Dan wasn’t mesmerized. “So, what do we do?”
Cobra’s question managed to distract Renard, who turned to smile with revelation at the operative. “Do?” he echoed. “We do what Mr. Smith would want us to do.”
Dan thought Renard would tell him, but when, like some people who know too much, he didn’t, Dan asked the obvious with barely controlled anger.
“And what is that?”
Renard’s reply was so blissful, even Lily had to wonder if he wasn’t stoned.
“Why, follow the money, of course.”
Chapter 21
“You okay?” Conley asked, rousing Dan from his stupor. He raised his head, blinked, and tried to stay awake as the others kept working on translating the card.
First they tried to figure out what language it was in, and, since the planet Earth has more than seven thousand languages—many more if you include dead ones—that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.
Renard narrowed it down to a mere three thousand by figuring Smith would want the most indecipherable language, especially to Americans. That sent the search to Asia, but just when Dan thought they were getting somewhere, Linc spoiled the party.
“Papua New Guinea alone has more than eight hundred languages,” he informed Dan.
So the search continued. Dan admitted he was not helping by glaring at the I.T. experts, so he joined the rest of the team in the salon, where they were trying to formulate a plan of attack. At least stepping out of the control room, back into the literal and figurative light, made Dan feel better.
“Once we have a location,” Lily said, “we’ll go in and fan out…”
“Nope,” Conley said casually, beating Dan to the punch.
“What do you mean, ‘nope’?” she demanded as Conley looked at Dan—like a jazz musician handing off a solo to the drummer.
“With Bloch still M.I.A.,” Dan told the redhead, “we need someone in control. Someone not at risk in the field.” He saw that Lily was already accepting the logic of his statement, but he finished the thought just in case. “Let us go in,” he said, motioning to himself and Conley, “while you handle the big picture.”
She couldn’t argue with that, so, as she brainstormed with O’Neal about every possible contingency, Cobra and Conley walked across the room.
On the way, they passed Hot Shot, who was still communing with his lap top while all ten fingers seemed to be jitterbugging on the keyboard of their own accord. Dan glanced at the computer screen, half-hoping to see a videogame of solitaire, but he was happily disappointed to see it was still all digital gobbledygook.
The two field ops entered the mansion hallway shoulder-to-shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Dan asked his partner.
“Prepping the Flying Fox so that when immediate departure becomes imperative,” Conley answered smoothly, “immediate departure will be possible.”
Dan thought about asking for details, but then accepted he really didn’t care. That was how much faith he had in his friend. If the thing needed beagle blood to fly, then Cougar would have it filled with beagle blood by the time Dan got back.
So, instead of asking stupid questions, he peeled off once they started passing the I.C.U.
Alex was sitting up, but she was still in the recovery bed, with Dr. Whittaker keeping a calm, friendly, watchful eye nearby. His daughter hadn’t exactly perked up when Dan walked in. In fact, he seemed to have interrupted some sort of internal discussion she was having with herself. If he knew her, himself, and the entire Morgan family, it was probably centered around the “to get up and report for duty or not to get up and report for duty” conundrum.
He let her continue as he pulled up an ergonomic chair designed to match the futuristic bed and the rest of the fixtures and sat beside her. They both stayed quiet as he tried to figure out the best way to tell her that he was probably leaving very soon and that, given the situation, she shouldn’t go with him.
As he opened his mouth, she turned her head to face him, and had beaten him to it.
“Bon voyage,” she said.
That surprised him. “What?”
She pointed at her ear. “R-comm,” she explained. She then motioned at Whittaker. “The doctor gave me one too.” The tall, dark blonde physician gave Dan a small, waving, smiling acknowledgement. “Just in time for me to hear about Smith’s calling card.”
“Yeah,” Dan replied. “About that…”
“Good hunting,” she interrupted. “Nothing I’d like better than to have your back, but I don’t want you worrying about whether I have a concussion or not.” Before he replied to that, she muttered, “and I don’t want to be worried about that either.”
