The Sector

by Kari Nichols

  Tank had let it be known that he’d pay good money to talk to anyone who had been in the area at the time the signal had bounced. Trust was low, especially for Americans, but his money was good. It’s why they’d kept him waiting so damn long, ordering one weak drink after another.

  The door slapped open and a short, balding Asian man walked in. Standing on the threshold, he scanned the entire room, stopping when he’d spotted the only non-local in it. Hitching his pants a little higher, the newcomer gestured to the bar before walking over to Tank’s table.

  “You want to know about my boat, you buy me a beer,” he spoke in his native tongue and waited for Tank to respond.

  Tank nodded his head and the man sat in the chair opposite him. When the bartender brought the beer, in a bottle, over to the table, Tank snatched it from his hand. “Bring another of these for my friend, and take this crap away,” he gestured to the weak beer in the glass in front of him. He took a long pull from the bottle. All pretense of being inebriated was gone.

  Tank waited for the captain’s beer to be served and then stared at the man. He figured the little guy could be intimidated enough to give up the information, but Tank couldn’t be bothered. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the Japanese equivalent of $500. Setting it on the table, he held one finger on it as the captain tried to snatch it away.

  “You answer my questions and I’ll double this.” He lifted his finger and the money disappeared in the blink of an eye.

  Once the captain had stuffed the cash inside the pocket of his shirt, he sipped his beer and smiled at Tank. “What do you want to know?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Kenji Sato. I am captain of the Hotaru for six years now.” He puffed out his chest.

  “You were sailing the Hotaru five days ago, up near Kuril.” It was a statement, not a question. He’d gleaned that much from the conversations he’d overheard to know it was true. “What did you see?”

  Sato took another pull from his beer and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt. Resting his arms on the table, he leaned in closer to Tank. “We pull nets in, good catch. We ready boat for home.” Sato took a casual look around the bar. “Sonar beeps. Sometimes Russian military use Kuril for training. We wait, not move. No sound,” he whispered.

  Sato’s grip on his bottle tightened, the knuckles turning white. He pushed a shaky hand through the thinning hair on his head before continuing. “Sonar beeps faster.” Sato took a long gulp of his beer and belched before continuing. “We watch submarine break surface a half mile from us.”

  When Sato stopped talking again, Tank asked where his boat was when he’d seen the submarine. Sato pulled out a map of the coast and unfolded it on the table. He used his bottle to hold one edge open and Tank placed his own at the opposite edge. He stabbed a gnarled finger at the coast. “This is wharf. We sail up here,” he explained, trailing his finger to the east and north of the marina and stopped when he’d reached the edge of the boundary with Russia.

  Sato looked around the room as though he expected everyone to be paying attention to their conversation. He dragged his finger a little further along the map, beyond the boundary and into Russia, and stopped it in the leeward side of the first island, at its northern tip. Tank estimated that the position of the sub had been closer to the second island and that the curve of the first island would have offered Sato’s ship some cover.

  Ownership of the Kuril Islands had been in dispute since the end of the Second World War. They had been promised to Japan, but were still under Russian rule. The islands were mostly uninhabited, pending an outcome of the ownership debate. It was illegal to fish there, since neither country agreed to give up the revenue; if the authorities found out he’d been there, Captain Sato could lose his boat.

  “We wait, two hours. Submarine did not move. We see men come out, but we didn’t see what they were doing. Submarine dive, sonar beeps disappear, we go.”

  “Which direction was the submarine heading in?”

  Captain Sato put his finger back on the map and dragged it even further up the coast, along the Kuril Islands, now well beyond the boundary, and continued to drag it north. “Head north, to Russia before sonar beep stops.”

  The submarine had been heading home, but where had she been?

  Simon watched as the smaller Asian man approached the white man’s table. He’d surveyed the room before picking his way over and the cursory glance Simon had received was enough to tell him that his disguise would hold.

  He’d not wanted to be recognized as a white man in this bar. He wasn’t local and the others were wary of him, but he didn’t garner the same attention that the big guy had. Simon had taken the time to tint his skin so it matched that of a man who had spent his life on the sea. His eyes were too Anglo to ever pass inspection, so he kept them hidden behind the long hair of a black wig. His own bright blue hue darkened with non-prescription contact lenses.

  He listened to the conversation, though both men were trying to keep it quiet. The big guy was interested in the same information that Simon was. He examined the man, but not overly long. A quick impression was all he’d needed. The guy had the stink of the CIA on him. They may be on the same path, but Simon would never put his trust in that organization.

  He’d be hard pressed to put his trust back into his own organization.

  ***

  Waterville, Maine

  Tate could feel her arm starting to go numb and that worried her. She arrived at the doctor’s house, but drove on by, scouting the area. He lived at the end of a short lane and the back of his house butted up tight against a small mountain.

  Satisfied that she hadn’t been followed, Tate pulled the SUV around the side of the house and tucked it in behind his Lexus. Stepping out, she held the gun at her side, out of view and walked toward the back of the car. She waited there for the doctor to appear.

