Section 8 Read online

  Orson was standing still, watching, hands on hips.

  “We need a medic,” Sinclair repeated.

  Orson slowly nodded. “All right. I’ll take care of it.” He went over to the phone linking them to the ASTs and spoke into it. “An ambulance is on the way.”

  Then he went to his laptop, typed in a message and transmitted it.

  Hong Kong

  Ruiz wiped the sheen of sweat off his forehead as he stood in the warehouse. Behind him were three large wooden crates resting on pallets. They contained the rest of the Golden Lily treasure from the cave that was to be auctioned this evening. He checked his watch once more. It was time, but where was—

  He looked up as the small door set into the large sliding door for the warehouse opened. The Japanese woman walked in. She was dressed all in black: slacks, shirt, and leather coat. She was carrying a metal briefcase. She walked up to the table set in front of Ruiz and put the case on it without a word. Then she gestured with one hand, indicating for him to open it.

  Ruiz hesitated as he considered the possibility the case was rigged. But his greed overcame his fear and he flipped the two latches and swung the lid up. Stacks of cash along with a plane ticket were lying on top, along with a Japanese passport.

  “As promised,” the woman said. “Only half the money. The other half will be given to you at the airfield after we ensure you have given us what we paid for and to make certain that you truly are gone. We don’t want you having second thoughts.”

  A second thought was the last thing on Ruiz’s mind as he checked the plane ticket and saw his picture in the passport along with a new name. “Is this real?” he asked, holding up the passport.

  “Yes.”

  He stared at the cash. “Everything remaining is in the crates.”

  “I’m sure it is,” the woman said. She was looking at him strangely, and he wondered what she was thinking.

  His focus shifted back to the case and the money.

  “Abayon,” she said.

  Ruiz was startled. “What?”

  “Abayon. Why did he put these pieces out for auction? He’s been sitting on them for over half a century.”

  Ruiz shrugged. “He wants to help fund other groups. He has so much there . . .” He paused, not sure how much he should say.

  “He has the Golden Lily, of which this is only a taste,” the woman said.

  “You knew that,” Ruiz said. “Or else you would not have sent the envoy.”

  “Who you killed.”

  Ruiz licked his lips. “Abayon did that. I wasn’t even there.”

  “What else does Abayon have planned?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You lie.”

  Ruiz took a step back from the table. “No. I have no idea. This was my job . . .” He indicated the crates. “Abayon is very good at keeping things compartmentalized. I only know what I needed to know to do this.”

  “That is too bad,” the woman said. Her hands were on her hips, the long leather coat pulled back. For the first time Ruiz noted a sword hanging at her side. A samurai sword.

  “We have a deal,” Ruiz said, his throat tight.

  “Yes, we do.” The woman indicated the case. “Take it.”

  Ruiz tentatively stepped forward, snapped the case shut and picked it up. He held it at his side.

  “Our deal is complete now, yes?” the woman asked.

  Ruiz frowned. “Yes.”

  “Very good. I am a person of honor. I would never allow it to be said I do not fulfill my word.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Ruiz said. He glanced over his shoulder toward the back door. He froze as he saw a large black man with a wicked looking gun in his hand standing there. “What the hell?”

  “The deal is done,” the woman said.

  The door behind her opened and another man walked in, short and muscular, with a submachine gun in his hands.

  “Hey.” Ruiz held up the briefcase. “I—”

  “Made a deal,” the woman said. She flipped aside the right side of her long leather coat and drew the sword. “Both of us kept our word. But now the deal is over.”

  “Wait!” Ruiz begged.

  “For?” The woman cocked her head.

  “Abayon is up to something else,” Ruiz said.

  “We know that,” the woman said. “That statement is of no help.”

  “A submarine. It involves a submarine.”

  The woman lowered the sword. “If everything is so compartmentalized, how do you know this?”

  “I talked to one of the men who was to be part of her crew. They kept the submarine hidden, probably in one of the coves on Jolo, but they had to get men to operate her.”

  “What does Abayon plan to do with the submarine?”

  “The man didn’t know,” Ruiz said. “He said it was an old submarine.”

  “That is not very specific.”

  “He was very drunk,” Ruiz said. “He said it was a one-way mission. They were all volunteers who had agreed to give their lives.”

  “That is all?”

  Ruiz nodded, a sheen of sweat on his forehead once more.

  “Good, then you will not mind giving your life either.”

  She gestured at the black man, and he drew a similar sword from a scabbard on his back.

  “Take it,” the woman said as the man came forward and laid it on the table.

  Ruiz shook his head. “No. This is not—”

  “Take it or they will shoot you,” she said. “An honorable death is to be preferred over being shot down like a dog.”

  “But we made a deal,” Ruiz whined. “And I told you all I know.”

  “And we completed the deal. And you told me all you know, so you are of no more use to me. Now you must go through me to get out of here.”

  “But why?” Ruiz was frozen.

  “Pick it up.” She tapped the table with the tip of her sword. “There really is no choice.”

  Ruiz’s shoulders slumped. There was now a third armed man in the warehouse. With a trembling hand, Ruiz picked up the sword. He awkwardly held it in front of him, blade vertical, trying to protect his upper body.

