Spectre Rising

by C. W. Lemoine

  “IFF?” Decker asked, interrupting Spectre.

  “Identification Friend or Foe, it’s military talk for transponder,” Spectre replied. “So she turns off her transponder as she’s descending. She had to figure that with the radar lag, people would assume it was just the last known position. Christ, I can’t fucking believe it.”

  Spectre leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. It was all a big nightmare. He didn’t know what to believe anymore. Both of the possible scenarios were unsettling. On one hand, the girl he had loved could be dead. On the other, the girl he loved was possibly a defector and a traitor to the country he loved so much. He felt sick.

  Decker leaned over and put her hand on his shoulder. Spectre looked up. She gave him a comforting smile, patting his shoulder. “I know this must be hard for you,” she said.

  “But can’t the jets see each other using their own radars or something?” Baxter asked.

  “She was too far away from the other aircraft for them to see her,” Spectre replied.

  “What about her wingman?”

  “You mean datalink?” Spectre thought about the question for a minute. “Same as the transponder, she just turned it off to make it look like she had gone lost contact. Probably turned them off at the same time. With the cloud deck, even if she had ejected, finding the wreckage in the middle of the ocean with no beacon would’ve been difficult. She knew that. She was counting on it.”

  “Just playing devil’s advocate here,” Decker said, twirling her pen, “but this is all very circumstantial. Is it possible she crashed and the radar return was just a coincidence?”

  “It’s possible, but not likely. That was a pretty solid return for quite a few frames before it went out of range. Besides, no wreckage and no emergency beacon. We have more proof that she’s alive now than we do that she’s dead.” Spectre’s voice sounded tired. He felt defeated. It was nearing lunchtime, but he felt like he had been up for forty-eight hours straight. Except for a few hours of restless sleep, he had been.

  “But why? What motive would she have? Was she in trouble?” Decker asked.

  “Money, power, attention, or coercion. That’s usually what drives a defector,” Baxter said.

  Defector. The word resonated with Spectre. The girl he had loved so much had seemingly turned on her country. It just didn’t make sense.

  “Mr. Martin –”

  “Please, call me Cal,” Spectre said, interrupting Decker.

  “Cal, did Moss have anything going on at work that you knew of? Anything to push her over the edge?” she asked.

  Spectre couldn’t imagine Chloe reaching the point of betraying her country. He had always seen her as a strong woman, despite having been through a life of hardships. She had survived living with her real father who had been a complete drunk until her mother remarried, and she moved in with her mother and new stepfather. She had told him of many times she had fought off sexual advances and outright assaults at the Air Force Academy, but said nothing because she didn’t want to be seen as “that girl.” Her whole life, she had been told she wasn’t good enough and would never amount to anything by people intimidated by her successes as a woman. Yet she just smiled and pressed on, graduating number one from her Air Force Academy class and managing to get fighters out of pilot training. She had struggled through her flight lead upgrade, but always seemed to have a positive attitude no matter what the Gators threw at her. Spectre couldn’t see how someone so resilient could suddenly snap.

  “She was always fighting uphill in her career. Hell, the squadron fought tooth and nail to keep her from even getting this assignment, but she fought back. She won. They made it hard on her to upgrade in the jet. She never held it against anyone, and always had a good attitude,” Spectre replied.

  “So she had enemies?” Decker asked with a raised eyebrow.

  “Don’t all strong women in male dominated professions?” Spectre asked, holding eye contact with Decker.

  Decker blushed. “I guess so, but had it gotten worse recently that you know of? Did she seem frustrated?”

  “No, actually she had been in a pretty upbeat mood until she broke up with me, and even after that when she finally passed her flight lead upgrade checkride,” Spectre said.

  “Ok, we can get to the why later,” Baxter interjected. “So where did she go?” He was still pacing around the room as he tried to make sense of the whole thing.

