Sea of Fire o-10 Read online

  "Done," Hood said. "So what do you make of all this?"

  "I honestly don't know yet," Coffey admitted. "The wreckage is definitely that of a sampan, and it is definitely radioactive. It was probably destroyed by explosions that occurred on the sampan itself. Apparently, pirates have been working the Celebes Sea sporadically for years. They use explosives to hold crews hostage while the vessels are robbed."

  "So this could have been a premature detonation," Hood said.

  "It's possible," Coffey agreed.

  "But that doesn't explain the radioactivity," Hood added.

  "Exactly. As far as anyone knows, these pirates have never dealt in nuclear material. That's making everyone around here pretty jumpy."

  "Why?" Hood asked. "Nuclear trafficking has been going on for years in the region. The MIC knows that."

  "They also know that there isn't much they can do about it," Coffey said quietly. "If word gets out about this, there will be pressure to do something. Only no one knows what, exactly. It's the same problem the United States has faced for years. How do you monitor every point of access? It's tough enough catching drug shipments. Radioactive materials are even more difficult."

  Coffey was right. There was not much that anyone could do about it. A terrorist could use a lead-lined fountain pen or pocket watch or even a rabbit's foot on a key chain to slip plutonium into a country. Just a few grams of weapons-grade material would be enough to kill thousands of people or contaminate tens of thousands of gallons of water.

  "Has the press been all over this?" Hood asked.

  "Not yet. The government is trying to keep this as quiet as possible," Coffey said. "Patients and visitors are being kept away from the man's room, but this is a big hospital. Someone is certain to hear that something unusual happened. The game plan is to deny that anything hot was involved."

  "Is there anything else we can do?" Hood asked.

  "I'll let you know," Coffey replied. "Right now it looks as though someone's motioning for me. I think they want me in the room. Paul, I'll call you back when I can."

  "I'll be here another hour or so," Hood said. "Then you can get me on the cell or at the apartment."

  "Very good," Coffey said and hung up.

  Hood placed the phone in the cradle. He sat back and thought about what was happening on the other side of the world. It was strange how events like this caused the globe to shrink. Conceivably, what Coffey and the others were dealing with could impact the United States within hours. Nuclear material could be transported clandestinely by sea and then loaded onto an aircraft anywhere in the region. The plane could be flown to a small airfield in Washington or New York or Los Angeles. A small amount of nuclear material could be walked into the terminal and left in a waste can. Or dropped on the floor under a bench. The human toll would be extraordinary. A larger amount of nuclear matter could be attached to a makeshift explosive. Perhaps homemade plastique or cans of spray paint triggered by a car flare. The human toll of the dirty bomb would be unthinkable.

  All of that could be in progress right now, Hood thought. The realization came with a keen sense of helplessness.

  There were always crises. That was why Op-Center had been chartered. They were the National Crisis Management Center. But the personality of these disasters had changed over the years. The speed, the scope, and the frequency of them were terrifying. And though more resources were being applied to combat them, those resources targeted existing patterns and likely perpetrators. A methodology had not yet been created to anticipate what Bob Herbert called "kamikaze genocide" — the piecemeal extermination of Westerners by suicide attacks.

  Several years ago, when Op-Center was combating neo-Nazis, Herbert said something that had stayed with Hood.

  "When the brain doesn't have enough information, only your gut can tell you what to do," the intelligence chief said. "Fortunately, since some depraved sons of bitches blew up my wife and my legs, my gut has been able to digest some pretty sick thoughts."

  Hood suddenly felt energized. He and his team would figure this out. They would figure out everything that came along. Every deviant variation, every monster. They had to. It was necessity but also something more.

  It was stubborn, blessed American pride.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Darwin, Australia Friday, 12:47 P.M.

  "Madam, we are not going to inject the patient with anything!"

