They were more concerned with current data.
Third platoon, on the west end, was going slowly through two chemical labs, finding several boxes of lab notebooks, Morris directing them to take the most recent of the pile.
Fourth platoon was harvesting an alcove devoted to design work, an open bullpen of a dozen drafting tables, three of them the computerized CAD tables. The CAD file server’s disk drive was already removed and packed in one of the seal’s packs. Several original vellum drawings were being pulled from the manual drafting tables and rolled up for carrying out.
The harvest was nearly complete. Morris checked the other platoons in the metal building wings, some units finding nothing, some finding some interesting prints. In the corner of one of the wings was a room behind a heavy door, with a vault behind another heavier door. A secret material repository. Two of Morris’s men finished a cut with a torch, finding shelves and file cabinets full of material. Morris was unimpressed since most of the material was old and dusty, relics of the ages before the offices were computerized. Still, there was the odd file that the men pulled, a few large files of drawings.
Finally there was nothing to be done but wait for the second harvest and wire up the demolition charges. Morris’s watch read 0535 local time. Any minute.
At 0600, the first person arrived for work, a short heavyset Iranian man in a long overcoat and furry-eared hat and a large briefcase, looking annoyed at the absence of the sentry. He came into the lobby and found the light switches near the door. The main hallway lights came up as he stepped in the door to the east-west hallway. He turned toward Morris, his eyes wide in shock. Morris took the briefcase as his seals taped the man’s hands behind his back with duct tape, the tape also wrapped around his mouth and his ankles. He was led to an office and seated in a chair. Morris checked his watch again, deciding to give it another half-hour. In any lab the work horse scientists were there hours before the official starting time and hours after quitting time, the op-order read. The second harvest of scientists would be gathered at dawn and removed to the assembly area.
A phone rang from the east end of the building. Morris couldn’t wait too long — the caller would be alerted that no one was answering, especially since the phones probably rolled over to the sentry at night. By 0645 no one else had arrived. Morris called the withdrawal code on the VHF, grabbed up his pack and the scientist, the duct tape on his legs cut, and moved out to the south, out of the metal building he’d come into, across the complex yard to the fence cut.
He ordered the men on, pulling out a radio trigger from his vest while the platoons continued toward the rendezvous point. Morris took one last look at the complex before uncovering the toggle switch and clicking it on. The complex blew apart as two dozen high-explosive charges detonated.
There was not a great deal of HX brought in, the idea more that secondary lab chemical fires and paper-fed flames would level the facility. The plan had worked; three secondary explosions sounded from the lab end of the brick building, filling the dawn sky with a bright rising mushroom cloud. Morris turned and ran in the snow up the ridge, veering away to the assembly area once he was over the peak.
He caught up to the others, soon able to hear rotors, hoping the Marines would wait, hurrying the Muslim scientist, the frightened man offering little resistance but walking too slow. Morris motivated him with the muzzle of the MAC-10. He pulled the tape off his mouth and let him breathe. The assembly area came into view, the idling V-22’s rotors whipping up tiny shards of ice in the increasing light of morning. The scientist struggled when he saw the plane, but another hit got him in the door. The aircraft interior seemed hot and airless as the door came closed, the noise level drilling into Morris’s ears as the rotors spun up and the plane lifted off, the ground shrinking away as the rotors spun up and the plane accelerated. Morris stowed his backpack, pulled off his sweaty balaclava and parka and gloves, the earpiece of the radio feeling waxy, the lip-mike wet with his sweat. The scientist was looking out one of the oval windows, his body stiff from fear or cold or both.
Morris found the coffee um and poured a cup, tasted it and found it fresh, poured a cup for the scientist nodding at Bart to free his hands. The man took it, his hands wrapped around the cup to gather its warmth. The plane climbed over the mountains to be joined by F-18s. Hours later, when the rotors tilted to the horizontal for the approach to Coalition-occupied Minab, the hostage scientist was asleep.
When the rear door opened, the plane was mobbed by HQ types unloading the stolen data and taking custody of the scientist. Morris walked to the debriefing, whistling tunelessly, his mind moving on to the next mission.
Chapter 27
Wednesday, 1 January
Kane stood looking over Mcdonne’s shoulder as the executive officer dialed in a speed change for the assumed solution to Target One, the Destiny’s designation. Kane had been steadily driving a target-motion analysis wiggle in the UIF sub’s stem ever since returning from periscope depth twelve hours before. Mcdonne’s solution showed target speed somewhere between twenty-five and thirty knots. The Destiny had been moving at that high speed since a few minutes after reacquisition. Kane’s data showed it capable of speeds up to forty-five, maybe even fifty knots. If the sub went at its max speed. Phoenix would be unable to keep up with it.
But at the speed it was going it was making considerable noise.
The Destiny was on the way somewhere, in a hurry but not in such a hurry that it needed to go full throttle. Too fast for a routine transit, since the speed did risk detection. What was he doing? The chart’s track of their progress since emerging from the Strait of Gibraltar had been a great circle route leading to the southern tip of Greenland. The HP computer’s projection had the Destiny in the Labrador Sea between Canada’s Newfoundland coast and Greenland in another seventy hours. Three days. And why in hell would Sihoud be visiting Greenland?
Worse was the fact that he could enlist no other minds to solve the riddle. Communication, though possible physically, was impossible tactically. To rise to periscope depth meant low speeds of five or six knots to avoid breaking off the antenna and periscope, the masts too delicate to withstand higher forces from hydrodynamic drag. The slowness of PD ruled it out, at least for HF radio transmission. It would be easy to zip up to PD and transmit a UHF burst comm to a satellite and dive deep again; even with the Destiny driving at thirty knots. Phoenix could catch up, but to spend any more time at PD meant losing the Destiny. Kane was unwilling to risk losing the UIF vessel, now more than ever, since the mystery of its destination had to have some at least tactical significance.
“XO, any questions?”
Mcdonne turned and looked up at Kane as if surprised to see him still standing there.
“No, sir. I’ve got it.”
Kane had just finished briefing Mcdonne as command duty officer five minutes before. By stationing the CDO, Kane could enjoy the one time at sea when the captain relinquished a large chunk of his authority to someone else.
When in trail of a hostile sub the more routine decisions could be delegated to the XO/CDO so that the captain could get some minimum amount of sleep. His responsibility did not end, but the XO would act for him and leave him undisturbed unless there were a genuine emergency. Reluctantly, Kane left control and shut the door of his stateroom, tossing for an hour in his rack before sinking into a shallow sleep.