form, but the current situation had a safety margin so thin that you could sec
through it. Then there was the issue of getting out, the pilot reminded him-
self. He might as well have joined the Navy.
“Nice house.”
The rules were different in time of war, Murray told himself. Computers
made it easier, a fact that the Bureau had been slow to learn. Assembling
his team of young agents, the first task had been to run nothing more so-
phisticated than a credit check, which gave an address. The house was
somewhat upscale, but within the reach, barely, of a supergrade federal
employee if he’d saved his pennies over the years. That was something
Cook had not done, he saw. The man did all his banking at First Virginia,
and the FBI had a man able to break into the bank records, far enough to
see that, like most people, Christopher Cook had lived largely from one bi-
weekly paycheck to the next, saving a mere fourteen thousand dollars
along the way, probably for the college education of his kids, and that,
Murray knew, was on the dumb side of optimistic, what with the cost of
American higher education. More to the point, when he’d settled on the
new house, the savings had gone untouched. He had a mortgage, but the
amount was less than two hundred thousand dollars, and with the hundred-
eighty realized from the sale of his previous home, that left a sizable gap
that bank records could not explain. Where had the other money come
from? A call to a contact at the IRS, proposing a possible case of tax eva-
sion, had turned up other computerized records, enough to show that there
was no additional family income to explain it; a check of antecedents
showed that the parents of both the Cooks, all deceased, had not left either
husband or wile with a windfall. Their cars, a further check showed, were
paid for, and while one of them was four years old, another was a Buick
that probably had the original smell still inside, and that also had been pur-
(. hased with cash. What they had was a man living beyond his means, and
while the government had often enough failed to make note of that in espi-
onage cases, it had learned a little of late.
“Well?” Murray asked his people.
“It’s not a case yet, but it sure as hell smells like one,” the next-senior
agent thought. “We need to visit some banks and get a look at more rec-
ords.” For which a court order was required, but they already knew which
Itidge to go to for that. The FBI always knew which judges were tame and
which were not.
Similar checks, of course, had been run on Scott Adler, who, they found,
was divorced, living alone in a Georgetown flat, paying alimony and child
support, driving a nice car, but otherwise very normal. Secretary Hanson
was quite wealthy from years of practicing law, and a poor subject for at-
tempted bribery. The extensive background checks run on all the subjects for
their government offices and security clearances were reexamined and
found to be normal, except for Cook’s recent auto and home purchases.
Somewhere along the line they’d find a canceled check drawn on some bank
or other to explain the easy house settlement. That was one nice thing about
hanks. They had records on everything, and it was always on some sort of
paper, and it always left a trail.
“Okay, we will proceed on the assumption that he’s our boy.” The Dep-
uty Assistant Director looked around at the bright group of agents who, like
him, had neglected to consider the possibility that Barbara binders had been
on a prescription medication that had acted with the brandy Ed Kealty had
once kept close at all times. Their collective embarrassment was as great as
his own. Not an entirely bad thing, Dan thought. You worked hard to restore
your credibility after a goof.
Jackson felt the hard thump of the carrier landing, then the snapping deceler-
ation of the arrester wire as he was pressed hard into the back-facing passen-
ger seat of the COD. Another odious experience over, he thought. He much
preferred to land on a carrier with his own hands on the controls, uncomfort-
able with trusting his life to some teenage lieutenant, or so they now all
looked to the Admiral. He felt the aircraft turn to the right, heading off to an
unoccupied portion of the flight deck, and presently a door opened and he
hustled out. A deck crewman saluted, pointing him to an open door in the
carrier’s island structure. The ship’s bell was there, and as soon as he got
under cover, a Marine saluted, and a bosun’s mate worked the striker on the
hell, announcing into the i-MC system, “Task Force Seventy-Seven, arriv-
ing.”
” Welcome aboard, sir,” Bud Sanchc/. said with a grin, looking very natty
in Ins High! suii. “Captain’s on the bridge, sir.”
“Then let’s gel to work.”
“How’s the leg, Robby?” the CAG asked halfway up the third ladder.
“Still as hell after all the sitting.” It had taken time. The briefing at Pearl
I larbor, the Air Force flight to Eniwetok, then waiting for the C-2A to show
up to bring him to his command. Jackson was beyond jet lag, but for all that,
eager now, about noon, he thought, according to where the sun was.
“Is the cover story holding?” Sanchez asked next.
“No telling, Bud. Until we get there.” Jackson allowed a Marine to open
the door to the wheelhouse. His leg really was stiff, just one more reminder
that flight operations were over for him.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” the CO said, looking up from a sheaf of dis-
patches.
The roar of afterburners told Jackson that Johnnie Reb was conducting
flight operations, and he looked quickly forward to see a Tomcat leap off the
port-forward cat. The carrier was about halfway between the Carolines and
Wake. The latter island was somewhat closer to the Marianas, and for that
reason was not being used for anything. Wake had a fine airfield, still sup-
ported by the Air Force. Eniwetok was just a recovery field, known to be
such, and therefore made a more covert base for staging aircraft, if a far less
convenient one for maintaining them.
“Okay, what’s been happening since I left Pearl?” Jackson asked.
“Some good news.” The CO handed over one of the dispatches.
“It’s definite as hell.” Jones said, leaning over the sonar traces.
“They sure are in a hurry,” Mancuso agreed, his eyes plotting speed and
distance and not liking what they saw, further confirming what Jones sus-
pected.
“Who’s waiting for them1.'”
“Ron, we can’t
“Sir, I can’t be much help to you if I don’t know,” Jones observed rea-
sonably. “You think I’m a security risk or something?”
Mancuso thought for a lew seconds before answering. “Tennessee’s
lying right overtop the Eshunadaoki Seamount, supporting a special opera-
tion that goes off in the next twenty-four hours.”
‘ ‘And the rest of the Chios’?”
“Just off Ulithi Atoll, heading north a little slower now. The SSN force
will lead the carrier in. The Ohios are tasked to get inside early.” Which all
made sense, Jones thought. The boomers were too slow to operate effec-
tively with a carrier task force, which he’d also been tracking on SOSUS, but
they were ideal for getting inside a patrol line of SSKs … so long as the
skippers were smart about it. There was always that consideration.
“The Jap ‘cans will be about on top ol’Tennessee right about-”
“I know.”
“What else do you have for me?” ComSubPac asked briskly.
Jones led him over to the wall chart. There were now seven SSK-sil-
houettes circled on the display, with only one “?”-marked. That one, they
saw, was in the passage between the northernmost of the Marianas, called
Moug, and the Bonins, the most famous of which was Iwo Jima.
“We’ve been trying to concentrate on this passage,” Jones said. “I’ve
gotten a few twitches, but nothing firm enough to plot. If I were them,
though, I’d cover that area.”
“So would I,” Chambers confirmed. One likely move for the Americans
would be to put a submarine patrol line astride the Luzon Strait, to attempt to
interdict oil traffic to the Japanese mainland. That was a political decision,
however. Pacific Fleet did not yet have authorization to attack Japanese mer-
chantmen, and intelligence reported that at the moment most of the tanker
traffic in and out was composed of flag-of-convenience shipping, attacks on
which had all sorts of political ramifications. We couldn’t risk offending Li-
beria, Mancuso told himself with a grimace. Could we?
“Why the speed-run for the ‘cans back home?” Jones asked. It was not
something that appeared very sensible.
“We hammered their air defenses last night.”
“Okay, so they’ll scoot west of the Bonins . . . that means I’ll lose them