  The speaker was a man in a white tunic. Probably the attending physician. He was standing in a tight circle with Ellsworth, Loh, and Jelbart. Ellsworth was the one who had motioned Coffey over. The man's strident voice was the first thing Lowell Coffey heard as he approached the closed door.

  "Doctor," said Loh, "we have a situation that needs to be resolved as swiftly as possible—"

  "And I have a patient who needs rest," he interrupted.

  "You have one patient now," she said. "How will you feel when this ward, including the hallways, is lined with beds?"

  The doctor looked at Ellsworth. "Is she right about that? Is it possible?"

  "Such a scenario does not appear imminent," Ellsworth replied crossly. He was looking at Loh.

  "There is radioactive material abroad," Loh persisted. "We have to know whether this man was transporting it, receiving it, or merely stumbled upon it. We have to find out if there is radioactive material still at sea, poisoning the fish that may feed some of your patients. Or poisoning some of your future patients. Doctor, we need to know what happened."

  "If I do as you ask, you may kill him," the doctor said, shaking his head. "Then you will never get your answer. And there is no guarantee that he will say much, or even anything, if we wake him."

  "That is a risk worth taking," she replied.

  "Easy for you to say," the doctor said.

  "Before we even consider whether to take this rather extreme step, let's find out if we're free to do so," Ellsworth said. He turned to Coffey. Ellsworth was visibly upset. Coffey could not decide which was worse for the Australian official: the responsibility of having to make a controversial decision, or the fear of what they might discover. "Lowell, this is your bailiwick. What do you say, keeping in mind that we are not entirely certain of our guest's nationality? Have we the right to do anything to him?"

  "Apart from administering medical care," the doctor added.

  Coffey glanced at the physician's name tag. "Dr. Lansing, if this man is a Christian Scientist or a Buddhist, even that could be considered a violation of his rights."

  "You've got bronze for brains!" the doctor exclaimed. "The patient was shot twice and had third-degree burns! He would have bled to death if we didn't patch him up!"

  "That may be," Coffey said. "However, the International Resolution on Oceans and the Law of the Sea says that absent a victim's ability to choose, the dispensation of care is a decision to be made by his family or by the ranking representative of his nation, in that order."

  "And if we don't have those?" Jelbart asked.

  "In that case, the host nation calls the shots, isn't that true?" Ellsworth said.

  Coffey nodded.

  "That would be us," Ellsworth said.

  "Correct," Coffey said. "But the host nation is also liable for citation in any civil-rights violations that may arise from the execution of that decision. And the host nation is required to exercise what is called 'humanitarian caution' in administering curative drugs or techniques."

  "Which means we don't give him norepinephrine cocktails to try to wake him," Dr. Lansing said with finality.

  "Not necessarily," Coffey said. "If this man is suspected of what is classified as a 'high crime' involving the international transport of drugs or other contraband, the questioning of him by responsible authorities is permitted."

  "Go question him!" Dr. Lansing said. "It appears I can't stop that. Just don't ask me to wake him!"

  "I cannot believe you are debating this when there may be radioactive waste spilling into the sea," Officer Loh said.

&n
bsp; "And I can't believe your nation canes people nearly to death for spray-painting graffiti, but there we have it," Dr. Lansing charged.

  "Doctor, the IROLS is rather specific on the question of interrogation," Coffey said. "It doesn't say 'ask,' it says 'question.' The regulations presume that the individual is awake."

  "If he is not?" Dr. Lansing asked.

  "Then frankly, the peremptory issue is one of summum bonum, the supreme good," Coffey said. "Will the public welfare benefit from taking reasonable security measures? The only guidelines that apply are whether there is just cause for the pursuit of the information and, if so, that the questioning be done in a humane manner, without coercion or threats."

  "I'd say a radioactive man is reason enough to infer the presence of dangerous nuclear material," Jelbart said.

  "And you do have the weight of at least one other nation behind your decision," Coffey said, nodding toward Loh.

  "Whoa. Just one?" Ellsworth asked him.

  "Officially, yes," Coffey said.

