A Fulton Recovery with six people was dicey at best. The basic concept was sending up a cable attached to a small balloon. The six people would all link together their harnesses to the cable. The Combat Talon would come flying in low, below the float, and "whiskers" on the nose of the plane would catch the cable and draw it to the center, where it would be snatched and held.

The six people would then be jerked up into the air, their momentum causing the cable to swing underneath the plane, where it would be caught by a small crane on the back ramp. The crane would then winch the people into the cargo bay. Vaughn had done one Fulton Recovery, as a single, two years ago, and it had been quite an experience. With six, he envisioned some bumps and bruises – that is, if all six of them survived to make it to exfiltration.

He turned as Tai stirred. She sat up, blinking sleep out of her eyes, and he saw that moment of confusion as her conscious brain tried to figure out where she was. He'd experienced that himself many times in the past.

Her eyes focused on him.

"Everything all right?"

"As all right as things can be sitting on top of a mountain full of terrorists," he said.

"I've been hearing a lot of trucks moving over there."

He nodded to the southern side of the mountain.

"Headlights going back and forth. Something's happening."

Tai checked her watch.

"Not much longer."

"What are you going to do?" he asked her.

"What do you mean?"

"You're supposed to be dead."

Tai nodded.

"Yeah. I figure I'd best find a hide spot up here. Cover the infiltration and then the exfiltration. The guys coming in will have a plan to take down Abayon without my participation. I'll cover your back when you come back up for the exfil."

"You think there's a double-cross?" Vaughn asked.

"I don't think we can trust Royce or Orson," Tai said.

"And I think I had too many malfunctions coming in."

"Why did they try to take you out and not me?" Vaughn asked. The question had been on his mind the past hour. Tai sighed and leaned back on her rucksack.

"Because I'm Military Intelligence."

"Yeah, Orson said you came from – "

"I didn't just come from," Tai said.

"I still am."

Vaughn lay the MP-5 across his knees and stared at her.

"I'm a simple guy. Why don't you lay it out for me?"

"Some people very high in the military intelligence community have become concerned about…" She seemed to be searching for the right words.

"…certain operations occurring around the world."

"Such as this one?"

"Yes."

"Because?"

"Because we're not sure who is sanctioning these operations."

"Ah, shit," Vaughn muttered.

"The orders are not coming down the military chain," Tai said.

"Our requests to the alphabet soups – most particularly the CIA and NSA – have been met with blanket denials."

"It could just be highly classified and compartmentalized," Vaughn said.

"That's what Royce says," Tai acknowledged.

"And the goal of this mission seems in line with national security interests. As were a couple of others we got wind of."

"But…?"

"But there are some people in the military who are very concerned that there might be something else going on."

"Such as?" Tai shrugged.

"We don't know. That's why I'm here."

"And that's why someone tried to take you out on the jump," Vaughn said. She reluctantly nodded.

"They doctored my records to make it look like instead of reporting prisoner abuse in Iraq, I instigated it and was going to be charged. Just the type of person Section Eight comes looking for."

"This is fucked," Vaughn said.

"If that's the case, they're not going to let you on that cable for exfiltration."

"What makes you think they're going to let you on? What makes you even think the plane is going to come by to do the snatch?"

Vaughn stared at her.

"That bad?"

"Could be. I had three malfunctions coming in."

"Fuck."

"Got that right."

"What's going on?" Royce demanded when he saw that the simulation operations center was empty.

"Where is everyone?" Foster held out a folder with a red top secret band across the cover.

"They all were called back to the real operations center for a real emergency."

"What happened?" Royce asked as he opened the folder.

"Someone took out Johnston Atoll and escaped with four canisters of ZX nerve agent."

Royce scanned the message traffic. Over a thousand estimated dead. The Pacific Fleet was on alert, beginning to scour the sea and sky for whoever had done it. He closed the folder.

"No one has any idea who did this?"

"So far nobody has claimed responsibility. But the amount of ZX they have is enough to wipe out a major city."

"And our operation?"

"The simulation was shut down thirty minutes ago."

"And our operation?" Royce pressed.

Foster nodded.

"I've kept the message traffic up as if the operations center and the mission are still running."

"Good."

"The team is taking off from Okinawa as we speak."

"Very good."

Royce waited until Foster went back to his bank of computers and message traffic before opening his laptop. He scanned his own traffic, and there was nothing from his contact about the Johnston Atoll issue. The second team was en route from Hong Kong to Manila and would be arriving shortly.

Hong Kong had gone smoothly, except word about the Golden Lily was already in the media. That was unfortunate. Royce had been tracking Abayon for many years and he respected the old man. They'd short-circuited him in Hong Kong, but Royce was wary – he knew Abayon would not move without having carefully considered the situation.

His satphone buzzed and he checked the screen. A message from the Organization. He hooked the phone to his computer and downloaded the message, allowing the computer to decipher the text.

ABU SAYEF SUSPECTED BEHIND JOHNSTON ATOLL RAID AND ZX THEFT. HIGH LIKELIHOOD THEY ARE ON BOARD AN OLD DIESEL SUBMARINE. DESTINATION UNKNOWN. CHECK FOR LOCATION. PREPARE A TEAM FOR ACTION. ABAYON'S INTENTIONS UNCERTAIN. HANDLE WITH DISCRETION AND EXTREME PREJUDICE.

Royce cursed when he finished reading the message. It was a bit late to be getting this now. There was no way he could prepare a new team quickly. Which meant he had to use a team he already had. He glanced at the board for the location of the second Talon. Less than an hour from drop. He'd have to use them after they took care of their current mission.

Royce sighed. Check for location? He had no doubt the entire Pacific Fleet was doing that. And if the Abu Sayef were using a submarine, they had to have a line on it. Royce had worked the Pacific theater long enough to know that.

He hooked his computer to the Sim-Center computer and then accessed the Pacific Fleet's mainframe using his passwords. He quickly found the program he was looking for: SOSUS – the Navy's Sound Surveillance System, which blanketed the entire Pacific Ocean.

Developed at the height of the cold war, SOSUS consisted of groups of hydrophones inside large tanks, each almost as big as a large oil storage tank. They were sunk to the bottom of the ocean and connected by cables, which were buried to prevent the Soviets from trailing cable cutters off their trawlers and severing the lines.

The series of underwater hydrophones were so sensitive that since the cold war, the Navy occasionally let marine biologists have access to the system to track whale migration. The entire system was coordinated using FLTSATCOM – the Fleet Satellite Communication System – which Royce currently was accessed into.

He brought up all submarine activity and their corresponding tags: their identifiers. The Navy had belatedly realized after hooking the SOSUS system together that while it could pinpoint a submarine's location, it wasn't able to tell friendly subs from unfriendly. And since the U.S. Navy didn't know exactly where half its own subs were – the boomers, nuclear missile launchers patrolling wide areas of ocean entirely at their commanders' discretion – they had to come up with a way when SOSUS pinpointed a sub to know whether it was friendly or enemy. Thus, every U.S. and NATO sub had an ID code painted in special laser reflective paint on the upper deck.