The Trident Deception Page 40
“This is unusual,” she answered, “but one of the conditions for continued good relations between our two countries, considering what just transpired, was that I meet with you.”
“What are you referring to?” Kogen feigned ignorance for the moment, unsure how much his unexpected guest knew.
“I wanted to meet the mastermind behind the plot that almost resulted in one of our ballistic missile submarines completely destroying another country.”
Her words hit him in the chest like sledgehammer. Bronner had apparently told her everything. But why? The operation had been meticulously planned to ensure its genesis could not be traced back to Israel.
She continued, “I have to admit that you developed an exceptional plan. Ariel has given me the entire file, which I assure you we’ll thoroughly review. There are a few things we could no doubt learn from your organization.”
Kogen’s nervousness eased. Perhaps there was nothing sinister in her visit to his villa. Intelligence organizations around the world interfaced in a civilized manner, even though agents constantly strove to ensure their country gained at another’s expense. Perhaps that was the purpose for her visit; to discuss to what extent their two organizations could work together. However, he was guessing at her motive, and was not a fan of conjecture. “So why are you here, Miss O’Connor?”
“Did you ever watch the Merrie Melodies cartoons when you were a kid?” she asked.
He gave her an empty stare.
“I suppose not.” Christine’s eyes rested intently on him as she expounded. “There was this wolf who tried to steal lambs from a flock of sheep protected by a sheepdog, and they would battle each other all day long. The wolf constantly devised plots while the sheepdog consistently thwarted them, usually resulting in great physical harm to the wolf. But both the wolf and the sheepdog realized they were just doing their jobs, and when the lunch whistle blew, they sat at the table as friends, sharing their meal until the whistle blew again, putting them both back on the clock.
“That relationship is analogous to how our national intelligence agencies interact. We all have a job to do, and we constantly battle each other with the noble goal of benefiting our respective countries. But when the lunch whistle blows, you and I can sit at a table and discuss our disagreements in a civilized manner.”
Kogen nodded enthusiastically, the woman’s comments matching his thoughts exactly. The subterfuge their agencies employed to gather the vital information they needed was just part of the job, and she realized that.
“For example,” she continued, “you and I can sit here and discuss the death of Levi’s daughters, and how you were responsible for recruiting the suicide bomber who killed them.”
Kogen swallowed hard.
How did she know? How did anyone know?
Had Bronner learned of his duplicity in the death of Rosenfeld’s daughters and told her? And if he’d told Christine, he must have also told …
His throat felt parched from the day’s heat. He reached for the pitcher of tea, filling the glasses in front of him and his guest, taking a sip of the refreshing liquid as his guest raised her glass to her lips.
“But don’t worry,” she said. “Ariel promised me that neither he nor Levi would take retribution against you.”
“Why is that?”
“Because that’s my privilege.” The woman’s eyes hardened. “Lunch is over. We’re back on the clock.”
Kogen returned his glass to the table, uncertain of the meaning behind Christine’s last comment. He felt warm; perspiration collected on his brow. He went to wipe his forehead, but his hand didn’t release from around the glass. He stared at his hand, unable to relax his fingers.
His chest tightened.
He glanced at Christine, realizing too late that the woman had only held the glass to her lips; she hadn’t taken a drink. There was a faint bitterness in the tea’s aftertaste, contrasting with the subtle sweetness of the raspberry flavor. His stomach contracted violently, throwing him forward, his chest and face slamming onto the table. He remained there, his face turned to the side, staring at Christine.
Holding her glass out to the side, she slowly poured the liquid onto the stone patio. Kogen stared directly ahead, unable to move his eyes, unable to expand the muscles in his chest. His lungs screamed for oxygen, terror strangling his thoughts as he realized he would soon be dead.
“Ariel sends his regrets on not being able to attend our meeting,” Christine said as she stood. “I got the impression he would have enjoyed it.”
The woman exited his vision, her light footsteps on the rough stone fading away.
Intelligence Minister Barak Kogen’s heart strained, then beat one final time.
