Mark Greaney - Full Force and Effect

The radio waves, in addition to being hard to access, were also encrypted, so that anyone who could pull them out of the air couldn’t decipher the intel. Biery and his staff got around this with state-of-the-art decryption software and the massive amounts of high-tech hardware needed to run it.

But the technology had changed over the years, and now Gavin was able to access every bit of the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System’s intelligence networks, as well as other government networks, through a back door he developed through a virtual private network.

Gone now were the dishes, the miles of cabling running up and down a communications shaft, and the mainframes used just in the decoding and decrypting process. Biery did still have a mainframe here at the Alexandria building, but he was able to task it to other projects.

Gavin missed his sat dishes and his cabling. He had developed the virtual private network access to JWICS only out of necessity, after the Chinese assault on the West Odenton building meant The Campus no longer had the line-of-sight access necessary to intercept the radio traffic. Gavin lamented the loss of his massive computer and communications complex, but he was the architect of the new system, and objectively he did have to admit they were now in a newer, more secure, and better-connected location.

But there was another reason Biery missed the big Hendley Associates building in West Odenton. Up there, they had a nice cafeteria with excellent food. Here, by contrast, they had only a break room with snack machines. Of course there were restaurants nearby. Many of the employees walked the few blocks south down to King Street for lunch, but Gavin rarely took the time to go out for lunch. Usually he had pizza or sandwiches delivered from outside the building, but every mid-morning and mid-afternoon he liked a snack to keep him going, and for that he had to deal with the damn machines.

At ten-thirty a.m. Gavin was in the little break room, dropping quarters into a snack machine. He made his selection and then groaned in frustration as his fried blueberry pie got stuck between the plexiglass window and a bag of chips.

“Damn it,” he said. He banged on the glass a few times to no avail, and then started to fish through his pockets for more money, deciding this to be some omen telling him he really wanted the bag of chips as well.

While he was focused on his change, Jack Ryan and Dom Caruso came out of the stairwell into the break room.

Jack said, “Your secretary said we’d find you here. Mid-morning munchies?”

“It takes a lot of fuel to power all this brain, Ryan.”

“Oh, I understand completely,” Jack said.

Dom said, “Hey, Gav. We were just wondering if you felt like taking a little trip.”

Gavin couldn’t contain his excitement. As he spun around in surprise, several quarters flew out of his hand and bounced across the tile floor. “Hell, yes! Where and when?”

“Prague, and very soon. Like tonight.”

The fifty-six-year-old smiled broadly, and his chest heaved with excitement. “Prague? Central European intrigue. Cobblestone streets. Gas lamps. Mist. The perfect town for real cloak-and-dagger work.”

Jack rolled his eyes a little. “You’ve been reading too many spy novels. No cloak and dagger. More like sitting and watching, with you back at the hotel waiting for us to show up with a mobile phone or a laptop I’ll need cracked.”

“I can do that.” Gavin shrugged. “It’s still pretty cool.”

He looked a little dejected, so Caruso added, “If it will make you feel better, you can wear a cloak in your hotel room while you do it.”

Ryan laughed, and Biery played along. “Better than nothing, I guess.”

Dom saw the stuck fruit pie. He punched the glass window of the machine and the snack fell to the bottom. Pulling it out, Dom said, “Come on, Gavin. This shit will kill you.”

Gavin snatched the fruit pie from Dom’s hand. “No, Dominic. Shooting it out with Iranians will kill you.”

Dom gave Biery a hard look that Ryan plainly saw. Biery realized he’d screwed up. Gavin cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Okay. Well, I’d better go tell my staff they’re going to have to read an instruction manual on computers, because I won’t be here to hold their hands for a few days.” He took off toward the stairs.

Ryan looked at his cousin. “What the hell is he talking about?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Tell me.”

“Clark says we have to be trained to go it alone from time to time. To keep our work compartmentalized for the good of the whole. Something happened. I dealt with it. Now it’s time to move on.” Dom winked at his cousin and slapped him on the shoulder.

“But—”

“No but s.”

Ryan sighed. “Okay.”

16

United Nations Resolution 1874 authorizes member states, in accordance with international law, to inspect cargo in transit to and from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea if a member state determines there are reasonable grounds to believe the cargo contains materials related to weapons of mass destruction.

As with all international law, there was much gray area with this resolution, including but not limited to the types of actions that constituted suspicious behavior. And reasonable grounds could mean different things to different nations at different times, and this meant the interdiction of cargo in transit could be applied unequally in different cases.

All that said, the actions of the Emerald Endeavor , a feedermax cargo ship flying the flag of Liberia and traveling in international waters due west of the city of Inchon, were without question highly suspicious, and anyone aware of UN1874 knew that this particular resolution certainly applied to this particular situation.

The Emerald Endeavor ’s stated cargo was sugar from Cuba, and it did originate its voyage in Havana six and a half weeks earlier, but since then it had taken a strange route from the Caribbean. And one day out of the port of Batangas in the Philippines, the ship abruptly stopped transmitting its Automatic Identification System. The AIS was required on all maritime traffic of more than 300 tons, the Emerald Endeavor was 2,300 tons, so its failure to broadcast was either the result of a serious mechanical problem or else it was a clear violation of international maritime law.

Further, attempts to raise the ship via radio over the past twenty-four hours had been unsuccessful. It was possible the Emerald Endeavor ’s bridge communication system was down, but that would have been a huge problem for the captain, and the vessel steamed along in its shipping lane as if nothing were amiss, passing multiple ports of refuge as it headed north off the coast of South Korea.

Any UN member state had the authority to intercept the ship by UN rules, but not every UN member state had the ability to do so. If it was, indeed, carrying cargo in violation of international sanctions, then the crew might well resist interdiction, either by racing away at full speed or even by using weapons or other means to repel boarders, so a ship inclined to force compliance with UN1874 needed to have two things in sufficient quantities before attempting the interdiction.

Speed and guns.

It was well past midnight now, the Emerald Endeavor was just hours from entering the territorial waters of North Korea south of the port of Haeju, and it must have seemed to the North Korean captain of the ship that he was all but home free, until the moment the large blip on his radar representing a vessel outside the shipping lanes turned and began closing on him at forty-five knots, a speed impossible for a vessel of the size displayed on his screen.