“The secretary will see you now, Director,” the aide said, bringing Stockwell back to the present.
Together, Stockwell and Livingston were shown into Secretary Chertoff’s inner office.
“Congratulations on your promotion, Commander,” the secretary said, rising from his chair and coming around the desk to shake Deuce’s hand.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Please have a seat,” Chertoff said, motioning toward the two heavy leather chairs in front of the desk.
Once his guests were seated, the secretary leaned against his desk. “The president has approved your appointment as the acting Associate Director for Caribbean Counterterrorism, replacing Colonel Stockwell. It will, of course, have to be approved by Congress.”
“I’m honored to even be considered, sir,” Deuce said.
Stockwell turned to Deuce and said, “I asked the secretary to bring you up to speed personally on the situation with Charity Styles, Deuce. I’m afraid you’re not going to like it.”
Deuce looked from one to the other, obviously confused. He didn’t believe the rumors about Charity stealing the chopper. If anything, he thought the helo must have had some kind of mechanical failure and gone down.
Finally, Secretary Chertoff went behind his desk, unlocked a drawer and withdrew a file with a top-secret cover sheet, marked Operation: Sea Fury. Handing the file to Deuce, the secretary explained to him the full scope of the operation. Stockwell was right—Deuce didn’t like it at all.
“How many know about this, Mister Secretary?” Deuce asked, keeping his obvious agitation in check.
“Outside of this room, only one other person. The president.”
“So, I’m expected to lie?”
“It has to be this way, son,” the secretary replied. “Colonel Stockwell assured me that you’re the kind of man who can put the mission before his own personal honor.”
Deuce thought it over a minute. “Eventually, sir, the word will get out about what really happened. She’ll be spotted in the vicinity of an assassination, or arrested entering a country with a phony passport, and someone will put two and two together.”
“We’ve already taken steps to minimize that, if and when it happens,” Stockwell said. “I agree. It’s likely to happen. Hopefully, the revelation can be contained to only those in the intelligence and spec-ops communities. That’s who will likely be the first to discover it.”
Deuce stood and walked to the window overlooking Washington Navy Yard and the Anacostia River beyond it. He stared out toward the famous buildings and landmarks across the river. In the distance, he could just see the top of the Washington Monument.
Finally, he turned and faced the secretary and soon-to-be-former director. “I’ll do what needs to be done, sir.”
By the light of a high waning moon, Wind Dancer slowly motored through the inlet and into the Gulf of Mexico. Charity buried the memory of the night before and concentrated on the task at hand.
Clearing the jetty, she held a northern course, until she was a mile offshore. Then, turning west, she toggled all three switches, unfurling the sails. They snapped and filled in the light, but favorable, southerly breeze coming off the coast.
Wind Dancer heeled to starboard, accelerating, and Charity shut off the little diesel engine. Alvarado lay four hundred and thirty miles to the southwest. With luck, less than two days of sailing, arriving near dusk. But that would mean an average speed of twelve knots.
She knew that she’d lose most of the south wind by the time she made it halfway. The storm in the Gulf had moved inland, way up into the Florida panhandle, and the wind would return to its typical pattern. She would once more have to run before the wind, blowing toward the warmer land mass of mainland Mexico. In this part of the Gulf, the typical winds blew a little more northerly, at least. For the next hundred miles, she’d have to get every knot of speed Dancer could muster.
Less than an hour later and fifteen miles out of Progresso, Charity engaged the autopilot. The computer turned the boat toward the southwest, trimming the sails for maximum efficiency. She’d let the computer do most of the sailing from here on, having learned to trust the system more.
The sun was just beginning to tinge the sky behind Wind Dancer as Charity went below to get something to eat and check the laptop for messages. She was still wearing the dress from the night before, having been too exhausted to change when she’d returned to Wind Dancer. She quickly went forward and changed into proper sailing attire, long pants and a long-sleeved shirt.
When she returned to the helm thirty minutes later, the sun was above the horizon behind her. A quick check of the helm told her that Dancer was sailing a steady fifteen knots. She ate sliced fruit and thought about the message she’d received.
It’d been five days since she’d veered away from the go-fast boat in Florida Bay. McDermitt and the rest of the team had returned to their lives and duties, nobody hurt. But Jesse had turned down the job offer to be Stockwell’s successor. The director had seemed to think the man would accept it, but Charity had known all along that he wouldn’t. Jesse had served as a Marine for twenty years, costing him two failed marriages. For the last two years, he’d been involved with Homeland Security and lost his wife to domestic terrorists. He’d already given far more than his fair share.
Instead, Commander Livingston had assumed the role, moving to DC within a few days of Charity’s disappearance. The message had been from Deuce himself, reporting to her everything that had transpired and saying that even though he didn’t like how it had happened, he’d help her in any way he could. At the end of the message, he’d wished her well and said that he and his wife would pray for her safe return.
As the morning bore on, Charity contemplated the last part of the message. She’d never known her boss to be a religious man. She did recall his saying once that there were no atheists on the battlefield. Aside from that one reference, she couldn’t remember him mentioning religion or saying that he and his wife attended church.
