The Trident Deception Page 16

  Taking a deep breath, he returned to Control and stopped by the nav display, reviewing the navigation hazards and water depth to the west. After verifying the last GPS satellite fix was properly entered, Gallagher turned to the Officer of the Deck.

  “Bring her around to course two-seven-zero. Increase speed to ahead flank.”

  6 DAYS REMAINING

  31

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Dark gray clouds were rolling in from the west as a black Lincoln Town Car turned left on E Street, passing between the White House on the right and the President’s Park South on the left. In the backseat of the sedan, Christine gazed through tinted windows at the Colorado blue spruce that dominated the Ellipse, as the park was commonly called. The forty-foot-tall spruce, transformed each winter into the National Christmas Tree, marked the end of the Pathway of Peace, a trail lined by fifty-six smaller trees, also decorated during the Christmas season, representing the fifty states, five American territories, and the District of Columbia.

  As the car slowed for a right-hand turn onto West Executive Avenue, returning Christine to the White House for her meeting with the president, her thoughts dwelt on the lunchtime discussion she and Captain Brackman had just concluded with the secretary of defense. The private meeting had not gone well. It wasn’t that she didn’t get along with Nick Williams. Compared with her relationship with Hardison, she and the SecDef were the best of friends. However, the news Williams had relayed concerning their submarine sonar systems was disconcerting. It was obvious that the plan to launch the Kentucky’s missiles was multifaceted and meticulously prepared.

  Brackman had remained at the Pentagon for additional discussions and would return shortly for their meeting with the president. As Christine wondered what additional issues required his attention, her car pulled to a stop under the West Wing’s North Portico and she stepped from the sedan, passing between two Marines in dress blues guarding the formal entrance to the West Wing. Christine stopped in her office for a half hour, reading e-mail and attempting to catch up on the more critical issues she’d been neglecting. After checking her watch, she headed down the hallway toward the Oval Office. She was exactly on time, and Hardison and Brackman were already seated across from the president. She took her seat between them.

  “What’s the status?” the president asked.

  Christine led off with Kentucky’s continuing failure to respond to the strike cancellation message, then delineated the crippling of their submarine fleet. An uneasy silence followed, magnified by the room’s bombproof windows, insulating them from the sound outside. The gray skies over D.C. had opened up, bringing the Rose Garden outside the Oval Office to life; the red, pink, and white flowers bobbed up and down as fat drops of rain splattered on their petals. But there was no sound in the room, not even from the rain pelting the south side of the Oval Office, the usual patter attenuated by the windows’ triple panes.

  Finally, the president responded. “Do you have any good news?”

  “The North Carolina is on its way,” Christine answered, explaining the submarine was the lone ship unaffected, “and she’ll intercept the center of the Kentucky’s area of uncertainty in thirty hours, just before the Kentucky reaches Sapphire. We don’t know if she’ll find the Kentucky, but the North Carolina is one of the new Virginia-class submarines, and that at least gives us a shot.”

  “How is the military hierarchy taking this?” the president asked, turning to Brackman.

  “They’re shaken, sir, but they’re responding appropriately. Orders have gone out and units are arriving on station.”

  “Who knows the target is the Kentucky?”

  “Aside from the Joint Chiefs and Admiral Tim Hale at Pacific Command, only Admiral Herrell at PAC Fleet and Admiral Stanbury at SUBPAC, along with his right-hand man, Captain Wilson. They were directed not to notify anyone else, but they informed the commanding officers of three 688 fast-attack submarines, hoping they could establish underwater communications with the Kentucky. It didn’t work. The rest of the fleet believes they’re hunting a Chinese copy of a Trident submarine.”

  “So from a military perspective,” the president replied, “we’ve contained this debacle.” He glanced at Hardison before returning his attention to Christine. “What about the civilian side?”

  “Only us, plus SecDef Williams and Dave Hendricks from the Command Center, know.”

  “Good. Keep it that way.”

  “Mr. President, if I may,” Hardison interjected. “I’ve run a background check on Hendricks, and he’s an active member of the opposite political party. I’m concerned where his loyalty lies and his ability to keep this issue confidential.”

  Christine’s head swiveled toward Hardison. “May I remind you that I also am a member of the other party? Do you question where my loyalty lies?”

  Hardison smiled before replying. The kind of smug, condescending smirk Christine hated. “I don’t question your loyalty,” he answered, “only your judgment.”

  Christine’s palm tingled with the urge to slap the smirk off his face. But then something about the chief of staff’s previous statement grabbed her attention. “What’s your point, Kevin? You’re concerned about Dave keeping this issue quiet—where are you headed with this?”

  Hardison didn’t reply immediately. He seemed to be considering his response carefully, his eyes shifting between the other three persons in the room. Finally, he answered, “I wasn’t headed anywhere, Christine. Just thinking out loud.”

  Silence returned to the Oval Office as Christine speculated about what Hardison was really thinking; what types of solutions were slinking around inside his mind. The awkward silence passed, and Brackman wrapped up their update with the status of the antisubmarine barrier being established across the entrance to Emerald. At the end of the meeting, Brackman was the first to leave the Oval Office, followed by Christine and Hardison, who headed toward their diametrically opposed corner offices in the West Wing.

