Tom Clancy's Op-Center_ Divide and Conquer Part 13

After firing the shot, Friday had dropped the rifle the Harpooner had given to him. It was a G3, a Heckler & Koch model, Iranian manufacture. He had others at his disposal if he needed them. Friday had tossed the weapon in a shallow pond near the hospital. He knew the local police would search the area for clues and would probably find it. He wanted it to be traced back to Teheran. Friday and his people wanted to make very sure that the world knew Iran had a.s.sa.s.sinated two officials of the United States emba.s.sy. The Iranians would disavow that, of course, but America would not believe the Iranians. The NSA would see to that.

The Iranians who were working with the Harpooner had made cell phone calls to one another during the past few days. They had discussed the attack on the oil rig and described the two pylons that had to be destroyed: "target one" and "target two." The Iranians did not know that the Harpooner made certain those calls were monitored by the NSA. That the conversations were recorded and then digitally altered. Now, on those tapes, the targets the Iranians were discussing were emba.s.sy employees, not pylons.

In a phone call of his own, the Harpooner had added that the deaths would be a warning, designed to discourage Americans from pursuing any action against Iran in the coming oil wars. The Harpooner pointed out in the call that if Was.h.i.+ngton insisted on becoming involved, American officials would be a.s.sa.s.sinated worldwide.

Of course, that threat would backfire. After President Lawrence resigned, the new president of the United States would use the brutal murders as a rallying cry. He was not a live-and-let-live leader like the inc.u.mbent. Someone who was willing to cooperate with the United Nations to the detriment of his own nation. The a.s.sa.s.sinations, like the attacks on the oil rigs, would underscore that the United States had unfinished business from the previous century: the need to strike a decisive, full-scale blow against terrorist regimes and terrorist groups that were being protected by those regimes.

Friday entered his apartment. He saw the red light on his answering machine flas.h.i.+ng. He walked over and played the message. There was only one, from Deputy Amba.s.sador Williamson. She needed him to come to the emba.s.sy right away. She said that she had tried his cell phone but could not reach him.

Well, of course she could not. His cell phone had been in his jacket, and his jacket had been slung over a chair in another room. He had not heard the phone because he was in the bedroom of a woman he had met at the International Bar.

Friday called her back at the emba.s.sy. Williamson did not bother to ask where he had been. She just told him the bad news. Tom Moore had been shot and killed by a sniper outside the hospital. Pat Thomas's throat had been cut by an a.s.sa.s.sin inside the hospital.

Friday allowed himself a small, contented smile. The Harpooner's a.s.sa.s.sin had succeeded.

"Fortunately," Williamson went on, "David Battat was able to stop the man who tried to kill him."

Friday's expression darkened. "How?"

"His throat was cut with his own knife," she said.

"But Battat was ill-"

"I know," said the deputy amba.s.sador. "And either Battat was delirious or afraid. After he stopped the killer, he left the hospital by the window. The police are out looking for him now. So far, all they've found was the rifle used to kill Mr. Moore. Metal detectors picked it up in a pond."

"I see," Friday said. The a.s.sa.s.sin did not speak English. Even if Battat were lucid, he could not have learned anything from the killer. But Fenwick and the Harpooner would be furious if Battat were still alive. "I'd better go out and join the search," Friday said.

"No," Williamson said. "I need you here at the emba.s.sy. Someone has to liaise between the Baku police and Was.h.i.+ngton. I've got to deal with the political ramifications."

"What political ramifications?" Friday asked innocently. This was going to be sweet. It was going to be very sweet.

"The police found the rifle they think was used in the attack on Moore," she said. "I don't want to talk about this on an open line. I'll tell you more when you get here."

That was good news, at least. The deputy amba.s.sador had concluded that the killings were political and not random.

"I'm on my way," Friday said.

"Watch yourself," Williamson said.

"I always do," he replied. Friday hung up, turned around, and left the apartment. "I always do."

THIRTY.

Baku, Azerbaijan Tuesday, 6:16 A.M.

The Harpooner and his team reached the oil rig just before dawn. The boat cut its engines one thousand feet from the nearest of the four columns. Then the Harpooner and four members of his Iranian team slipped into the water. They were all wearing wet suits and compressed air cylinders. Slipping beneath the dark surface of the sea, the men swam toward the rig.

Two of them carried waterproof pouches containing watergel high-energy explosives. The Harpooner had carefully injected the blue sticks with heat-sensitive pentanitroaniline. As the sun rose, the heat would cause the foil packet to warm. The sunlight itself would detonate the explosion.

