“He’s waiting for us.” She’d anticipated my question yet again.
“Okay then, let’s go.”
Flynn scrambled off, and I felt Lazzo pull on my foot. “What?”
“What’s with her finishing all your—”
“Sandwiches?”
“Sandwiches!?” I could hear the bewilderment in his voice. “No, sent—”
“Let it go.” I crawled off. Clearly, he’s never watched Frozen with Emily and Abbey.
It was hard to believe Flynn was putting so much on the line for us. Then again, she was a teenage girl with more than a passing hatred of her father. Thank God the captain was the prick he was. Otherwise we’d likely be dead now.
We reached the end of the channel and dropped down into a well-lit room with blankets, stacks of bottled water, and boxes of packaged food.
“What is this place?” It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the light of the room.
A tall, thin, blond-haired boy—cut from the pages of a surfer magazine—stepped out of the darkness to greet us. “A flood room, I think. Hey.” He held his hand out to me. “I’m Chase.”
“Hey, Chase.” I hugged him instead. “Hayley.”
“And?” Chase extended his hand toward Lazzo.
“You don’t need to know his name.” I stepped between the outstretched hands of Chase and Lazzo. “Pretend he isn’t here.”
“Hayley—” Lazzo didn’t appreciate that.
I spun and cut him off. “Not another word.” I shoved my finger in his face. “You and I are going to talk. Soon. But right now, I’m going to drink a bottle of water and get some sleep.”
Lazzo didn’t object. He grabbed a bottle of water for himself and found a corner of his own.
“Guys, does your dad know you’re in on this?”
They shared a smile. “You didn’t tell her about the finger—Flynn—and the cameras?” Chase held up his middle finger.
“No. I didn’t.” She turned to me. “But, yes, by now he knows we’re with you.”
The finger, huh? Nice touch. “And you’re both okay with that? Won’t he be coming for you now, too?”
Chase answered for both of them. “She told me you were worth saving. Which is more than we can say for our relationship with Dad. And let him come—he’ll never find us down here. Not without the maps.”
Got it. As Chase and Flynn discussed the situation I glanced over at Lazzo, and we stared at each other for a few minutes. Finally he bowed his head, and I turned to thank Flynn and Chase one more time before succumbing to the sandman. A few solid hours of sleep would be quite heavenly tonight. I was confident that, in a little while, all hell was going to break loose.
TWENTY-ONE – Son Of A… (Ryan)
---------- (Wednesday, August 3, 2022.) ----------
Redemption Island, Hawaii
Danny couldn’t shake the feeling this entire scenario was being dictated according to a bigger plan. “This is more than a kidnapping for ransom,” he’d said. He felt like he was—like we all were—being played. We weren’t being proactive in any of this; we were only reacting. As a trained Marine sniper, he was used to being ahead—to being able to see what was coming—not behind like this. This was pissing him off.
Danny called Governor Barnes back after he’d collected himself and asked if the governor had told anyone about the message from the boat regarding the “terrorists” being killed. He hadn’t. Damien had picked up the message when he’d checked the line and called the governor directly. I listened over the speakerphone as Danny and Governor Barnes discussed the situation.
“Governor, please don’t say a word about this to anyone, not the other operatives—not even Nicole. I’ll tell Damien to sit on the message for now—there’s something about this that isn’t right. Those people at the house know a little too much about our capabilities. They seem to know everything.”
“Wait…so are we talking about a mole, Danny?”
“Honestly, Governor, I don’t know. But it makes sense if there is one. How else would the kidnappers know exactly what we can and can’t do, see, record, et cetera? How is it that an area of the island we weren’t even looking at suddenly ends up on that screen showing us everything we needed to see?”
“What do you mean? I thought you stumbled across it.”
“That’s just it. I didn’t. We didn’t. The compound wasn’t in any of the zones we were searching.”
