There was something dreamlike about the turmoil building in his life.
He dragged himself back into the living room and dropped onto the couch. Suddenly, he was very tired.
17
Moist ocean air collided with a warm offshore breeze, creating a one-hundred-meter band of mist that clung to the shoreline. Slow-moving streams of wet fog crept over the deck of the pier and meandered around its enormous concrete pilings.
For once, Luke thought, intelligence had gotten it right — near perfect weather conditions for their mission, with the fog giving them cover for their ingress onto the pier that stretched a quarter mile into the darkness. Their target was at the end of the concrete platform.
“Omega, do you have the bogey in sight?” Alpha, the team leader, spoke in a whisper.
Alpha hadn’t yet labeled the man Luke had in the crosshairs of his nightscope as a hostile. For now, the unknown figure remained a bogey, someone in the target area who was putting their operation at risk.
Luke made a clicking sound with the back of his tongue, inaudible even from a few feet away but sufficient for his throat mic to send an affirmative click to Alpha.
Three seconds later Alpha’s voice came through again. “Gamma, Zeta, can either of you identity the bogey?”
“Negative,” Gamma whispered.
That was followed by two quick clicks — a negative — from Zeta, who was in Zone One with Luke and too close to the hostiles to speak.
Darkness heightened the Proteus team’s advantage. Luke’s nightscope pierced the fog and turned warm bodies into luminous greenish-gray images. Poorly equipped North Korean security forces were blinded by the mist. Meanwhile, he captured every twitch, every distracted scratch, every casual gesture by their adversaries — men who at that moment were probably thinking about little else than keeping warm.
The bogey was approaching Proteus’s most forward-positioned team member, Kappa, who had already reached the pier. The bogey was small and thin, and young judging by his light gait. He had no rifle; in fact, Luke saw no weapon at all.
After ten seconds of silence, Alpha said, “Bogey nearing Kappa’s position, fifteen meters and closing.”
Kappa was tucked into a shallow inset between two large warehouses. The mission planners had identified the structures as seafood processing plants, placed there to camouflage the military installation.
The three remaining members of the insertion team, including Luke, had only three minutes to take their positions on and under the pier, then five minutes to get to the perimeter of the naval supply station. Once at the perimeter, they had exactly four and a half minutes to breach perimeter security and place explosive charges on the hull of the submarine, which, if not destroyed, would soon transform North Korea into a nuclear naval power.
He clicked the magnification setting of his rifle scope one notch higher and trained the crosshairs on the bogey, who was nearing Kappa’s position. A plume of bright green light, emissions from a heat-exhaust pipe, turned the bogey into a wavy mirage as he passed through it.
The bogey moved to within five meters of Kappa. The unidentified man was now in the mandatory kill zone.
Alpha said, “Omega, the bogey is now your target. Take him out.” His voice revealed no hesitation, no emotion.
Luke was full of hesitation. His target had no weapon. Was the target a soldier, or a civilian who’d wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time?
“Anyone have an identity on the target?” he asked.
“Omega, take out the target. Now!”
The blaring siren came out of nowhere.
Luke shot up onto the edge of his sofa, his chest heaving, his face drenched in sweat.
An instant later the phone rang and a bolt of pain speared his right eye. His spine arched and he flung himself back onto the couch.
Then, just as suddenly, the pain was gone.
He hoisted himself up and threw his feet onto the floor while grabbing for the telephone. Its ring had invaded his dream, his mind transforming it into a siren.
“You’re not gonna believe what just happened,” came Ben’s voice without preamble.
The afternoon sun painted a ribbon of orange across the far wall.
Luke rubbed the sleep from his face. “What?”
“Barnesdale marched into my office ‘bout an hour ago with some big shot from the Guatemalan Embassy—”
“You mean consulate?”
“Embassy, consulate, who gives a rat’s ass? The point is, Henry marches in with this muckety-muck and his attorney, telling me to hand over the tissue samples from our boy.” The pitch of Ben’s voice rose. “Henry was all swole up in the face, acting like I was some kinda ax murderer or something.”
“Hold on, Ben. Tell me exactly what happened.”
“I just told you. They demanded that I give ’em all the organ tissues, so that’s what I did. Except for the bone marrow. Apparently, they’d already gotten that from Oncology.”
“How’d they even know you had it?”
“I’m guessing the mortician. They gotta embalm the body before transporting it out of the country. The idiot musta said something to the mother, told her a piece of the boy’s rib was missing. What do they think we are, a buncha ghouls who go around collecting body parts?”
“Did anyone explain why they wanted the tissues back?”
“The consulate fella said something about religious burial rites and how important it was for the family to get back all the remains. Seems their tribe has some fancy burial ritual that gets the spirit from this life to the next. If we desecrate the body, the boy doesn’t get to go to heaven, or wherever it is that Mayan Indians go.”
“Did Barnesdale or this guy say anything else?”
A heavy breath came through the phone. “That’s about it. I wasn’t real eager to pursue the discussion.”
“So we’re back to where we started.”
“Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
“They didn’t ask me for the slides,” Ben said. “Just the tissues.”
“Slides?”
“The slides of the lung tissue, remember?” A short beat, then, “I musta forgot to tell ’em.”
Luke allowed himself a small grin.
“These folks were very particular about what they wanted,” Ben said. “They didn’t mention anything about slides.”
“Then they probably didn’t want them,” Luke threw in.
“Probably not.”
“So what do they show?”
“Can’t tell you until I look at ’em, now, can I? And I don’t plan on doing that until I get home. Henry’s already taken enough of my weekend.”
“Fair enough.”
“Glad you think so,” Ben said. “By the way, the Wilson clan is barbecuing some steaks tonight. Nothing fancy, but you’re welcome to join us if you want. I’ll probably get a look at those slides before dinner.”
“For a lot of reasons, I think I’ll take you up on that.”
“Steaks’ll be ready around seven.”
The knock on Ben’s door came as he was hanging up the phone with Luke.
“It’s open.”
Two workmen in gray uniforms gave Ben a deferential smile when the door opened. The larger one, a well-muscled Hispanic who was missing part of his left ear, pointed at the ceiling. “Your phone wiring?” When he didn’t get a reaction from Ben, he added, “I assume someone told you we’d be working in your office today?”