But he hadn’t reemerged, and she had eventually all but forgotten about him as the months passed.
But now he was calling about the location of the Fu Yu Shan, and Abrams felt her pulse quicken as she allowed herself to wonder what he had managed to find out.
‘Put him on,’ she ordered the secretary. ‘Immediately.’
4
An emergency meeting of the National Security Council had been convened, and there were hushed whispers all around the huge conference table as people wondered what was going on; but all conversation died down when President Abrams swept into the room and took her place at the head of the table.
Jeb Richards fidgeted in his seat nervously. He had done what he could to suppress useful intelligence, and knew that Mason would have been doing the same, but the persistent rumors suggested that the reason for this meeting was that there had been a breakthrough in the hijacking case.
Richards could only hope that it wouldn’t interfere with his own plans, his own assurances and promises that he had made to other parties.
‘Thank you all for coming at such short notice,’ he heard Abrams begin, morbidly curious to see where this was going to go, ‘but we have received information that we need to work on, fast. In conjunction with John’ — she nodded her head towards Eckhart, the National Security Adviser — ‘and Pete’ — she nodded again, this time at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — ‘I have ordered the DEVGRU squadron to our naval base at Sembawang, Singapore, from where they will stage a proposed hostage rescue mission for the crew of the hijacked cargo ship, the Fu Yu Shan.’
Secretary of State Clark Mason was almost out of his seat by the time Abrams had finished her opening statement, eyes bulging. ‘What exactly’s going on here?’ he demanded as calmly as he could. ‘And why haven’t I been informed about any of this?’
Abrams regarded him icily. ‘I’m informing you now,’ she said. ‘Time is of the essence here, as I’m sure you appreciate, and I didn’t wish to waste any time informing each and every one of you individually.’
Mason bowed his head in acceptance, and Abrams carried on with the briefing. ‘We have received intelligence pertaining to the location of the Fu Yu Shan.’ There was a collective murmur from the group, but it ended as quickly as it began as Abrams continued. ‘It appears that the group behind the hijacking was indeed Liang Kebangkitan, and their hideout has been traced to a small island off the coast of Sumatra. Pete will give you all the details later, but suffice it to say that the ship is there, and so are the hostages.’
Richards grunted. Mason might have accepted the situation, but Richards didn’t mind having a pop himself. ‘Where has this information come from?’ he asked with a concerned expression. ‘I haven’t heard anything about it. What kind of source is this?’
Abrams held up her hands, soothing the atmosphere. ‘It comes from a reliable source,’ she said reasonably. ‘One that I trust implicitly.’
‘Can you tell us what it is?’ Richards shot back acidly. ‘This is the National Security Council, isn’t it? If we’re going to authorize any form of action, then we need to know it’s from a trusted source. And if I haven’t heard anything about it through any agency in my department, then it makes me want answers, okay?’
Richards watched Abrams nod her head thoughtfully, seeming to weigh things up. ‘Okay,’ she said at last, ‘this intelligence comes directly from one of our operatives, codenamed the Asset.’
Richards almost choked as he heard this. ‘The Asset?’ he blurted out. ‘But who the hell is he? Can we trust him?’
There was more conversation around the table now, more heated and open than before, but all heads turned as Abrams cleared her throat.
‘We can trust him,’ she confirmed. ‘I can vouch for this man one hundred percent.’
‘You think?’ asked Clark Mason, getting himself back into the picture. ‘With all due respect, I believe we’re going to need a little more than that before we launch a military operation on foreign soil.’
‘We’ve got more than that,’ Major General Pete Olsen’s voice boomed down the table. ‘Now why don’t you do us all a favor, simmer down a bit and listen to what we’ve got?’
Richards was shocked by the man’s brusque disrespect to the Sec State, but Mason seemed to fold under the man’s intense gaze.
‘Good,’ Olsen said as nobody else dared interrupt him. ‘Now look at this.’
An image came up on the high-res screens around the room, showing the coast of Sumatra. ‘Now, here we can see the coastal city of Dumai on mainland Sumatra,’ he intoned with his rich bass voice, ‘with the island of Pulau Rupat off to the east. If we look closer,’ he continued as he flicked a button, the image on the screens zooming in, ‘we can see seven smaller islands in the channel between the two. Our interest lies with the easternmost islet, here,’ he said as he zoomed in even closer, highlighting the tiny island, the satellite maps showing a green outline of thick vegetation.
He clicked another button, and the image switched to direct line-of-sight photographs of a narrow river. ‘This is a riverine channel which cuts through the island,’ Olsen said, pressing the button once more. ‘And here is the entrance to the pirate’s hidden cave, where they are hiding the Fu Yu Shan and its crew.’ Several images flicked by, taken in both daylight and nighttime conditions. ‘And here,’ he said pointedly, ‘is the Fu Yu Shan itself’ — he clicked through to another picture — ‘the cabins used by the pirates’ — another picture — ‘and some of their marine vehicles and other equipment.’
