For a moment, nobody said anything.
"Not another conspiracy," Ronnie said.
"Like I said, DIA is at the heart of a lot of conspiracy theories," Stephanie said. "There are some crazy ideas out there. But the buried buildings exist."
"You're sure the signals came from there," Nick said.
"Certain, yes. The buildings make a perfect underground bunker."
Elizabeth drummed her fingers on the table top. "It's time for us to get off this island," she said. "If they sent that signal to Alaska from DIA, that's where the control center for the weapon must be. We have to destroy it, and we have to do it without causing a lot of collateral damage."
"Let me make sure I understand you," Nick said. "You want us to find a way into secret bunkers under one of the busiest airports in the world. That's if we can get past whatever they've got for security without killing a lot of civilians. Then you want us to locate a hidden control center and blow it up. That about right?"
"Do you have a problem with that?"
Nick sighed and pulled on his ear. "We'll need equipment. Communications. Weapons, IDs, all that. DIA has a lot of security surveillance. We're going to need gear to jam it or take it out of commission."
"Langley could help," Stephanie said. "Hood isn't part of this."
"Two years ago I never would've thought of asking the CIA for anything," Elizabeth said. "It just shows how much things have changed. I can probably get Hood to give us what we need, but he needs plausible deniability. The less he knows, the better. Asking him to help us launch a raid against DIA might be a bit much."
Lamont started to laugh and broke into a fit of coughing.
"You gotta do something for that cough," Ronnie said.
"Yeah, I'm on it." Lamont held up a package of cough drops. "Menthol," he said. "Want one?"
Ronnie shook his head.
"Everyone agree it's time to go?" Nick said.
No one objected. "Let's get the boat loaded and get out of here." He turned to Selena. "What about this place?" He waved his hand in the air, taking in the house and the whole island. "With Emile gone, there's no one to look after it."
She brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. "I'll close everything up. When we get back to the mainland, I'll get somebody out here. It will be fine until then."
Lamont began coughing. He ate a cough drop.
Nick went around the house with Selena, helping her close the storm shutters. They latched the last one into place.
"That ought to do it," Nick said. "You ready for an ocean cruise?"
"I wish I could joke about it like you do," she said.
"It's the way I deal with the stress," he said.
"I know." She looked out at the ocean. "I've always loved this place," she said, "but it's different now. With Emile gone it won't be the same."
Nick took her hand. "I'm sorry about Emile," he said.
"I always thought that if I ever got married, I would come here on my honeymoon."
He kissed her. "There are plenty of islands we can go to for a honeymoon," he said, "but we probably ought to get married first."
"Jerk," she said. She was smiling.
CHAPTER 43
They sailed past Martinique and St. John's. They passed north of the British Virgin Islands and set a course for the US mainland. Four days out from Selena's island, Puerto Rico lay off the port bow, a blue-green haze in the distance.
The boat was named Island Angel. She was powered by a single Caterpillar diesel that drove them at a steady nine knots. The Island Angel was double decked, with a glassed-in bridge that provided a sweeping view. She had a raised, flush foredeck and a high, sharp prow. There were three small staterooms on the main deck. Nick and Selena were in one, Stephanie and Harker in the second and Ronnie and Lamont in the third.
Lamont's cough was worse, a racking, heavy sound. Ronnie had taken over the wheel. Lamont was in his room, lying down. The others were in the main cabin.
"He needs a doctor," Selena said.
"It's that hit he took in Jordan," Nick said. "He didn't have enough time to get over it before everything went down."
"I think he has an infection," Harker said. "Maybe pneumonia. He's running a fever."
"We're still at least a week out," Stephanie said. "Nick, what are we going to do?"
"Hope he gets better," Nick said. "There are antibiotics in the medical kit. Start feeding him pills and aspirins and soup. He'll get through it."
"What if he gets worse?"
"We'll deal with that if we have to," Nick said.
Elizabeth said, "I sent a copy of the Ajax protocol to Hood. It shook him up. He decided to take a look at the Pentagon."
"That's domestic surveillance," Nick said. "He could get in a lot of trouble for that."
"It wouldn't be the first time Langley overstepped the bounds," Stephanie said. "But at least this time there's a damn good reason to do it."
"Has Hood found anything out?" Nick asked.
She nodded. "There is a small group of senior military officers, politicians and bankers who call themselves the Augustans. They meet for drinks and conversation on an irregular basis, a few times a year. All of the members have expressed dissatisfaction at one time or another with something President Rice has done."
"That doesn't mean much. Sometimes I don't like what Rice has done."
"Yes, but Hood thinks there may be more to it. Several judges and CEOs are part of the membership as well. "
"It sounds like a typical Washington power group," Nick said. "There are dozens of them."
"That's true," Elizabeth said. "Except that the chief figure in the group is a four-star general in charge of SATWEP and the station you raided in Alaska."
"What's his name?" Ronnie asked.
Elizabeth drummed her fingers on her knee. "Westlake. Louis Westlake. I want you to run a full background on him, Steph. Find out if he has any connection with Edmonds. Can you hack into the White House computers?"
"Sure. Compared to the Pentagon, it's easy. I've done it before."
"Get into the visitor records and see if Westlake has visited Edmonds recently. He could be the one who told Edmonds we were interfering with a secret military project. It would take someone with a lot of rank to put that story across."
"Will do," Stephanie said. "I'll log into the computers back in Virginia. From there I can tap into the White House and the NSA database. It shouldn't take long to find out everything about him."
Later, Selena was in her room. She lay on the narrow bed she shared with Nick, reading a dog eared paperback novel about pirates and Scotsmen she'd found in the main cabin. She across a sentence with the word ravish in it and smiled. Elizabeth knocked at the door.
"Busy?" Elizabeth said.
Selena sat up. "More like bored. Come on in."
Elizabeth entered the tiny room and sat down on one end of the bed.
"I can't stop thinking about the man I killed," Elizabeth said. "It was horrible, all that blood. Different from that man I shot in Virginia."
Selena marked the page and put the book down. "I can sympathize with how you feel," she said, "but that probably doesn't help very much."
"I remember when you came back from your first mission, you were different. I watched it all on the satellite. I saw you kill that soldier. How did you handle it, afterward?"
"Nick helped," Selena said. "He helped me see that I'd made the right choice, even though everything I'd been taught told me it was wrong. He didn't try to sugarcoat it, or come up with some platitude about defending our country, anything like that. He told me it would take time to let it in and that the best I could do was to try not to think about it and move on."
"Did it work?" Elizabeth asked. "Not thinking about it?"