He had no idea what he’d do next. The
Decatur
’s namesake, Stephen Decatur, had gone out with his spurs on, dying in a duel in 1820—a story Williams loved telling. But duels were no longer politically correct. Williams supposed he’d wind up going home to Dallas, burning his afternoons playing golf. Or maybe he’d start consulting with some defense contractor. Either way he’d secretly be hoping for a quick heart attack.
Was Williams bitter about what had happened? His commanding officers had put him in a damn-near-impossible position, then punished him for failing to find a way out of it. In return for a career of loyal service, he’d been ditched like a rusted-out propeller. Though he could see the other side, too. The navy had plenty of commanders with spotless records. It didn’t have to take a chance by promoting one with a blemish as big as his. And pissing off the Chinese wasn’t in anyone’s interest. Especially since America and China were both pretending that the festivities the previous summer had never happened.
In the meantime, Williams still ran the
Decatur
, and he wasn’t coasting into retirement. He’d always run a clean ship. Now he was pushing his officers and crew harder than ever. He knew his sailors weren’t happy, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t asking for anything beyond the navy’s own regulations. He simply wanted them followed, to the letter. And if regulations said that officers weren’t to eat until the captain arrived at meals, or that sailors were forbidden to keep pornography even in their own personal footlockers, well, rules were rules.
What are they gonna do, fire me?
So, yeah, he was bitter. He didn’t think anyone could blame him.
THE ORDERS CAME
near midnight local time, as they were about to cross the equator on a hot dry night in the central Atlantic, slightly closer to West Africa than Brazil. The
Decatur
was to move east and north, off the coast of Sierra Leone and Liberia, just outside the sea lanes that ran between Europe and West Africa.
There, Williams and his crew would watch for a freighter that had gone missing on a run from Hamburg to Lagos. Somebody thought this ship, the
Juno
, was carrying more than a couple tablespoons of capital-S, capital-N, capital-M Special Nuclear Material. The whole Atlantic Fleet was looking for it, as well as every satellite the NSA had.
As soon as the orders arrived, Williams lightened up some, took his foot off the crew’s collective neck. Didn’t take a head-shrinker to figure out why. For the first time since Shanghai, the
Decatur
had a mission. The navy still trusted him a little. And so Williams ordered the
Decatur
’s four massive gas turbines to full throttle and turned his ship east at twenty-five knots. By noon the next day, they reached their new position, the sun fierce overhead, the sea quiet, not even the hint of a breeze. Except during hurricane season, weather hardly existed in this part of the Atlantic. Fall and winter and spring were the same, an eternity of hot dry days.
Further orders weren’t long in coming. Twice in two days, Williams was ordered to check on ships that the NSA’s satellites deemed worthy of a closer look. Each time he’d put up the SH-60B Seahawk helicopter the
Decatur
carried, though each time he’d been sure they were wrong. In one case, the target looked too wide to him to be the
Juno
, and in the other too tall.
When the helo came back empty-handed the second time, Williams decided that he wasn’t going to wait to be told what to do next. The NSA might have the satellites, but it didn’t know squat about ships. He was going with his gut now, and his gut told him that the
Juno
was nowhere near West Africa. Why would it be? If it had followed the route on its original manifest, it would have reached Lagos weeks before. On the other hand, if it had made a drop off the American coast, it probably would have turned away, sailed southeast at full speed to get into the open Atlantic as quickly as possible. In that case, it would be west of him, and possibly south as well, depending on its speed. Williams decided to head southwest, back where he’d been when his orders arrived. He knew the risk he was taking, ignoring a direct order from the Atlantic Fleet command, and he didn’t care.
“You sure you want to do this,” the
Decatur
’s executive officer said.
“Until they take my ship from me, I’m running it as I see fit.”
OVERNIGHT THEY RAN
southwest at twenty-five knots into the open ocean. By morning, Norfolk was asking where they were. “Better fishing in deep waters,” Williams messaged back. Let them chew on that for a while.
