Read Stone Cold for Free Online Page A

water. His ride had started at what should have been a highly secure military dock at the Norfolk Naval Station. However, the “highly secure” component had broken down completely when confronted by Harry Finn wearing one of his vast array of disguises and his air of belonging perfectly in whatever situation he found himself.
    The boat slowed and swung around to the port side of the larger vessel. Finn let it drift to a stop before he slipped underneath the water, kicking away from the boat as he did so. He had a waterproof knapsack slung over his back and an electronic jammer around his waist making him invisible to any tracking gear on board either boat. He dove down farther and headed underneath the other ship, which rode quite low in the water, and for good reason. It weighed over 80,000 tons, carried nearly a hundred aircraft and 6,000 sea and air personnel, housed not one but two nuclear powered generators, and had set the American taxpayer back over $3 billion.
    Once he reached the spot, it took him only two minutes to attach the device to the bottom of the ship’s hull, and then, keeping well away from the massive screws, he made his way back to the other boat, reattached himself, and rode it back in. He had accepted this mission largely because it would give him some practice for another upcoming task of a more personal nature. He actually thought about the details of that job as the boat he was piggybacking on made its jog back to land. After it docked, he slipped out from his hiding place, swam to a remote part of the pier, clambered out and stripped off his gear. He made his phone call and later reported to the duty officer’s chambers with a high-level military escort, the members of which had privately bet there was no way anyone could do what Finn had just done: place a bomb on the hull bottom of the navy’s prized Nimitz-class
George Washington
aircraft carrier as it sat off the coast of Virginia. It was a bomb powerful enough to sink the carrier and all hands on board along with a couple billion dollars’ worth of aircraft.
    This time the admiral of the Atlantic fleet and everyone down his chain of command was given a ten-megaton blast by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who happened to be a four-star army general. The man could barely hide his delight at delivering this meltdown to his naval colleague, a dressing-down so loud, it was said the four-star could be heard all the way back at the Pentagon nearly two hundred miles away. This very public whipping was reinforced by the presence of the secretary of defense, who had been standing by in his chopper waiting to see if Harry Finn could actually pull it off. The fact that the man had scored an improbable triumph against massively high odds prompted the secdef immediately to offer Harry Finn a position on his staff.
    The secretary of Homeland Security was not amenable to this co-opting of a prized contractor. The two cabinet members went at it like schoolboys on a playground until the president himself interceded by secure video conference call and decreed that Harry Finn would stay right where he was, as an independent contractor to DHS. The defeated and miffed secdef climbed on his private chopper and flew back to Washington.
    Harry Finn stayed down in Norfolk to give a briefing to a group of chagrined naval security personnel. While he was always courteous and unfailingly respectful, his comments were not watered down. Failures had happened, here is how I did it, and here is what you need to do to prevent a bona fide terrorist from doing it for real.
    What Finn did for a living was often referred to in the field as “red cells.” The term had been coined by a former Navy SEAL who’d helped start the program. The red cell project had commenced after the Vietnam War at the request of a vice admiral to test the security of military installations. After 9/11, it had been expanded to test the security of nonmilitary facilities to penetration by