Patrick Robinson - To The Death

“Did you check the film after the break-in, you know, maybe catch a glimpse of her leaving?”

“No, I didn’t bother. I was only out at the side of the building for three or four minutes, and I’d have known if anyone came in or left. Headlights, car engines, and all.”

“How long would it take to run the film back right now so we could take a look?”

“Maybe coupla hours. There’s a lot of film in that system.”

“Okay. Perhaps you’d do it when you got some time and let me know?”

“No problem, sir.”

“Did Jane have a car?”

“Well, she never filled out the vehicle identification form for a reserved space in the parking lot. But she must have had a car. Ain’t no other way to get out here in the country. I guess she must have forgot.”

“Is the management strict about these procedures?”

“Hell, no. This parking lot’s half empty most of the time. Ain’t something we take very seriously. But since you mention it, I never saw her behind the wheel of a vehicle. But that don’t mean she didn’t have one.”

Joe thanked Fred for his help and said they’d be in touch, with regard to police interviews with the residents. When he arrived back at the precinct, he picked up the telephone and dialed the personal number of Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Ramshawe at Fort Meade.

The call from Detective Segel, in Jimmy’s mind, caused more questions than answers. How long after “Jane” came home did the break-in occur in the parking lot? Who told Fred it had happened? Precisely what was on that film during the few minutes Fred was out? And what the hell was someone doing smashing the windshield of the Lincoln? No one breaks into a car like that, especially one with an alarm system.

In fact, these days, very few people break into cars at all because the systems are so good. Whoever broke into that Lincoln certainly did not want to steal it and then drive around with no windshield. And through the windshield was no way to get inside the car.

No, pondered Jimmy, that made no sense, unless it was pure vandalism. And who the hell would want to do something that stupid, knowing they might get caught when the alarm went off?

There’s only one person who logically might have broken that windshield, and that was someone who wanted Fred away from his station for a few minutes. Time either to get into, or get away from, Chesapeake Heights.

He picked up the phone and called Fred, who jumped right to attention at the contact from a Navy lieutenant commander at the National Security Agency. He promised to call back in two hours with some answers. And, when they arrived, every one of those answers was precisely what Jimmy guessed they would be.

The break-in occurred eighteen minutes after Jane Camaro returned home. Fred did not hear the alarm because he was watching television. He was alerted by a chauffeur who rushed in through the front door and said he saw a couple of hoodlums running away from a big Lincoln automobile with a smashed windshield and an alarm blaring.

Fred saw the chauffeur fleetingly, and identified him as a guy who could have been Italian or Puerto Rican. And yes, he had studied a rerun of the film and identified a figure leaving the building who could have been Jane. But she had turned away from the camera as she walked through the foyer, covering her face with a magazine. It may not have been Jane, because she was walking kind of funny. But it could have been. Anyway, she was carrying a medium-sized suitcase.

Carla Martin, you are one very professional lady. Jimmy Ramshawe’s admiration was sincere.

Right now, he had about three hundred coincidences. And in Jimmy’s mind, they added up to one large warning light. Someone was most certainly determined to eliminate Admiral Morgan. But he doubted Arnold would believe him.

He was right about that too. “I guess it’s possible,” the great man grunted. “But I’m not running my life around the antics of some goddamned barmaid. I got a lot of security, and it’ll be as good in London as it is here. Jesus Christ, Jimmy, leave it alone. Why don’t you check out that Iranian submarine at the eastern end of the Med? I see it’s only about two hundred miles from a U.S. carrier. That’s too close. Call me.”

The phone went down with a crash. Arnold, of course, never said good-bye to anyone. Not even the president. Jimmy usually chuckled at this gruff eccentricity. But he found nothing amusing today. Absolutely nothing.

The Russian-built Type 877 Kilo-class submarine, owned by the Iranian Navy, slid through clear ocean waters five hundred miles south of Italy ’s Gulf of Taranto. Her captain was Mohammed Abad, who had twelve officers, fifty-three crew, and one guest under his command. The guest, General Ravi Rashood, C-in-C Hamas, had come aboard off the coast of Lebanon, delivered by a Syrian Army helicopter.

These were strange seas for the Iranians, who normally patrolled only the Gulf and the Arabian Sea. But this particular submarine had just emerged from refit conducted in her birthplace, the Admiralty Yards in St. Petersburg, on the shores of the Baltic. It had been commissioned back in November 1996, and it had not been necessary to return to Russia since then. The engineers at Iran’s submarine base, Chah Bahar on the northwest shores of the Gulf of Oman, had been more than competent.

However, Hull Number 901 had experienced some major mechanical difficulties eighteen months previously and had missed an Indian Naval Review. With her propulsion system on the blink, the Kilo had been towed behind a Russian frigate all the way back to the Baltic. Now, restored to pristine fighting condition, she had spent three months at the eastern end of the Med, patrolling the waters off Beirut and generally making the Americans very jumpy.

There were certain admirals in the Pentagon, and one in Chevy Chase, who thought she should have been sunk, forthwith, in deep water. There could, after all, be only one possible reason why the Islamic Republic of Iran should deploy one of her four diesel-electric inshore submarines in the Eastern Med. And that reason was all-purpose-to assist the terrorist organizations Iran had financed and supplied for so long.

According to U.S. Naval Intelligence, that could mean anything from supplying missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon to opening fire on Israeli warships-the Russian Kilos carried 18 torpedoes-or perhaps even sinking a U.S. warship, since there is often an American fleet patrolling these volatile seas. This latter course of action would almost certainly turn into a suicide mission for the Iranians, but with Allah awaiting the crew in Paradise on the other side of the bridge, and sounding the three trumpets, this is not considered a bad fate for Muslim extremists. At least it’s never deterred them before.

The Type 877 Kilo is a formidable opponent for even the most modern surface ship, because she bristles with state-of-the-art radar surface-search systems. Underwater, she is even more dangerous, equipped with the highly efficient Russian Shark’s Teeth sonar.

She’s silent under five knots and can dive to seven hundred feet. Her range is six thousand miles cruising at seven knots. However, her single shaft and 3,650-hp electronic engine can drive her through the depths of the ocean at greater speeds. If she struck hard, however, underwater against an opposing warship, she would be damn near impossible to find if the CO cut her speed.

The Russians have long gloried in the potential of this export-only submarine. Indeed, they have a big four-color trade advertisement which reads “THE KILO CLASS SUBMARINE-the only soundless creature in the sea.” And when they wrote that ad, they had Hull 901 in mind. The address in St. Petersburg, complete with phone, fax, and E-mail, is that of RUBIN, Russia’s central design bureau for marine engineering.