True Honor (12 page)

“What do you think, Chief?” Bear asked, as he too stripped off his gear.

Sam confirmed a look with Wolf before answering. “The tape should be good. And I’m going to bet the conversation turns out to be explosive, sir.”

“Let’s hope so.”

The light turned green and Bear opened the hatch.

Sam descended the ladder after Wolf and entered the USS
Dallas.
Ninety-seven men lived and worked in this submarine. It was an isolated and self-contained world. The sub rarely if ever surfaced during its six months at sea. The
Dallas
was an attack submarine, and it hunted other submarines. It could gather shipping and signal intelligence as it cruised the shore of a hostile country listening to every transmission. Its location when at sea was carefully guarded.

Sam handed over the recording to the waiting SEAL from his squad. The conversation would be compressed and made ready to transmit to the Defense Intelligence Agency over burst encryption. The SEALs would send the audiotape along with digitized pictures taken through the nightscopes, add their action report, and while the package streamed over, they would answer via text message any questions the interpreters who were taking the feed live had about the meeting. The process meant it would be another ninety minutes before this mission was complete, but at least it meant he’d get to see the first rough translation of the conversation he’d just risked his life to gather.

“Get the pictures queued first, Frank,” Bear requested. “Find the clearest ones for each tango. Let’s see if we can get a confirmation of identities before linguists start translating the conversation.”

“Will do.”

Time was tight. Bear motioned him toward the stateroom, and Sam started dictating the action report to him as they walked.

Passageways aboard the submarine were tight, and two people couldn’t pass each other easily. The boat had never been designed to carry extra passengers, let alone the numbers and the amount of gear a SEAL team brought with them. On some submarine trips they had bunked down in the missile room, the sleep feeling a bit strange when it was inside a room full of explosives. On this trip the sixteen SEALs shared a small stateroom; a hot bunk schedule allowed them to sleep with only nine bunks.

Sam stripped off his wet suit. He was so exhausted it was a struggle to lift his arm to peel off the material. Cold fingers hurt. “What bit me?”

Bear lifted off the remains of a big black squished bug Sam hadn’t been able to shake off earlier. “Ouch.”

Sam was grateful it was dead. “It felt like an ugly critter. Battihi was meeting with a European,” he continued. “It looked like a big deal just given where they talked and how nervous the security guards with each man were.” Sam gratefully accepted a mug of coffee from a yeoman. “I think we got good photos; it would be nice to get an identification on him.”

“Any problems getting in?”

“There was a lot of activity in the area, but the rubble along that road has increased since the last visit, and it wasn’t hard to stay out of sight. It was a lot of climbing through destroyed buildings. Any problems on your end?”

“Two boats got a little close. They were fishing trawlers, but neither was actively searching with sonar. It was just a cold night in the water.”

Sam settled a towel around his neck, wishing for a hot shower and a meal. He followed Bear through the boat to the communications center.

Wolf had the sequence cued up. Sam handed Wolf the mug of coffee and the towel and watched the sequence play. “I agree on the picture choices; that looks good. Audio ready?”

Frank shifted tapes in the compression mixer. “It’s ready.”

Bear passed word to the executive officer of the boat that they were ready to ascend to periscope depth.

Sam took a seat at the console beside his partner. The captain would lift powerful antennas and listen for anyone around or anyone listening in. And then if they had clear surroundings, he would raise the powerful transmitters and send this package in bursts. At the other end the time lags in the transmission would disappear as the audio and video were decompressed.

The captain sent back word they were ready to transmit.

“Send it,” Bear ordered. “Let’s see what DIA has to say.”

Nine

* * *

JANUARY 16

Wednesday, 1:35 a.m.

Madrid, Spain

Darcy settled on her office couch with the stack of the latest intercepts and the file she’d built on Luther and read in no particular order, just looking for patterns. She had stopped writing reports. The number of people with high enough security clearances to read them was so small it was faster to brief verbally. She read, she thought, and when she had something Gabe agreed was solid, the military went in. Synergy was the name of this game. The terrorists were beginning to understand the terror of being hunted.

