Using a handheld control, MacIntyre zoomed in and out and moved the cursor, quickly scanning the circle he had asked for, with its 10-mile radius. Connor could not keep up with her boss’s search and was getting vertigo from the image on the screen as it zoomed and swerved in front of her. It was as though she were looking down on the Arabian Desert from a blimp just yards above the sands. Suddenly MacIntyre stopped and sat back down behind his desk.
“Helluva haystack, Susan,” the Deputy Director said, shaking his head at the perplexed analyst. “Helluva needle.”
“I’m not sure I understand, sir. What was that on the image?” Connor was perched again on the edge of the couch, a plate on her lap filled with pizza crust ends and tomato-stained anchovies.
“That, Ms. Connor, was twelve underground missile silos and a central support base for mobile missiles. Judging from the one missile that was on a truck at the base, I would say it is the Chinese CSS-27, Beijing’s latest medium-range ballistic missile. Except they’re not in China, they’re in Saudi Arabia — ah, Islamyah.”
Susan Connor stood up, whistled, and then, slowly, said, “Ho-lee shit.” The anchovies were now on the carpet.
Although the carrier was moving at 25 knots, preparing to recover a squadron of F-35 Enforcers, there was only the slightest sense of motion in the admiral’s suite, buried just under the flight deck of the 77,000-ton floating air base.
“Would you like a cigar, Admiral? It’s a Cohiba,” the new flag ensign offered. The three-star vice admiral, Bradley Otis Adams, grinned as he reached into the open mahogany cigar box. “First of all, Ensign, smoking a cigar in here is prohibited. Second, a Cuban Cohiba is contraband. And third, your predecessor briefed you very well.”
Leaning forward from his seat at the end of the table in the admiral’s dining room, one-star rear admiral Frank Haggerty took the beat-up Zippo lighter his boss offered. It was engraved with the words “HVT Bar, Baghdad.” Haggerty smiled, remembering Adams had a role in going after the high-value targets, the leaders of Saddam’s Iraq. Frank Haggerty lit up his Cohiba. “Ruck, you get these in Jebel Ali?”
Andrew Rucker was captain of the USS Ronald Reagan, a 1,040-foot behemoth with two nuclear reactors and a crew of 5,900. He looked across the table at his boss. “You can buy anything in Dubai,” he answered as he, like Adams and Haggerty, lit a cigar.
Smoking indoors on a U.S. Navy ship had been banned for years, but no one was going to tell that to the commander, Fifth Fleet, or his subordinate, the admiral in command of the Reagan battle group. So for the captain in charge of the Reagan, there was one slight benefit to having the brass dine in. “I think, sirs, that once Castro finally goes we are going to switch from being enemies of Cuba to its greatest friends. Real fast.”
Admiral Adams drew a long puff from his cigar and savored the aroma as it filled the room. The roly-poly fifty-year-old flag officer was young to be a three-star. Although his blond hair was thinning, he looked even younger than his age. He had been young to be in every position he had ever been assigned to for over twenty-five years. He joked that salt water ran in his veins, since two Otises and three Adamses had been U.S. Navy admirals over the past two hundred years. He had been in the Bahrain job for one month, acting as both commander of U.S. Naval Forces (Central Command) and commander, Fifth Fleet. Already he was getting cabin fever in the little island nation of Bahrain. He had choppered out from Bahrain to join his friends Haggerty and Rucker for dinner under way aboard the carrier. He also just wanted to be on a moving ship again, not tied to a shore desk.
Tonight he also needed to deliver a message, one that was for their ears only. He made a slight gesture toward the two aides standing nearby, and Rucker instantly caught his meaning. “Lopez, Anderson. That will be all, thank you.” The ensign and the seaman left the dining room and quietly closed the door behind them.
Adams stood up and took another long drag on his cigar. “Although he was a little shaken up by the lobby of his hotel turning into a charnel house, Mr. Kashigian did eventually emerge and come by the base for his briefing. Only, turns out he was actually here to brief me.” Adams handed Haggerty a sheet of paper, with the engraved seal of the Secretary of Defense on the top and the looping signature of Under Secretary Ronald Kashigian at the bottom. “Take a look.”
As the two read the documents, Brad Adams walked over to the wall and looked at the aerial view of the Gulf and the countries surrounding it. From space it seems as if nothing had changed at all, he thought, but now the al Sauds are gone and Iran had nukes, and we are in the middle of it all with not much more leverage than this fleet gives us.
“Does SECDEF really expect us to carry out all this while revealing nothing to anyone?” asked Haggerty. “I’m not sure that we can get the force prepped to do everything that he wants that fast without someone getting wise.”
Rucker shook his head as he looked at the document in front of him. “Admiral, I don’t mean to be out of place, but isn’t it SOP for orders like this to be transmitted over ARNET, not delivered by hand?”
Adams turned back to the two men. Rucker, now forty-two, had been a little iconoclastic since his Annapolis days. He thought independently, didn’t just accept the company line. It was amazing he had made captain. “They’re worried about leaks. Of course, they’re always worried about leaks. But this time they seem to be almost paranoid about it. It’s almost as if they are certain that if CIA or NSA or IAC gets word of what we are up to, then somehow it is going to get out.” Adams sat back down at the table as Rucker placed the orders on the table.
“Well, given the size of what they are planning, how do they expect it not to leak?” asked Haggerty. “They must realize that someone is quickly going to see not only what we are doing here, but all the movement in CONUS and the Med, too. You can’t move this many men and ships and position that many people for action without someone getting wind of it.”
“You’re right, Frank, and I tried to explain that to Kashigian,” Adams replied. “But SECDEF is locked into this thing with a religious fervor that makes the Shura look like a Unitarian Sundayschool class. I don’t understand it exactly, but they are moving ahead with this at a pace like I’ve never seen before. The only thing I can figure is that they’ve gotten some bit of intel that they haven’t shared with us or anyone else, or else—”
“Or else what, Admiral? This just doesn’t make sense. The Iranians are a threat to blow up the whole damn region, Iraq is still a mess, sending terrorists after us wherever we turn. Why the hell would we pick right now to stage a major amphibious exercise with Egypt in the Red Sea and pull most of the Fifth Fleet out of the Gulf for ten days?” Haggerty got up from the table and walked over to the aerial photo of the Gulf that Adams had been studying. “I really am not sure that I can do everything that they want in that time frame, Admiral,” Haggerty said as he looked at the picture. “There is a lot going on here, and we should not be denuding the Gulf of American forces for some silly exercise. What do you want us to do?”
“I expect you to follow orders, Frank. Remember, civilian control of the military? Even if sometimes the civilians don’t make sense. You and Ruck do what you have to so that you can get us ready to do these missions while keeping them quiet. The largest amphibious exercise in memory, two carrier battle groups, most of our assets from the Gulf, all for a landing on the Red Sea coast of Egypt? It might be meant as a message to Islamyah. When does that say the date is of the amphibious landing?”