Sea of Fire o-10 Read online

  "Lee Tong, what were you doing at sea?" she asked.

  "It hurts," the patient said. He closed his eyes. Tears fell from the sides. "My skin, my feet… on fire."

  "We will make the pain stop when you answer my questions," Loh said. She was glad the doctor could not understand her. He would only waste time with misguided pity. "What were you doing at sea?"

  "They fired at us," he said.

  "Who did?" Loh asked.

  "They saw in the dark," he went on.

  "The boat you were attacking?" she asked.

  "Yes," he replied. "They hit… plastique."

  "Your plastique?" she asked. "You had plastic explosives on board?"

  He nodded.

  "Lee Tong, were you trying to take something from the other vessel?" Loh asked.

  He began to pant.

  "Did you attack another vessel?" Loh demanded.

  "It hurts… help me!"

  "Did you attack another vessel?" she shouted.

  "Yes—"

  Dr. Lansing was checking the heart monitor to the right of the bed. "Ms. Loh, his blood pressure is rising, two ten over sixty. His heart rate is two twenty."

  "Meaning what?" Jelbart asked.

  "He's approaching ventricular tachycardia," the doctor said. "That can cause hemodynamic compromise — clots, air bubbles, death."

  "You're saying you haven't got much time," Jelbart said.

  "I'm saying he hasn't got much time," the doctor replied. "It's time to stop this, Ms. Loh."

  Loh refused to move. "Lee Tong, what did you want from the vessel?" she demanded.

  He did not answer. He simply moaned.

  "Did you want to hijack it? Did you want to steal something?" the naval officer asked.

  "Money," he replied.

  "You just wanted money?" she asked.

  "Jewelry," he said. "Goods."

  "What kind of goods?" she pressed.

  "Electronic," he replied.

  "Nothing dangerous?" she asked. "No nuclear waste?"

  He shook his head weakly.

  They were just pirates, then, she told herself. Pirates who picked the wrong vessel to try to board.

  Lee Tong began to cry. He struggled against the straps that held him to the bed. A nurse came over to help restrain him.

  "Officer Loh, this has got to stop," Dr. Lansing said. "Nurse, he needs a beta-blocker to stabilize. Push more propranolol IV. The rest of you — out."

  Loh ignored the physician. "Lee Tong, were you in the Celebes Sea when this happened?"

  "Yes," he replied.

  "Can you describe the vessel you attacked?" she asked.

  "Too dark," he said. He began to shiver and become more active. His eyes opened suddenly. He forced out a raw, hoarse, inarticulate scream.

  "That's enough!" the physician said.

  Dr. Lansing moved in front of the woman. He turned the morphine drip on again. Almost at once the patient began to calm.

  Loh maneuvered around the doctor. "Can you describe the boat?" she asked. "Did it sink?"

  "Did not sink," the man said as he drifted off. "Explosion… kept going…"

  Lee Tong relaxed and sank back into the bed.

  "Why did you do that?" Loh asked the doctor.

  "Because his heart rate was approaching two hundred and thirty-five beats a minute," the doctor said. "In his weakened condition, we could lose him. Now step aside, Ms. Loh. Let me do my job."

  The naval officer moved back. As the physician moved in with his nurse, Jelbart took FNO Loh by the arm. He walked her around the lead screen and into the corridor. The other men gathered around her.

  "What did he tell you?" Ellsworth asked.

  Loh looked at the others. She took a short breath. "His name is Lee Tong, and he is Singaporean. He was at sea with other pirates, and they attempted to rob a vessel at night. They only wanted those goods they could spend or fence. That is typical of the breed. Judging from the radioactivity, it appears they happened upon a vessel that was carrying nuclear waste."

  "What kind of ship?" Jelbart asked.

  "I don't know," she said. "But these people do not routinely attack the kind of vessels that would transport nuclear materials."

  "Legal nuclear materials," Coffey pointed out.

  "That is correct," she said. "The pirates obviously tried to stop the ship and were repulsed by weapons fire, probably by a team with night-vision capability. Lee Tong said they were cut down in the dark."

  "By professionals," Jelbart said.