* * *
Christine walked around the corner of the villa, greeted by William Hoover. He holstered his pistol, which he had held ready in case something went wrong, and placed the mobile jammer he held in his other hand into his coat pocket. Jamming Kogen’s cell phone had forced him inside to call Bronner, giving Christine the opportunity she needed to poison the tea.
“Excellent job, Miss O’Connor. A professional couldn’t have done it better.”
She handed him a small metal vial she had concealed in her hand, then unclipped a beret from the back of her hair as Hoover removed the corresponding receiver from his ear. He took the beret from Christine, then opened the rear door of the car. She slid into the back as he eased into the driver’s seat and buckled up.
“If you ever decide to change your line of work,” he said while looking at Christine’s reflection in the rearview mirror, “give me a call.”
“I’m afraid this was a onetime deal,” she replied. “It’s back to a desk job for me.”
Hoover smiled. “Where to now?”
“Airport, please.”
Christine closed her eyes, leaning back against the headrest as the car rode slowly over the winding gravel driveway. It’d been a long two weeks, and the physical exhaustion combined with the mental stress of preparing for her meeting with Kogen had finally taken its toll. As Daniel Landau turned the sedan onto the smooth, paved road, headed east toward Ben Gurion International Airport, he looked into the rearview mirror. Although her slumber would be restless and her dreams troubled, Christine O’Connor was already asleep.
EPILOGUE
HER MAJESTY’S AUSTRALIAN SHIP (HMAS) COLLINS
5 DAYS LATER
Twelve hundred feet underwater, a weak yellow light bobbed in the darkness, slowly making its round through the abandoned lower level of the Collins’s Forward Compartment. In the partially flooded Weapon Stowage Compartment, the fading light shone forlornly on sixteen green warshot torpedoes, still in their stows. Only three of the six torpedo tubes remained visible; the other three were submerged, casualties of the steadily rising water and the submarine’s thirty-degree list to starboard. The light turned abruptly and headed aft, sweeping back and forth across the darkened Galley before a quick trip through Junior Sailor Berthing, likewise deserted, the bottom starboard racks also underwater.
After climbing to the upper level of the compartment where the thirty-nine survivors shivered in the frigid air, the dim light paused in Senior Sailor Berthing to examine the injured in their bunks and the man who tended them. With a mournful shake of his head, the weary Corpsman, stretched beyond his means by the injuries, pulled the blanket over the face of one of the men, reducing the number of the living to thirty-eight. The dying light passed into Control, examining the filthy and sometimes bloody faces of the men and women who huddled together in small groups.
The light was set a moment later on the side of the atmosphere monitoring station. There was no power and the automatic air-sampling system was inoperative, so the light illuminated a handheld air sampler. It took five squeezes to suck in the stale air and deliver the unwelcome, but not unexpected, news. Bobbing through the compartment again, the light approached two officers sitting on the deck in Control, their backs against the Attack perisc
ope. One of the men was the submarine’s Commanding Officer, who awaited the results of the latest inspection round. The second man, his American friend, wore a summer white uniform, the white cloth now marred with the ship’s grime and stained with the crew’s blood. The two officers stood to greet Chief Marine Technician Kim Durand as she approached.
* * *
Five days ago, the Kentucky’s torpedo had punched an eight-foot-diameter hole in the submarine’s Motor Room, flooding the Aft Compartment. The Collins’s stern sank as lights throughout the submarine flickered, then were extinguished as the ship lost power. The stern continued to tilt downward until the ship reached a ninety-degree angle, the crew holding on to equipment as best possible as they plummeted into the ocean depths. The hull groaned as the outside pressure increased, the crew waiting in the darkness for the hull to collapse around them.
Their descent halted abruptly, announced by the sound of screeching metal pierced by screams of terror and pain, as the Collins crashed into one of the thousands of submerged seamounts scattered across the Pacific. The bow careened downward, joining the stern on the mountain’s surface. The ship tilted slowly to starboard, then slid down the steep mountain incline, finally slowing and coming to rest on the edge of a cliff overlooking the abyssal plain three thousand feet below.