  "Will the United States back whatever decision we make, emphasis on the we?" Ellsworth pressed.

  "You've got sound legal grounds, and my office agrees that there are real security concerns," Coffey said. "That's as close to a yes as this attorney can give you right now."

  Dr. Lansing looked from Coffey to the others. He shook his head unhappily. "Attempting to wake this man may kill him. You understand that?"

  "We do," Loh said.

  "I'm absolutely opposed to it," Lansing said. "I want that known."

  "Noted," Ellsworth said.

  "I also want to tell you, not as a doctor but as an interested observer, that the one man to whom this matters most can't say a bloody word! I don't think that's right."

  "Why do you assume he would be opposed?" Coffey asked.

  "Good point!" Jelbart said. "Maybe he would want us to snatch whoever did this."

  Lansing looked from Ellsworth to Jelbart. "I have other patients. Which of you two is going to sign the consent form?"

  There was a long moment of silence. Jelbart turned to Ellsworth. "Is this going to be a military or government matter?" the warrant officer asked.

  That is a good question, Coffey thought. If this were classified as a military issue, the armed forces would have a legal leg up to launch a military response. The transport of nuclear material would automatically be classified as a security threat and not simply illegal traffic. If Ellsworth signed, Canberra would be obligated though not bound to pursue a diplomatic resolution.

  Coffey was not surprised when Jelbart answered his own question a moment later.

  "I'll sign the form," the warrant officer said. "Let's see what our guest can tell us."

  Dr. Lansing summoned a nurse. He turned Jelbart over to her while he went to the medical supply closet on the opposite side of the corridor. Officer Loh went silently into the hospital room.

  "Thank you, Lowell," Ellsworth said.

  "You're welcome, Brian," Coffey replied.

  The government official looked pale. He went to the water cooler on the opposite wall.

  "Would you like some?" Ellsworth asked as he filled a cup.

  "No, thanks," Coffey said.

  Ellsworth drained the cup and refilled it. He drained that, too, then crumpled the paper cone and tossed it in the trash.

  "Is there anything you haven't told me?" Coffey pressed.

  Ellsworth shook his head.

  "Is there anything else I can do?" Coffey asked.

  "Yes. Would you mind sticking around?" Ellsworth asked. "I know you have that convention in Sydney. But we really could use a third-party voice."

  "What would you have done if I had gone against you?" Coffey asked.

  "I didn't think you would have," Ellsworth replied, sounding somewhat defensive. "I feel that we have the jurisdiction to do this."

  "You didn't answer me. What would you have done?" Coffey asked.

  "We would have done exactly what we are doing," Ellsworth admitted. "We don't have a choice. This is a scary business, Lowell. It has to be dealt with aggressively." He looked at Coffey and smiled slightly. "But it's good to have you on our side."

  Coffey smiled. It was strange to hear Ellsworth talk about dealing with things aggressively. Just a minute ago he had frozen when it came to taking responsibility for drugging their guest. What the chief solicitor meant, of course, was that he must aggressively authorize others to take action and responsibility. It was a strange new world for people like Brian Ellsworth. Men who enjoyed the perks of power without the shoulder-bending weight of liability.

  In the meantime, though, Lowell Coffey found himself in agreement with Ellsworth on one point, at least.

  This was a scary business. And he had a feeling it would get a lot more terrifying before it was through.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Darwin, Australia Friday, 12:59 P.M.

  FNO Loh stood between Warrant Officer Jelbart and Dr. Lansing. The three wore rubber gloves and surgical masks. The Singaporean naval officer watched dispassionately as the physician injected a clear solution into the patient's intravenous needle. He had already turned off a valve to the drip in the patient's thin but sinewy left arm. Brian Ellsworth and Lowell Coffey stood behind the lead-lined screen near the doorway.

  The balding physician shook his head. "This poor chap is going to get a double dose of wake up," Lansing said.

  "How so?" Jelbart asked.

