by Roland Smith
He named me Quest after a hit song he wrote. It could have been worse. He had another hit song called “Zit.” When I got old enough to know that Quest was a weird name, Mom suggested we get it legally changed. I passed. By then I was known as Q and I didn’t mind the nickname except when my teachers spelled it CUE …
See what I mean by my busy mind? When I’m nervous, thoughts bounce around like bingo balls. Boone gave me a concerned look as I walked by for the tenth time, then looked at Angela.
“I think we’d better let him take his cards back out,” he said.
Angela sighed. “Okay.”
I pulled my deck back out and sat down and started to shuffle … quietly. Boone looked like he wanted to dive into the laptop screen and pluck Bethany from the backseat of the Tahoe. The strain of the past few days was etched into every wrinkle on his old face. It might have been my imagination, but his long gray braids and beard looked a shade lighter too. If this kept up, his hair might be snow-white by sunrise. His cell phone rang. He put it on speaker without picking it up from the table.
“Update,” the president said without a hello.
“No change,” Boone said. “Any intel from the interrogations?”
Malak and Angela had taken down two White House moles before Malak had snatched Bethany. Pat Callaghan and Charlie Norton, two Secret Service agents, had taken the moles to an undisclosed location and were questioning them, which probably meant something very different than the word implied.
“They’ve been sweated pretty hard,” J.R. said. “They don’t appear to know anything except their small part.”
“Their part wasn’t so small,” Boone said, his eyes still on the laptop screen.
“Agreed,” J.R. said. “The operation was perfectly compartmentalized. Arbuckle and Chef Cheesy didn’t even know they were on the same team until this morning. I don’t think they have any idea who gave them their instructions, or who else is involved.”
“They were recruited somewhere by someone, and trained,” Boone said.
“We’ll get the whole story out of them eventually, but it won’t help our current situation.” The president paused for a long moment, then said, “I have a SEAL team on alert.”
Boone turned away from the screen and looked down at the phone.
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them to stand by. No details.” Another long pause. “I’m going to send them in, Boone. If I think it’s necessary.”
“Are you co-opting the operation?” Boone asked.
“Negative,” J.R. answered. “But I’m tempted to. It’s my daughter.”
“I appreciate your restraint,” Boone said. “This can’t be easy. Are you still in the Oval Office?”
“No. I moved down to the Situation Room. P.K.’s still with me. The electronics and communications are better and more secure in here. We’ve locked ourselves in. It’s driving the staff up the wall.”
I could imagine. J.R.’s chief of staff, Mr. Todd, was a control freak. He had given Angela and me the third degree after our late-night meeting with the president in the Oval Office. We told Todd nothing about what was said, which nearly unhinged him.
“They called the V.P.,” J.R. continued. “They told her that they thought I’d had a nervous breakdown. She rushed over here ready to take the oath of office. I told her that the rumors of my insanity were greatly exaggerated and sent her packing. But I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to hold them off. Eventually I’ll have to let them in on what’s going on, or fire all of them for allowing terrorists to infiltrate the White House.”
“You hired Chef Cheesy,” Boone pointed out.
“Thanks for reminding me. When this is all over, I might have to fire myself too. But as we discussed, I’d like to take the ghost cell with me.”
“We’re doing our best.”
“I know you are, Boone. I have complete confidence in you, but I’ve recruited some extra help.”
Boone’s blue eyes narrowed. “Who?”
“John Masters. You know him, right?”
“Our paths have crossed,” Boone said quietly.
“Indonesia,” J.R. said. “The hostage rescue during the volcanic eruption.”
“I remember. I thought John hung it up after that. Settled down. Got married.”
“He did. His wife died in an auto accident a couple years ago. He’s been bumming around the country doing construction. He’s living outside Tampa. We did a big favor for him in Mexico.”
“What kind of favor?”
“We rescued him and his son … and a circus. Off the books.”
