CHAPTER 15

"I have a job for you."

Royce stared at Foster and waited.

The scientist in charge of the Sim-Center avoided his eyes.

"I'm doing the job I was given."

"Multitask," Royce said simply.

Foster glanced into the control room where the military people were changing from day shift to evening shift.

"Did that person really die in the parachute drop?" He nodded his head toward the control room.

"They think it's part of an obstacle in their exercise, losing half the recon element. But you and I know better, don't we? I didn't program it in. That was a real message from real people."

Royce folded his hands in his lap.

"You think you know better? Than what? You don't have a clue."

And neither do I, he thought.

"You're doing all this for deniability," Foster said.

"You're using me as a cutout – don't think I don't realize that I take the fall if the shit hits the fan on this."

Royce had read Foster's file. The man was not stupid, that was certain, although he had been rather indiscreet years ago. Royce briefly wondered how many people worked for the Organization simply going around and gathering blackmail material on people the Organization might eventually use someday. And not for the first time he wondered what the Organization had on him.

"You know what happens to you if the shit hits the fan?" Royce asked.

"What?"

"You die."

Foster blinked, then ran his tongue over his lips.

"Who are you? That other guy said he was NSA. But you're not NSA, are you?"

"No."

Royce said nothing more.

Foster fidgeted in his seat for several moments.

"All right," he finally said.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to hack into Space Command's tracking records."

He gave Foster the time period and estimated location in which David's plane had gone down.

"I want whatever they have on it. I want to know exactly when and where it went down. I know they track every goddamn thing moving in the sky now with their satellites."

Ever since 9/11, keeping an eye on the skies had become a much higher priority.

"Who was on this plane and why do you think it crashed?"

"That's not something you need to know," Royce said.

Foster was confused.

"But why don't you send a request – "

"I want you to do this without anyone knowing you're doing it. Between me and you. Are you capable of that?"

Foster slowly nodded.

"I should be able to get in there. I have access to the government's secure system, so that helps a lot. The hard part will be leaving no trace of my visit."

"I recommend you don't," Royce said.

"Or else you'll get visitors who won't be as nice as me."

Moreno knew he should stay on the submarine. He'd even promised Abayon that he would, though at the time they both knew it was a promise that would not be kept. Since their first days together as teenagers fighting the Japanese, they had always held the belief that a leader led from the front. Moreno knew that a major reason why the Abu Sayef had not been as active as it might have been was Abayon's confinement to the wheelchair. While it had been a politically prudent move for the group to lay low for many years, it was also partly because it took Moreno a long time to convince his old friend that even though he could not personally lead his men, he could – and had to – issue orders for others to go out and kill and die.

Moreno, though, was not confined to a wheelchair, and the spry old man slid down the side of the submarine into the waiting rubber boat crowded with his men. There were two other similar boats, each holding sixteen men. That left a skeleton crew of five on board the submarine, enough to hold it in place until they returned.

Moreno sniffed the air as they cast off in the dark. The wind was shoreborne, as he had planned. There was no moon yet, leaving only the scant illumination of the stars. He didn't need a compass to find Johnston Atoll, though. The complex was well-lit, glittering like a beacon three kilometers away.

Using small electric engines, the three Zodiacs glided silently through the water toward the lights. Moreno sat in the bow of the lead boat, his silenced submachine gun across his knees. A kilometer from shore he directed the small fleet to the left, to the landing spot he had picked, out of the glare of the lights. The three boats ran up on the beach and the crews jumped overboard, dragging them above the tide mark.

There was no need for Moreno to issue any orders now, since they had rehearsed what they were about to do at least a hundred times on a mock-up of the facility on Jolo Island. The forty-eight men moved toward a fenced compound set about three hundred meters away from the main complex. Inside the eight-foot-high fence topped with razor wire, there was a bunker shaped like a pyramid with the top half cut off. According to the intelligence Moreno had been able to gather, it was built according to U.S. government specifications. He had been able to find the exact same type of bunker in Subic Bay at the abandoned American base there. It was used to hold precision munitions when the American fleet operated out of Subic – at least, that's what the Americans had publicly claimed. The persistent rumor was that the bunker had held the fleet's nuclear weapons.

Moreno grimaced as he pushed through a spiny bush. The Americans lied. They lied, and then they said no one else could do what they did. They bombed and invaded at will, yet acted like they were protecting the world.

Moreno paused in the cover of the bushes as four pairs of men crawled up to the fence and began snipping the links with bolt cutters. He looked left and right and was satisfied that his flank security sections were doing exactly as they had been trained. There was no sign of any guard, which he found surprising and a bit disconcerting. He could not believe the Americans would leave what was supposed to be in the bunker unguarded. Had the intelligence they'd bought at such great price been wrong?

They made four holes in the fence. The lead scouts crawled through. Moreno forced himself to hold back and let the scouts do their job. A minute passed. Another. Then a dark figure reappeared near the fence, gesturing. Moreno led the rest of the force out of the bushes and through the fence. The force deployed around the bunker as he and four men went to the large steel doors.

It was as the source had said. A lock was bolted in place on a thick hasp. One of the men shrugged off a backpack and removed a bottle of powerful acid. The others stepped back as the man donned a breathing mask, then opened the bottle and began to drip the acid on the lock. They had timed this on the same grade and amount of steel, and it would take fifteen minutes. But it was quiet, as opposed to the quick work an explosive charge would make of the lock.

As one poured the acid, other men checked the outside of the doors, searching for any alarm systems. There were none. The arrogance of the lack of security systems only played into what Moreno already believed about the Americans.

He could feel the tension mounting among his men as each minute passed. They had expected to meet at least one guard. If there were none posted, then there was a good chance there would be a roving patrol. The last thing they needed was gunfire or any sort of alarm to be given. Everything relied on stealth. Moreno's men were all armed with silenced weapons, but the guards would certainly not be. One shot and the plan would unravel. There were contingencies, but Moreno preferred not to have to use them.