True Devotion

by Dee Henderson

  “It was, but I won.” She ruffled Misha’s fur. “It was worth it.” She glanced around the kitchen. “Hey, it looks almost normal.”

  She sounded so surprised that he laughed. “We’ll do the wallpaper tomorrow night?”

  “Please.” She pulled out a chair and spun it around. “I really appreciate this.”

  “I enjoyed it.”

  “Sure you did. I suckered you into working on your evening off.”

  “Better to spend the time with you than watching some baseball game on TV,” he countered.

  “Liar.”

  “The kiss was adequate compensation.”

  She blushed, just a little. “The wallpaper will be a challenge. The walls aren’t straight.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at her for ducking his comment but let it pass. “I remember Nick once threatened to raise one corner of the house. I’ll figure it out.” He was reluctant to end the evening, but if he stayed much longer . . . Things were already getting out of control; to stay would just ensure they ended up over their heads. “I’d better get this dog home before she gets herself into any more mischief.”

  “Probably wise.”

  Kelly walked with him to the patio door. A hug right now would be a match to dry tinder. He put three feet of distance between them and tried to ignore the awkwardness that was present. “G’night, Kelly.”

  “Good night, Joe. I’ll see you on the beach in the morning.”

  “Early.”

  “I’ll be awake long before you get here.”

  She wouldn’t understand if he said he sincerely hoped she overslept. The anticipation of seeing tussled hair and sleepy eyes was going to keep him company tonight. “Tomorrow.” He called his dog and wisely went home.

  * * *

  Joe’s pager went off at 0200. He saw the number and immediately picked up the phone. He called the duty officer to report he was on his way in and eleven minutes later pulled into the parking lot at NAB. This place felt different tonight, no longer peaceful but rather gearing up for action.

  He headed to the administration building, passing staff officers moving through the halls. Joe nodded to the security officer controlling access to the senior staff wing and passed the communications officer for the day shift. They were calling back the full complement of staff. His boss waved him into the conference room.

  “Sir.”

  There were four officers present, two of his counterparts from other platoons and a civilian Joe had never met before. The maps on the long table were of the South China Sea.

  “We’ve got another shipment,” his boss said simply. “Raider’s back, and he’s traveling with this one.”

  Twenty-One

  * * *

  Joe stopped breathing for a moment before his eyes narrowed, the intensity burning. His confidence spiked. Raider was back. He had been prepping for this day for three years. “What do you have?”

  “Mr. Harnley, fill him in.”

  Accustomed to Lincoln’s brusque tone, Joe wasn’t surprised when the civilian jumped a bit and fumbled the folder in his hand. Joe had seen a lot of folders like it over the years. The top-secret stamp was nothing new, nor was the code word clearance stamped boldly on the front. Defense Intelligence Agency? Central Intelligence Agency? National Security Agency? The guy had the look of someone from the analyst side of the house, not the operations side.

  “We don’t have much. Our contact in Hong Kong just got this information out to us. A boat will be leaving Hong Kong with a destination of Maytiko Island, southwest of Taiwan. The island has a decent harbor, an overgrown airstrip, and has been deserted since World War II. The device is nuclear, but we don’t have specifications. It’s apparently being flown from there on to Taiwan.”

  If the shipment got through, it would create a conflagration in the China-Taiwan relationship. China would never tolerate Taiwan having a nuke. “When is it moving?” Joe asked.

  “The plane arrives at dawn, Monday the twenty-second, island time.”

  Joe scanned the maps. With the date line and time zones, that meant Sunday morning—four days from now. He nodded. They had worked with worse. “Who’s the buyer?”

  “We picked up a fragment of a conversation on an encrypted Taiwan military channel,” Mr. Harnley replied. Joe raised an eyebrow at that. A rogue in their military—how high up, how well organized? He accepted the piece of paper he was handed, surprised at being given raw data.

  [Subject 1] Your device has been found.

  [Subject 2] How soon can it be delivered?

  [Subject 1] Eight days.

  [Subject 2] No sooner?

  [Subject 1] Patience. There is more paperwork with this one.

  “That’s all we got of the conversation. The transmission date, the reference to eight days, it matches this shipment information.”

  “So the plane landing on Maytiko Island may well be from the Taiwan military.”

  “Yes.”

  It was going to be touchy. Trying to intercept the device in Hong Kong was out—it was now Chinese soil. Tracking the plane into Taiwan and taking it there on the runway would be difficult—they didn’t know who the buyer was or whom they could trust. That left an intercept on open water or the island. “Lincoln said Raider was traveling with this shipment.”

  Mr. Harnley nodded. “That’s all the contact knew—that the man you call Raider was personally delivering this device. We don’t know if that means he is on the boat leaving Hong Kong, flying in on another plane to meet up with the shipment, or coming in on the same plane taking the device to Taiwan.”

  “Why break his pattern on this one? He’s always remained far from the actual shipments.”

  “He’s been in hiding for the last three years; his buyers may be a little jittery to work with him. Or possibly it’s the same buyer as three years ago, only this time they want a personal guarantee the shipment gets made.”