“I imagine,” Boone said dryly.
“What’s important is that he’s on his way to meet you right now. I scrambled a navy jet. They’re in the air. Tampa to Norfolk. They should be landing soon. I was going to have him choppered up to meet you, but the hurricane makes that unlikely.”
“What hurricane?” Boone asked.
Rain was pelting the windows and the wind was buffeting the coach, but it didn’t seem that bad.
“You’re driving into it,” J.R. said. “Hurricane Jack. It just got upgraded from a tropical storm. They’re predicting a landfall near Nags Head, North Carolina. Bad chopper weather. I’ll put him in a vehicle and head him your way.”
“He’s been out of the game for a long time,” Boone said.
“Not as long as you and your team.”
“Our game is quite a bit different from John Masters’. We don’t fight our way out of problems. We think our way out of problems. There’s nothing the matter with our minds.”
“You know as well as I do, Boone, that there are situations where thinking isn’t enough. John wouldn’t have come if he didn’t think he was up to it.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Everything,” J.R. admitted. “I wasn’t about to send him into this blind. I trust him. You can trust him. He has a Seamaster.”
Boone glanced at me and Angela. “Good enough. I assume he’s equipped with more than a hammer and screwdriver?”
J.R. gave a short laugh. “I have a full tactical kit waiting for him at Norfolk. He’ll have plenty of tools, but no hammer and screwdriver. He’ll check in with you when he lands.”
“Fine,” Boone said, but it was clear from his expression that he wasn’t happy about the new addition to the SOS team. “I’ll keep you in the loop.” He ended the call.
“Do you know this guy well?” I asked.
“Well enough. I worked with him a couple of times back in the day. He was the SEAL team expert in hostage rescue/ recovery. Scuttlebutt was he had never lost a hostage. Don’t know if the record held until he mustered out. And he has a Seamaster.”
Angela and I glanced down at our watches. Having a Seamaster had nothing to do with the sea. The Seamaster was a Swiss watch made by Omega. The president had given us the watches the night before in the Oval Office. Boone had one and so did Angela’s mom, Malak. Although she had taken out the tracking device, which J.R. used to keep tabs on his special friends. Engraved on the back of the case was the president’s private phone number.
“How many of these watches has he given out?” Angela asked.
Boone smiled. “Don’t worry. It’s still a very small club.” He hit X-Ray’s speed dial. “Can you check out—”
“John Masters,” X-Ray interrupted, which meant he had been monitoring Boone’s cell phone. “I have him up on my screen. After he left the SEAL team, he moved to Portland, Oregon, and started a construction company with his wife’s brother. They made a go of it for several years, then his wife and daughter were killed, then the economy tanked and the construction company almost went bust. About a year after that, he got struck by lightning and he and his son hit the road chasing storms, hiring out to fix the damage.”
“Struck by lightning?” Angela blurted out.
“Yep,” X-Ray confirmed. “Right in his backyard. He was in a coma for a week. But I guess he’s okay now. I found a TV
interview with him just before Hurricane Emily hit the Gulf coast of Florida this year. He was down there helping people get ready for the wind. The years have been kind to him. He looks pretty fit.”
“What was he doing in Mexico?” Boone asked.
“The details are sketchy on that, but he was down there during the eruption of Mount Popocatépetl, and like J.R. said, there was a circus involved. A SEAL team flew down for an off-the-books extraction, which included the rescue of lions, tigers, and bears.”
“Oh my,” I added, completing the line from The Wizard of Oz, which got a laugh from Angela, a smile from Boone, and a compliment from X-Ray.
“Good one, Q,” he said, and continued with his rundown on John Masters. “John and his son, Chase, came back to Florida, where John’s been fixing hurricane damage.”
“Until tonight,” Boone said.
“Right. The president called him at twenty-two-oh-seven. They spoke for nineteen minutes. He was on an F-14 Tomcat twenty minutes after the call ended, heading to Norfolk Naval Station with an ETA of about five minutes.”
