Spectre Rising

by C. W. Lemoine

  It wasn’t until much later in the evening, when they were alone and getting ready for bed in the spacious guest bedroom, that Spectre took the traditional one-knee approach and asked Chloe to marry him.

  “Of course I will,” she said as the tears began rolling down her cheeks. “You’re my symbolon."

  “I’m your what?” a confused Spectre asked as he put the ring on her finger.

  “My symbolon,” she repeated. “It means something broken into two parts that yearns to be whole again. Plato wrote about it as the origin of soul mates when Zeus was afraid humans were too powerful as a whole. He broke them up into two souls – man and woman. You are my soul mate – my other half. My symbolon!"

  It had been the first time she had called him that, but it stuck from that point forward. She had called him that until they broke up, when his whole world seemed to fall apart.

  Spectre shook off his daydreams as they neared the observation position. They were finally clearing the sugar cane fields and nearing the rice fields surrounding the perimeter fence. Spectre could see the glow of lights in the distance.

  They spread out as they reached the levees of the rice field just outside the perimeter fence. Taking up prone positions, they used the levee for concealment in the dark early morning. There was no perimeter or runway lighting at the airfield. Aside from the lights from the open hangar, it was completely dark.

  Baxter pulled out his satellite phone and digital camera with night optics while Carpenter set up his Toughbook Laptop. Marcus extended the bipod on his rifle and flipped open the dust cover on the scope, ready to snipe any possible threats.

  “We’re in position,” Marcus radioed back to Elvis and Browning.

  “Copy that,” Elvis replied. “We’ll have the bird ready to fly.”

  Spectre pulled out his binoculars and zoomed in on the hangar door. There were two men pacing around the outer perimeter of the ramp with AK-47s slung across their backs.

  Based on the satellite photos, they had picked their observation point for the best viewing angle into the hangar, but it turned out not to be necessary as the large hangar door was more open than it had been in the photos. Spectre could clearly see an external power generator hooked up to an F-16 with what looked like technicians working around the jet. Spectre reasoned that they must have opened the hangar doors more to allow for the exhaust gases of the generator to escape.

  “It’s in there, let’s make the call,” Spectre said, handing the binoculars to Baxter as he picked up the camera.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  FBI Miami Field Office

  Decker sat in her cubicle staring at the black satellite phone on her desk. The open area they called “Cube City” filled with cubicles for field agents was dark except for the glow of the hallway lights and Decker’s desk lamp.

  She had dropped off Spectre’s truck at the range and made it into her office a few minutes after 5 AM. Except for the security guards and a few agents that had been working on field operations in another part of the building, she was alone. She was tired. She had only gone home for a few hours after the intense planning session the day prior before it was time to start their mission. It was enough time for a quick shower, an hour nap, and an early breakfast before heading back out. It wasn’t much different than many of the other field operations she had been on, but she had never quite grown used to the lifestyle of a field agent.

  Decker stared at the phone impatiently as she pushed a stray strand of golden blonde hair out of her face. She hated waiting. It was much easier to be in the action than waiting for a phone call. She still wasn’t quite sure how she’d approach it though. As far as her bosses were concerned, she was still working the Aalee case with Special Agent Baxter. No one had any idea that Americans were in the process of infiltrating Cuban farmlands and spying on defunct Cuban airfields.

  She wondered how she would even broach that subject. The Secretary of Defense had been adamant about letting the State Department handle the situation. It was only through the gentle prodding of an aide that she and Baxter had gotten an agreement to humor the idea of a Marine FAST team, but how the incontrovertible evidence would be acquired was never discussed.

  Decker was just glad she had been able to talk Cal Martin down from going off alone on some half-cocked plan to get Moss out. She had seen the look in his eyes when they first realized she might still be alive, and again when he stormed out of the meeting with the SECDEF. Something in him had snapped. He had gone from looking defeated and depressed to hopeful and determined. She guessed love did that to people.

  But Decker had never known such love. She had never had time for it with her busy career. She could only imagine what would drive a man to risk his life, freedom, and the lives of his friends for one person, especially when that person had ended the relationship weeks prior. She just hadn’t been able to wrap her head around the motives in the case yet.

  She still didn’t trust Moss. She wasn’t sure why an intelligent, successful fighter pilot would go to such great lengths if she were truly under duress. And if she were really a traitor, what caused a person who had everything to give it all up. And then there was Martin.

  Martin had been the toughest to convince that a rescue operation was just too risky. He and Carpenter wanted to go in and take down the whole airfield like a Navy SEAL team. Martin had even said that as long as there was a chance Moss was still alive, he wasn’t going to risk living with that hanging over his head the rest of his life. It was completely reckless.

  At the same time, though, it was slightly romantic to Decker. Martin seemed to be very focused and intense. It was hard not to want to help him, despite the odds. He just had that about him. Decker just hoped this woman was worth it. It always seemed like the good ones were wasted on the worst women.

  The satellite phone buzzed to life as Decker was deep in thought. Her heart leapt. They were finally calling, although she had been expecting it all along. She only hoped it was good news. She dreaded the phone call that they were in trouble and needed to be rescued, a very real possibility they had gone over in great detail.

