Checkmate Page 4

  “Give me the overlay, Anna.”

  Grimsdottir tapped the keyboard and the image changed to a maze of yellow and orange lines punctuated by circular blooms of red. To Fisher the colors looked eerily familiar. Already guessing the answer, he asked, “What are we seeing, Colonel?”

  “Slipstone’s water system.”

  “There’re only a few ways that many people can die that quickly: waterborne or airborne.”

  His eyes still fixed on the monitor, Lambert nodded grimly. “How long, Anna?”

  “Almost there, Colonel.” A few moments later: “Confirmed: it’s the same signature as the Trego.”

  Fisher felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He turned away from the screen and took a deep breath. The Trego had just been the opening salvo. This was the real event.

  Someone had just poisoned an entire American town.

  6

  NORFOLK NAVAL SHIPYARD, HAMPTON ROADS, VIRGINIA

  FISHER angled downward until his depth gauge read thirty feet, then leveled off and checked his OPSAT. He was on track, almost dead center in the middle of the Elizabeth River. A quarter mile to go. His rebreather unit hissed softly in his ears. As it always did, the sound reminded Fisher of a mellower version of Darth Vader.

  Displayed across his facemask was a HUD, or Heads-Up Display. Like the display projected onto the windscreen of a modern jet fighter, the faint green overlay on his face mask told him virtually everything he needed to know about his environment, including a map of the river and the shipyard, his current position, the river’s depth and temperature, and distance and bearing to his next waypoint, which showed as a yellow arrow near the upper edge of his mask that changed position and length according to his position. Follow the yellow brick arrow.

  Deciding best how to penetrate the shipyard’s Southgate Annex, one of the most secure yards on the Eastern Seaboard, had been the easiest part of his mission. Given the high level of base security, an approach by land was a nonstarter, which had left only one other option: water. This suited Fisher’s preference. His SEAL days had taught him to trust the water. Water was safety; water was camouflage; water was anonymity.

  Norfolk Naval Shipyard is one of the busiest in the country, servicing on any given day as much as fifteen percent of the U.S. Navy’s fleet. With seven thousand employees, five hundred acres, and sixty-nine production buildings, the shipyard was an impressive site—more so since it was located eight miles south of the Norfolk Naval Station proper, in the southern branch of the relatively quiet Elizabeth River.

  An hour earlier Fisher had parked his car in a wooded parking lot overlooking the eastern bank of the river, and waited until a teenage couple in a steamed-up Ford Escort finished their business and drove off. He’d then retrieved his duffel and walked a few hundred yards through the woods to the shoreline, where he changed into his wet suit, rebreather harness, mask, and fins, then slipped into the water.

  Now Fisher craned his head back, checking the surface for boats. It was two A.M. He’d seen virtually no traffic, save for the occasional civilian motor cruiser returning home late after a day of fishing in the Chesapeake. He finned upward and broke the surface, careful to allow only the upper half of his mask to show. To his right, upriver, he could see car headlights crossing the Jordan Bridge, which linked the western and eastern shores.

  Directly in front of him, a quarter mile across the water, the shipyard’s Southgate Annex was brightly lit by sodium-vapor lights. Fisher counted ten ships of various sizes, from frigates to refrigerator ships, moored at the piers, and here and there he could see the sparkle of welding torches. A loudspeaker crackled to life and a voice made an annoucement, too distorted for Fisher to hear. As long as the message wasn’t “Intruder in the water,” he didn’t care.

  South of the main line of piers was a row of five man-made inlets, each covered by a hangarlike structure fronted by a massive rolling door wide enough to accommodate warships as large as cruisers. These were the annex’s secure docks, or sheds, numbered one through five. The Trego had been towed into Secure Shed Four, Five being the last in the line.

  To reach her, Fisher would have to first have to get past the annex’s sea fence, which stretched some three hundred yards across the entrance to the annex and was marked by a line of blue-lighted buoys, each linked to the next by floating aluminum pipes.

  Of course, it wasn’t the fence itself that concerned Fisher, but rather the spotlight-equipped Navy speedboat that constantly patrolled its length.

