The explanation for the vessel’s deviation was captured in the amplifying information. An engineering casualty: some kind of damage to one of the line shaft bearings. The ship was diverting to the nearest port for emergency repairs.
As Marek cleared the ship from the alert queue, a pronounced growling noise issued from her midsection. She ignored the biological distress call and summoned up the next ship in the queue. The Motor Vessel Lecticula was a 38,000 ton general cargo carrier registered under the Liberian flag.
What kind of name was Lecticula? It sounded like a sultry vegan vampire from bad teenage fan fiction. (Although Marek would have been hard pressed to name an example of good teenage fan fiction, come to think of it.)
Her eyes slid down the screen to the ship’s owner of record. Consolidated Maritime Group. That made sense. Since the explosion of that other CMG ship, the MV Amaretto or whatever, the alert algorithm was tagging every vessel in the Consolidated Maritime fleet.
One glance at the ship’s movement history and she sat up straight in her chair. Holy shit! It was the same route.
The white line of the voyage track started in North Korea, swung northeast of the Japanese island chain, and then hooked down around the southern tip of South America before looping up to cross into the Caribbean south of Grenada. Except for the variation on the final leg, the MV Lecticula was following the exact same route that the other CMG ship had taken. The MV something-or-other that started with ‘A’. The one that had nuked itself close to Cuba.
Same shifty-ass corporate owners. Same dead-end registry. Same snaky routing — the long way around South America to avoid the Panama Canal. Even the same general class of expendable rust-bucket freighter.
The Lecticula was north of Aruba now, and moving northwest toward Cuba. They were doing it again. The bastards (whoever they were, and whatever they were up to) were doing it again.
Marek tabbed the messenger icon on her op screen and started a chat session with Commander Caramicio. When the chat window was open, she typed, “Got a sec?”
The commander’s reply popped up almost immediately. “Sure. What’s up?”
Marek thought about typing out an explanation, but that would take too long. She typed, “Can you drop by my console? I’ve got something you need to see.”
His reply was three words. “On my way.”
Marek leaned back in her seat to wait for the commander. It wouldn’t take long. His office was only a few doors down the hall from the analysis center. And then things would ramp up quickly.
When the excitement was over and the short-fuse reports had gone up the chain of command, Marek would reward herself with some peanut butter crackers.
She was already mentally revising her fitness spreadsheet; factoring in another half-hour on the stationary bike.
CHAPTER 9
Sitting behind the historic Resolute desk, President Bradley gazed into the cluster of television cameras with the air of a stern-but-loving father. There were still twenty seconds or so before the cameras went live, but his face was already composed for his coming address to the nation. He was all business tonight: the famous Chaz Bradley grin nowhere in evidence.
Camera positions had been selected by lot. CNN held the coveted center spot, flanked on the left by the Fox News camera, and on the right by C-SPAN. The whitehouse.gov camera — which would stream live video directly to the White House website — was far off to the side, yielding floor space to networks who had drawn less advantageous real estate.
The cameras were being operated from remote, crews controlling pan, tilt, and focus from a string of news vans lined up along the curb of West Executive Avenue.
At exactly 7:30pm, the warning light above every camera flipped from red to green, and the president began to speak.
“Good evening, my fellow citizens. On October twenty-second of nineteen-sixty-two, President John F. Kennedy sat at this very desk and announced the presence of Soviet nuclear missiles on the island nation of Cuba. This reckless act on the part of the Soviet Union would come to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. It brought our planet to the verge of a global nuclear conflict which might have marked the extinction of life on Earth.
“Tonight, more than a half-century after our closest brush with Armageddon, we find ourselves again facing the same situation. It is my unpleasant duty to inform you that the government of North Korea is now following in the ill-conceived footsteps of the USSR.”
He paused to let this pronouncement sink in. His next words were taken nearly verbatim from JFK’s 1962 broadcast, partly as an homage to the long-dead president, and partly to underscore the extreme gravity of the current threat.
“Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the United States.”
The president hesitated, feeling both the weight of repeating history and the foreknowledge that future generations of scholars and pundits would endlessly deconstruct every syllable now issuing from his lips. He resisted an impulse to clear his throat before continuing.
“I have conferred with President Diaz-Canel, and he emphatically denies any knowledge of North Korean missiles on Cuban soil. His assurances will understandably be met by a degree of skepticism within certain quarters of our own government, but I remind my colleagues in all branches of leadership that our neighbor to the south is not the tiny island that many of us imagine it to be. The Republic of Cuba has more open land and wilderness than our own state of Kentucky, with a national population of only eleven million. It is not beyond possibility — or even credibility — that a number of truck-based launcher systems could be smuggled into the country without the consent or awareness of top Cuban officials. I am therefore disposed to take President Diaz-Canel at his word in this matter, until and unless we receive evidence of collusion on the part of his administration.
“We do not currently enjoy diplomatic relations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. We have no ambassador to North Korea, and our attempts to establish a dialogue with their government are not being acknowledged.”
President Bradley’s expression hardened by some infinitesimal fraction that was somehow visible to the cameras.
“Like President Kennedy before me, I would prefer to find a peaceful diplomatic solution to this situation. Offered the choice, I would rather extend the olive branch than take up the sword. But — also like President Kennedy before me — I will not stand by and allow the United States to be threatened with nuclear weapons.
“A few minutes ago, I ordered a full naval blockade of the waters surrounding Cuba. Until this crisis has been resolved, U.S. warships will intercept, board, and inspect every vessel that attempts to enter the blockade area — regardless of registry or nation of origin. If any of our inspection teams encounter armed resistance, they will engage and neutralize the antagonists with overwhelming military force.
“We are prepared to take any measures necessary to prevent the introduction of additional North Korean weapons onto Cuban soil, but such reactive efforts are clearly not sufficient to deal with the threat that already exists.