Battle lanterns flicked on, their bright beams illuminating the darkness as the crew frantically assessed the condition of the ship and the status of the injured. Two-thirds of the crew were still alive, the men and women lucky enough to be in the Forward Compartment. A fourth of those were injured, and they were tended to once the watertight integrity of the submarine was addressed. Water oozed past the Aft Compartment watertight door, a telltale reminder of what awaited them outside their fragile steel cocoon.
Humphreys and Wilson, doing their best to keep fear from leaking into their voices, directed the crew to shore up the watertight hatch and shut every hull and backup valve, hoping to keep the water out of the Forward Compartment. But the thin trickle seeping past the Aft Compartment watertight door had increased to a steady stream, indicating the door seal was failing. The water collected in the bilge, rising steadily until the lower level of the Forward Compartment had become uninhabitable. However, the rising water wasn’t their only concern; the frigid temperature and limited oxygen supply were more important factors.
The submarine cooled quickly to the ambient temperature of the ocean depth, only 3 degrees above freezing. Hypothermia threatened to claim what remained of the crew, and they donned their foul-weather gear and huddled closely together to conserve body heat. And although the ship had ample emergency carbon dioxide curtains, scavenging the CO2 from the air, the amount of oxygen was another matter. The crew burned their limited supply of emergency oxygen candles, each one generating enough oxygen to sustain the crew for a few hours.
The battle lanterns had faded now, and the last operable one was in Kim Durand’s hand, faintly illuminating the crew as they huddled in the darkness. The air was stale and cold, the quiet periodically pierced by a sickening screech as a hull plate deformed under the intense ocean pressure. They would either succumb to the lack of oxygen, or soon, like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, a bolt would finally shear and the nearby fasteners would fail in quick succession. A flange would part from its mate, and the ocean would claim them.
Either way, it would not be long before the Collins would be unable to sustain human life.
Even so, the crew clung to the faint hope they would be rescued: that the Collins’s emergency beacon had made it to the ocean’s surface undamaged, that someone had picked up the beacon’s signal in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and that a deep-sea submersible rescue ship would arrive before their supply of oxygen ran out.
The odds were slim, but that hope and one oxygen candle were all they had left.
* * *
As Chief Durand approached, Wilson stood stiffly, shivering inside the foul-weather jacket he had borrowed from one of the dead crewmen. Humphreys climbed to his feet beside him, awaiting the report from his senior Weapons Chief. The faint yellow light from her battle lantern illuminated her grime-smeared face and blue eyes that were glazed over in a glassy sheen, as if they were not quite focused. A curled lock of blond hair escaped from the hood of her foul-weather jacket, tied tight around her face to keep the precious heat within. Her breath condensed into white fog as she spoke, her words coming out slightly slurred, her mind sluggish from the low oxygen content in the air.
“Oxygen is at fourteen percent, Captain. We can’t wait any longer. Request permission to burn the last candle.”
Humphreys examined the dirt-streaked face of his chief, resignation and despair in her eyes. They had survived five days together, keeping alive the hope they would somehow be rescued. But the submarine’s oxygen supply had steadily depleted, and the one remaining candle would sustain them for only a few hours more. Thankfully, as the oxygen level fell below what was required to sustain human life, they would slip into unconsciousness; their deaths would be painless. This last order, however, was not.
“Burn the last candle.”
“Aye, sir.” Kim Durand turned away, then stopped and faced back toward Humphreys and Wilson. “It was an honor serving with you,” she said.
“The honor was mine,” Humphreys said, extending his hand.
“And mine,” Wilson said, shaking the woman’s hand after Humphreys.
A metallic screech tore through Control as the submarine tilted a few more degrees to starboard. Wilson grabbed the periscope to steady himself, wondering if the Collins was teetering on the brink of an abyss, the ledge finally giving way under the weight of the crippled ship. Kim shined the battle lantern around Control, examining the compartment for sign of flooding—a small crack in the hull or piping giving way under the tremendous ocean pressure. A series of metallic scrapes reverberated through the ship, this time from farther aft and above. As the crew listened tensely with upturned faces, five distinct taps, each one second apart, echoed through the hull.
