The Afghan

“No need. Just sink her with her cargo hatches open. The port would be closed for a decade.”

“Okay,” said Marek Gumie

“Nobody out there in the shopping malls or the gas stations realizes how the whole of world trade is now geared to just-in-time delivery. No one wants to store or stockpile anymore. The T-shirt made in China that sold in Dallas on Monday probably arrived at the docks the previous Friday. Same with gasoline. “What about the Panama Canal? Or the Suez? Close them down and the whole global economy spins into chaos. You are talking damage in the hundreds of billions of dollars. There are ten other straits so narrow and so vital that sinking a really big freighter or tanker broadside would close them.” “All right,” said Marek Gumie

Chuck Hemingway produced a paper that he and Seymour had worked on earlier. “Okay, sir, we feel probability one is likely to be the taking over of a very large vessel-tanker, freighter, ore carrier-and her sinking in a narrow but vital shipping bottleneck. Measures to counter? Identify all such bottlenecks and post warships at either end. All entering vessels to be boarded by Marines.” “Christ,” said Steve Hill, “that will cause chaos. It will be claimed we are acting as pirates. What about the owners of the host waters? Don’t they have a say?”

“If the terrorists succeed, both the other ships and the coastal countries will be ruined. There need be no delays-the Marines can board without the freighter slowing down. And, frankly, the terrorists on board any ghost ship ca

“Probability two?” queried Steve Hill.

“Ru

“That is why the national owners have to share the cost burden. And it need not be a warship. If any interceptor vessel is fired on, the ghost ship is exposed, and may be sunk from the air, sir.”

Marek Gumie

“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 i

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.”