Strike Force Alpha by Mack Maloney Read Free Book Online

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    It was at the bottom of the ship though, on the keel level, that the real treasures could be found. This was the heart of the listening station, four interconnected compartments known as the White Rooms. The crew called the people who worked down here Spooks. The compartments—air-conditioned, environmentally controlled, and virtually dirt and dust–free—were crammed with some of the most sophisticated eavesdropping equipment ever conceived. In the space of three 12-by-36-foot containers were devices that allowed the Spooks to intercept just about any E-mail sent over the Internet, and just about any fax, telegram, or wire cable, too. Satellite-relay stations in one container could tap into the National Security Agency’s ultrasecret Echelon system, meaning just about any telephone call made anywhere around the globe could be tracked, recorded, listened in on, or even altered. The containers also housed facilities where CDs, hard drives, official documents, photographs, videos, and DVDs could be manufactured or counterfeited. Fake TV news reports could be broadcast from here, pirate radio programs created, newspapers and magazines replicated.
    There was also a Dirty Tricks section where just about anything from superitching powder to a nuclear warhead could be conjured up.
    It was in one of these rooms that the bombs used to level the Rats’ Nest had been built.
     
    Whose idea was all this?
    No one was really sure. When the ship first set sail for the Middle East two months before, the 43 people onboard had been told to keep the chatter among themselves to a minimum. This was not such an unusual request in the world of supersecret ops, where most people operated on a need-to-know basis only. Everyone onboard had done a good job keeping his mouth shut. Of course it was a relatively easy thing to do. There was no recreation room onboard, no TV room, no game hall. The only common meeting area was the forward mess, and it was huge. The crew ate in shifts, and usually everyone sat at his own table. Between this and the long hours of training and doing mission preps, there really wasn’t much opportunity for interaction or information exchange.
    This did not mean, however, that there were no rumors onboard. Military ships floated on scuttlebutt, and just about everyone aboard Ocean Voyager was military to some degree. And everyone was familiar with the name of at least one person behind the mystery ship, and maybe the only one. That name was “Bobby Murphy.”
    How did they know this name? Because it was plastered just about everywhere on the ship. It was hard not to turn a corner, come to a bulkhead, or work on a piece of equipment anywhere onboard without seeing Bobby Murphy Approved scrawled in yellow chalk somewhere near it. From the bow to the stern, from the top of the deckhouse to the floor of the keel, anything that had been installed, refurbished, repainted, or rewired during the ship’s transformation from hulk to secret warship had been given a stamp of approval by Bobby Murphy.
    But who was he?
    The Ocean Voyager ’s commanding officer was a Navy captain named Wayne Bingham, “Captain Bingo” to everyone onboard. Bingo’s CO had actually met Murphy shortly before the ship sailed from Newport News, Virginia, the site of its secret refitting. It had been a brief encounter, but the CO had told Bingo a few details of the chat. This was where the scuttlebutt began. A whisper here, a chance meeting there, and things get passed along, even on a ship full of sealed pie holes. After a few weeks at sea, the story of Bobby Murphy had been retold so many times, some variations bestowed an almost mythical nature on the man. He was a genius. He was insane. He possessed “a beautiful mind.” He was a drunk. He was a highly paid government clairvoyant. He didn’t exist.
    The most often repeated story had Bingo’s CO first asking Murphy just who he worked for. CIA? NSA? DIA? NIO? Murphy claimed he didn’t know