  It was still a troubling departure from everything Joe knew about the man. And he wanted Raider to be there, meaning his evaluation of the risks was far from impartial. If the intelligence was good . . . “Is there any way to get confirmation of this data?”

  “We’re trying. We’ve got nothing so far.”

  Joe glanced at his boss. “Platoons Echo and Foxtrot are in the area. Can they shift to intercept?”

  “They’ve already got their hands full. We’ll have to deploy resources from here,” Lincoln replied. “Joe, I want you to work up a plan to take the shipment at Maytiko Island. Grant, you’ve got stopping the boat in international waters. Larry, you get the nasty one—assume we have to snatch it off a runway in Taiwan. I need plans by 1800 hours. Wake up your men, gentlemen.”

  Joe felt the adrenaline, the focus, could taste the anticipation. He wanted this mission, was confident that by 1800 hours his platoon would not only have a workable plan to present, but that it would be the best option.

  Four days was enough. They could use today to plan, tomorrow to train, then pack and deploy on Friday. It would be an eleven- to thirteen-hour flight, depending on the jet stream, to get them into the area.

  “Bear, stick around a minute,” Lincoln said.

  Not liking the implications of that terse directive, Joe waited for his boss to finish talking to one of the officers as the other platoon leaders left with copies of the maps. He followed his boss back into his private office and accepted the seat he was waved to.

  “The fact that this is Raider—is this going to be so personal I should put another platoon in your place?” His boss had always been blunt.

  “No, sir.” He practically growled the words. It would be personal, but it would only sharpen his men’s focus, not detract from it. It had sharpened his.

  His boss had a way of looking through a man to his soul. He eventually nodded. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

  “Sir, the informant in Hong Kong—a lot can change in three years. How trustworthy is this data? It goes against everything we know about how Raider
operates.”

  “The fact he is supposedly traveling with the shipment bothers me too, but a more interesting question—how is Raider still able to work through Hong Kong now that it’s under Chinese control?”

  “Someone is being paid to look the other way.”

  His boss nodded. “Probably.”

  “What if China knows about the shipment and is still letting it proceed out of Hong Kong?” Joe asked. “Could this shipment be a Chinese attempt to create a provocation within Taiwan?”

  “If the shipment succeeds, China has an excuse to act mili-tarily before the device can be deployed. If it fails, it still splits Taiwan’s military more sharply between those trying to force independence and the government’s position. China wins either way,” Lincoln said. “We want Raider, Bear, but we have to stop that device.”

  Joe thought about the implications of that as he walked down to see the duty officer to have his men paged. The profile on Raider showed he stole for money not ideology. But stepping into the China-Taiwan quicksand? It was a political escalation from his point of view. A change in his approach, or did the conflict simply create the best market price? So much misery was created because of this one man’s greed. Were they going to lose another SEAL trying to stop this shipment?

  Nick.

  The grief was back like a wave. He had never been able to tell Kelly the truth. It was one thing to hide the truth of what had happened from Kelly when he was her friend, another to bear that burden now that they were dating. She knew he accepted responsibility for what happened, for Nick’s death. But that wasn’t the same as her knowing how he died. She didn’t know Joe’s shoulder injury had come first. That Nick died saving him.

  He needed Raider to be there, needed to be able to put the past to rest. If he couldn’t tell her, at least he could stop the man responsible. He owed that to Nick. And to Kelly.

  * * *

  “What do we know about the ship?” Boomer asked.

  Joe sat back and listened as his men worked the problem. Dawn was still only a tinge of pink in the sky, and the fifteen men had already transformed the conference room they had appropriated for planning the mission into a small war room with relief maps of Maytiko Island showing elevations, satellite images of the old runway, weather data, logistical data. Questions were being asked and answered all around the room, and out of them was coming a powerful, workable plan.

  Cougar had been prowling for data about the boat. “It’s old, Russian in design, a discarded supply ship once used to service their patrol boats. It was converted to civilian use five years ago and now flies a Norwegian flag. Its deep cargo wells are divided into four holds by metal plating; the holds are only accessible from above. The ship’s central hub is two levels: Above deck is the control room, and below deck it’s divided down the center into staterooms on one side, engine room on the other. We can assume the device will be in one of the four holds. The normal crew complement is five.”

  “There is no access from the engine room or staterooms into the holds?” Wolf asked.

  Cougar shook his head.

  “So if we control the deck, we control the device,” Wolf concluded.

  “Exactly.”

  “They have to lift it out by crane?”

  Cougar nodded. “There are two, built into the ship structure.”

  “That’s the ship. What about the island?” Boomer asked. “Where’s the best terrain for a strike?”

  “The satellite pictures show we’ve got a lot of thick tree cover,” Wolf mentioned.

  “The forest has grown up to touch the old runway. We can take the shipment at the pier, in transit to the runway, or once it is loaded on the plane. As long as we keep that plane on the ground, the terrain means we can make our move anywhere we desire.”

  “The plane is scheduled to arrive at sunrise,” Boomer cautioned. No SEAL wanted a mission run in the daylight if they had the option of attacking in the dead of night.