Olsen looked around the room at the stunned expressions on the faces of the Security Council members.
‘When were these taken?’ asked Catalina dos Santos, stealing the words right from Richards’ open mouth.
‘Yesterday,’ Olsen replied evenly. ‘And we are getting regular updates.’
‘You mean the Asset is still there?’ Richards asked in disbelief.
‘Yes,’ Olsen replied with a smile. ‘We’ve got real-time, on-site reconnaissance.’
Dammit, Richards thought to himself, cursing the agent who had found the pirates.
Under the table, he started to text his personal secretary.
Urgent. Find out everything you can about intelligence agent codenamed The Asset.
‘Listen up,’ Ike Treyborne announced to Red Squadron, lined up in front of him in an old aircraft hangar at Sembawang naval base. ‘We’re going to get our gear squared away immediately. Night Stalkers are also en route and should be here by morning. After that, we’ll need to be ready to move at an hour’s notice, understood?’
Jake Navarone, along with the other members of the Red Indians, gave a nod of his head in affirmation. The Night Stalkers were pilots from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), the incomparable covert ops flyers charged with delivering JSOC special mission units such as DEVGRU to their targets. Piloting advanced aircraft such as the Black Hawk and Little Bird under some of the harshest operational conditions imaginable, they had built a legendary — and well-deserved — reputation for themselves.
‘We have maritime elements also en route,’ Treyborne continued, ‘but if push comes to shove and we have to move quickly, we’ve got access here to some suitable vehicles. I’ll discuss that with troop commanders individually at this evening’s briefing.’
Red Squadron had been called into action more quickly than expected, but the intelligence that they were being fed by JSOC was real-time, and nobody knew for sure how long the agent providing it could stay in place for.
And the intel was good; photographs of the river, the surrounding area, the cave entrance, the disposition of buildings within the cavern, the Fu Yu Shan itself. Whoever was sending it over must be one hell of an operative, Navarone considered.
JSOC was even able to patch through to them up-to-date thermal imagery from infra-red cameras that the agent had somehow managed to set up throughout the cavern. A gift of exquisite operational value, it allowed the SEALs to see where each and every person was in the cavern.
It appeared that the hostages themselves were being held together in a room off the main cavern. It wasn’t clear from the thermal imagery, but Treyborne and the analysts back at JSOC believed that it was likely to be a smaller side-cave, probably sectioned off with steel bars.
What was clear was that there were eleven bodies in that room — identified as hostages by their limited and restricted movements — whereas the ship had originally had a complement of twenty-two, including its armed security element. Navarone and the other SEALs wondered what that meant for the missing eleven.
Navarone could guess about the six men who had been charged with protecting the ship; they had probably all been killed during the initial assault. But the other five? They might also have been killed during the raid, or after — perhaps as an example to the others, maybe because they tried to fight back. Or else they may have died subsequently from illness, dehydration or starvation, or any number of other complications.
But there were eleven live hostages left, and to Navarone and the rest of the Red Indians, that was a hell of a lot better than none.
The thermal imaging also allowed the SEALs to track the movements of the pirates; who was on sentry duty, when and where, as well as a wealth of further information about their general habits within the lair.
The on-site agent was also sending back analysis of the lair’s fortifications and defensive systems, which seemed formidable. JSOC specialists were running through it all now, and Navarone knew that he would probably learn more at the briefing for troop leaders later on.
But they had an intelligence goldmine, and that would make their work a lot easier.
‘I spoke to Commander Lewis before setting off from Subic,’ Treyborne continued, referencing Chad Lewis, the Commander of Task Force 73, Logistics Group Western Pacific, who was the officer-in-charge of the base, ‘and he’s already been setting up an ad hoc training facility based on the general layout of the river and cave system, so we can get some situation-specific rehearsal in.’
There was a general murmur of approval amongst the man; they couldn’t wait to get started, knowing that time spent rehearsing was never wasted.
‘So get yourselves squared away and back here in thirty minutes ready for our first run-through,’ Treyborne instructed. ‘We don’t have the mission green light yet, as it needs approval from above’ — at this there were the expected moans and groans, and Treyborne raised his hands for silence — ‘but we need to be ready when we get the call. Any questions?’
‘Just one,’ Navarone said. ‘Who the hell do we have out there? Who’s getting us all this intel?’
Treyborne shook his head. ‘I’ve got no idea, son, and I probably never will. But if I do ever find out, I’ll be buying him a cold beer, that’s for damn sure.’