With that she strode to the door and was gone.
Tai waited until it became light enough to see before climbing down to join Vaughn. He was at the bottom of a twelve-foot shaft cut into the side of the mountain. The sides were overrun with growth and the opening was almost completely blocked. If Vaughn hadn't fallen in, Tai wasn't sure they'd have found it. When she finished climbing down, she found Vaughn sitting cross-legged, staring straight ahead at a two-foot-wide black hole at the side of the shaft.
"What do you think?" she asked.
Vaughn glanced at her.
"That's the way in. The question is, do we want to go in?"
Tai glanced at him.
"What do you mean? Abayon is in there."
"I think there's more than Abayon in there."
Tai sat down next to Vaughn at the bottom of the shaft. She could feel the warm air blowing out of it on her face. The hot spot.
"There probably is."
"Such as?" Vaughn asked. She sighed.
"What do you think of the team?"
"What?"
"Our illustrious team. Orson. Sinclair. Kasen. Hayes. You. Me. The team."
Vaughn shrugged, still staring into the dark hole.
"Special Ops people. The kind you'd want for something like this."
"Fuck-ups," Tai said. Vaughn turned to her.
"What did you say?"
"I was relieved of command in Iraq because I complained of prisoner abuse. My career was over.
Kasen – I checked on him. He was up for manslaughter for killing an Afghani not under rules of engagement. Couldn't get much more than that, but his time in the green machine was over."
"He's also an addict," Vaughn added. Tai didn't seem surprised.
"Lots of drugs in Afghanistan. He's not only an addict, but he has AIDS. And it's not responding well to treatment. Then there's Sinclair. Came here from Leavenworth."
"What was he in there for?"
Tai looked at him.
"Running weapons out of Thailand."
Vaughn had heard about the scandal in the First Special Group.
"Orson? Hayes?"
"Hayes is dying."
"He's what?" Vaughn remembered Hayes's late night trip to the latrine and the coughing.
"Cancer. Very aggressive. He was diagnosed three weeks ago. From what I could find out, he's got one to two months left to live."
"Fuck."
"Right on that."
"And Orson?"
"On him, nothing recent that I could find. He was in the SEALs. SEAL Team Six, as that spook said. But he left the team four years ago and simply vanished as far as a paper trail, even a classified paper trail."
"How did you get access to the information you got?"
"I was Military Intelligence," Tai said.
"I still have contacts."
Vaughn wondered about that. How could she communicate with her contacts about the other members of the team if she only met them once they went into isolation? The facts didn't add up. But he wasn't about to point that out to the one person who was supposed to cover his back here on an island full of terrorists.
Vaughn shifted back to what she had told him about the other members of the team.
"So one guy who is going to die shortly, one who has a potentially fatal infection, and three people who fucked their careers up. And one mystery."
"A bunch of losers."
"Speak for yourself."
Tai smiled. Her short dark hair was plastered to the side of her face. Her skin was splattered with mud. Her gear was still wet from the ocean. All in all, quite the mess. She had her MP-5 across her knees and had gone back to staring at the dark hole that beckoned to them.
"I don't think we should go in until night," she said.
"What difference will it make in there?" Tai asked, nodding toward the opening.
"Because most people still work on a normal biological clock," Tai said.
"I guarantee there will be less people about at night."
"You guarantee?"
Once more she gave a slight smile.
"All right. But come on – "
Vaughn nodded.
"I agree. I'm in no rush anyway. And I don't see why Orson is either."
He shifted his rucksack into a more comfortable position.
"Do you buy that killing this Abayon guy will destroy the Abu Sayef?"
"No."
Vaughn waited for amplification but none was forthcoming. Finally he was forced to ask: "Why not?"
He could just barely see the dark form of Tai's head moving in the growing dawn as she turned toward him.
"Come on. You've been in Special Operations. All we've been doing the last several years is fighting terrorism. You know better."
This time Vaughn remained silent. She was right, but he wanted to hear her thoughts, because the more she spoke, the more he would learn about her. And he needed to know more about her because it was the two of them alone on this island, and tonight they were going in that dark hole that beckoned in front of them.
Tai finally continued.
"Capturing Saddam didn't stop the insurgency in Iraq. The Israelis have killed many Palestinian leaders and the movement continues. These are people who haven't dedicated themselves to their leaders, but to their causes. And the only way to defeat a terrorist movement is to defeat the cause."
Vaughn had spent two rotations in Iraq and one in Afghanistan while he was in Special Forces before going to Delta Force, and he knew she was right. The U.S. military was waging the wrong type of war in both places – as it had done before in Vietnam.
"So then why are we doing this?" he asked.
"I've been thinking about that," Tai said. Vaughn could now see that she was also lying back on her ruck, the infamous rucksack flop. Her eyes were closed.
"There's something else going," Tai said.
"Something that Royce and Orson aren't telling us."
"There's always something else going on," Vaughn said.
"And it's usually about money."
A slight smile graced Tai's thin lips.
"'Ours is but to do and die.'" Vaughn was startled.
"Tennyson?" It was Tai's turn to be surprised.
"Every soldier should know Tennyson. The Abu Sayef have never been high on the United States terrorism target list for a simple reason – there's no oil here."
"Cynical," Vaughn said.
"Skeptical," Tai countered.
"So what's changed?"
"That's the big question, isn't it? But I bet it has something to do with wealth in some form or another.
Now, you want first watch?"
Moreno looked through the periscope at the small island, focusing on the cluster of buildings. His position was a couple of hours ahead of Jolo Island, so the morning sun was well up already. He could see little activity on the island. An occasional vehicle moving on the few miles of paved road. There had been no activity at the airfield so far.
Moreno had the military flight schedule for the atoll. He'd downloaded it from the Internet, and he thought it was very nice of the American military to publish it on the Web. One Air Force plane was scheduled to land just after noon on its way across the Pacific on a regular run.
Moreno had an entire binder of information on Johnston Atoll, all gained from simply surfing the Web. He even knew the exact number of guards on the island. Not U.S. military, but rather, civilian contractors. And probably not the best that could be recruited, since they were serving in places where the pay was much better, such as Iraq.
Thirty-two rent-a-cops guarded the facility, probably in three shifts of eight, if they were working at full strength. But that implied they were all working seven days a week, which Moreno doubted, since one had to add in days off. He guessed a guard shift was at most six, possibly four. There were several hundred U.S. military personnel on the island, but they were scientists and supply officers and clerks – not infantrymen. He had to assume those people had access to weapons, but he hoped to be on the island before an alert could be issued.
And then it would be too late.
Royce sat in the clearing on top of David's truck, staring aimlessly to the north. He had no doubt the Organization had killed David and all the others on the plane. Not being a fool, Royce also could extrapolate that eventually he would suffer the same fate, probably under a different guise and at a different time.