  Gibson wasn’t what she’d been expecting. She’d pictured a graying, stoop-shouldered man. Gibson was younger and much sexier than she’d imagined. His dark hair was buzzed down to within a few millimeters of being completely shaved. His gray eyes showed concern for her wound. Tate thought she also saw a brief flicker of interest, but it was gone before she could evaluate it. As a doctor she’d expected Gibson to be fit, but not built like the soldiers she worked with. Evan had said he was Sector, but she’d thought he meant a Sector doctor, not a soldier. He smiled as he stepped out on the back porch.

  “Evan told me to expect a guest.” He had a thick Scottish brogue that required concentration to decipher. “How bad is that arm?”

  “It could use some attention.” Tate gestured toward the house. “How’s things, doc?”

  “Quiet and calm.”

  Good. That meant he had no visitors and wasn’t under duress. Tate tucked the gun into the back of her waistband and headed for the porch.

  “What happened to your arm?” Gibson asked.

  “House shrapnel.”

  He didn’t question her further. He opened the back door and gestured Tate inside. He led her into his medical room. Gibson was brisk and professional. He removed her jacket and her shirt. Tate saw that the blood had coated the entire sleeve, as well as her arm. It wasn’t bleeding now, but it was throbbing.

  He looked at it for a minute, examining the wound. He used tweezers to remove a sliver of glass that had been bothering her every time she moved her arm.

  “It’ll need quite a few stitches and it’s deep so I’ll have to do a double layer,” he determined, once he’d completed his exam. “I can’t put you out. I don’t have an anesthesiologist here, but I can give you enough morphine to kill the pain.”

  “Negative,” Tate said, shaking her head for extra emphasis. “Morphine will fuck me up and I need to be alert. Give me a local and let me deal with the rest.”

  “I can’t do that,” he argued. “It’ll be too damn painful. I figure you’ll need 25 stitches per layer.”

  “Then you’d best get start
ed, because I can’t stay here.” He looked like he was going to argue further, so she pulled out her gun and stuck it in his face. “I can’t stay here. I can’t be out of it. You’ll have to work with an ornery patient and you can charge Evan double for your services. He’ll know you earned it.”

  Half an hour later she was wishing to hell he’d talked her into the morphine.

  With her arm stitched and dressed, Tate paced near the front of the house. She was tired, but she knew that she’d have to get a move on soon. Gibson came out of his office, after talking to Evan.

  “Nothing new to report.”

  Tate looked at him. Her brother obviously trusted Gibson, but she’d never worked with him. Granted, most Sector Agents worked alone, unless they called for a backup team. She’d done so several times in the past and Gibson had never been on any of them. She’d have remembered him.

  He was too fit, even for a doctor. He had to work out hard to keep those muscles as primed as they were. Likely he used the mountain attached to the back of his house for some rappeling practice.

  He had the eyes of an assassin. They were always moving, always looking around him. The accent had her thinking ex-SAS.

  Gibson led her back to the medical room and pointed to the bed. “Sleep. I know you can’t stay long, but you need some rest.”

  Tate was too tired to argue. She’d been on the go for two days, checking into Emily’s background. She crawled into bed and let Gibson tuck the blankets around her.

  She’d been asleep a few hours when an alarm jolted her awake. It clanged throughout the house. Grabbing her torn jacket and shouldering it on over the bandages, she picked up her gun and backpack as she crept toward the medical room door.

  Gibson had spent the past few hours in his home office. He’d checked on Tate more often than was necessary. He’d heard of her, of course. There were few women in The Sector and fewer yet who were Sector Agents. He’d never worked with her before. His background often had him stationed in South America or the Far East. Wherever there was a conflict in the jungle, that’s where they’d need him most.

  Tate was an urban operative. She could hide in plain sight better than any other agent he knew of. He knew she was looking into the disappearance of TA-4. It was difficult to keep secrets within an organization that specialized in ferreting them out. He’d worked with a few of the men on that missing team. Gibson had convinced one soldier, Barry Samuelson, not to be an SA because the work was irregular and often intrusive. As a member of a task force, Samuelson would be stationed in one area and would only be called on for some OT when the shit hit the fan. Otherwise it was straight eight’s with weekends off.

  Now he’d gone missing and Gibson felt a heavy dose of guilt over that. He’d asked to assist in the investigation, but he’d been politely but firmly refused. Short of going rogue, which would get him splintered, he’d been forced to sit around and twiddle his thumbs. He’d done some quiet asking around, outside of Sector protocols, but his sources hadn’t turned up a damn thing.

  Gibson was on his way to medical when the roof klaxons started shrieking. He ran back to his office and grabbed the remote for his TV. He switched from the cable show he’d been watching to the cameras he had posted on his roof. He saw them as they jumped over the edge, already making their way down the side of the mountain.

  He threw open the cabinet next to his desk. Inside, he unlocked a hidden panel and slid the back of the cabinet aside, revealing a large case built into the wall. He pulled out an M4, attached the grenade launcher and slammed a clip into the mag.

  Jagger’s team landed on the roof and heard the klaxon sounding inside the house. “They’re expecting us!”

