by Marc Cameron
“Fighters?” she asked.
Skeet drained the last of his beer and set the glass on the bar, pretending he didn’t hear her over the din of the crowd. He caught Schmidt’s eye when he turned around. “Remember that time in Misawa?”
Schmidt shook his head, though he knew exactly what Skeet was talking about. They’d come home from training to find uninvited guests had been smoking in their apartments. The sheets were crumpled like someone had been sitting at the end of Skeet’s bed. Schmidt’s was always unmade, so it was impossible to tell on his. Files were rifled. Drawers were opened. A turd was left floating in Schmidt’s toilet. It was as if they wanted the aviators to know they were being watched. Psych-ops—mind games meant to trip them up. Neighbors reported seeing two Chinese men hanging around the complex. NCIS had impounded the turd—for DNA samples of known Chinese spies. It had turned out to be from a dog, but you had to hand it to those NCIS guys for trying.
Schmidt glanced at gap-toothed Lucy Liu. Her chest heaved, like it wanted to escape from the white T-shirt. Schmidt looked back at Skeet.
“No? Seriously, you think?”
Skeet nodded. “Afraid so.”
“You guys want to get a room?” the girl blurted out, sticking the tip of her tongue through the gap in her teeth. “The Sheraton is just a couple of blocks from here. We could all go.”
Schmidt shrugged, playing it cool. He raised his finger, as if to chide her. “You promise you’re not a spy?”
She stared at him straight-faced until they both broke into laughter.
“Of course you’re not a spy,” Schmidt said, slapping his leg, sloshing a little of his Jack and Coke. “Your English is too good.”
A wry smile spread across her lips. “So, you want to?”
“As much as I’d like to take you up on that . . .”
She turned immediately to Skeet. “How about you?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. He could have said he had an early day, but that would have been passing on intel—and Skeet Black was too wily for that.
Even so, with this incident, Schmidt knew their day was now going to start a hell of a lot earlier.
* * *
—
Five hours later, Major Schmidt stirred to the sound of someone banging on his door. He lay back on his couch, staring up at the ceiling, dressed in a freshly pressed woodland Marine Corps combat utility uniform, or MCCUU. Dead tired and dry-mouthed, it killed him that two Jack and Cokes could give him a hangover. He groaned and dragged himself to the door. This was getting old as hell. As he suspected, Skeet Black stood there, looking way too chipper, like he’d had a full eight hours and a big breakfast of oatmeal and almond milk. He was also in woodland MCCUU, the sleeves rolled up to his biceps, but his were just a little crisper.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Skeet said, looking around at the dirty dishes and pile of laundry on the end of the couch. “Guess you never got around to reading Make Your Bed.”
Schmidt rolled his eyes. “I forgot what a hoot you are at parties,” he said, grabbing his hat and locking the apartment door. “Anyway, that’s a Navy book. You know, if you hadn’t said anything, the Chicoms would have paid for our dates last night.”
“And you and I would have a big black mark on our PRP.”
The Personnel Reliability Program was DoD’s way of ensuring the trustworthiness of people in sensitive positions. You pretty much signed your privacy away—especially if you flew with nukes—which both men periodically did.
“For your information,” Schmidt said, “I figured out they were spies right before you did. The one with the gap in her teeth used my nickname—which I never told her. She’d done a background on me. Not very smart for a spy.”
“I think they just counted on us being dumb,” Skeet said.
“Or numb. Interesting that you were targeted. The Chinese have hacked into U.S. government personnel records so many times they’ve got data on all of us. Good we’re making a report.”
“Even so.” Schmidt groaned again. “The old man is going to have my ass.”
“We were both there,” Skeet said. “We were approached. We are making a report.”
“He’ll still be pissed,” Schmidt said. “But I’m a single guy, and no money changed hands.”
* * *
—
The wooden sign behind the abnormally clean desk in Captain Craig Slaughter’s cramped office said YOU CAN’T HAVE SLAUGHTER WITHOUT LAUGHTER, which pretty much summed up the Carrier Air Wing commander’s terrifying personality.
