Sorry it took so long, but I've been insanely busy. I was going to finish this on Saturday night, but I got sidetracked listening to Bob Hawke on Sky. But now it is done... with another cliffhanger. Damn, I love those. And with any luck, I'll have this finished by the end of the week. But no promises.
Enjoy and please review.
Chapter Eighteen
The tide had risen and the Hammersley was swaying noticeably when Raffy's team, the last team, finally arrived back. He went straight to the COMCEN and spent the better part of an hour on the phone with, Kate suspected, ASIS Intelligence Officer Ethan Saunders. It was a reluctant but necessary discussion that needed to be had, and Raffy emerged somewhat dishevelled with important news for his CO.
The news hadn't been good. The information they'd previously acquired had been pivotal. The response had been slow. Kate sensed that somewhere, between it all, the effect would be great.
There was precious little that she could do but wait. If her XO was right, there was a little over 30 hours left to prevent a major catastrophe. She hadn't slept in over 42 hours. Scars of the previous day were haunting her every waking moment. Her bruised ribs, an injury she'd sustained in the crash, twinged a little as she reached for her clean uniform. Fingers did not meet the lining of the blue-grey camouflage material, however. A knock at her door drew her attention away.
"Enter."
Her door opened and a similar clothed man edged his way inside, shutting the metal behind him. She was glad that he took the time and courtesy to knock before making himself at home in her cabin. His old one, if she was going to be unwaveringly correct.
"What news?"
Had he been expecting some?
"The X was on the phone with Saunders, I suspect," Kate told him. She was sitting absently on the edge of her chair and he was in the usual relaxed position that he held in the CO's cabin—back to wall and buttocks to desk.
"And?" With all that had happened in the last few hours, he wondered, was she really waiting for an invitation? He knew it would be bad news. That was why she took so long to out it.
"There was nothing when Detachment 88 arrived. Not even the security team. Definitely no bomb or Hussein."
"What do you mean? They left?"
Kate shrugged. "It took us five hours to respond. If they even thought for a second that they'd been compromised, they'd have left immediately. And you can bet that Hussein had an exit strategy."
Mike shuffled uncomfortably. "Did they leave anything behind?"
"A mess," she answered. "At least we know that they left in a hurry and left one hell of a cleanup behind. Forensic experts are going through it now."
"I hope we'll be informed on what they once the CSI's do their thing," Mike said. "Have you got anything from them yet?"
"Something big. Will you let me finish updating you and then you can start with the questions?"
He looked a little sheepish. "Sorry." She was sure getting snappy in her higher position.
"That part of the coastline is home to some deep-water when the tide rises. My guess is that's why they picked the place. There was some sort of underwater trench leading into the main body of the warehouse."
"Which fits in with Raffy's submarine theory," Mike put in quickly.
She glared and he realised that he'd interrupted her again. "It's not a theory," she said, continuing. "It's a more than likely probability."
"I'll give you that," Mike said. "But what are they planning to do with a submarine and a thermobaric weapon?"
Kate looked at him strangely. "Blow up something, perhaps?"
He responded in kind with a similar look. "Very good, Lieutenant Commander. Even I figured as much. I meant what."
"Well, if we knew that, we wouldn't be in this mess," she said with the same condescending tone.
"I realise that! I'm brainstorming."
There was a short pause. "I didn't hear any suggestions."
Mike growled lightly in good-humoured frustration, which made Kate laugh. "Would you like me to-"
"List?" she finished with a smile. "We don't know enough-"
"To guess," he said quickly. "And if we're wrong the results could be-"
"Disastrous," she put in. "And we're running out of time. Ramadan starts tomorrow."
"According to Raffy's timeline."
"Well," Kate began, "we know it's imminent and it would probably have some symbolic meaning."
"That could still leave us with a handful of other times. We have no-"
"No what? Definitive time and date? That would be too easy, Mike."
He shook his head and smiled. "Yes. Exactly what I'm thinking. Why is it that you always seem to know what I'm thinking?"
She shrugged. "Hmmm…. Not always, Mike."
"Well," he started suggestively, looking from her clean clothes to the open bathroom door. "What am I thinking now?"