  “Baxter!” she said in a forced whisper, standing to look around to make sure no one else was around as she answered the phone.

  “Is everything set on your end?” Baxter asked. His voice was slightly muffled, but seemed calm.

  “Yes,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief that they were still safe. “As soon as you upload the pictures, I’ll print them out and send the secure fax to that Lieutenant Colonel.”

  “Uploading now,” he replied. “I’ll check back in twenty minutes. See ya.”

  Decker turned and logged into her computer as she hung up the satellite phone and put it back on her desk. Her heart was racing. She couldn’t believe things were going so well. She had feared the worst. Now it was time for her to act.

  She typed in her username and password and logged into the secure upload site they had set up to transfer the pictures. As she reached the main folder on the server, it was empty, but she knew with the delays of the satellite modem and the size of the high-resolution pictures, it could take a few minutes. She continuously hit refresh anxiously, willing the pictures to show up.

  “You’re here early, and a Sat phone?” a deep voice with a slight Spanish accent behind her asked.

  Decker nearly jumped from her seat as she was still clicking the refresh button. She hadn’t expected anyone in the office for at least another hour or two. She reached for her gun as she spun around in her chair.

  “Easy there Agent Decker. Did I scare you?” the man asked, eyeing her hand on her Glock 19 in its holster. It was Special Agent Jay Leon, one of the Assistant Special Agents in Charge of the Miami Field Office of the FBI.

  “Oh, Jay, it’s you. I’m sorry, you startled me,” she said, catching her breath.

  “A little jumpy are we?” he said with a cheesy grin.

  “Sorry, I just didn’t expect anyone else to be here,” she said.
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  Decker had never been fond of Leon. Although he was a supervisor, she hadn’t worked with him much since she had been in Miami. He worked mainly foreign intelligence and espionage cases and spent most of his time behind a desk. She had only encountered him a few times, but the few times she had, he had come off sleazy and tried to hit on her. He had a reputation for trying to date agents in the office.

  “It’s quite alright,” he said, moving closer. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

  “No, I’m fine,” she said. He just wouldn’t leave, she thought.

  “So what’s up with the phone?” he said, nodding at the Sat phone sitting on her desk.

  “Oh, it’s for a case I’m working,” she replied nervously.

  “Yeah, I overheard you as I was walking by. I thought you were working with the JTTF on Thomas’ old case. Aalee wasn’t it?”

  Decker blushed. She was mad at herself that he overheard. She thought she had done a decent job ensuring no one was around. It was a careless mistake, and now it was costing her time.

  “Yeah, I’m just finishing up some loose ends on the case,” she replied nervously.

  “Did you guys figure out who he was working for?” Leon asked. He leaned against the cubicle with his cup of coffee in his left hand.

  Decker shifted uneasily in her seat. She didn’t like Leon asking so many questions. The case had nothing to do with him, and the tone of his voice seemed to indicate more than just a professional interest. The hair on the back of her neck was now standing up. Something wasn’t right.

  “I’m still working out the details. I just started on this case,” she deflected.

  “Ah, well if you find out anything, let me know. Thomas was a good friend of mine.”

  “Will do,” she replied, letting her guard down. She decided that she was just being paranoid. She hadn’t gotten enough sleep and the adrenaline from the operation was starting to make her see danger where it didn’t exist.

  “Thanks. Good luck on the case.” Leon smiled and nodded as he turned to walk away. As he started toward the hallway, Decker’s computer beeped. Decker froze as he stopped and turned back around.

  “What is that?” he asked as he moved closer to look at her monitor.

  Decker’s heart stopped as she turned to look at the screen.

  “Is that a hangar? And a fighter jet?” he asked ominously.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Castro Field, Cuba

  “It’s time,” the voice said as the door swung open, letting in the blinding light from the hallway.

  Chloe Moss groaned and squinted in the light as she tried to identify the person standing there. At first, she thought it was one of the guards that had been checking up on her. She wasn’t sure how long she had been in the cell, but she guessed it had been at least twelve hours, maybe more. They had come in a few times, giving her bread and water and emptying her honey bucket. At first, she hadn’t been hungry. Her appetite was completely gone from the interrogation, but by the third visit, she tried eating. She knew she’d need her strength for what was to come.

  Within seconds of the door opening, it came to her. It was Ling, the man who had ripped off the nail of her right index finger. The sound of his voice made her tremble.

  “Here, put these on, it’s time for you to cooperate,” he said, throwing a shirt and pants at her. It was the same loose fitting t-shirt and jeans she had been given when she first arrived.

  Chloe groaned as she sat up on the floor and tried to pick up the clothes. Her whole body ached. Her face felt swollen and her whole right hand was hurting. She felt completely exhausted. She had been sleeping when Ling walked in, but it had only been a few minutes. She had only been able to manage thirty-minute sleep sessions maximum since she had been there.

  “Where’s Victor?” she asked as she pulled the shirt over her bruised body. Her voice was hoarse and weak.

  “He will be there. For now, concern yourself only with getting dressed,” he replied.