  He picked out a few landmarks he’d chosen from his map before the mission, confirmed their position on his HUD display, then flipped over and dove.

  TEN minutes later, he stopped swimming and coasted to a stop. He adjusted the compensator on his vest until he was neutrally buoyant, hovering motionless in the water. Aside from the glow of his HUD, he was surrounded by absolute blackness. Night diving could be an exercise in mind control, Fisher knew. Without any external reference points, a vertigo-like confusion can quickly take over. Fisher had seen the bravest of men, divers with hundreds of hours of bottom time, panic while simply floating motionless in dark water. Even he could feel it nipping at the edges of his mind: a primal urge to rush to the surface. He quashed the feeling and focused on his face mask; the soft green glow was reassuring. If his navigation was accurate, the sea fence lay directly ahead.

  To his right he heard a the muffled chugging of a marine engine. Fifty yards away the gray, teardrop-shaped hull of the patrol boat was cutting across the surface, parallel to the fence. The boat’s wake fanned out behind it, spreading outward until it met the fence, where it curled back on itself and slowly dissolved. A spotlight clicked on and pierced the surface, turning the water around it turquoise.

  Fisher waited until the boat crossed his front, then swam ahead. He had two minutes until the patrol boat returned. The sea fence appeared out of the gloom, a steel-cable net that stretched from its anchor bolts in the seabed to the linked buoys on the surface. Looking at the net, Fisher said a silent thanks to EPA, which had years earlier urged the Navy’s secure facilities to change the gap width of its sea fences so the indigenous fish population could come and go freely. In this case, the gaps were a foot square, which made Fisher’s job much easier.

  He checked the time display in the upper-right-hand corner of his mask. Even as he did so he heard the chug of the patrol boat to his left. He flipped over and dove straight down, hand trailing over the fence until he reached the bottom. The boat passed overhead, spotlight arcing through the water and playing over the fence. Once it was gone, he ascended ten feet and went to work.

  From his harness he pulled a “burn tie,” an eight-inch length of magnesium primacord. Ignited, magnesium burned hot and fast at five thousand degrees Fahrenheit, cutting through virtually anything it touched like a scalpel through jello.

  He curled the tie around the cable before him, then jammed his thumbnail into the chemical detonator at the end and backed away. There was a half-second flash of blinding white light; the fence disappeared in a cloud of bubbles. When they cleared, Fisher swam ahead. The cable had been sheared neatly in two, turning the foot-wide gap into a two-foot-wide gap. He took off his rebreather harness, pushed it through the hole, then swam on.

  TEN minutes later he drew to a stop in front of shed’s steel door, a wall of corrugated metal painted battleship gray. He flipped himself upside down and finned downward. He switched on his task light.

  The muddy seabed appeared before his faceplate. He turned horizontal and banked right. He passed the right edge of the door and then, abruptly, there it was: a circular scuttle set into the wall. He reached out and tried the hand wheel. Predictably, it was locked and, according to Grimsdottir, alarmed. If he tampered with it, he’d find himself surrounded by patrol boats before he got a hundred yards away.

  “Anyone home?” Fisher radioed.

  “I’m here, Sam,” Grimsdottir replied.

  “I’m at the hatch.”

>   “Okay,” Grimsdottir replied. “Give me thirty seconds. I’m hacked into the Shed’s control room, but they’ve got the locks on an eight-digit public key encryption—”

  “That’s nice, Anna, but maybe we save the technobabble for another day?”

  “Yeah, sorry, hang on.” She was back a minute later: “Okay, locks and alarms are disengaged.”

  “Going in,” Fisher replied.

  The hand wheel was well oiled and it turned smoothly under his grip. He spun it until he heard the soft clank of metal on metal, then gently pulled. The scuttle swung open. Arms extended before him, he swam through.

  His fins had barely cleared the opening when suddenly he heard the muffled shriek of alarm klaxons. In the distance, a water-muffled voice came over the loudspeaker: “Intruder alert . . . intruder alert. Security Alert Team to armory. This is not a drill! I say again: This is not a drill. . . .”

