“Nice to make your acquaintance on the phone, Mr. Hawk. I’ve heard plenty of stories about you.”
“Don’t believe everything you hear, Doc. But I didn’t call to chat about the exaggerated stories people tell about me. More to the point, I was wondering if you could walk me through how I could disable the device, especially if it’s something I can do from a fair distance.”
Morton sighed. “Unfortunately, if you want to disable the weapon, you’ll need to be on site to do it.”
“In other words, if it’s already underwater, I’m going to have to dive down to shut it off?”
“Precisely. I thought placing the kill switch on the torpedo launcher would be a good way to avoid the enemy being able to render it useless if they didn’t know where it was located.”
“You didn’t even consider what might happen if they decided to use it themselves?”
“I know, I know,” Morton said. “It was a huge error in judgment, but there’s nothing I can do about it in this particular situation.”
“You’re probably not aware of this, but Al Hasib intends to deploy the weapon in the Strait of Hormuz if they haven’t already, the shipping lane for more than seventeen million barrels of oil each day.”
“Oh, my. What have I done?”
“Listen, Doc. Anything useful you can tell me that would help me locate the device quickly would be helpful. The Strait of Hormuz is quite vast in size.”
“Well, there is one fail safe I included in the event that the currents moved the weapon and made it more difficult to find.”
“Go on.”
“On the operating console, there’s a button that will set off a homing beacon that will go off underwater. You should be able to hear it if you dive beneath the surface with any type of listening device.”
“What if I can’t get access to the console?” Hawk asked. “Trying to get access to the console is going to add another degree of difficulty to my mission that I’m just not sure I have time for.”
“It operates on a wireless signal,” Morton said. “If you’re savvy enough with a computer, you could potentially hack into the console and set off the homing beacon.”
“I know a person who can do that for me.”
“Good. Just tell me where to send the instructions for gaining access to the back end.”
Hawk gave Morton an email address.
“Now for the big question,” Hawk said. “How do I shut down the weapon once I locate it.”
Morton laughed nervously. “Believe it or not, that’s the easiest part. There’s a chip you can remove that would render the device inoperable. You certainly won’t be able to raise it to the surface without some heavy equipment.”
“Right now, we just want to stifle any threats. We’ll worry about salvaging anything later.”
“Fair enough. I’ll include a diagram of the launching mechanism and instructions on how to remove the chip in my email.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“No, thank you, Hawk. I’m praying you’re successful in your endeavor.”
“Pray hard,” Hawk said. “This isn’t going to be easy.”
Hawk hung up and groaned softly. The mission had seemed challenging before, but the degree of difficulty just increased significantly upon learning the only way to shut down the weapon. The only thing that gave him a little bit of confidence was the fact that he had his Navy Seal training to rely on now.
If anyone could do this, Hawk could. And he knew it—but that was little solace given the consequences should he fail.
CHAPTER 21
Washington, D.C.
NOAH YOUNG ADJUSTED HIS TIE and took a sip of water before preparing to look over the speech handed to him by one of his writers. With the rumor mill run amok, Young felt the need to use what little power afforded to him as the fill-in president to get his message out, bypassing all the news filters. He wanted the voters to hear for themselves what was really important about the election. James Peterson was not going to direct the national conversation if Young had any say in it.
Blake Mayfield approached Young’s desk several minutes before the speech was set to air.
“You don’t have to do this,” Mayfield said. “We can come up with a reason why you had to postpone.”
Young looked up at Mayfield. “Do you still think this is a bad idea?”
“It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard of, but I don’t think you stand to gain much by going on television right now and trying to deflect. The people are going to want answers to the questions Peterson raised. And if you don’t answer them, they are going to draw their own conclusions. Letting people decide for themselves what actually happened is not the best move right now.”
“Peterson can raise all the questions he wants, but what voters really want are answers to the issues that affect their everyday lives. If they feel safe and secure, they’re going to have little to complain about. People with extra change in their pocket rarely raise an uproar.”
“And is that what you think the people care about?”
“That’s what every person from the beginning of time has cared about,” Young said. “It’s a universal truth.”
“In more recent times, people have also cared about whether or not their politician is honest. That’s why Peterson’s questions have to be addressed or else people are going to assume he’s right.”
“Sorry, Blake. You’re my campaign adviser, not my campaign nanny. And right now, I’m going to head off in a different direction on this issue. I usually agree with you, but not in this instance.”
“I’m pleading with you to do this. I don’t want to see your whole campaign torpedoed over some insinuation that is patently false.”
Young shook his head. “I won’t do it.”
“Won’t? Or can’t?”
Young cleared his throat and glared at Mayfield. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to finish prepping for this speech.”
For the next ten minutes, Young read and re-read each line on the page. He
