Section 8 (14 page)

Oahu

Royce read the message from Tai to ARPERCEN twice, then closed the lid of David's laptop. He was seated in David's Defender, which he'd parked along the side of a road overlooking Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Base. He put a set of binoculars to his eyes and looked down at the runway. A Gulfstream jet painted flat black was parked near the tower, door open and stairs down.
Royce adjusted the focus as a half-dozen people emerged from the building below the tower and made their way to the plane. Even without the aid of the binoculars he would have been able to spot David's figure among them. The other five were around David's age, but Royce had never seen any of them before. They were all dressed aloha style and seemed quite excited.

* * *

The heat was reflected off the tarmac, intensifying the effect of the sun. David put a hand over his eyes to shade them and looked up at the mountains to the west. He knew Royce was up there somewhere. He was going to miss his friend. He dawdled, letting the others pass him on the way to the plane. There was a distinct sense of anticipation among them—the payoff after decades of hard work in the trenches was at hand. It wasn't a normal retirement, but none of them had lived normal lives. The other five were from the mainland and had been flown to Hawaii the previous day. David had never met any of them before, though he knew it was possible he'd worked on missions in conjunction with some if not all of them. The Organization was big, its tentacles spread around the planet.
As he reached the steps up to the plane, he paused, looked past the mountain where he knew Royce was and to the sky. As his brother must have looked at the sky that morning over sixty years ago, he reflected. His last dawn. He and his older brother had been close for all of his fourteen years, before his brother enlisted and was shipped out to basic and then to Hawaii.
David had visited the Punchbowl the previous day and stood at his brother's grave, one of many with the same final date etched on the stone: 7 DECEMBER 1941. Leaving the grave for what he knew was the last time had been difficult, harder than leaving the small house on the east shore he'd called "home" for the last ten years. People in the covert world never really had homes.
A flash of light on the hillside caught his attention. He knew it was Royce, shifting his binoculars, the sun striking the lens. David waved, sighed, then stepped into the plane. As soon as he was on board, the door was pulled up behind him and the jet engines revved with power.

* * *

Royce tracked the Gulfstream down the runway and into the air. It was gaining altitude fast, rocketing up into the blue sky and banking to the west. He kept the craft in sight until it disappeared into the blue haze, then slowly lowered the binoculars and put them back in their case.
He glanced at the laptop lying on the passenger seat, feeling the pull of duty and work, but didn't pick it up for a while. The laptop was his link to David's—and now his—handler in the Organization. It was also the address where all information on the operation was collated. Royce had spent the morning recovering from the hangover that was the result of his and David's last night on the town, and then going through the computer after David disappeared in a cab to head to the Marine base. Royce had offered to drive, but David nixed that idea, saying they had kept their relationship secret all these years, there was no point in him showing up at the gate of Kaneohe with Royce at the wheel.
So Royce had checked what had been bequeathed to him by his old friend: an old truck and a new laptop. The setup inside the laptop was efficient. There was an address book with numerous points of contacts, each labeled with a code word and a brief summary of what that POC was responsible for. It was specific and extensive. If he needed weapons up to and including heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades in Chile, there was a phone number and a code name. If he needed access to the Defense Intelligence Agency's most deeply held files, there was an e-mail address, a phone number, and a code name for that. There were even access points for most other country's intelligence agencies.
Royce had his own code name. Like the others, it was a six letter/number combination. An annotation told him that the code cycled every forty-eight hours, which required him to sync the computer to the satellite wireless system it automatically picked up every time it was on, at least every two days. He had no doubt he was hooked in to Milstar, the secure satellite system the Pentagon had circling the planet.
Since the satellites were linked to each other, Milstar provided initial security by requiring no ground relay, which could always be tapped in to. And the satellites used frequency hopping to transmit their encrypted messages. When he checked into Milstar after first using it several years ago—and he always checked everything he used, since his life depended on it—he discovered that the Air Force claimed there were five working satellites in the system, even though six had been launched. The publicity page on the Air Force website claimed that a mistake was made on the third launch in 1999 and the satellite had been placed in a nonusable orbit.
He very much wanted to know where that satellite was in geosynchronous orbit. He had a feeling it would tell him a great deal about the Organization he worked for, because he doubted that the orbit for that one had been a mistake. Perhaps from the Air Force point of view it had not gone where they wanted, but he believed that someone else was very happy wherever that satellite had ended up.
Royce sighed. All this thinking was keeping him from doing what had to be done. He opened up the laptop and read Tai's request to ARPERCEN one more time. It was either bullshit, stupidity, or something else. Because he had told Tai, as he'd told the others, in no uncertain terms, that she was no longer part of the big green machine and could never go back to it. So why was she sending an e-mail concerning a next assignment that would never happen?
She was not stupid. He had her file. Tops in her class at the University of Arizona. While on active duty, she had somehow managed to earn a Ph.D. in military history. Every efficiency report sparkled and glowed with that extra bit of effort that indicated her commanders had not been just routinely punching her ticket, but truly impressed with her. Until she was accused of abusing prisoners in Iraq, a strange departure from her straight and narrow record to that point.
Since she wasn't stupid, that meant the ARPERCEN request wasn't bullshit. Which meant it was something else, and the only thing Royce could come up with was that it was some sort of coded message Tai had sent to someone on the outside.
According to the file, she'd been recruited because of the prisoner abuse charges—and her personal motivation after losing her sister on 9/11. Her test—like those of all the others—had been to assassinate a target designated by the Organization. Even he had no idea why these people have been targeted. She had killed the target as ordered, so there was some degree of security in that—she'd crossed a line.
But…
Royce brought up her 201 personnel file once more and began reading it, searching for the thread he must have missed the first time through, now that he suspected that Captain Tai was more than she appeared to be. He glanced at his watch. The C-130 for the recon team should be ready on Okinawa by now. And Tai and Vaughn should be heading to the airfield.
Royce pulled out his secure satellite phone and punched in a number.

