“Are you sure you don’t want to wait?” Mercy nodded toward the pair of corpses. “Maybe go somewhere that’s a little more…I don’t know…not here?”
Jenna shook her head. “After everything I’ve been through to get here, I just want to know the truth.” She opened to the first page.
If you’re reading this, then you’d better put it back where you found it, right now. Seriously.
She could almost hear Noah’s slightly gruff voice as she read the words. It triggered an unexpected surge of emotion.
Or I suppose it could mean that something very bad has happened. It’s okay. Don’t worry about me. I came to terms with my mortality a long time ago, and now I’m off to find the answer to life’s greatest mystery.
But that bad thing I mentioned? Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it? Mercy? If it’s you reading this, and I hope to hell it is, there’s just one thing I want you to do. Get Jenna and take her to Miami. When you get there, look up a guy named Bill Cort. I wish I could say he’s an old friend, but that wouldn’t quite be the truth. If you get the time to read the rest of this book, you’ll understand what that means. And you’ll probably have a better idea of why this is all happening.
Below that was an address, but it had been crossed out and an arrow pointed to the margin where a different address had been written in.
Mercy read over her shoulder. “Next stop: Miami?”
Jenna blinked back tears and swallowed. “I want to read the rest of it. I have to know what was so important that it got him killed.”
She turned the page and read aloud. “November sixteenth, nineteen ninety-nine…”
STORM
22
They appeared as barely visible specks — particles of black debris in the blue-white froth of the storm-tossed surf. There was a lot of flotsam in the water, most of it washed into the sea by the floods that resulted from the torrential rain of Hurricane Lenny, but unlike most of the litter, these black shapes moved under their own power.
Swimming was the wrong word for what they were doing. The six neoprene-clad men were engaged in a life or death struggle with the relentlessly turbulent surf. They were all strong swimmers — strong men — but these were extraordinary conditions that taxed their individual abilities to the limit. One man won his freedom, and turned to help the nearest of his comrades. These two helped the next, and in short order, all six were on the beach, above the reach of even the largest breakers. Though exhausted from the epic battle against nature, none of the men showed the least sign of fatigue. They organized into a wedge formation behind the point man and made for the relative cover of the nearby tree line. Their footprints would be gone by morning, and there was little chance of anyone happening upon the marks in the sand before they were erased by the driving rain. No one was foolish enough to be out here in the middle of the storm. No one but these six.
And one other.
A red light flashed out from the trees, went dark, then flashed again. This signal kept repeating, the intervals random and irregular, like a train-crossing signal with a stutter, until the point man spotted it. He flashed a return signal with his red-hooded Mini-MagLite and adjusted course, homing in on the flashing light. As he neared the margin of the beach, a stout form, also clad in black neoprene, stepped out to greet them.
“You find the strangest things on the beach after a big blow,” he said in a booming voice. He had been waiting here for more than an hour, and he knew that there was no one around to overhear their exchange. As the men gathered around, he lowered his tone just a little, but still had to yell to be heard over the lashing rain. “Any problems?”
“Problems?” the leader of the six-man element replied. “You mean aside from the kind of problems that come with having to swim a mile-and-a-half through open water on the edge of a hurricane? Whose brilliant idea was this, anyway?”
The seventh man regarded the leader with patient but critical eyes. “The mission was handed down from the DO, but using the storm to cover our movements was my brilliant idea.” He emphasized the last three words, but he did not mean it as an admission of culpability. Operators — he knew their preferred term was shooters—tended to whine a lot about little details at the beginning of a mission. The complaints were usually just a way of working out the jitters. That was fine with him, but they needed to know that he was not going to be a very sympathetic listener. There was work to do.
“Officially, we are Action Team Storm, and my designation is Storm God. That was not my brilliant idea, in case you’re wondering. I’d rather you just call me ‘Papa.’ Everyone does.” Papa allowed a moment for the shooters to introduce themselves with their preferred operational callsigns. There was Driver, the leader; Rodent, the demolitions man; Van Gogh, the designated marksman who along with his spotter, Loco, formed a sniper team; Mutant, the team medic; and Billy Boy, who ran communications.
“The objective is a small compound right up there.” Papa pointed to a spot on the bluff, high above them, but it was too dark to see any manmade structures. “It’s about a five klick walk to get there.”
The shooters knew all this, but their initial briefing had been presented by an agency analyst, down from Langley, who despite being familiar with satellite photos of the facility, had no real world experience with the target. Papa produced a laminated satellite map and shone his red light onto it. He kept it tilted so that the rain would run off. “Concrete construction to withstand the weather, but there’s been a lot of erosion over the years. The place was originally supposed to be a resort hotel, but it’s been repurposed for special research.”
“Special research?” Driver asked. “I don’t like the sound of that. Can you be a little more specific?”
“Actually, I can’t.” The question was a valid one, but Papa did not care for Driver’s tone. Sometimes, the gripes were nerves, but sometimes they revealed a deep-seated resentment of the way military special operations were routinely co-opted by civilian intelligence agencies. That most definitely was not okay with Papa. “All I can say is that the research being conducted in the facility poses no immediate danger to us, but does have strategic threat potential.”
In truth, Papa was not sure about that last part. The intel was spotty at best, but it was a better answer than the standard ‘need-to-know’ line.
“On site security works four shifts of three on duty at any given time. Probably a dozen, but no more than fifteen in all.” None of the shooters offered comment on the size of the security force they would be going up against, so Papa went on. “There’s a sentry post here.” He tapped a spot on the map. “And the other two guard the gate, which is hardly ever used. They’ll be buttoned up tight tonight.
“Civilian personnel numbers no more than twenty. Scientists and support staff. Most of the work is done in the east wing of the old hotel building.” His finger continued to move about the map. “Living quarters are in west wing. That’s where we’ll be doing most of our work tonight. You all have your cards?”
Each of the shooters had been issued a short deck of laminated cards, the size and shape of regular playing cards, with photos of key targets believed to be at the facility. Although destroying the facility and everyone in it was the primary objective, if any of the researchers survived, there was always a chance that the project could be reconstituted, probably somewhere a lot harder to reach. Driver nodded, answering for the rest of the team.