“Yes, sir,” the skipper said.
Peck rubbed a hand across his face. He’d been up for more than twenty-four hours now, and his day wouldn’t be over anytime soon.
“Remember that line from Big Jake?” he said.
The captain chuckled. “Which one?”
“When he’s got the gun on Richard Boone — you know, ‘No matter what happens, your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault…’”
“Of course,” the captain said.
Peck nodded. “That line carries a good deal of weight when you have command in the Navy.”
“Indeed, sir,” the captain said.
Peck looked back out over the waves. “Because no matter what happens… your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault… the mistakes are always our fault.”
“You’ve planned this to the nth degree, Admiral,” the captain said. “And it will go as planned.”
“I know,” Peck said.
But he didn’t, not at all.
63
JTTF?” Sophie Li exhaled quickly, like a startled doe. “What exactly is that?”
“Joint Terrorism Task Force,” Li said. “They’re set up all over the U.S.”
The kids were asleep, or at least pretending to be. Peter’s friend John Clark had arranged for Peter and his family to stay in an apartment in downtown Chicago that was undoubtedly a CIA safe house. Four well-armed men, presumably with the Agency, and definitely Clark’s friends, were in the two adjoining rooms. So far, no one but Clark had asked any questions. Li had just finished downloading the Signal encryption app to Sophie’s and the kids’ cell phones, and all the devices lay on the dining room table between him and his wife.
“So we’re just supposed to stay in Chicago?”
“That’s the plan,” Li said.
Sophie’s eyes went wide. “This has got to be the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. People tried to murder us less than fifty miles from here. We need to leave. Now.”
“We’ll be fine,” Peter said.
“Really?” Sophie said. “You believe that? I heard you talking. I know they found that girl from your office murdered.”
Peter nodded. “Cecily Lung. She was involved in this. A loose end they needed to clean up.”
“Peter,” Sophie said. “Don’t you see? We are loose ends. All of us.”
“We’ll be fine,” Peter said. “Chicago has twelve thousand cops, and that’s not counting all the Feds.”
Sophie’s face fell slack. She shook her head slowly, the situation becoming clear to her now. “So… We’re bait? Oh, no. No, no, no.”
Li scooted his chair around to her side of the table, taking her hands in his. He kept his voice soft, steady. “He has people to make sure we’re safe. Turns out that the JTTF is working on this very thing. Triad involvement and the like. No one will know we’re at the meeting but people at the Federal Building.”
“Do you think they targeted you because of…”
“Because my parents were Chinese?”
She nodded.
“Believe me,” Li said. “That’s a reality I’ve had to think about with every conversation I’ve had with the FBI. But no, I was targeted because of the work I do, not my genetics.”
“Good,” Sophie said. “I still think it would be better to leave Chicago. The JTTF guys can come to us.”
“There are a load of agencies involved,” Li said. “Bureau, CIA, DEA, ATF, U.S. Attorney. And I’m just getting started. There are a lot of people who want to talk to us.”
“This is crazy.”
“It’s part and parcel of what goes on when we call the authorities.”
“What happens if somebody from one of these triads is watching the Federal Building?” Sophie’s head snapped up. “God forbid, what if they’ve paid someone off inside and they know we’re coming?”
“Unlikely,” Peter said. “But we’re meeting at an off-site location. We’ll look at some photographs of known offenders, people they suspect, and then get right out of there.”
“Then what?” Sophie looked across the room at the sofa bed where the kids were sleeping. Though teenagers, they’d reverted to clinging to each other like small children after the violence in their home, a place that should have been their ultimate sanctuary. “Tell me the truth. Are we going to have to stay in hiding? Change our names? What?”
“The truth,” Li said, “is that I have no idea. What I do know is that we have to be proactive about our own safety.”
Sophie sat up straighter, pulling her hand away. She stared up at the ceiling, eyes closed. “I’m so scared.”
“Things will work out,” Li said.
But they might not. Both of them knew it. Each of them had lost the person they’d planned to grow old with. Sometimes people you loved died for no good reason. Things did not always work out.
But they had to pretend or risk going insane.
“Peter, they almost killed us,” she said. “You remember that action movie, where the man’s wife and daughter are murdered and he goes on a revenge spree?”
Peter groaned. “That’s pretty much every action movie.”
“I… I’m afraid that’s what you would do.”
“How about you?” Peter asked. “You would fight like a tiger to protect the kids, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course,” Sophie said.
He laid his hand tenderly on the side of her belly. “Then you can imagine what I’d do to protect you and this baby.”
“I don’t have to imagine,” Sophie said. “I saw it firsthand.”
64
Commander Akana welcomed Ding and Adara aboard the USS Fort Worth without asking their names. The corpsman checked out Ding’s pupils, deemed him mildly concussed but ambulatory, since he’d just run off a mountain. She splinted his wrist and made him promise to get a CAT scan at his earliest possible convenience when he returned to shore. The cook hustled up some ham and eggs — reminding Chavez how good the Navy ate.
The skipper invited them into the officers’ wardroom and gave each an ice-cold bottle of Gatorade.
“I’d offer you coffee,” he said, “but it’s a diuretic and the doc says you both need to keep some liquids in you right now.”
As bad as his head hurt, Chavez was ravenous, and he dug into the ham and eggs like he hadn’t eaten for days.
“I don’t suppose you have a computer genius on board, do you, Skipper?” he asked after a long pull of electrolytes.
“Like a tech?”
“I mean like a hacker.”
“Half the kids on this boat are hackers,” Akana said. “I think that’s this generation.” He glanced up at a senior enlisted man who had a pencil-thin mustache and the look of a man who had just bitten the head off a baby duck.
“Command Master Chief, would you be so kind as to locate IT2 Richwine?”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” the CMC said, wheeling at once to leave the wardroom.
Information Systems Technician, Petty Officer Second Class Carl Richwine poked his head inside the wardroom a few minutes later. He was farm-boy big, with broad shoulders and a broad face that was covered with freckles.
“You wanted to see me, Captain?”
“Come in, IT2,” Akana said, addressing the sailor by a combination of his rating and rate.
Chavez leaned back, blinking to clear his thoughts after the meal. “Your skipper says you’re a whiz with computers.”
IT2 Richwine gave a humble grin. “I do all right, sir.”
“You know what a Raspberry Pi is?”
The sailor laughed and looked around the wardroom like he was surely being punked. “Of course, sir. Doesn’t everyone?”
“Well,” Chavez said, “I don’t. Not really, anyway. That’s why we need you. I wonder if you might have a stand-alone laptop on board that would allow you to take a look at something for us, tell us what you see.”