There was another aspect to the letter, though, that had been an integral part of their marriage-their inability to have children. They’d been tested many times over the years, and it always came down to the fact that injuries Dalton had received during torture while being held prisoner had removed his ability to father a child. They had discussed adoption, but with all his deployments it had never seemed like quite the right time and the years had gone by. He felt as if he had taken everything from Marie and given her little in return.
Dalton turned his face to the east, toward the valley she had loved, the letter in his hands. “I never thought you would be gone first,” he whispered.
He kicked a rock, sending it tumbling down the scree and boulders to the west. Anger stirred, followed by guilt. And then something else touched his mind, the gentlest of touches, like a single snowflake landing on warm skin and vanishing quickly. It was so brief he wondered if it had been real.
Dalton closed his eyes. The wind gusted. He folded the letter and slipped it in the lid, then picked up the box. The strange feeling came again, stronger, and this time he had no doubt. Thirty-two years of marriage, even with all his deployments, had built a bond between him and his wife that not even death could completely sever. He’d felt this before, when he was being held prisoner in Hanoi. And he had seen her spirit, her essence, when he visited her in the hospital while operating on the virtual plane as a Psychic Warrior. He had let her go then, let her out of her misery.
He could sense her again. She was here.
Sergeant Major Dalton opened his eyes and smiled, guilt and anger forgotten. “Marie, I feel you.”
He opened the lid and the wind took the ashes, blowing them out over the valley. He watched them until there was nothing left to see.
“I’ll always love you.”
Dalton turned to leave, but paused as something else touched his mind. Marie, once more. He was puzzled for a moment, not quite understanding. Then he realized she was warning him. Of treachery and betrayal. He stood still for several minutes, hoping there would be more, but all he felt was the wind. He shivered, then pulled the collar of his jacket up around his neck and headed toward his Jeep.
It was already dark over the East Coast of the United States while the sun set on Jimmy Dalton as he drove down from the mountains. The deep blue of the water off Florida ’s east coast was far removed from the white snow of the Rocky Mountains.
Slicing through that water, the United States Coast Guard cutter Warde kicked up a phosphorescent wake. With a ten-person crew and a length of eighty-two feet, it was one of the Guard’s smallest patrol boats, but more than adequate to handle the tasks that confronted it. The crew was experienced at their job and knew the waters between Florida and the islands off its east coast quite well. There were two main types of incident they dealt with-refugees from Cuba and drug runners from South America and the islands in the Caribbean.
In the small bridge set back from the ship’s main armament-a twenty-five-millimeter cannon-Lieutenant JG Mike Foster stood just behind the helmsman, scanning the surrounding ocean through night vision goggles. The lights on the control panels were dimmed so that they wouldn’t interfere. He turned as a bright green glow almost overloaded the light enhanced in the goggles. His radar operator-Rating Second Class Lisa Caprice-had lifted her head up from the eyepiece.
“Target, bearing two eight zero degrees, range five thousand meters, sir.”
“Size?”
“Looks like a forty footer. No beacon.” She put her head back down and peered into the eyepiece.
Foster shifted the goggles in the direction she had indicated. “Heading?”
“Also along the coast, heading north, sir.”
There was nothing out there that he could see. At five thousand meters he should be able to easily pick up the ship’s lights with the goggles, which amplified ambient light.
“She’s running dark,” Foster informed his bridge crew. “Wake up the off-shift. I want everyone on station.” He ordered the helmsman to make for the other ship.
Foster grabbed the radio handset. “Unidentified vessel, this is the United States Coast Guard cutter Warde. Please stand by and prepare to be boarded. Over.”
He waited but there was no response.
“Range four thousand meters,” Caprice said.
Foster could see the other ship now, a darker object against the black ocean. An expensive pleasure yacht with sleek lines, cutting through the water, all running lights out. He picked up the handset, but as soon as he clicked the Send button, a burst of static came out of the speakers.
“What the hell,” Foster muttered. He switched frequencies, then moved to another radio and picked up the handset for the satellite radio.
“Key West CG station, this is the Warde. Over.”
“Warde, this is Key West. Over.”
“We are in pursuit of an unidentified vessel that refuses to respond to our hails.” He then gave his location and heading, and his headquarters in Key West acknowledged. “We seem to have strong interference on our FM bands,” he added.
He picked up the other handset and tried once more, but the result was the same. He tried to raise his headquarters in Key West again, but the radio couldn’t break through the wall of static that had descended upon them.
“Could they be jamming us?” he asked his electronics specialist.
“I haven’t heard of anyone doing that,” Caprice said. “But you never know what these people will come up with next.”
They had encountered many strange ruses and tricks used by drug runners over the years. One trend had been the increase in both equipment and sophistication. Foster wouldn’t be surprised if the ship in front of them was using some sort of jammer.
Foster could see two of his crew manning the forward twenty-five millimeter. “What they’re going to get next is a boot up their ass.”
He didn’t like the idea of a confrontation. This was their last day on a weeklong patrol. The boat was due for overhaul and the crew would have a well-deserved month off. Caprice was getting married on Saturday and the entire crew would be attending the wedding. All those things combined to give him a bad feeling about the situation, but it was their duty to stop the boat.
“Range three thousand meters.”
Foster reached up and turned on the forward spotlights, fixing the other boat in their harsh glare. There was no one visible on deck. He leaned out the open side window. “Warning shots,” he ordered.
The twenty-five millimeter spit out a burst of rounds, the tracers arcing across the front of the other boat.
Foster exchanged the night vision goggles for a set of powerful binoculars. He trained them on the other boat. He could make out the name stenciled on the bow. “Aura II,” he read aloud.
Caprice had already accessed their onboard computer registry. “It’s not listed, sir.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me,” Foster muttered.
The yacht had not slowed or changed course, despite the warning shots. They were now less than two thousand meters from the other boat and closing. He scanned the boat once more. Something was strange about the silhouette. There was what appeared to be a large SATCOM dish just aft of the bridge, but instead of pointing up to the sky, it was level, pointing right at Foster.
The captain once more keyed his SATCOM handset. “ Key West, this is Warde. Over.”
There was just static, but he transmitted anyway. “Identity of vessel is the Aura II. Not listed in registry. We are-” There was another sharp break in the transmission and Foster almost dropped the handset as a shock went up his arm. “What the hell?”