back, what-a couple of-”
“If you have to ask, you can’t afford it,” Hawke said, quoting a fine old sport-fishing boat-builder from Florida he’d known, an old salt named Rybovich.
“Boss,” Stoke said, eyeing the colorful signal pennants running from bow to stern up and across the tops of the three giant carbon fiber masts. Each flag was an international letter, understood only by mariners. “You know, older I get, more my maritime alphabet gets a little rusty. I know you got an important message spelled out up there in the rigging-what do the flags say, anyway?”
Hawke looked at Stoke and smiled. “You would ask that, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, I know you never miss an opportunity to mess with folks’ heads, that’s all. ’Specially when it comes to putting out special flag messages on your boat, knowing most people can’t read ’em.”
Hawke said, “Those particular flags read: ‘Rarely does one have the privilege to witness vulgar ostentation displayed on such an epic scale.’ ”
Brock and Stoke both laughed out loud. It was vintage Alex Hawke and reminded them that the man in charge always believed you could still have fun, even when the mission was deadly serious. It actually increased your chances of survival and success. Both men had witnessed it many times.
Istanbul’s Barbaros Yacht shipyard, where Blackhawke had been built and was now riding at anchor, was located just east of the city on the left bank of the Bosporus. The size of Hawke’s new yacht was completely and utterly out of scale with anything nearby. The flotilla of handmade, hand-painted fishing boats, the large tourist ferries traveling back and forth across the Bosporus, even Hawke’s palatial hotel standing on the shoreline, all were dwarfed by its presence.
Blackhawke had kept hundreds of Turkish workers employed for more than a million man-hours over four years. This had made the British owner something of a celebrity in Istanbul, a fact he had learned only when he checked into the hotel and found that he’d been upgraded to the presidential suite. His choice of the Barbaros yard had brought Turkey’s shipbuilders long-sought international visibility. In the local papers he was portrayed as something of a hero, his vessel a symbol of Turkish pride.
From the ship’s bridge, the vessel had a commanding view of the strait separating Europe from Asia. The $200 million yacht, its three-hundred-twenty-foot hull a gleaming jet black, was anchored within sight of the Ciragan Imperial Palace, now a five-star hotel that reeked of marbled opulence, flower petals in every fountain and in every warm bath run by the staff for tired guests.
Arriving a day later than expected, Hawke had taken rooms there to be near his new vessel. When he saw his suite, he felt like Suleiman the Magnificent, gazing through the opened French doors at his magnificent Blackhawke, lit up against the purple night sky with halogen lights from stem to stern.
Stoke and Harry arrived at the Palace, jet-weary and fresh from the hellish Hotel Metropol in Moscow. Upon seeing their splendorous rooms overlooking the sea, they felt like they’d died and gone to heaven. Upon arrival, they’d decided to find out the true meaning of a “Turkish bath” and had met Hawke in the bar for cocktails afterward with smiles on their faces. Hawke didn’t ask.
Once the men were inside the bridge, which boasted a forty-foot curved control panel that looked somewhat more sophisticated than the space shuttle, Badie asked the new owner to have a seat in the captain’s command chair, a lushly padded black leather throne on a stout chromed column that raised and lowered hydraulically.
“Looks like Captain Kirk in that chair,” Stoke said, and Brock stifled a laugh. Harry was literally awestruck by the vessel. He dreamed of cruising the world’s oceans, circumnavigating the globe, sailing to Antarctica and rounding Cape Horn. All in a cocoon of mahogany and oceans of wine he couldn’t begin to name much less afford.
“This is a lot of boat,” he said to Hawke, who smiled and replied, “As Hillary Clinton once said, Harry: It takes a village.”
Abdullah Badie cleared his throat and gained their attention.
“With respect, I’d like to show you gentlemen some video footage that was recorded by Blackhawke ’s underwater surveillance cameras just moments after midnight last night. There are four oscillating cameras mounted on the hull below the waterline: one at the bow, one at the stern, and two amidships-one to port, the other to starboard. The screens above you will show the feeds from all four cameras, equipped with IR lenses for nighttime visibility. Roll tape, please.”
The screens flickered, but remained black.
“Please be patient a few seconds. While we wait I will remind you gentlemen that you were all supposed to arrive yesterday morning and be sleeping aboard Blackhawke last night, no?”
Hawke said, “Yes, but I was informed by your staff that the air-conditioning was not working and that none of the French bed linens nor any of the silver or china had arrived. Held up in Customs at the airport. So I elected to check into the Palace.”
“I certainly understand. We’re working with Customs officials now, Lord Hawke. We intend to remedy this unfortunate situation shortly. I assure you, you will all be sleeping aboard this evening. It will be-how do you say- shipshape.”
Suddenly a loud, keening alarm sounded on the speakers. On the screens, a wavering blue-white orb appeared, moving closer at about eight knots.
“Hell is that?” Stoke said.
“You will see momentarily, when it makes a sharp turn to port,” Badari said. “Now-you see it-the profile?”
“I see it, but what the hell is it?”
“A two-man submarine. European-built, four tons, called a Comsub. Look, here come two more, one to either side. That alarm you heard was the ship’s underwater sonar array registering three intruders breaching our half- mile security perimeter.”
Hawke and his two men stared at the three oncoming wafers of light, eerie in the blackness of the sea.
The lead sub turned hard left. You could make out its rounded shape, a long torpedo-like cigar, with a raised and windowed cockpit. But suspended underneath it hung another object, also torpedo shaped. The flanking subs turned to port as well, continued for a few hundred yards, and then all three turned to starboard, now heading directly toward the cameras.
“Torpedoes?” Hawke said quietly. The tense atmosphere on the bridge was suddenly palpable.
“Yes, sir. Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAMs, antiship weapons.”
Hawke watched, mesmerized.
“Watch carefully,” Abdullah said. “Now, they launch the JDAMs!”
All three were launched simultaneously, streaking forward toward Hawke’s yacht. They instantly separated, one appearing to head for the bow, one for the stern, and one directly amidships.
“Holy shit,” Brock said. “What the-”
At the bottom of the screen, three smaller torpedoes could be seen streaking toward the incoming JDAMs.
“Our ATT system in action,” Abdullah said, “Anti-torpedo torpedoes. Only seven inches in diameter and one- oh-five inches long but they pack an enormous punch and their acoustic sensors cannot be evaded by electronic countermeasures. The ATT’s microprocessors rapidly calculate all acoustic information and make timely maneuvers to intercept the incoming threat.”
A second later, three huge underwater explosions roughly a quarter of a mile from Blackhawke. The three two-man subs instantly turned tail to run, their propellers churning furiously.
Now, three more torpedoes could be seen streaking after the fleeing subs.
“Those are offensive weapons,” Badie said, “called VLTs, or very lightweight torpedoes. They are all that is necessary in this case. We also have ship-killer JDAMs in the Blackhawke arsenal.”
Three more explosions, less violent, but just as deadly. There was nothing left of the three submarines or their crews that was distinguishable in the water.
“My God,” Hawke said. He knew about the vessel’s armament and defense systems, but he’d no idea they’d be tested before he even took her to sea.
“They were meant for you, sir. That is my belief. Whoever staged this attack was aware of your plans and believed you would be sleeping aboard the vessel last night and not at the hotel.”
Hawke looked at Stoke and Brock, the two men in a state of semishock. After the havoc they’d wreaked in
