The Chief of Staff turned to the NID. “Doug?”

The NID stood up and walked to a nearby monitor, which came to life showing a satellite view of Slipstone. The image was in shades of gray, save for a few spots of orange-red.

“These are radioactive hot spots around Slipstone. We’ve coordinated satellite coverage with the EPA to find the limits of the contamination and quarantine the water supply. So far, it looks like there is no leakage into the surrounding ground water or geological structures.”

“What are we talking about here?” asked the Chief of Staff. “What’s the contaminate?”

“Cesium 137. It’s a common waste element produced when uranium and/or plutonium are bombarded by neutrons. In essense, it’s radioactive waste from either a reactor or the remnants of bomb production. Unfortunately, in the world of nuclear physics, cesium is a dime a dozen. Finding precisely where it came from is doable, but it’s going to take some time.”

“How persistent is this stuff?” asked Homeland Security. “How long before the town is habitable again?”

“The half-life of cesium 137 particles is thirty years. In other words, Slipstone will be off-limits to all human life long after most of us are dead.”

THEmeeting was adjourned and Fisher sat in silence, watching the attendees file out.

He was stunned. He’d heard the initial death toll predictions, but hearing them recited in such clinical fashion chilled him. Five thousand dead . . . Slipstone a ghost town, uninhabitable for a generation or more. . .

Lambert appeared before the screen. Over his shoulder, the situation room was empty.

“So: You heard.”

“I heard,” Fisher replied.

“Here’s how it’s going to happen: By the close of business today, Congress will officially name the government of Iran as the perpetrator of the Tregoand Slipstone attacks. In a unanimous vote they’ll reaffirm the President’s authority to use all available military force in response. By this time tomorrow, the Joint Chiefs will have an operational plan on the Secretary of Defense’s desk. Forty-eight hours from now, a U.S. Navy battle group will begin moving toward the Gulf of Oman.”

It would happen, of that Fisher was certain. Whether it would precisely match Lambert’s scenario he didn’t know, but what his boss had just described was a fair prediction of what was coming. The only evidence that contradicted the seemingly irrefutable Iranian angle was his report of a Chinese crew aboard the Duroc,now scattered along with its crew on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

The question was, how and when would the President choose to respond to the attacks? Full-scale war with boots on the ground in Iran; precision air strikes; tactical nuclear weapons?

“Where does this leave us?” Fisher asked.

“Same place, just a tighter deadline. If there’s something more to all this, we’re running out ot time to find it. But wherever the evidence leads, we have to have all of it. Grim, are you on?”

“I’m here. Sam, two items of interest: One, the data you pulled from the Duroc’s helm console was heavily encrypted—another Marcus Greenhorn masterpiece, but so far it looks like other than the trip from its home port in Port St. Lucie to the Bahamas, it had been up and down the Atlantic Coast, following the deep-sea fishing lanes with a couple stops in Savannah, Hilton Head, Charleston—places like that.

“The stomping grounds of the yacht-owning rich and famous,” Fisher said.

“You got it. I’m still working on an owner, but whoever the Durocbelongs to, they’re wealthy. Item number two: We’ve traced the serial numbers you took from the Trego’s engines. According to Lloyd’s of London, the engines were installed two years ago aboard a freighter named Sogonat Kolobane Shipyard in Dakar, Senegal.”

“Nassiri claims he boarded the Tregooff the coast of Mauritania,” Fisher said. “Dakar’s only a hundred miles from the border.”

“And I’ll give you ten to one the Sogonand Tregoare one in the same,” Lambert said.

“Either that, or it was a swap. Do we know where the Sogonis now?”

Grimsdottir said, “I’m looking. As for the shipyard: I’ve tried to hack into their computer system, but it’s rudimentary at best—e-mail and little more. All records are likely kept as hard copies in the shipyard itself.”

Fisher thought for a moment, then said, “Last time I was in Dakar was two years ago.”

“Then I’d say you’re long overdue for another visit,” Lambert said. “Pack your bags.”

24

DAKAR, SENEGAL

FISHERpulled his Range Rover off the road onto a dirt tract bordered on each side by jungle, and then doused his headlights and coasted to a stop. He shut off the engine and sat in silence—or what passed for silence here. He was surrounded by a symphony of the jungle’s night sounds: chirping frogs, cawing birds, and, high in the canopy, the shrieking and rustling of monkeys disturbed by his arrival.

Though he was officially within the city limits of Dakar, the jungle refused to be tamed as it tried to encircle and retake the urban areas. Since his arrival that morning, Fisher had seen hundreds of laborers along Senegal’s roads, hacking at the foliage with machetes.

So much the better,he thought. Like water, for him the jungle meant cover, a place for stealthy approach; escape; evasion; ambush. He slapped at a bug buzzing around his ear, and was instantly reminded of the one thing he didn’t like about the jungle.

He’d been to Dakar twice, the first time during his SEAL days when he and a team had been dispatched to track and eliminate a French black market arms dealer who’d been arming both sides of a brush war between Mali and Mauritania. Thousands had died on both sides, many of them child-soldiers, and thousands more would die in the months to come if the Frenchman had his way. He didn’t get his way; he’d never gotten out of jungles along the Senegal-Mali border.

Dakar had been founded as a French colonial outpost by residents of the nearby island of Goree, and had over the last century and a half grown into a major commercial hub on the West African coast, an exotic mixture of French culture and Islamic architeture.

Fisher got out, grabbed his duffel from the backseat, then walked a dozen meters into the jungle. He quickly traded his Bermuda shorts and T-shirt for his tac-suit, web harness, and guns, then tucked the duffel into some foliage and set off at a trot.

ONEmile and eight minutes later, he saw a clearing appear through the branches. He stopped and crept to the edge of the tree line and crouched down. Ahead of him lay a fifty-foot-wide tract of ground that had been burned clear of jungle; beyond that was Kolobane Shipyard’s eastern fence: twelve feet tall and topped with razor-tipped concertina wire. On the other side of the fence was more open ground, an acre of weeds and grass that gave way to the shipyard’s outer buildings, a double line of low storage huts separated by a dirt road. Over their roofs he could see several cranes. Here and there klieg lights mounted atop telephone poles cast circles of light on the roads below.

While Kolobane was the busiest shipyard on the African coast between Morrocco to the north and Angola to the south, the shipyard had only enough work to keep it busy during the day. At night it was staffed only by security and maintainence crews.

Fisher pulled out his binoculars and scanned the area, first in NV mode, then in IR. According to Grimsdottir’s brief, the shipyard maintained a skeleton staff of roving patrols. Before he moved into the yard he wanted a feeling for their routes and schedules.