Again, he opened his mouth to comment, assuage, commiserate, sympathize, or something, but then Linc’s voice appeared in both father and daughter’s ears. And just their luck, the I.T. wiz was affecting a pretty bad English accent.
“By George, I think we’ve got it.”
Both father and daughter imagined O’Neal slapping Shepard on the arm again.
Dan got up, putting a reassuring hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “I promise you one thing,” he told her, annoyed at having to rush the declaration. “I’ll get the ones who killed …destroyed our home.”
The flickering of Alex’s eyes clued him in that she hadn’t missed his sudden decision to change the direction of his accusation. Neither of them was ready to accept the possibility that Jenny had been in the house when it exploded.
Feeling frustrated and awkward about the bobbling of his promise, Dan headed back to the I.C.U. door. “No matter what,” he concluded, then double-timed it back to the control room.
He reentered the darkness to find Chilly, Renard, and Shepard—the latter looking like a cat who had eaten an entire pet store of canaries.
“What?” Dan all but spat at them.
The others deferred to Linc, since he had apparently been the one who had found the key. “Like I told you,” he began, “Asia has thousands of languages, but we were concentrating on Japan, because it’s an agglutinative, mora-timed language with a lexically significant pitch-accent. But we decided that was too obvious for anyone as cunning as your Smith guy.”
Linc took a micro-second to breathe, then plunged back into his spiel. “Yeah, so which language wouldn’t be as obvious? Not Chinese. That would be way too obvious, no matter how many dozens or even hundreds of dialects there are. Well, how about one that has a pre-historic dialect, a four-tongued historical dialect, and a present-day five-tongued dialect with a full fifty-seven variants…?”
“Cut to the chase!” Dan bellowed.
Linc had reacted as if Dan had slapped him in the face with a fish. “Taiwan,” he had blurted.
Dan had been expecting Linc to apologize or defend or allude to the various science-fantasy languages he had learned or developed for his card and video game playing friends, so when the man had instead burped up the result. Dan tried to comprehend it.
“Taiwan?” he repeated.
Before Linc, Chilly, or even Renard could respond, they all heard Conley’s voice in their R-comms.
“Ready for takeoff when you are.”
* * * *
“The Taiwanese language is so complex and evolving, every generation sometimes can’t understand the previous one,” Linc informed Dan on the way to the Flying Fox’s arrival and departure bay. “There’s even one form that is entirely poetry, like Shakespeare, but so complicated from so many perspectives that some poets can’t understand the beginning of their epic poems by the time they finish. That’s the one Smith used.”
Dan stopped in his tracks to pinion Linc with a suspicious glare. “So how did you know it?”
Linc had the decency to blush. “Because it’s the one they use in Taiwan’s major contribution to world pop culture,” Linc had confessed. “Their cent
uries-long puppet theater, movies, and TV shows.”
“Of course,” Dan responded, throwing up his hands as Renard had caught up to them, and put his arm around the I.T. man’s shoulder.
“Does Mr. Smith know his audience or what?” the tech billionaire enthused. “How many people who are gunning for us do you think would know about a Taiwanese puppet show language?”
Dan chuckled despite the seriousness of the situation. He had to admit that the only plain sight this could have been hidden in was Linc’s. Dan, too, then clapped Linc on the shoulder, eliciting a thankful smile from the I.T. guy.
As the trio entered the aircraft bay, they found the rest of the team waiting for them, even Chilly and Hot Shot—although the latter had tablets near at hand. As Linc went to accept congratulations from his fellow Zetas, Renard laid a hand on Dan’s arm, signaling for him to hold back for a private tête-à-tête.
“I’m fairly certain you were shielded from the people who are chasing you when you stepped into Palecto,” Renard reminded him. “That protection continued, even doubled, as soon as you landed here.”
