“Go.”
“Nightmare One, this is Rawhide Two. Light your firefly.”
Nick kept the phone to his ear and removed a clear, one-inch-by-one-inch acrylic cube from his pocket, sliding a little black switch on the side forward with his thumb. The electronics within began to tick, once per second.
“Rawhide Two is visual. Cover.”
Nick slipped the cube into his pocket. The fabric of his canvas pants partially muted the infrared flash it gave off with each tick, otherwise the powerful little beacon would block out half the coastline on Rawhide’s night-vision goggles.
Drake raised his own night-vision monocle, holding it with two hands like a pirate with a spyglass. “I don’t see him.” The big operative panned the monocle from the left all the way to his right until he was looking down at Nick. “Your pants are flashing, though. Very hip.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“Nightmare One, Rawhide Two is padlocked on your position. Stop firefly.”
“Nightmare copies. Firefly off.”
Even with the monocle, Drake was not able to pick up the SEAL raiding craft until it was fifty yards from the beach. Nick did not see it until it was half that distance. The Navy man drove the black dinghy right up onto the beach and then jumped out to hold it still in the sloshing tide. No one spoke. Nick and Drake ran to him, helped him push it back out into the waves, and hopped in.
White spray kicked over the side as they built up speed. Despite its power, the outboard motor was quiet, and when their squat, stocky coxswain finally spoke, he barely raised his voice above a conversational tone. “Gentlemen. My name is Chief Morales.”
Nick could not see much of his face in the moonless dark, only the silver droplets of saltwater glistening on his bushy black mustache.
“I’m not supposed to ask who you are,” continued the SEAL, “but you must have some serious connections to drag us all the way out here.” He flipped his NVGs down in front of his eyes and adjusted the boat’s course to the east. “Rawhide One is thirty meters off the bow and already under way. We’re going to join up hot, so you’ll want to keep your heads down.”
Nick and Drake bent forward, but Morales shook his head. “I mean way down.”
With his chin behind the bow rail, Nick could see little on the dark horizon. It didn’t help that he had to keep wiping the sea spray from his eyes. Then a silhouette formed ahead, racing to meet them — a black trapezoid rising just above the water’s surface. Nick dropped his head below the rubber hull and braced for impact.
The starlit floor of the dinghy went completely dark as it slid into the small rear bay of its mother ship. As soon as the bay doors closed behind them, Nick felt the larger craft rise up and rapidly accelerate, bouncing on the choppy sea. Dim blue lights flashed on, and the water in the bay drained out, allowing the dinghy to settle onto rubber rails, giving them all a little more headroom. Nick glanced around at the angular gray walls. He allowed himself a smile. He had just caught a unicorn — or at least, it had caught him.
The M8 °C Dagger was the Sasquatch of the maritime community — rumored to exist, occasionally sighted, only seen in grainy videos shot from a great distance. The stealth boat was sleek and thin, with a faceted structure and an M-shaped hull that rose out of the water at speed and sank at idle so that it could hide amid the waves. If anything could get them into Israel undetected, the Dagger could.
The chief led them forward through a corridor barely wide enough for one man. While the two Triple Seven operatives steadied themselves against the walls, the squat SEAL walked unaided, despite the pitch and roll of the boat. He led them up to the cockpit where the boat commander sat at controls, his face illuminated by the white glow of a wide forward screen. He was big, almost as big as Drake, with a square jaw and dark features, as if he had some Native American in the nearer branches of his family tree.
“Lieutenant Jonathan Lighthart,” said the SEAL, his voice also carrying a Native American flavor. “Welcome aboard and thanks for ruining my day off.” Lighthart’s eyes never left the forward screen. At the speed it was cutting through the waves, the Dagger could not be left to an autopilot.
“Happy to be aboard,” said Nick.
“Always a pleasure to ruin a Navy man’s day,” added Drake.
Like the Triple Seven’s M-2 Wraith, the Dagger had no windows. Sensors embedded in the hull fed the forward screen. A grayscale, enhanced-infrared image showed them a clear picture of the waves ahead. Across the bottom, a six-inch-tall strip displayed close-in sonar returns. Flecks of blue and purple appeared and disappeared as the system found contacts and quickly dismissed them as small biologicals.
Drake pointed to a pair of small blue boxes floating on the horizon. “What are those, Lieutenant?”
“Radar tracks.” Lighthart used his trackball to move crosshairs over one of the contacts. All of its data appeared on the screen, including its type — a container ship — and its name and destination. “We use position data and ship size to correlate targets with a real-time database. If she can see a boat, the Dagger can tell you who it is.” He glanced back. “So? What do you boys think of her?”
Nick patted the gray wall. “She’s a real beauty.”
“All except the callsign,” said Drake. “Rawhide? Couldn’t you come up with something a little less landlocked?”
Lighthart returned his eyes to the screen. “Dolphin or Sea Lion would be too obvious.”
“Have you considered Sea Monkey?”
As Nick slapped his teammate’s arm with the back of his hand, his phone chimed. He had come to dread that sound. He fished the device out of a wet pocket, praying the alert meant a text from his dad, knowing, fearing, that it was something else. His fear proved justified.
The black box with the ivory letters waited for him on the screen. The Emissary has taken your queen. Your move.
An icy hand gripped Nick’s chest. His queen. Katy.
On cue, the phone rang — just like with Scott.
He put the phone to his ear and turned toward the seclusion of the aft bay. “What happened? Is Katy okay?”
“Hey there, Nick Baron.” The voice was CJ’s. She sounded weak. “Don’t know about Katy, but I’m feeling a little peaked, myself. You might not have to buy me an expensive dinner after all.”
Slowly, and with effort, the FBI agent explained what had happened at the pump station. Her team stopped the Hashashin from infecting the water supply, but the terrorist had already injected himself with the virus. He had planned to throw himself into the reservoir. The blood he coughed up infected her instead.
Nick steadied himself against the corridor wall, partly because of the bounce and roll of the Dagger, but mostly because of the flood of neurochemicals assaulting his system. The revelation that the lost queen was not Katy, the guilt of his relief, and the impotence of knowing that Kattan had wounded, perhaps killed, another friend while he had yet to even touch the man all combined and conflicted, weakening him to the edge of collapse.
“CJ, I—”
“Don’t blame yourself, Nick. This is part of the job. Every agent knows it.”
Nick pounded the wall with his fist. “This was not your job. It was a game, Kattan’s stupid chess game. You were the queen, a piece to be taken. Somehow he knew you would be at the pump station.”
“The queen. I like the sound of that.” Her voice was fading. “Nick, I’m tired. I’m going to transfer the line to the doc.”