That might be true, but Buck also wanted his colleague to keep an eye on me. So, knowing I could dump her anytime, I said, “All right.” Buck wasn’t telling me what his next move was, and I didn’t ask. Maybe he was going to take a nap.
Buck wished us luck and offered me his hand, but I didn’t take it, and reminded him, “We have unfinished business.”
Tess and I walked through the graveyard back to the Blazer.
She asked me, “Do you believe what Buck is suggesting?”
“Do you?”
She walked on in silence, then replied, “It’s just so beyond anything I can imagine…”
Well, Albert Einstein imagined it long before the first bomb was even built, and that’s why we carry radiation detectors. I asked her, “When did you know about this?”
“I wasn’t fully briefed until I called Buck from the diner.”
That could be true, considering she didn’t want me to crash Tamorov’s party. The problem with compartmented information is that nobody knows what the hell is going on. Or why they’re doing what they’re doing. If the police operated like that, they’d never make an arrest.
She added, “When I told Buck that our three Russians took off in an amphibious craft, he suspected something was up.”
“He suspected something was up long before tonight. That’s why he was in New York and not Washington. And that’s why he stuck me with you.”
She didn’t reply.
I always believed that 9/11 never would have happened if these people talked straight to each other. Now we were looking at something that would make 9/11 look like a bad day at the office.
We reached the Blazer and I said, “I’m driving,” and got behind the wheel.
Tess got in the passenger side and reached back into the rear where all the toys were kept, including the pocket-sized portable radiation detector, which she placed on the console between us.
She asked, “May I have my gun back?”
I handed her her Glock and her creds.
I drove back to the road and headed out of the Shinnecock Reservation.
I looked at the portable radiation detector. There are two ways to detect radiation. One of them is with a PRD before nuclear fission takes place, and the other is too late.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As the last of the twilight disappeared on the western horizon, the amphibious craft carrying Vasily Petrov, Viktor Gorsky, and Dr. Arkady Urmanov approached a long white yacht sitting at anchor in international waters, twelve nautical miles off the coast of Southampton.
The yacht was named Hana, which Petrov knew meant “happiness” in Arabic. Happiness will be at planned time and place.
The yacht’s portholes and decks were aglow, and Petrov noticed a green-and-white flag flying from the stern, which he knew was not a national flag, but the personal ensign of His Royal Highness, Prince Ali Faisel of Saudi Arabia.
The helmsman brought the amphibious craft around to the starboard side of the two-hundred-and-twenty-foot super yacht, and the twelve ladies onboard became excited as they realized this was where they were heading. Several of them stood, and the second crewman motioned them to sit.
Petrov said to the ladies in Russian, “If you fall overboard, we will not rescue you.”
The ladies laughed, and Petrov smiled.
Viktor Gorsky, the SVR assassin, snapped, “Sit!”
The ladies sat.
Petrov looked at Urmanov sitting across from him. The man seemed far away, and Petrov said to him, “Doctor, is your mind working on mathematical formulas? Or are you seasick?”
Urmanov looked at his compatriot, but did not reply.
Petrov was annoyed with the man, and more annoyed at the GRU idiots who had chosen Urmanov for this mission. Urmanov was becoming a problem as he understood the reality of what he had agreed to do.
The amphibious craft continued on a course toward the starboard side of the yacht, and as they drew closer Petrov could see a large door in the hull partly below the waterline—what was called a shell door—about fifteen meters from the stern.
As the amphibious craft approached, the door began to open upward, letting the sea into the hull.
This, Petrov had been told, was a unique feature of this ship. Most garage doors were above the waterline, and the tender craft was pulled into the ship’s garage by means of a ramp and a winch. But the Italian shipbuilders who had designed The Hana had devised a float-in dock for the prince so that the garage could be flooded and a small craft could sail directly in and out of the hull without the delay or discomfort of a ramp and winch. Wonderful engineering, Petrov thought, and as it turned out this special feature solved one of his and Moscow’s problems—the problem of how to mask the radiation of the nuclear device that would later come onboard The Hana. The device had a lead radiation shield that had once been sufficient, but no longer was because of the more sophisticated American radiation detectors now in use. Thousands of liters of water, however, along with the lead shield, would ensure that the American radiation detectors in New York Harbor would stay dark and silent.
In fact, the greatest fear of the American nuclear security forces was something like this—an explosive nuclear device attached underwater on the hull of a ship coming into an American port. Well, Petrov thought, the Americans’ worst fears were about to be realized, though this nuclear device would not be attached to the outside hull of the ship where the Americans had sonar devices to detect unusual shapes on the hull; this nuclear device would be submerged inside the flooded watertight compartment of The Hana where it would be undetectable.
Petrov exchanged glances with Gorsky and they both nodded.
The helmsman pointed his bow at the open door, then cut the throttles as the craft slipped through the opening into the flooded garage. There was a dock on either side of the garage and the helmsman steered to the one toward the stern where deckhands awaited them. The opposite dock was empty, Petrov noted, but not for long. Tonight, another small craft, a lifeboat, would be arriving from a Russian fishing trawler—the fish is swimming—and that fishing trawler would deliver a small package of death, no larger than a steamer trunk, but with enough atomic energy inside it to level Lower Manhattan.
Petrov looked at Dr. Urmanov, who had been given very few details of the operation, but who knew that the device would be arriving and that his job was to ensure that it was operational and armed. Urmanov had actually designed these miniature nuclear weapons—what the Americans called suitcase nukes—in the 1970s, and they had worked perfectly in tests when new. But they were complex and temperamental, and they needed periodic maintenance and a technician to properly arm them—or the inventor himself, if a major problem was discovered. The device that was to be delivered to the yacht, Petrov knew, would yield ten to twelve kilotons of atomic energy. Petrov would have liked a bigger device, but twelve kilotons was the limit of these miniaturized devices that were designed to be small, relatively light, self-contained, and easily transported—like a steamer trunk, perfect to take aboard a ship or plane. Petrov smiled.
Suddenly a set of underwater lights came on, creating a dramatic effect that excited the ladies, and one of them exclaimed, “Just like in a James Bond movie!”