Keeping his lights off, he pulled out onto the road two hundred yards in trail of the Jeep, feeling a giddy nervousness with each passing minute. By the time his target had reached the Cal Poly campus, he was reasonably certain she hadn’t spotted him. But he didn’t want to take chances, and he drifted further behind and watched from a discreet distance as she turned right on Campus Way.
As the Jeep’s taillights retreated up the hill, he used the trees lining the street as cover and turned to follow. With his heart pounding in his chest, he glanced at the navigation display to try to predict where she was headed. He saw the Jeep pull into a parking space at the bottom of the hill, and he quickly turned right and pulled into a parking lot in front of a white stucco building and coasted to a stop. He kept his foot off the brake pedal to avoid illuminating his taillights, then shifted into park and turned off the engine.
What is she doing?
He adjusted his rearview mirror to observe the area around where TANDY had parked the SUV. She could have been executing another countersurveillance technique, waiting to see if any other cars pursued her down the hill before driving away. But, after several minutes, she surprised him by emerging on foot and walking away from him and deeper into campus.
He quickly climbed out of the car and crossed the street to the sidewalk alongside Cuesta Avenue. In the distance, he saw the back of TANDY’s head, her dark hair bobbing rhythmically as she crossed another street and disappeared into the shadows between two academic buildings.
“Shit!”
Fearing what might happen if he lost her, he started jogging down the hill while musing over his decision to wear the brightly colored Hawaiian shirt. While it might have helped him blend in at the yacht club, he stood out like a sore thumb on the deserted campus.
When he pulled even with the blue Wrangler, he removed a small magnetic tracking device from his pocket and slipped it inside the Jeep’s grill without breaking stride. He ignored the heat radiating from the hood in the cool morning air and removed his phone to check that the tracking device was working. But before he could, his phone vibrated, and he saw a notification banner that the NSA had intercepted another message.
Rick stopped and hurried to access the secure portal, where he downloaded the pending message. He felt time and his target slipping away from him but needed to know what the message said.
TEXT FROM INTERCEPTED TRANSMISSION FOLLOWS.
FROM: TANDY
TO: KMART
1. PROVIDE DETAILED INFORMATION ON NAVY PILOT.
2. BE ALERT FOR OPPORTUNITY TO ELIMINATE.
His heart rate quickened, knowing that the woman who had sent that message to a sailor aboard the Abraham Lincoln was less than one hundred yards in front of him. He dialed Punky as he resumed his chase, eager to fill her in on what he had discovered since she left. His call was answered after three rings.
“Uncle Rick.” She sounded breathless. “What time is it?”
“Early.” He heard rustling in the background and assumed she was still in bed.
“Oh, shit! I’m late!”
“Late for what?”
She didn’t answer. “Where are you?”
“I’m following TANDY,” he said. “She’s at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.”
The rustling continued, and Punky’s voice sounded strained. “San Luis… wait. Did you say she?”
“Yeah.” Rick darted between the buildings where he had last seen TANDY, hoping to regain his visual before she disappeared for good. He recited the description he had built the night before as she walked past Morning Wood. “Punky, our subject is a woman. Asian, most likely Chinese—”
“Ministry of State Security,” she muttered.
Rick ignored the interruption and continued relaying his information as he slowed his jog and neared the corner of the building. “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.”
“Are you on foot?”
Rick heard the unmistakable angry growl of a cold Corvette Stingray starting, and he ignored her question. “What are you late for? Where are you going?”
“Don’t get burned. We can’t lose her.”
He knew he had been on the phone too long already, distracted from the task at hand, but he couldn’t help but worry that she was rushing into danger. In the background, he heard the Corvette’s engine rev. “I placed a tracker on her car,” he said. “She won’t get away.”
“Hang back,” Punky warned. “If she sees you, it’s over.”
Rick stepped out from behind the corner of the building and saw her.
She was walking across a wide lawn with her back turned to him, and he edged away from the walkway toward a sycamore tree and shrubs at the west end of the open space. Suddenly, she stopped and knelt to tie her shoe, and he froze. He knew she was checking for a tail, which meant something was about to happen.
“I’ve gotta go,” he whispered. “Don’t do anything without me.”
“I’m not a kid anymore, Uncle Rick.”
When she hung up, he clenched his jaw in frustration, as much with himself as with her obstinance. But when he watched TANDY quickly stand and walk to a concrete bench, he forgot he had called to warn his stubborn adopted niece that the Navy pilot was in even more danger than before.
15
Professor David Wang watched the whole thing while sitting nestled in the trees at the east end of Dexter Lawn. He was in his early forties but often mistaken for someone ten years younger, a happy accident he attributed to not owning a car and either riding his bicycle or walking everywhere he needed to go. San Luis Obispo was a coastal town located halfway between the Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles but enjoyed a cool Mediterranean climate. It was the perfect place for an active and modest lifestyle, and it suited him well.
Like most professors at the university, David wore slacks and a collared shirt to lecture, but was often distinguishable on campus by his bright green Outdoor Research GORE-TEX rain jacket. Even when rain wasn’t in the forecast and the early summer temperatures ranged from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies, the damp ocean air chilled him to the core, and he wore the jacket more often than not.
But this morning, he had left it at home, favoring more subtle attire that allowed him to blend in with his surroundings. He fancied himself one of the more popular members of the faculty, at least in the College of Engineering, and rarely was able to walk across campus without being noticed. Most of his students, undergraduate and graduate alike, recognized him and hailed him with friendly waves or shouts of, “Hey, Professor Wang!” He smiled at the thought, already missing most of his students who had moved off campus for the summer break but glad for their absence at the moment.
The campus had been planted in the middle of a roadless barley field, but Cal Poly sprouted into an institution with rich arboreal roots. From the orchards maintained by students in the 1900s to the Canary Island date palms lining the entrance to campus, David found peace in the abundance of greenery. Over the years, he had identified several carefully selected spots, known only to him, where he could escape the chaos of the classroom and breathe in the fresh air to rediscover his calm and practice the art of being still.
He sat in one of those spots now, absorbing the sound of the wind whispering to him through the California redwood, deodar cedar, and London plane trees, while admiring the woman Mantis had sent. She appeared confident and demonstrated competent tradecraft as she made her way to the designated dead drop in remarkable time, but it wasn’t entirely surprising she hadn’t seen him hidden in the trees.