The Last Line (39 page)

“Neither was I,” Teller said. “It's a little late for spring break.”

“Are there any contacts here?”

Teller had his laptop open in front of him, displaying a map of the beach area from Virginia Beach to Cape May.

“Lots,” he replied with glum frustration. “With this many people, I guess the dealers are out in force.”

“If it's this crowded now,” Dominique said, “what's it like in July?”

“Worse,” Teller replied. “Much,
much
worse. I was here once a few years ago, and the traffic was backed up halfway to Salisbury.” That was the largest city on Maryland's Eastern Shore, about thirty miles inland.

“So what do we do?”

Teller studied the map for a moment more, zooming in to focus just on the stretch of beach from Ocean City to the Delaware border.

“We need,” he decided, “to get away from the crowds. Our Iranian friend is going to want privacy, and he sure as hell isn't going to find it here.”

Dominique turned the key, gunning the car to life. “Okay. Which way?”

Teller considered this. South, the way was blocked by the Ocean City inlet through the barrier island on which the city was built. Beyond that, the beaches were largely deserted; that was Assateague Island, most of which was taken up by a state park in the north and the Assateague Island National Seashore to the south.

“Assateague Island?” Dominique asked, leaning over to look at the screen. “Long white beaches and herds of wild ponies.”

“Maybe,” Teller said. Then he shook his head. “No. This early in the season the beaches might well be deserted, but Assateague has only one point of access—here, the Verrazano Bridge.”

“That's in New York City.”

“Different Verrazano Bridge. If I were trying to smuggle a nuke ashore, I think I'd prefer to have several routes, so I didn't get trapped on the beach.”

“So … north?”

He nodded as he closed the laptop. “North.”

 

Chapter Twenty

REYSHAHRI

INDIAN RIVER INLET, DELAWARE

2215 HOURS, EDT

21 APRIL

Captain Saeed Reyshahri sat behind the wheel of the Dodge Avenger they'd rented at Reagan International, looking out into the ocean's blackness. Fereidun Moslehi sat in the passenger seat, a set of French UGO low-light optics strapped to his face. Available commercially from Thales Optronique, the day/night unit included a second-generation image-intensifier tube that allowed 4X magnification under extreme low-light conditions. For the past couple of hours, they'd been taking turns with the unit, swapping it back and forth as they studied the night-shrouded ocean.

“I am growing tired of this,” Moslehi said. “How much longer?”

Reyshahri looked at the luminous face of his watch. “Three more hours,” he said. “Assuming they get here tonight.”

There was, in fact, no telling whether the submarine would reach this beach today, tomorrow, or even the next several days after that. There were so many variables—the Russian captain had promised to make the passage from Belize as swiftly as possible, but if he'd encountered American naval elements along the way and been forced to reduce his speed, or even lie in wait to avoid being heard, he could be several days late.

The plan did allow for that possibility. According to their orders, Reyshahri and Moslehi were to drive down onto this stretch of beach each night for five nights and watch between the hours of 2100 and 0200, waiting for the expected signal.

“I hate the waiting,” Moslehi said.

“As the Americans say,” Reyshahri replied, “it goes with the territory. The operations plan is a complex one. The planners could not anticipate every possibility.”

“There are other ways this could have been done. Faster, more certain ways.”

“More risky ways.”

Operation Shah Mat had been designed to allow for failure or mischance at every step along the way, every step except this one—arguably the most important. He and other operatives had allowed themselves to be smuggled across the line between Mexico and the United States, knowing that if some of those operators were intercepted, others would succeed. The freighter
Zapoteca
had been hired from the Mexican drug cartel that owned it through multiple false fronts, to avoid any connection with Iran, and false leads had been planted so that if the nuclear weapons were intercepted, blame would naturally fall on the Sunni heretics—especially al Qaeda. There were even different possible targets, a long list of them, any of which would work as a place where a small nuclear weapon could be detonated with great effect. The agents who actually deployed the weapons had been given a great deal of latitude in the placement; if one target proved to be blocked or otherwise unusable, the agents themselves could decide on an alternative.