“What about Hurricane Jack?” Boone asked.
“I’m tracking it. It’s supposed to hit landfall at oh-two-hundred.”
“Oh two hundred?” I asked.
“Military time,” Miss Know-It-All said. “Two in the morning.”
Spies can’t even tell time normally.
“The wind is already picking up speed ahead of us,” X-Ray continued. “Vanessa is having a hard time with the drone. If the wind gets worse, we’re going to have to park it. I suggest we get a little closer to Malak.”
“Got it!” Felix shouted from the driver’s seat.
Apparently X-Ray had patched him into the conversation.
“No closer than a mile behind,” Boone warned Felix, then turned back to the phone. “Keep the drone up for as long as you can.” He ended the call and brought a weather map up on the screen. “When it rains it pours.” A black swath of ugly clouds was blowing in from the Atlantic.
“Where are we in relation to the storm?” Angela asked.
Boone pointed to the screen. I could see we were just entering the northern edge of the ugly clouds.
“The only bright side is that the ghost cell wasn’t expecting a hurricane either,” Boone said.
“And we have a storm expert coming our way,” I added.
“If he makes it.” Boone traced his finger along John Masters’ route. “He’s going to be right in the thick of it.”
In the Thick of It
John Masters thought he was going to crash and burn. The Tomcat bounced five times, like a winged basketball, before the pilot was able to get the jet to stick to the runway. The pilot pulled his helmet off and began to taxi. John pulled his helmet off too.
The pilot didn’t look much older to John than his son Chase, which made John feel very, very old. He had called Chase just before he’d climbed into the cockpit in Tampa. It was a short conversation.
“I’m going to be out of pocket for a few days,” John had said. “You won’t be able to reach me.”
“Where are you going?”
John was going to make something up, but he had promised Chase in Mexico he would always tell him the truth.
“I can’t tell you any more than that. This cell phone isn’t secure.”
“I thought you were done with that stuff.”
“Me too. But this guy I know has a … uh … family problem and asked me to give him a hand. I owe him and couldn’t refuse.”
“Be careful, Dad,” Chase had said, and asked no more questions.
John smiled as the pilot taxied toward a huge hanger. The guy was John Robert Culpepper, president of the United States. John had only met J.R. one time, many years earlier in Iraq, before J.R. became the president. John and his team had rescued an important asset in Iran without any fuss, meaning that they were in and out of Iran with no one knowing it and with the asset alive and well. J.R. had flown into Iraq for a personal debriefing. Highly unusual for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The debrief had lasted no more than fifteen minutes. At the end of it, J.R. took John into a room by himself and gave him a red box. Inside the box was an Omega Seamaster watch. John told him that he didn’t wear a watch, that he always knew what time it was in his head almost to the second. J.R. took the watch out of the box and showed him the number engraved into the crystal on the back of the case.
“My personal number,” he had said. “Someday you might need something from me. I’m ten digits away. Don’t hesitate to call. I owe you.”
John had put the watch away without ever putting it on his wrist, but not before memorizing the number. He had thought of that number many times over the years as he followed J.R.’s career. After John left the SEAL team and settled into private life, he didn’t think he’d ever have a reason to use the number … until Popocatépetl. Desperate, John had stood on the ash-covered slope and punched in the number, not believing for a second that the president would actually answer. But he had. On the second ring.
“Culpepper. Who’s this?”
“John Masters,” he replied thinking the president would have no idea who he was. But again he was wrong.
“I hope you’re not calling about the lousy economy and how it’s affecting your construction business.”
John was shocked. How did the president know he was in construction?
“No, sir,” John said.
“Good. What can I do for you, John?”