  Wolf pulled over the latest images of the runway. “I doubt they’ll try to bring the plane in early, while it’s still dark. This runway shows signs of having been cleaned up, but I don’t think they can risk the plane being damaged by trying to arrive at night.”

  “If they have been working on the runway, we have to assume they have a number of people already on the island, that we will be dealing with more than the men on the boat,” Cougar pointed out.

  “Then we should let Grant’s platoon hit the boat while it’s still in international waters. That would limit the number of tangos to the men on the boat,” Boomer decided.

  Joe stepped in. “Having Grant take the boat at sea best limits the opportunity for casualties, but it would also alert Raider very early on that we know his plans, and we’d miss the first opportunity we’ve ever had to grab him. The guys in Washington may want to take a little more risk if there is a chance we can get Raider too,” Bear assessed. “For now, let’s assume Grant’s platoon is not available. Assume there are an unknown number of men on the island we’ll have to deal with. What’s the best option? The harbor?”

  David, the platoon’s radioman, pulled over the nautical map. “One option: We wait here, outside the coral reef, for the ship to enter the harbor. We come in behind it and hit while they are moving to unload the device. That leaves all the threat in front of us.”

  “But it could be a nasty threat,” Wolf assessed. “Until the time the plane arrives, the harbor will be the center of attention for any men on the island. There is not a lot of cover to work with; it’s a wide beach, and they would have the advantage of being above us from these rocks.”

  Boomer ran his finger across the map. “What if we wait? Let them unload the device? Because of the terrain they would have to bring it to the airfield along this route. We ambush them here at this choke point, take the device, and return back up this ridgeline and call in a helo to take us out. We would have the cliffs at our backs, and they would have to come uphill toward us to attack.”

  “How do we get there unseen?” Wolf asked.

  “I doubt they would be expecting a threat to come from the cliffs. We climb, set up on the trail, and we wait,” Boomer replied.

  Joe watched the reaction, saw the nods around the room. It was an interesting option even if it meant a steep rock climb in the dark to pull it off. It could get them in position without being detected.

  “We don’t know for certain what time the boat will arrive. What if they haven’t moved the device from the boat and it’s getting close to dawn?” Cougar asked.

  Boomer studied the terrain. “We could sweep down this way and hit the boat, then secure the device there. We put men into the water to come up behind the boat; others use the boathouse for cover and cut off anyone on the beach from coming back up the pier. We can control the decks and seal anyone on the boat below deck; we can control the pier and cut off anyone onshore. If possible, we then steal their own boat and take the device out that way. If they have sabotaged the engine room or the control room, we get the device out over the side for pickup.”

  “Complex,” Bear remarked. “Tell me about the runway options.”

  “Assume the plane lands shortly after dawn. We could disable the plane, seize the device, and retreat back to the far end of the runway, then call in a helicopter to extract us,” Wolf offered.

  “We could wait until the device is aboard and then steal the plane,” Cougar added. There was laughter at that option, but it was actually worth considering.

  Joe looked around the room. “Let’s switch objectives for a moment. Raider. How do we identify and capture him?”

  “The problem is getting him to the island,” Boomer replied. “If we move on the device before the plane lands, assuming he’s coming in by air, the odds are he would get a message alerting him to our attack, and the plane would divert.”

  “The plane has a point of no return when the fuel on board requires it to land,” Wolf noted. “If it can’t turn around because of bingo fuel, the
y may have no choice but to come onto the island.”

  “If they plan their flight right, it could probably divert to the Philippines,” David suggested.

  “We could track it and intercept it on the runway there if it diverts,” Wolf replied.

  Boomer got up to pace. “What about this? We take it in two stages. Stage one is the urgent reality—the device. The best odds are if we hit in the dark, when the device is in transit from the harbor to the runway. It gives us the element of surprise and better terrain. So we do that first and get the device out of the equation. Stage two: Raider. He is either on the boat or coming in by plane. We bottle him up. We remove the urgency on us to engage. We sabotage the boat, and we disable the plane when it lands. If they divert the plane, we follow and take the plane when it lands. We then have a group of men stuck on an island with no way off and no particular urgency on our side. A Naval exercise run out of Okinawa could effectively blockade the island until they were all arrested.”

  Joe liked the idea. He wanted a mission that had a reasonable expectation of no casualties. Bottling Raider up would be as effective as a capture. They had enough general details of a plan to begin working specifics. “Let’s split into three groups. Boomer, work up snatching the device in transit from the harbor to the runway. Cougar, look at the fallback of taking the device at the boat if for some reason they don’t start to move it and we are running short of time. Wolf, assume we can get the device out of there—what’s the cleanest way to bottle them up? Everyone pay special attention to asset logistics. Equipment has to already be in Okinawa or able to fly out with us Friday.”

  The men moved into teams to begin working on the details. Joe watched Cougar and Wolf tackle the assignments he had given them. He was confident the plans they developed would be comprehensive. They were the two who would someday take his and Boomer’s places in leading the platoon. It would be in good hands.