But at the exact moment when she felt the trigger break, the flashlight shifted up the hill and blinded her in its brilliant beam. The gun recoiled in her hand, and she let the trigger reset but held off on firing a second round. Even without looking right at it, the white light had washed out her night vision goggles, and she lost sight of her target. She could only hear the soft scampering of feet retreating down the hill.
“Federal agent!” she yelled again, still blinded but hoping her command voice was enough to encourage the woman to stop.
Instead of surrendering, her target responded by letting loose a fusillade of submachine gun fire on full automatic, and Punky heard the sharp cracks of supersonic rounds impacting the hillside around her. She dove to her right, vaguely recalling that part of the slope being clear of jagged rocks, and hit the ground hard. The impact jarred the night vision goggles from the makeshift bracket, then she bounced, and her body plummeted down the hill.
But at least she managed to hold onto her pistol in the tumble.
After several seconds of falling, she finally came to a stop. Dizzy and disoriented, she rose on unsteady legs and scanned the darkness around her. Without the night vision goggles, she struggled to make sense of the scenery and couldn’t tell up from down or north from south. Her ears rang from the gunfire, but she could just barely make out a few other distinct sounds. The bass drumbeat of a helicopter’s rotor blades, ocean waves crashing ashore in Smuggler’s Cove, and the faint crackle of twigs breaking under the weight of a boot.
She spun toward the sound with her eyes wide, searching for movement in the shadows. But all she saw was the inky black of night. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she felt her skin flush from her body’s fear response, but she inhaled slowly through her nose to avoid giving in to the budding panic. Slowly, she lowered herself to the ground, letting her ears build a picture in her mind.
The helicopter’s sound echoed from both over her shoulder and directly in front of her, and she looked up at the tapestry of stars that came to an abrupt end in a jagged line. She must have tumbled into the narrow valley on the east side of the ridgeline. The sound of the waves beating against the southern shore reached her right ear first, confirming that she was still facing east.
Snap.
It was quiet, barely loud enough to register over the other sounds, but she reacted to the snapping of twigs by turning slowly to her left. There, maybe ten feet away, was the dark silhouette of a woman moving toward her in a crouch. Punky raised the pistol and placed the front sight post on center mass, then began pressing back on the trigger.
But something didn’t feel right.
A little voice in the back of her head told her to wait.
She relaxed her finger off the trigger just as she heard another twig breaking, this time up the slope to her left. The person in her sights also heard the sound and spun, offering Punky a faint profile that confirmed what she’d feared.
It’s not her.
Suddenly, the darkness was split open by muzzle flashes twenty yards to her left. Punky shifted her aim and squeezed the trigger repeatedly while lunging for the dark shape just in front of her. She stopped firing as her feet left the ground and her shoulder caught the person in their ribs. Punky could tell she had hit a woman, but she continued driving through the tackle until they were both on the ground with automatic fire raking the air over their heads.
“Don’t move,” she growled.
The woman whimpered.
She rolled to her side and leveled her pistol on the now silent submachine gun, searching for her target in the valley’s shadows. After several seconds, Punky looked down at the woman and asked, “Who are you?”
“Tiff… Tiffany,” she said. “I’m the park ranger.”
She must have been the one whose flashlight had taken away her element of surprise. Punky wanted to curse her incompetence but remembered they were all treading on new ground. To her knowledge, nobody had ever tracked a foreign agent to an island off the coast of Southern California. “Do you have a radio, Tiffany?”
The woman reached for a handheld radio clipped to her belt and handed it up to Punky. She took the radio and keyed the microphone, keeping her voice low as she continued scanning for a target. “Raptor Two Four, come in.”
“Go ahead,” the pilot’s voice answered.
“This is Special Agent King,” Punky said. “I’m here with Tiffany on the east side of the ridgeline.”
“Stand by.”
The sound of the helicopter grew louder and the echoes off the surrounding terrain overlapped as the Seahawk drew closer. She looked to her right and saw the shadowed outline of a helicopter approaching their position from the south.
“Raptor Two Four is visual two individuals,” the pilot said.
She gave a little shake of her head. “There should be a third,” she said. “We were taking fire from north-northwest at about twenty yards.”
The pilot was silent for a moment. “Negative contact. We only see you and Tiffany on infrared.”
What the hell?
Fifty yards north, Chen huddled next to a shrub while watching the approaching helicopter with some trepidation. She knew the helicopter likely had infrared search capability and its crew wore night vision goggles, but she hesitantly placed her trust in the clothing Wu Tian had brought for them to wear. The Ministry’s scientists had touted that the specially made camouflage would make them invisible on infrared, and she gambled her life on their competence.
The helicopter descended closer to the ground, hovering over her pursuers for a few moments before lifting and spinning to the east to disappear over Montañon Ridge. She knew it would likely return to resume its search, so she used the brief opportunity and scurried north, away from the two individuals hunting her and down a narrow draw that might lead her into Smuggler’s Canyon. From there, she knew she could reach the butte and escape north to the beach at Scorpion Anchorage.
At first, her movements were slow and methodical, but the deeper she went into the draw, the more she forsook noise discipline for an increase in speed. She had successfully escaped being caught in a pincer on the east slope, but with that treacherous part behind her, it quickly became more important to reach the beach than it was to stay and fight. The inflatable dinghy Wu Tian had stashed on the beach was her only lifeline to the sailboat at anchor off the coast.
And the sailboat was her only refuge.
As she made her way up onto the butte, she heard the helicopter several more times, crossing high overhead in a north-south zigzag pattern. Each time, she froze, listening to her ragged breathing and the blood pulsing in her brain, and she waited. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. It was pure agony waiting for the helicopter to retreat out of sight so she could continue her movement north, but each time her confidence in the clothing increased. If they had spotted her, they would have engaged. That she was still alive counted for something.
By the time she reached Smuggler’s Road, she had convinced herself she was invisible. She slung the H&K MP7 over her shoulder and ran like her life depended on it. The helicopter continued flying in a zigzag pattern behind her, and she allowed herself to revel in the taste of the salty ocean spray on her lips. She was close, and there was nothing the Americans could do to stop her.
53