‘People in our line of business have been worried for years and filing reports for years. The oceans are a terrorists’ playground. The fact that Al-Qaeda chose for its first huge spectacular an attack from the air was actually illogical. They only hoped to take out four floors of the Trade Center towers, and even then they were incredibly lucky. All that time the sea has been beckoning to them.’
‘Security of ports and harbours has been massively tightened,’ snapped Marek Gumienny. ‘I know, I have seen the budgets.’
‘With respect, sir, not enough. We know ship-hijacking in the waters around Indonesia – that is, in all directions – has been steadily increasing since the turn of the millennium. Some has simply been to make money to fund terrorism’s coffers. Other events at sea defy logic.’
‘Such as?’
‘There have been ten cases of sea dacoits stealing tugs. Some have never been recovered. They have no value as resales because they are pretty noticeable and hard to disguise. What are they for? We think they could be used to tow a captured supertanker right into a busy international port like Singapore.’
‘And blow her up?’ asked Hill.
‘No need. Just sink her with her cargo hatches open. The port is closed for a decade.’
‘OK,’ said Marek Gumienny, ‘so . . . possible target number one. Take over a supertanker and use her to close down a commercial port. This is a spectacular? Sounds pretty mundane, except for the port in question . . . no casualties.’
‘It gets worse,’ said Chuck Hemingway. ‘There are other things that can be destroyed with a blocking ship with vast damage to the world’s economy. In his October two thousand and four video Bin Laden himself said he was switching to economic damage.
‘Nobody out there in the shopping malls or the gas stations realizes how the whole of world trade is now geared to just-in-time delivery. No one wants to store or stockpile any more. The T-shirt made in China sold in Dallas on Monday probably arrived at the docks the previous Friday. Same with gasoline.
‘What about the Panama Canal? Or the Suez? Close them down and the whole global economy spins into chaos. You are talking damage in the hundreds of billions of dollars. There are ten other straits so narrow and so vital that sinking a really big freighter or tanker broadside-on would close them.’
‘All right,’ said Marek Gumienny. ‘Look, I have a president and the other five principals to report to. You, Steve, have a prime minister. We cannot just sit on this message from Crowbar. Nor can we simply burst into tears. We have to propose concrete measures. They will want to be active, to be seen to be doing something. So list the likelihoods and suggest some counter-measures. Dammit, we are not without resources of self-defence.’
Chuck Hemingway produced a paper he and Seymour had worked on earlier.
‘OK, sir, we feel probability one is likely to be the taking-over of a very large vessel – tanker, freighter, ore-carrier – and sinking her in a narrow but vital marine bottleneck. Measures to counter? Identify all such bottlenecks and post warships at either end. All entering vessels to be boarded by Marines.’
‘Christ,’ said Steve Hill, ‘that will cause chaos. It will be claimed we are acting as pirates. What about the owners of the host waters? Don’t they have a say?’
‘If the terrorists succeed, both the other ships and the coastal countries will be ruined. There need be no delays – the Marines can board without the freighter slowing down. And, frankly, the terrorists on board any ghost ship cannot permit boarding. They have to fire back, expose themselves and scuttle prematurely. I think the ship owners will see it our way.’
‘Probability two?’ queried Steve Hill.
‘Running the ghost ship, crammed with explosives, into a major facility like a sea island of oil pipes or an oil rig and blowing it to pieces. It causes astronomical eco-damage and economic ruin for years. Saddam Hussein did it to Kuwait, torching all their oil wells as the Coalition moved in, so that he would leave them living off scorched earth. Counter-measure: same again. Identify and intercept every vessel even approaching the facility. Secure positive identification outside the ten-mile cordon sanitaire.’
‘We don’t have enough warships,’ protested Steve Hill. ‘Every sea island, every seashore oil refiner, every offshore rig?’
‘That is why the national owners have to share the cost burden. And it need not be a warship. If any interceptor vessel is fired on, the ghost ship is exposed and may be sunk from the air, sir.’
Marek Gumienny ran his hand over his forehead.
‘Anything else?’
‘There is a possible third,’ said Seymour. ‘The use of explosives to cause a terrible massacre of humans. In that case the target would likely be a tourist facility crammed with holidaymakers by the seaside. It’s a horrible prospect, reminiscent of the destruction of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1917 when an ammunition ship blew up in the heart of the inner harbour. It wiped the city off the map. It still rates as the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history.’
‘I am going to have to report all this to the principals, Steve, and they are not going to like it,’ Gumienny said as they shook hands on the tarmac. ‘By the way, if counter-measures are taken, and they will have to be, there is no way we can keep the media out of this. We can devise the best cover story we can to divert the bad guys’ attention away from Colonel Martin. But, as you know, much as I take my hat off to him, you have to accept the reality. Chances are he’s history.’
Major Larry Duval glanced out of the flight dispersal hut in the Arizona sunshine and marvelled as he always did at the sight of the F-15 Strike Eagle that awaited him. He had flown the F-15E version for ten years and reckoned it had to be the love of his life.
His career postings included the F-111 Aardvark and the F-4G Wild Weasel and they were both serious pieces of machinery that the US Air Force granted him the privilege to fly, but the Eagle was for him, after twenty years as a USAF flier, the ace of them all.
The fighter he would be flying that day from Luke Air Force Base right up to Washington State was
still being worked on. Immune to love or lust, hate or fear, it crouched silently amid the teeming swarm of men and women in coveralls who crawled over its burly frame. Larry Duval envied his Eagle; for all its myriad complexities, it could not feel anything. It could never be afraid.
The aeroplane being readied for this morning’s air test had been at Luke AFB for fundamental overhaul and ground-up servicing. After such a period in the workshops the rules stated she had to be given a proving flight.
So it waited in the bright spring sunshine of an Arizona morning; 63 feet long, 18 high and 42 across, weighing in at 40,000 lb bone dry and 81,000 at maximum take-off weight. Larry Duval turned as his Weapons Systems Officer, Captain Nicky Johns, strolled in from his own equipment checks. In the Eagle the WSO, or wizzo, rides in tandem behind the pilot, surrounded by millions of dollars’ worth of avionics. On the long flight to McChord AFB he would test them all.