by Andrew Watts
Henry said, “No, but maybe Lena used that as a way in.”
Natesh said, “Please, let’s remember that this is all speculation.”
Norman said, “Bill being dragged into a helicopter unconscious was speculation?”
Natesh sighed and held up his arms in surrender.
David said, “Alright, calm down. Look, I needed to tell someone. I thought I could trust this group. But if it’s all the same, let’s keep this information to ourselves for now. We need to figure out who we can trust. And personally, I just don’t think Lena’s acting alone.”
Brooke said, “You think this place is bugged?”
They all looked around the room. David said, “I honestly didn’t consider that.”
Henry said, “It’s not bugged.”
Norman said, “How do you know?”
Henry said, “Because they’d be running in here right now, guns blazing. Right? Look, we know she’s not acting totally alone. The computers transmit and receive to someone, right? The stewards, the daily resupply flights. Hell, she got a helicopter to arrive within a few hours. She must have an immense amount of support. But what I don’t know is what support she has on the island. And if she is playing for the Chinese, the isolation factor may be our greatest advantage.”
David said, “Actually, I think you’re right. Natesh, you told me that you think you could hack past the firewalls in the Comms building. Do you still think you could do that?”
Natesh glanced around the room. “Yes. I do.”
“Good. Because right now, I think you are the only way that we know of to get a warning out and send for help.”
Henry nodded, “That’s a good idea. But I would think that they’ll know somehow. I mean, Lena would know. The Major would know. Natesh might be able to get in there, but wouldn’t he get caught and shut down?”
David said, “Not if we’ve got Lena and anyone on her side as our prisoners.”
Norman said, “I’m in. I don’t even know what you’re planning yet, but I’m in. I know some of those law enforcement and military guys that are on the Defense team would have to be with us if we told them what’s going on.”
David looked at Natesh. “If we gave you the time, could you do it? I have to imagine there is some kill switch if whoever is pulling the strings finds out what you are trying to do.”
Brooke said, “That would be easy to set up.”
Natesh said, “Let’s slow down. Please. Can we first make sure that we in fact have ruled out all possible legitimate reasons for what David saw happen to Bill?”
Henry said, “Of course, but—”
Natesh held out his hands. “If we find out that Lena indeed is anything other than what she says she is, then I am confident that if you get me thirty free minutes in that Communications building, I will be able to send out a warning message, and contact friends on the outside that could lead rescuers to our location. I have seen enough of those computers and operating systems. I can do it. But please, let us continue to do our jobs until we know for sure.”
David nodded. “That’s fair. First, we need to figure out what’s really going on. If it is the worst-case scenario, then we need to come up with a plan to escape. And warn people. Right now, Natesh is our only hope. And getting him alone in that Comms room will be the goal if we confirm that Lena is not CIA. She and any of her accomplices are people that we’ll have to deal with. But I am not convinced that they are the only ones on this island that could be a problem…”
Natesh said, “What do you mean?”
David said, “The fence.”
“What about it?” Norman said.
“Why would you need a barbed wire fence on an island? Who are you trying to keep out?”
Henry said, “Animals? I don’t know, orangutans? They’re pesky beasts, if you ask me. Never trusted ’em.”
David said, “No, seriously. This island is relatively large. I don’t know exactly how far around it goes, but I don’t think that fence is for our protection. I think it is to keep us from finding out what else is here on the island. Maybe this is just part of a larger base. Maybe this is the part that was meant to hold us.”
Norman said, “So what else is out there?”
David said, “I don’t know. But I’m willing to bet it will help us figure out what’s going on. So I’m going to find out.”
Natesh said, “Find out what?”
David said, “Find out what’s beyond the fence. For now, let’s all please agree to keep this just among us. Let’s keep meeting like this at night. We can call it a poker game if anyone asks, but keep it exclusive to this group until we know who else we can trust. Keep your eyes and ears open—tomorrow night I’ll share what I’ve seen and we can decide where to go from here. But promise me that none of you will tell a soul about any of this until we come up with a plan.”
The others nodded.
Brooke asked, “How are you going to find out what’s on the other side of the fence?”
David said, “Leave that to me.”
7
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know…what I was walling in or walling out…
—Robert Frost
David’s eyes snapped open as his watch alarm went off. It was 4:45 a.m. He kicked his legs over the side of the bed and put on his running gear and sneakers. He needed to hurry. Dawn approached.
A few minutes later he was once again running on the pavement of the island’s lone runway. By his estimate, the sun should rise at 6 a.m. That gave him a good forty-five minutes of darkness.
David tried to scan the starlit runway for signs of other people as he ran. He didn’t see Lena this morning. But that was one of the reasons he was up so early. It was a full hour earlier than he had seen her the last time she was out here. He wanted to avoid being seen by anyone, but especially her. To his knowledge, Lena and he were the only two real runners on the island. A few of the consultants worked out lightly in the afternoon. He had seen them with their trendy workout clothes on, doing push-ups and sit-ups on the beach for a few minutes and calling it a day. But if he even heard footsteps on the tarmac, he had to assume that it was Lena.