“Fairly certain?” Dan asked.
“As certain as I can be,” Renard admitted.
Then that was probably fairly certain indeed, Dan thought.
“But once you leave here or disembark from Palecto…,” Renard started.
“All bets are off?”
“No, all bets are not off,” Renard retorted, pointing at Dan’s right ear. “The R-comm will keep you securely in touch, but be advised that it also includes a new facial recognition software scrambler that should keep you safe from even the most advanced surveillance systems.”
“Should?” Dan pounced on the word.
“Remember my speech about knowledge doubling every year?” Renard replied. “I was being modest. By the time you arrive in Taiwan, it could be doubling every fortnight—especially in that region. Every time we try to predict what China and Japan can do, by the time we decide, they’ve already done it.” Renard shook his head, giving time for Lily to approach.
“But don’t worry about all the cloaking devices we’ll keep giving you,” she suggested, walking with them toward the Flying Fox. “Worry about why they’re still looking for you. We sure are.”
Dan exhaled with a grim grin. “It’s okay, temp-boss lady,” he assured her. “They shouldn’t worry about looking for me. They should worry about what’ll happen to them when they find me.”
Renard and Randall exchanged an intrigued, curious look as Alex approached, accompanied, as always, by Dr. Whittaker, just to be on the safe side. A good sign was that Alex was wearing the newly de rigueur Zeta outfit of shirt, pants, jacket, and boots.
The daughter leaned on her father and whispered. “You find Smith. I’ll find Bloch.”
The two Morgans looked at each other with complete trust, care, and conviction; then Dan made his other farewells and boarded.
* * * *
The takeoff was smooth and, within the ship, as silent as ever.
Dan stretched out in his seat. “What’s our ETA?”
“You’ve got a good twelve hours,” Conley assured him. “Raid the ice-box, double check the ordnance I chose, and maybe even get some shut-eye. I got a funny feeling you’ll need it.”
The weight of the last few days climbed onto Dan’s back like the entire cast of a German opera.
“Good idea,” he sighed, stood, and headed for a dream-cap. He had only gone two steps, however, before he stopped and turned back to Conley.
“What about you?” Dan asked him. “Want me to spell you awhile?”
Conley looked at his partner with an incredulous expression. “Yeah, I want you to spell me, ’cause I’m fully committed to crashing this baby into the South China Sea. Wow, you really are tired, aren’t you?” Conley laughed at Dan’s muzzy expression, then waved him away. “No, really, Cobra, sweet dreams. You wouldn’t believe the auto-pilot on this thing.”
Dan took another step, but stopped again when everything he had survived since turning the corner of his home street fast-forwarded through his brain. “Really?” he asked Conley.
Conley turned, his expression changing from concern to sympathy. He was sorry to admit to himself he knew exactly how Cobra felt. “If you wake up to find my head has exploded,” he assured his partner, “then you’ll know, won’t you? Now go to sleep and dream of the fragrant island.”
Chapter 22
The first attack occurred two hours, thirty-seven minutes, and twenty-two seconds after Dan Morgan had exited the Flying Fox.
Prior to that, he had gotten a lovely nap, an invigorating cleaning, a swell meal, and enough intel on Taiwan from Randall, Renard, and O’Neal—whom Conley referred to as “the Law Offices of…”—to fill his head to the bursting point.
What Dan had retained from the barrage was that “the fragrant island” was actually the nickname—or maybe the translation—of Formosa, which was what the ninety-mile wide, two hundred and fifty-mile long island had been called before 1895, or maybe 1912, when the constant squabbling between China’s Qing Dynasty and Japan had settled.
Even Dan knew that the Chinese squabbling was still going on, although the Japanese squabbling had effectively ceased in 1945. O’Neal let him know that the aboriginals, who had been on the island for thousands of years, had no say in anything, despite the fact that about five hundred thousand remained in a general population of around twenty-four million.