  "It appears so," Loh agreed. "In the course of that exchange, the pirates' own plastique was detonated. It must have punched a hole in the target vessel and sprayed the sampan with radiation. He said that the ship is still afloat. Perhaps it was crippled in the explosion and is at anchor not far from where it was attacked. I'm going to search for it."

  "Before you leave," Coffey said to Loh, "I am obligated to point something out."

  "Yes?" she said.

  "Whatever the patient told you cannot be used in fashioning a legal case against him," Coffey told her. "Mr. Tong did not have an attorney present, and he was under the influence of medication."

  "He is also guilty of piracy," Loh replied flatly.

  "Perhaps," Coffey admitted. "And if you are inclined to prove that, you will have to do it some other way."

  The woman's aides were standing at the far end of the corridor. Unschooled and very young, they both knew virtue from criminal behavior better than these older, highly educated men beside her. Knowledge and liberality had crowded common sense from their brains.

  "Gentlemen, I am returning to my patrol ship," she said. "It is probably not a coincidence that this event occurred where it did."

  "What do you mean?" Ellsworth asked.

  "You're thinking about the 130-5 site, aren't you Officer Loh?" Jelbart asked.

  "I am," Loh replied. "I would like to go there and look for evidence of a conflict or perhaps the target vessel itself."

  "Excuse me, but what's the 130-5 site?" Coffey asked.

  "It's the point of intersection at one hundred and thirty degrees longitude, five degrees latitude," Jelbart replied. "That's where Japan and China are permitted to dump their nuclear waste."

  "But Officer Loh just said these pirates wouldn't have attacked a vessel of that sort," Ellsworth said.

  "They would not have," the Singaporean agreed. "What I'm afraid of is something else."

  "What?" Ellsworth asked.

  "That they attacked a vessel that may have just done business with one of those vessels," Loh replied.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Washington, D.C. Thursday, 11:55 P.M.

  Paul Hood was about to leave when the phone beeped. It had been nearly five hours since he turned over the running of Op-Center to the evening shift. That was the only time he got to catch up on E-mails, intelligence briefings, and personal matters.

  He snatched it up and sat on the edge of the desk.

  "Evening, Paul," Coffey said.

  "Good afternoon," Hood replied. "So? Did your patient wake up?"

  Coffey told him he had. Before the attorney briefed him, Hood conferenced in Mike Rodgers and Bob Herbert. Both men were at home. Rodgers was up watching old action movies, as usual. Usually John Wayne or Charlton Heston. Herbert was getting ready to turn in.

  Nothing Coffey said surprised Hood.

  "Do you have any information about the bullets they pulled from the pirate or the wreckage?" Rodgers asked.

  "Yes, I wrote that down," Coffey said. "Jelbart had one of his men come over and take a look at them. He just received word that they were from a.380 double-action semiautomatic. The initial forensics tests said that the bullets were remanufactured with a tungsten-polymer coating—"

  "Which means that they're doubly difficult to trace," Rodgers said.

  "How so?" Hood asked.

  "Remanufactured, meaning that the shell and casing came from different places," Rodgers said, "and designed so as not
to retain evidence of the rifling from the barrel that shot them."

  "Bullets without fingerprints," Herbert said.

  "More or less," Rodgers replied.

  "Would it take considerable financial resources or a special laboratory to create ammunition like that?" Hood asked.

  "Not necessarily," Rodgers replied. "Depends on what scale they're making these things. A few dozen, even a few hundred could be done in a shack with easily obtainable gear."

  "So that's pretty much a dead end," Hood said.

  "There is one thing that we need to talk about," Coffey said. "Brian Ellsworth, the chief solicitor for the Australian Maritime Intelligence Centre. He is very keen to have the United States as a part of this investigation."

  "Officially, you mean," Rodgers said.

  "That's what I mean," Coffey said. "I'm here as an independent adviser, not as a representative of Op-Center or the United States."

  "What is Mr. Ellsworth looking for?" Hood asked.

  "A formal commitment that we are a part of this investigation," Coffey told the others.

  "Why should that matter?" Herbert asked. "There isn't a convenience the Australians need or a challenge that scares them."

  "They could certainly do this by themselves," Coffey agreed. "At the same time—"

  "They would prefer not to go it alone," Hood interrupted. "Especially if they need to put pressure on Singapore for access to intelligence or background information on this pirate."

