Frederick Forsyth - The Afghan

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 harbor. It wiped the city off the map. It still rates as the biggest nonnuclear explosion in history.” “I have to report, Steve, and I am not going to enjoy it,” he said as they shook hands on the tarmac. “By the way, if countermeasures 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 flight dispersal into the Arizona sunshine and marveled, 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-lil Aardvark and the F-4G Wild Weasel, and they were both serious pieces of machinery that the U.S. 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. It crouched silently amid the teeming swarm of men and women in coveralls who crawled all over its burly frame, immune to love or lust, hate or fear. Larry Duval envied his Eagle; for all its myriad complexities, it could not feel anything. It could never be afraid.

The airplane 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 test flight. So the Strike Eagle waited in the bright spring sunshine of an Arizona morning, sixty-three feet long, eighteen high and forty across, weighing in at forty thousand pounds bone-dry, and eighty-one thousand pounds maximum takeoff 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. The open utility drove up to the windows, and the two aircrew were driven the half mile to the waiting fighter. They spent ten minutes on their preflight checks, even though the chances their ground crew had missed something were extremely slim.

Once on board, they strapped themselves in, gave one last nod to the ground crew, who clambered down, headed back and left them in peace. Larry Duval started the two powerful FlOO engines, the canopy hissed down into its seals and the Eagle began to roll. It turned in to the light breeze down the runway, paused, received clearance and crouched for one last testing of the brakes. Then thirty-foot flames leaped from its twin afterburners, and Major Duval unleashed its full power.

A mile down the runway, at 185 knots, the wheels left the tarmac, and the Eagle was airborne. Wheels up, flaps up, throttles back to pull the engines out of gas-drinking afterburn mode and into military power setting. Duval set a climb rate of five thousand feet per minute, and from behind him his Wizzo gave him a compass heading for destination. At thirty thousand feet, in a pure blue sky, the Eagle leveled out. and pointed her nose northwest toward Seattle. Below, the Rockies were clothed in snow, and would stay with them all the way.

In the British Foreign Office, the final details for the transfer of the British government and its advisers to the April G8 were almost complete. The entire delegation would fly in a chartered airliner from Heathrow to JFK, New York, there to be formally met by the U.S. secretary of state. The other six, non-American delegations would fly in from six different capitals to JFK.

All the delegations would remain “air side” at the airport, a mile away from the nearest protesters outside its perimeter. The president was simply not going to allow what he called “loony tunes” to scream insults at his guest or harass them in any way. Repeats of Seattle and Genoa were not to be entertained. Transfer out of J F K would be by an air bridge of helicopters that would deposit their cargoes into a second totally sealed environment. From there, they would simply stroll into the venue of the five-day conference and be sealed in luxury and privacy. It was simple and flawless. “No one had ever thought of it before, but when you think about it it’s brilliant,” said one of the British diplomats. “Perhaps we should do it ourselves one day.”

“The even better news,” muttered an older and more experienced colleague, “is that after Gleneagles it won’t be our turn for years. Let the others cope with the security headaches for a few years.”

MAREK GUMIENNY was not long getting back to Steve Hill. He had been escorted by the director of his own agency to the White House, and had explained to the six principals the deductions that had been drawn following the receipt of a bizarre message from the unheard-of island of Labuan.

“They said much the same as before,” Gumienny reported. “Whatever it is, wherever it is, find it and destroy it.”

“The same with my government,” said Steve Hill. “No holds barred. Destroy on sight. And they want us to work together on this.” “No problem. But, Steve, my people are convinced the USA is likely to be the target, so our coastal protection takes precedence over everything else-Mideast, Asia, Europe. We have top priority over all our assets-satellites, warships, the lot. If we locate the ghost ship anywhere away from our shores, okay, we’ll divert assets to destroy it.”

The American director of national intelligence, John Negro-ponte, authorized the CIA to inform their British counterparts on a “for your eyes only” basis of the measures the States intended to take.

The defense strategy would be based on three stages: aerial surveillance, identification of vessel and check it out. Any unsatisfactory explanation, any unexplained diversion from course, would generate a physical intercept. Any resistance would entail destruction at sea.

To establish a sea territory, a line was drawn to create a complete circle of three hundred miles’ radius round the island of Labuan. From the northern curve of this circle, a line was drawn right across the Pacific to Anchorage, on the south coast of Alaska. A second line was drawn from the southern arc of the Indonesian circle southeast across the Pacific to the coast of Ecuador. The enclosed area was most of the Pacific Ocean. It included the entire western seaboard of Canada and the USA and Mexico down to Ecuador, including the Panama Canal.

There was no need to announce it yet, the White House had decided, but it was intended to monitor every ship in that triangle steaming east to the American coast. Anything leaving the triangle or heading to Asia would be left alone. The rest would be identified and checked out.

Thanks to years of pressure by a few bodies often dubbed “cranky,” there was one procedural ally. Major merchant marine shipping lines had agreed to file destination plans, as airliners file flight plans, as a matter of routine. Seventy percent of the vessels in the “check it out” zone would be on file, and the companies that owned them could contact their captains. Under the new rules, there was also an agreement that sea captains would always use specific words, known only to their owners, if they were secure. Failure to use the agreed-upon word could mean the captain was under duress.