  The room fell silent as they all pondered the question. The obvious answer was somewhere south based on her last known radar track, but the options seemed endless.

  “Victor,” Spectre said, breaking the silence. It hurt him to say it. She was fleeing to another man.

  Baxter bolted out of the room without saying a word. A minute later, he returned with folders in his hand. He placed them on the conference table.

  “That’s a good start. Now, which one?” he asked.

  Spectre pulled the first folder off the stack and opened it. “Victor Leon, Venezuelan national, probably not.” Spectre tossed the folder aside.

  “How can you be so sure?” Decker asked.

  “Venezuela is a little far to fly unrefueled, and I think the Venezuelans don’t even have tankers without drogues,” Spectre said, moving on to the next folder.

  “What makes you think she would fly to their country of origin?” she asked.

  “I think he has a good point,” Baxter intervened. “Aren’t most of these guys foreign intelligence agents? If she’s defecting, they’re probably bringing her straight to their own country to avoid any attention from other governments.”

  Spectre ignored them. “Victor Cruz, Colombia... nope”

  Spectre tossed the second folder and moved on to the third. “Victor Alvarez, Cuba, DGI operative. This is your man.” He held up the picture for the two to see.

  “Don’t you want to look at the other two? What if they’re from Cuba?” Decker asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. She’s in Cuba. Look at a map, it’s the only logical answer, assuming she did defect,” Spectre replied.

  Decker picked up the remaining two folders and flipped through them. “Honduras and Peru, he’s right,” she said.

  “Cuba is not a small island. She could have landed anywhere,” Baxter said, leaning against one of the conference chairs.

  Spectre thought about it for a minute. He was confident that if she were still alive, she had gone to Cuba. It only made sense, but figuring out where she had gone would be a lot tougher. He thought about what he would have done in her position.

  “You can rule out any civilian fields or runways shorter than six thousand feet,” he began. “They would want maximum security and minimum exposure. Do you have a computer with JMPS?” The Joint Mission Planning Software served as a common mission-planning suite for both Navy and Air Force. It included high-resolution imagery and maps, as well as navigation and combat flight planning tools.

  “Yeah, back in the vault, but I’ve never used it,” Baxter said.

  “It’s a pain in the ass, but I’m pretty sure I still can,” Spectre responded. They walked down the hallway and through the heavy vault door into the secure area. Spectre sat down at a computer terminal as Baxter logged him in. Spectre pulled up a map of Cuba. He selected an overlay of all military airfields. Three red dots populated the map.

  “Well, I think we can safely rule out Guantánamo Bay, or we might have heard about it by now,” Spectre said. Decker and Baxter were huddled over his shoulder.

  “And San Julian Air Base is over 300 miles away from the airspace she was flying in,” Spectre said as he used the straight line distance measuring tool.

  “Too far?” Decker asked.

  “It is if you’re trying to avoid unwanted attention. It also means she would have flown right by Key West as well. Her last track had her headed south,” Spectre replied, rubbing his temples.

  “Well then San Antonio de Los Baños Airfield is out too, since Havana is southwest,” Baxter said, pointin
g at the final red dot.

  “So she didn’t go to Cuba after all,” Decker said.

  Spectre stared at the map. He was sure that his theory was correct. If she defected, she had to have gone to a military base in Cuba. There was no way she would risk overheating the F-16’s below average brakes and running off a short runway after going through so much trouble. And defecting to a civilian airport was just stupid.

  “I agree with your logic on those bases, so where did she go?” Baxter asked.

  Spectre thought back to his flying days. Cuba had never been much of an area of concern, except right before Castro stepped down. That’s when the Russians were stepping up their Global Reach initiative and building strategic bases everywhere. That was it! He remembered the intel briefs over Drill Weekends as they discussed the possible threat. The Russians were building a strategic base in Cuba for their bombers. But where?

  Spectre put down a marker on the map in the Atlantic Ocean. “This was where we last saw her, heading south,” he said.