Two other men carried an inflatable raft. This would allow them some stability underneath the platform. Many rigs had sensors on the columns and motion detectors along the sea line. Avoiding the columns and going under the motion detectors was the safest way to get inside the perimeter. Once the explosives were placed, it would be virtually impossible for the crew of the rig to get to them in time.

The Harpooner carried a spear gun and night-vision gla.s.ses. He would use the gun to fire the watergel packets around the support struts beneath the platform. The Harpooner had brought along only a dozen of the seven-eighths-inch sticks of explosive. He had learned long ago that the trick to destroying something big is not necessarily to hit it with something big. In hand-to-hand combat, a foe could be driven back with a powerful roundhouse punch. He can be debilitated faster, more efficiently, and with more control, with a finger pressed against his throat, just below the larynx and above the clavicle. Hooking the top of a foot behind the knee and then stepping down with the side of the foot will drop someone faster than hitting them with a baseball bat. Besides, all it takes to neutralize a bat attack is to move in close to the attacker.

The Iranian oil rigs in the Caspian Sea are mostly semisubmersible platforms. They rest on four thick legs with ma.s.sive pontoons that sink below the waterline. There is a platform on top of the legs. The riser system-the underwater component, which includes the drill-descends from the derrick, which is mounted on the platform. The key to destroying a platform like that is not to take out the columns but to weaken the center of the platform. Once that has happened, the weight of the structures on top will do the rest. The Harpooner's team had been able to get copies of the oil rig blueprints. He knew just where to place the watergel.

The men reached the underbelly of the rig without incident. Though it was dark in the water, the higher struts of the rig caught the first glint of dawn. As the Harpooner eyeballed the target, two men inflated the raft while the other two attached a pair of watergel sticks beneath the tip of three spears. The twelve-inch-long sticks were carefully taped belly-to-belly. This configuration allowed the spear to be fitted into the tube muzzle. It also made sure that the sticks of watergel would not upset the balance of the spear. Though it would have been easier to a.s.semble the package on the boat, the Harpooner had wanted to keep the watergel packets as dry as possible. Though moisture would not harm the explosives, wet foil would take longer for the sun to warm. These packets would only be exposed to direct sunlight for a half hour. He had to make certain they were dry enough-and thus hot enough-to explode within that time.

The raft was a six-man hexagonal platform. The Harpooner did not need it to hold six men. He wanted the larger size for stability. Larger rafts tended to ignore the smaller waves. That was important when he lay on his back to fire. He had removed the canopy to make it lighter. The large case in which it had been carried was discarded. The Harpooner climbed on board while the other men hung onto the sides to steady the raft even more.

The speargun was made of stainless steel. It was painted matte black to minimize reflected sunlight. The spears were also black. The weapon was comprised of a forty-inch-long black tube and a yellow grip and trigger at the end. Only a foot of spear protruded from the end. Normally, a rope was attached to the spears so that prey could be hauled back to the spearman. The Harpooner had removed these back on the boat.

There were six-inch-thick acoustic dampeners beneath the platform. They were located fifty feet above the sea. The hard rubber pads had been placed there to m.u.f.fle the sounds of activity. This was done so that people who lived on the rig would suffer as little noise pollution as possible. The Harpooner had chosen his targets from the blueprints. He would fire two harpoons. The first would go into the padded area below and to the northeast of the derrick. The derrick was in the southwest comer of the platform. When the detonation occurred, the derrick would fall toward the center of the platform. A second harpoon would be fired into the platform at the point where the heavy center of the derrick would land. The second explosion, plus the impact of the derrick, would shatter the platform and cause it to collapse inward. Everything would slide to the center and tumble into the sea.

The Harpooner would not need the third harpoon to destroy the rig, though he did not tell his people that.

The terrorist donned night-vision gla.s.ses and lay on his back. The speargun had terrific recoil, equivalent to a twelve-gauge shotgun. That would give him quite a b.u.mp. But his shoulder could take it. He aimed the weapon and fired. There was a sound like a metallic cough and the spear flew through the dark.

It hit the target with a faint thunk. The Harpooner quickly repositioned himself to fire the second shaft. It, too, struck its target. He motioned the men to start back. As soon as the others ducked underwater, the Harpooner pulled the tape from the spear, grabbed one of the equipment bags, and slipped the watergel sticks inside. Then he slid into the water and followed his men back to the boat.

Upon boarding the vessel, the men dropped the remains of Sergei Cherka.s.sov into the sea. On the way over, they had burned the body. It would look as though he had been killed in the blast. The photographs that had been taken from the airplane were already in his pocket. As far as the Iranians on board knew, the Russians and the Azerbaijanis would be blamed for the attack.

The Harpooner knew differently.

When Cherka.s.sov was in the water, the boat departed. They were nearly out of visual range when the oil rig exploded.

