Chapter 23
2308 Words
Chapter 23
Daniel tried to assess him, but the man was so totally non-descript that Daniel never would have noticed him on the street. Now they sat in a small restaurant at Skagit County airport, which sat in a far corner of Washington State.
“Captain Smith,” the man they’d flown across the country to meet smiled with a bit of chagrin, “My real name, I promise.”
Captain Smith of the Canadian Special Operations Aviation Squadron. SOAS was one of those special operations groups that almost no one had heard of. They weren’t Delta or SEAL or SAS, but they were impressively effective in their own quiet way. Daniel had read the reports carefully when Beale had recommended he contact them.
He and Alice, Majors Beale and Henderson, and Captain Smith sat upstairs in the restaurant looking out over parked private planes and the sleepy runways. At the far end of the room, a half dozen vacant tables scattered across the space between them, sat the two Black Hawk crew chiefs, Tim and John.
No one else. The waitress had returned downstairs to fill their various breakfast orders.
Almost lost in the rainy haze, dull gray against the gray-green of the moss-covered fir trees, the C-17 transport lurked on an unused taxiway at the back of the airport. The flight crew had remained there as a standing guard. The flight engineer was downstairs getting some breakfasts to go for them.
No scheduled flights bounced through Skagit, not until the tulip season. The waitress, recognizing them as obvious out-of-towners, had regaled them with stories about the local farms which supplied ninety percent of the nation’s tulips. The wall was hung with dozens of colorful photos offering mute testament to her statements about the number of sight-seeing flights in the high season. Each incongruously draped with red-and-green Christmas garlands that had seen a few too many seasons.
The two crew chiefs were sitting nonchalantly by the head of the stairs at the opposite end of their otherwise vacant dining area. Big John, the giant of the pair, was riffling a deck of cards. Tim, “Crazy Tim” Daniel had been informed, had tossed some coins on the table. Daniel had learned enough about them to know that no matter how casual they appeared, they were intently watching the parking lot out the window, listening for stray noises from the main restaurant below, and guarding each other’s back. They moved with that perfect harmony of good friends and immense training.
“Skagit County airport in mid-December,” Captain Smith observed. “Stone quiet and perhaps a twenty-minute flight for the U.S.-Canadian border. I find those are interesting aspects of your curious locale for a meeting.”
“Captain Nathaniel Smith?” Alice asked with surprise, emphasizing the first name.
He nodded easily.
“You flew the Sudanese mission in 2006?”
The man didn’t move. He’d shifted from a pleasant man with a light British accent to cold steel in a single heartbeat.
The crew chiefs sensing the change visibly tensed at the far end of the room. The Majors set down their coffee cups ever so nonchalantly, probably to empty their hands in case sudden action was required.
Daniel braced to interpose himself between the man and Alice. Captain Smith would be easy to remember now. The captain, so common-looking a moment ago, now radiated the chill of death.
“That was well done, sir.” Alice held out her hand. “I’d be honored to shake your hand.”
Captain Smith gingerly shook her hand as if she were a grenade about to go off in his grasp.
Daniel recognized the look, as if the Captain’s brain had just been sideswiped by a speeding locomotive. Daniel often felt that way around Alice.
The two Majors inspected the Captain more carefully, but Daniel could see by their quick exchange of looks that neither knew what Alice was referring to. He didn’t either.
“How?” the Captain’s voice was rough.
“That was approximately the same time that I was performing a departmental assessment of flight abilities of various allied Special Operations operators. Your career has been, I believe ‘distinguished’ would be a fitting word. Naturally when I learned that the asset of a close U.S. ally had flown the mission, there was an eighty-five percent probability you had been on that flight.”
“Uh, I was commander of the mission.”
“Seventy-two percent probability. Yes!” Alice raised her hand palm out and the Captain high-fived her before he could stop himself.
Captain Smith glanced around the table, eyed each of them warily before returning his attention to Alice. He rubbed his fingers together as if the high-five had somehow changed their texture.
“What are you?”
Daniel leaned forward, ready to jump to her defense, but she simply offered one of those disarming smiles.