David finally arrived at the far end of the runway, about a mile from the barracks, cafeteria, classroom, and Communications building. He walked off the tarmac and towards the shore. The waves were picking up. This must be that weather they were talking about during the morning brief. Not perfect for swimming, but David would manage…as long as there were no sharks out for a morning feed.
He placed his shoes, socks, and shirt behind a small bush fifty yards from the end of the runway and halfway to the fence. It was hidden so that if Lena were running by, she wouldn’t spot the pile.
David waded ankle-deep into the ocean. The salt water was warm against his skin. He walked farther out into the pitch-black water, wondering what was beneath the surface. He could feel the sand packed in soft rolls under his feet. He plowed through the moderate surf. Every once in a while, he would feel something hard touch his toes. Maybe a crab. Hopefully there were no sea urchins under there.
A million magnificent stars lit up the sky, and a sliver of bright moon reflected off the ocean. The water was up to his neck when he started swimming breaststroke, careful to keep an eye on the razor-sharp top of the fence. He had to swim against the waves so that he could get far enough out before he turned left to parallel the shore and start swimming around the island. That way, he wouldn’t get lodged up against the jagged metal spirals of razor wire that followed the fence in a straight line fifty feet out to sea. David swam an extra fifteen feet past the point where the fence sank under the water. He was beyond the breakers, and the waves carried him up and down as he swam. He didn’t want his legs kicking into the razor wire.
Once he was out far enough, he turned ninety degrees away from the base and swam parallel to the shore. He picked up the pace and switched to free-style.
In a way, it felt good to break the rules by swimming out
here, past the fence. It was also terrifying. David was vulnerable out here. He didn’t want Lena to catch him, and he wasn’t sure what he would find. He had a hunch that something or someone would be there. Would they have a security guard? Would they be armed?
As he swam, he began to feel the swells of ocean pick up slightly. He realized that there must be stronger winds on one side of the island. Muscles that hadn’t been tested in a few weeks were starting to burn, which felt good and made him push himself harder. His legs fluttered through the water, kicking but trying not to splash and make too much noise. Every few minutes he would take his head up a bit farther when he breathed, to gauge his distance to the shore. He tried to keep the same distance so as not to go too far out and get caught in a current.
He swam for twenty minutes that way, riding the waves up and down, breathing out his left side every few strokes. The waves were bigger than he had anticipated. It was hard work, but he pushed himself onward. Every few minutes he checked his watch, and then the shore.
David stopped and floated, taking a moment to get the salt water out of his eyes so he could clearly see the island. It always frustrated David that he had been medically disqualified for flight training for having bad eyesight. It frustrated him because, while he sometimes had to wear glasses to read, he could see faraway things just fine. The eastern sky was light blue now, and at any moment, the sun would begin to creep over the horizon. While the lightening sky made him nervous since it would be easier for someone to spot him, it also made it easier for him to scan the shore for any sign of suspicious activity
He checked his watch. Damn. This swim was taking too long. He didn’t have much more time. As he pondered turning around and heading back, David realized that he was further out to sea than he had originally intended. He was a good seventy-five yards from the shore; far enough out that he almost missed the dimly lit concrete structures about a half mile further down the island.
His eyes widened when he saw them. He had suspected that he would find something else outside of the fence. Still—it was one thing to suspect it, and another to see it with his own eyes. He swam on to get a closer look.
The buildings looked like they were made with the same solid concrete design as the ones on his side of the island. But these buildings had some type of enormous netting draped over them. The main structure was about the size of a small college dormitory, and it slanted down from the hill toward the beach. Like the Comms building, there were dozens of antennas and satellite dishes on top. Just next to the main building was a large concrete square that looked like it must have been a helipad. David bobbed up and down in the rolling blue waves, studying the structures. There was a line of dim lights at the top of one facing of the building. It looked like a bunker. Lights shined through slits at the top of the bunker, just like the windows in the Comms building. David could just barely make out their glow.
He just floated there for a bit, bobbing in the warm sea. His nervousness told him he should head back, but his curiosity kept him stationary. It didn’t look like there were any roads leading to these buildings from his side of the island. Hell, there weren’t any cars to drive on roads. So who’d built these structures and how were they kept supplied? Who inhabited them? They looked like they could hold a hundred or more people, but he didn’t see anyone. Why would this island have a fenced-in base on one side with these isolated structures on the other?
As the horizon began to turn greyish blue, signaling the coming dawn, he could just make out a small pier near the shoreline, adjacent to the buildings. Two motor boats were tied to the dock. Beyond the building and the pier was a sheer wall of rock rising up from the shoreline. It was at least one hundred feet high, and then gradually turned into the jungle-covered mountain above. The longer David stared at that cliff, the more it looked manmade. It was too perfect to be a natural rock facing. The smooth surface was rounded at the top and he could barely make out a vertical line splitting its center. It looked strangely like a gigantic door of some kind. An enormous closed stone door that opened into the sea. Very curious…
The noise froze him.
