Authors: Robert Doherty
CHAPTER 13
Jolo Island
Vaughn lay on his back staring up at the stars, savoring the cool night breeze blowing across his soaked clothes and the feel of sand beneath him. They were on the shore of a small, deserted cove on the north side of Jolo Island. As soon as they made landfall, they conducted a quick box reconnaissance of the immediate area, and both were confident they were on an isolated part of the island.
"That was fucked," Tai said.
Vaughn turned his head and looked at her in the moonlight. She was lying next to him, still breathing hard from the long swim to shore. In her hand she had the GPS, which she'd just pulled out of a waterproof bag in her rucksack.
"We're alive," Vaughn noted.
Tai looked up from the GPS screen at the sky. "It will be dawn soon. We're over ten kilometers from where we're supposed to be." She pointed. "Hono Mountain is there."
Vaughn could see a large dark mass in the moonlight towering up into the sky.
"We're way behind schedule," Tai added.
"Is that what bothers you?" Vaughn asked.
"Hell, no," she said angrily. "Three malfunctions in a row. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit."
They'd hit the water hard, then had to scramble out from underneath the reserve canopy that draped over them. Unspoken between them was the fact that they hadn't worn life vests. They'd been so confident they could make the flight to the island, it was never brought up. For Vaughn, that mistake brought echoes of the designator battery. What saved them was that they followed standing operating procedure and waterproofed the contents of their rucksacks before the jump, which served as flotation devices in the pinch. They'd cut away from the reserve, Vaughn got rid of the harness, and then they tied themselves together using a short length of rope, put their elbows on their floating rucks, and started swimming toward the silhouette of Jolo island. It took them almost an hour to make it.
Tai had explained all the failures to him. Vaughn had to agree with her succinct assessment of what happened to her, but he wanted to wait and let her lay out the obvious.
"Someone was trying to kill me," she finally said.
"You think?"
That earned him a slight smile that momentarily wiped away the tension and anger on Tai's face. Vaughn checked his watch. "We're overdue on the initial entry report." He sat up, grabbed his rucksack, and began to open it to get to the satellite radio inside.
Tai put out a hand and stopped him.
"What?" Vaughn asked.
"Someone was trying to kill me," she repeated.
"I know, and—" Vaughn stopped and slowly nodded. "I see." He let go of the ruck. "Why? And who?"
"I don't know."
"The Abu Sayef?"
"I think getting to my chute and disabling it would have been a little hard for them to do."
"Someone tried to kill you," Vaughn said.
"I already said that twice," Tai responded.
"Yes. So, you're dead."
Tai stared at him. Their eyes locked in the moonlight, and she slowly nodded and smiled. "Very good." Her smile was not of the pleasant variety.
Hawall
General Slocum was none too pleased, and he was letting his staff know it. The initial entry report from the recon team was overdue. This raised a lot of questions, none of which anyone knew the answer to. Had the team been compromised, which meant that the entire mission was compromised? Was it equipment failure? Had both jumpers died on infiltration? Or were they too severely injured to make commo?
From behind the one-way glass in the observation room, Royce watched the general lash questions at his staff, none of which could be answered by any of them. It was a fruitless exercise, but one Royce had seen far too many times in his dealings with the military. Von Clausewitz, the great Prussian general, who many military men liked to quote, had once said,
"In war, everything is simple, but even the simple is difficult."
Royce always remembered that saying when he dealt with the military.
There was another element that began to enter into the discourse in the operations room: someone dared ask the question whether this was simply a twist thrown into the simulation to see how they reacted. That earned the speaker an even fiercer tongue-lashing by Slocum, who got them back on track by pretending this was a real exercise.
For Royce, there was another issue bothering him. One that had nothing to do with the recon team or even the mission. He'd used one of his connections to the National Security Agency to check on the progress of the jet David was on. The NSA was wired into Space Command out in Cheyenne Mountain, which controlled a ring of satellites that tracked every single object that flew.
The reports had been fine up until a little while ago. Then the jet disappeared.
At first Royce had assumed that it landed on some island. But when he checked the last confirmed satellite spotting, projected out speed and time, and drew a circle, all he was left with was ocean. There was no place it could have landed.
It had vanished.
Royce did not believe in the Bermuda Triangle, or the Devil's Sea, the Pacific's version of that famed locale. Planes didn't vanish. They crashed, they blew up, or they landed somewhere. Instinctively, he knew that David—and everyone else on board that plane—was dead. The Organization had retired them. Permanently.
He shook his head. It wasn't his instincts, it was reality. He'd sensed David's fatalism the last time they met. And he had to assume that David had not made the decision to retire, despite what he'd told him. He'd been forced out.
Royce held his emotions at bay and considered that. True, David was old. But he was still an effective agent. A man with loads of experience. So why "retire" him?
