“Margo, please.” Pacino looked at the CIA director. She usually kept her hair back in a stern bun and wore oversized eighties glasses, as if she intended to make herself look homely, but tonight she’d let her auburn hair down to her shoulders, and it gleamed in the lights of the room, making her look like she could be a model for a conditioner ad. And she’d put on eye makeup and lip gloss and lost the glasses. And unlike her usual frumpy frock, tonight she was wearing a tight pencil dress, gray cashmere, with a thin black belt at her waist, with black tall pumps, the ensemble revealing a slender but beautifully curving feminine form. For the first time Pacino saw her as a woman, and realized she was a stunning beauty. He’d never seen her as anything other than the chief spook before this moment. He must be suffering from too long without sleep, he thought. He was getting punch drunk. That, or what was happening with his soon-to-be-ex-wife Colleen was being processed in his subconscious as time went on.
Allende got up and went to the credenza behind them and found an old-fashioned laser pointer. She resumed her seat, the stirring of the air near her wafting her scent into Pacino’s nostrils, a faint trace of perfume, something French, something that had to be wickedly expensive, he thought. No doubt, he’d been awake far too long, or he was losing his sanity.
Allende pointed the laser pointer at the screen and hit the button, and a bright yellow point of light appeared due south of Karachi, Pakistan, some three hundred nautical miles due west of the red dots. As quickly as the yellow dot appeared, it went out, but it had engraved itself onto Pacino’s mind.
“Jesus, Margo, they’re at the same goddammed latitude!” Pacino breathed.
“Relax, Patch. There’s two hundred eighty miles between them. Even if the Russians had Panther’s exact position and speed and raced at flank speed to where Panther would be at the exact time of the Russian’s arrival, they’re twelve hours out. Maybe more. They couldn’t be within weapons range before lunch. And it’s just after midnight now. Nothing is happening for hours, Patch. And good news — the Russians were at periscope depth for over half an hour, and all during that time they were headed northwest. The wrong direction. When we look at possible outcomes, we deal in probabilities, Patch, and the probabilities here favor Panther escaping with the Russians being none the wiser.”
“Unless Panther does something loud and the Russians get a transient noise detection,” Pacino said. “With a detection of the Russians this accurate, can’t we vector in a Pegasus P-8 patrol aircraft? Two Mark 50 torpedoes dropped out of a Pegasus, those Yasen-M-class submarines are history.”
“You know those aren’t the rules of engagement, Patch. We can’t attack Russian submarines for just existing in the general area. We can only fire on them if they’re actively trying to stop the Panther. You’re cheating.”
You ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’, Pacino thought, the motto of the first Devilfish before she perished in the Arctic Ocean.
“Can’t we inform the Vermont of the Yasen positions?”
“Already done. Vermont knows.” Allende placed her hand on Pacino’s bare forearm. Her hands were cool and soft, her nails done in a French manicure. “I still think you should come with me and get a few hours’ sleep.”
Pacino shook his head. “Something is bothering me. Something doesn’t add up,” he said. He looked up at the display. “If the Russians are serious about finding and stopping the Panther, why haven’t they overflown the Arabian Sea with maritime patrol aircraft, their equivalent to our antisubmarine warfare P-8 Pegasus planes? Why no dropping of sonobuoys from aircraft or helicopters? And where are the antisubmarine destroyers and frigates? For both the Russians and Iranians? Margo, the Arabian Sea should be so full of sonobuoys you should be able to walk from India to Oman without getting your feet wet. There should be more warships in the sea than merchant ships. It doesn’t make sense. I know you made that vague promise that the only opposition force would be Russians submarines, but I find that hard to believe.”
Allende smiled mysteriously at him.
“Oh, no, not another classified program I’m not read into yet,” he groaned.
“I can neither confirm nor deny, Patch, but there is something you should have noticed in the NewsFiles.” Allende clicked through her pad computer, finally finding what she was seeking. She paired her unit to the flatpanel display next to the Arabian Sea orbital display. “We leaked this juicy info at four o’clock yesterday, in time for it to make the national evening news.”
It was a news segment filmed by Satellite News Network. SNN newscaster Brett Wolverine sat at a news desk, a graphic of a huge naval base taken from a helicopter or a drone shown behind him. Wolverine, as always, was clad in an expensive suit with a wide tie cinched neatly up to his throat, clean-shaven, his hair coiffed in a hundred-dollar haircut, his deep voice characteristic and sometimes satirized on variety comedy shows, or even featured in fake news bulletins in movie thrillers.
“We have reports in,” he began, “of a major cyberattack conducted against the Russian Federation Navy, an attack so severe that it took down fleet computers in every segment of their operation, including supply chain and logistics, communications, command and control and even the operating systems within their ships allowing them to navigate and maneuver. Also paralyzed, reportedly, are Russian naval air force units, including fighter jets, transport jets, tankers and antisubmarine patrol aircraft, including Russian military air traffic control systems. Russian Defense Minister Radoslav Konstantinov commented Tuesday that the cyberattack was definitely caused by a nation-state, not the work of cyber criminals, hackers or so-called ‘hacktivists.’ When asked if he suspected the American CIA or NSA, Konstantinov stated that it was a crime committed by the Israeli Mossad, and that Russia would retaliate. More on this story from our Moscow correspondent Monica Eddlestien—”
Allende clicked off the display. “It’s just more of the same. Wild speculation as to who caused it and why.”
Pacino looked at her. “Did we put the Israelis up to doing this?”
“The worm didn’t hit Russia directly. The Mossad inserted it into Iranian systems, the first priority being to paralyze the Iranian Navy’s frigates and destroyers and their naval air assets, which would allow the Vermont to escape with the Panther. Israel and the Mossad have a long-running beef with the Iranians. Anything Israel can do to mess with Iran, they’re going to do. Apparently Mossad saw the Iranians putting a nuclear reactor into the Kilo submarine — and no, we didn’t tip them off, they flew their own drone overhead and figured it all out, with the help of what we suspect are on-the-ground human assets. An Iranian nuclear submarine is a direct threat to Israel, and they were willing and able to help sabotage the Iranian Navy.
“So we gave the Mossad the virus software. The Iranians had ordered a batch of new printers for their navy administration building. And as usual, printers are useless without downloading the drivers from the vendor. And when they downloaded the drivers, the worm came in with them. The worm spread from administrative networks to the military command-and-control networks and boom, airplanes are grounded and surface ships become little more than paperweights while sparing their submarines’ networks, as intended. Then the fun really started. The Russians are too cozy with the Iranians, and their networks tie together in the administrative sphere, and the worm found the interlink and jumped into the Russian network. Then, bang, the Russian surface navy is dead, as is anything the Russian Navy flies. So no Russian MPA aircraft will be coming our way. See, Patch, your good friend Margo is taking very good care of you.” She put her hand on his forearm as she said that, and he felt a spark from the touch.