Instigator

by Fiona Quinn

  “Del—co-y, Go —-d.” The radio hissed Blaze’s voice and static.

  “I can’t find D-day.”

  “Read—SSSSsss—two.” Blaze let Gator know he couldn’t hear him.

  “I. Can’t. Find. D-day!” Gator yelled.

  All he got back was static. Gator ripped the radio from his arm and checked it. It wasn’t a maritime radio. Damn thing was destroyed in the salt water. Gator threw it across the room in frustration then moved to the doorway that would take him outside and up.

  The doors to the salon banged rhythmically against the wall. The wind whipped into the sitting room, but the strength was nothing compared to what was happening outside. Wind gusts, pounding rain, the waves swelled into black walls around them.

  Gator flashed his light down one direction, nothing. Down the other…Gator focused on two shapes black against the black night working near the deck. His first thought was that the crew was trying to get something rigged. He made his way toward them, maybe they’d seen D-day. As he made his way around the curve of the bow he saw them lift something white. Then he made out a leg and his light caught on bright red nail polish decorating the toes. He was running. The sheet slipped, and he saw her face, eyes at half-mast. She was fighting them. Tiny compared to the two dark figures. Drugged and disoriented.

  They pushed her over the side.

  “Christen,” Gator screamed, and with a running leap, he dove after her into the sea.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Gator

  Friday, In the arms of Armageddon

  Gator flailed his arms in the direction he thought Christen should be. Kicked. Pulled. He fought against the buoyancy of his life vest and the one looped on his arm. His flashlight under water lit mere inches in the murky brew. The salt stung his eyes as he frantically searched around him. There! Below him he saw a flash of white. His lungs screamed for air. His brain tried to force him toward the surface. He was back in training, in the deep end of the pool when his instructors grabbed at his legs and pulled him down when he was on his last few seconds of air. They’d taught him over and over to stay present, to fight for your goal. His goal was that flick of white. Another mighty pull of his arms, and he snagged cloth around his index finger, yanked. And she glided into his arms.

  Whomp. Over the top of him it felt like they were under a collapsing building, pressed and forced deeper down. He wrapped his arms around Christen’s waist and pulled her tightly against his chest. He waited for the life vest to lift them in the right direction. He was so turned and tumbled, if he started swimming, he might be driving them deeper still.

  Up they rose. She dangled lifelessly as he pushed her face toward the sky. He needed to check to make sure she was breathing, but they were rising up another swell. Gator’s battle-tested mind was sharply aware, and he prioritized his actions. Gator wrapped his legs around Christen, squeezing her in his thighs as he worked to fasten her life vest around her.

  He put the edge of her sheet between his teeth and bit down. This sheet might just be the thing that kept them alive. He felt like it was a gift. A gift that he’d seen her life vest in the state room, a gift that she was wrapped in the sheet, a gift that he’d been there when she was tossed overboard, that he’d found her in the waves, that he had her in his arms. He sent up a prayer of deep thanksgiving.

  With shaking hands, he screamed at the clasps that didn’t want to fit together. He had seconds before—Boom! They crashed. The wave forced them down under the water, deep, deep. His ears popped. His lungs screamed. His arm was shoved up the center of Christen’s life vest keeping them from separating, and he forced her mouth to stay shut, held her nose as best he could. Tried to keep any more water out of her lungs.

  Up they floated.

  He tried to feel for air coming from her nostrils but was confused by the winds that whipped past them. He shoved the sheet into the waist of his BDUs, and then attached the clasps of their vests together one at a time as they rose up another swell. He slid his arm through her shoulder hole and screamed in her ear, “Deep breath. NOW!” He plugged her nose as the wave crashed and drove them down, down through layers of water. Down past the heated surface, down into the cold beneath.

  Up they rose. He gasped at the air. Filled his lungs. Exhaled and filled them again. He put his hand on Christen’s chest, and he could feel her heart beat, could feel her sucking in deep gulps of air. He flipped his arm with the flashlight and saw that her eyes were still closed. “Here we go again,” he bellowed. Boom! Down they slid.

