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  Fallout

  A Beck Casey Thriller

  Earl Merkel

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Earl Merkel

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition April 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-629-9

  Also by Earl Merkel

  Dirty Fire

  Beck Casey Thrillers

  Final Epidemic

  Fire of the Prophet

  Part One

  The Day After

  Thursday, May 1

  Prologue

  May 1

  INS Tanin

  21° 49’ 46” North, 61° 25’ 03” East

  Depth: 104 Meters

  Gulf Of Oman

  19:46 Hours ZULU (GMT)

  It was never really dark here, despite the efforts made to duplicate a true circadian cycle for the benefit—both physical and psychological—of the crew. Humans have evolved to need the rhythms that are so taken for granted on the surface world, and despite the tweaking required to provide a four-watch system of six hours each, the illumination system of the Tanin did its syncopated best to mimic the patterns so essential to human health and efficiency.

  But here, in the submarine’s Combat Information Center, such pretext was neither possible nor desired. Banks of computer screens stacked in pairs lined the side bulkheads, adding their blue-white glow to that from the overhead lighting panels; control touchscreens in twenty-four-unit rectangular blocks shone in vivid yellow at each station; and even the high-resolution video displays of the periscopes added their own eerie glow, despite being retracted and in stand-by mode.

  Nearly two dozen officers and seamen—a misnomer, as a third of the watch were women—crowded the CIC. The Tanin was at full-combat alert, and had been since word of the terrorist attack on the American capital had reached it, now almost a day ago.

  “Washington … gone.” The words were in Hebrew, though the Executive Officer spoke English almost as well. He shook his head in disbelief and sympathy. “You had friends there, Captain?”

  Jonah Rothberg nodded, a single dip of his head. “Many. I spent two years as naval liaison at our embassy.”

  Both had listened to the news broadcast—at least, the audio of it—that detailed the nuclear irradiation of America’s capital; it had been relayed by the Israeli Navy’s submarine center near Haifa, using the extremely low-frequency network that allowed the Jewish authorities to communicate with submerged submarines at sea. Mindful that two of their crew once had been Americans—Israeli submariners were unique in the Israel Defense Force in being required to renounce any dual citizenship—shortly after the broadcast began the captain had ordered it switched on throughout the ship’s com system.

  It had been chilling. Even then, as the complicated plot was still being unwound, the knowledge that it had been but an opening chapter of a far wider conspiracy was staggering in its implications—for America and its attackers, certainly … but just as certainly, all aboard realized, for Israel.

  They were now entering the second day of combat patrol, haunting the deep waters where the Persian Gulf became the Indian Ocean. To the east lies Murray Ridge, part of a submerged mountain range that marked the edge of the abyss carved out over millennia by the Indus River; to the west lies the turmoil-ridden Horn of Africa; to the north rises the lands of the once-and-possibly-future Caliphate that already encircled their own tiny nation.

  Once again, Rothberg studied the master display: all systems were within normal parameters, depth was holding steady—As steady as the damnable currents here allowed, he corrected himself—and speed was at a dead-slow three knots.

  All four forward torpedo tubes were also loaded and ready, though an additional four aft still stood empty. These latter, significantly larger than the standard tubes, would remain so—at least, unless and until the order came to load them with the specialized ordnance onboard for which they were designed: four Popeye-Turbo cruise missiles, each tipped with a nuclear warhead a magnitude more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

  They could be loaded quickly; as part of Israel’s relatively new strategic defense system, the crew had trained and drilled in the horrific event that they would someday be needed. Today, in the wake of yet another American tragedy—one that all evidence indicated was rooted in the conspiracies of Israel’s own sworn enemies—that need might well be realized.

  Israel fielded five of these German-built Dolphin-class subs, their Popeye cruise missiles part of a quietly desperate strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction. Like the erstwhile Cold War opponents who first devised that terrifying deterrent, Israel had constructed a seaborne nuclear-delivery force: a loaded gun to the head of those whose own arsenals—now, it appeared, also nuclear—were themselves placed firmly against the Israeli forehead.

  Arrayed against them was a virtual fleet of hostile-or-potentially-so Russian-built Kilo-class attack submarines—Iran alone in possession of four of these sub-killers, with other Islamic powers a dozen more—purchased and refitted for the various Muslim countries. These were supplemented by all the land-based, ship-carried or airborne anti-sub weapons that staggering oil wealth could obtain.

  Mossad had only recently reported on the latest of such threats, this one aimed directly at Rothberg’s own vessel: Iran had, the spies said, reverse-engineered what had been a closely held Russian superweapon. The secrets of the Shkval torpedo—rocket-powered, propelled along at any depth in an almost friction-free super-cavitation bubble created by the nosecone design—were now in Iranian hands, with the unintentionally humorous nomenclature of “HOOT,” Farsi for “whale.”

  It was decidedly no whale. At underwater speeds in excess of two hundred miles per hour, HOOT was a super-fast killer shark, the harbinger of a new, even more lethal era in sub-versus-sub warfare. When it was deployed—and not even Mossad could guarantee that the Russian Navy still remained the sole proprietor of an operational Shkval-style torpedo—Rothberg knew that it would turn even high-tech marvels like the Tanin into relatively slow-moving submerged skeet.