Slaughter was Navy, but as the CAG commander—the acronym for the previous title of Carrier Air Group had stuck—Slaughter was responsible for everything that flew or made things fly on CVN 76, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan. It was like he enjoyed doling out ass-chewings. He was sure as hell good at it, which Majors Schmidt and Black were learning firsthand as they braced to attention in the shipboard office.
Captain Slaughter was old-school Navy. His gray crew cut, barrel chest, and the ever-present stub of a cigar like an exclamation point in his mouth reminded Skeet Black of a crusty senior chief more than an officer. He recognized good men, though, and, a pilot himself, talented aviators. Unfortunately for Oh Schmidt, the CAG was also extremely perceptive to the situation.
“We are in the business of fighting wars,” Slaughter said, red-faced, laying on the theatrics like the professional that he was. “Not policing your pecker so it stays in your pants. If said pecker interferes with said war-fighting, then we got a problem. You read me, Major?”
“Loud and clear, sir,” Schmidt said.
“Why you?” Slaughter said, his eyes narrow slits. “Are you such an easy mark that Chinese girl-spies come up to you in bars to get information?”
Already braced to attention, Schmidt’s shoulder blades nearly overlapped at the accusation. “No, sir!”
“Did either of you happen to let slip what kind of bird you fly?”
“No, sir, Captain,” Schmidt said. “She . . . They know I am a pilot. That is all.”
“A fighter pilot?”
“That is possible, sir.”
“I realize that with spy satellites being what they are,” Slaughter said, “our enemies know when one of our birds has a rusty rivet, but sometimes we just might have a plan in place to thwart that eye in the sky . . . Do I need to spell out for you that very often, the type of aircraft we do or do not have aboard is . . . I don’t know”—he spoke through clenched teeth, slamming the flat of his hand on the desk—“A SENSITIVE MATTER?!!”
“I understand, sir.” Schmidt stared at the far wall.
The CAG turned his light-of-a-thousand-suns gaze on Major Black. “How about you, Skeet? What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Captain,” Black said. “We were drinking, letting our guard down more than we should have, conversing with members of the opposite sex, whom we now believe to be Chinese intelligence operatives. We broke contact immediately once we developed this suspicion. No critical information was revealed, but in hindsight, we should have been more careful about the information we did convey. I will use more diligence in the future, sir.” He ended with a phrase common to the debrief after every Blue Angels flight, displaying, he hoped, the fact that he knew there were many Naval aviators with just as much skill as he had, who’d worked every bit as hard, but somehow, through fate and fortune, he’d ended up where he was. “I’m just glad to be here.”
Captain Slaughter let it soak in for a moment before turning back to Schmidt.
“NCIS is going to ask you this, but I want to know myself. Did either of you give up any information about our upcoming mission?”
“All due respect, Captain,” Schmidt said. “But we haven’t yet been made aware of the specifics of our upcoming mission.”
“Sounds like a sound decision
on the part of both the Navy and the Marine Corps,” Slaughter said, looking at Skeet. “Generalities, then?”
“No, sir. The young ladies know we fly, but that is all.”
“Well, gentlemen,” Slaughter said. “You will, no doubt, be ecstatic to know that you will shortly be leaving my gentle care aboard the Reagan for the meat of your assignment.”
“May I ask where, Captain?”
“Orders will be forthcoming,” Slaughter said. “But, as you can both surmise, the type of aircraft you fly are more suited to the Gator Navy than big-deck carriers.”
That made sense, Skeet thought. Amphibious landing craft and the sailors that ran them worked with Marine Expeditionary Units to project U.S. power around the world. The ships were smaller, with no catapults, but capable of launching all manner of rotary wing aircraft as well as STOVL-capable fighters like the Marine Corps Harrier and the F-35B. Skeet knew one thing: The CAG was extra-tense, even for him, so the assignment must be something big.