  Chloe gingerly put on the pants and stood. Ling wasted no time, grabbing her arm and roughly ushering her out the door. His touch sent chills down her spine. She had never been so afraid of one person in her life. She only hoped her plan worked and she would never have to face him again.

  Ling rushed her down the hallway and down a nearby stairwell. A man with an AK-47 followed close behind as Chloe stumbled, trying to keep pace. Her legs were weak. It was as if she had just run a marathon and could barely walk straight.

  Ling pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairwell, revealing the hangar bay with several men standing around the F-16. Chloe saw the open hangar door and felt a sense of relief. She had never quite resolved how to fix that part of her long shot of a plan to get them free of their captors. It was still dark out beyond the hangar doors. It didn’t make or break her plan, but it definitely helped and the door being open was exactly what she needed.

  Chloe’s heart leapt as Ling guided her closer to the jet. There she saw Victor. He was being held by an armed guard right next to the external power cart parked in front of the jet. It was a small jet fuel powered generator being used to power the F-16’s avionics. The technicians in and around the jet worked feverishly to download software and data from the F-16’s mission computers before they would eventually part it out for shipment to China.

  The external power cart posed a small problem to Chloe’s plan. While not her main plan, it made it impossible to use the aircraft as a secondary escape method, should something happen that she needed to fire up the jet and taxi out to create a diversion for Victor to escape. She would be forced to adhere to her primary plan and hope it worked.

  Chloe winked at Victor as Ling guided her past him at the front of the jet. Victor nodded back and gave a forced smile as Ling continued to push her toward the left side of the cockpit where a small portable ladder had been hung from the side of the aircraft.

  “If you try anything stupid, I will make you watch me kill him, and then I will continue our previous conversation,” Ling said forebodingly. He nodded for the technician sitting in the cockpit to descend down the ladder and then pointed for Chloe to proceed.

  “I already told you,” she said as she began to climb up the ladder, “I just want to get us both out of here safely.”

  Chloe stopped as she reached the top of the ladder and looked into the cockpit. Everything was exactly as she left it, except for the addition of a small tablet computer attached by a fiber optic cable to a serial data bus on the center console display. That must have been how they were attempting to hack into the software and get the data, Chloe reasoned.

  As she leaned over into the cockpit, she noticed her helmet bag was still stuffed in the back rear corner next to the F-16’s reclined ejection seat. She hoped they had not searched her bag. If they had, the whole plan would fall apart instantly.

  Chloe gingerly climbed into the cockpit and sat down, sweeping her left hand across her bag subtly as she settled in. She felt the hard mass she had been looking for as her hand swept across it. Good. It was still there. She and Victor still had a small chance of getting out of this alive.

  Ling climbed the ladder behind her and leaned over the canopy rail to watch her.

  “All of the systems have been booted up. Now, you will do exactly as you’re told,” he said.

  Chloe nodded as she did a quick scan of the cockpit. Instantly she found the switch she had been looking for and returned her attention to the cockpit multifunction displays.

  “First, bring up the aircraft’s weapons systems and power up the Fire Control Computer,” said Ling.

  Her adrenaline started pumping. In the times she had gone over this scenario in her head, she thought he would make her power up the basic systems first. They must have already gotten the data they needed, she thought.

  Turning on the aircraft’s Fire Control Computer was perfect. The switch was on the panel her helmet bag was now resting on. This was her chance.

  Chloe
watched Ling’s eyes as she reached for the red guarded switch by her thigh with her right hand and the switch under her helmet bag with her left. He was watching the data on the displays, not paying attention to her movements.

  As she flipped the Fire Control Computer switch on with her left hand, she quickly flipped the red guard up with her right thumb and flicked the underlying MASTER ZEROIZE switch forward.

  Ling’s eyes widened as all three displays read “MASTER ZEROIZE.” The aircraft had entered a mode to delete all classified data and sensitive information. Chloe had successfully declassified the aircraft.

  “What are you doing!” he screamed as he reached in to grab her.

  “Fuck you, asshole,” she said defiantly as she pulled the trigger.

  Chloe didn’t really have a specific reason for sneaking her Smith and Wesson M&P 9C sub-compact 9MM handgun into her helmet bag. When she left the house that morning, she expected the reception in Cuba to be more of a hero’s welcome than an interrogation, but something told her to bring it anyway.

  It had been Spectre’s voice in her head that pushed her over the edge as she debated bringing it with her. He never went anywhere without a gun, and when she asked him why he did it, he always said, “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.” He had been absolutely right. She was thankful for that. Spectre was a good man. She just wished he hadn’t taken their relationship for granted and driven her away.

  The sound of the gunshot was almost deafening to Chloe as the round hit Ling directly in the chest. He fell off the ladder, landing with a thud as Chloe jumped out of the cockpit and hustled down the ladder. The gunshot seemed muffled by the loud generator of the power cart, as the nearby technicians seemed concerned only that Ling had fallen off the ladder, not that he had been shot.

  Chloe ran around to the front of the F-16 where Victor was standing with a guard and took aim. After all the years of being picked on as a kid for being left-handed, it was now of great use to her. There was no way she could have pulled the trigger with her right index finger.