  Tanin’s sole advantage was in its own advanced technology, centered largely around the ability of its electric propulsion system to operate at a level of stealth that made even nuclear subs noisy by comparison. Skillfully manned, the Tanin was a lethal specter, a virtually undetectable hole in the water.

  But Rothberg recognized that similar technological attributes were held by his opponents’ submarines, even if he prided himself that their level of command competence was likely somewhat lower.

  A low voice sounded in his wireless earphone: “Captain, XO—come to the sonar station, please.”

  Ari ben Shilboh—nicknamed Oznayim, Hebrew for “ears”—was the boat’s senior sonar operator; he sounded worried, and a worried sonar man is a submarine captain’s worst nightmare.

  Rothberg and his exec pushed through the packed CIC to the station. There, Oznayim gestured at an oversized screen whereon a constant cascade of lines and dashes fell top to bottom.

  “Sir, the waterfall picked up something a few seconds ago. Just for a flash, sir, then it was gone.”

  “Picked up what, Oz?”

  Oznayim hesitated. “Dunno, s
ir; it was too fast and faint even for the earphones. A blip on the screen, but something was there. I mean, I think.”

  The XO spoke up. “A ship, a sub … a whale? Was it a biologic or man-made? A false-bounce off the bottom?”

  Oznayim stared helplessly at the waterfall display. He reddened and swallowed hard.

  “Is there something, or is there not?” Rothberg demanded.

  “Captain … I … it isn’t there now…”

  Behind him, Rothberg heard the XO grunt. “Damn it, Oz. Captain, we’re most likely just picking up a transient echo. There’s been no indication of any—”

  At that instant, Rothberg saw Oznayim stiffen.

  Almost simultaneously, a sharp inverted “V” spiked on the waterfall display.

  “Contact, bearing one-nine-zero! Range fifteen-seventy meters, sir!” Oznayim frowned, eyes closed and intent on his earphones. “Multiple evolutions now … doesn’t sound mechanical, Captain … kind of a low-frequency roaring, sir…”

  Not a torpedo then, Rothman told himself. Thank God for—

  But the sonar technician’s fingers were already dancing over his keypad.

  “Computer searching for audio signature … match! Oh, my God … torpedo in the water, Captain! It’s a Shkval, sir—one of those damned rocket-fish!”

  “All ahead flank!” Rothberg shouted. “Helm: hard right rudder, evasive! Emergency dive, maximum angle! Launch decoy noisemakers, now!”

  Immediately, he felt the submarine lurch wildly in the desperate, twisting maneuver.

  Rothberg’s mind raced. Sixteen hundred meters-minus, at three hundred kilometers per hour…

  He did the math. Perhaps twenty seconds, perhaps less…

  Less.

  “Tracking us, sir! Now bearing one-six-two relative … range, six hundred meters and closing. I think they have a lock on us, sir. Oh, shit! Estimate eleven seconds to impact, Captain.”

  Rothberg was surprised to find his own voice was level, even calm.

  “Rudder, come hard left to course two-nine-zero. Radio, dump the computer log, high-speed squirt over ELF.” Even submerged, the extremely low-frequency transmission would be picked up by Israeli Navy monitors.

  As the boat corkscrewed violently yet again for the next few seconds, Rothman took a deep breath.

  At least Haifa will know what killed us, he thought.

  “Sound collision alarm,” he said aloud, just as the torpedo struck.

  • • •

  The death of the Tanin came over the com speakers in an ongoing series of grinding, crunching, screaming sounds—much of the latter that of tortured metal imploding at depth, but some of it indisputably human—that lasted long minutes after the initial detonation.

  “Bring us to nine hundred meters, and lay in a course that takes us out of this damnable pocket,” the captain said to his second. “Maintain strict sound discipline; the last thing we require is to be picked up on a sonobuoy or by a Western submarine until we are far, far away from this place.”

  “We flee the scene of the crime,” the second said. “As the Americans say, a ‘clean getaway,’ yes?”

  The captain chuckled, amused.

  “You spend too much time watching your cinema,” he said. “Yes. A getaway. Make it so, Nicolai. And make it ‘clean.’”

  His words, like those of his subordinate, were spoken in Russian; his tone was of a man who had carried out his orders, with success.

  Chapter 1

  May 1

  Oak Park Shopping Mall

  Overland Park, Kansas

  1:52 P.M. CDT

  Randi Taylor struggled with the heavy glass door, handicapped as she was with an oversized stroller, a dangling diaper bag, her Coach purse—and, of course, Amanda herself: still fretful from being awakened and hoisted from a designer pink car seat, only to be strapped into yet another pink-hued, four-wheeled contrivance.

  Which was now wedged in the half-open door, defying Randi’s contortions to simultaneously yank it open and push the stroller through.

  She was rescued by a hand that came from behind, reaching past her to pull the balky doorway wide and hold it open.