“I’m a specialist in logistics. There are perhaps a dozen people in the world who could recognize your trademark actions, if they bothered to look, maybe only a half dozen. I’m one of them.”
Once again he assessed the circle about the table, then offered a soft laugh.
“My job is to be invisible. I find it, ah, less than reassuring that I am not.”
Alice patted his arm. “If I were allowed, I could tell you some stories about these two that would alarm them no end.” She nodded toward the Majors. “Several of them with well over ninety percent probability.”
Henderson positively blanched, but Beale nodded. “That would not surprise me. Alice can be remarkably astute, Captain.”
“So I see.”
He stood and took his coffee cup over to the glass pot the waitress had left on a warmer plate when she’d taken breakfast order.
Daniel could see that his hands were not rock steady. Apparently the captain made the same observation of himself. He stopped pouring for a moment, took a deep breath, then finished the task with rock-steady hands. Captain Smith returned to the table and took his seat with a calm that almost belied the moment he’d needed to recover.
“And what remarkably astute observation has caused me to cross into U.S. territory for such an eclectic conference?”
Daniel had thought about sliding up to the subject carefully, to test the man out. But if Alice approved of Captain Smith, and he in turn was apparently coming ‘round to appreciating Alice, perhaps he would forego that step.
“We need a meeting location.”
The Captain did not state the obvious, that U.S. soil had thousands of locations just as obscure as the present one. He knew that he wouldn’t have been contacted if that were the issue. He nodded for Daniel to continue.
“As I’m sure you just surmised, it cannot be on U.S. soil. Yet we want it to be very near. It must have immense security that can be implemented by a minimal force.”
“As the White House Chief of Staff is seated across the table from me, I can assume some measure of the care required. Though your lack of Secret Service escort must be truly irritating someone back in Washington, D.C. Does that also speak to the scale of your ultimate operational requirements?” The Captain waited with that amazing stillness Daniel had witnessed in so many of the Special Operations soldiers.
Highest security was required for this mission. And with each person they added, that needed secrecy became less reliable. Daniel nodded toward the flight crew presently in the room.
“This is it. Full team. Maximum protection. Maximum.” He let the last word hang.
The Captain whistled quietly.
Achieving a truly high-level protection force with only four people was a contradiction of terms. A simple bodyguard detail even for Daniel would normally be two or three. The President’s public visits, between advance site prep, security, press, and so on, often exceeded five hundred people not counting local law enforcement for crowd control. President Clinton had once planned to visit the African nation of Burkina Faso. They’d had to cancel when the advance team determined that there were insufficient hotel rooms in existence in the entire capital city of Ouagadougou to accommodate the President’s full entourage.
“We’re the site approval and inspection team. I doubt there will be many more for the meeting itself.” Daniel tried not to think about that. “A day of site prep. Probably two nights and one day on site.”
“Don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who will be visiting?”
Daniel glanced at Alice for a moment.
After a hesitation, she nodded her head.
Daniel could feel his shoulders ache as if he’d just done fifty reps with too much weight. Every single thing Alice had said so far had played out. From the arms smugglers in Pakistan, to Captain Nathaniel Smith, to the back check that North Korea actually would be sending someone.
Except for the absolute impossibility of the situation, he had no reason to doubt her next conclusion either. North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un was leaving the safety of his country to meet privately with the President of the United States.
Alice reaffirmed the nod more certainly. Brushing her hair aside to glare at him without even the partial screen of her bangs.
Daniel resisted the urge to sigh. This grew trickier by the minute.
“We’re unsure,” he had to decide how completely to trust the Captain. He hadn’t even told Majors Beale and Henderson yet about Alice’s conclusions. Need to know. Well, to keep the President safe, they now needed to know. All three of them. He took a deep breath and forged on, keeping his voice low.
“I wouldn’t be shocked if we were hosting two heads of state.”
That caused enough reaction at the table for the two crew chiefs seated at the far end of the room to spring to their feet and slip hands onto their sidearms.
Beale recovered first and waved for them to stand down.