  "I've had to shut off the flow of painkillers. Morphine inhibits the uptake of norepinephrine," the doctor informed him. "In a perverse way, though, that may help to save him. I'm giving him a moderate dosage of levarterenol. I'm hoping that the combination of pain and stimulant will be enough to wake him without damaging him."

  "Why would he be damaged? What does this norepinephrine do?" Jelbart asked.

  "It is an energizer," Lansing told him. "This patient is suffering from hypotension."

  "Shock," Jelbart said.

  "That's right," Lansing replied. "The sudden jump from systemic underactivity to overactivity could easily drive him to cardiac arrest."

  "I see," Jelbart said. "What about the radioactivity? How has that affected him?"

  "It's too early to say," the doctor replied. "There would not be many symptoms this early, and we still don't know what the original exposure levels were."

  "Then how can you treat him?" Jelbart asked.

  "He's still alive," the doctor said dryly. "So we can infer that the dose was not lethal."

  "True," Jelbart said.

  "There are standard responses, regardless of the exposure," Lansing went on. "I've given him Melbrosin pollen, a natural radiation-sickness therapy. We can treat the results, the nausea and weakness. But this boosts the capability of the bone marrow to produce red and white blood cells. It won't affect the pharmacological treatments he's receiving for his wounds. If there is good news in any of this, it is that the burns appear to have been caused in the explosion, not as a result of the radiation."

  "How can you tell?" Jelbart asked.

  "The body responds differently," the doctor replied. "You see a more extensive form of blistering with radioactive burns."

  "What about the levels of radiation the patient himself is generating?" Jelbart asked.

  "They are extremely low," Lansing assured him. "We won't be contaminated in any way if we stay for less than a half hour or so. And we will be here for far less than that, I assure you. That lead screen is primarily for the nurses who walk by all day."

  The man in the bed began to moan as the drugs entered his system. FNO Loh leaned toward him.

  "Don't bother talking to him yet," Lansing cautioned. "He won't hear you. This is only the pain talking. You'll know he's conscious when you see his eyes begin to move under the lids."

  Loh stood up again. She tugged on the hem of her jacket and absently ran a hand down the front.

  The room was warm, and there was the faint odor of antiseptic. It smelled sanitary rat
her than fresh. To FNO Loh, dirty mop water on the deck of a patrol ship smelled fresh. Salty sea air, rich with fuel from the engine room, smelled fresh. This smell was void of life, of character.

  The young woman looked at the patient. He was starting to breathe more rapidly. She felt a pinch of sadness. It took suffering and horror to put him in what was probably the cleanest bed he had ever been in. Whatever his nationality, there were thousands of other young Asian men and women just like him. Maybe he was running from something. Maybe he did not want to be like his father. Perhaps he was running to something. Perhaps he had seen European or American movies or television shows and wanted to live like that.

  The officer felt compassion for him, but she also felt contempt. It was not a crime to want to escape from terrible oppression and poverty. To desire money and freedom. Yet there were other ways to earn money. Legal, honorable ways. Service in the military was one. Working on a farm was another. Apprenticeship in a trade was yet another. People like him were devious rather than smart, indignant rather than industrious, violent rather than strong. They deserved the disaster they ultimately brought on themselves.

  The patient's eyes opened slightly. They crinkled with discomfort. His dry lips parted and moved wordlessly. He began to shift about, then started thrashing weakly as he moaned. Loh leaned close to his ear. She lightly touched his unbandaged cheek and forehead.

  "Don't move," Loh said softly in Malay. She repeated it in Chinese and then in English.

  "Who—?" he said in Malay.

  "You are safe," she said. "I am Monica. You are in a medical facility. Where are you from?"

  The patient writhed and opened his mouth in silent pain.

  "Where are you from?" Loh repeated.

  "Singapore," he said.

  "What is your name?" she asked.

  "Name," he said drowsily. "Lee."

  "Lee what?" she pressed.

  "Tong," he replied.