  The next time they reached the air, Christen was panicked and fighting. She was strong. He knew she was strong, but this was adrenaline strength, and training. This was her limbic system, confused by the drugs, confused by the waterboarding, desperate to get out. Get free. Get safe. She had no idea who Gator was. She just wanted to survive.

  Boom!

  They went down, still fighting. Gator finally wrestled her arms to her side and held her in a bear hug. He wrapped his legs around hers and squeezed to stop her from kneeing him in the groin again. The pain was excruciating, and if he passed out, he didn’t give either of them much chance of living through the night.

  Up they rose.

  “D-day!” he screamed in her ear. “You are a Night Stalker! Night Stalkers don’t quit.” He felt something in her shift. He tried it again. “D-day! You are a Night Stalker, and you have a creed! Night Stalkers don’t quit.”

  They rose up again on the wave. She didn’t strike at him anymore. She wrapped her arms around him and pushed her face forward until her lips were at his ear. “Night stalkers don’t quit.”

  Boom!

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Lynx

  Friday, The Men’s Barack’s, Iniquus Campus

  “Hey, hey, hey.” Lynx felt Striker dragging her from her nightmare into his arms. “You’re having a bad dream.”

  “Gator! I have to save Gator and his wife,” she pushed the words up from the depth of her nightmare.

  “Gator has a wife?” He was brushing the hair from her face, kissing her lips. “Come on now. Wake up. You’re dreaming. It’s another nightmare. Wake up.”

  The wave hit. It felt like being in a car crash. She struggled for survival. There was a tangle of arms and legs. Rising up again. Blissful air. She looked up. This next wave was enormous. It was like looking up the side of a skyscraper. It was horrifying. Her mouth dropped open, and she screamed. Screamed loud and long. Screamed, using every last particle of breath in her body.

  “Fuck, Lynx, wake up!” Striker was shaking her, trying to rouse her from her terror. She was aware of him, of her surroundings but she was out of her body. Too far out to find her way through the nightmare and back to her bed. With another solid shake. She came slamming back home. Her eyes popped open. She pushed herself forward, eyes wide in shock, clinging to Striker’s shoulders, chest heaving while she filled her lungs again with oxygen. He tucked her head down in the curve of his neck and combed his fingers through her hair. “You’re okay.” He crooned as he wrapped his body around her and rocked her in his arms.

  It wasn’t her. She was fine. Gator. Gator was in danger.

  Someone pounded on the door. Striker held her head between his splayed fingers, tipping her face up so he could look her in the eye. He gave her a nod and went to open the door.

  Her scream was still ringing in her ears, of course someone would come check. She scrambled out of bed and followed Striker into the living room. Jack. Jack looked at her then turned to whoever was coming up behind him. “Beetle was chewing on the TV remote. Horror film and volume control,” he said.

  That seemed like a reasonable thing to blame on her dog. It could happen. Beetle and Bella were circling her, sniffing and whining, working her already raw nerves.

  Whoever had arrived to save the day, slogged on back to bed. She could hear the message being passed along. What did she expect? This was an Iniquus barracks. Every single one of the men who lived here also lived fo
r the opportunity to run into danger.

  “What’s happening?” Jack asked as he moved into the apartment and shut the door. He was dressed in a pair of gym shorts. He was barefoot and bare chested, but didn’t look like he’d been asleep.

  “Gator,” she said. “I was dreaming about Gator. It was so vivid. He dove over the side of the boat. He’s trying to save D-day. They’re in the ocean.”

  “In your dream,” Jack said.

  “No. No.” She gripped at her shirt. “No, I don’t think so. No, not in my dream that’s what’s happening now. He’s just on the other side of the Veil. He’s yelling for help. We have to do something.”

  Her phone buzzed on the counter, making it spin in a circle against the smooth surface. She leaped forward, grabbing it. She swiped a trembling finger over the screen.