  * * *

  Hardison closed his door, then leaned back in his chair, feet up on his desk, eyes shut. The overcast skies and steady rain drifting over the city could not have soured his mood further. Reviewing the issue at hand and its potential solutions, he began with the facts.

  Hendricks, he was convinced, was much more of a problem than the president and Christine realized. If the public discovered launch orders had been sent to a nuclear submarine, it was game over for the administration. The president’s opponents would capitalize on the debacle and force him out of office, either voluntarily or through impeachment. No defense, no matter how sophisticated, would be successful against the simple truth of what had transpired on the president’s watch. That left only one option: bury the truth.

  That effort would be relatively easy, with the exception of Dave Hendricks. Unlike the civilian deputy director, military personnel could be trusted to keep the issue quiet. One of the admirable traits of senior military officers was that they knew how to follow orders, even ones they disagreed with. They had been promoted to positions of responsibility not only because of their experience and talent, but also because they could execute orders sent down the chain of command accurately and expeditiously. In the end, Hardison was convinced they would follow the order to keep their mouths shut about every aspect of this issue.

  Hendricks, on the other hand, was a wild card, his commitment to the administration secured only through a tenuous relationship with his former wife. At some point in the future that relationship might sour or his allegiance shift. A permanent solution was required, or at least a temporary one that would last through the end of this administration and the next, assuming the president was reelected.

  Keeping things quiet was something Hardison was intimately familiar with. He had spent thirty years working his way up through congressional staffs and knew the darkest secrets hidden in the closets of dozens of the most powerful representatives and senators. But what would come in handy now were the contacts he’d establi
shed in those three decades, men who would prove useful in dealing with the situation at hand. Sifting through the options, he settled on the most promising. Hardison opened his eyes and sat upright. A permanent solution would be applied.

  He reached for the phone.

  32

  ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

  A few hundred yards to the east of Interstate 395, Dana Cooke held his leather briefcase over his head to protect himself from the light rain as he hurried up the sidewalk toward a crumbling twenty-eight-story apartment complex. Skirting foot-high weeds sprouting through the cracked cement and a cluster of tattooed teenagers arguing loudly at the base of the stairwell, Cooke went to one of the operable elevators, cursing under his breath as he endured the jerky and interminably slow ascent to the twelfth floor. However, the decrepit elevator and squalid surroundings were not the true source of Cooke’s disgust; they only served as a daily, acrid reminder of what that ungrateful bitch had done to him.

  His ex-wife had stolen most of his money in the divorce and sucked his paycheck dry each month like a bloated leech. In an effort to recapitalize his wealth quickly following his divorce, Cooke had invested what remained of his inheritance in the riskier sectors of the stock market, ones that had performed extremely well during the late 1990s. But the tech stocks crashed months later, and Cooke, overextended on margins, lost everything, racking up a six-figure debt in the process. The life of luxury he was accustomed to no longer existed—and it was all her fault.

  Cooke stepped out of the elevator and trudged down the long hallway, the brown carpet stained every few feet with who knew what types of liquids or bodily fluids. Finally reaching his apartment, he inserted his key into the door and was surprised to find it unlocked. He’d been running late this morning and must’ve forgotten to lock the door.

  Pushing the door open, he stepped into the dark entryway. He hated this place, accommodations even the uneducated masses deemed unsatisfactory. But things would soon change. He worked in the sonar division of Landover Engineering Systems, and he’d made a deal with a company installing sound-silencing upgrades on the Navy’s Trident submarines. The performance of those upgrades had been in doubt, and one of the company’s advisers had approached Cooke with a plan to ensure his company received the full incentive payment.

  Only a few minor modifications to the sonar algorithms under development were needed. The Kentucky would become invisible, resulting in the full incentive payment for his new friend’s company, not to mention lucrative follow-on contracts for the rest of the Navy’s submarine fleet. Cooke would soon receive the payment for his work, and he looked forward to the day he’d close the door to this miserable apartment for the last time.

  Cooke flicked the light switch in the small living room, but the apartment remained shrouded in darkness. He flicked the switch up and down a few times, then muttered under his breath in disgust. Trudging across the dark room, he approached the kitchen, turning on the light as he entered, stopping at the entrance in surprise.

  The bare bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminated a man sitting on the far side of the kitchen table. Cooke exhaled in relief. “Oh, it’s you.” He pulled up a chair across from the man, who was leaning back in his chair. “Did you bring my payment?”

  William Hoover smiled. “Yes. You will be paid in full tonight.” He nodded toward a leather satchel on the floor by his feet.

  “It’s about time,” Cooke said. “I took a lot of risk modifying those sonar algorithms. But the money will ease my conscience.” He glanced in anticipation at the bag on the floor. “However, I’m afraid we’ll have to renegotiate the terms of my continued service to your company. My price has doubled for any follow-on work.”

  Hoover stared coldly at him. “That’s impossible.”

  “You damn well better make it possible, or the performance of your submarine upgrades will suddenly be called into question, if you catch my drift.”