The one deadly weak link in the plan was
here,
where the Iranian agents on land had to meet with the submarine and receive the weapons. This was where the Russian submarine was most vulnerable, most likely to be detected. If American intelligence had learned of the plan, this was where they might track the Iranian agents, to this beach, to catch them and the weapons together.

Reyshahri looked away from the ocean, studying the night. South, perhaps a kilometer away, a point of light flickered against darkness—American civilians enjoying a bonfire on the beach. Beyond that, on the horizon, light glowed from beach houses and private homes, and from the streetlights and businesses of a town called Bethany Beach.

There was no sign at all of American surveillance or a military presence.

Of course, American intelligence was very good at using technologies that at times seemed downright magical. Their satellites, for instance, could easily pick out this car sitting on the sand just above the high-water mark from hundreds of kilometers up, might even be able to photograph his license plate.

The question was whether the American intelligence analysts knew that this one vehicle out of millions offered a potential threat.

In truth, Reyshahri was more concerned about those he was forced to work with on this operation. The Mexican drug lords, especially, could not be trusted. They were greedy, and they were mindlessly vicious in a way that appalled Reyshahri, with a lust both for blood and for drama that could easily jeopardize a mission that depended on invisibility to remain off the enemy's radar. As for the Aztlanistas, the gangs and the political extremist groups seeking independence for U.S. states in the southwest—their passions made them careless, and their outspokenness made them targets for government surveillance.

Even the man sitting here next to him, in Reyshahri's opinion, was a weak link. Moslehi, code name Kawrd, was a member of Quds Force rather than VEVAK, the regular Iranian secret service. Quds Force was … less than dependable. They certainly were very good at what they did; they were members of an elite group within Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, subject to iron discipline and superb training—but that also meant they were motivated by the passions of their ideology. Quds Force was designed to export the Iranian revolution to other nations, to Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and Yemen in particular. Their ideological intensity could make them blind sometimes, blind especially to their own weaknesses.

That made a professional intelligence operative like Reyshahri as nervous as did the smugglers of drugs and people across the U.S.-Mexican border.

A case in point was the recent purported attempt by Quds to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. More than anything else, that had been a rather clumsy effort by the American government to accuse Iran and damage Tehran's relationship with various of her allies. However, an overeager operative with a connection to Quds Force
had
allowed himself to be sucked into an American sting operation and given the Americans the ammunition they'd needed. Tehran had been quite busy after that trying to repair the damage to the government's global image.

VEVAK would not have allowed itself to be so easily deceived.

“It's about time for me to take the night goggles for a while,” he told Moslehi.

“Good. My eyes are … wait.”

“What?”

“The signal! I see it! Two shorts … a long … and repeating!”

“Let me see.”

He accepted the goggles from Moslehi and pressed them against his face. Looking in the indicated direction. He scanned the horizon slowly … there! A single tiny light winked against the horizon. Short-short-long. Short-short-long …

Once he knew where to look, he lowered the goggles and saw the light winking without magnification.

“That's it,” he said. Handing the NVDs back to Moslehi, he turned the key and started the car. Reaching down, he turned the car's headlights on, repeating the signal: Short-short-long. Short-short-long. “Very well, my friend,” Reyshahri said. “It won't be long now.”

KILO CLASS SUBMARINE

3 NAUTICAL MILES OFF INDIAN RIVER INLET

DELAWARE

2218 HOURS, DST

The Kilo submarine surfaced gently, water cascading off the rounded surface of its hull. Captain Second Rank Besargin emerged from the hatch in the vessel's long, low sail moments later, using binoculars to scan the coast to the west. That fire on the beach just to the south—that could be trouble. Swinging slightly to the right, he studied the stretch of beach where he'd seen the signal moments ago through the periscope.