  “Lynx here.” She brushed her hair out of her face and stared into Striker’s eyes, listening. “I’m on my way.”

  Striker and Jack stood with their arms crossed over their chests, feet wide, faces grim.

  “The yacht is in a typhoon. They still had intermittent satellite connection on the boat up until about ten minutes ago. The last feed they picked up has the boat in one location and Christen Davidson in another.”

  “What? What does that mean?” Jack asked.

  “She was wearing a ring with a GPS tracker,” Lynx explained. “That ring got separated from the boat. One would assume that means Christen is in the water.”

  “Lynx was screaming from a nightmare that Gator dove in the water going after Christen,” Striker said.

  “Then they’re in the water.” Concentration lines crisscrossed Jack’s forehead. “Let’s get to Headquarters. Get a rescue plan together.”

  ***

  The three of them burst into the Panther Force war room, where Nutsbe was busy tapping at his computer.

  He looked up. “Commander Rheas, I have no communications link to your men.”

  “Has the CIA been updated?”

  “John Black is headed to Langley, and we’re expecting a call back.”

  “Were you able to get in touch with Lula LaRoe? I understand she was eyes and ears on William Davidson. Where are they?” Lynx was over at their whiteboard and was busily drawing dividing lines and posting names.

  “William Davidson and Johnna White – Lula—were deposited on Davidson Realm and the Davidson helicopter returned to Singapore. Once Lula was on the island communications were scrambled.”

  “Scrambled?” Jack leaned his six-foot-five frame against the wall, taking it all in. He’d pulled on the Iniquus uniform of digital print camouflage BDUs, charcoal grey compression shirts, black Vibram-soled work boots. He looked ready to jump into the fray – but the fray was on the other side of the globe.

  “My guess is that William Davidson was well aware that this party would catch international intelligence attention, and our Fivey allies would have ships out trying to pick up anything they could.” Nutsbe said, “I’m betting he wanted to make sure that what happens in the Realm stays in the Realm.”

  Lynx moved to another white board and posted that information. The phone on Nutsbe’s desk rang. “Please hold for John Black, CIA.”

  They had all dealt with Black before. They waited silently for him to come on the line.

  “Black,” he said.

  “Sir, this is Nutsbe Crushed, Iniquus Panther Force. You are on speaker phone with Commander Striker Rheas, Strike Force, his second in command, Jack McCullen, and Iniquus puzzler Lynx Sobado.”

  “Very well. The message I received was that there’s been a disruption in communications both with our operatives Johnna White and Johnna Red, and that of our asset Christen Davidson.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nutsbe responded.

  “On our end, Langley cannot pull the Paradise Found Yacht up on radio, or satellite. We have no means of communicating.”

  “Nothing here either, sir. I’ve plotted their course, I’m sending you an image.” Nutsbe’s finger moved over the keyboard. “This is where we lost data.”

  “Are we sure that it’s still afloat?” Black asked.

  “The failure corresponds with reception rather than a transmission. The satellite is no longer functioning in this area.”

  “Hey, you,” Black called to someone in the room with him. “Try another satellite to reach this yacht.”

  “Sir, none of the satellites are functioning in this area because of the storm,” Nutsbe said. “Red and White split up, as I indicated in my report. We believe White is safely on Davidson Realm. Red and Asset Davidson were positioned on a yacht that was due to arrive on that island thirty hours from now. They were caught in the unexpected typhoon. They were making their way to a mainland port when we lost contact.”

  “They were not in distress when you lost contact?”

  “They sent a pan pan at ten pm Zulu time, it was not followed up by a mayday.”

  “Do we have ships in the area that could get an eye on them?”

  “US Naval ships, sir? No. There are none that are close enough to assist.”

  “Alright, now what’s this you say about the asset, Christen Davidson? She’s gone overboard?”

  “We believe so, sir. She was wearing a micro GPS unit in her ring as well as her communications surveillance band. Both of which pinged on our map in the same spot, but it was in a different spot than the yacht pinged. The ring is on her right hand. She wore the band on her left.”