Hours later, with little else to occupy her time, she went below and began putting together the equipment she’d need to take with her once she reached Alvarado. The original plan was to anchor in a secluded cove and use the Zodiac to transport things to a waiting car, once she’d secured one.
Now, she would be forced to tie up at a dock. Which would mean finding a marina where she could bring a car close to the boat. A person walking a long pier, dressed in black, and carrying a sniper rifle and gear, wouldn’t go unnoticed, even in the middle of the night.
With luck, she’d arrive in Alvarado early enough in the evening to rent a car or truck for the fifty-mile drive to the southern slope of the volcano. Barring that, she’d have to wait and rent the car the next day. If she could then get her gear to it without drawing attention, she could drive to within a few miles of the volcano and wait for darkness. The tone of Deuce’s message indicated that time was of the essence. He’d mentioned reports that an attack in South Texas was planned for Armed Forces Day, less than six days away. If it was this cell, they’d wait until the last minute to cross the border, which meant they’d leave the volcano in four days.
Best case, she’d have two nights in which to scout the enemy camp before taking her shot when the terrorists met for breakfast in the crater. Worst case would mean climbing to the high northern slope during the night and taking the shot the next morning.
As the afternoon turned into evening, Charity prepared for another night of sleeping at the helm in short naps.
Awad woke early. It was still dark when he rolled out his prayer mat for the morning prayer. When he finished, he rolled and stored his mat, picked up his backpack with the lightweight machine pistol inside and left the tent.
Fareed was on watch and had to be relieved so he could prepare the morning meal. Walking along the now-familiar path to the summit, Awad thought about the coming days. Today they were weapons training again, after a couple of days of him and Karim trying to tea
ch the men a few words and phrases of English, and to act a little more like the infidels they hated so much. It was a lesson in futility.
Tomorrow was more weapons training, and after that, each man was to spend a full day in prayer, fasting after the morning meal. At least being on lookout, he wouldn’t have to be shooting.
It took Awad twenty minutes to cross the crater, where they practiced shooting at a large round rock in the center, and climb up to the high spot where Fareed watched over the surrounding area. The only light to guide his way was the waning moon, now high overhead. In a few more days, they wouldn’t even have that. Not that it mattered. They’d be gone.
“As-salamu alaykum,” Fareed said as Awad stepped up onto the giant boulder that would be his perch for the next three hours. Since Fareed cooked all the meals, Awad was relieving him early, so he could get his cook fire started.
“Wa-Alaikum-Salaam,” Awad replied. “You will remember to bring me something to eat, once the others have finished?”
The cook grinned. “I feel Faud may be right. You do have a tapeworm inside you. Yes, I will make sure to bring you plenty.”
“Have you seen or heard anything?”
“A few sounds down in the darkness below, animals, probably. I have not seen any vehicles on the road all night.”
“Not even on the main road to the west?”
“No, nothing at all,” Fareed replied, rising and starting down the boulder-strewn peak. “I will return in an hour.”
“Thank you, Fareed.”
Awad sat down just below the top of the boulder. Far enough up on it so that he could see down the northern slope, but not so high as to silhouette himself once the sun rose above the eastern rim of the volcano.
“Fareed, wait,” Awad said. “Do you have a cigarette? I left mine in my tent.”
The cook turned around and came back up onto the boulder, sitting down once more. Reaching into his shirt pocket, he took out a pack of strong Turkish cigarettes and shook two out, handing one to Awad.
He struck a wooden match on the surface of the rock, and it flared brightly. When the flame subsided, Fareed held it out to Awad first and then lit his own, as Awad turned his head upward, exhaling the rich smoke.
“In three days, we will not be allowed to smoke anything but the American cigarettes,” Fareed complained.
“At least Hussein agreed to that, my friend. After Majdi and I told him everyone in America smokes them.”
“You couldn’t have told him they smoked a good Turkish blend?” the older man asked, taking a deep draw on the strong smoke and exhaling over his shoulder.
Awad laughed lightly, looking up at the night sky. A bright star directly above them and very near the moon seemed to flicker, growing brighter as the dawn of a new day approached. Awad thought it a good omen.
Chyrel Koshinski was in her office in Homestead very early, well before the sun had even thought about rising. She liked to start her day early and often worked late into the night. This morning, she was up much earlier than usual.
Deuce had texted her late last night from his new office in the nation’s capital. He had an assignment for her that involved moving the surveillance satellite they sometimes used. He said he’d email the location to her office and she could then move the satellite into geosynchronous orbit above a suspected terrorist training camp to begin observation.
With the satellite currently parked in space above the Gulf of Mexico, Chyrel knew it would take several hours to move it into position over whatever Middle Eastern country he wanted to look at with its sophisticated camera equipment.
In her tiny office, Chyrel booted up her desktop computer and waited. When the secure client server came up, she opened the email and was surprised that the target area Deuce emailed her was in Mexico, not the Middle East.
Shrugging, she pulled up a terrain map of the target area, with lines of longitude and latitude laid out on it. Jotting down the exact coordinates of the suspected camp, she opened the control panel for the satellite and entered the numbers from her pad.