Dan had tuned out around then, letting the flow of facts and statistics wash over him, until he’d tuned in again when he heard information that had something to do with him.
“We’re having Cougar drop you off in the middle of a coconut palm jungle between the Eluanbi Lighthouse, the Kenting Meteorological Radar Observatory, and Kenting National Park,” Lily Randall informed him. “If he handles the landing just right…”
“I’ll handle the landing just right,” Dan heard Conley mutter. “Don’t you worry your pretty little heads about that.”
“…you should be unobserved.”
There was that pesky word “should” again.
“It’s the Taiwanese equivalent of the King Range Mountains’ Lost Coast,” Renard added. “From there,” Randall continued, “make your way to Pingtung County, Hengchun Township. We’ll have a local op rendezvous with you.”
An unusual silence followed that statement. Dan waited a full five seconds before inquiring further.
“Do I get a name, description, or specific location?” He was distracted by the way Cougar’s shoulders were hopping, as if he were silently laughing. Then he realized why. “You don’t know who the local is yet, do you?”
Dan let his own silence linger as he accepted, considering the situation, that this was the best anyone, including himself, could do.
“We’re not sure any Zeta-friendly, truly trustworthy contacts remain in the country,” Randall slowly related. “We’ve been reaching out as best we can since you left, but so far…”
“I’ve even been scouring my staff in the region,” Renard interjected, inspiring Dan to remember that, amongst all the other intel they had pelted him with, Taiwan was a hub for computer research, development, and manufacturing. “But I want to make sure whoever I ask is capable of facing the kind of danger this will no doubt entail.”
Dan opened his mouth to suggest the tech boss forget it, but then closed it again. Given the situation, he really didn’t have time to create a contact of his own. Better someone than no one, but if he had to go in solo and mostly blind, he would.
“Unfortunately I have my own assignment, Cobra,” Conley said. Dan was tempted, but knew he would never ask Cougar what it was. But Cougar would also never leave his partner hanging. “I’ll be putting our Peking Ducks in a row,” he murmured mysteriously before returning his full attention to the landing.
“As
soon as we secure and vet a contact, we’ll let you know,” Randall assured him.
“No worries, Cobra,” a distracted O’Neal chimed in. Dan guessed it was she and Linc who were doing most of the securing and vetting. “We’re getting close. The timing should be perfect. By the time you get to the meeting point, the sun will probably be up and your contact should be arriving.”
Before Dan could ask the meeting point location, Conley interrupted.
“Drop your socks and grab your Glocks,” he cut in. “Time’s up. We’re landing.”
Everyone, Dan included, was grateful for the interruption in the rain of new “shoulds.”
The complexity and finesse of the landing were incredible. Conley had to swoop out of the sky over the South China Sea, with a minimum of sight time, and get in so low and so fast over the top of the jungle’s coconut palms that even the tropical birds might have thought they imagined it. Then he had to precisely place the Flying Fox just over a clearing amongst a copse of perfectly shaped trees that the on-board computer had found. But Dan had expected nothing less.
“Take a walk,” Cougar said to his partner and passenger. “Say hello to your contact for me.” The sardonic smile on his face reminded Dan that they had both been through worse.
Not much worse, Dan thought as he grabbed the dark gray backpack Renard had designed, and headed for the hatch, but worse…maybe.
Dan had already slathered himself in a Renard-approved combination sun and insect repellant, because Linc had informed him that the dengue fever-carrying mosquitoes were as big as wasps and the wasps were as big as hummingbirds. He grabbed the handle of a special corded wire just inside the hatch door, and hopped out. The corded wire was elastic and designed for this kind of exit.
It lowered Dan down like he was a floating aerialist at a circus, then stopped him just an inch from the ground. Palecto had already measured the distance and programmed the cord before Dan had touched it. Dan let go, and the corded wire rolled back up, and then into its slot by the door, like a self-retracting metal tape measure.
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