“Hello?” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“That was quick.” Emily’s voice crackled through the earpiece. She sounded more tired than he felt.
“I’m a light sleeper. What’s up?” He picked up his watch and checked the time. It was just before 5 a.m. local time.
“We have a problem.”
That was never a good thing to hear, especially at such an early hour of the day. And definitely when it was from a high-level government agent.
“Why did I have a feeling you were going to say that?”
She didn’t answer his question, instead getting straight to the point. “The SEALs found the plane at the airfield in Mozambique.”
“That’s great news, Em… Agent Starks. What’s the problem?”
“It was empty.”
Sean frowned and put his face in his free hand. “Empty? What do you mean, empty?”
“There were no missiles. There weren’t even any crates. If that was the plane you saw leaving Songea, there was nothing on it.”
Sean felt a sickening feeling creep from his stomach into his throat.
“I’m sorry. For a second there it sounded like you said the plane was empty.”
He still didn’t believe it. And at such an early hour, wrapping his head around pretty much anything was a difficult task.
“Are you sure you got the tail number right? You didn’t mix up a letter or a number?”
“Agent Starks, there may be a lot of things I screw up in life, but remembering number-and-letter sequences is not one of them. Call it a gift.”
He wasn’t being cocky. It was the truth. Sean didn’t exactly have an eidetic memory. But with certain things, he was fairly close. License plates and phone numbers were easy. More complex sequences were a little harder but only when they reached fifteen or more characters. As a result of his ability to memorize those sorts of things, he’d done extremely well on that part of the IQ test in graduate school.
“You’re certain?” Emily double-checked.
Sean wasn’t offended. “Positive, 100 percent.”
“Then they must have unloaded the cargo and taken off.”
It didn’t make sense. Why would they fly the missiles to Mozambique just to unload them? They could have driven them there. It’s not like it was a twenty-hour journey. With the time it took to load and fuel the plane, get it ready for flight, and up in the air, they would have been halfway to their destination.
“Something doesn’t add up,” he said.
“You think?”
“No,” he shook his head and stood up. His feet began pacing mindlessly back and forth across the room. “Flying such a short distance. The logistics involved, everything it takes to get an aircraft ready to fly; it’s too much time. Why would they spend so much time doing all that unless….”
Sean stopped in mid-sentence. A chill shot through his blood, raising the hairs on his skin.
“Unless what?” Emily prodded.
“Unless they wanted us to see them do it,” he murmured.
There was a three-second pause before Emily said, “What? Why would they want that?”
Sean stopped in place, and his head rose and fell slowly. “That’s it. They wanted us to see the plane take off. Don’t you see? They knew we found the underground storage facility. They even knew we would follow them all the way to Songea. The shootout, the car chase, all of it was a ruse.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“It was all a setup. Whoever is running this thing knows every move we’re going to make.”
Sean’s head spun. The puzzle pieces whirled around like a blizzard. There was a piece missing, but he couldn’t figure out which one.
“How is that possible?” she asked.
Sean froze in place. “Are you close to Fitz right now?”
His question came out of the blue. “No. He’s in his own room. I called him before I woke you.”
“How well do you know him?”
“I don’t. I’ve only worked with him a few times before this mission. You don’t think… ”
“That he could be a mole? Yeah, it’s possible. I’d say anything is possible right now.”
Emily hesitated for a moment. “What if there isn’t a mole and the people behind all this are just being really careful? If Fitz was a traitor, we’d be dead already. He could have killed us and left us in the middle of nowhere. And no one would be the wiser.”
“Point taken. Please don’t tell him I said that.”
She let out an irritated grunt. “Maybe they’re just outthinking us.”
That part wasn’t too far off. Whoever was moving the missiles appeared to be a master chess player. Sean was brilliant in several areas, but he’d always struggled at chess. It wasn’t his forte. Right now he felt like a pawn up against a board full of queens and knights, and someone else was moving him around.
Emily interrupted his thoughts. “The people responsible for all this must have a ton of money. I mean, the funding necessary to make all this possible would be astronomical.”
Valid point. But they were getting nowhere. Whether someone was watching their every move or not didn’t matter. The most immediate concern was that the missiles had disappeared, somewhere between Songea and the airfield in Mozambique. That last thought caused Sean’s head to lift instantly.
“Wait. What if the plane didn’t unload at the airport in Mozambique?”
The question caught Emily off guard. “What do you mean? Where else would it have unloaded? They wouldn’t have had time to stop somewhere else first. Based on the information we obtained, that aircraft flew straight there.”
“Right, I get that,” he said. “But what if instead of unloading the cargo at the airport, they dropped it mid-flight?”
“I don’t understand. Why would they do that? Unless… ”
“Unless they knew we were coming. Or at least thought we would.”
They keep playing the shell game, he thought.
He went on. “They could have dropped the cargo with parachutes on the way to Mozambique. From there, new trucks could have picked up the crates and taken them to who-knows-where.”
Sean hurried over to his gear bag and pulled out a map of the region. He carried it over to a small desk and opened it onto the surface. Next, he drew a huge circle around the location of Songea and then neighboring Mozambique.
“Sounds like a bit of a stretch.” Emily said, breaking the silence.
“No. That has to be it. They let us see the plane leave. They knew we would track it down. And they knew we would seize it. That means the plane dropped its cargo somewhere between here and here.” He pointed at the map as if someone else was in the room with him.
“Here and where?”
“Sorry. I have a map, and I just drew a line between the two airports. The question is, where did the missiles go once they left the cargo plane?”
“Kind of a big question.”
He stood back and stared at the map. “If the crates were dropped off in mid-flight, that means someone had to be waiting for them on the ground or be there shortly after to pick them up. There’s an area on the map that would be perfect for that. It’s a nature preserve, so no one would be around, at least not many people anyway.”
“They’d still have to get the weapons out of the country, though.”
“Which means they’d need an airport.”
“Or an airfield,” Emily corrected. “Check on your map for any smaller airfields in the vicinity. Doesn’t have to be much. Just a strip where a plane could take off and land.”
He leaned over the map again and scanned the area around the line he’d drawn. Nothing jumped out immediately. On his second pass, however, he noticed something. “It looks like there’s a small airfield just outside of Kandulu. If they dropped the cargo in the Niassa Reserve, it could have been picked up and taken to a new plane in no time.”