Captain Slaughter peered across his nose as if deciding what to do—though both pilots were well aware that any decision had been made before they ever entered his office. They were Marines, and accustomed to the theatrics of discipline.
“You’ve got balls,” he said, “I’ll give you that. We have some work to do in the coming days and Lightning pilots ain’t exactly growing on trees. We need you, but we don’t need you that bad. You read me?”
“Yes, Captain,” the men said in unison.
“Outstanding,” Slaughter said. “Now, go grab your shit from your apartments and get back here at flank speed. I’ve already spoken with your Marine Corps chain. Consider yourselves confined to base until further notice. The only way I want you off these premises is when you’re in the air on your way to your next assignment.” The CAG’s voice calmed a notch, and he took a long breath, like the theatrics might be over, and he was about to bestow some sage, fatherly advice. Instead, he curled up his upper lip like he needed to spit out something bitter and said, “Dismissed.”
25
Three minutes.
Cecily Lung looked at her watch and squirmed in her ergonomic desk chair. She was new to Dexter & Reed, not yet completely trusted by the rest of the engineers—but Phil had a crush on her, so that was something. She’d give herself another minute and a half and then go to his desk, two cubicles down. He made no secret of the fact he’d like to ask her on a date, but he hadn’t quite figured out how to navigate work relationships.
She’d been there only a week, but Lung kept notes on everyone in the office, looking for useful weaknesses that she could leverage—like Phil’s AWF—Asian woman fetish. She used her own made-up code to jot everything down in a notepad she kept in her purse along with a .22-caliber Beretta semiautomatic. She had a small suppressor as well that a former boyfriend had given her. It wasn’t much longer than her thumb and didn’t silence the subcompact pistol, but rendered it quiet enough that anyone listening behind a closed door might wonder if someone had dropped a book.
There were few doors here, though, and only a couple of walls. Dr. Li didn’t believe in cordoned work areas, insisting that open spaces inspired cooperation and group effort. He’d grudgingly allowed cubicles, so long as the walls didn’t go above the shoulder of the shortest seated individual. He had an office—the bigwigs at corporate had insisted so as not to make them look bad for having offices of their own—but he’d taken the door off and kept the blinds raised.
The computer control room itself had a door—an extremely secure door. Known among the engineers as “the vault,” the control room was connected to the outside world, to corporate and government clients, including the Missile Defense Agency, who purchased and depended on Dexter & Reed products—and the periodic software updates that product required. Sealed like a fortress, the vault was built of reinforced concrete block, sheathed in wire mesh walls, floors, and ceiling. Alarms and scramble pads controlled entry.
It wasn’t that there was an atmosphere of mistrust. They were all on the same team and all had high-level security clearances. But Li stressed redundant security and oversight. If anyone, including him, performed any task on the terminal, it had to be double-checked and verified. Engineers with specific hardware or software needs could enter the vault two at a time during office hours, but Li had the only code that worked after hours.
Tucked in Cecily Lung’s purse with the notebook and the pistol was a small thumb drive that her handler had delivered to her that morning, along with the instructions to upload it at once into the central terminal—behind the secure door. The sooner, the better. It would be quick—her handler estimated some fifteen seconds, but that might as well have been fifteen months if she couldn’t get into the locked facility by herself. She’d asked Phil to go in with her to check some hardware, but there was no way she could insert the drive. He was smitten, but he was also smart—and would surely see if she inserted any drive.
With any luck, the logs of the visit would help cover her tracks.
She stood, throwing her purse over her shoulder. Not that she needed the gun to talk to Phil, but it made her feel better to have it—and anyway, shit was about to get real.
