They reached another trail intersection, and he stopped. She would never have admitted it to him, but she was thankful he had decided to take a small break. He lowered his dry sack to the dirt and squatted over it, unrolling the top to remove two Nalgene water bottles. He handed one to her, and she eagerly accepted it, uncapping it and bringing it to her mouth to gulp down the lukewarm water.
“Only a little farther,” he said.
She nodded, knowing the comment had been intended for her benefit. Wu Tian was a veteran of the Jiaolong, the naval commandos of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, whose members were renowned for their toughness. Men like Wu Tian had survived a training pipeline with an eighty-eight percent attrition rate to become “Sea Dragons,” the most lethal commandos in the world. A leisurely stroll through the rolling hills of Santa Cruz Island wouldn’t even come close to arduous.
He took another sip of water, then capped his bottle and slipped it back inside his dry sack. She handed hers back, and it also disappeared inside. For this mission, they had dressed like every other recreational hiker enjoying the Channel Islands and wore Arc’teryx or Outdoor Research shorts over Asolo hiking boots and brightly colored fleeces and soft-shell jackets that had been removed as the sun bore down on them. She caught Wu Tian casually glancing at her revealing tank top, but otherwise he appeared totally focused.
Their dry sacks weren’t filled with the usual equipment and supplies one might expect of backpackers visiting the island. No tents, sleeping bags, or sleeping pads. They carried enough water to last them twenty-four hours, but the other items they carried wouldn’t be found on any other hiker.
“Shall we?”
Wu Tian rolled up the top of the dry sack and stood. He shifted the weight of the pack on his shoulders, then turned to take the lead of their two-person column again. He set out at a brisk pace, and she followed, letting her thoughts drift to the upcoming mission. Months of planning had gone into getting them to this moment, and if not for the failed waveform on the previous night’s mission, success would have been all but certain.
The trail grew more difficult as Wu Tian led them up a rocky slope through scrub oak, climbing higher up onto Montañon Ridge and traversing toward the southern shore of the island. They hiked for another hour in silence before coming upon a clearing at the summit, eighteen hundred feet above sea level.
She paused and scanned the open space, noting the small concrete utility building and solar panels that ostensibly powered the tall radio antenna stretching into the sky. Then, she looked east beyond Anacapa Island at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, twenty-five miles distant across the dark blue waters of the Pacific Ocean.
Wu Tian stopped and followed her gaze, then turned to her. “We need to set up our hide site.”
She nodded but felt a tinge of excitement and let a tight smile crack her stern facade as one thought repeated itself in her mind.
Destiny.
28
Continuing onward, Wu Tian led them down a small finger from the summit that gave them a commanding view of the ocean. Smuggler’s Cove was in the distance below and to their left, and Sandstone Point was to their right, but they had no intention of going to either.
There was no trail descending south from Montañon Ridge, but Wu Tian forged his own path down the rugged terrain. Halfway down the steep slope, he found a narrow ledge that was protected on one side by a large boulder jutting up from the ground. Scrub brush dotted the landscape in every direction, but otherwise they had no protection from the elements.
“This will do,” he said.
Chen nodded her agreement, then immediately went to work. She dropped her pack to the ground and stripped out of her brightly colored recreational hiking clothing, ignoring Wu Tian’s sidelong glances as she crammed the garments into a separate stuff sack before tucking them away in her pack. Then she put on the specially made clothing Wu Tian had brought with him, a camouflage jacket and pants of a polyester-weave woven fabric coated with near-infrared absorbent dye. They blended in with the natural landscape, but the added dye masked them from modern night vision goggles. Something that didn’t matter now but might when the sun set.
To help reduce their thermal signatures, silver-plated filaments had been inserted every centimeter into the fabric in weft and warp, but their clothing alone wasn’t enough to keep them from being spotted. Once their brightly colored clothing had been replaced with the state-of-the-art camouflage, Wu Tian covered their entire hide site with camouflage netting to break up their outlines.
Hidden from view, Chen opened the duffel she had brought with her and handed a padded pouch to Wu Tian. He quickly unzipped it and assembled the broken-down submachine gun, then set it aside so he could focus on the most important tasks required for the operation. First, he removed the disassembled pieces from each dry sack and placed them deliberately around the hide site. While Chen went to work connecting them to make the weapon operational, he put together the satellite receiver required to download the software update once it had been completed.
“How long until it’s ready?” he asked.
She looked up from the tablet she was working on. “It’s ready now.”
She glanced at the satellite receiver to see if any lights had illuminated. None had, but she knew that would soon change. Once the software update had been transmitted to the satellite in geosynchronous Earth orbit — over thirty-five thousand kilometers above them — it would immediately broadcast to their receiver and allow them to fine-tune the weapon’s waveform. Only then could they commence the operation.
“Now we wait?” he asked.
“Now we wait,” Chen replied.
She leaned back against the steep slope and closed her eyes, feeling the weight of her fatigue settle on top of her.
“Somebody’s coming,” a voice hissed in her ear.
Her eyes shot open, and she looked through the camouflage netting at the canyon wending up from Smuggler’s Cove. Through the shimmering heat rising from the barren ground, she saw two heads bobbing in unison as the hikers ascended the steep slope. The one in the lead had shoulder-length dark hair wrapped in a red bandanna, and the other was blond, styled in pigtails.
“Two women,” she whispered. “Let them pass.”
Though her fatigue had dissipated, she knew the pair would pass their location soon and present no threat. Their position was well concealed and high above them, so there was little reason for the women to even look in their direction. But even if they did, it was unlikely the women would spot them.
Wu Tian prepared himself regardless. He lifted his H&K MP7 submachine gun and pointed the stubby suppressor through the netting at the hikers, tracing their winding movement through the canyon.
“I’ve got the one on the right,” he said, sighting in on the blonde in pigtails.
“Steady,” she cautioned, watching his short barrel drift slowly from right to left as he tracked his target. The women would never even know a trained commando had already calculated the lead, factoring in the swirling wind and drop of the heavy 4.6 x 30mm round. They were only a breath away from being killed and had no idea.
With relaxed curiosity, she watched Wu Tian following the hikers’ movements and listened to the faint echo of their distant chattering when she heard a soft whir from over her left shoulder. Turning her head slowly, she saw a red light flicker on as the satellite transceiver began downloading the promised software patch.