True Devotion (23 page)

“Let me do this, Joe, if you wouldn’t mind tackling the path of disaster she left?” Joe looked at his dog, then glanced back at her. “She’s all yours.”

* * *

Kissing Kelly could most certainly get addictive. Joe tried to shake off the bemused state of mind that had him crossing the kitchen twice to do the same task. He was cleaning up while Kelly dealt with his dog.

She kissed like a dream. She was a little out of practice, and that reality only made it more intoxicating. He had not wanted to let that first kiss end.

He rubbed the heels of his hands over his face. Second date, and she could make him crazy without trying. So much for the vague idea that he could take this slow and give her plenty of time to figure out what she really wanted. He was beginning to figure out exactly what he wanted. It was definitely Kelly and something very permanent. He just had to figure out how to make it work.

They were in the shallow waters. The fact they had been friends for years was helping with two issues: the comparisons with Nick and her uneasy acceptance of the fact he was on active duty status, but deeper waters were ahead. Kelly was going to want children.

Providing leadership on that question was going to be an interesting challenge of honoring her dream while also doing what was best for them both. God was going to have to figure this one out and let him know what was right because it didn’t look like there was a simple solution. Joe loved children. But he was not going to be an absentee father. A child deserved to have a father around. And a SEAL on active duty traveled on average 180 days a year. Last year, faced with special circumstances, he had been deployed for 232 days. That was tough on a wife, but for a young child—Joe wasn’t ready to rush into that situation. But asking Kelly to wait several years was not exactly the right answer either . . .

He pushed aside the problem for the moment. It was going to take time to figure out. And prayer. He turned his concentration to finishing the kitchen. He had to give Misha credit for smarts; she had managed to get inside and make a real mess. He closed paint cans, cleaned brushes, folded the drop cloth, took out the trash, and put back light fixtures and outlet covers. They would have to deal with wallpaper another night.

When he was done he pulled out a chair at the table and sat down. He could hear a hair dryer from the bathroom. Misha was getting the full treatment tonight.

After a few minutes the dryer shut off and the bathroom door opened. Misha came racing down the hall, thrilled to be free again. She came skidding to a halt beside him. Joe caught her to him. Kelly had done a good job; Misha’s coat gleamed and she smelled like baby shampoo.

“She’s as good as new. No more paint.”

Joe glanced up and had to smile. “You look like you’ve been in a battle.” There was soap drying on Kelly’s shirt and her hair had dropped down from the clips she had used to keep it back. She looked cute when she was a mess.

“It was, but I won.” She ruffled Misha’s fur. “It was worth it.” She glanced around the kitchen. “Hey, it looks almost normal.”

She sounded so surprised that he laughed. “We’ll do the wallpaper tomorrow night?”

“Please.” She pulled out a chair and spun it around. “I really appreciate this.”

“I enjoyed it.”

“Sure you did. I suckered you into working on your evening off.”

“Better to spend the time with you than watching some baseball game on TV,” he countered.

“Liar.”

“The kiss was adequate compensation.”

She blushed, just a little. “The wallpaper will be a challenge. The walls aren’t straight.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her for ducking his comment but let it pass. “I remember Nick once threatened to raise one corner of the house. I’ll figure it out.” He was reluctant to end the evening, but if he stayed much longer . . . Things were already getting out of control; to stay would just ensure they ended up over their heads. “I’d better get this dog home before she gets herself into any more mischief.”

“Probably wise.”

Kelly walked with him to the patio door. A hug right now would be a match to dry tinder. He put three feet of distance between them and tried to ignore the awkwardness that was present. “G’night, Kelly.”

“Good night, Joe. I’ll see you on the beach in the morning.”

“Early.”

“I’ll be awake long before you get here.”

She wouldn’t understand if he said he sincerely hoped she overslept. The anticipation of seeing tussled hair and sleepy eyes was going to keep him company tonight. “Tomorrow.” He called his dog and wisely went home.