"Very funny," she said in a very unamused tone. "We should probably get some rest. I'll see you at breakfast."
He was ushered out of the cabin before he had a chance to put forward any more wildly inconclusive suggestions.
Ethan Saunders did not arrive back at the Hammersley until 1000h the following morning. He was not travelling alone as Raffy expected. The two black-suited men were flashed passed security and welcomed on the gangway. Kate invited them on to the bridge. She was taken aback when Don McAllister shrugged off her greeting and pushed passed her to Mike. It was almost an affront to her new status as CO, but he was still the highest-ranking officer on the Hammersley.
He did not greet Mike as they anticipated. He did not say anything. Ethan, pulling up the rear with Raffy, was the first to launch into discussion once Kate had cleared the bridge of non-essential personnel.
"We found explosive residue in the warehouse," he told the officers. McAllister, Kate suspected, had already been informed of this.
"Do we know why they were gone when we got there?" Raffy asked. "Did they see or hear us last night?"
Ethan gave him a knowing glare that said a lot more than his response. "Someone talked."
"So we are sure that this sub is carrying a bomb of some sort?" Kate asked pertinently, ignoring the eye-to-eye conversation that was going on between Ethan and Raffy.
"Do we know what it is anyway?" McAllister said, interrupting her. "What are you doing to find out?"
"We're doing everything we can, sir," Mike told him firmly. "Nobody here is in a position to do more than that."
McAllister did not seem swayed. He stepped closer to the camouflage-clad officer before him and hissed a dangerous threat. "Well, you had better work harder. I'm not taking the fall for this again. Don't forget, Commander, shit rolls down hill."
Mike was expressionless.
"I've been informed that it's an old Soviet Beluga class submarine, sir," Raffy told the insistent embassy official, interrupting the tense power play between civilian and military.
"Is that good or bad news, son?" the older man requested impatiently.
"Well, it's slower than us. Top speed of 24 knots and that's submerged."
"So what's the bad news?" Patience was not a virtue Don McAllister appeared to possess or appreciate.
"It's been fitted to carry a 53-65K torpedo," Raffy answered quickly and absorbed the disappointed response that engulfed the room. "Kerosene-hydrogen mix. And if that's been chock-loaded with ethylene oxide… it's going to go boom."
He looked from Raffy to Mike to Kate wildly. "You're the naval officers. You tell me where this is going."
"Timor Sea?" Kate suggested. "Oil?"
"The oil fields are a distinct possibility," Ethan agreed.
"The maximum depth throughout most of the Timor is 650 feet," Raffy put in. He clarified the point when he saw a noticeable number of confused glares. "200 metres."
"If it was going to take out something on the water…" Ethan began questioningly and looked to Raffy to continue.
"It would need to surface to a depth of no less than 50 feet."
McAllister was nodding happily, as though stopping this attack was now well within their grasp.
"But she's a diesel," Raffy continued. "We won't hear her until she does so."
Mike was obviously waiting for the right moment to speak again. It had arrived. "But at 600 feet, we should be able to pick up her sonar."
"Yeah, if we can find her," Kate said blasphemously.
"Can we?" McAllister asked.
Kate edged further against the desk. "It'd be a lot easier if we had a sub, but the nearest is at Fleet Base West. Perth."
"Actually," Raffy interrupted, "that's not the case. There's two Collins class submarines on their way back from the Gulf."
Something snapped inside his head. When realisations came, it was normally too late to do anything. But this… this time, Mike discerned the plan before anyone else and while they still had a chance to stop it. There were moments for him sometimes, when he just knew what was coming next. This was one of those times. "Say that again."
Raffy looked at the Commander strangely and lost-like. "There are two Collins subs coming back from the Middle East. They're travelling with the Parramatta and the replenishment ship, Sirius."
Mike was shaking his head in disbelief. He looked up at his colleagues, a shocked, but determined look in his eyes. "And two patrol boats. We wondered what they achieved by taking naval officers. We wondered why they wanted the Coastwatch security frequency. We wondered why they needed a sub!"
"They're going to blow the Parramatta and her group," Kate realised. "That's more than 350 serving naval personnel."
"Well, we know their plan now," Mike said slowly over the gathering silence. "They're going to wipe out a portion of our fleet."