It was too dark. He picked up the intercom handset. “Sail, Bridge,” he said. “Flash ‘surfaced' recognition signal.”

High above him, on one of the periscope masts, a light flashed, using a different code this time: Short-long-long-short. Not the Morse Code
U
for
utets'ya,
which meant being enclosed or cooped up, but
P
for
pover'ii,
which meant surface. A moment later, the reply came—a set of automobile headlights repeating the code: Short-long-long-short. Short-long-long-short.

“Break out the raft,” Besargin ordered. “
And
the cargo.
Quickly!
The American submarine will be on us soon!”

Men began spilling out of the forward deck hatch below him.

TELLER

FENWICK ISLAND, DELAWARE

2242 HOURS, EDT

They'd driven ten miles north along the Coast Highway, Route 1, entering the state of Delaware from the south and passing through a resort town called Fenwick Island. Just to the north, the beachfront homes and resorts tapered off, and Dominique had pulled off onto a dirt track that gave access down through the dunes to a deserted stretch of beach.

This, Teller had thought, was more like it—an empty expanse with no nearby houses or signs of habitation, though there were some condominiums on the west side of the highway, well back from the beach and more or less screened from the waterline by dunes and lines of brush and small trees. The barrier island here was quite narrow; they were sandwiched in between the Atlantic and Little Assawoman Bay, which meant that if the smugglers were spotted here they'd be more or less trapped. The only way across to the mainland here was Route 54, two miles to the south. Three miles north, past Fenwick Island State Park, was the town of South Bethany—more motels, more resorts, more beach houses … but more choices for someone trying to find alternate routes away from the coast.

He'd booted up the laptop again and was studying the constellation of blue Cellmap dots showing from South Bethany up to Bethany Beach. He picked one more or less at random, an isolated icon on the Bethany Beach boardwalk, and opened a program that let him listen in, using the target cell phone as a bug. Illegal as hell, but he was running out of ideas.

It took a moment to make the connection. His laptop was using a mobile hotspot to provide him with Wi-fi service, linking him by satellite to the larger computers back at Langley. Then his laptop's speaker hissed, and he and Dominique were listening in on a conversation perhaps five miles north of their parking spot.

“Yeah … what the dillio, dude?”

“Jes' coolin', m'man. What can I do ya for?”

“The usual, man. Eight-ball o' white.”

“Y'got four yards?”

“Four! Shoo, you shittin' me? That stuff is taxed!”

“Hey, watch the six o'clock, man. Times is tough, nah-mean?”

“All I got is a coupla Cs, man.”

“Shit. That there'll buy ya a teener, no more.”

Teller switched the link off. A drug deal, going down on the boardwalk. He'd been able to hear something like carnival music in the background, mingled with crowd sounds and ocean surf. Were such deals really that public? Apparently so. He'd always imagined such goings-on taking place in dark alleys or deserted buildings, not in the middle of a crowd. Damn it, where were the cops?

He knew the answer to that one, though. Local police forces were stretched to the breaking point. That street dealer probably had some friends spotting for him, to let him know when a cop was approaching.

The flood of drugs coming north into the States and the lure of quick and easy money would only put more stress on the system.

Where, Teller wondered, was the breaking point?

Briefly, he considered giving the Bethany Beach police department a call—but they wouldn't be able to act on what he said, not on an illegal wiretap.

His cell phone buzzed. It was Procario.

“Yo,” he said.

“You have Cellmap running?”

“Yup.”

“Take a look off the beach just south of Indian River.”

“
Off
the beach?”

“Just do it.”

Teller thumbed the map view on his laptop, moving to the north. At first, he didn't see anything, but when he zoomed back out a bit, two blue dots appeared out in the ocean, tucked in close alongside each other perhaps half a nautical mile offshore. The Indian River Inlet was just under ten miles north of where they were parked now.