Ten minutes later a SEAL team was scrambled to Mexico to rescue him, Chase, the Rossi Brothers’ Circus, and dozens of injured villagers. After a few weeks helping to rebuild the village, he and Chase returned to Florida. Chase wanted to finish the school year in the same school. No more storm chasing. There was plenty of construction work after Hurricane Emily. John was as happy as he had been in years. Marco Rossi had given them a nice piece of property, and John was gathering material to build a home—a real home, a permanent home to take the place of the fifth wheel he’d been hauling behind his truck for two years.
Then the president had called. The conversation lasted less than half an hour. And it really wasn’t a conversation. J.R. had done most of the talking. It was the most concise and organized mission briefing he had ever been through. What made it even more remarkable was that the president was talking about his own daughter’s kidnapping.
Along with the rest of the world, John had watched the news coverage of the bombings in Washington, D.C. But he saw the attack through the calculating eyes of a former SEAL team member, knowing there was a lot more to the story than the media was able to dig up. They didn’t know about the kidnapping, the ghost cell, the undercover agent posing as a terrorist, or the infiltration of terrorists into the U.S. government. The only people who knew were the president and a handful of ex-spooks led by the mysterious Tyrone Boone.
He had crossed paths with Boone twice, back in the day, without being certain who he was, or in what capacity he served the government. He had assumed the Willy Nelson look-alike was a CIA NOC agent—non-official cover—the most secret of the secret agents. John was surprised that Boone was in charge of the operation. In fact, he was surprised that Boone was still alive. The guy had been ancient twenty years ago. He had an image of Agent Hippy, as the SEAL teams had called him, tottering around a nursing home on an aluminum walker, pulling an oxygen tank behind him. But the president had been crystal clear. Boone was alive and well and completely in charge of the op. John was not to make a single move against the target without running it by Tyrone Boone first.
But first I have to find Boone, John thought as the Tomcat was hooked up and towed into the hanger.
A chopper was not waiting for him. Not surprising in this wind. The only ground personnel was the guy driving the tow truck. That wasn’t surprising either. The fewer eyes on this the better. The ground guy pushed a set of the steps over to the cockpit. The pilot popped the cockpit hatch.
“Thanks for t
he lift,” John said.
“No problem. Sorry about the bounce.”
“We’re on the ground in one piece. No foul.” John climbed out of the cockpit. The pilot said nothing more. John knew the routine. The pilot had been ordered to pick up a civilian in Tampa and ferry him up to Norfolk without any questions.
John stretched the kinks out of his cramped muscles. At Mach 2 it had been a short flight, but the backseat of a Tomcat was a tight fit for his six foot two frame. There was a reason fighter pilots were called jet jockeys. Most of them were small. But they made up for their height with lightning quick reflexes.
Lightning.
John looked through the hanger door at the wind and the rain as a bright flash lit up the sky. He had been struck twice now, but lightning was the least of his problems. He started down the metal stairs and heard the pilot coming down behind him.
“No chopper tonight,” the ground guy said as he reached the bottom.
“I figured,” John said. “Kind of breezy out.”
The ground guy nodded and pointed to a black SUV. “Keys are in the ignition. I was instructed to tell you that everything you need is inside. When you’re ready to leave, take a right out of the hanger, then another right on Base Road. Security is expecting you. When they see the vehicle, they’ll open the gate. No need to stop and ID yourself.”
“Thanks.”
The ground guy and the pilot climbed into a truck without another word and drove out of the hanger, leaving him completely alone. He was in a hurry to get on the road, but he wasn’t going anywhere until he checked every piece of equipment inside the SUV. The first thing he checked was the secure satellite phone. The unit was much smaller than it used to be—not much bigger than a cell phone. He turned it on and called Tyrone Boone.
Operation Medusa
“You’re five miles behind,” Boone said.
Felix eased off the gas. Wind gusts slammed into the coach, but he was managing to keep it under control. The same could not be said for the drone. The video of the Tahoe was bouncing all over the screen. Boone looked worried. His phone rang. He looked down at the number.
“I don’t recognize it.”