She was interested in the basic question of logistics. Luther had to talk and move, and so did those who worked for him. Fifty dollars to an airport worker gave her plane tail numbers and the amount of fuel pumped; twenty gave her a copy of the disk from a security camera in the parking garage; ten bought her a copy of a taxi company dispatch book. When she was looking for patterns over time, it was money well spent.

Her computer was wired to control everything in her domain from coffeepot to CD player. It began to play the strains of Elvis Presley’s hit song “Hound Dog.” Darcy reached back and punched in the code to unlock her office door.

“I wish you’d get a key lock on this door instead of an electronic keypad. You die in here, it’s going to be a pain getting in to haul you out,” Gabriel commented, shoving the door to close it again so he would have room to pull out her desk chair.

“Considering the amount of your coffee I’m drinking, I’d be self-embalmed.” She turned her head to look at him and winced, reaching back to move around the pillow she had brought from home to help ease the stabbing pain.

“You need to see a chiropractor for that neck.”

“It’s the strain of all the office work. I prefer being on the road somewhere, traveling.”

He tipped his head to read the title of the report she held. “Have something?”

“Right now it’s just a whiff of smoke, not much substance.” She studied her world map on the wall. “That cell in Morocco we’ve been watching? They went shopping today and bought Russian vodka. We’ve been watching them for four months, and they’ve bought a lot of items but never that.”

“Someone is coming for a visit.”

“Dansky drinks Russian vodka.” That was one of the tidbits she’d noted from the Russian files on the man.

“It’s thin.”

“But we know he’s looking for a new group to hire. The Brits took out the cell in Algeria he’d been talking to last month. Dansky may be going to Morocco as a second option.”

“Flag it so the guys watching Morocco will know we’re interested in lots of pictures of any guests.”

“Will do. Has the defense feed come in on Battihi yet?”

“It’s setting up now.” Gabe connected them to the Defense Intelligence site and entered the security codes to join the pool taking the feed. Darcy recognized several names of the translators, some of the National Security Agency’s best linguists among them. The screen split into sections as the DIA set up the package transfer of audio, digital pictures, and text.

On the second terminal, Darcy logged in so she could search their database.

The first picture painted to the screen. The green of night-vision photographs allowed better elimination of possible matches than identification of one. “That’s Battihi,” she concurred as image specialists noted a visual match probability at 74 percent. She’d studied his face over the last months; she knew him.

The audio of the conversation began to play as the second photo painted to the screen. Whoever had crept in to capture this had a lot of guts. Who would the DIA send into Lebanon covertly? CIA? SEALs? Battihi was incredibly hard to get close to. She listened to the conversation as it streamed in, watched the live translation begin to appear on the side screen as translators worked, and read the action report below from those who had captured it.

Who was Battihi meeting with? “Gabe, that almost looks like Dansky.” It was hard to get a clear image through the night-vision camera, and the photo they had for comparison was grainy at best. “And the voice may be a match; it’s European. Could Dansky have slipped into Lebanon?”

She added a question to the queue:
D
ID THE MAN TALKING WITH
B
ATTIHI HAVE A LIMP
?

“Dansky’s knee surgery was just a rumor,” Gabe remarked, seeing the question.

“About everything we have on him is a rumor.”

The operative on the other end eventually reached her question in the queue.
YES. LEFT LEG.

“I’m on it.” Gabe began hunting through old records to find the information. “Here it is,” he said moments later, tapping his finger on the monitor to note the success. “Not much, but at least it’s from an intercepted phone call between people suspected of working for Dansky rather than a snitch trying to make points. ‘Dansky’s unavailable; you’ll have to handle it yourself.’ ‘There’s cash on the line; where is he?’ ‘I heard he needed knee surgery.’ That’s the extent of the reference.”

“When was that dated?”

“Four years ago, June.”

“Surgeons take X-rays, photos. We find Dansky’s doctor and we’ve got a good thread we can pull.”

