The Weapon (15 page)

“They were never in earnest about selling?”

“Not to us. They make the kind of deal you were suggesting, which by the way I don't have any idea where you got the blessing to offer Dvorov that—” He waited but Dan didn't say, so he went on, “—they agree to that, and bing, they lose downstream sales from every rogue regime that fronts a seacoast.”

“They'd never have passed that up,” Byrne said. “They'd have agreed to Dan's deal, taken the money, then sold it to the others under the table. Or set up a subsidiary company, a cut-out.”

“Oh, not only that,” the bald man said. “Now they have this big spy scandal, they can double their price. Now it's super-secret technology even the U.S. wants.”

Dan rubbed his face, reveling in the feeling of clean skin, but suddenly depressed. He'd been naive. Dangerous secrets had a way of bleeding through any barrier, like virus particles passing through a filter. The money passed it, going the other way.

“Anyway, Jack said you needed a secure line?” The Agency guy powered down the computer and took the jacket off the door. He pushed the red Tri-Tac phone toward Dan. “Going over to Visas. You can close the door. Jack?”

“I'll go with you.”

Dan thanked him again for the use of the apartment. When they were gone he punched in his access code, then numbers from memory, computing the time in his head: it'd
be about 07 in Virginia Beach. His CO answered on the first ring. “TAG, Captain Mullaly.”

“Good morning, sir. Commander Lenson. Can we initiate and go secure?”

Hiss.
Beep.
When they were scrambled Mullaly said, “Dan. I got a message saying you were out of Russia?”

Beep.
“Yessir, I'm at the embassy in Warsaw.”

He filled Mullaly in on what had gone wrong. “There's a possibility Komponent was playing us from the start. So you might want to question whoever gave you the word that they were willing to sell. To us, I mean. Bottom line, sir, Plan A's not going to work. With all the outrage they're putting out, the Russians aren't going to lease us anything with supercavitating technology. They're treating this like a major spy case. The intel resident says they've expelled two of our staff in Moscow.”

“What about unexpended funds?”

He frowned, not following. “Unexpended funds, sir?”

“The money Henrickson put in for. The thirty thousand.”

“Oh. Um, Captain, I'm afraid all those funds were . . . expended.”

Silence. Then Mullaly said, sounding exasperated, “Well, I'm glad you're both okay, but Monty told me you weren't going to spend that. That it was for a bona fide.”

“Well, sir, if we hadn't used it—say, maybe we could charge it off to Navy Intel. Get reimbursed. Should I ask Captain Byrne how to do that?”

“Maybe. But if I take the hit, that gives me a chip the next time I need something from . . . I'm thinking out loud, sorry . . . let me think about that. But right now we're at the end of the quarter and that puts me over budget.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Well, you did what you thought you had to. You're probably right, we're not going to make any time with Dvorov. So we'd better cut our losses and bring you guys home. See if there's Space-A out of Warsaw, okay? If there isn't call Dawn and have her cut you four tickets back.”

“Four, sir? There's just Monty and me—”

“Got another call coming in. See me when you get back.”

“Aye, sir.” He hung up and sat gnawing his lip. “Shit,” he muttered.

A tap on the door, and Byrne put his head in. “Done?”

“I guess.”

Byrne came in holding two pastries. “Raspberry.” He put one in front of Dan and got himself fresh coffee from the maker. “Merle come back yet?”

“No.”

“Everything okay?”

“It'll work out. My CO's ticked about my spending all our walking around money. He's thinking about asking your guys for reimbursement. It's thirty grand.”

“Hell, he can have it out of my pay,” Byrne said. “I owe you, Dan. I could have been behind those charges for ten, fifteen years.” He added, “Though I wasn't too happy about it out in the middle of that river.”

“You'd have done it for me.”

“I'd certainly have tried.”

They sat together for a few seconds. Then Byrne cleared his throat. “In fact, thinking about it, seems to me you're in the wrong end of this business.”

“What end?”

“Yeah, the Navy always needs ship drivers. And I know, backbone of the Fleet, iron men in wooden ships, all that. But basically, any idiot can drive a ship. Left rudder, right rudder, all back full. Not a lot of nuance. Ever thought about the intel community?”