  7

  GRIMSDOTTIR’S panicked voice was immediately in his ear: “Sam, I—”

  Fisher reached up and hit his transmit switch twice, then once, telling Lambert and Grimsdottir, Radio silence; wait for contact.

  In or out, he commanded himself. If he got out now, they’d lock the dock down and his chance would be lost. If he stayed on mission, he’d be facing a security force on high alert, hunting for an intruder. It was an easy decision. This is what he did.

  He quickly shut the scuttle, then pushed off the wall and finned downward, hands outstretched. When he touched the rough concrete of the dock’s bed, he rolled to the right and kept swimming. He had one chance and one chance only. The shed was divided by a main watercourse bracketed on both sides by working piers. If he could find a hiding place deep within the pier’s pilings, he might be able wait out the security sweep.

  Above him, the water went suddenly from dark green to turquoise as the dock’s security lights came on, bathing the interior in bright light. He heard the muffled pounding of boots on the dock and voices shouting back and forth to one another.

  His fingertips touched wood: a piling. He hooked his arm around it and pulled himself under the pier. The water went dark again. He switched on his task lights and was engulfed in hazy red light. He kept swimming, weaving his way through the pilings. Covered in mottled gray barnacles, they reminded him of elephant legs.

  Somewhere behind him he heard multiple splashes. Divers in the water. The dock’s security team was well trained and moving fast. Keep going.

  The inner wall of the dock appeared before his faceplate. He looked up. Above his head he could just make out the understructure of the pier, a warren of crisscrossing girders and conduits.

  Fisher finned around the piling nearest the wall, then switched off his lights and broke the surface. He shed his fins and clipped them to his harness. Now the hard part, he thought. Here was where all the hours of grueling exercise to keep his forty-something body in shape would pay off. He hoped.

  Arms and feet braced against the wall and the piling, he began inching himself upward, using only the tensing of his muscles as leverage. Known in the mountaineering world as a chimneying, the manuever took supreme concentration. Fisher felt sweat running down his back inside the wet suit. His set his jaw and kept climbing.

  Out in the watercourse he heard more splashing. To his left he saw a black wet-suit-covered head break the surface. A flashlight beam played over the pilings. Fisher froze. The beam passed over him, paused for a beat, then two, then three, then moved on. The diver turned and kept swimming.

  Fisher pushed himself up the wall a few more feet and looked up. The understructure was within reach. He reached up, grabbed a water pipe, and let his legs swing free.

  Somewhere nearby, a radio squelched: “Dock Boss, this is Diver Two-One. Approaching north wall, section nine. I’m going into the pilings. Thought I saw something.”

  “Roger, Two-One.”

  The diver had turned back. Hanging perfectly still, Fisher scanned his eyes left. The diver was there, head just above the surface, flashlight playing over the water as he made his way through the pilings toward him.

  Quick and quiet, Sam. Go.

  He tensed his abdominal muscles, drew his knees up to his chest, then hooked his ankles over the pipe and began inching his body along it until he was tucked tight against it. He looked down. The diver was almost directly beneath him.

  With one palm pressed against a neighboring pipe for leverage, Fisher rolled his body until he was balanced lengthwise atop the conduit. He went still again. The diver’s flashlight appeared again, closer yet, casting slivers of light and broken shadows through the understructure.

  Fisher closed his eyes and willed himself invisible.

  Nothing here but us pipes, pal, Fisher thought. Swim along now.

  After what seemed like minutes, but was likely less than twenty seconds, the diver clicked off his flashlight and finned away. Fisher let himself exhale.

  WITH nothing to do until the security sweep was completed and the stand-down order given, he had to choose between sitting still and waiting it out, or doing a little exploring. He decided on the latter.

  A quick check of his OPSAT confirmed what he’d predicted: The pier’s understructure wasn’t included in the dock’s blueprints. He scrolled through the schematics to be sure. There was nothing.

  He set out.

  He crawled along the maze of conduits until he intersected a grated maintenance catwalk. All around him he heard the gurgling of water through pipes, the hissing of steam, and the low hum of electricity. The ceiling, a mere four feet above the catwalk, dripped with condensation and was covered with tiny stalagtites of mineral deposits. In the distance he could hear the crackle of acetylene cutting torches.