The pictures of the two men shaking hands and parting appeared. The transcription was finishing up. Darcy added a final note to the queue with her call sign after the others signaled they had no more questions.
I
OWE YOU A FAVOR FOR THE GUY WITH A LIMP. COLLECT SOMEDAY; I’M GOOD FOR IT. HOUND DOG.
It flowed out at the end of the queue of traffic.

“If that guy with Battihi is Dansky, we’ve hit gold,” Gabe said. “What’s the best visual they got of him? We’ll need to firm it up.”

The last photos were coming across. Darcy set up to see the sequence again, when the screen flashed a note in the text section.

DARCY?

The question sat there in the lower quadrant of the screen, flashing, lingering.

She struggled to know what to do.

Gabe leaned over her shoulder and typed:
SAM?

YES
.

“While the final pictures transmit, use the side bandwidth,” Gabe said. “I want to talk to DIA about this for a minute.” He picked up the secure phone.

Darcy nodded and took a deep breath.
CHAT ROOM
2.

The secure chat room opened moments later.

HI DARCY.

HI SAM.

She had no idea what to say. He was on the other end of the transmission, and his presence meant he’d been one of the guys sneaking into Lebanon to spy on a terrorist. She might know in her head that his job put him at this kind of risk, but it was different to know about a specific mission.
Samuel, you are going to get yourself killed and then what am I going to say? I don’t have that many really great friends in my life that I can afford to lose one.

Sam didn’t have a problem knowing something to say; letters were appearing on the screen.
STILL DEAD?

She smiled.
Oh, friend, you and I have some talking to do. I’ve got four months of news.
She rested her hands on the keyboard and continued typing, grateful she had learned to type fast over the years.
YES. OKAY FROM MISSION?

A-OK. DO FAVOR? CALL KELLY—MSG: JOE OK, ILY. JILL—MSG: TOM OK, ILY. MY FOLKS—MSG: GOT LETTERS, ILY.

“What’s ILY?” Darcy asked Gabe, rapidly jotting down numbers, names, and messages. Sam was typing this? The words were flying faster than she could scrawl notes.

“Subspeak for
I Love You.”

DONE.
Darcy hesitated before she typed:
I MISS YOU.

THANKS, D. I MISS YOU MORE.

I’M SERIOUS ABOUT THE FAVOR. COME HOME AND COLLECT.

I PLAN TO. PROMISE.

The last photo came over. She typed the direct phone number to her desk here as rapidly as she could, trying to beat the cutoff of the satellite link. It had been so frustrating to get Sam’s message on her answering machine in the States and have no way to get in touch with him. The link dropped on her before she got an acknowledgment on the transmission.

“A SEAL team sneaking into Lebanon . . . interesting,” Gabe commented.

“Did Sam get my number?”

“It’s impossible to tell. You’ll know if he calls you.” Gabe turned the other terminal screen toward her, and she forced herself to think about work again for a moment. “DIA will see if they can enhance the visuals, but they agree it’s probable. While they see if they can get a voice match, let’s proceed as if that is Dansky. Dar, print out the transcript of Battihi’s conversation with him and come down to my office. Let’s see if we can figure out what he’s planning. We may have a shot at actually getting ahead of Dansky and anticipating his next move.”

“I’ll be right there.”

He struggled to his feet. “I’m glad it was Sam.”

“So am I.”

Gabe tugged the door shut behind him.

Darcy queued the document to print.

Sam
. She reached over for one of the oranges in the fruit basket on her desk. She wasn’t ready for the surge of emotions she felt.
I’m so glad he’s okay.
She rarely let herself step back from the day-to-day fight to take a deep breath and think about life before September 11 or what it would be like after this war was over. She still hoped for a chance to explore a relationship with Sam. The distance of several states had to be easier to manage than the present reality of countries and oceans.

She kept oranges around as a reminder of him.
“Take courage, do the work, and peace will once again flourish.”
Sam’s note had arrived at CIA headquarters the day after the attack tucked in a basket of Florida oranges, the package hand delivered to her by Brandon. That note now folded in her wallet had helped relieve the stress of the last few months.