  "On Singapore, Malaysia, China, anyone who could be involved in this," Coffey replied.

  "Frankly, I don't think the pirate is going to matter much anymore," Herbert said. "He and his guys were just unlucky."

  "Possibly," Hood agreed. "I'm curious what they'll do if they discover that any Australians are involved in this."

  "I'm sure that's another reason Ellsworth wants us involved," Coffey said. "If there is an Australian component to this, we can help pressure anyone in Canberra who might be in denial. That's one thing they don't do very well, Bob. Self-examination. There's a very strong blue-wall component in their thinking. It's them against the Rim, fighting for European values in an Asian world. They don't like attacking their own."

  "Is anyone going out to the site of the attack?" Rodgers asked.

  "Loh and Jelbart are both going on separate vessels," Coffey said. "I'll be joining the Australians."

  "Lowell, if these pirates had attacked a vessel involved in the legitimate transport of nuclear material, there would be a record of the transit. Isn't that correct?" Hood asked.

  "Yes," Coffey said. "Also a report would have to have been filed about the attack. The International Nuclear Regulatory Commission demands that an accident or attack involving any nuclear vessel, military or civilian, must be reported to both the home and destination port. That hasn't happened."

  "How do you know?" Rodgers asked.

  "Because the INRC must put out a bulletin immediately, warning of potential dangers to shipping or possible radioactive contamination," Herbert said. "The Australian Department of Defence, the Department of National Emergency Services, and the Communicable Disease and Public Health Center are among those institutions that would be notified."

  "And have not been," Hood said.

  "Right," Coffey said.

  "Are the public health people down there taking any special precautions?" Hood asked.

  "They're going to increase coastline patrols off the major cities," Herbert said. "They'll be looking for radioactivity, of course, as well as any ships that look as though they've been damaged."

  "Bob, is there anything the National Reconnaissance Office can do to help look for the mystery ship?" Hood asked.

  The National Reconnaissance Office was the highly secretive government agency that controlled and processed satellite imagery as well as other electronic surveillance capabilities.

  "We're talking about a very large area with a great deal of shipping," Herbert said. "We don't know which way the other ship may have gone or exactly where the sampan was. I'd like to try to narrow the search area before we ask the NRO to tie up resources."

  "Isn't this what those resources are for?" Coffey asked.

  "Actually, no," Herbert replied. "Those satellites are for watching Chinese naval maneuvers, missile tests, and picking out terrorist activity in the hills and jungles of Indonesia. All of that affects American military and foreign policy on a daily basis."

  "I see," Coffey said.

  "You don't sound happy, Lowell," Hood suggested.

  "Well, I was hoping to give the Australians something," Coffey said.

  "Does it have to be practical or can it be political?" Herbert asked.

  "I suppose both is out of the question?" Coffey said.

  "Only since the days of Julius Caesar," Herbert said. "Will Mr. Ellsworth accept a gesture of solidarity?"

  "Most likely," Coffey said. "What did you have in mind?"

  "Going over there myself," Herbert said. "It would be awkward sending Mike into a situation that is already bristling with soldiers."

  "And I'm not sure the Pentagon would approve," Rodgers added.

  Hood had to agree with that. Though Rodgers was second-in-command at Op-Center, he was still a soldier. The Australian press might assume that the unscheduled arrival of a military adviser was a prelude to a regional military buildup. Extreme ideas tended to grow in the fertile ground of unprecedented situations. They could not afford that kind of attention, not just from foreign governments but from the White House. Op-Center's needs might conflict with the administrations short- and long-term plans in the region.

  "Mike, what about some of your special ops people?" Hood asked.

  "If I sent Maria off on another mission now, Darrell would start a war of his own," Rodgers said.

  Darrell McCaskey was Op-Center's liaison with the FBI and various international law enforcement groups. He had recently married former Spanish Interpol agent Maria Corneja. Shortly thereafter, Rodgers offered her a spot on his new intelligence-gathering unit named Op-Center Reconnaissance, Intelligence On-Site. ORION had been assembled to put spies on the ground, where the crises were happening, instead of relying on electronic surveillance. Maria accepted the assignment and was immediately sent to Africa along with her new teammates David Battat and Aideen Marley. McCaskey had not been happy about that.

