Yuri spread his hands out in front of him as if he were harmless, deepening his accent slightly. It was odd how that always worked to his advantage. Americans instinctively believed that anyone with a foreign accent was stupid. “I am lost, I think.”
He pointed back toward the hatch. “Those numbersmy room?”
The expression on the young sailor’s face cleared. Visitors getting lost on a carrier was a common occurrence, and the long-suffering permanent inhabitants of the aircraft carrier quickly learned to recognize the mixture of chagrin and embarrassment that went with asking for directions.
“What were those numbers, sir?”
Yuri handed her a scrawled piece of paper, the one that the admiral’s Chief of Staff had given him.
“Here’s the problem.” She pointed to the first digit in the group. “You’re on the wrong deckthe floor, I mean.”
She pointed down and spoke a little louder. “One floor down, you see.”
“Ah, I understand.” He looked up and down the passageway. “But where are the stairs?”
Her suspicions completely vanquished, the young sailor smiled. “If you’ll follow me, sir, I’ll take you straight there.”
“You are too kind.”
Yuri fell into step behind her.
If the device did as its makers claimed, then the bomb would accomplish two purposes. First, since it was set to go off at three o’clock in the morning, it would undoubtedly catch Admiral Magruder in his room. The shrapnel from the shape charge should kill the man. Yuri glanced up at the overhead, smiling as he realized exactly where he was.
Additionally, the upward force of the blast should cause some damage to the deck. In fact, if his estimation were correct, they were now directly below the waist catapult. It would not take much damage to sever the steam lines that ran to the catapult launch shuttle or warp it beyond immediate repair.
At any rate, sometime within the next twenty-four hours, the USS Jefferson would find herself decapitated and severely restricted in her ability to launch aircraft.
Yuri hoped it would be enough.
“Sorry I’ve kept you waitinglet’s get on with it,” Magruder said as he strode into the room. It was a relief to be back among his own kind, other sailors and officers. He felt uncomfortable in his stiff dress uniform surrounded by the other officers in their comfortable working uniforms.
Tombstone turned to the senior Intelligence Officer. “What have you got for me?”
Lab Rat looked grim. “It’s possible,” he said bluntly. “Based on the Falcon’s flight profile, I can’t rule out the possibility that it has a vastly more capable power plant than we suspect.”
He held up one cautionary finger. “I have no hard data to support that, Admiral, but it’s worth briefing all the squadrons on the possibility. They might want to take another look at their tactics against it.”
Tombstone nodded. He was sure that a wealth of technical detail underlay Lab Rat’s warning, and equally certain that he didn’t need to hear it. If Lab Rat said that a warning was warranted, then so be it.
“Anything else I need to know?”
Lab Rat glanced around the room. “Not here, Admiral. If you will step into SCIE-“
Tombstone shot him a surprised look. He followed the Intelligence Officer to the back of the conference room and into the highly secure intelligence spaces located directly off the TFCC. “What gives?”
Lab Rat took a deep breath. “More speculation, Admiral. I’m short of proof on a lot of things these days. But you might want to read this.”
Tombstone stared at the message, reached out to take it, and then drew his hand back. “Give it to me short,” he ordered. He glanced at his watch. “I have to get back to the goddamned diplomats in a while.”
“Stealth technology,” Lab Rat said. “There’s a possibility that somebody besides the U.S. has it.”
“Who?” Tombstone said, unable to contain his impatience.
“The former Soviet Union had the beginnings of a program at the end of the Cold War. Most of the engineers on it were Ukrainian. National intelligence estimates say they returned to Ukraine after the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, and are probably continuing their work along those same lines there.”
Lab Rat paused for a moment, and his frown deepened. “Admiral, if Ukraine has stealth technologyoperational or capableit changes the whole complexion of this scenario.”
It took a moment for Tombstone to catch on. When he did, the implications stunned him. “Turkeyit wasn’t necessarily Turkey,” he said, not wanting to hear his own words. “That makes even more sense, in one way. There’s not much tactical reason for Turkey to have launched on usnone, as far as I can see.”
He thought back to the initial briefings he’d attended in the conference room. “They certainly don’t seem like they’re culpable, at least in public. They even seemed-” He struggled for a moment to find exactly the right word. “Outraged,” he concluded finally.
“Angry at the United States, justifiably angry. And we know that Ukraine has fissionable materials taken from the long-range warheads that were left on her soil after the dissolution.”
He stared at Lab Rat for a moment. “God, man, I’ve got to have more to go on than this.”
Lab Rat nodded. “I know. I’ve asked for a special intelligence analysis of Ukraine’s nuclear capabilities as well as a complete rundown on their stealth program. I sent the query out this morning, and I’ve already got two very concerned intelligence officers calling on top-secret lines to talk to me. Not with answerswith more questions. Evidently, I’m not the first one to think of this possibility.”
“Then why don’t they tell us this out in the field?” Tombstone raged. “I have lives depending on this sort of intelligence, decisions to makeand after yesterday, if we weren’t in a shooting war with Turkey, we almost are now. I’ve got one man injured, one still in the water somewhere, dead or alive.”
“I’ve suggested we redirect satellite coverage to provide continual surveillance of Ukraine,” Lab Rat added. “In particular, I’m looking for any unusual troop movements, anything out of the ordinary, and most particularly, any indication of nuclear material being moved around on the ground.”
“If that’s all we can get, that’s all we can get,” Tombstone answered. “It had better be enough.”
7
“Lieutenant,” the starboard lookout howled. “I got it, sirI got it!”
The officer of the deck darted across the bridge and jumped over the combing around the edge of the hatch. His foot caught on it in mid-leap, and he stumbled out onto the bridge wing, fetching up against the alidade.
“What is it, Simpson? Dammit, you keep yelling. Didn’t anybody tell you how to make a proper contact report?”
The lieutenant’s tirade came to a dead stop in midstream.
The lookout grabbed the lieutenant by the left shoulder and turned him around so that he faced out toward the sea. The sky was partly cloudy, and the moon obscured by the overcast. Nevertheless, there was enough ambient light for the surface of the water to be clearly visible.
“Just look, Lieutenant.” The lookout pointed.
The officer stared, his eyes slowly resolving the pattern of shape and motion into the vision that had so excited the lookout. He grabbed the sound-powered phone microphone that hung around the lookout’s neck.
“Combat, OOD. Set Condition Two AS. I’ve got a visual on a snorkel mast, range four thousand yards, bearing zero-four-zero. If sonar’s not holding it, I damned well want to know why.”