“So Nicole—”
“It came up on her screen—somehow—that’s all I know for sure. I have to believe we saw what the kidnappers wanted us to see exactly when they wanted us to see it. All of this so far has gone according to their plan.”
“So you don’t think Nicole’s in on it—that she’s one of them?”
“I don’t know,” Danny said. “But we can’t tip her—or anyone else—off to anything we’ve discussed here. Not until we know more.”
Governor Barnes agreed.
After Danny hung up with the governor and spoke to Damien, he expressed his concerns to the rest of us. “The DTF operatives in Area 52 are people just like us. They have their loyalties as we do, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be compromised. They’re as skilled as they come—and are all capable of manipulating the system. Wouldn’t you say, Keena?”
She nodded. “It’d be pretty easy for any of them.”
“You seem to be suggesting you know who set this up,” Kate noted.
Danny nodded. “Set it up? That I’m not sure of. But to guarantee no one found the house earlier when we were searching the satellite feed Nicole preset all the screens on specific coordinates. She delayed us—wasted our time—and then suddenly found the property outside the coordinates. Too convenient to be coincidence.”
“But we wouldn’t have even known about the ELF idea in the first place if it wasn’t for Nicole. So why would she have wanted us to get a message to the carrier if she’s helping them?” Kate sounded unconvinced.
“Hang on.” Danny held up a hand. “I don’t think she’s necessarily helping them. Obviously it looks that way, but maybe she was forced to do what she did, and sending a message to the aircraft carrier might not have had an effect on anything else.”
I am so lost. “Okay.” I couldn’t take it anymore. “Explain this to the rest of us, so we can understand what the heck you’re saying … or is it just me that’s confused?”
There was a hot-potato exchange of glances around the room but no comments. Maybe it was just me.
“I think what Danny’s trying to say is that the kidnappers have something on us …” Blake volunteered. “… and they could have leverage on Nicole too.”
“So you’re not going to do anything about it?” Frustration was eating me alive. Seriously?
“Exactly.” Danny nodded. “Without knowing specifically what’s involved, if I pull Nicole out now, I could threaten whatever—or whoever—they’re holding over her.”
I didn’t like it. It still didn’t make perfect sense to me, but I wasn’t going to mention that now—not when everyone else seemed to understand Danny’s theory. I had thought all the operatives lived at Area 52 and never left there specifically so they couldn’t become a security breach. Isn’t that the whole idea? So do these people have one of Nicole’s siblings? Or her parents? What is their leverage? Does it even matter? If Nicole was helping them, she had to have a reason compelling enough for her. I’d have done anything to save my daughter and Emily, no matter who asked me, so I definitely could understand. But I still didn’t like it.
Danny decided he needed to go talk to Nicole in person, and he asked Tara and Kate to go along with him. Blake, Trigger, and Twix went as well, and Axel flew them all to the Hexagon. Deacon, Keena, and Royce stayed here with the rest of us. We’d watch the meeting via satellite.
When Danny arrived at the Hexagon, he directed Damien to open up a secure direct feed between the interrogation room at Area 52 and the computer we had on Redemption. Danny looked up into t
he camera and told Keena to kill the line if she caught any sign of someone tapping in to the feed—even from inside the Hexagon.
We watched from the computer in Blake’s office as Nicole knocked on the interrogation room door and entered. Danny and Kate were the only ones in there with her. Danny must not trust Tara’s emotional state. Nicole looked nervous. Then again, my hands were shaking, and I wasn’t anywhere near there. Nicole sat down and looked at Danny and Kate. We couldn’t see her face clearly, but her voice was noticeably shaky when she spoke. “What’s this about, Danny?”
“Nicole, the only way this goes bad for you is if you pretend you don’t know why I’m here talking to you right now.” He paused. “You have my word. I will not act on anything before tonight. Nothing … I promise.”
I saw her wipe her face a couple times and knew Danny was right. She is involved. Dang it. How did I not get any of this?
