Hostile Contact. Gordon Kent

the Chinese, a sniper, had apparently killed two of his own men before he was killed himself. That made no sense to Lao. Lao thought that someone else must have killed the sniper and used his weapon. Perhaps the forensics men would find something to prove his theory—or perhaps they wouldn’t.

      He used his teacup to warm his hands as Tsung brought him an older man, his thin trousers flapping in the wind. Lao bowed a little and the old man gave him a nervous smile.

      “Tell him that I’m a policeman.”

      Tsung spoke to the old man in careful Arabic. It wasn’t his best language, and it was one the old man probably only knew from the Qur’an, but they communicated.

      Lao stood patiently, sipping tea and offering it to his witness, while the old man told the story of the evening in halting driblets. Lao taped it. He didn’t speak much Arabic and he wasn’t sure he’d trust anyone in Dar to translate, but he had to keep a record.

      The old man pointed out the commanding view that the little hill village had of the highway below them in the valley. He described the plane’s landing on the road, and he described the other car’s driving away after the plane had left. Yes, he was sure. No, he had no idea who had been in the car.

      Lao swallowed the rest of his tea and spat out the leaves.

      Maybe Chen was alive, after all. Lao smiled without humor: if Chen was alive, then he could clean up his own messes. Like the unfinished operation to target the Jefferson. Lao disliked executing operations in whose planning he’d had no part—let Chen be alive and take it over! The operation, he thought, had been put together too hastily, too emotionally—it seemed part of that nervous hysteria he’d felt in Beijing. He never thought he’d be sorry that Chen was dead (if he was dead), but he’d be delighted to have him rise now from the rubble of this Pakistani village and take over.

      “Tsung,” he said. The younger man came almost at a trot. Eager. Lao was wondering if Tsung could be trusted to take over some of the details of the Jefferson operation and free him, Lao, to concentrate on Chen. “You’ve run agents among the Pakistani military?” he said.

      Tsung grinned. “They don’t like to call themselves agents. ‘Friends of China,’ meaning they have an agenda that matches ours somewhere.” He made a joined-hands gesture, fingers of one hand inserted between the fingers of the other like meshing gears.

      “I have a task for you.”

      Tsung said something about being honored. Lao ignored it. He skipped details—the name of the Jefferson, the use of the submarines to pass data, the agent on the west coast of the United States—and explained about the plan to tap into Islamic hatred of America and to launch a small-boat attack on an American warship.

      NCIS HQ.

      Alan was in Dukas’s office at NCIS headquarters at nine-thirty, eager to hit the road for Jakarta.

      Dukas was supposed to be making the travel arrangements; his assistant, the until-then absent Dick Triffler, was going to brief Alan and then go along to ride shotgun.

      “Shotgun, hell,” Triffler said. “My son’s pitching tonight for his Little League team, and being Dad is more important than playing cops and robbers. Sorry, Commander.”

      Alan grinned. “You wouldn’t say that if Mike was here.”

      “I’d say it in spades if Mike was here! You think I’m afraid of Mike?”

      Triffler was a tall, slender African American with what Alan had to think of as “class.” His skin was the color of caramel; his face was handsome and lean; his voice was a tenor, his enunciation pure northeastern US. He was not afraid of Mike Dukas, that was true; in fact, he emphasized their differences whenever he got the chance. Their shared office, for example, was divided by a wall of white plastic crates, into which the obsessively neat Triffler had put potted plants, sculpture, books—anything, in fact, that would block his view of the squalid mess where Dukas ruled.

      Alan laughed. “I think you’re about as afraid of Mike as I am, Dick. But, uh, this is an operation, and I really am going to Jakarta, and I really do need some—”

      Triffler waved a long hand. “Okay! I know! Uncle Sam says I have to go. Tomorrow! Okay? So I get there twenty-four hours after you, so what? You take a nap, have some local beer, watch TV. I’ll catch up.” Triffler shot his cuffs, maybe to show off his cuff links. “I don’t want to spend any more time in a germ pit like Jakarta than I have to, anyway.”

      Alan didn’t comment on “germ pit.” He had heard enough about Triffler to know he was obsessive about cleanliness, too—the only man in NCIS who slid a coaster under your coffee cup when you picked it up. “Well—if it’ll work—”

      “Sure, it’ll work. I got here at twenty of eight this morning, Dukas already had the file and a memo on top of the pile of other jobs he’s tasked me with while I was away, so I’ve read it and looked at the map and I’m up to speed.”

      “If you wouldn’t take time off—” a voice came from the other side of the room divider—“you wouldn’t get tasked.”

      “Hey, Mike—when did you sneak in?”

      “I didn’t sneak, Al, I walked; you and Mister Clean were too busy dissing me to notice. And how are you this morning, Mister Triffler?”

      “I was telling Lieutenant-Commander Craik that I’m not afraid of you, is how I am.”

      “Good. Nobody should live in fear. You rested after your vacation?”

      “It was not a vacation! It was quality time with my family.” Triffler smiled at Alan. “Some people don’t have families. Unsociable, outsider people.”

      “Somebody has to do the scut work while you daddies are having quality time,” Dukas’s voice growled. “Will you guys get to it, please?”

      They spent three hours. Triffler explained—redundantly, but there was no stopping him—what a comm plan was and what the Jakarta plan was. He went through the structure that Alan would have to build around the comm plan—walking a route before he left the mark that was supposed to set up the meeting, memorizing codes to communicate with his team (that is, Triffler), planning for a busted meeting and an escape.

      “Which won’t happen,” Triffler said, “because there isn’t going to be any meeting to bust, right? This is a dead plan, right? Uncle’s paying to send us to Jakarta so Mister Dukas can cross an item off a list, right?” He raised his voice. “IS THAT RIGHT, MIKE?”

      “Just do your job.”

      

      Dick Triffler was down to shirtsleeves after an hour more of briefing Alan, revealing wide yellow suspenders to go with his yellow-on-beige striped shirt. His tie looked like heavy embroidery, also brown and yellow with flecks of green. He made Alan feel dowdy, even in uniform.

      “Uh, what will you be wearing in Jakarta?” Alan said.

      Triffler looked startled. He spread his arms as if to say, These. “Work clothes,” he said. He looked more than a little like a model in GQ.

      “I thought I’d wear jeans.”

      Triffler coasted over that by saying they weren’t going undercover, so there was no need to think of disguise. “We’re just two guys who happen to work for the Navy, having a look around Jakarta. In and out in two days. One suit, one wrinkle-free blazer, two neckties, four shirts.”

      “And blue jeans.”

      Triffler looked at Alan’s uniform, then his shirt, then his polyester tie, and apparently decided to say nothing. He got them both coffee—great coffee, because he was also obsessive about that—and sat again at his uncluttered desk. “You go in,” he said. “Normally, you’d have watchers. This time, only me. No problem; there’s nothing to watch. You do a route to a cannon, or whatever it is where you leave the mark. If we thought