  He signaled to Pax, his second-in-command, to take his team to the side of the house, near the garage. Jagger’s own team would knock on the front door.

  Jagger led them to the front, striking his piton into the roof and hooking his ropes to it. His men followed suit and on his signal they jumped off the roof, swinging in through the plate glass window next to the door.

  “Honey, I’m home!” he yelled. He knew his quarry was a woman. The owner of the house was collateral damage.

  The house was a sprawling ranch, but it was built in the old box style, where every room was sectioned off from the next. She could be in the room next to him and he wouldn’t know it until he went in there.

  He signaled to his men to split up and start checking every room. He followed behind, surveying as much of the scene as he could.

  Tate heard the crashing at the front of the house. She didn’t have any idea how many were inside, but she suspected her Sig 9mm wasn’t going to be enough weapon to stop them. Looking around the room, she spotted a jar of hydrochloric acid. Snatching it up, she pulled a band-aid bomb from her pack and stuck it to the side of the jar.

  Band-aid bombs were another of Bailey’s cool inventions. Each bomb was the size of a knee band-aid with an adhesive side and a fabric side. The ‘absorbent pad’ part of the band-aid was plastic explosive. It had enough firepower to blow stubborn locks on heavy duty doors as well as some smaller safes. The band-aid was self-detonating. Once it was placed on a surface all she had to do was press the center of the pad to activate the detonator and step back. It had a twenty second lead time before it blew. Little fuss and less sound, it worked like a hot damn. Bailey had created some with remote detonation capabilities. Each bomb could be synched to a remote and activated at any time with the push of a button on the remote. The remote was synched to a satellite, to eliminate any hassles caused by range.

  Reviewing the layout of the house in her head, Tate knew she had nowhere to run. She’d assumed the crashing was the living room window. Intruders would have access to all parts of the house from the hallway running lengthwise through the centre.

  An explosion outside the house warned her of another group of intruders. The blast shook the house. The SUV was no more, she felt certain of that. With the first group heading down the hallway, Tate knew that the second group would head straight for the medical office. Looking around the room at her options, she noticed a panel of the ceiling had shifted from its frame. Hopping up on the desk, she pushed it back and poked her head into the attic. She found framework and insulation and little else.

  Tate jumped off the desk and ran to the office door. She could hear people swinging down off the roof. They’d be through the outer door in seconds. Sitting the bottle of acid in front of the office door, she armed the detonator to explode after 20 seconds, leaped onto the desk and managed to vault into the attic without splitting any stitches. She replaced the ceiling panel and started to make her way across the attic.

  The house was built in a large horseshoe, with the medical room and three other rooms at the back. Gibson’s office was at the front, next to the living room. Checking the video feeds to see who his intruders were, he heard them plow through his living room window. They’d be on him in less than ten seconds.

  He flipped a switch to shut down the camera feeds and armed the electronic eye outside his office door. He closed the cabinet and headed to the back corner of the room. The house had previously belonged to a couple who’d had two children. They’d built a pass-through between the bedrooms, so the kid’s could travel between the rooms without going into the hallway.

  Gibson ducked through it and ran to the dresser in the second bedroom. He hoisted himself up and pushed up a panel from the ceiling. Leading with his gun, he peered into the attic.

  Jagger pointed to Alexei and motioned toward the door of the office. Alexei nodded and walked the short distance down the hall. Before he could kick in the door it exploded outward, triggered by the electronic eye that Gibson had set in the picture frame across the hall. The force of the blast ripped Alexei to pieces, splattering blood and gore across the wall. His shoes remained in place on the floor, his severed feet tucked inside them.

  Jagger hesitated and then signaled to Hank, his demolitions man, to continue to check the room. If th
e woman had done that, he’d have to reassess her skills. Hank approached the door, looking for any remaining booby traps. Seeing none, he bent over to look into the room and then straightened again.

  “Clear,” he whispered.

  Pax crashed in through the side door and took a quick look around. Jagger’s team was on their way into a room down the hall. Pax signaled his men to head for the medical office. As the first guy reached the door and kicked it open, the band-aid bomb’s detonator finished its countdown. It exploded outward, spewing a trail of burning acid, dousing the first soldier from the waist up. The skin melted from his face and throat, killing him instantly.

  The man beside him wasn’t as lucky. The acid hit him square in the chest, burning through his gear and his skin. It left a gaping hole, the size of a fist, over his belly button. Ropy bits of intestine started to squeeze through the hole. Dropping his gun, he attempted to push his guts back inside his body.

  The medic was on Jagger’s team. Pax pulled a large square gauze pad from his pack and ripped the backing off. He stuck the adhesive over the wound. Another teammate wrapped gauze around and around his waist, holding the pad in place. It would have to do until they could get him better medical help.

  “Find the bitch and make her pay for this,” Pax ordered.

  His remaining teammates slipped around their fallen comrades and entered the medical office. It took little time to check the entire area.

  “Clear!”

  Up in the attic, Tate had to weave her way around the beams toward the far end of the house. The vertical beams were spaced too far apart to use as support. The horizontal beams were four inches thick, but it was enough to put her foot down and balance across to the next vertical beam.