There was only one reason Royce could come up with: David had fucked up.
And David had been working this op.
Royce's jaw clenched. Tai. The bitch. She—His thought abruptly ended as a red light flickered in the operations center. An incoming message. It began to scroll across the screen in front of the room. The overdue initial entry report:
ON JOLO. WATER LANDING. TAI DEAD. MALFUNCTION. BODY GONE. WILL CONTINUE WITH MISSION. VAUGHN
The muscle on the side of Royce's face relaxed. Payback was a motherfucker.
Australia
"One down, five to go," the team leader announced.
"But that only leaves five to do the job," the black man noted. "They are supposed to do the job, aren't they?"
"Oh fuck off."
Johnston Atoll
It was a worthless piece of ground if taken by itself. But as realtors always say: location, location, and location. In this case the key to the location was isolation. Many believed Johnston Atoll was the most isolated reef in the world. It is eight hundred kilometers southwest of Hawaii—the nearest island—and fifteen hundred kilometers north and east of North Line Island and Phoenix Island, respectively.
The United States and the Kingdom of Hawaii annexed Johnston Atoll in 1858. The United States mined the guano deposits until the late 1880s. When they ran out, it was designated a wildlife refuge, in 1926. Then the Navy saw the strategic position of the place and took over in 1934.
The atoll consists of four coral islands: Johnston Island, Sand Island, North Island, and East Island. The largest of the four, at 625 acres, is Johnston Island, and the only one that could support an air strip. It was the place where the Navy settled in, and the island has continued to be the center of what little human community there is. At present, there were 960 civilian and 250 military personnel stationed on the island. They were not there on vacation.
The United States government designated the atoll a national wildlife refuge jointly administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Defense: two distinct, incompatible organizations. As with any jointly administered operation in the U.S. government, when DOD was on one end, things tended to slide down the table to it.
The major facility on the atoll was operated and maintained by the Field Command, Defense Special Weapons Agency, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. Its mission made perfect sense for the remote location, and as usual for the military, was given an acronym: JACADS: Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System.
The Department of Defense claimed that JACADS had fulfilled its mission, which begged the question as to why so many people were still stationed there and what exactly they were doing. If the U.S. military wasn't developing any more chemical weapons and JACADS had fulfilled its mission of destroying the stockpile, there seemed no point for the large contingent of personnel, all of whom had top secret security clearances.
* * *
Six kilometers south of Johnston Atoll, a submarine periscope pierced the surface, cutting a slow, smooth wake as the craft ran parallel to the atoll. Standing in the cramped control room, Moreno could see the lights on the island reflected and magnified through the scope's mirrors.
Satisfied, he ordered the scope down and the sub to come to a halt and submerge—to sit on the bottom in one hundred feet of water. They were here, but it wasn't time yet. Tomorrow would be another day.
Hong Kong
Ruiz slumped down on the podium. The room was empty. He looked at the piece of paper the woman who took the bids had left him. He knew Abayon's goal with the auction was not about the money, but about the attention it would bring. But still, the figure was staggering.
His cell phone had already rung four times with inquiries from major news agencies wanting to know the source of the auction items. His reply had been to sink the hook in deeper and invite the reporters to another auction, where he promised even more rare pieces would be put up for sale.
And he dropped a hint, asking the reporters in return if they had ever heard of the Golden Lily project.
Okinawa
"Vaughn is on the island, ten klicks from where he was supposed to land," Orson announced.
"Vaughn?" Sinclair repeated. "What about Tai?"
"Dead."
That brought silence to the four people in the isolation area.
"How?" Hayes finally asked.
"Apparently some sort of parachute malfunction," Orson said. "The initial entry report wasn't specific." He shrugged. "Nothing changes. Vaughn can do the recon. The mission is still a go."
"Lot of fucking empathy there," Sinclair muttered.
Orson glared at him. "You want empathy, you should have joined the Peace Corps. There's nothing any of us can do about Tai. Let's get back to work, people."
Hawall
Royce frowned as he began to read the latest message on the laptop from David's—now, his—boss. A job needed to be done in Hong Kong. Hong Kong? he wondered. What the hell did Hong Kong have to do with the current mission? There was no explanation, just instructions.
There was no point in pondering the reasons, and from experience, Royce knew he wouldn't get any explanation if he asked. The problem was, he would have to divert assets that were allocated to the Abu Sayef mission. There was time, but not much.
He brought up a blank message and typed in the address. Then he quickly typed out the orders and transmitted the command.
Then Royce sat very still for several minutes, thinking hard, trying to come to a decision he didn't want to face. Some said ignorance was bliss. But ignorance could also be dangerous.
Australia
"Grab your gear and let's get moving," the team leader announced. He was ahead of his own order, as he had his rucksack slung over one shoulder and his weapon in his hand.
