Seated in one of the few chairs left, all placed along the rear bulkhead, Fox felt the twin-engine business jet bounce and rattle as it hit another pocket of turbulence. Grimacing, he tightened his seatbelt slightly. From the front, one of the two tracking system operators looked back at him with a grin. “Pretty rocking thrill park ride today, sir.”
He nodded. “Will all this jolting and shaking give you any trouble?”
“Nope,” the other man said confidently from his seat mounted directly behind the telescopic camera. The large device was currently aimed out one of the eight portside cabin windows. “This baby is gyro-stabilized to the nth degree. Heck, we could take it on a real rollercoaster and still get razor-sharp images.”
“Two minutes out,” Laura Van Horn’s voice came over the aircraft intercom. “Tracking crew stand by.”
“Standing by,” the second operator replied. He would be responsible for controlling the tracking camera system’s movement along the rails as they made their pass. Both men were retired Air Force veterans who did clandestine work for the Quartet Directorate on a part-time contract basis.
“Thirty seconds.”
Fox tensed. He was following their flight’s progress on his laptop. A text box at one side of the map indicated he had a secure communications connection for text messaging with the Dragon team on alert in Florida.
“Target acquisition!” the primary camera operator said rapidly, zooming in on the glowing green thermal image on his monitor. His fingers flew over his controls. “Signature match! That’s the Gulf Venture, all right.” The camera whined slightly, tracking toward the edge of the cabin window. He glanced at his partner. “Shift us aft, Pete.”
With a soft whir of gears, the tracking camera mount slid down the length of the Gulfstream’s cabin until it reached the next large round window. The camera traversed again. “Target reacquisition,” the primary operator confirmed. “Good pictures. No observed change to target profile.”
“Can you give me a course and speed?” Fox asked.
“Yes, sir, that oil tanker is currently on a heading of three-one-five degrees. I estimate its speed at around eighteen knots.”
Fox allowed himself to relax a little. The enemy vessel was still moving on the same course it had been following since it was spotted from space and at the same speed.
“Strike that!” the camera operator said sharply. “Course change observed.” He shot a glance at his partner. “Shift us two windows aft this time, Pete. I need a clearer angle.”
Fox resisted the urge to unbuckle and move to look at the monitor himself. The Gulfstream was still hitting pockets of significant turbulence and it wouldn’t do anyone any good for him to risk being tossed into the ceiling or against a bulkhead.
The tracking camera rolled down the aircraft’s cabin, drawing closer to him. It halted smoothly. Again, the camera traversed toward the forward edge of the window it had stopped beside. “Confirm that course change,” the operator said. He swung toward Fox with a troubled expression. “Sir, it looks as though the Gulf Venture is now engaged in making a series of wide, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turns.”
Fox stared back at him. “The tanker is just steaming in circles?”
“It looks that way,” the other man said carefully. “And the ship’s speed is coming down to around five knots. Whatever they’re doing, it sure doesn’t seem like they’re in a real hurry anymore.”
Frowning in perplexity, Fox studied the map on his open laptop. What were the Iranians and Russians aboard that tanker up to now? Circling in place like this wouldn’t bring the ship any closer to the United States — and it was still several hundred miles outside the maximum predicted range for the three-stage rocket hidden inside its hull. Then he froze. “Oh, my God,” he muttered. “We’ve been wrong.”
“Mr. Fox?”
He looked up. “We’ve been wrong about the range of that missile. It’s got to be more like twenty-five hundred miles, not two thousand. They’re in striking range now.”
“The weather’s still really crappy, though,” the camera operator offered. “Even through my IR filter, I can see that ship — big as it is — pitching and rolling pretty significantly.”
“Which explains why they’re still steaming in circles,” Fox realized. “They’ve reached their pre-set launch coordinates. Now they just have to wait for the weather to clear.” He slapped the intercom button on his armrest. “Laura, what’s the most recent forecast?” he asked urgently.
“Wait one,” she replied from the cockpit. After a moment, she came back on. “This front’s passing faster than first predicted, Br’er Fox. NOAA says its computer models and satellite data now suggest a return to good conditions over this part of the Atlantic sometime in the next four to six hours. They’re calling for light winds at just seven to ten knots, with diminishing wave action.”
Fox nodded to himself. While its record of long-range weather prediction was as mixed as that of any other group of meteorologists, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s short-term forecasts were highly regarded. And they were widely broadcast, which meant the crew of the Gulf Venture must now realize they would have an acceptable launch window in just a few hours.
Rapidly, he typed a short text message to Flynn and his assault force standing by in central Florida. Containing the tanker’s current latitude and longitude and its observed movements disguised as stock market share prices, it closed with a simple exhortation: EXECUTE BUYBACK IMMEDIATELY. That was the coded signal for the Dragon team to go… and go now.
Fox hit the send button and then keyed the intercom. “We need to set down on Bermuda as soon as possible,” he told Van Horn.
“Copy that,” she said tersely. “On this heading, we’ll be outside of that ship’s radar horizon in thirty minutes. Maybe less. As soon as we’re clear, I’ll declare a minor in-flight passenger medical emergency and request landing permission from the controllers at L. F. Wade International there. We should be on the ground in less than an hour.” Despite the obvious tension in her voice, there was a tiny undercurrent of humor. “So one of you guys back there better get busy pretending to be sick. And make it convincing, because I don’t want some snotty British bureaucrat making trouble. Not when I have another plane to catch.”
Viktor Skoblin held on tight to the railings of the bridge ladder while the oil tanker rolled through an arc of more than twenty degrees, slammed broadside on by a large wave. From this high up, he could see that the sea was a vista of white-capped gray rollers all the way out to the close horizon. In the gathering darkness, thick clouds and bands of rain obscured the sky, cutting visibility to less than a nautical mile.
As the big ship rolled back the other direction, he gritted his teeth and pulled himself up the rest of the way and out onto the open starboard wing. They’d been in the grip of this storm for more than a day. But for most of that time, the tanker had been heading northwest on its pre-plotted course — keeping its stern to the oncoming waves and wind. Now, though, for some reason, the Gulf Venture was steaming in circles, which greatly worsened the impact of the bad weather on its motion. Instead of simply pitching up and down as the following waves rolled down the length of its hull, the huge vessel was currently pitching, rolling, and yawing almost all at once as it shouldered across an endless succession of foaming, white-capped swells.