  Spectre selected the measuring tool and drew a line from that position one hundred and fifty miles to the south.

  “Do you remember when the Russians built that strategic base in Cuba?” Spectre asked.

  “Vaguely. It was all over the news,” Baxter replied.

  “Can you look it up?” Spectre asked.

  Baxter sat down at the terminal next to Spectre and pulled up the Secret database. He did a search for Russia and Cuba. The first result was Castro Field. He pulled up the page.

  “Give me those coordinates,” Spectre said, looking over at Baxter’s monitor. Baxter wrote them down and passed them to Spectre. He typed them into the mission planning software and set up a marker. It was twenty-five miles west of the line Spectre had just drawn. They had found her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Castro Field, Cuba

  Chloe Moss lay in the fetal position, sobbing softly in the corner of the room. She was back in the room she had first been in before being reunited with Victor. She hadn’t been sure before, but now she was certain. She was definitely in a holding cell. She was a prisoner.

  Except for her white cotton underwear, she had been stripped of the clothes she had been given when she arrived. She was cold and shivering, naked and afraid. Her body ached. Her cheeks felt swollen and sore. She smelled like urine. She hadn’t eaten since leaving American soil, but she wasn’t hungry. She felt nauseous and weak.

  Her refusal to answer any of Jun Zhang’s questions were met with a look of disappointment. She demanded proof of life and refused to say anything without it. Zhang didn’t say a word as he left the room. She had hoped that was the end of it. She imagined Zhang conferring with Victor, who would have undoubtedly stood up for her and demanded her release and better treatment. They had a deal after all.

  She wondered if Victor knew about the kidnapping. It seemed plausible, but rather unlikely. Victor knew she was a willing participant in the whole ordeal. He had no reason to try to up the stakes. No, this was all the work of the Chinese. They had gotten greedy. They wanted more than just the technology. They wanted inside her mind and all the American secrets it contained.

  But Chloe had done her best to resist. Selling state secrets was never part of the deal. Anyone could get F-16 technology, even the latest American version. She was sure of it. But to hand over the keys and everything the government had trusted her with over the last seven years? That was just too much. She had to draw the line somewhere. Her service and hardships might have been worth fifty million or so, and a new life on the beach, but it wasn’t worth giving away the whole playbook and costing American lives.

  But the man who replaced Zhang was far less diplomatic. She had recognized him as the other man talking to Victor when she was escorted into the hangar. He was slightly shorter than Zhang, with a very noticeable scar across his left cheek. He and one of the guards had stripped her down to her underwear and tied her to a chair. She was afraid they were going to rape her, and the look in the Cuban guard’s eyes seemed to suggest just that, but what they had in store for her was much different.

  “My name is Ling. If you cooperate, you will be treated as a human again,” he said. His voice was heavily accented like Zhang’s, but much deeper. It was much more sinister.

  “But if you do not,” he continued, “you will wish you were dead. But I won’t let you die. Death would be a welcome release from the pain you will feel. Do you understand?”

  Chloe nodded. She had to dig deep into her training. It had been years since she had gone through SERE school in Washington and learned resistance techniques. She knew she would eventually break. Everyone broke, they told her. Even the best and most skilled in the intelligence community broke eventually. It was just a matter of holding out as long as possible. In her case, she just hoped to hold on until Victor could settle the obvious misunderstanding and they could be on their way.

  They had stripped away her clothes as a way of tearing down her ego and self worth. The more naked a person felt, the more vulnerable they would be, especially women. They wanted Chloe to fear rape. They wanted her to be afraid. It was working.

  “What is your name?” he asked. As she began to answer, he connected with a strong backhand across the face. Blood oozed from her lip.

  “What the fuck!” she screamed. He hit her again with his other hand.

  “You will think carefully before answering my questions,” he replied.