* * *

Joe’s pager went off at 0200. He saw the number and immediately picked up the phone. He called the duty officer to report he was on his way in and eleven minutes later pulled into the parking lot at NAB. This place felt different tonight, no longer peaceful but rather gearing up for action.

He headed to the administration building, passing staff officers moving through the halls. Joe nodded to the security officer controlling access to the senior staff wing and passed the communications officer for the day shift. They were calling back the full complement of staff. His boss waved him into the conference room.

“Sir.”

There were four officers present, two of his counterparts from other platoons and a civilian Joe had never met before. The maps on the long table were of the South China Sea.

“We’ve got another shipment,” his boss said simply. “Raider’s back, and he’s traveling with this one.”

Twenty-One

* * *

J
oe stopped breathing for a moment before his eyes narrowed, the intensity burning. His confidence spiked. Raider was back. He had been prepping for this day for three years. “What do you have?”

“Mr. Harnley, fill him in.”

Accustomed to Lincoln’s brusque tone, Joe wasn’t surprised when the civilian jumped a bit and fumbled the folder in his hand. Joe had seen a lot of folders like it over the years. The top-secret stamp was nothing new, nor was the code word clearance stamped boldly on the front. Defense Intelligence Agency? Central Intelligence Agency? National Security Agency? The guy had the look of someone from the analyst side of the house, not the operations side.

“We don’t have much. Our contact in Hong Kong just got this information out to us. A boat will be leaving Hong Kong with a destination of Maytiko Island, southwest of Taiwan. The island has a decent harbor, an overgrown airstrip, and has been deserted since World War II. The device is nuclear, but we don’t have specifications. It’s apparently being flown from there on to Taiwan.”

If the shipment got through, it would create a conflagration in the China-Taiwan relationship. China would never tolerate Taiwan having a nuke. “When is it moving?” Joe asked.

“The plane arrives at dawn, Monday the twenty-second, island time.”

Joe scanned the maps. With the date line and time zones, that meant Sunday morning—four days from now. He nodded. They had worked with worse. “Who’s the buyer?”

“We picked up a fragment of a conversation on an encrypted Taiwan military channel,” Mr. Harnley replied. Joe raised an eyebrow at that. A rogue in their military—how high up, how well organized? He accepted the piece of paper he was handed, surprised at being given raw data.

[Subject 1] Your device has been found.

[Subject 2] How soon can it be delivered?

[Subject 1] Eight days.

[Subject 2] No sooner?

[Subject 1] Patience. There is more paperwork with this one.

“That’s all we got of the conversation. The transmission date, the reference to eight days, it matches this shipment information.”

“So the plane landing on Maytiko Island may well be from the Taiwan military.”

“Yes.”

It was going to be touchy. Trying to intercept the device in Hong Kong was out—it was now Chinese soil. Tracking the plane into Taiwan and taking it there on the runway would be difficult—they didn’t know who the buyer was or whom they could trust. That left an intercept on open water or the island. “Lincoln said Raider was traveling with this shipment.”

Mr. Harnley nodded. “That’s all the contact knew—that the man you call Raider was personally delivering this device. We don’t know if that means he is on the boat leaving Hong Kong, flying in on another plane to meet up with the shipment, or coming in on the same plane taking the device to Taiwan.”

“Why break his pattern on this one? He’s always remained far from the actual shipments.”

“He’s been in hiding for the last three years; his buyers may be a little jittery to work with him. Or possibly it’s the same buyer as three years ago, only this time they want a personal guarantee the shipment gets made.”

It was still a troubling departure from everything Joe knew about the man. And he wanted Raider to be there, meaning his evaluation of the risks was far from impartial. If the intelligence was good . . . “Is there any way to get confirmation of this data?”

“We’re trying. We’ve got nothing so far.”

Joe glanced at his boss. “Platoons Echo and Foxtrot are in the area. Can they shift to intercept?”