He put the Seahawk in the air and ordered it to push south to the limits of its fuel tanks and to notify him of any ship that remotely resembled the
Juno.
Three hours later, it came back, dry and empty. He ordered it refueled and sent out again, this time to the southwest. The mission was a waste of fuel, a 10,000-to-1 shot. The helicopter faced the same problem as the satellites. It had to fly close to the waves so it could see the details of the boats below, but staying low limited its field of vision.
But somehow Williams wasn’t surprised when the call came in an hour later. Eighty nautical miles to the southwest of the
Decatur
, the SH-60’s pilot had spotted a freighter that matched the
Juno
’s basic design. “Wants to know if they should take a look,” Stan Umsle, the
Decatur
’s tactical information officer, said.
“Go for it,” Williams said.
Two minutes later, the radio buzzed again. Umsle listened. “You’re not going to believe this, sir. The boat, it’s headed southeast, 165 degrees, fourteen knots. And they’re certain it’s the
Juno.
”
“How do they know?”
“They say it’s got
Juno
painted on the side in big white letters.”
“Good enough for me.” Somehow Williams kept his tone steady, though he wanted to howl in joy. Finding this boat might not save his career, but at least he could retire now with his head up, as something more than the captain who’d nearly started a war between America and China. “Take us to thirty knots, heading two hundred,” he said to Umsle. “Now.”
Then he called Rear Admiral Josh Rogers, who was overseeing the western half of the search from Norfolk, with the good news. Rogers listened in silence, then said, “I don’t suppose I should ask why you were three hundred nautical miles from where you were told to be.”
“No, sir,” Williams said. “You shouldn’t.”
Williams half-expected Rogers to tell him to wait so the navy could bring in the SEALs. Instead, Rogers ordered him to make the interdiction as soon as possible. “Ask nicely first. But if they don’t stop, you are authorized to disable their engines.”
“I don’t mean to be a stickler, but under what authority, sir? This is open ocean and they’ve got as much right to be on it as we do. They’re not even headed for an American port.”
“If that ship is carrying nuclear material, it’s violating who knows how many United States laws and UN resolutions. Tell them whatever you want, but stop them. If they’re clean, we’ll offer a thousand apologies for wasting their precious time.”
“Yes, sir, Admiral. We’ll get it done.”
“Roger that.” Rogers hung up.
Williams looked at Umsle. “Lieutenant, get a tac team ready to board the
Juno.
I’m not sure what law or UN resolution or intergalactic ordinance we’re going to use as an excuse, but we’re going in.”
“Intergalactic ordinance, sir?”
“Just get a team together. Make sure they know what they’re looking for.” Williams went up to the
Decatur
’s bridge and sent his executive officer down to manage the combat information center. He wanted to see this ship for himself.
Intercepting the
Juno
, which was traveling in a straight line at a piddling eleven knots, was almost embarrassingly easy for the
Decatur.
Within two hours, the freighter was visible from the destroyer’s bridge, a speck on the ocean to the southwest. A half-hour after that, the two ships were less than five nautical miles apart, and the
Juno
was clearly outlined against the sea.
In another fifteen minutes, the
Decatur
and the freighter were sailing parallel. The destroyer towered over the
Juno
, twice as long and almost three times as high. Even if the freighter had been larger, the missile launchers and guns that sprouted from the deck of the
Decatur
left no doubt which vessel was in charge.
“We have radio contact?” Williams asked the bridge communications officer.
“Yes, sir.”
Williams grabbed his headset. “This is Captain Henry Williams of the United States Navy. To whom am I speaking?”
“Captain Alvar Haxhi.” Haxhi had a heavy Eastern European accept. No surprise. Lots of ship captains were from Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania.
“You are the commander of the
Juno
, registered in Monrovia, Liberia?”
“That is correct.”
“Captain Haxhi, by order of the United States Navy, you are commanded to stop so my men can board and search your vessel.”
“Under what law of the sea do you make this demand?” The captain sounded surprisingly unworried given the circumstances.