Okinawa

Vaughn could see that Orson wasn't one for rah-rah premission speeches. "We don't hear from you on your initial entry report in twenty-four hours, we'll consider your mission compromised."
Orson was standing in the entrance to the tunnel, looking up into the back of the truck. Tai and Vaughn sat on benches across from each other, their packed rucksacks on the space behind them.
"Roger that," Vaughn said. He hadn't told anyone about his encounter with Kasen—at this point it would make little difference, if any. The mission was on, and he had to make the best of it.
Diesel fumes from the idling engine wafted through the enclosed space. He felt a curious sense of detachment as he pushed away the thoughts and feelings about the coming mission.
"Is the primary mission canceled if we're killed during the recon?" Tai asked.
Orson stared at her. "What do you care? You'll be dead."
Vaughn and Tai met each other's eyes. He wasn't sure what he read in hers. Anger? But there was something else. He turned to Orson. "What if we're captured? Twenty-four-hour rule?"
He was referring to the concept that a prisoner could hold out against torture for twenty-four hours, then even the best would give up everything they knew. But twenty-four hours was enough time for every plan the prisoner knew to be changed, and for damage control to begin.
"Don't get captured," Orson growled. He slapped the side of the truck to let the driver know it was ready to go, then turned and walked away.
Vaughn pulled down the canvas flap covering the back of the truck. "Friendly."
"This isn't a friendly business," Tai said.
Vaughn wondered if she knew about his brother-in-law. Frank and he had discussed the problem of serving on the same team, but in the end they had decided they'd rather fight with someone they knew and trusted. That had not turned out well.
As the truck rumbled its way toward the airfield, Vaughn began preparing for battle. Both he and Tai wore sterile camouflage fatigues of a make easily bought anywhere in the world. He put his body armor on, securing it with the Velcro straps. He then slid on the combat vest bristling with extra magazines, grenades, a knife, and the FM radio with which he could talk to Tai. He put the earpiece in, secured the mike around his throat, and when Tai had done the same, turned his radio on and moved to the front of the truck bay, as far from her as he could get.
"Read me? Over."
"Roger that," Tai responded. "Over."
"Let's keep the radio off until just before jump to conserve batteries," Vaughn said. "Then operate only on minimum settings. Over."
"Roger. Out." Tai turned off her radio and Vaughn did the same. He returned to the rear of the truck and checked his pistol, making sure there was a round in the chamber. Then he put on his composite armor forearm guards.
Tai noted that. "What's your training in?"
Vaughn knew she was asking for a specific martial arts discipline. "Killing."
Tai laughed. "Know enough of a bunch of various styles and master of none?"
Vaughn shrugged. "I don't have a black belt in anything, but I have trained in a variety of styles. What about you?"
"Black belt in hapkido and tae kwon do. And trained in a variety of styles."
Vaughn had expected as much, given the way she took down Kasen. He pulled his flight gloves on, flexing his fingers to ensure a tight fit, then secured the brass knuckles to his combat vest.
Seeing that, Tai raised an eyebrow. "That's a new one."
"Something from my childhood," Vaughn explained. He felt a flush of sadness, remembering Frank at the assembly area in the Philippines before the botched raid also commenting on the knuckles.
Tai pulled something long and thin, wrapped in black cloth, out of her pack. "Something from
my
childhood." She unwrapped the object. A wooden scabbard and hilt appeared. Tai drew the blade. It was a shoto, a Japanese short sword, the blade about eight inches long.
"May I?" Vaughn asked.
Tai paused and then handed it over, handle first.
Vaughn took it. He was surprised how light it was. He turned it and looked at the edge. Razor sharp. "How many times was the metal folded?" he asked, referring to the process by which such blades were handmade.
Tai smiled, holding her hand out to take it back. "You know something of swords?"
"I spent time in the Far East," Vaughn vaguely answered.
"The making of this is a family secret," Tai said as she slid the blade back into its sheath. She then put the sword inside her combat vest, on top of the body armor, straight down along her chest, between her breasts.
"Interesting placement," Vaughn said. Tai shot him a sharp look. He held his hands up defensively. "Sorry,"
"You get one mistake," Tai said. "And you've made it."
Vaughn nodded. "It was stupid."
Tai relaxed. "A man who can admit he's wrong. That's something new."
The truck lurched to an abrupt stop, then gears grinded as the driver threw it into reverse. Vaughn lifted the canvas flap covering the rear and saw the back end of a C-130, ramp open.
"We're here."