“They’ve already got their hands full. We’ll have to deploy resources from here,” Lincoln replied. “Joe, I want you to work up a plan to take the shipment at Maytiko Island. Grant, you’ve got stopping the boat in international waters. Larry, you get the nasty one—assume we have to snatch it off a runway in Taiwan. I need plans by 1800 hours. Wake up your men, gentlemen.”

Joe felt the adrenaline, the focus, could taste the anticipation. He wanted this mission, was confident that by 1800 hours his platoon would not only have a workable plan to present, but that it would be the best option.

Four days was enough. They could use today to plan, tomorrow to train, then pack and deploy on Friday. It would be an eleven- to thirteen-hour flight, depending on the jet stream, to get them into the area.

“Bear, stick around a minute,” Lincoln said.

Not liking the implications of that terse directive, Joe waited for his boss to finish talking to one of the officers as the other platoon leaders left with copies of the maps. He followed his boss back into his private office and accepted the seat he was waved to.

“The fact that this is Raider—is this going to be so personal I should put another platoon in your place?” His boss had always been blunt.

“No, sir.” He practically growled the words. It would be personal, but it would only sharpen his men’s focus, not detract from it. It had sharpened his.

His boss had a way of looking through a man to his soul. He eventually nodded. “That’s what I wanted to hear.”

“Sir, the informant in Hong Kong—a lot can change in three years. How trustworthy is this data? It goes against everything we know about how Raider operates.”

“The fact he is supposedly traveling with the shipment bothers me too, but a more interesting question—how is Raider still able to work through Hong Kong now that it’s under Chinese control?”

“Someone is being paid to look the other way.”

His boss nodded. “Probably.”

“What if China knows about the shipment and is still letting it proceed out of Hong Kong?” Joe asked. “Could this shipment be a Chinese attempt to create a provocation within Taiwan?”

“If the shipment succeeds, China has an excuse to act mili-tarily before the device can be deployed. If it fails, it still splits Taiwan’s military more sharply between those trying to force independence and the government’s position. China wins either way,” Lincoln said. “We want Raider, Bear, but we have to stop that device.”

Joe thought about the implications of that as he walked down to see the duty officer to have his men paged. The profile on Raider showed he stole for money not ideology. But stepping into the China-Taiwan quicksand? It was a political escalation from his point of view. A change in his approach, or did the conflict simply create the best market price? So much misery was created because of this one man’s greed. Were they going to lose another SEAL trying to stop this shipment?

Nick.

The grief was back like a wave. He had never been able to tell Kelly the truth. It was one thing to hide the truth of what had happened from Kelly when he was her friend, another to bear that burden now that they were dating. She knew he accepted responsibility for what happened, for Nick’s death. But that wasn’t the same as her knowing how he died. She didn’t know Joe’s shoulder injury had come first. That Nick died saving him.

He needed Raider to be there, needed to be able to put the past to rest. If he couldn’t tell her, at least he could stop the man responsible. He owed that to Nick. And to Kelly.

* * *

“What do we know about the ship?” Boomer asked.

Joe sat back and listened as his men worked the problem. Dawn was still only a tinge of pink in the sky, and the fifteen men had already transformed the conference room they had appropriated for planning the mission into a small war room with relief maps of Maytiko Island showing elevations, satellite images of the old runway, weather data, logistical data. Questions were being asked and answered all around the room, and out of them was coming a powerful, workable plan.

Cougar had been prowling for data about the boat. “It’s old, Russian in design, a discarded supply ship once used to service their patrol boats. It was converted to civilian use five years ago and now flies a Norwegian flag. Its deep cargo wells are divided into four holds by metal plating; the holds are only accessible from above. The ship’s central hub is two levels: Above deck is the control room, and below deck it’s divided down the center into staterooms on one side, engine room on the other. We can assume the device will be in one of the four holds. The normal crew complement is five.”