Merk toweled off. He watched the assistant handlers feed Tasi, Inapo, and the other dolphins. He met with the supervisor of the Mobile Vetlab clinic to make sure the hardboxes and the fleeced-lined stretchers were ready to move the dolphins when the time came to fly north to New York City.
On the helicopter flight from Little Creek to the Pentagon, the SEAL Team Two navy commander joined Merk in going over the logistics of sneaking a dozen navy dolphins and tons of supplies into the City that Never Sleeps without raising an eyebrow.
When they landed, they were taken to a fifth floor conference room to meet with Naval Special Warfare Command, which oversaw all Navy SEALs and covert operations, including the implementation of the navy Dolphins with the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Units — EODMO.
Having received word that Lt. Toten didn’t want the systems exposed in New York by telegraphing to the terrorists that the DoD was going to use every detection system in its arsenal to intercept a dirty bomb, the Special Warfare admiral signaled an engineer to run a presentation.
The first slide in the deck showed a naval helicopter with a laser detection system that pinpointed objects that dolphins tagged as suspicious. In a Midwest accent, the admiral noted: “Lt. Toten, because it’s Fleet Week and there’ll be military exercises plus an air show, we’ll use a helicopter to fly around the harbor and laser-tag any discovery made by the MM systems. The show the navy puts on will be of a training exercise variety that shouldn’t draw suspicion.”
“Yes sir, Admiral, I agree. The dolphins won’t use floating markers or buoys to broadcast their locations in the water. Since a visitor might see a dolphin or two, I request that the systems won’t be saddled with anti-foraging muzzles or other hardware that’s easy to spot. We need to take a Spartan approach to keep the op in stealth mode,” Merk said, and then asked, “What other tools or equipment is the navy planning to use in the harbor?”
The engineer clicked the next slide. The admiral nodded to the engineer to answer Toten’s question: “The US-3 is an Unmanned Surface Sweep System or sea drone.” The image showed a thirty-six-foot-long, torpedo-shaped speedboat with magnetic and acoustic sweep capabilities.
A drone… dolphin drone, Merk thought, recalling what Jenny told him what she saw at the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility in Iran.
“Lt. Toten, if the US-3 wasn’t cool in a kind of Star Trek way, I wouldn’t deploy it. But under the same principle of Broadway theater for the Fleet Week crowds, we’ll deploy the US-3 to cruise up and down the Hudson River under the auspices of showing off the navy’s new unmanned drone. Remember, Fleet Week is a big recruiting tool for the armed services.”
“Yes, I am aware of that, sir. The helo and US-3 will dovetail nicely with the armed forces showcase. Admiral, are there any other details about the op I should know?”
“Affirmative. Just one addition to your request for MK-4 and MK-5 EOD Mobile Units,” the admiral said. “Because some waters in New York have low visibility, Special Warfare Command ordered a pair of MK-8 mine-detecting, mine-neutralizing dolphins to be flown direct to New York. When you set up there, be ready to receive them.”
“Sir, what are the names of those systems?” Merk asked.
“Ekela and Yon,” the engineer said. “It appears you have worked with those systems before.”
“Affirmative, sir. As a pod on a covert op, no less,” Merk said, wondering how those dolphins were doing. He would soon find out.
Chapter Seventy-Two
“Ruthless, Merk. You have to be ruthless,” Jenny said, wearing a blonde wig and holding a black baseball cap in her hand. Dressed in gray slacks and a white blouse, donning glasses, she gave yet a different look, style, and persona with the disguise. “We’re going to fly in the back door of New York through Westchester County Airport. A diplomat will escort us from there. You will be undercover until agents drive you to a CIA safe house in lower Manhattan,” she explained. “Like my plan?”
“Incognito, like you.” Merk checked out her blonde tresses, handing her a flash drive.
They lifted off without incident. Jenny and her team of CIA operators went over details that were streaming in from the New York State Intelligence Fusion Center. The two-hour flight was all the time Merk needed to decompress, grab a power nap, and think about the best way he should go out in the city and draw attention to his visit. Only he knew he would use himself as bait, as chum, to draw the terrorist tiger sharks out in the open. He would keep Jenny in the dark about that tactic, knowing that without taking such risk they would know next to nothing about Pratique Occulte’s planned attack, except that it was going to originate in water around New York City.
Going against FBI and ONI advice, Merk spent all of five minutes in the safe house in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. He didn’t care about protocol, potential threats to his life, or being a marked man. In the latter, he wanted to roam around in public to be seen and followed, as long as that meant flushing the terrorists out so they could pursue their quarry. If there were Syrians, Somali pirates, Iranian agents, or Yemen Shia warriors embedded in New York, he wanted to find out who they were and draw them out in the open.
So he began the chum operation by moving around the city, checking water extraction points for the dolphins, landmarks for Black Mass targets, and obstacles in the rivers for the systems to avoid; above all, to find a staging area for the Navy Marine Mammal systems to be housed and secure 24/7. NMMP needed space as much as secrecy, a place with easy access to the water that could hold a battalion of fifty marine biologists, armed security guards, assistant trainers, handlers, and veterinarians who were assigned to Merk to oversee Operation Free Dive.
Merk scouted the piers, warehouses, and the Intrepid Aircraft Carrier Museum along the Hudson River from the rooftop of a west side midtown hotel, drinking a light beer, enjoying the view. He saw old navy vessels in port, but not a Littoral Combat Ship that could be used to search the Hudson River for subsurface anomalies.
He took a subway down to the new World Trade Center, and strolled along the miles-long walkway of Battery Park City to the southern tip of Manhattan. He rode the Staten Island Ferry back and forth, eyeing the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island on the New Jersey side of the harbor, and Governors Island and Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront on the east port. Merk watched a cruise ship enter escorted by a tugboat, and scanned the Brooklyn Armory out toward the Belt Parkway, with the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge looming in the background under the noonday sun.
After a quick bite, Merk strode through the streets that Hurricane Sandy submerged in the fall of 2012, from Wall and Broad Streets, to Pearl Street and many other narrow avenues. On one of the New York Stock Exchange’s blocked roads — to prevent a car bomb from going off — he watched a security guard circle an SUV holding a stick with a tiny mirror to search for bombs that might be planted under the vehicle.
Merk picked up a rent-a-car, using his real name and PenFed credit card. He drove across the Brooklyn Bridge. Not only was he out and about, leaving a long physical trail, but he left an electronic one as well. He took it one step further and kept his mobile phone on, inviting access to his location. He drove along the Brooklyn waterfront and didn’t notice federal vehicles, police cars, or terrorists shadowing him. He was alone; his plan seemed to be failing.
Having seen enough, he took the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway on-ramp and drove on the elevated section of the highway by the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. He glanced out to the harbor and saw a dark, abandoned, concrete structure with the name NEW YORK PORT AUTHORITY GRAIN TERMINAL faded on the giant box’s side.