Strike Force Delta Read Free Page B

appeared no different from any other of the hundreds of containerships plying the world’s oceans.
    But the
Ocean Voyager
was not really a containership. It was a warship, powerful and unlike any other.
    If it had an official description, it would be Air-Land Assault Ship/Special. But no one privy to its existence ever called it that. It was based on a British concept, born of low defense budgets back in the 1970s, in which the Royal Navy would deploy the Harrier jump jets on converted containerships, thus negating the need to build new, expensive aircraft carriers.
    The
Ocean Voyager
was that dream come true in spades. It began with two elevators that had been installed just forward of the ship’s recessed deckhouse. The same size and type used on the U.S. Navy’s super-carriers, they were powerful enough to lift forty-thousand pounds from the bowels of the ship up to the deck. These elevators served as movable launch and recovery pads for aircraft flying from the vessel. And they were well hidden. When they weren’t in use, six containers were slid on top of the elevators, preventing them from being seen from above.
    The elevators served the small airborne strike force that was hidden below decks. The first time this very secret undercover vessel saw action was a year before, in the Mediterranean and then in the Persian Gulf. For that, its maiden voyage as a combat vessel, it had carried two of the supersecret Superhawk helicopters and a pair of AV-8s, the U.S. Marine version of the famous Harrier jump jet.
    Now, there were four Superhawks on the ship, in addition to one surviving jump jet. The helicopters were all new, just off the assembly line. A platoon of Marine Corps air mechanics serviced these aircraft in the ship’s crowded belowdecks hangar. Spare parts and ammunition for the aircraft were stored nearby in—what else?—seaborne containers. Just about everything theship needed to stay at sea and do its thing was hidden in plain sight inside the containers lashed to its deck.
    But the ship’s assets only began with the planes of its tiny air force and the highly trained special ops troops who flew them. There was a section toward the front of the ship, on the bottom level, that was crammed with five white oversize containers. Inside these nearly antiseptic compartments could be found some of the most sophisticated spy equipment known to man.
    Nicknamed the White Rooms, these containers held tons of eavesdropping and satellite tracking gear. The people who worked in these containers—the Spooks—could tap into Echelon, the National Security Agency’s ultrasecret satellite system. This meant that just like several dozen NSA sites around the world, the ship could intercept just about any phone call made, E-mail sent, fax transmitted, anywhere on earth, then read, copy, and even alter it without the sender or receiver ever knowing a thing.
    The white containers also housed dirty tricks sections where just about anything needed in the spy game could be produced, duplicated, or counterfeited. Weapons could also be made down here—anything from a germ bomb to a small nuclear device.
    So the
Ocean Voyager
packed a punch. High-tech aircraft, a small army of high-tech warriors, a huge snooping capability—and its own weapons factory—it was all powered by four gas turbine engines, the very same powerplants that drove the F-14 Tomcat fighter jet. The
Ocean Voyager
could move through the water like nothing else its size.
    But whose ship was this? Who built it? Paid for it? Who was able to get all these weapons and spy gear, airplanes,and people on board—to sail off and do what was considered the dirtiest work in all of the dark world of secret operations?
    There was no easy answer to any of those questions except the first one. The ship did not belong to the U.S. Navy or the Marines or any branch of the U.S. military. Nor the Central Intelligence Agency, National