sea of Japan, we’d have a reception committee waiting for us; either a Los Angeles Class attack submarine, or maybe a Seawolf or a Virginia. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
Bin Laden fell silent for several seconds. But then he nodded. “I came to the same conclusion, my friend. But we will let Mysko carry on with his plan; it may divert the Americans’ attention.”
“You’ve found another submarine?” Graham asked. The catch was back in his throat.
“Yes, and two missiles; we have friends elsewhere,” bin Laden said. “In any event, the Russians have no love for us.”
“Will the target still be the Panama Canal?”
“In thirty days President Haynes will give a State of the Union address to Congress. If you were to get within two hundred and fifty kilometers of Washington before you fired your missiles, there would be very little time to evacuate the building.”
Graham saw it all as one piece, as if he’d been planning for something like this all his life. “I’ll get us so close that they will have no time to react,” he said, and smiled. “This time I cannot fail.”
THIRTY-FIVE
McGarvey thought that Katy was holding up well until he walked in the door of the CIA safe house a few minutes before one in the afternoon and saw the brittle expression on her face. There was more there than the stress of their move and her husband’s being called back into the field.
She had a small bourbon, neat, ready for him at the pass-through kitchen counter, and when she came into his arms and clung to him, she was shivering. McGarvey hadn’t seen her this uptight since last year just before he’d resigned as DCI.
“Have you see CNN this morning?” she asked. “They’re running a story about a gunfight aboard an oil tanker in the middle of the Panama Canal.”
“No, I haven’t,” McGarvey said, surprised.
“A Venezuelan oil tanker. Someone aboard a cruise ship just in front of the tanker had a camcorder. There you were, right in the middle of it.”
“It’s all right, Katy,” McGarvey told her. “I’m back now.”
“You don’t understand, Kirk.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“Every crazy bastard on the planet knows that you helped stop the attack, and now they know your face.”
“It doesn’t matter,” McGarvey tried to assure her. “I was the DCI, and just about every time I testified to a committee on the Hill I made all the networks.”
“Yes, but you were supposed to be retired,” Kathleen insisted. “Everyone in the world now knows that isn’t true.” She pulled back and looked into his eyes, an intense set to her mouth. “You’ve done enough,” she said. “Let this be the end of it. Someone else can finish the job.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Katy, I can’t walk away from it. Not yet. Not like this.”
“Until when?” she cried. “How much longer, Kirk? Goddammit, give me a date. I need something to believe in.” Her fingers were digging into his arms. “I don’t want to end up alone, just another widow in Florida. I can’t do this, Kirk. I can’t lose you. Don’t you understand?”
“I don’t want that to happen either, but I have to finish it this time.”
“Finish what?” she sobbed. “They’ll just keep coming out of the woodwork, pulling the triggers, blowing themselves up, and killing anyone nearby. We’re not safe anywhere. Not in an airplane, or on a bus or train. Even sitting in a restaurant.” She was searching his eyes for some hint that she was getting through to him. “You and Elizabeth were almost killed when the bomb in front of the restaurant in Georgetown went off. That was just a few years ago. Or have you forgotten already?”