The Harpooner was watching through high-powered binoculars. He saw the puff of yellow red smoke under the platform. He saw the tower shudder and then do a slow pirouette drop toward the center. A moment later, the muted pop of the first explosion reached the boat.

The Iranians on the deck all cheered. Which was odd, the Harpooner thought. Even though they thought they were doing this for the national good, they were happy about the deaths of at least one hundred of their countrymen.

A moment before the derrick hit, the second watergel packet exploded. The Harpooner had positioned the two to go off nearly at the same time. It would not have done for the derrick to crash, knock the spear from the rubber padding, and drop it into the sea. A second cloud of red and yellow smoke began to form, but it was flattened and disbursed when the derrick struck the platform. It hit with a small-sounding crunch. Debris flew into the morning sky, chasing away the distant gulls.

The entire rig shuddered. The whole thing reminded the Harpooner of a vignette he had seen as a child. A poplar tree had been split during a storm and fell across power lines. It hit them, bounced, then hit them again. The lines hung there for a moment before sagging and then ripping from the poles on the left and right. That was what happened here. The platform stood for a moment after the derrick struck. Then, slowly, the steel and concrete sagged where the second blast had weakened them. The platform bent inward. Sheds, cranes, tanks, and even the helicopter began sliding toward the crease. Their weight caused additional strain. The Harpooner could hear the ugly collisions in the distance, see the smoke and shattered pieces of wood and metal fly into the air.

And then it happened. The added weight was too much for the platform to bear. It cracked and dumped everything into the sea. The boat was now too far away for the Harpooner to make everything out. The collapse looked like a waterfall from this distance, especially when the cascade of white and silver debris. .h.i.t the sea, sending up waves and spray.

As the rig disappeared beyond the horizon, all the Harpooner could see was a large ball of mist hanging in the new day.

He turned away, accepting the congratulations of the team. They were treating him like a football hero, but he felt more like an artist. Using the medium of explosives and a canvas of steel and concrete, the Harpooner had created a perfect destruction.

He went below to wash up. He always needed to wash after creation. It was a symbolic act of completion and of getting ready for the next work. Which would be soon. Very soon.

When the boat reached the docks, the Harpooner told the crew he wanted to go ash.o.r.e. He told the Iranians he wanted to make certain that the Azerbaijani police had not already learned of the blast. If they had, the police might be checking incoming vessels. They might be looking for possible terrorists and also for eyewitnesses to the explosion.

The men thought that was a good idea.

The Harpooner told them that if he did not come back in five minutes, they should leave the dock and head to the open sea. The Harpooner said that if the police were talking to people, stopping them from leaving the area, he would figure out a way to elude them.

The men agreed. The Harpooner went ash.o.r.e.

Six minutes later, there was a ma.s.sive explosion in the harbor. The Harpooner had stuck a timed detonator into one of the sticks of watergel. He had set it and then left it below, under one of the bunks. Evidence from the attack was still on board. It would take a while, but eventually the authorities would find traces of the watergel on the boat and on the rig and realize that the Iranians, aided by a Russian terrorist, had attacked their own operation. The Iranians would dispute that, of course, and tensions would rise even higher. The United States would suspect that the Russians and Iranians were working together to seize the Caspian oil wells. There would be no way to avoid what was coming.

The Harpooner got in the repainted van and drove it from the harbor. There were no police there. Not yet. At this hour, the Baku police force was involved primarily in traffic management and accident investigation. Besides, there was no indication that a boat had attacked the rig or that it had come to Baku. That would come later, when they found the Russian and the Americans had sent over satellite photographs of the region.

The Harpooner headed toward the Old City. There, he drove up Inshaatchilar Prospekti toward the hotels on Bakihanov Kuchasi. Two days before, he had taken a hotel room under an a.s.sumed name. Here he was Ivan Ganiev, a telecommunications consultant. It was a name and profession he had chosen with care. If he were ever stopped by customs agents or police, he could explain why he was traveling with high-tech equipment. And being Russian had another advantage, especially here. One that would help him get out of the country when the time came.

He had left clothing, gear, and cash in the room and a do not disturb sign on the door. He would clean himself up, dye his hair, and then take a long nap. When he woke, he would apply a fake mustache, slip colored contact lenses into his eyes, and call a cab to take him to the train station. A cabdriver was always a good hostage in case he was discovered and surrounded. He would use his fake pa.s.sport to leave the city.

He parked the van in an alley near the hospital. Then he pulled a packet of dental floss from his pocket. He rubbed it deeply between two teeth until his mouth filled with blood. Then he spat on the floor, dashboard, and seat cus.h.i.+on. It was the fastest way to draw blood. It also left no scars, in case anyone decided to stop him and check for wounds. He did not need a lot of blood. Just traces for the forensics people to find. When he was finished with that, he slipped a plastic mircochip in the gas tank. Then he replaced the cap.

