The admiral reflected mightily, pacing his office. “FUCK ME!” he added, glaring at the portrait of General Patton on the office wall. “YES!” he confirmed. “YOU MIGHT WELL LOOK SERIOUS, GEORGE. BILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF GODDAMNED DOLLARS’ WORTH OF STUFF — ADMINISTERED BY MORONS.”
And he glared some more around the completely empty room. “AND WHO IS THE CHIEF FUCKING MORON? THE LEADER OF THE GODDAMNED PACK…MORON FUCKING SUPREMO! GEORGE FUCKING MORRIS, THAT’s WHO. ADMIRAL GEORGE R. MORRIS, C–IN-C MORON SQUADRON, FORT FUCKING MORON, MORONLAND.”
The President’s National Security Adviser was beside himself with anxiety. For three days now the American satellites had been photographing the shores of the South China Sea in search of any clue there might be as to the whereabouts of the crew of Seawolf. The fact was, there was nothing. No sign of a major group of men where previously there had been nothing, no sign of military activity, no sign of anything out of the ordinary. If he could have, Arnold Morgan would have spun the Earth on its axis even faster to give the overheads a few extra passes.
With every passing hour, his frustration mounted. He had personally sanctioned the spending of millions and millions of dollars, sending in one of the biggest and best Special Forces teams ever assembled in peacetime. And now, he knew, they were due to land in Okinawa and then make their way out to the Ronald Reagan, presently 60 miles offshore in the company of her entire Battle Group.
He had snatched Colonel Hart from the London embassy to take overall command of the operation. He had spent God knew how many thousands of dollars relocating the colonel’s family back to Washington. He had made promises to the President of the United States. And, far from having to report failure, he couldn’t even find the fucking target.
“Jesus Christ!” groaned Arnold Morgan. “What the hell did I ever do to deserve all this bullshit?”
Just then the serenely beautiful Kathy O’Brien slipped into the room and inquired, “Darling. Do I detect you might be working yourself up into an absolute lather?”
“Yes,” he growled. “Leave me to my misery. Can I have a cup of coffee?”
“Would you like some salad or something? You’ve been here since four A.M.”
“You mean as well as every damn thing, I’ve got to pretend I’m some kind of a goddamned rabbit?”
“You can have some lovely vinegar and olive oil dressing on it. Rabbits eat it plain.”
“BEEF, WOMAN!” he roared, laughing at his own ridiculous imitation of Henry VIII. “Bring me beef — rare slices cleaved by my master-at-arms, between mighty slices of rye bread, with a sizeable dollop of mayonnaise right in the middle…and mustard.”
“You’re not having beef. You eat too much of it. You can have tuna, the chicken of the sea.”
“I don’t want TUNA!” he yelled, still laughing. “I loathe the chicken of the sea. I want the roast beef of the land. With mayonnaise. And mustard.”
“Well, you’re not getting it.”
The admiral stormed to the window, gazed out onto the White House lawn, and raised his arms heavenward, like Sampson. “My undying love for you, Ms. O’Brien,” he said, pompously, “does not give you the right to deny me my reasonable share of the finer things in life…”
“The finer things in life do not include roast beef sandwiches dripping with mayonnaise and devoured about seventeen times a week.”
“Fifteen,” he chuckled. “Where’s George, Kathy? Where is the moronic admiral who is supposed to bring me glad tidings of the battle in the South China Sea?”
“I can’t say I am able to answer that,” she replied, and just then the phone rang. Expertly she pirouetted around and picked up the pastel green receiver from his desk.
From the window he growled, “I speak only to the President. I’m too depressed to deal with anyone else. Anyway, I’m on my lunch break, and even that’s turning into some kind of hell.”
“Hello, Admiral Morgan’s office…may I ask who’s calling?
“Arnold,” she said, pressing the HOLD button. “It’s for you…you’d better take it.”
“IS IT THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES? If not, I am formally at lunch. No calls.”
“No, it’s not the President. It’s Admiral Morris.”
“WHAT!” Admiral Morgan bounded across the room like a starving panther who had sighted a roast beef sandwich.
“George…”
The voice on the other end was brief and clipped. “Arnold, I think we’ve found ’em. I got the photographs. Helicopter right outside. I’m on my way in. See you in twenty.”
Arnold Morgan almost died of happiness. He lifted his right leg and flashed his shiny right shoe back and forth, pumping his right arm.
“GEORGE!” he exclaimed, chuckling. “George Morris. Doesn’t seem too swift when you first meet him, mind. But he’s careful, painstaking and misses nothing. The perfect detective intelligence officer. What a stroke of pure genius when I appointed him to replace me…pure genius.”
“I thought you just said he was a moron,” said Kathy, swishing across the room toward the door to order his tunafish sandwich and coffee for two.
The ensuing 20 minutes were almost more than the admiral could endure. He completely lost his appetite and, leaving even the coffee, he walked outside to the helicopter pad to wait with the security guards for the chopper from Fort Meade. And he saw it coming a long way out.
It made one small pass over the White House lawn, checked in with the control room, manned as always by Marines, and came clattering down onto the concrete square. A Marine guard moved smartly over to open the door, and Admiral George Morris disembarked clumsily, holding his briefcase and two big files, one spilling over with a Navy chart.
“Hi, George,” said Arnold Morgan. “We cracked it?”
“I think so, sir. If we haven’t, we’ve discovered something even bigger.”
“There isn’t anything bigger.”
The two men hurried to the West Wing, where one of the agents momentarily fussed about a badge for Admiral Morris. That lasted for almost three seconds, before Arnold Morgan snapped, “I do not have time for that crap, y’hear? Get the badge and bring it to my office…that upsets you or your boss, run along to the Oval Office and tell the President.”
And with that he hustled Admiral Morris through the door and on down the passage to his own office, never even hearing the agent mutter, “Yessir.”
Inside the big carpeted headquarters of the National Security Adviser, Kathy waited with coffee. George Morris opened a file and laid a line of 8 x 10 photographs on Arnold Morgan’s desk.
“Okay, sir. Let me take you through this in sequence…that way you’ll know as much as we do. Now, take this picture shot from the overhead about three weeks ago…this is one of our benchmarks…a direct shot of a couple of islands around eighty miles west of the Pearl River Delta…see, we got almost nothing on it. The place is just about uninhabited save for this cluster of probably empty buildings in the north.
“Now, sir. I put a man on this. Pulled up photographs for the past five years. There’s never been so much as one person in any picture we’ve ever had in that time. Of course I had other people studying other places along that coast…but this is where we got a development.
“In the past we’ve photographed it irregularly, but subsequent to your orders last weekend, we have intensified all our photography from the overheads, taking in this stretch of coast eighty miles east up to Houmen, and along here westerly to this island. It’s called Xiachuan, and quite frankly it was right at the limit of the range you gave us…but we’ve zoomed in on it and done blowups that I’m working toward.”