“Delta One, Air One, looks like you’re looking for a RHIB.”
“Roger.”
Rick had come to the same conclusion as the Stationair pilot and guessed that the RHIB was returning from a ship at anchor. Either TANDY had dropped something off or picked something up, but he figured it didn’t matter much one way or the other. He leaned forward in his seat and strained through the darkness to make out the navigation lights of the smaller boat idling from the channel toward the mouth of the basin.
He felt a bubbling nervousness now that their months of tedious and fruitless investigative legwork was about to pay off. He was about to put eyes on TANDY for the first time. The boat entered the basin and motored for an empty slip two down from his. He remained still and squinted at the figure in a dark wool coat.
Something’s not right.
“Delta One has a visual,” he said.
“Air One.”
“Going dark.”
When the RHIB disappeared behind the neighboring boats, Rick removed the earpiece from his ear and descended from the fly bridge to the main deck. Halfway down the ladder, he felt his phone vibrate, and when he reached the bottom, he pulled it out and saw another message waiting in the secure portal. He glanced in the target’s direction then back to his phone, deciding he had time to check the message before regaining a visual. There was only one way off the dock, and it led right past his position from the deck of Morning Wood.
Rick unlocked his cell phone with a six-digit passcode and biometric scan, then opened the secure portal. Entering another unique passcode, he connected to the server and downloaded the waiting message. Over the last several months of monitoring communications between KMART and TANDY, their pattern had been consistent. The sailor sent one message at night, and his handler replied in the morning. It was predictable.
This was out of the norm, and it worried Rick that KMART had sent another message so soon.
After downloading the message from the secure server, he read it through quickly and felt his face flush. He read it again, then glanced in the direction of the RHIB and cursed.
“Well, shit.”
He exited the secure portal and dialed Punky.
Punky had cleared the bulk of Los Angeles area traffic and had the convertible Mille Miglia Red Corvette purring like a kitten. But she couldn’t keep her mind from racing with worry.
What aircraft had been targeted?
What was supposed to have happened?
Why did it fail?
Her hair thrashed in the wind as she pushed the classic muscle car south to San Diego. The speedometer needle cracked ninety miles per hour, and she instinctively veered into the left lane to pass slower-moving traffic. Patience might have been a virtue, but it wasn’t one she had been blessed with. At least not when it came to rooting out traitors and putting them behind bars, where they belonged.
A modern sports sedan veered out in front of her, and she swerved back to the right and stomped on the gas, avoiding the temptation to flash her badge — or middle finger — at the offending driver. As much as she refused to admit it, she wasn’t any closer to uncovering KMART’s identity, and she doubted a midnight detour into her office at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service Southwest Field Office would help. But what choice did she have?
Her phone rang as the traffic in front of her opened up. She slipped in her AirPods as all two hundred and seventy ponies shoved her back into her seat. “What’s going on, Uncle Rick?”
“We got another one,” he said.
“Another…?”
“Message.”
“So soon?”
“This doesn’t sound good,” he said.
“The last one didn’t sound good. What makes this one worse?”
Aside from the fact there had been a predictable cadence in communications between KMART and his handler, and that an increase in tempo hinted at something major in the works, she had a suspicion she wasn’t going to like the content. Her foot pressed harder on the pedal.
“Where are you?”
“An hour from the base. Are you going to tell me what it said? Or am I supposed to guess?”
Rick sighed on the other end, and she knew he was struggling with the idea of discussing classified material over an unsecured line. Rick was a good agent, but sometimes the cumbersome rules put in place to protect their country from its enemies hindered those who were trying to stop them.
“Spit it out.”
“The message said, and I quote, ‘Navy pilot downloaded aircraft data. Potential compromise.’ End quote.”
She felt her first glimmer of hope. Instead of floundering about in reports she had already read at least a dozen times, hoping to find a needle in a haystack and a new morsel of information that might lead her to the traitor, all she needed to do was find the pilot. If KMART thought the pilot had information that could compromise him, then she needed to find the pilot.
“What’s bad about this? This is good news,” she said.
“Punky. What do you think TANDY will do if KMART is worried about the pilot having this information?”
Her foot came off the gas pedal a smidge. She hadn’t considered the danger to the pilot just because of whatever knowledge he possessed, and she tried convincing herself her motives for finding him had changed. “I’ll find him,” she said.
“Punky…”
“Uncle Rick, you said it. If there’s a target on his back, I have to warn him before…” She almost said, Before we lose our only link to KMART. “Before something happens to him.”
“He’s on an aircraft carrier,” Rick reminded her. There were hardly more secure places than an American aircraft carrier at sea, but she knew that wasn’t good enough. She knew she wouldn’t be able to rest until she found the pilot and learned what he knew.
“And?”
“And how are you going to get there?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
She heard a commotion on the other end of the line before Rick’s voice came back in a rushed whisper. “I’ve got to go. Don’t do anything without me.”
“I’ve done everything without you.” The words came out harsher than she intended, but thankfully he had already hung up.
Punky took her AirPods out of her ears before reaching across the center console to remove her holstered .40 S&W SIG Sauer P229 from the glove box. While balancing the steering wheel between her knees, she clipped the handgun to her belt above her right hip, slipped a magazine pouch with two spares onto her left side, and pulled her hoodie low to conceal them. Then she pressed hard on the gas pedal once more and launched the Corvette back above ninety miles per hour.
It’s time to go home.
12
Chen docked the RHIB in the same slip she had departed from hours earlier, then jumped the narrow gap to the dock and secured her lines to the weathered cleats. She was hardly a skilled seaman but had plenty of experience working with ropes, and she was confident the boat would still be there when she returned. She had paid for the slip through the end of the month, but only needed it for one more day.