Dan decided not to respond to the blackshoe taunts. He said patiently, “I know you can put in for it. At least, when you're a jaygee, or a lieutenant.”

“The rules say that, but the nice thing about spookdom is, the rules are not always the rules. If you know what I mean.”

“I'm starting to guess.”

“That's the spirit. Now, I've followed your career, okay? You're technically savvy. I mean, the Tomahawk program, you found out why they were crashing. You work well in mixed teams. Like the black ops thing in Desert Storm, going
into Iraq. Like Korea—yeah, I heard what you did in the Strait. You're better known than you think.

“We could do better for you than the surface line community is doing. We'd send you to Defense Intelligence College, get you your master's in intelligence policy. Then put you in operations. We lost a lot of the old guard when the Wall came down. People felt like, well, the Soviets are gone, I can take early retirement. And we downramped our accession pipeline then, too.

“Now the mission's global again, and we're stretched thin. The current DNI'd be real interested in somebody like you. So interested—” Byrne gave it a beat, “—I'd guarantee you'd make captain on your first board.”

Dan blinked. Captain was more senior than he'd ever expected to get, even as a dreamy-eyed mid fresh out of Annapolis. He made himself take a minute. Because it was a tempting offer.

“Jack, I appreciate it, but I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a pookah spook. I know the job you guys have to do. And that you only get noticed when something goes completely to shit. But, call me an idiot, but I'm still hoping for another command.”

“Another destroyer? You already had one, Dan.”

“Well, a deep draft next, I guess. A cruiser, or one of the new Burke class. I miss going to sea, Jack.”

“We go to sea. Half our billets are large-decks, task forces, strike groups. We play in mission planning and post-strike analysis. You'd be on a carrier . . . but you'd be at sea.”

Dan regarded him, knowing the one thing Byrne hadn't mentioned, that he couldn't without prejudicing his argument. The line Navy guarded no privilege more jealously than ship command. Over the years, rather than yield it to such Johnny-come-latelies as engineers and oceanographers, it had created separate promotion stovepipes for medical officers, legal officers, meteorologists, intelligence officers. They called these “the restricted line.” Restricted line types competed among themselves for promotion, and led their own organizations. But they didn't command.

“So you're thinking . . . let me guess. That the difference would be that you wouldn't command.”

“You took the words, Jack.”

“Let's get realistic. Are they ever going to trust you with a ship again? After what happened to
Horn?
”

He tensed in his chair. “She's still afloat. I brought her back.”

“She
glows in the dark,
Dan. She'll stay behind that wire at the Navy Yard for twenty years.”

“I stopped the—”

“I know, you're not supposed to talk about it. But you and I know they haven't forgiven you for that, or for the Congressional, or for second-guessing them on a few other occasions. Including what happened at the White House. You know Niles is being talked about for CNO. It was Nick Niles who put you out to pasture at TAG, right? You think he's going to give you another shot?”

“He'll do what's right. I trust the guy.”

It was less than the truth. Niles had said more than once that another command was the last thing he had in mind for Dan. If Niles became Chief of Naval Operations, he could forget ever going to sea again.

He took a slow breath, quieting his yammering mind. What you couldn't change, he'd tried to learn to accept. He'd seen too many men let their ambitions warp their actions. Each time it had sickened him more. “Jack, if the Navy offers me another command, I'll take it. If they don't, I'll do what they give me to do. I'd just rather not wall off the possibility, okay? I appreciate the offer. I know it's well meant, and you can do everything you say. But no thanks.”

 

Byrne took it well; he probably had expected the refusal. And maybe Dan was just being blind turning down the opportunity. He'd stick till the O-6 board met. If he didn't make captain then, it'd be time to think about what to do with the rest of his life.

He had lunch in the compound cafeteria with the bald man and Byrne. They thought it'd be just as well if none of
the recent escapees went traipsing around town. He borrowed the phone again to call Blair at Manpower and Personnel. Then the bald man and Bone escorted them across the street back to the apartment. The dog trotted quietly at their side, glancing alertly at the passing cars, the passing pedestrians. Dan watched the windows of the Russian embassy, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. No one seemed to know they were right next door. Still, he'd be glad when they were on their way home.