The crew broke out in cheers.
A rescue ship was latching onto the outside of the Collins’s hull.
* * *
Three hours later, blinking in the sunshine, Captain Murray Wilson stepped off LR5, the Australian submersible submarine rescue ship, onto the deck of the salvage ship that had carried it across the Pacific Ocean. LR5 had just finished the last of four round-trips between the Collins and the salvage ship, ferrying the survivors to the surface. Wilson and Humphreys were the last to leave the stricken submarine and the last off LR5. After stepping onto the deck of the salvage ship, which rolled gently in the calm seas, Wilson stopped and reflected on what Commodore Lowe had told them.
Lowe had boarded the Collins from LR5 after it secured itself to the submarine’s hull and the hatches between them were opened, then briefed the crew on what transpired after the Kentucky’s torpedo sent the Collins to the bottom. After being fired on by the Collins, Commander Malone figured out his Radio Room had been sabotaged and had restored communications. They received the Launch Termination message, and orders to Pacific Fleet to sink the Kentucky had been canceled.
The Kentucky’s crew had been spared.
Tom was alive.
Captain Murray Wilson looked up, squinting at the bright yellow sun suspended in the clear blue sky. His eyes filled with tears as the sun shone down, offering warm relief from the cool ocean breeze.
COMPLETE CAST OF CHARACTERS
UNITED STATES ADMINISTRATION
ROBERT TOMPKINS, vice president
KEVIN HARDISON, chief of staff
CHRISTINE O’CONNOR, national security adviser
NICHOLAS WILLIAMS, secretary of defense (referenced only)
CAPTAIN STEVE BRACKMAN, senior military aide
LARS SIKES, press secretary
RUSSELL EVANS, White House aide
NATIONAL MILITARY COMMAND CENTER
ADMIRAL TRACEY MCFARLAND, D
irector (referenced only)
DAVE HENDRICKS, Deputy Director
MIKE PATTON, Section Two watchstander
RON COBB, Section Two watchstander
ISAIAH JONES, Section Two watchstander
ANDREW BLOOM, Section Two watchstander (referenced only)
BRADLEY GREEN, Section Two watchstander (referenced only)
KATHY LEENSTRA, Section Two watchstander (referenced only)
ISRAELI ADMINISTRATION
LEVI ROSENFELD, prime minister
HIRSHEL MEKEL, prime minister’s executive assistant
EHUD RABIN, defense minister
BARAK KOGEN, intelligence minister
ARIEL BRONNER, director, Metsada
DANIEL LANDAU (ALIAS WILLIAM HOOVER), Metsada agent
U.S. EMBASSY IN ISRAEL
GREG VANDIVER, U.S. Ambassador to Israel
JOYCE EDDINGS, Ambassador Vandiver’s executive assistant
COMSUBPAC
JOHN STANBURY, Commander, Submarine Force Pacific
MURRAY WILSON, Senior Prospective Commanding Officer Instructor
ERROL HOLCOMB, Admiral Stanbury’s Chief of Staff
DAVID MORTIMORE, Admiral Stanbury’s Aide
LACONTA COLEMAN, Strategic Watch Officer
JARRED CRUM, N7 Operations Officer
NAVSEA
ADMIRAL STEVE CASERIA, Program Executive Officer (Submarines)
CAPTAIN JAY SANTOS, program manager, PMS 401 (Sonar)
HMAS COLLINS
BRETT HUMPHREYS (COMMANDER), Commanding Officer
KIM DURAND, Marine Technician Chief
USS HOUSTON
KEVIN LAWSON (COMMANDER), Commanding Officer
USS KENTUCKY
WARDROOM (OFFICERS)
BRAD MALONE (COMMANDER), Commanding Officer
BRUCE FAY (LIEUTENANT COMMANDER), Executive Officer
JOHN HINVES (LIEUTENANT COMMANDER), Engineering Officer
PETE MANNING (LIEUTENANT), Weapons Officer
ALAN TYLER (LIEUTENANT), Navigator