  “I catch your … drift, Mr. Cooke. But rather than discuss the terms of your future employment, perhaps I should pay you for your previous work first.”

  “You’ll pass on my demands to your company?”

  “Yes, Mr. Cooke. I’ll forward your request.” The corners of Hoover’s mouth turned up into a warm smile. Reaching down, he picked up the satchel and tossed it onto the table.

  Cooke’s fingers tingled with excitement as he unhooked the clasp, flipped up the cover, and peered inside.

  It was empty.

  Cooke slammed the bag onto the table. “What the hell is going on?”

  Hoover replied dispassionately, “I’m afraid the terms of your payment have been modified.”

  “What new terms?” Cooke was practically screaming, his face red with anger.

  Hoover lifted his right hand from under the table and rested a pistol with a silencer on the table’s edge, pointed at Cooke’s chest. “I’m afraid your services are no longer required. But if it’s any consolation, your work was of exceptional quality.”

  Cooke’s eyes widened. He leaned back in his chair, pushing himself away from the table, his hands out in front, waving his palms toward Hoover in supplication. “You don’t need to kill me. I’m sure we can come to agreement on payment. Perhaps I was too greedy.”

  “No,” Hoover replied, “your request was reasonable. Unfortunately, the United States Navy has discovered the sonar algorithms were modified, and it won’t be long before they trace them to you.”

  Cooke’s heart pounded inside his chest, his body breaking into a cold sweat. “I won’t tell anyone. I swear. No one will find out about our agreement.”

  “I know, Mr. Cooke. Thank you for your service.”

  Hoover smiled again, then pulled the trigger. Cooke sat silently in his chair, his arms slack by his sides, blood flowing from a hole in the center of his chest. Cooke’s breathing eventually turned shallow, then stopped.

  After placing the pistol into its holster under his jacket, Hoover stood and collected the satchel. He examined the man sitting across from him for a second before he left, closing the door to Cooke’s run-down apartment for the last time.

  33

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Dusk was settling over the city skyline as Christine hurried south on 17th Street, her head down and hands plunged into the pockets of her coat. Whipping across the Tidal Basin, blustery winds blew beneath the kind of flat gray clouds that promised rain but never delivered. Pulling her hand from her pocket, she checked her watch. Less than an hour ago, as she was sitting in her office, an unexpected phone call had jarred her thoughts from the impending launch. The man had refused to meet her in the White House, which told Christine the issue had something to do with the president or his administration. She had agreed to meet at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial at precisely 7 P.M.

  After crossing Independence Avenue, Christine headed south on the famous Cherry Tree Walk, approaching the entrance to the FDR Memorial ten minutes later. Leaning against the façade near a sculpture of the president in his wheelchair was a man wearing faded jeans and a thin gray Windbreaker. Upon spotting Christine, he turned and entered the memorial. A moment later, Christine followed him in.

  Divided into four outdoor galleries, each representing one of FDR’s terms in office, the memorial’s waterfalls, shade trees, and quiet alcoves of red South Dakota granite create the feeling of a meandering, secluded garden rather than a formal memorial. The first two rooms depict the dichotomy of the Great Depression—the despair symbolized by men standing in a breadline and the hope evident as a man listens to one of Roosevelt’s fireside chats on the radio. The third room depicts the destructive turmoil of World War II, with giant granite blocks strewn across the visitor’s path and a roaring waterfall to the right, crashing down over jagged boulders.

  It was in this third gallery that Christine stopped beside the man in a secluded alcove next to the waterfall. She followed his gaze to the inscription carved into the granite wall; Roosevelt’s famous “I have seen war�
� quote, delivered during his 1936 speech at the New York Chautauqua Assembly:

  I have seen war. I have seen war on land and on sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

  After a moment, Captain Brackman finally spoke, his words muted by the roar of the adjacent waterfall. “It’s a somewhat appropriate quote considering the circumstances, don’t you think?”

  It was more a statement than a question, but Christine nodded nonetheless. As she stood near Brackman in the cool air, she could feel the heat radiating from his body through his thin Windbreaker, could smell the faint scent of his cologne. Her thoughts suddenly wandered. She wondered if he was attracted to her, imagined what it would feel like to have his strong arms wrapped around her. She felt the heat rising in her face and quickly forced the thoughts from her mind, hoping he hadn’t noticed her reddening cheeks. Thankfully, his eyes remained focused on the inscription. After another moment of silence, she looked up toward the overcast sky as a gust of cold wind whipped through the alcove. “So what brings you out of the office on a day like this?”

  Brackman glanced around the memorial, verifying no one was close enough to overhear their conversation. “There’s something you need to know. You weren’t the only one alarmed at what Hardison might have been contemplating during our last meeting with the president. I decided to talk with him afterward, and as I was about to knock on his door, I overheard part of his conversation on the phone. It was about Hendricks.”

  “What did you hear?” Christine asked slowly.

  Brackman’s eyes seemed distant as he continued. “He was making arrangements to silence Hendricks, negotiating the price. He wanted it done after this issue with the Kentucky is over, and wanted to be informed when everything was ready. After he hung up, I left quickly—I didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping.”