The Silent Man

eternity of hot dry days.

Further orders weren’t long in coming. Twice in two days, Williams was ordered to check on ships that the NSA’s satellites deemed worthy of a closer look. Each time he’d put up the SH-60B Seahawk helicopter the Decatur carried, though each time he’d been sure they were wrong. In one case, the target looked too wide to him to be the Juno, and in the other too tall.

When the helo came back empty-handed the second time, Williams decided that he wasn’t going to wait to be told what to do next. The NSA might have the satellites, but it didn’t know squat about ships. He was going with his gut now, and his gut told him that the Juno was nowhere near West Africa. Why would it be? If it had followed the route on its original manifest, it would have reached Lagos weeks before. On the other hand, if it had made a drop off the American coast, it probably would have turned away, sailed southeast at full speed to get into the open Atlantic as quickly as possible. In that case, it would be west of him, and possibly south as well, depending on its speed. Williams decided to head southwest, back where he’d been when his orders arrived. He knew the risk he was taking, ignoring a direct order from the Atlantic Fleet command, and he didn’t care.

“You sure you want to do this,” the Decatur’s executive officer said.

“Until they take my ship from me, I’m running it as I see fit.”

OVERNIGHT THEY RAN southwest at twenty-five knots into the open ocean. By morning, Norfolk was asking where they were. “Better fishing in deep waters,” Williams messaged back. Let them chew on that for a while.

He put the Seahawk in the air and ordered it to push south to the limits of its fuel tanks and to notify him of any ship that remotely resembled the Juno. Three hours later, it came back, dry and empty. He ordered it refueled and sent out again, this time to the southwest. The mission was a waste of fuel, a 10,000-to-1 shot. The helicopter faced the same problem as the satellites. It had to fly close to the waves so it could see the details of the boats below, but staying low limited its field of vision.

But somehow Williams wasn’t surprised when the call came in an hour later. Eighty nautical miles to the southwest of the Decatur, the SH-60’s pilot had spotted a freighter that matched the Juno’s basic design. “Wants to know if they should take a look,” Stan Umsle, the Decatur’s tactical information officer, said.

“Go for it,” Williams said.

Two minutes later, the radio buzzed again. Umsle listened. “You’re not going to believe this, sir. The boat, it’s headed southeast, 165 degrees, fourteen knots. And they’re certain it’s the Juno.”

“How do they know?”

“They say it’s got Juno painted on the side in big white letters.”

“Good enough for me.” Somehow Williams kept his tone steady, though he wanted to howl in joy. Finding this boat might not save his career, but at least he could retire now with his head up, as something more than the captain who’d nearly started a war between America and China. “Take us to thirty knots, heading two hundred,” he said to Umsle. “Now.”

Then he called Rear Admiral Josh Rogers, who was overseeing the western half of the search from Norfolk, with the good news. Rogers listened in silence, then said, “I don’t suppose I should ask why you were three hundred nautical miles from where you were told to be.”

“No, sir,” Williams said. “You shouldn’t.”

Williams half-expected Rogers to tell him to wait so the navy could bring in the SEALs. Instead, Rogers ordered him to make the interdiction as soon as possible. “Ask nicely first. But if they don’t stop, you are authorized to disable their engines.”

“I don’t mean to be a stickler, but under what authority, sir? This is open ocean and they’ve got as much right to be on it as we do. They’re not even headed for an American port.”

“If that ship is carrying nuclear material, it’s violating who knows how many United States laws and UN resolutions. Tell them whatever you want, but stop them. If they’re clean, we’ll offer a thousand apologies for wasting their precious time.”

“Yes, sir, Admiral. We’ll get it done.”

“Roger that.” Rogers hung up.

Williams looked at Umsle. “Lieutenant, get a tac team ready to board the Juno. I’m not sure what law or UN resolution or intergalactic ordinance we’re going to use as an excuse, but we’re going in.”

“Intergalactic ordinance, sir?”

“Just get a team together. Make sure they know what they’re looking for.” Williams went up to the Decatur’s bridge and sent his executive officer down to manage the combat information center. He wanted to see this ship for himself.

Intercepting the Juno, which was traveling in a straight line at a piddling eleven knots, was almost embarrassingly easy for the Decatur. Within two hours, the freighter was visible from the destroyer’s bridge, a speck on the ocean to the southwest. A half-hour after that, the two ships were less than five nautical miles apart, and the Juno was clearly outlined against the sea.

In another fifteen minutes, the Decatur and the freighter were sailing parallel. The destroyer towered over the Juno, twice as long and almost three times as high. Even if the freighter had been larger, the missile launchers and guns that sprouted from the deck of the Decatur left no doubt which vessel was in charge.

“We have radio contact?” Williams asked the bridge communications officer.

“Yes, sir.”

Williams grabbed his headset. “This is Captain Henry Williams of the United States Navy. To whom am I speaking?”

“Captain Alvar Haxhi.” Haxhi had a heavy Eastern European accept. No surprise. Lots of ship captains were from Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania.

“You are the commander of the Juno, registered in Monrovia, Liberia?”

“That is correct.”

“Captain Haxhi, by order of the United States Navy, you are commanded to stop so my men can board and search your vessel.”

“Under what law of the sea do you make this demand?” The captain sounded surprisingly unworried given the circumstances.

“We have reason to believe your vessel is carrying sensitive material that belongs to the United States government. If you don’t allow us to board, I’ve been authorized to use deadly force.”

A pause. “Then I suppose I have no choice.”

THE BOARDING WENT smoothly enough. Over the radio, Williams asked Haxhi to come to the Decatur so he could be interviewed about the Juno’s movements.

“I will not leave my ship,” Haxhi said.

“Under any circumstances?”

“You and I both know this boarding is very much illegal, Captain. I allow it because I must. But I will not leave my men.”

Williams had to respect that attitude. “Then I’ll come to you.”

A half-hour later, Williams was sitting with Haxhi in the captain’s cabin on the Juno, an unadorned white-painted room ten feet square. The cabin stank of Eastern European cigarettes and was furnished with a metal desk, a full-sized wooden bed, and a dresser, all bolted to the floor. Two photographs of a pretty young woman were taped over his desk, Haxhi’s wife or girlfriend or maybe even his daughter, and a couple of Albanian novels lay on his bed. Otherwise, the cabin was devoid of any signs of personality, except for the putting green nailed to the floor.

“You like to golf?” Williams said.