  Tears began to trickle down her face. She was in over her head. She wasn’t even sure how she got wrapped up in everything. It had all seemed so exciting and romantic. She had confided in Victor all that she had been through. Her life and career had just been fucked up. Everyone had been against her. Everyone except Victor. Victor gave her hope. A hope that, despite his best efforts, Cal Martin could have never given her. He was far too set in his ways and too wrapped up in his own drama to give her what she needed. Victor showed her the possibility of a new life.

  As more tears rolled down her cheeks, she knew she wouldn’t make it out alive. Victor was probably being tortured and questioned the same way in another room. These men, Zhang and Ling, were in control. Once they had what they wanted, they would kill the two lovers. Victor had been a fool for trusting them.

  “Your name?” he asked impatiently. She flinched in response. She knew that was what he wanted, but she couldn’t stop it. He had gotten to her already.

  “Chloe Moss,” she replied.

  “What squadron are you with?” he asked calmly.

  She paused for a moment, waiting for another backhand. When none came, she said, “39th Fighter Squadron.”

  “Good, now how many pilots are in the 39th Fighter Squadron?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “Twenty? Thirty?” She was trying to be intentionally vague. Lying was not an option, but presenting herself as someone with little to no knowledge might prolong the questioning.

  Ling wasn’t buying it. He knew all of the methods of the trade. He punched her in the stomach, instantly knocking the wind out of her. She gasped for air.

  “You disappoint me,” he said, moving behind her. He leaned in close to her ear as she was still gasping for air. “I know all of your tricks. You only make this harder on yourself.”

  “Fuck you,” she said defiantly.

  Ling nodded at the guard who exited the room. Moments later, he returned with a bucket of water and a rag.

  Chloe recognized what was about to happen. Ling was resorting to water boarding. She had been through it before in training, but nothing like the pain she was about to experience. Ling was much more violent than her instructors had been.

  The routine went on for what seemed like an eternity. Ling asked more questions, probing deeper into classified subjects, and Chloe evaded. She gave vague answers or none at all, each time finding herself being held down while water was poured over the rag covering her mouth, or being hit by Ling. The water boarding made her feel like she was dr
owning. The pain and fear were debilitating. Ling continued to threaten her family, but Chloe refused, each time demanding proof of life. If they were really captive, they were probably already dead.

  After three iterations, Ling untied Chloe and had the guard drag her into the holding cell. It was a small victory, but she had made it through round one at least.

  Ling pulled out a pair of pliers from his back pocket and held them in Chloe’s face before he left. “This is just the beginning,” he said. “You will talk. We’ll start with nails first. You will have twenty chances. Then I will bring out the shears and you will have twenty more. I will be back soon. Consider your cooperation carefully.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Victor Alvarez stood looking out into the hangar bay. From his second floor office, he had a perfect view of the Chinese technicians working quickly in and around the jet. An external power cart could be heard through the double pane glass, powering the jet’s avionics as the technicians gathered classified information from the F-16’s avionics.

  “You said she would cooperate,” a voice behind him said. Alvarez didn’t need to turn around to see who it was. He recognized Zhang’s voice. It had the kind of shriek to it that made him cringe every time he heard the man speak, but he couldn’t complain too much. The man was giving him the biggest payout of his career.

  “And you said you wouldn’t need Ling,” Alvarez replied without turning around.

  Zhang walked up to the desk and sat down. Alvarez didn’t want to be having this conversation. He wanted the men to take their new jet in however many pieces they needed and be on their way. The longer they waited, the more likely an American intervention would become, and with Cuban-American relations slowly improving since the Russians backed down from their strategic base deal, it was something his country couldn’t afford.

  Alvarez thought about what his government would do if they found out about his current operation. The DGI had given him considerable leeway over the years, and most within the agency had no idea what he did. For the most part, they just knew he achieved results. That’s the way he wanted to keep it, but this was something too big for them to miss. He only hoped they found out after the dust had settled and the Chinese were long gone.