  “Why are you giving me that information?”

  “It seems unlikely that the ring and band would come off of her and land in the same space in the water, unless she were still wearing them. I conclude she went overboard.”

  “Did you get a visual feed from her contact lenses? Where’s her phone?”

  “The phone locates with the boat, sir. Negative to any surveillance information. It comes in over the satellite feed – of which we have none right now. But, whatever she saw before going over should be sent to us as soon as there’s a break in the clouds. The size of the boat was smaller than the range of her lenses. As long as her phone stays operable we’ll eventually get those images. Of course, we would assume that once she went over, she would have lost her contact lens, and she would quickly be out of range of the phone. If she were alive to see anything.”

  A chill went through the room. Striker and Jack looked Lynx’s way for information. “Sir,” Lynx said with conviction. “Christen Davidson is an athlete, a Night Stalker. I believe she’s alive. I would like to develop a rescue plan.”

  “I’ll be back in touch,” Black said. The phone call ended.

  They all stood stalk still for a moment absorbing the information.

  “Nutsbe. She’s alive. I can feel it in my bones,” Lynx said on an exhale.

  Nutsbe looked more than skeptical. He shook his head. “I’ve been watching the damned thing on Red and D-days lenses before we lost contact. It’s apocalyptic out there, man. I wasn’t laying much hope in the yacht coming through this let alone a man overboard.”

  “Was she wearing a life vest?” Jack asked.

  “Last I saw? Yes. But these are thirty-foot swells. That’s a three-story drop. Jack, did that and ended up on the operating room table. Can you imagine dropping like that over and over again for hours on end? I’m telling you. There’s no possible way that she survived this.”

  “That you’ve ever thought of – that you can imagine,” Lynx countered. “Don’t give up on her training and her guts. The average human being? I’m right there with you. But Christen Davidson is cut from heroic cloth. She is physically capable of astonishing feats. She’s been trained to deal with extreme levels of danger with a focused mind, to process and strategize. She is an elite human being. You know that. You know that first hand. Nutsbe don’t count her out. We need to send rescue.”

  “No one’s heading into this mess. No matter how much we’d pay.”

  “Yet. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t get ourselves prepared. Boats will
be able to get out before aircraft, I would think. We can start there. They’ll know the currents best. But we can try to figure it out. They’ve probably been pulled pretty far away after all these hours.”

  “Wait. Whoa. They?” Nutsbe swiveled his chair to face her.

  “Remember the story you told me about your grandmother?” She waited for his nod. “Just before you called, I woke up from a dream—a nightmare—where I saw Christen being thrown into the ocean and Gator Aid Rochambeau diving in after her.”

  “And they were both still alive?”

  Lynx looked at him with a steady gaze.

  Nutsbe pulled himself around and reached for the keyboard. “Rescue mission it is!”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Gator

  Heck if I know what day it is or where we are…

  The rain stung their faces. It was hard to breathe. There seemed more water than air available in the dark atmosphere that enveloped them. Gator had turned off the flashlight to conserve batteries. It was state of the art tactical equipment, waterproof – but he wasn’t sure that meant this kind of waterproof. The waves had calmed. And while they still rose and fell like a rollercoaster at the fair, they were bobbing on the surface. They weren’t getting beaten into the depths like before. Gator tried to calculate what time it might be. He’d guess they’d been in the ocean for five or so hours, soon the sun would come up. That would help their morale.

  Belly to belly with their clips keeping them together, it wasn’t the perfect configuration. They had banged each other up pretty good as they tumbled hour after hour. It was the entirety of Raider Spirit – the Marine Raiders version of the SEALs hell week—all rolled into one long night. He’d gotten his boots off his feet. At least that protected Christen from slamming up against the hard surface of his soles.

  The drug still hadn’t worn off Christen. She had struggled against it, but Gator had convinced her to put her head on his shoulder and try to rest.