“Danny, I’m sor—I’m so sorry.”
“I need to know what’s going on, Nicole. Who are we dealing with here, and what do they have on you?” He tossed the patch from the boat onto the table and tapped the emblem. “Who are you working for?”
She glanced at the patch then up at Danny in obvious surprise. “I have no idea what that is. And…have on me?” We saw her look at Kate then back at Danny. “N-n…nothing. They don’t have anything on me. You mean…wait, you don’t know? Why are you—”
Now Danny looked surprised. “I don’t know what?”
Nicole looked like she had several different thoughts she wanted to express at that point—like she didn’t know where to start.
“Come on, Nicole,” Danny urged.
“They…they don’t have anything on me. They have Hayley. Hayley is on the aircraft carrier with Lazzo.”
Danny stood up suddenly, his chair slamming back against the wall. His “What?” preceded mine by a millisecond. “Nicole, you’re certain Hayley is on that ship?” He almost yelled the question.
She nodded. “Pretty sure, yes. Lazzo forced her …”
“I know what happened. So she’s …”
I was stunned. I sank into a chair, and Keena turned to look at me. Was Nicole saying what I thought she was saying? A glance at Dad’s stricken face and I knew she was. Hayley was one of the “terrorists” they’d killed on the carrier. Hayley is dead. I could feel the tears forming in my eyes. I stared blankly at the screen that had become a blur.
“How do you know that?” Danny’s voice remained clear—and remarkably composed.
“I was going to tell you when I found out … I just didn’t know how. I knew you were already thinking it, so I didn’t want to say it. I knew you’d be upset—”
“Wait, you think I’m here because I found out you held out on me?”
“No.” Nicole shook her head. “Well, not exactly. I thought you were here because you knew I’d had contact with the people working with Lazzo.”
“The people in the house on Kauai?”
She shook her head again. “No.”
“There are more people involved in this?” Kate revealed her own surprise.
The hits just keep on coming.
“I…I don’t know that for sure. It could be the same people, but they were here on Oahu—they were at the Marine Corps Base Station I sent the ELF message from.”
“Okay, let’s start there. Tell me about that.” Danny leaned forward in his chair.
Nicole took a deep breath. “Okay. When I went to the base to send the message, I wasn’t the only one there. I sent the message, as you requested, but as I was leaving someone put a gun to my head and told me never to come back there. Wait …”
“What?” Danny asked.
“Can I see that patch again?”
Danny pulled it back out and set it on the table.
“I have seen this before. The guy who put the gun to my head had it tattooed on his arm—inside wrist to be exact. His hands were white, and he spoke in perfect English—though his voice was electronically altered. He told me they had your friends in Kauai and the girl on the boat—which I later realized meant Hayley. I was to keep all satellite cameras away from the specific coordinates he handed me until 5:00 a.m. and then type those exact coordinates into one screen and pretend like I’d stumbled across the compound. I was ordered not to mention a word to anyone, and any deviation from exactly that and they’d kill them all. So, what is that a symbol of?” She pointed at the patch.
“It’s the insignia for Libyan Intelligence.”
I’m no expert on lie detection but the expression on Nicole’s face couldn’t have been too different from the one on my face when I found out the same thing. She couldn’t possibly be in on this. I turned and said as much to Keena. “She’s not in on this.”
“I know,” Keena replied without taking her eyes off the screen.
Back in the interrogation room Danny was pacing. “Did they give you a way to contact them?” he asked.
Where was he going with this?
“No.”
“So they didn’t even ask you about the message you sent?”
“No.” She shook her head.
Huh. That’s weird.
Danny seemed to think so too. “So they knew what was going on without you saying anything?”
“I don’t know.” Nicole shrugged. “I guess. I definitely didn’t tell them anything.”