When he was finished dressing the van, the Harpooner took the backpack containing the Zed-4 phone and left. When the authorities found the vehicle, they would also find evidence inside tying it to the Iranians in the boat. That would include their fingerprints on the wheel, glove compartment, and handles. They would a.s.sume that one or more of the men got away. The blood would suggest that he was injured. The police would waste time looking through hospital records for a possible perpetrator.

The Harpooner would return to Moscow. Then he would leave Russia and permit himself a rest. Possibly a vacation in some country where he had never committed terrorism. Some place where they would not be looking out for him.

Some place where he could sit back and read the newspapers.

Enjoy once again the impact his art had had on the world.

THIRTY-ONE.

Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. Monday, 11:11 P.M.

Paul Hood was concerned, confused, and tired.

Bob Herbert had just spoken with Stephen Viens of the National Reconnaissance Office. Viens was working late to catch up on paperwork that had collected during his absence. While Viens was there, an NRO satellite had recorded an explosion in the Caspian Sea. He had called Herbert, who wanted to know if anything unusual had happened in the region. Then Herbert called Paul Hood.

"According to our files, the coordinates of the explosion match those of Iran's Majidi-2 oil rig," Herbert said.

"Could it have been an accident?" Hood asked.

"We're checking that now," Herbert said. "We've got some faint radio signals coming from the rig, which means there may be survivors."

"May be?"

"A lot of those rigs have automatic beacons to signal rescue craft in the area," Herbert said. "That may be what we're hearing. The audio keeps breaking up, so we can't tell if it's a recording."

"Understood," Hood said. "Bob, I've got a bad feeling about this. Fenwick goes to the Iranian mission, and then an Iranian rig is attacked."

"I know," Herbert said. "I tried to call him, but there was no answer. I'm wondering if the NSA knew about this attack, and Fenwick took intelligence to the mission in New York."

"If Fenwick had intel, wouldn't Iran have tried to prevent the attack?" Hood asked.

"Not necessarily," Herbert told Hood. "Teheran has been itching for a reason to establish a stronger military presence in the Caspian Sea. An attack by Azerbaijan could give them that reason. It's no different than historians who say that Franklin Roosevelt allowed Pearl Harbor to be attacked so we'd have a reason to get into World War Two."

"But then why all the deception with the president?" Hood asked.

"Plausible deniability?" Herbert replied. "The president has been getting misinformation."

"Yes, but Jack Fenwick would not undertake something of this magnitude on his own," Hood said.

"Why not?" Herbert asked. "Ollie North ran an uberoperation during Iran-Centra-"

"A military officer might have the b.a.l.l.s for that but not Jack Fenwick," Hood said. "I had a look at his dossier. The guy is Mr. Support Systems. He's inst.i.tuted backup systems for backup systems at the NSA. Got congress to jack up the budget fifteen percent for next year. The CIA only got an eight percent b.u.mp and we got six."

"Impressive."

"Yeah," Hood said. "And he just doesn't strike me as the kind of guy to take this kind of chance. Not without backup."

"So?" Herbert said. "Maybe he's got it."

s.h.i.+t, Hood thought. Hood thought. Maybe he does. Maybe he does.

"Think about it," Herbert went on. "He got double the increases everyone else got. Who has that kind of sway with congress? Not President Lawrence, that's for sure. He's not conservative enough for the budget group."

"No, he's not," Hood agreed. "Bob, find out if Matt can get into Fenwick's phone records and calendar. See who he might have talked to and met with over the past few days and weeks."

"Sure," he said. "But it's going to be tough to draw any conclusions from that. The NSA head meets with practically everyone."

"Exactly," Hood said.

"I don't follow."

"If Fenwick were part of a black-ops situation, he would probably meet with his team away from the office. Maybe by seeing who he stopped meeting with, officially, we can figure out who he's been seeing on the sly."

"Nice one, Paul," Herbert said. "I wouldn't have thought of that."

"But that isn't what has me worried," Hood went on. The phone beeped. "Excuse me, Bob. Would you bring Mike up to date on this?"

"Will do," Herbert said.

Hood switched lines. Sergei Orlov was on the other end.

"Paul," Orlov said, "good news. We have your man."

"What do you mean you have him?" Hood asked. The Russian operative was only supposed to keep an eye on him.

"Our operative arrived in time to save him from joining his comrades," Orlov said. "The a.s.sa.s.sin was dispatched and left in the hospital room. Your man was taken from the hospital to another location. He is there now."