"Are we certain it was Pyongyang and not an accident?" Nick asked.
"It definitely wasn't an accident," Hood said. "She was sunk using our own technology. No one else is supposed to have it. The emergency buoy recorded what happened to her and transmitted the information when it reached the surface. Transmissions have stopped. The North Koreans plucked it out of the water."
"What kind of technology?"
"Now that you're acting in Elizabeth's place, I can tell you. DARPA developed an underwater drone called Black Dolphin that attaches itself to the hull of an enemy ship. It hacks into the target's computers and shuts them down. On the surface, a ship would lose all computer-controlled functions. It would drift, helpless. With a submarine, she'd turn into a big rock. That's what happened to California."
"How do the North Koreans come to have our top-secret tech?"
"That's the question, isn't it?"
"Treason," Nick said. "Someone gave it to them."
"It's the only possibility. Not only that, no one could break through the firewalls on one of our nuclear subs without the right codes. It has to be someone high up in the command structure with access to that information."
"At least it narrows the field."
"We'll find him, whoever it is," Hood said.
"What happens next?"
"President Rice isn't going to let the North Koreans get away with this. It may be up to his successor to finish what he starts, but Rice is mounting a rescue mission in case some of our people are still alive. The sub went down in North Korean waters. Yun is unstable, no one knows how he'll react. This could trigger a war."
President Rice was in the last days of his second term. It remained to be seen what would happen when his successor took office. No one knew what approach he would take toward the covert world where the Project operated, or the black budget that funded it.
"China won't like this," Nick said.
"You just put your finger on one of the problems. The Chinese have been unwilling to shut down Yun's lunacy with his missiles and his nuclear program. Now it's coming back to bite them in the ass. They're worried we're going to provoke him into using his nukes."
"So it's our fault if he does?"
"Everything is our fault, these days. There's a meeting at the White House with the Chinese ambassador later today to discuss the situation. President Zhang will be on the phone. Rice wants Selena in the room with him, to listen in."
Selena Connor was part of the field team. Against all the odds, she and Nick had gotten married the year before. Selena spoke Chinese fluently and understood the important nuances lost or omitted in translation. Her uncle had been a close friend of the President, and she'd known Rice since she was a child. He'd asked her once before to help him understand the minds of the men who ran China.
"She'll be here soon," Nick said. "What time is the meeting?"
"Four o'clock. Rice wants her at the White House a half hour before, and he wants you and your team outside. There will be protests when the story leaks."
"The Secret Service can handle it. We're not cops. Why would he need us? Did it occur to him that I'm a little busy right now?"
"Ours but to do or die, Nick. What the President wants, he gets."
After he hung up, Nick leaned back and thought about the California. Someone had given the North Koreans the technology. Whoever he was, Nick hoped the bastard was found out before he did any more damage.
He heard the door open and someone stomping their feet in the entryway. A moment later Lamont Cameron came in. He threw his coat over the arm of the couch across from Harker's desk and sat down.
"Man, I hate this cold weather. How about coming up with a mission someplace warm?"
"Scuttlebutt says we might be heading to the Arctic," Nick said.
"Funny, Nick. You got a real future as a comedian."
Lamont was one of four who composed the Project team in the field, along with Nick, Selena, and Ronnie Peete. He was a little shorter than Nick's six feet, lean and muscled. He'd been a Navy SEAL for most of his military career and had the scars to prove it.
Shrapnel in Iraq had left a long, pink line across his brown face. It started over his right eyebrow and worked its way across the bridge of his nose, then down his left cheek. It gave him a piratical look that belied his easy-going humor.
Selena and Ronnie came in the door and shook snow off their boots. A puddle of water was starting to collect in the entry.
"I don't think the snow's going to last," Ronnie said as he sat down. "It doesn't smell like it. Just enough to make everything a mess."
"With that nose of yours, I'll take that as gospel," Lamont said.
"It is a Roman nose," Ronnie said, "a sign of intelligence and intuition." He sniffed. "The snow will stop."
It was true Ronnie had a big nose. It went with his Navajo heritage. He had the stocky build, light brown skin, broad shoulders and narrow hips of the People. He dropped onto the couch next to Lamont. Selena sat next to him.
The dress code at Project HQ was casual. Selena wore black slacks and boots. She had on a dark blue sweater that brought out the violet color of her eyes, She wore no jewelry except her wedding ring. The cut of her red-blonde hair framed high cheekbones hinting at a Slavic ancestor in the distant past. She had the kind of unselfconscious beauty that always got a second look. A natural beauty mark above her lip added the final touch.
Nick wasn't used to looking at the team from this side of Elizabeth's desk. He wasn't comfortable with the feeling of separation it created, but it went with the territory.
A friendly looking, dark-haired woman came into the room and took a seat near the desk. Stephanie Willits knew how the Washington political game worked. She was Elizabeth's deputy and knew where all the bodies were buried. Technically, she should have been the one sitting in Harker's chair, but she and Nick had played this game before. There wasn't any competition between them. They shared a mutual determination to get the job done. She took her usual seat to the right of the desk.
She'd arranged for someone to stay with her newborn son during the day while she was working. Normally, Steph was full of energy. Today she seemed tired, her cheerful face showing the stress of a newborn baby and holding down one of the toughest jobs in Washington.
"Sorry I'm late. Matthew kept me up half the night."
"It's nothing to worry about, Steph."
Nick decided to begin the meeting and get right to the point.
"I got a call from DCI Hood this morning to start off our day. There's a problem."
"There's always a problem," Ronnie said.
"Yesterday one of our ballistic subs went down with all hands," Nick said. "The California carried a hundred and sixty-five officers and enlisted men and a full complement of nuclear cruise missiles."
Lamont sighed. "Shit. I have a buddy on the California."
"How? Where was she?" Selena asked. She brushed a wisp of hair away from her face. It was a gesture Nick had come to love.
"The how is what we're going to talk about. The where is off the East Coast of North Korea, in twenty-seven hundred feet of water."
"Did the Koreans sink her?"
"Almost certainly. They're the logical suspects at this point."
"Do we know what happened?" Lamont asked.
"Yes and no. We know some of it. Her emergency beacon deployed when she went down. Aside from giving the location, the beacon records all the relevant data and functions of the vessel up to the moment it's released."
"Like an airplane black box?" Selena asked.
"Right, only more sophisticated. When there's an accident and the beacon reaches the surface, it broadcasts everything to a satellite. The California's beacon sent everything it had recorded before the North Koreans retrieved it."