Tim and Big John returned to their seats very slowly. But not until they performed a careful scan of the room, out the window to the sparsely used parking lot, and down the stairs to where the lone morning waitress was waiting for the breakfast order to be cooked. They finally settled back into their chairs.
Daniel turned back to face Captain Smith and the Majors. Daniel offered a slow nod as confirmation that he too believed the assessment.
The Captain didn’t need to know which other country was involved. The fact that the U.S. President would likely be holding a secret meeting on Canadian soil with a tiny security detail was already too much information.
The Majors had obviously reached other conclusions based on their deeper knowledge of the situation. They looked even more sober than usual. They’d been ready to fly into North Korea. That hadn’t fazed them for a moment. That they might well be transporting Kim Jong-un, the country’s Supreme Leader, was a different matter entirely.
The chill remained only half a moment longer.
By the stairs, one of the crew chiefs scraped his chair back loudly sending a clear signal. The cheery waitress climbed the stairs wielding a large tray piled with dishes. The smells of a hot breakfast reminded Daniel that all he’d had in the last twenty-four hours was a quick sandwich at his desk and a finger-sized candy cane.
Everyone slipped into casual-mode so easily that Daniel had trouble crediting the room’s tension from a moment before.
“Did you ever sail among the San Juan Islands, Alice?” Captain Smith asked it as if they had been discussing nothing but sailing for the last half hour.
Right in character, she shook her head, rested her elbow on the table, and propped her chin on her hand. So attentive she appeared to be flirting. Daniel was a little surprised at the hot trickle of jealousy up his spine despite his mind knowing the reaction to be ridiculous.
“I really prefer the Canadian Gulf Islands myself,” Smith waved a negligent hand out the window and toward the northwest using the excuse to slouch a little closer to Alice. “Quiet up there. Fewer folk, on and off the water. There’s this little bakery in Pender Harbor, fresh baked sourdough every morning. Whenever I sail in there, I buy a loaf and a stick of butter. That bread alone is as fine a meal as they set in any landside restaurant. No offense, ma’am,” he nodded to the waitress.
“None taken. I’ve had that bread when we’ve gone up gunkholing on our little boat.” She turned to Alice. “Fine eating if you get the chance, Miss.”
“Gunkholing?”
“Definitely not from ‘round about here. Gunkholing is, well, it’s just puttering around for the hell of it. Pardon my language.”
Daniel took a deep inhale and let it out slowly as he received his two eggs over easy on English muffins with hash browns and bacon.
When the waitress finally left, after regaling them the best way to cook fresh Dungeness crab on the boat barbeque, Smith returned them to the main topic.
“There is a little island that should interest you. A tad bit over eighty kilometers to the northwest. Privately-owned island. A single building. Non-resident owner. Only access is by air, unless you have the control code for the dock crane. That will better explain itself when viewed in person. High cliffs, large front lawn. Trees and, at this time of year, a truly deep sense of privacy. Not many fools sailing the channels in mid-December.”
“How well known?” Major Beale asked.
“Not very,” Smith dug a fork into his tall stack with bacon and sausage. “When the joker who built the crazy place was looking for an on-call helicopter service, he wanted the very best. Ended up calling a buddy of mine, retired SAS pilot who had moved from Glasgow to open a small Vancouver helicopter service. Flies for him, and still does the odd flight for me to keep his hand in.”
He turned to the Majors, “Either of you ever flown with James McKee?”
Emily Beale burst out laughing. “Tried to pick me up in the midst of a deep-ocean search and rescue operation back when I was a first lieutenant and he was a charming son-of-a-b***h freshly done with wife number four.”
“Yes,” Smith smiled. “That would be James. You’re his type, doesn’t surprise me.”
“What?” Beale asked. “Female?”
Smith laughed. “Exactly. Also he’s very partial to a woman who flies. Regrettably he’s on vacation to see his second or maybe it’s his third set of kids. They’re in London.”
“Do we need him?” Major Henderson’s voice was little more than a growl. His protectiveness of his wife, even for events long before they met, made Daniel feel less bad about his own reaction of jealousy about Alice.
“Don’t need him for a second,” Smith offered. “All you need is the ten numbers of the security code, which I happen to know.”
- Writer