  He keyed his subdermal: “I’m back.”

  Grimsdottir said, “Thank God. I was worried.”

  “Didn’t know you cared.”

  “Dummy. Sam, I don’t know what went wrong. I was sure I’d covered the alarm redundancies.”

  “The curse of modern technology. No harm done.”

  Lambert said, “Are you in or out? Scratch that; dumb question. What’s your status?”

  “Doing a little spelunking while they finish their security sweep.”

  “Okay, stay—”

  A voice came over the dock’s PA system. Fisher told Lambert, “Wait,” then listened: “All hands, security alert stand down. Security Alert Team report to control for debriefing.”

  Lambert said, “I heard. Stay safe and stay in touch.”

  Fisher signed off.

  Hunched over, occasionally ducking under valve junctions or cloverleafs of piping, he began picking his way down the catwalk. He paused every few seconds to switch his trident goggles to infrared for a quick scan of the area ahead; with the swirling steam, he found the NV unreliable. Aside from the red and yellow heat signatures of the conduits, he saw nothing.

  With a screech, a parrot-sized rat scurried across his path and darted down the catwalk. Fisher realized he’d drawn his SC; he holstered it. Constant training made for good reflexes and a lot of almost-dead rats.

  After another fifty feet he came to a T-intersection. He switched to IR. Clear. Ahead, the catwalk continued to who knows where; to his right, a ladder rose from the catwalk and disappeared.

  Thank God for maintenance hatches.

  The ladder was but a few rungs tall and ended at a manholelike opening. He took out his flexi-cam, plugged the AV cable into his OPSAT, waited for the image to resolve on the screen, then snaked the camera through one of the cover’s holes.

  It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. A boot; a black leather boot. He froze. Standard Navy-issue Chukka, size 12. He knew the model only too well. He’d worn out three pair during BUD/S, the Navy’s six-month SEAL boot camp.

  Ever so slowly he eased the flexi-cam back through the hole.

  Above him, the sailor’s boot was joined by a second. Fisher could smell the tang of cigarette smoke. “They find anything?” the fi
rst sailor asked.

  “Nah. You know how it is: They always say, ‘This is not a drill,’ but it almost always is.”

  “Yeah. So what’s the deal with this ship? What’s with all the guys in space suits?”

  “That’s biohazard gear, idiot. The Master Chief says its an exercise, but I don’t buy it. I think there’s something—”

  A grizzled voice interrupted. “You two! Got nothing to do, I see. Follow me. I’ll find you something.”

  “Come on, Chief, we’re just taking a break.”

  “Break’s over, ladies. Back to work.”

  Fisher waited for the count of thirty, then slipped the flexi-cam back through the hole. The boots were gone. He switched to IR and did a 360 scan. There was nothing. No bodies, no movement.

  Using his fingertips, he gently lifted the manhole cover, slid it aside, and crawled out.

  8

  HE slid the cover back into place, crab-walked four steps to his right, and ducked behind a pallet of crates. Now that the security sweep was over, the dock had returned to normal work lighting. Sodium-vapor lamps hung from cross-girders high in the vaulted ceiling, casting the dock in gray light. Farther down the dock, amid the loading derricks, a group of sailors moved crates around on a hand truck. Here and there he could see the sparkle of welding torches, could smell the sulfer stench of acetylene.

  To his right was a familiar sight: the Trego. She was moored bow-first toward the dock door. Her deck hatches, portholes, and windows were covered with yellow plastic sheeting and sealed with red duct tape. At the midships hatch a tentlike structure had been erected—the decontamination entry and exit, he assumed. As he watched, a pair of NEST people in white biohazard suits stepped out of the tent. They were met by a trio of similarly dressed figures who began hosing them down with a foamy liquid.

  Fisher felt a flutter in his stomach. Grimsdottir had assured him the radiation levels aboard the Trego were well below a risky dose, but watching the decontamination procedure made him wary. His harness was fitted with a pen-sized quartz-fiber dosimeter linked to both his subdermal and his OPSAT, so he would get plenty of advance warning if he were taking on a radioactive load. Or so the theory went.