Hostile Contact. Gordon Kent

He began to cough.

      “There is another matter, Colonel Lao.” The General’s aged geniality had vanished. “It actually falls under your responsibilities at Dar es Salaam—a Middle Eastern matter. I speak of the loss of face we suffered when the Americans shot down two of our aircraft and got their agents and Shreed out of Pakistan. We were made to look like children in this matter. We were humiliated in front of the Pakistanis. We will pay for this failure for years. Admittedly, we may have been too ‘forward leaning.’ That is not for me to say. But we have been tasked to register our anger with the power that interfered with us.”

      Lao had an armful of critically secret folders and was burning to begin his investigation. The idea that there was further business irritated him. “Yes, sir?”

      “We are going to target a strike on one of their carriers. The one that was used in Pakistan.”

      The General opened yet another file and tossed it on the desk.

      Lao had to change his grip on his stack of folders and put them on the floor. The Westerner was watching him now, as if judging him. “Yes, sir?” he repeated.

      “USS Thomas Jefferson. We will hit her through surrogates. The Americans will get the message.”

      Lao’s heart pounded, and he thought, They’ll kill us. “Has this been approved by the War Council?”

      “This operation was planned by the War Council.” The Westerner seemed less watchful, as if he had passed some test. “It is called Jade Talon. You will execute it. Use Islamic surrogates. I have appended contacts that we recommend.”

      Lao opened the new file with trepidation. The first item was a photograph of a Nimitz-class carrier. There followed a detailed analysis of the possibility of crippling a Nimitz-class carrier with a speedboat full of explosives. Lao looked up. “I don’t believe this will sink a carrier.”

      “Sink? Probably not, although we want you to use several boats. But a nice big hole? Perhaps leaking radioactive material? Hundreds of dead sailors?”

      “And how are these small boats to target a carrier?”

      “I’m sorry, Colonel?”

      “How are a group of Islamic surrogates in tiny boats supposed to find this carrier and strike it?”

      “Jefferson will be off the coast of Africa for sixty days. We have a method to pass accurate targeting information.”

      “Is this my operation?”

      “Absolutely. Only, do not fail. And make finding Chen your priority. Am I clear?” The General was no longer smiling.

      “Perfectly clear, sir.”

      Lao picked up all the files and saluted and turned. The room wheeled as if he was dizzy, but his mind was utterly clear. He knew that he had been sent to walk a razor’s edge.

      

      “Does he know what this is really about?” the General said when the door had closed. The civilian snorted and shook his ugly hair. He lit another cigarette. The General sat back, hands folded. “He must have heard things.”

      “He doesn’t know about the money. Nobody knows about the money.”

      “Perhaps we should have told him.”

      “No!” The hoarse voice was rude; the General’s eyebrows arched a millimeter. “No. If he finds Chen, he finds the money. If he doesn’t find Chen—” He shrugged.

      “He is a good man,” the General said. “There is no real chance for a speedboat to cripple a carrier, is there?”

      “It sends a message. Either way. American public opinion is fickle. It might move the US away from Africa. A lucky hit? It might damage the reactor and kill everyone on board. It might call into question the whole legality of placing a nuclear reactor on a vessel in international waters.”

      “But Lao? Whether he finds Chen or not, he loses.”

      The civilian shrugged again.

      

      Over the Pacific.

      “Craik and Dukas,” Jerry Piat said to himself, jammed into the middle of the five-across seats in the belly of a 747.

      He was traveling to Jakarta economy class. Jerry was just past having been a hotshot CIA case officer. He had always traveled well, first or business class on cover passports or diplomatic ones, and the reality of an economy seventeen-hour flight from Washington, with a layover in Manila, had settled into his bones. Being fired from the CIA means you have to travel like this, he thought. Even walking around the cramped aisles didn’t help the swelling in his feet.

      Booze cost cash and was harder to get in the back of the plane. It was claustrophobic, with kids screaming and their mothers trying to ignore them, couples chatting or fighting. Too much. Not Jerry’s scene.

      The flight kept him awake and gave him too much time to think. He kept thinking of the messages and the plan he was on his way to implement. Too Byzantine, he felt. Too complex. The plan of an analyst, not an operator. He didn’t like Ray Suter, the desk-driver who had thought it up, didn’t trust him, thought him a boob when it came to the street. He didn’t like Marvin Helmer, Suter’s henchman, who was some big hotshot in Seattle now but whom Jerry remembered as just one more Ops Directorate cowboy. Jerry wanted revenge against the traitors who had brought George Shreed down as much as anybody, but he didn’t like the Suter-Helmer plan—or the planner. Photographs, blackmail, and a smear campaign. Desk-driver shit. Like giving Castro an exploding cigar. Jesus. He shook his head, raised the plastic cup of wine to his lips and hated the taste.

      Fuck that. In Jakarta, he would make up his own plan. Anything could happen in Jakarta. He began to shut out the plane as he worked it through. He had twelve hours left in his flight. By the time he landed, he’d be ready to act.

      “Dukas and Craik,” he murmured to himself, and tasted the wine again and concentrated on a simpler plan.

      Kill them.

       2

      NCIS HQ.

      Alan Craik showed up at Dukas’s office a few minutes after Dukas got there himself. Alan wasn’t a stranger to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, even had a somewhat tenuous designation as “agent” because of past work for Dukas. Still, he had had to go through some rigmarole with security that had cost him time.

      “Hey, Mike.”

      “Jesus, put out the cigarette! The tobacco police’ll be here with a warrant!”

      Alan crushed the cigarette against the sole of his shoe. “I quit, before—you know—then I—” He shrugged.

      “Surprised some turkey didn’t collar you out in the corridor.” Dukas took the cigarette butt and doused it in a half-full coffee cup and hid it under some trash, all the while studying Alan’s face. “I’ve seen you look worse.” In fact, he was surprised at how relatively normal Alan looked—drawn, sleepless, but okay except for a new tic that drew one corner of his mouth down in a kind of spasm and then was gone.

      Alan gave a lopsided grin. “Death warmed over?”

      “Practically lifelike. Anyway, enough about you; let’s talk about me for a while. My injury feels pretty lousy, thanks for asking. And you noticed I’m wearing my Bugs Bunny rig—how perceptive of you.”

      “Oh, shit, Mike, I’m sorry—Christ, all I think about is myself—”

      Dukas raised his hand, palm open, to shut Craik down, and said, “How’s Rose?” and Alan said she was fine, fine, doing her fixed-wing prep so she could fly out to Edwards and fly F-18s before she went into astronaut training. “While I