Capt. Blake said, “At zero eight hundred local time, USS Lincoln came under attack by thirty-six Qader anti-ship missiles. As you know, we’re hitting the area where the missiles originated within the hour. Our potential HVT, however, is right here.” The army captain pointed to a large luxury yacht that appeared to be about a mile from shore. A helicopter sat on its stern deck. “This video was captured at the very edge of the range of a Reaper circling the region ninety miles from the carrier at twenty thousand feet. Good thing it had an ARGUS-IS, or we would have missed it,” she said, referring to the MQ-9 Reaper’s Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System, the revolutionary wide-area sensor sporting 368 five-megapixel cameras to create images of about 1.8 gigapixels at the rate of twelve frames each second while covering an area of thirty-nine square miles. Conceived and built at DARPA, the DoD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARGUS-IS had the resolution to gather “pattern-of-life” data on individual people while operating at the Reaper’s maximum ceiling of fifty thousand feet.
Prost was still angry at himself for having missed the trucks, but they had parked close to the periphery of his surveillance area set at ninety miles from Lincoln, encompassing more than twenty-five thousand square miles of terrain — which should have been plenty.
Only it hadn’t.
As Murphy’s Law would have it, the damn trucks, which looked like civilian vehicles, had been parked another eight miles out, and they had apparently traveled there at night.
Can’t catch a damned break, he thought with a sigh, staring at the ARGUS-IS high-resolution video showing a man standing on a platform using binoculars pointed precisely toward the hill crowded with the TEL trucks.
Blake worked her tablet, and the screen zoomed in, capturing the man’s facial features clearly as he spoke on the phone. Then an instant later, the missile firing began. Before the last Qader went airborne, blazing toward Lincoln, the man had boarded the helicopter and flown away.
“Who is he and where the hell did the bastard go?” he asked around a mouthful of veal.
The captain looked down at her tablet, and the screen zoomed in even more. “The yacht’s name is Unbridled, and it’s registered to the International Bank of Riyadh. Three-dimensional facial recognition identifies him as Prince Omar Al Saud. He is the bank’s CEO.”
Prost put down his fork and pushed away his food, suddenly losing his appetite. “Have we tracked him yet?” he finally asked, grabbing the bottle of water and twisting the cap.
“Yes, sir. The helicopter flew to King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he went inside a private terminal. Thirty minutes later, he boarded another helicopter, a Sikorsky S-76C, and flew directly to a much larger yacht, the Azzam a few miles off the coast of Abu Dhabi.
The video fast-forwarded to a megayacht that made Unbridled look like a lifeboat.
“Must be nice to be rich,” Prost whispered to himself, before asking, “Did we figure out who owns it?”
Capt. Blake shook her head. “I have three guys working that now, sir.” She pointed at three men, two in ACUs and a civilian in jeans, a white T-shirt, and running shoes tapping away at their consoles wearing headphones. “All we know at the moment is that it’s registered in Saudi Arabia and that it was built by Lürssen Yachts out of Bremen-Vegesack, Germany.”
“What about the blueprints.”
“We’ve contacted the BND, and they’re working it real time,” Blake replied, referring to the Bundensnachrichtendienst, the German Federal Intelligence Service, that country’s version of the CIA. “What we do know, is that the owner of Azzam is also the entity who acquired the majority of the assets of the Sino-Eastern Group, which owned the planes that attacked Truman as well as the ones we bombed in Guatemala.”
He leaned back. “And that’s as clear as it gets in our line of work, Captain.”
“Speaking of that… he’s been standing by, sir,” she said.
“Yeah,” Prost said. “Put him through.”
A moment later, a man of medium stature but muscular appeared on the screen wearing faded jeans and a black T-shirt. His brown hair and matching beard were a tad long and unkempt.
“Evening, Commander,” Prost said.
“We’re ready to roll, sir. What’s the word?”
“Operation Night Out is a go,” he said.
“Will do.”
“And good luck,” Prost said.
The man frowned, then said, “I’d rather have the blueprints on the target so I can make my own fucking luck… sir.”
“Absolutely,” Prost said. “You should have them in—”
The screen went blank.
Prost frowned. “How long before we can get that to him, Captain?”
“Within the hour, sir.”
“Let me know if I need to call the BND director. He owes me for last year’s tip on ISIS that kept those crazy bastards from blowing shit up in Munich.”
“Will do, sir.”
As Blake went off to work with his team, Prost sat back and contemplated the activity beyond the glass panels. His team with no name represented the pick of the litter from the CIA, the DIA, and the NSA, plus his special ops guys on the other side of the world.
He stared at this operation of his own creation that didn’t exist, following orders that were never given to execute a battle plan that could fall apart — in spite of Russo’s best efforts — the moment the first bullet was fired.
And that made Prost think of a comment made long ago by former author and commentator William F. Buckley Jr. after the alleged CIA failed plot to assassinate Indonesian president Sukarno in 1957: It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed everybody in the room except Sukarno.
Javier Ibarra and his crew worked quickly, with efficiency, lowering the three reinforced sails and preparing the motorsailer for rough seas and stormy weather.
They cleared the scuppers, battened down the hatches, removed all extra weight from the vessel’s bow, and secured the gear aft as the onslaught of gale-force winds struck Erasmus with impressive force.
Working the twin engines, and assisted by Mario Mendoza while the other two crew members remained in the engine room, the seasoned captain knew that survival depended on keeping the vessel’s bow facing the incoming twenty-five-foot swells. And that required the Cummins to continue delivering their respective 220 horsepower of thrust.
Heavy rain peppered the thick windscreen, and continuous lightning flashed across angry seas as Ibarra glanced at the GPS showing them roughly six hundred miles west of Lisbon.
Middle of nowhere, he thought as the turbulent sky rapidly turned a shade of black and dark pea green and some waves crested at almost thirty feet. Mierda.
Everyone wore life preservers in case they needed to abandon ship, but Ibarra almost laughed at the thought. No way could anyone survive a minute drifting out there.
And forget the Whaler, he thought. Their twenty-three-footer also wouldn’t stand a chance against the towering swells.
They would either get Erasmus through this or they all died. There would be no calling anyone for help in the middle of the North Atlantic. Besides, the moment he had accepted Al Saud’s lucrative contract, the only contact he was allowed to have was with one of Al Saud’s spies. Operating out of the Virginia Beach area, the spy monitored movements of Coast Guard and US Navy vessels to help ensure that Erasmus got to its destination.