I spent a minute studying the water, gauging the wind. The currents.
“Ralph, how far do you think it is to shore?”
He surveyed the distance. “I’d say about a mile, mile and a half.”
“You were in the special forces; how long would it take a Navy SEAL to swim that far?”
“A SEAL, with this wind… maybe thirty-five, forty minutes.”
As I stepped toward Aina I heard him mumble, “Take a Ranger twenty-five.” I took a moment to compare the swim time with the time of the fire’s origination.
“He’s on the mainland,” I said. “Aina, we need to send out an APB, have officers start sweeping the shore. Get some. Wait-” As I stared at the shoreline I saw the news helicopter again. This time I could read the writing on the side: Channel 11. “They’re filming this. Ralph, see if you can get us a feed. Pull some strings if you have to. I want to see if they’ve caught our guy on camera.” I saw Lien-hua coming toward us, picking her way through the crowd.
“Maybe we could have the helicopter crew help look for him,”
Aina suggested.
“No good,” I said. “I don’t trust the media, and the more control they have, the worse off we are. We need to get in the air ourselves.”
Lien-hua arrived, and while Aina and Ralph made the calls, I ran with her toward the amphib base’s landing pad.
The man on the phone had been very clear that if the device was not intact they would kill Cassandra. So, before delivering it, Austin decided to take a quick look and make sure it hadn’t been damaged during his swim across the bay.
He bypassed the zipper and instead tore open the waterproof bag and pulled out the black duffel bag inside. He didn’t rip this open, though, but unzipped it carefully. The device was enclosed in a protective foam wrap, which he gently unfolded.
The device looked a bit like a video camera supported on an extendable tripod base. The unit’s body had a laser focus and a satellite dish the size of Austin’s hand. An eight-inch video screen was mounted in the front, and a large removable battery pack with radioactive warning labels hung from its belly. If he didn’t know better, he’d say it was some kind of laser tracking unit or remote listening device, or maybe a high-tech thermal imager. But he did know better; he’d seen those two men use it the previous night.
Austin thought this thing might have something to do with the research Cassandra was doing, but he couldn’t be certain. One time she’d mentioned a project she was working on for the government, but he hadn’t pried. After fourteen years as a SEAL, he knew that keeping secrets meant keeping your job. Now, he wished he’d asked her more about it. In any case, the device didn’t seem to have retained any damage from its trip across the bay. No way to tell for sure, but it looked intact. He folded the foam around it and zippered the duffel shut.
Time: 1844 hours.
Cassandra would be dead in seventy-six minutes unless he delivered this device.
Austin pulled his combat knife out of its sheath, cut the rope off his waist, and tossed his snorkeling gear into the ocean. Then he strapped the device to his back using two elasticized ropes as shoulder straps and sprinted up the pier.
I smacked my hand against the stucco siding of the air transport building.
Two stern MPs blocked my path. “I’m sorry, sir,” one of them said, “orders from the admiral.”
Ralph appeared beside me. “Aina sent out an APB, they’re scouring the shipyards-” Then he saw the expression on my face.
“What’s the problem here?”
“They won’t get us a bird,” I said. “We’re on a military base, not civilian soil, so they said they would take care of this themselves.”
“What?” He glared at the MPs. “Let me talk to your superior officer.”
“Wait,” said Lien-hua. “Time’s not on our side anymore. Finding the right person, going through the right channels, getting clearance, we don’t have that kind of time. What did Channel 11 give you?”
Ralph shook his head. “We got nothing,” he said. “They were filming the fire, not the shore…” He looked toward the sky.
“What the-”
I followed his gaze. The news chopper had changed direction and was heading back along the beach of the mainland. “Oh no,”
I said. “They’re going for an exclusive. They’ll spook him. Ralph, can you-”
“I’m on it,” he snarled, pulling out his phone again. Before speaking into his phone, though, he told Lien-hua and me, “You two get to the mainland. Now.”
Catching up to Hunter was the key to finding Cassandra, and we had just over an hour to do it. Lien-hua and I hurried to the car.
I pulled out the car keys, but she grabbed them from my hand.
“I’ll drive.”