The gun was meant to be a last-ditch effort. Her employers would, no doubt, have preferred that she use it on herself if she were compromised. Still, knowing it was in her purse made the tedious job of watching and waiting a tad more exciting. Cecily Lung had graduated from MIT with a degree in EECS—electrical engineering and computer science—one year after she’d been recruited by Department Two, the intelligence arm of the People’s Liberation Army. Both her parents were Taiwanese. They’d immigrated to the U.S., where, overwhelmed with the prosperity and free speech of her new country, Cecily began to display a revolutionary streak while she was in high school. At first she’d been wise enough to keep her thoughts off social media, but she was quick to grow bored and was on the verge of shucking it all to join an activist group when she was approached. Her recruitment could not have come at a better time. A life designing computers made her want to scream. A life of espionage and designing computers was something she could sink her teeth into.
If it didn’t get her arrested—or worse.
She glanced at her watch again.
Nearly there.
Dr. Li was on the phone, talking in animated tones, but hushed enough that she couldn’t make out his words. He was a decent enough man for a capitalist, and Cecily really didn’t want to have to shoot him. In truth, her superiors had never said anything about shooting anyone. They did not even know she had the pistol. But she was a spy, wasn’t she? Was she supposed to go in and do all this unprotected?
Time to move.
“Hey,” Phil Beasley said, rolling back from his workstation to show he was giving Cecily his full attention. He was no more than ten years older than her but dressed like her grandpa, with wide brown ties and stodgy leather wing tips that were so scuffed it looked like he’d worn them camping. He had a habit of clutching his hair while he worked on a computer problem, leaving a spiked forelock that would have been cool on a high school kid but looked absurd on a man in his mid-thirties.
“What brings you to my neck of the woods?” he asked, playing imaginary bongos on his desk.
“To be honest,” she said, glancing at the clock—less than a minute now. “I need some help moving an old clothes dryer out of my apartment. I’ll buy you lunch if you could help on Saturday.”
Don’t rush. Act natural.
“Color me there,” he said.
“Great. I’ll text you my address.” She took her phone out of her purse, fumbling so it dropped between Phil’s feet and bounced under his desk. Ever the gentleman, he reached to retrieve it for her. When he bent down, she snatched his ID badge from beside his computer.
It seemed a thousand eyes were on her, but no one stood up, no one pointed an accusing finger.
Phil sat up and handed her the phone at the same time she stuffed the ID into the pocket of her slacks. She looked at the clock again.
“I have to pee,” she said, bouncing a little—from nerves, not her bladder, but the effect was the same. “I’ll text you my number in a second.”
Phil rolled back to his computer. “Cool, cool, cool,” he said.
Cecily made it through the door of the ladies’ room five seconds before the fire alarm went off. She went in a stall and shut the door, standing on a toilet so her feet didn’t show. It was standard operating procedure for the floor warden—one of the engineers who’d been designated—to poke her head in to see that everyone had made it out. They didn’t expect people to hide on the toilet. She heard Mr. Li shouting for everyone to log off their computers—which she’d conveniently done before going to visit Phil’s cubicle. With any luck, he’d rush out without looking for his ID, believing she’d gone on ahead without him. Rude, considering he’d just agreed to what amounted to a date, but people behaved strangely during a possible fire.
Teetering on the flimsy plastic toilet seat, Cecily braced herself against the stall for another two full minutes, allowing everyone to clear the floor. Her handler assured her he would take care of the security video feed that covered the door to the secure computer vault—and she would have to trust him on that.
She stepped down gingerly, shook a cramp from the prolonged half-crouch out of her calf, and then peeked out the door. The alarm—which her handler had activated—still blared, giving the deserted cubicles a postapocalyptic feel.
She had a limited amount of time before the floor wardens finished their tallies and someone was sent back up to find her. Dexter & Reed took its fire alarm and active-shooter drills seriously, thanks to all the former Feds on the payroll. Cecily pushed that terrifying thought out of her mind and sprinted down the empty corridor to the vault. She used both her ID badge and the one she’d stolen from Phil Beasley to scan her way inside. She’d worried that the door might fail-secure during an alarm, and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the electronic mechanism release with an audible clunk.
