For some reason, he kissed her on the cheek and then got up to go.
She stopped him by saying, “Check out the location and see if I’m right. I trust payment will come as usual?”
He didn’t know the nature of usual, but had to think the Agency would take care of this for him. “Certainly,” he said.
Karl smiled and walked away, slipping the note into his left front pants pocket.
He got back to the hotel before checking the note. It was simply GPS coordinates, which he checked out on his phone. The last image taken of that area simply showed thick jungle canopy. But that image was a couple of years old. He would need the Agency to get a current shot. So, he sent the coordinates to Roddy.
After a quick shower to clean a layer of sweat, he lay down in the bed for a moment. He hadn’t slept well the night before, so he was a little tired. He guessed that part of his tiredness had to do with the oppressive heat outside. His body was still not used to that kind of hell.
He had barely fallen asleep when Maya came through the door carrying a number of shopping bags.
“You’re sleeping?” Maya asked, setting the bags down.
“Resting,” he said, rising to his elbows. “Recharging. Find some good stuff?”
“You wouldn’t believe how cheap clothes are here,” she said. “I bought you a couple of shirts also.”
Karl sat on the edge of the bed and watched her go through the clothes, showing him what she had purchased. Finally, she pulled out a leather shoulder bag big enough to hold her clothes and extra ammo.
She came to him and he got up to meet her. Without hesitation, she hugged him tightly and said, “I’m liking this arrangement.”
Arrangement? “Murmansk plus about a hundred degrees,” he said with a smirk.
“Not so much the location,” she said. “It’s the company.”
He couldn’t help thinking about her meeting the night before with that senior SVR officer. Was she the best liar he had ever met? Was she playing both sides? Probably on both counts.
“I’m going to shower,” she said. “And then we make love.”
She stripped down in front of him and he immediately wished he had waited to shower with her. Once she was in the shower, his phone buzzed and he picked it up. It said the caller was from Publishers Clearing House.
“Did I win?” Karl asked.
“You like that?” Roddy asked. “You might have hit the jackpot with those coordinates.”
“What is it?”
“We got lucky. Had SAT coverage of that area. It looks like some minor construction. But not likely oil related. The signature of the area is at least twice the size of a normal oil drilling rig build up. But the kicker is what looks like a hardened shelter covered by dirt and fresh sod.”
“A nuclear storage facility?” Karl asked.
“Looks like it from high above,” Roddy said. “But we need someone on the ground for a closer look.”
Someone? “You mean me, right?”
“You and Maya, yes.”
Karl heard the shower finish and Maya would come out soon, so he needed to cut the call short. “All right. We’ll head out in the morning.”
“You’ll need to use the oil company guide, Juan Ruiz,” Roddy said.
“Can I at least trust him?” Karl asked, a subtle indication that he couldn’t even trust his current partner.
The bathroom door opened and Maya came out completely naked. She stopped when she saw Karl on the phone.
“Will do,” Karl said, and then hung up.
“Your stock broker?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I wish. No, it was the Agency. They have a plan for us.”
She put her hands on her naked hips. “Tell me we still have time for this.”
He said nothing. He simply set his phone on the table next to the bed and went to her. They kissed passionately before Karl shoved her onto her back on the bed. Then he quickly planted his mouth between her legs, bringing an immediate gasp from Maya. She was quick to satisfy. But then he didn’t let her rest for a second as he shoved himself deep inside her until they both finished together.
26
The winds were starting to pick up in the Atlantic, the swells occasionally cutting across the bow of the ship as they rocked and rolled.
Lieutenant Commander Rita Carlson, the ship’s XO, had just turned over the helm and conn to the Officer of the Deck and traversed through the internal passageways to the Combat Information Center. Those in the CIC were actively monitoring the Russian merchant ship on large LED screens, along with the current flight of an incoming helo.
Commander Randy Wockovich sat in his command chair in deep thought.
Rita came up next to the captain and said, “How far out, sir?”
“Less than twenty miles,” the captain said. “They’re bucking a heavy headwind.”
Storms in this part of the ocean were rare in February, Rita knew. But that fact didn’t help with their current mission.
“It’ll be a rough landing,” she said.
“There’s no other choice, Rita. They won’t have enough fuel to make it anywhere after dropping their load. Even if they turned back now, they couldn’t make it to Barbados. We have to hope for a lull in the gusts.” The captain glanced over to a petty officer on the far end of the panel of screens. “What’s weather look like?”
“Sir, we’ve got fifty knot winds and twenty foot swells,” the petty officer said.
The captain shook his head. “What’s the position of the Russian ship?”
A junior officer spoke up. “Sir, it’s twenty-two nautical miles south southeast of our location.”
Rita leaned in and said, “We have no choice, sir. That’s a six-man SEAL team aboard the helo. We could drop them into the water and pick them up from there.”
The captain shook his head. “Not in these swells. Even that would be a tough op.”
“We could have them repel down,” the junior officer said.
The XO interjected. “That doesn’t help. The helo still needs to refuel before flying back.”
“As it is,” the captain said, “we’ll have to chock it and tie it down to hot refuel it. Or these winds might blow her off the deck.”
Rita said, “Cross winds will make it almost impossible to land. We’ll have to turn into the wind.”
“Even that could be dangerous,” the captain said. “If they power up to buck the wind and the gusts suddenly stop, they could ram into our hangar bay. Put me on the comm with the helo.”
A petty officer handed the captain a headset. Rita also got a comm to hear the conversation.
“We’re taking a beating out here, captain,” the helo pilot said.
“It’ll be a hard landing,” the captain said. “But we have no choice.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the pilot said. “We’ll be testing the struts on this bird.”
“What’s the range on the Seahawk?” the captain asked.
The pilot said, “About three hundred and eighty nautical miles. We’re coming up against that soon, so we’re coming in light.”
One of the screens in the CIC showed the rear camera view from the hangar to the fantail. The destroyer slowly turned into the wind to cut down on possible crosswinds. Moments later the Seahawk with the SEALS aboard came in low on the water, almost directly in line with the helo pad. At the last second, the pilot pulled the nose up slightly, the craft struggling against the heavy winds. Then, hovering while still keeping pace with the destroyer, the pilot expertly set the Seahawk onto the pad, but kept the rotors moving. The ground crew chocked the craft and started attaching tie-down chains to hold it in place, while a fueling crew pulled out the heavy hose and connected it to the fuel receptacle after grounding the craft.