  "The other operatives are out of town, tying up personal and professional matters before moving down here," Rodgers said, "and I haven't had any face time with my Asian intelligence man, Yuen Chow."

  "Where is he now?" Hood asked.

  "At home in Hong Kong," Rodgers said. "He'll be here next week. We're still running security on him. He spent seven years working in the movie business in Shanghai. It's tough finding out which of these boys may have had ties with the Guoanbu in Beijing or the Triads in Hong Kong."

  "Or both," Herbert said. "Frankly, I'd want some of that take-no-prisoners muscle in my corner."

  "So would I," Rodgers said. "But I would hate having to hire a shadow to make sure my spies weren't double-dealing."

  The Guoanbu was short for the Guojia Anquan Bu, the Chinese Ministry of State Security. They were a ruthless intelligence service with irrevocable ties to Chinese nationals around the world. The Guoanbu thought nothing about imprisoning people at home to gain the cooperation of family members abroad. The Triads were the equally amoral gangsters who had organized in Hong Kong over a century before. They took their name from a three-sided good luck symbol that stood for heaven, earth, and man.

  "So that leaves us with me," Herbert said. "I can go to Darwin and lend a hand collecting and crunching intel."

  "Lowell?" Hood asked.

  "It sounds like a good idea to me," Coffey said.

  "Run it past Ellsworth," Hood suggested. "In the meantime, Bob, why don't you get ready—"

  "I've been making the reservations on-line as we speak," Herbert told him. "Air New Zealand to Darwin. I'll be there Saturday morning."
r />   "By way of how many cities?" Rodgers asked.

  "Five," Herbert replied. "D.C. to New York to Los Angeles to Sydney to Darwin."

  "Screw that. I'll call over to the travel office at the Pentagon," Rodgers told him. "I'm sure we can hitch you a ride and get you there with less hassle."

  "What, on one of those butt-cold, avalanche-loud, flying metal rib cages that you guys call airplanes?" Herbert asked.

  "Actually, I was going to requisition Air Force One," Rodgers said. "But I don't want you going soft."

  "Gentlemen, I'm going home," Hood told them.

  "And I've got to go hitch a ride with Jelbart as soon as he's finished with Ellsworth and Officer Loh," Coffey said.

  "What are they talking about?" Hood asked.

  "Whether we're going to have two investigations or a coordinated operation when we get out to sea," Coffey replied.

  "Jeez," Herbert sighed. "This is how the world will be lost. There will be a skirmish that bloodies someone's nose followed by a world war that has nothing to do with that. We'll kill each other debating how to find some son of a bitch instead of just laying waste to him and his kind."

  "You said it before," Hood reminded him. "It's either practical or political."

  "Well, let's see if we can make it both," Herbert said.

  "How?" Hood asked.

  "By understanding," Herbert replied.

  "That's it?" Hood asked, amused.

  "Yes," Herbert said. "Understanding that the only way to get rid of me is by doing this thing right."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Cairns, Australia Friday, 7:00 P.M.

  The tranquillity of the cove was just what Peter Kannaday needed. Like any long-time sailor, his emotional state was strongly affected by the sea.

  The sun was going down as the Hosannah entered the mouth of the cove. The effect was like a candle on the sea. There was a long, rippling, waxy-yellow streak on the water. It ended in a burning yellow wick on the horizon. Kannaday watched it from the stern as they entered the cove. Directly above him the blue-green skies were already spotted with early stars.

  To all other sides of him was Darling Cove. The inlet was located in the northern reaches of the Great Barrier Reef. Over 2,000 kilometers in length and up to 125 meters thick, the reef is separated from the mainland by a shallow lagoon. The massive structure was born at the end of the Ice Age when oceanic polyps began to thrive in the region. The polyps created protective multicolored shells that survived when the animals themselves perished. Coral built upon coral for over 10,000 years, providing a home for each new generation of tentacled creature. It also became a haven for countless species of fish, giant turtles, humpback whales, manta rays, dolphins, and dugongs — marine cousins to the elephant.