It was the high-pitched whine of a boat engine combined with the sound of its hull bouncing up and down on the water. And it was getting louder. Behind him. He swiveled to look…and immediately dove underwater, holding what breath he had.
The world went from light and loud to dark and silent as he plunged into the ocean. He swam deeper and deeper, trying to get under the boat that had looked like it was coming straight for him.
The boat had looked like a rigid-hull inflatable boat, with its bow protruding upwards. A high-horsepower engine probably weighed down the aft end. In the flash David had observed the boat, he thought he had viewed multiple people on board. He guessed three. Had they seen him?
The seconds inched by as David held his breath, waiting for the boat to pass overhead. He was desperately pushing himself downward, trying to fight the buoyant yet precious lungful of air that wanted to raise him up to the surface. He heard the dull noise of the boat passing above. It sounded like it was right on top of him. He looked up, eyes burning in the salt water.
There was a blur of dark motion on the light blue surface of the water as the vessel passed overhead, followed by circling bubbles of white foam. Time moved in agonizing slow motion. David’s lungs screamed at him to breathe, but he kept pumping his arms to stay deep, away from the engine. And away from the eyes of the men on the boat.
When he couldn’t hold his breath any longer, David let himself drift up as slowly as he could manage. He surfaced and breathed in deep gulps of satisfying air. His eyes were on fire with salt water. He wheezed and coughed, treading water. He did his best to stay right at the waterline, out of sight. He could only hope that the passengers on that vessel were far enough away and hadn’t seen him before he dove under, and that they weren’t looking in his direction now. The sky was grey now, and it was light enough for them to see him if they were looking. As the waves carried him up and down each crest and trough, he watched the boat continue its bumpy journey over the water, toward the pier that David had been looking at moments before.
He could see the men on the boat clearly, their bodies bouncing in rhythm with the speeding boat as it skipped across the waves. David had been wrong. There weren’t three men on board—there were four.
Two of the men were Asian, and they wore black uniforms, with submachine guns slung over their shoulders. Not good. One uniformed man piloted the boat. He had one hand on a small silver wheel and the other on a black plastic power control lever. The other uniformed man was gripping a side rail, watching a prisoner.
A prisoner—that’s what the third man looked like from the way he held himself. He held his head down, dejected. His arms and shoulders were slouched together like his hands were restrained.
David couldn’t see the face of the prisoner, but he didn’t need to. He knew who it was. The prisoner’s fluorescent white hair was a very distinct feature. Very easily recognized. That was one of the reasons he had spotted him the other night, in the dark, being hauled unconscious to a helicopter.
Bill.
David was numb. One part of him felt a strange satisfaction that his hunch had been right. A much bigger part of him wanted to panic.
The fourth man turned from facing forward and David almost lost it. The fourth man looked angry and unpleasant, just like he had the week before when he had convinced David to get on a jet to this godforsaken island. The fourth man’s mouth was moving, and he looked like he was saying something to Bill, his prisoner. His prisoner. However impossible that seemed, David could see it in the body language. The fourth man shouldn’t have been in the same hemisphere, let alone on that boat.
David tried to make sense of it. He tried to understand how that could be possible. As the military-style speedboat zoomed off to the dock, David wondered if he had a chance of surviving this ordeal.
He now knew with certainty that this gathering on the i
sland wasn’t to help the United States plan its defense. It was to provide China with its defense plans. No. It was to give China attack plans. They were outsourcing their war planning to the best consultants they could get. And at least some Americans were in on it. Seeing the fourth man confirmed that.
The fourth man was Tom Connolly.
8
In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
—George Orwell
David swam back to his side of the island with determined intensity. There was a slight current working in his favor, not against him. He was lucky for that. In fifteen minutes, he crept out of the water and walked back on the beach near the runway. He hobbled over toward his pile of shoes and clothing. His wet feet were picking up grey bits of sand as he walked.
There was no one out on the runway. David kept looking up to make sure. And he kept his ears peeled for Lena’s footsteps, too. He didn’t want her sneaking up on him and catching him red-handed. He placed his sandy wet feet into his socks and got moving. He looked at his watch. He needed to hurry to make it in time for the first meeting this morning. Now more than ever, he didn’t want to look suspicious. But he needed to tell the others what he’d seen. The question was—how?
Thunder crackled in the distance. He looked up and saw a line of storms approaching from the West. It was still another thirty minutes out, by the looks of it, but the wind was already picking up.
They needed to act soon. As he jogged the length of the runway back to his barracks, he thought about what he needed to do. David didn’t think that the situation could get any worse. He was very wrong.
Henry slouched in his chair in the back of the auditorium, half-listening to the guys next to him. The classroom was alive with chatter. The intellectual exercise of plotting America’s demise and learning interesting bits of classified security information fascinated most of the members of the Red Cell, and everyone seemed to be discussing their groups’ plans. Apparently, the “compartmentalization” rules had been thrown out the window. Rumor was that everything was getting shared today anyway.