CHAPTER 10
Jolo Island

The report of Kasama's execution reached Abayon while he was once more hooked up to the dialysis machine. He was not surprised. Abayon knew the power of the Yakuza. And he knew that anyone who could do what had been done to Kasama was even more powerful. He had seen this before. A powerful organization struck by some group that lived in the shadows, one that seemed able to wield power with impunity. Not for the first time—or, he knew, the last—he wished he had not been so quick to cut Colonel Tashama's throat. In the six decades since that event, he had come to realize that it was as close as he'd ever gotten to someone who might have known what this shadow organization was. However, given the security levels he had run into whenever he tried to penetrate his enemy, he realized Tashama had probably known little more than he needed to hide this part of the Golden Lily here.
The nurse pulled the needle out of his arm and smiled at Abayon. He nodded his head in thanks. The dialysis was not a cure—it was a stop-gap measure designed to keep death a handsbreadth away. Time, the most valuable of all currencies, was what he needed. Just a little more time. And then he would embrace death. He had faced it many times before and he did not fear it—he only feared not completing what he'd set out to do so many years ago.
The issue of whether there was life after death had plagued mankind since the beginning of consciousness. For some people, usually those in the bounty of their youth, such a question was often considered in theoretical terms. For those in his situation, pinned to a wheelchair and hearing his life leave him molecule by molecule with each breath, it was a very real consideration.
He had managed to get the doctor to be honest with him, and Abayon knew that he would not be alive that long. What was beyond that increasingly occupied his mind. He was not one of the Muslims who believed heaven was a bountiful place of all the food one could eat and all the beautiful women one could take for one's own pleasure. Those were the naive dreams of ignorant men. A strict reading of the Koran indicated that man could have no concept of heaven because it was so far beyond anything experienced here on Earth.
Abayon liked the concept of something he couldn't conceptualize. It was a spiritual existence, not a physical one. There would be a birth of a soul from his own soul. And that new soul would reap the benefits of the type of life one had lived on Earth. According to his interpretation of the Koran, Heaven and Hell existed in the same place but on a different dimension. It was all relative, depending on what one could perceive and one's state upon death.
Abayon planned for his state upon death to be one of equilibrium. He had suffered much in life and spent decades building himself up to a position of power in order to equal out the scales. It had required tremendous patience, the need to hold back when there was a burning desire to strike out against his enemies and those who had done him tremendous wrongs over the years.
There was evil in the world. The evil of the material world. And looming behind that evil was the United States and its corrupting influence. In that, he agreed with Al Qaeda and the other extremist Islamic groups. But Abayon sensed something more. A power behind the power. He had seen and heard and interpreted too many unsettling things over the course of his life.
Finding this complex and its contents had been disturbing enough over sixty years ago. But it had only been the first of several events that changed his view on the world, just as his learning of Islam had changed his view of the afterlife.
A guard wheeled Abayon from the medical center to his office. Abayon checked the in-box, signing off on the minor details that kept the Abu Sayef running its day-to-day operations. He smiled as he thought it was not much different running a guerrilla organization than a corporation.