That sunk in for a moment, until Mary Pat said, “Obviously, the best situation would be if you didn’t get caught.”
Dom said, “Okay. How many locations are we talking about?”
“There are over four hundred.”
“Wow,” Ding said. “That’s a lot of photography.”
“It is,” Mary Pat agreed. “But you’ll just have to trust me. It is important.”
John Clark said, “We’re not actual members of the intelligence community. How do we do this without raising red flags with CIA station?”
Mary Pat said, “We have an established cover for you. You go in as private intelligence gatherers. You are a private enterprise working with the CIA under contract, which means you can collect atmospherics and data. You can’t run agents, you can’t take part in any sort of direct-action work, officially speaking, of course, but there is no reason you can’t go over there and take some pictures under contract for the ODNI.”
Clark asked, “How are we going to be able to take four hundred photographs out in the open without drawing attention to ourselves?”
Mary Pat said, “I think I can help in that department as well. From time to time we work with an American company that does business in Central Europe. They are electronic technicians, laying fiber-optic Internet cable all over Lithuania, both underground and aboveground on poles. It’s a real company, so the work is real, and twenty-five percent of the workers are from the U.S. Ninety-five percent of the techs working over there have no affiliation with the U.S. intelligence community, but we have a good relationship with the owner of the company, so we can fold you into his operation and you can travel all over the country with no one batting an eyelash. It will get you into buildings, on the streets, wherever you need to go.”
Chavez said, “Excellent. We’ll study the requirements for the job and be ready to hit the ground running when we get there.”
Off a look from Caruso, Mary Pat said, “Dom, is something wrong?”
Caruso gave a half-smile. “That sounds like real work.”
Chavez slapped him on the back, well above his wound. “Don’t worry, kid. As my apprentice, I’ll take good care of you as you enter the exciting world of the fiber-optic field service technician. Of course, you will have to do most of the heavy lifting, dirt digging, and pole climbing. I have to supervise you.”
“Why the hell can’t I be the supervisor and you be the apprentice?”
Chavez said, “I’m older. Seniority has its privileges. Not very many, that’s for sure. But enough to keep me off a pole and out of a ditch.”
Clark had been entertaining the idea that he could go to Lithuania as well, but he realized there was no way he could pass himself off as a cable technician. Sure, he could dig a ditch and drive a truck, but there would be aspects to this physical work that would make it too hard for him to fit in.
Gerry Hendley looked to John Clark. “You’re the director of operations. What do you think?”
Clark didn’t hesitate. “I think the DNI is asking us for help. Ryan is in the field on an analytics job, so Dom and Ding can go. I’ll stay here, help in any way I can from HQ.”
Chavez said, “You sure about that, John? You’re a Russian speaker. We could use you over there.”
“You’re a Russian speaker, too. They speak Lithuanian in Lithuania. If you find yourself needing your Russian very much, that probably means you are in a whole lot of trouble.” There were chuckles around the table, except for Chavez, who only smiled. He looked at John for another moment, clearly surprised he wasn’t sending himself along for this trip. Finally, Ding extended a hand to Mary Pat Foley. “Sounds good to us. Dom and I will get everything together here and get going as soon as possible.”
Mary Pat shook Ding’s hand and looked to Gerry again. “Obviously, Gerry, if you agree to send your men to Lithuania, you need to be prepared to get them out of there. If an invasion happens, I don’t want Dom and Ding caught behind the lines.”
“That makes three of us,” Dom quipped.
Gerry said, “I’ll have our plane ready to go over there at a moment’s notice. If things look really bad I’ll keep the aircraft at the airport in Vilnius twenty-four/seven so we can exfiltrate them in an hour if necessary.”
“When do we go?” Dom asked.
Mary Pat smiled as she stood. “I’ll leave you boys to work out the details, but as soon as possible would be my choice. I’ll notify Pete Branyon’s station that you’re coming. I want you to know I appreciate your help, and my secure phone is always on me. I’m available whenever you need me.”
Gerry drummed his fingers on the table. “Mary Pat, I’m going to go ahead and address the elephant in the room here. This seems important, maybe more important than we are able to understand at this point, but this doesn’t seem like the kind of crisis that would bring the head of all the U.S. intelligence agencies out on a weekend to make a personal appeal for two operatives to go into a theater to collect data. Are we missing part of the puzzle here?”
Mary Pat shook her head. “I’m not hiding part of the mission or anything like that. I could have done this over the phone with you, Gerry, and left you to task your men. But I wanted to come in person, as a sign of respect for all The Campus did for us in Mexico… and what you lost in the process.”
The men of The Campus nodded at this.
Gerry said, “We’re a small outfit. Losing one of our own hits us in the gut, that’s for sure.”
Mary Pat looked to Dom Caruso now. “The Campus has paid a terrible price in the past several years, and yet you all keep showing up in the most dangerous situations. This country can’t know what you are doing, but I know, and I want to convey my thanks.”
The men thanked her, then Chavez and Caruso each immediately began a well-practiced routine of prepping and packing to leave town.
16
A deckhand hard at work clearing fishing nets of their mackerel just happened to look up and off the starboard bow of his fifty-foot trawler. It was sunrise, thirty-eight miles northwest of Scotland’s Shetland Islands, and there were no other fishing boats or cargo ships in sight. This meant this boat should have had the sea to itself, because no pleasure craft ever came up here, since there was not one thing pleasurable about bobbing and rolling and freezing to death on this stretch of the North Atlantic.
The deckhand glanced away from the bow and back down to his work, but then his head lifted back up quickly and his eyes focused on a point less than a mile distant. It took a second to pick out the anomaly in the waves that caught his attention, but once he found it again, he knew what it was. The fisherman was still a young man, and his eyesight was excellent. The low form was gray like the water around it, but a few shades darker, and its edges were unmistakable. Man-made. It was also massive, easily the length of a train car and three times the height.
He looked out across the water by himself for a moment, ignoring the fish falling out of the net and onto the deck behind him, but soon he grabbed the man next to him and pointed.
This deckhand was much older, his eyes weren’t so sharp, and he agreed only that he saw “something.”
The younger man said, “It’s a bleedin’ submarine.”