The computer told her the satellite would be over the target in less than an hour, so she spent the time studying the geography, using both the terrain map and a satellite image from Google.
Though Google images are sometimes years out of date, she liked playing with them. Sometimes, the angle of the sun would show shadows and give her a better idea of what a place was like. Occasionally, she went to the street view to see regular people going about their day. Lately, she’d been zooming in on boat wakes she saw in the water, to look at people on their boats. This time, even though the Google image was overgrown with trees and shrubs, the shape was still unmistakable.
“Huh,” she said aloud. “Hiding in a volcano?”
Referring to the terrain map, she saw that the mountain, called Vulcan de San Martin, was a long-dormant volcano about twenty or so miles inland and southeast of Veracruz. The concentric rings of the terrain map showed that it rose steeply from the barren plain to a fractured cone at just over a mile above sea level.
The cone itself appeared to be roughly circular, at just over a half mile wide. Looking back and forth from the terrain map to the Google image, she noticed that the western slope was carved with deep gouges, canyons with a vertical drop of several hundred feet in places. The southern and eastern slopes were heavily forested, and the north slope looked like a moonscape, mostly bare rocks and sand. Zooming in, she saw several areas with round depressions that she realized had been made centuries ago by cooling lava forming bubbles.
The rim of the crater was highest on the north side and lowest on the south. It looked like the jungle just spilled into the nearly flat area of the cone from the south side.
A ping from the satellite control panel let her know the orbiting spacecraft was in place. Knowing that Deuce wouldn’t be in his office for at least a couple of hours, Chyrel switched the satellite’s camera equipment on to have a look.
It was still full darkness, so the digital camera showed nothing but blackness. When Chyrel switched it to thermal imaging, what she saw startled her.
Near the center of the crater was a very large, very hot spot. Curious, she zoomed in and activated the sensory systems. The display on the side of the thermal image indicated the surface at the center of the twenty-foot-wide hot spot was over one hundred and fifty degrees. Moving the sensor just fifty feet away, she found that the surface temperature was a relatively cool seventy-two.
When Chyrel zoomed back out to show a five-mile square, she realized what the hot spot was. Molten lava below the surface was heating the ground.
At the same time she realized this, she noticed about a dozen much smaller and cooler hot spots on the southern slope and a solitary one on the northern rim. She zoomed in on the tight cluster to the south. All but four were in groups of two and appeared to be people lying down. When one of them began to move, she was sure of it.
“Guess the reports are right,” she said to herself.
“What reports?” a voice asked from her open door.
Chyrel looked up and smiled at Tony Jacobs, one of the field guys with the Caribbean Counterterrorism Command. A shaved-headed black guy with a muscular physique, he was by far the friendliest of the group of always-serious spec-ops spooks she worked with.
“Deuce has me looking at a volcano in Mexico where reports have said a terrorist cell had set up a training camp.”
Tony came around Chyrel’s desk and bent over to look at the image on her screen. Most of the team members had security clearances as high as, or higher than, her own. Tony was Deuce’s right-hand man and had come with Deuce to work at Homeland Security from the Navy SEALs. They had a lot of history, and the boss trusted him completely.
“Sure looks like a group of people,” he said. “Hey, look. That guy’s moving.”
As they watched, a solitary figure began weaving away from the group, moving to the north. Thermal imaging can’t distinguish features, or even different
iate between a ninety-eight-degree rock and a person. All it measures is differences in heat, so a person against a cold background looks like a ghostly apparition.
“There’s one more about a mile north of these,” Charity said, zooming out. “And check this out.”
“Whoa!” Tony exclaimed. “What the hell is that? A fire?”
“This whole area,” she said, making a circular motion around the bright spot on the screen. “This is the volcano’s crater. From what I’ve found out, it hasn’t erupted in over two hundred years.”
Tony laughed. “Looks like we might not even have to worry about these guys.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Chyrel said. “I don’t know squat about volcanoes. They might stay hot like that all the time.”
“That guy’s walking right past the hot spot,” Tony said. “Follow him.”
Chyrel worked the keyboard, zooming out until both the moving person and the one on the north rim were in view. As the one drew nearer, she zoomed in slightly. “Where this person is,” Chyrel said, pointing to the stationary one, “is the highest part of the rim. A lookout, maybe?”
“And you think you’re no good at sleuthing?” Tony said, mocking her. “The others are sleeping and that guy is on his way to relieve the sentry. I’d bet where that other guy is, it’s a lot higher ground.”
Pulling the terrain map back up, she pointed to a spot on the north rim, where the circles lay very close together, indicating a cliff. “That spot is a good hundred feet higher than the rest of the rim and nearly five hundred feet higher than the center of the crater. The elevation there is fifty-four hundred and ten feet above sea level.”
“Good choice for an observation post,” Tony said. “He can probably see all the approaches to the mountain from there.”
Just then, the moving figure arrived at the solitary person’s location, and Chyrel zoomed in a little more.
Merciless Charity: A Charity Styles Novel (Caribbean Thriller Series Book 1) Page 12