  Randi glanced back, and shot a wan smile in gratitude.

  The owner of the hand—a kid, Randi saw, trying to look older than he was—nodded his own smile in return.

  They moved inside as if they were a couple.

  “Thanks,” Randi said, “I really appreciate—”

  But the young stranger was already gone, absorbed into the hustle of faceless others moving with determination inside.

  Randi trudged forward, more than a bit envious of his unencumbered freedom.

  Cripes, she told herself. Really packed in here today. Yeah, great idea, dragging Mandy and everything she owns into this mob scene…

  Still, it was an escape. Of sorts.

  For the past twelve hours-plus, there had been no respite from what had, rapidly and succinctly, become known as “The Attack.” Every television channel, every website, even the music stations on her car radio during the drive here—all had been consumed by the tragic events in Washington D.C.

  For Randi, it had been wildly overwhelming at first—and then, it had become stultifyingly oversaturated. By Amanda’s noon-time feeding, she had had more than enough televised punditry, “news” accounts that were still little more than ill-informed speculation, and video clips of a dying city—Certainly, she had mused, enough to last the rest of my life.

  And so Randi had packed up her almost-one-year-old child, along with the requisite impedimenta that filled even the spacious mid-seat of her Honda Odyssey.

  And headed for the mall.

  Others had had the same idea. The mall was crowded, a bustling throng of news-refugee shoppers—more reminiscent of a pre-Christmas weekend than of a Thursday afternoon in May.

  Lots of offices closed down for the day, Randi told herself. Probably lots of other people too freaked out to go in, I bet. Didn’t know what else to do, so they came here.

  Like me, she added, rueful.

  Randi took a deep breath, then wedged the too-large baby carriage—a gift from grandparents decidedly doting, if also somewhat clueless to a young mother’s navigational needs—into the jostling torrent of shopping humanity.

  As she did, from the stroller came a new, rising clamor.

  Perhaps annoyed at the tumult—or perhaps alerted by a primordial, instinctive sense of looming disaster—Amanda started to cry, loudly.

  • • •

  He had been polite, holding the door for the woman and her child. That was for show, to avoid attracting any unwanted attention; video cameras were everywhere, and he reckoned that any display of nerves, or of impatience, or of anything but what could be deemed “normal” behavior might well mark him in the eyes of mall security watchers.

  Today, for sure, he thought. Especially today.

  He had taken pains to appear “normal.” His hair was carefully combed, in a more conservative style than he would otherwise sport; he had donned a pair of casual loafers, which melded well with the pressed-and-creased khaki slacks; a light-blue Oxford shirt, collar-points buttoned over a bright-silk vermillion tie, emphasized his newly fresh-faced features.

  Even the stylish sports coat—tweed, possibly a bit too bulky for a mild day in May—suited his needs nicely. It fit well, and the side pockets showed not a sign of the burden they carried.

  Six 17-round magazines, three in each pocket.

  A total of one hundred and twenty 9mm rounds, if one also counted the loaded Glock and the bullet already chambered therein.

  Charles Alexander Campbell—known more familiarly as Chaz to what one news reporter would subsequently describe as an “increasingly concerned circle of friends” among his fellow junior-class students at Shawnee Mission East High School—merged seamlessly into the crowd: in it, if not of it.

  Ahead of him, at the top of the escalator, a department store anchored the east side of the mall; it overlook
ed a packed food court.

  The store’s open-to-the-mall entryway was marked with a large red star.

  To Chaz Campbell, it seemed very much like a beacon.

  • • •

  Goddamn crazy in here today, Piper Cameron muttered, if silently. She sidestepped, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with an Asian woman who bent under the weight of four red-starred shopping bags she carried and, instead, bumping hard against the shoulder of a harried store employee rushing in the opposite direction.

  Piper straightened, keyed the radio mic clipped to her forest-green uniform’s left shoulder epaulette.

  “Base, Cameron.”

  The response was immediate: “Go ahead, Piper.”

  “The thing at Macy’s. All clear. Store decided she wasn’t a shoplifter after all.”

  “Ten-four. All clear.” The voice dropped a level, conspiratorially. “Let me guess. A regular customer, hefty charge-card balance?”

  Piper smiled despite herself. “Roger that. Just ‘forgot’ she dropped a bottle of Chanel in her purse. She paid; manager apologized to her for the misunderstanding.”

  “Yeah. Make sure you put her name on the report. I’ll archive the video, in case she forgets again the next time.”

  “Way ahead of you there, Base. I already flagged her driver’s license and Macy’s account numbers. Cameron, out.”

  Ah, said the wry voice inside her head. The exciting life of a mall cop. They ought to make a movie. Oh, wait—they already did. No Oscar for that guy, either.

  Still, she countered, recognizing how pathetic the unspoken debate sounded even to her, I get to wear a uniform again.

  Truth be told, she had missed that. It gave her a feeling of purpose—even if it was a different uniform from that which Piper had worn during two tours in the Sandbox, when her National Guard unit had been activated for duty in the Middle East.