Letting himself in, he heard voices in the kitchen, the clink of glass on glass. Faces turned toward him. Two were new since this morning. One he knew, but hadn't expected here. The unfamiliar one was huge, well-built, solidly muscled. The new arrivals were in casual clothes, slacks and jackets over black muscle tees.

“Obie,” he said, surprised. “What the hell are you doing here?”

 

He hadn't seen Teddy Oberg since shotgun training at the GrayWolf compound. The Team Charlie member came to his feet with a lazy respectfulness that was almost arrogance. “Sumo, this here's my team leader at TAG, Commander Dan Lenson. A blackshoe, but he's seen action. Iraq. Srebrenica. A diver, too—right?”

“Just a sport diver, Teddy. Just scuba.”

“Monty told us how you got the guy out, hitting the river, paying off a rowing team to do the snatch. Pretty slick. Buddy here I'd like you to meet: Jeff Kaulukukui. Young, dumb, and full of come. Sumo Man's from Team Two, been in Bosnia hunting PIFWCS.”

“Hunting what?”

“Persons indicted for war crimes,” Kaulukukui said. His smooth features looked Polynesian, or more probably, Dan guessed, Hawaiian. His arms were as thick as Dan's thighs, but despite that he didn't look threatening.

“I hope Ratko Mladic's on that list.”

“He is. You run into him?”

“I ran into him once,” Dan said. “Yeah.”

“You're lucky to be alive.”

“I know. Did you get him?”

“Not yet,” the big guy said, and his smile dimmed. “He travels with a big PSD, but it's low-key, hard to pick up. I was in a bar with him in Belgrade and I couldn't do a thing but try not to get made myself. So, you know Teddy Bear, huh? Know there's a restraining order out against him? Part of him, anyway.”

Dan played along. “Which part?”

“His hand. For self-abuse.”

As an answer, Oberg got Kaulukukui in a headlock. The two of them nearly demolished a couple of chairs. They reminded him of two lions playing. It got pretty realistic at the end, finishing with Oberg lashed into one of the now-shaky chairs with his hands zip-tied behind him.

The mention of teams, of course, meant Kaulukukui was a SEAL. The East Coast even-numbered teams, two, four, eight, and ten, were based out of the fenced compound down the road from TAG. He was in his late twenties, probably a second-class or first-class petty officer. But rank structure didn't work in the SEALs the way it did elsewhere, Dan knew that. “Well, good to meet you, uh, Sumo. See you found the Polish beer.”

“No, brought that with us.” Kaulukukui left the “sir” off, but Dan didn't get the feel it was usually there.

“So, what are you doing here, Teddy? I thought you were back at Little Creek.”

Oberg sat hunched forward, arms still behind him. His face was going purple, but he wasn't making any progress on the zip ties. The creased seams on his face turned darker than the rest, suffused with blood. It occurred to Dan, not for the first time, that he didn't know that much about Oberg. The man joked, but he didn't reveal. “We staged out of there when you dropped out of sight.”

“Oh, yeah? Captain Mullaly didn't—oh, wait a minute, he did.
Four
tickets. Now I get it.”

Oberg explained that when they got the message Dan and Monty were missing, after having met with someone
presumed to be under FSB control, he'd organized a reaction team. “Jeff was in off deployment. He didn't have anything to do other than get drunk and hop anything that moved at Hot Tuna, so we pulled some gear together and flew to Helsinki. I figured we'd get word where you were, and see what we could do. Then we heard you were headed for Warsaw, and caught a commercial down here.”

“Pretty flexible scheduling,” Dan said. “TAG cut your orders that way?”

Oberg gave him a funny look. “We don't need no stinkin' orders, sir. Ticketing, orders—they're not the problem in the spec ops community they seem to be for the rest of the Navy. We just slap it on the Visa and sort it out afterwards.”

“Monty tell you about the Russki embassy?”

“Yeah. We're staying off the balcony.” Oberg looked at the window. He twisted, holding out his wrists to Kaulukukui. “Okay, take 'em off. Or you're really fucked, when I get out of 'em.”