  The Japanese woman smiled coldly. She stepped around the table, her sword gripped in both hands, blade held low. Ruiz did the unexpected, charging forward, the blade swinging in a wide arc at the woman’s head. Unexpected to the members of the team gathered around, but apparendy not to the woman. She ducked under the swing and jabbed her sword into Ruiz’s stomach, piercing through and coming out his back. Just as quickly, she withdrew the blade and, as the first gasp of pain left his lips, gracefully spun, blade level and extended, and severed his head from his body.

  Ruiz’s lips were still open in the gasp of shock as the head bounced off the concrete floor.

  The woman pulled out a lace kerchief and wiped the blade clean, then slid it back in its scabbard.

  Jolo Island

  The corridor was six feet wide by eight high. The walls were roughly hewn rock, and Vaughn assumed that an existing tunnel had been expanded to make this passageway. He doubted that the technology existed during World War II to completely carve this out of solid rock. His assumption was confirmed as he noted occasional natural openings on either side as they moved farther into the mountain.

  Their progress was stopped after about a hundred meters by an iron door that seemed to be bolted on the other side, since it did not budge when both he and Tai put their weight on it.

  “What now?” Tai asked as she considered the door.

  They had a limited amount of explosives, but using them was the last thing Vaughn wanted to do. “The room we just left,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s moving air out of the complex, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “So there have to be air shafts coming into it from below. Beneath that big fan.”

  Tai nodded and turned back the way they had come. They retraced their steps and entered the room. Vaughn looked at the large a
ir handler. There was a service panel on one side. He pulled out his multipurpose tool and unscrewed it.

  “Shit,” Tai said as the opening revealed the large, six-foot-diameter fan, spinning, the blades thumping through the air, pushing it up. There was an open shaft below it. “How do we—”

  Vaughn answered by pointing at a bundle of wires. “We cut those, we stop it.”

  “Won’t someone notice?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then we need a better plan.”

  Vaughn waved his hand, indicating she could do whatever she wished. He stepped back as Tai stuck her head in the opening, looking about. “The tips of the fan don’t make it to the sides,” she noted. “There’s about eighteen inches of room.”

  Vaughn was already shaking his head. “We hit those fans and it’ll cut us in two.”

  “There’s room,” Tai insisted.

  Vaughn looked. She was right. But it would be damn close. He shined his flashlight down and saw the shaft below the fan curved, so he couldn’t see how far it dropped.

  “I don’t like it,” he finally said.

  “We don’t have much choice,” she replied.

  She was right about that. But he didn’t see how they were going to get out of there once they went in. He took a deep breath. This was representative of what he’d been feeling ever since becoming part of Section 8. They were on a one-way trip.

  “Ladies first,” Vaughn said, and the tone of his voice indicated it wasn’t a choice.

  Tai responded by edging over into the opening. She gripped the side with her hands and slowly lowered herself. Vaughn anxiously watched as her legs reached the level of the fan. The metal whipped by, less than six inches from her flesh. She continued to lower herself until her arms were fully extended. The fan was at chest level, barely missing her. She looked up at Vaughn, gave him a wan smile, then let go. She slid down the tube and out of sight.

  Cursing to himself, Vaughn climbed into the machine and duplicated her actions. As he lowered himself, he could feel the power of the fan so close. As he extended his arms, the edge of one of the blades hit the back of his combat vest, cutting through it and the shirt underneath but barely missing his skin. Abandoning caution for speed, Vaughn let go and slid down, safe from the fan now but uncertain where and when his fall would be arrested.

  The tube curved, but only slightly, and he gained speed as he went down. He tried slowing his progress with his hands but there was nothing to grip. The tube was steel, too new to be from the original World War II structure. Vaughn gasped as he suddenly went airborne into a black void. He braced himself for impact.

  He slammed onto a steel platform with a solid thud.

  “That you?” Tai asked.

  “No,” Vaughn grunted as he inwardly reviewed his body for injuries.

  A red light came on, and he could see Tai, about four feet away. He slowly got to his feet. They were in an open space, and as Tai shifted her light, he saw that it was about ten meters square with a steel floor. He looked up and saw the opening he had fallen out of about eight feet above his head. Not good, he thought, as he considered how the hell they were going to get out of there.

  Tai directed her light toward a couple of openings in the floor. She walked over to the closest one, and Vaughn joined her. There was a two-foot depression, then a metal grate in the three-foot-wide hole. Air was being drawn up through the opening. They both knelt next to the opening and she shined her flashlight down. The red light penetrated the darkness for a few feet but they couldn’t see anything.

  “I assume no one’s in there since it’s dark,” Tai said.

  “Unless it’s a barracks room,” Vaughn said, “and there’s a bunch of guys with guns sleeping.”

  “Always the optimist.”

  Tai turned off her flashlight, leaving them in darkness. Vaughn could hear her unscrewing the cover. She turned the light back on, flooding the room with white light. She pointed it down at the grate.

  Both of them gasped as a golden glow was reflected back at them. Directly below the grate was a five-foot-high stack of gold bullion.