The three other members of the team looked up from what they were doing. The Sicilian slid his knife into its scabbard and without a word, began gathering his equipment. The black mercenary considered the order for a few seconds, then complied. The Australian began gathering his gear, but had to ask: "What's the rush? The main team hasn't even gone in yet."
"We're going to the Philippines," the team leader said, "but just to cross-load."
"Where to then?" the Australian wanted to know. "What's the op?"
"We're staging out of Manila," the team leader said. "Civilian flight from there."
The Australian was getting exasperated by the slow flow of information. "You bloody well gonna tell us where we're going and what we're gonna be doing or you going to wait till we get there?"
The team leader walked up to the Australian. The blood was pulsing in the scar on his head, backlighting the barbed-wire tattoo. "You want to run this team?"
"I want to know what I'm going to be doing."
"You'll know when you need to know," the team leader growled.
The black man stepped between the two, dwarfing both. "There's no reason for you not to tell us where we're going and what we're going to do." He put a hand on the team leader's chest, forestalling whatever he was about to say, and looked at the Australian. "But you know what,
mate,
what the fuck difference does it make?" He spread his massive arms, pushing the two back. "It's the job we signed up for, and it isn't like we can quit. So let's shut the fuck up and get going."
Jolo Island
Vaughn and Tai didn't need the GPS to make their way to the mountain. From the beach, they shot an azimuth to the crown of Hono Mountain and then moved out into the jungle, staying on that track. Tai was on point, Vaughn right behind, close enough to reach out and touch her. All he could see were the two reflective cat eyes sewn into the back of her patrol cap. He knew all she was focused on was the glowing needle of her compass. Her concentration was verified by the occasional grunt of pain as she walked into a tree or log.
It was hard going, breaking their way through the tangled vegetation. Vaughn kept a pace count, and after two hours he reached out and tapped her on the shoulder, signaling a halt. They did rucksack flops on the jungle floor, each half sitting, half lying on their packs, weapons across their laps, facing each other but offset, so they had clear fields of fire.
Not that they were likely to bump into anyone around here. They had yet to see any sign of civilization, not even a trail. Vaughn remembered from isolation that the north side of the island was almost completely unpopulated, which was a blessing, given the screw-up this mission had been so far.
"I need to call in a situation report," he whispered.
"I know. Wait until we stop for daylight," Tai advised.
"No. I want to call it in from a location where we won't be staying."
Tai digested that. "You're that worried?"
"You're the one that had three malfunctions on one jump. I've done over two hundred jumps and never had one malfunction. I'd say that constitutes reason for worry. I'd prefer that the only one who can pinpoint our location be us."
"All right."
By feel, Vaughn got the satellite radio out. He typed a message into the keyboard, telling the rest of the team that he would not be on the mountain until the following night and would send in a report as soon as he discovered something. He signed off and put the radio back in his rucksack.
"We should be pretty close to the hot spot," he said to Tai.
She already had her GPS unit out. She turned it on and waited while it acquired the nearest positioning satellites, then put a poncho liner over her head and turned on the back light on the unit.
"How close?" Vaughn asked as he kept watch on the surrounding darkness. Even if they had their night vision goggles, he doubted they would see much in the pitch-black underneath the jungle canopy.
"Eleven hundred and twelve meters. Two hundred and four degree azimuth."
Vaughn remembered blundering around in the dark years ago at Fort Benning on night land navigation courses. Technology had certainly changed things, although the loss of the night vision goggles during their water landing and the disaster of the laser targeting during the earlier raid he'd led made clear that one could not totally count on the equipment. He clicked in the correct azimuth on his compass, an older but more reliable technology.
"Let's move," he told Tai. "Do you want me to take point?"
"For a little while." She turned off the backlight.
Vaughn got to his feet and shouldered his rucksack. He felt Tai's hand on his shoulder as he led the way through the dark jungle. He had his MP-5 slung over his shoulder. In one hand he had the compass, while he held the other out in front of his face to prevent losing an eyeball on the vegetation they were moving through.
The ground was sloping up, which didn't aid movement. Checking the altimeter on his watch, Vaughn saw that they were up over a thousand feet in altitude. He was taking short, careful steps, but that didn't help him as he tried to plant his left foot and it touched nothing but air. He tried to pull back, but his momentum was too strong and he tumbled forward.
Behind him, Tai was surprised to see the two little reflective cat eyes on the back of Vaughn's cap disappear and his shoulder vanish from her hand. She froze, knowing right away he'd fallen. The question was, how far? She could hear his body breaking through brush and a muffled curse.
Kneeling down, she felt forward with her free hand, found the dropoff and leaned over it. "Vaughn?"
"Yeah." He didn't sound too far away, but his voice had a strange echo. "I think we found the heat source."