The dinghy looked miniature compared to the fishing boats and motor yachts occupying the neighboring slips, but with names like Wet Dream and Morning Wood, she reasoned their owners still thought size mattered and could use the ego boost. Without so much as a glance over her shoulder, she strode up the dock toward her four-door Ocean Blue Metallic Jeep Wrangler in the parking lot.
“Ahoy there,” a slurred voice called from the deck of Morning Wood.
Chen gave the Black captain in a Hawaiian shirt a furtive glance but gritted her teeth and kept walking. As much as she would have loved to embarrass him by exposing his inadequacies, Mantis had made it clear time was of the essence. And she still hadn’t figured out what to do about the Marine and his ineptitude.
When she reached her Jeep, Chen opened the door and climbed inside. She opened the calculator app on her phone and again entered the passkey that gave her access to the partitioned communications portal she used to send and receive messages with her asset. She had a long drive ahead of her and wanted to send him something simple, like DO NOTHING, to keep him from striking out on his own and taking action that might jeopardize the entire operation.
She clicked on “Receive” and waited for the progress bar to fill, hoping he hadn’t made the fatal mistake of sending a second message in the same night. She knew the American National Security Agency monitored all manner of electronic communications, but those coming from a strategic asset like an aircraft carrier likely received additional scrutiny.
1 NEW MESSAGE.
She tapped on the icon and waited for the message to download while growing increasingly frustrated with the man. She had recruited him for one very simple reason, and it wasn’t to break from protocol and inundate her with meaningless information at a critical phase of the operation. No matter how useful he might have been in getting them to that point, she couldn’t abide carelessness that risked exposing them and jeopardized her opportunity for advancement.
The message downloaded, and she read it with some surprise.
Maybe he has some use after all, she thought.
She exited the application without replying. She still had several hours before a reply was even necessary, and it might teach the impatient Marine a lesson in sticking with protocol. Send one message a night, at most, and check for incoming messages in the morning. How hard could that be?
Without programming her destination into her phone, she scrolled along her planned route, looking for traffic that might delay her arrival in San Luis Obispo. Chen was familiar with the area and knew her route would take her across Naples before turning to parallel the San Gabriel River north to Interstate 405. She would pass through Torrance, Hawthorne, and Inglewood, bypassing both the Long Beach airport and larger Los Angeles International before traffic slowed her. Southwest of Burbank, she would merge onto the 101 and pick up speed as she traveled west on the north side of the Santa Monica Mountains. From there, she would hug the coast through Ventura and Santa Barbara, before finally reaching the sleepy college town on the central coast.
She switched back to the calculator app and read the message again.
1. NAVY PILOT DOWNLOADED AIRCRAFT DATA. POTENTIAL COMPROMISE.
Though she doubted the data could lead engineers to conclude the jet’s software had been manipulated via remote hack, she thought it possible they could use it to discover the fissure that allowed it to happen in the first place. That would change everything and put months of planning at risk of being wasted. She would have to respond to this, but first she needed to get moving. Mantis didn’t like to be kept waiting.
Chen put her phone in the cradle mounted on the dash, backed out of her spot, and began her drive. Normally, she’d spend at least an hour completing a surveillance detection route before proceeding to her destination, but time was short, and she elected to bypass it. Spotting a tail before San Luis Obispo would be child’s play.
Rick watched the spy climb from the RHIB onto the dock while he mentally catalogued her appearance for his later reports. Asian, most likely Chinese. Early thirties. Five foot two or five foot three. One hundred and ten to one hundred and twenty pounds. Shoulder-length black hair. Narrow face with almond-shaped eyes.
She sauntered past the neighboring yachts, and by the time she’d pulled even with his, he had recovered enough to act inebriated and call out to her. “Ahoy there.”
She flashed him a halting smile but continued moving up the dock with effortless grace, confident that she was a woman to be desired, the mistress of her domain. He made note of that characteristic as well, then pulled the earpiece out from under his collar and slipped it into his ear.
“Air One, Delta One.”
“Go for Air One,” the pilot said.
“Subject is moving toward the parking lot. Female, Asian. Early thirties.”
“Air One has a visual.”
Rick waited until she had disappeared into the parking lot, then slipped into the saloon, where he turned out the lights. He returned to the aft deck to contemplate his options. “Maintain your visual, and let me know when she’s on the move.”
“Subject is in a four-door Jeep Wrangler,” the pilot said.
Rick heaved himself over the transom and stepped on a stern line to draw the fishing boat closer before leaping to the dock. He willed himself not to run, but in the distance, he saw the Jeep back out of the space next to his loaner BMW and leave the parking lot.
“Delta One is in pursuit, maintain your visual.”
“Air One copies.”
When the Jeep had gone a hundred yards and disappeared, Rick leaned forward and sprinted up the dock to reach the BMW. Driving a flashy car had seemed like a good idea at the time, but as he climbed into the driver’s seat, he regretted his decision not to go with a boring government sedan.
He backed out of his spot and put the German car into gear, tearing out of the parking lot onto Ocean Boulevard to eat up some of the lost ground. “Status?”
“Subject is turning north on Claremont,” the pilot replied.
Rick zoomed in on the BMW’s navigation display to see the street names and purposely drove past the street she had turned down. He suspected TANDY was only cutting across to Second Street and the quickest route to the freeway, but the residential street was a good place to begin a surveillance detection route. “Copy, I will pursue on…” He squinted at the street names on the moving map. “Pomona.”
“Air One will be bingo fuel in one five mikes.”
He cranked the steering wheel over to turn down Pomona Avenue, paralleling TANDY’s route as he tried to close and regain the visual before his air support had to return to the Long Beach airport to refuel. He bit off an acerbic reply and simply said, “Copy.”
Rick pressed hard on the gas pedal, ignoring the beach cottages and parked cars whirring by as he sped through the Belmont Shore neighborhood. He scrambled to come up with a backup plan before he lost his dedicated air support.
“Subject at Claremont and Second Street,” the pilot said.
Rick glanced down at the map and saw that he had narrowed the gap to five hundred yards, albeit on different streets. “Air One, can you get a license plate?”
“Negative.”
“If I can get eyes on, can you run the plates?”
There was a pause. “Affirm. Subject turning east on Second Street.”