“We have reason to believe your vessel is carrying sensitive material that belongs to the United States government. If you don’t allow us to board, I’ve been authorized to use deadly force.”
A pause. “Then I suppose I have no choice.”
THE BOARDING WENT
smoothly enough. Over the radio, Williams asked Haxhi to come to the
Decatur
so he could be interviewed about the
Juno
’s movements.
“I will not leave my ship,” Haxhi said.
“Under any circumstances?”
“You and I both know this boarding is very much illegal, Captain. I allow it because I must. But I will not leave my men.”
Williams had to respect that attitude. “Then I’ll come to you.”
A half-hour later, Williams was sitting with Haxhi in the captain’s cabin on the
Juno
, an unadorned white-painted room ten feet square. The cabin stank of Eastern European cigarettes and was furnished with a metal desk, a full-sized wooden bed, and a dresser, all bolted to the floor. Two photographs of a pretty young woman were taped over his desk, Haxhi’s wife or girlfriend or maybe even his daughter, and a couple of Albanian novels lay on his bed. Otherwise, the cabin was devoid of any signs of personality, except for the putting green nailed to the floor.
“You like to golf?” Williams said.
“Of course, Captain. Do you?”
“I think it’s a big waste of time. Tell me where you’ve been.”
“The stupidest of trips,” Haxhi said. “We were on way to Nigeria. When we reached a hundred kilometers from Lagos, my manager called, said, Head west to Caracas.”
The story was implausible to the point of being insulting. “When was this?” Williams said evenly.
“Ten, eleven days. I can check.”
“Has that ever happened before?”
“One time.”
“And who is your manager?”
“Name is Serge.”
“Serge what?”
“I just call him Serge. But, sure, we have his name on the manifest.”
“What’s the company?”
“Called Socine Expo.”
“You have a phone number, address, e-mail?”
Haxhi gave him all three.
“How’d you end up here?”
“I told you, after Lagos, they tell us Venezuela. We go there, all the way across the Atlantic, and then when we’re two hundred kilometers from Caracas, they tell us, back. To Jo’burg this time. So we turn around again.”
“Not a very well-run company. You wasted a lot of diesel.”
“Bosses change their minds. Why they’re bosses.”
“And when we found you?”
“As I said, on way back from Caracas.”
“You short on food or fuel?”
“Have plenty of both.”
“Your crew must be sick of this.”
“My crew, they do what I tell them.”
That much Williams believed. “You have logs to support this story of yours?”
Haxhi nodded at his desk. “Of course. Maybe you tell me what you looking for? Maybe I can help.”
“You get to wait here until we’re done looking around. It may be a while. I’m going to put a sentry outside the door, so don’t be stupid.”
“Mr. American Captain. You must be kidding. Look at my ship and look at yours. Maybe I am stupid but crazy I am not.”
FOR THE NEXT SIX HOURS,
the
Decatur
’s crew combed the
Juno
with radiation detectors, looking for any hints that uranium or plutonium had been carried on the ship. But they found only the car parts that were listed on the manifest, a hull of crates packed with gear shafts, tires, brake drums, and shocks. The destroyer’s medic examined the sailors on the
Juno
for radiation sickness but found nothing unusual. Williams tried to talk to the sailors but got nowhere. To a man, they claimed they couldn’t speak English. He went back to Haxhi’s cabin, now clouded with smoke.
“Captain, may I get you anything?”
“My ship. Get it back to me.” Haxhi offered Williams the pack. “Cigarette?”
Williams shook his head.
“Have you found it yet, what you’re looking for?”
“No, and we’re not going anywhere until we do. And neither are you.”
“What about my delivery?” Haxhi asked the question with a straight face.
“Those poor South Africans, waiting for your precious car parts?” Williams almost laughed. “They’ll have to hang on a few more days. Let me tell you something, Captain. Pretty soon half the U.S. Navy’s going to be here. If we have to put this rustbucket in dry dock and cut holes in it from stem to stern, we will.”