A burst of static sounded, followed by a harsh voice saying, "Hallak… hallak… hallak." There was a pause filled by the hiss of static, and then the words repeated. "Hallak… hallak… hallak."
"Hallak, ladies and gentlemen," Rubens said, "is the Arabic word for now\"
That caused a stir in the audience. "A signal of some sort," Debra Collins said. "After the sinking of the escort."
"It's difficult to see what else it might have been," Rubens replied. "It's possible that the destruction of the Ishikari was deliberate sabotage, designed both to take the Sandpiper's military escort out of the picture and to draw the cruise ship in close to assist with SAR efforts. The helicopter was over the Channel at the time, and immediately radioed Brest that it was proceeding to the disaster site to assist… despite the fact that its fuel would have been critically low if it had flown to the Ishikari and then back to Brest, even without spending any time at the scene of the disaster."
"Obviously," Wehrum pointed out, "they were able to land on the Sandpiper's deck."
"Indeed," Rubens replied. "But how would a civilian helicopter have known that a ship of the Sandpiper's design was going to be available for a landing at sea? We picked up nothing on radio frequencies between ship and aircraft, other than the fact that the aircraft was on its way. And the fact that that helicopter was masquerading as a military aircraft is… disturbing. It suggests that after the Ishikari explosion, which quite possibly was intended as a diversion, people on board either the Sandpiper or the Queen carried out a hijacking, probably in concert with armed attackers off that helicopter. If so, then unknown hostile forces are now in control of both vessels, and taking them to an unknown destination."
"And just who is the enemy?" Admiral Prendergast asked. "Al-Qaeda?"
"We don't know, sir. Not yet. However, this operation has the flash and high profile we've come to associate with them."
"Al-Qaeda is a spent force, Mr. Rubens," General Barton pointed out. "Broken. They haven't been able to mount a single effective operation since nine-eleven."
"Not for lack of trying, sir," Rubens replied. "And perhaps they're not as broken as we've come to believe. Or this may be a new group with a similar signature. There's no way to tell. Yet."
"We can assume al-Qaeda until we learn differently," Collins pointed out. "Do you have any intelligence leads, Mr. Rubens?"
"A few. We're working them."
"So where are those ships headed now?"
"At last report, they were on a heading of two-four-zero. That's roughly the correct course for the Sandpiper — toward the Caribbean and the Panama Canal. At this point, the Atlantis Queen is considerably off-course. She's supposed to be headed due south, toward Gibraltar and the Mediterranean."
"I assume attempts have been made to contact both vessels," Barton said.
"Of course, sir. There's been no response so far."
"Then we need to intercept those ships at sea," Collins said.
Rubens nodded. Collins was not his favorite person. They'd actually once been lovers, a bit of ancient history on which he did his best not to dwell. As Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA, Collins had often targeted the NSA's Desk Three as an asset that properly should have fallen under her jurisdiction. So far, Rubens had managed to fend off her ambitious attempts to gain control of his department, but he remained cautious in his dealings with her.
At the moment, though, she seemed to be siding with him, making him wonder what she was up to. He was glad to have her support, though.
"One of the vessels that responded to the Ishikari SOS," Rubens continued, "is the Ark Royal, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier. She's still about eighty miles from the sinking, but her skipper has agreed to deploy a couple of Harriers to check on the Sandpiper They may at least establish visual contact, even if the ships' radios are out." He checked his watch. "They should be over the Sandpiper and the Adantis Queen within the next hour.
"It also seems we have a possible agent in place on board the Queen. Quite serendipitous, actually. We're making attempts now to get in electronic contact with her."
"An agent?" Collins asked. "One of yours?"
"Indirectly. She's GCHQ, which means — "
"Which means she works for one of the NSA's subsidiaries," Collins said with a throaty chuckle. "Yes, we know."
Not quite true, Rubens thought, but close enough to the truth that he let the barb pass. "She happens to be aboard the cruise ship as part of another operation," Rubens continued. "If we can make contact with her, we may be able to get some direct intelligence on what's happening on those ships.
"If the Atlantis Queen or the Sandpiper or, as seems probable at this juncture, both ships have been hijacked," Rubens continued, "her intelligence may be invaluable. We do need to begin making contingency plans."
"Meaning a military response?" Wehrum asked. "Both of these ships are British. It seems to me the responsibility for any type of response should lie with them."
"Maybe so," Rubens said. "The NSA gathers intelligence. It does not set foreign policy, nor does it carry it out. However" he added forcefully as Wehrum began to reply, "half of the passengers on board the Atlantis Queen are American citizens, and it is our responsibility to protect them from hostile forces no matter where they are. We also have a treaty obligation to do whatever is necessary to safeguard the cargoes of those plutonium transport ships. At the very least, we're going to need to work closely with the British government on this one, making our military response assets available."
"If we're the ones to go in," Prendergast said, "it means the SEALs."
"Either the SEALs," Rubens said, "or Black Cat."
"Black Cat?" Prendergast said, white eyebrows arching. "What's that?"
v "Combat Assault Team — 'CAT.' A counterterrorist unit operating out of Desk Three and the NSA," Rubens said. "It's new."
Very new. More than once in the past couple of years, U. S. Navy SEAL units had assisted NSA operators in covert military missions in remote areas, including a recent one on the Arctic ice cap. The SEALs were unparalleled at getting into hard-to-reach places without being seen, carrying out their mission, and extracting again, often before the enemy knew they'd even been there. Not long after the op against the Russians in the far Arctic, Rubens had pushed through a Deep Black program called Black Cat — the "Cat" portion of the name suggested by the counterterrorism, or "CT," nature of their mission as well as by the term "combat assault team." A highly classified number of active-duty SEALs and Army Delta operators had been seconded to the NSA, still drawing military pay but serving with and under Agency personnel. For the past six months they'd been training with combat-experienced NSA operators, including Charlie Dean and Lia DeFrancesca. Black Cat Bravo was based at Pawtuxet River, Virginia, and was under the command of Lieutenant Richard Taylor, the SEAL officer with whom Dean had deployed in the Arctic. Black Cat Alpha was based at the 'phib base in San Diego.
While the budgetary battles over Black Cat continued both within the Pentagon and at NCTC headquarters in northern Virginia — critics of the program insisted it wastefully duplicated already existent combat units such as the SEAL teams themselves — the unit promised to provide Desk Three with a tremendously valuable and powerful tool. The NSA gathers intelligence, he'd told them. It does not set foreign policy, nor does it carry it out. Right…
Sometimes, though, to carry out its more dangerous or complex missions the NSA needed something a bit more specialized and a bit more hard-hitting than a com-wired agent with a handgun. The important point was that with its own paramilitary force on tap, there would be fewer problems getting a clean interface between Desk Three and the pointy end of the stick. Clear communications were vital in any covert operation, and more than one major op — Eagle Claw, the failed mission to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980, was a rather obvious example — had ended in disaster in part when communications broke down between rival services.