  CHAPTER 16

  Oahu

  “Space Command did track the plane,” Foster said.

  It didn’t surprise Royce, because Space Command had tracked everything flying since nine-eleven. There was little activity in the operations center. Everyone was still waiting for the report from the surviving recon team member on the ground—if he lived long enough to make a report.

  Foster slid a piece of paper across his desk, and Royce recognized the location it displayed: the middle of the Pacific Ocean, west of Midway Island. A thin red line went from Oahu to a point about four hundred miles away from Midway, where it ended.

  “That’s where it disappeared,” Foster said. He cleared his throat nervously. “There was no report of a plane missing in that area or anywhere close to it. But there was also no flight plan for a plane flying in that area at the time. No one has reported a plane missing either.”

  “Of course not,” Royce said as he stared at the end of the red line. A watery grave. At least David’s brother had received the honor of being buried in the Punchbowl. There would be no markers to commemorate David’s service. It was as if he’d never existed.

  Royce folded the piece of paper and slid it into his pocket.

  “Also—” Foster hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “We just got a report that one of the team members, Hayes, is very ill.”

  Royce stood up. “Inform me as soon as the recon element reports in.”

  He went out to David’s Defender and drove into the hills. Once in the clearing, he opened his laptop and typed out two messages. The first one was to the isolation area on Okinawa. The second went to the backup team that should now have been departing Hong Kong to converge on the primary mission.

  Okinawa

  The Humvee ambulance slowed to a halt outside the door to the isolation area. The medic/driver hopped out and went to the rear, pulling out a folding stretcher. Orson was waiting for him, arms folded. “This way.”

  He led the medic to where Sinclair had Hayes lying on a couch, a cold compress on his forehead. The medic checked Hayes’s pulse while he looked at the other members of the team. “Any idea what’s wrong with him?”

  “Pancreatic cancer,” Orson said succinctly, which earned a surprised look from Sinclair and a not so surprised look from Kasen.

  “Jesus,” the medic muttered. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “His job,” Orson said.

  The medic shook his head. “He needs to be in a hospital ASAP.”

  Orson frowned and glanced at the other members of the team. “I’ll go with him. You two continue mission preparation. Contact me ASAP if you hear from the recon element.”

  Orson and the medic put Hayes on the stretcher and carried him to the Humvee. They slid the stretcher in and Orson climbed up next to Hayes. The black man was sweating profusely, his gaze vacant. The medic slammed the back door shut and got in the driver’s seat. The Humvee ambulance slowly wound its way through the tunnel toward the outside world.

  Orson glanced at the front—the medic was focused on the road. Orson leaned over and placed his forearm across Hayes’s throat, applying pressure. Hayes’s eyes went wide and he reached up and weakly grabbed Orson’s arm, trying to push it away, but he was too sick. Orson kept the pressure up as he watched the front of the Humvee.

  The panic in Hayes’s eyes disappeared as the life drained from them.

  When the Humvee cleared the tunnel, Orson rapped on the back of the driver’s seat. “Let me out.”

  The medic stopped the Humvee and turned, confused. “What?”

  Orson indicated Hayes’s body. “He’s gone. I’ve got to get back to isolation.”

  “‘He’s gone’?” The medic hopped out and came into the back. He checked Hayes’s vitals, confirming that the man was indeed dead. “I don’t get it,” he muttered as he pulled a
blanket over Hayes’s face. “He was sick, but—”

  Orson stepped out of the Humvee. “We really needed him to last a while longer.” He shrugged. “Some things you just can’t control.” With that he disappeared into the gaping mouth of the tunnel.

  Johnston Atoll

  The Navy F-14 Tomcat came in low and fast. It had made the flight from Hawaii in less than two hours, dispatched after the tower on Johnston Atoll failed to respond to repeated radio queries. That, combined with a complete electronic blackout from the atoll—no e-mails, faxes, phone calls—absolutely nothing, had caused the jet to be scrambled.

  It roared across the island one hundred feet up, the pilot peering out of the cockpit. He saw nothing out of the ordinary except nothing was happening on the island. No movement. No people. He did a wide loop then came back, flying slower, just above stall speed, while transmitting, trying to contact the tower. There was only the sound of low static in reply.

  The pilot knew that the sound of his engines could clearly be heard, even by people inside the buildings. Yet no one came running out to look up. Absolute stillness.

  Then he noticed something else. There were no birds.

  Pacific Ocean

  “Target bearing zero-six-seven degrees, range four hundred meters.”

  Moreno nodded at the sonar man’s report. Exactly where the target should be. “Periscope depth,” he ordered. It wasn’t necessary to make a visual confirmation, but Moreno believed in double-checking.

  He grabbed the handles for the periscope as it ascended, flipping them down, and pressed his head against the eyepiece, turning in the direction the sonar had indicated. Moreno blinked as he saw the massive ship. He’d seen pictures, but that had not prepared him for the real thing.

  It was one of the largest oil tankers in the world— the Johre Viking. It wasn’t moving through the ocean so much as plowing through the water, ignoring the four-foot swell that pounded against its steel hull, heading almost due east, toward San Francisco. The tanker was over a quarter mile long and seventy meters wide.