Suddenly I understood what Danny’s line of questioning was focused on. These guys knew Nicole was going to be at the Marine base, and they knew what she was there to do. They didn’t need to ask her about the message. They already knew. They had a contact on the boat and someone feeding them information here—they were the link between two parties. We were getting too close too fast, and they needed to slow us down. More importantly—if this was all true—Nicole was definitely not the mole.
“So you don’t know Hayley’s dead?” Danny asked suddenly.
“What?” The shock on Nicole’s face was absolutely authentic. “Dead? How …”
Danny held up his hand. “The carrier replied to your message while you were off duty. Damien decoded it and shared it with the governor. Then Barnes told me.”
“What was the message? Can I ask? No one told me anything.”
“They caught the stowaways and killed them.”
“So they’re saying Hayley and Lazzo … but that doesn’t—wait.” Nicole shook her head. “Did Damien go to the Marine base? Did he run into those people too?”
“What? No. The message came here.”
She was still shaking her head. “But it couldn’t. There’s no relay on ELF messages. Someone would have had to send it here manually from the Marine base.”
“Okay, so someone sent it here. So?”
“So otherwise you would have never gotten that message.”
“But why would they want me to get that message? I would think that would be the last thing they’d want.”
“No, Danny. Not if they’re trying to stall you.”
“So my sister and Lazzo are dead?”
“I don’t think so. If that were the case, they wouldn’t need Reagan and the girls at the compound. They wouldn’t still need you to go there tonight. They wouldn’t want you there tonight—or ever.”
“Right. I agree.”
Wait. So Hayley might not be dead? And Danny believes this? I leaned forward to make sure I didn’t miss a word.
“So…” Nicole looked at Kate then back at Danny. “Either they know the reply message was a lie, or they don’t know about the reply at all.”
“Right,” Danny answered, standing again. “And you’re leaning toward the first.”
“I am,” Nicole continued. “Someone on the carrier is communicating with the kidnappers via ELF. And the kidnappers fed Damien the reply from the Marine Corps Base Station. But Damien didn’t think anything about it because he didn’t even know about the ELF—that it couldn’t auto-relay from the carrier.”
“Okay.”
“So if
Damien doesn’t know what’s going on and the governor hasn’t put any of this together, then they’re not involved, and there isn’t a mole.”
“No, there is.”
“Or…there is, and it’s—” “One of the other two Digital Task Force agents.” Kate understood where they were going with this. “Which means the mole is either Dewey or Stacy.”
“Most likely.” Danny glanced out the window then added, “And they—directly or indirectly—probably have a contact on the boat.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. It really is one giant web.
“We can’t let Dewey or Stacy know anything about the reply then, or that we even suspect them.” Nicole stated the obvious. “If one of them mentions the response from the carrier, we’ll know who the mole is.”
Danny remained silent. There was always a chance the mole wouldn’t say anything. We might never figure out who it was.
“Dewey and Stacy are out there right now—in the main room.” Nicole pointed toward the other room. “They’re going to wonder why you’re in here talking to me. Whoever’s watching us and making sure I do what they asked—they’re going to know I was talking to you.”
Danny nodded. “Yes.”
“So what do you need from me?”
Suddenly I heard Keena beside me say, “Danny, someone just hacked into this feed.”
Danny touched the earpiece in his left ear and nodded, confirming he’d heard her. “Cut on now, okay.”
Keena nodded. She knew what Danny was talking about. Suddenly Danny went ballistic. He picked up a steel chair and hurled it against the interrogation room window. The bulletproof glass didn’t so much as crack, but it sure made one incredibly loud noise. Kate jumped up and stood back against the wall, and I watched in shock as Danny flipped the table across the room. Papers and water went everywhere. The petrified look on Nicole’s face was genuine.
“What the hell are you doing, Danny?” I yelled at the screen. He obviously couldn’t hear me—and didn’t reply.
The door to the room swung open then, and Blake stuck his head in. “Get out!” Danny screamed at him. “Now!”
Redemption Page 13
