Brett was my designated medic. A former Force Recon Marine, he had spent the last decade as a paramilitary officer in the CIA. Knuckles was my second in command, and a Navy SEAL. I didn’t hold their previous employers against them, being Army and all, because they were some of the best men I’d ever operated with—even if Knuckles dressed like he was trying to audition for Bachelor in Paradise.
Actually, he’d never have to do that, because he continually had women auditioning to be in his private version of the show. It sort of sickened me.
Knuckles said, “Since you let Veep go to sleep last night, I figured it was okay to get some breakfast on your dime.”
I ignored the jibe and said, “You guys remember Dunkin from back in the day?”
They looked at him, trying to place the face, and then the recognition dawned. Brett said, “Oh, yeah. I remember. The guy could dunk a basketball better than me. Is that right?”
Dunkin went red in the face and Knuckles said, “Take a seat.”
Brett scooted over for Dunkin and I sat next to Knuckles. Changing the subject away from his callsign, Dunkin said, “Who’s Veep? Someone new on the team?”
I said, “Remember that op in Europe? The last one you did before you left the Taskforce? The kidnapping?”
“Yeah, of course. With the vice president’s son?”
“Yep. That’s Veep.”
Nicholas Seacrest—Veep—was the millennial on my team. An Air Force Special Operations Combat Controller, he got his callsign because his father had been the vice president of the United States, the same man who was now the U.S. president. For security reasons, Veep went by his mother’s maiden name. Getting him on my team had taken a little bit of arm-twisting, but Veep had wanted to come over, and I liked the skills he’d shown during the operation. Since I’d pretty much saved the day by rescuing him and several other prominent politicians’ kids from certain death, I had a few blue chips available to help it along.
Dunkin said, “Wait, Seacrest’s father isn’t the vice president anymore.”
I said, “I know.”
Incredulous, he said, “You have the president of the United States’ son on a Taskforce team?”
Knuckles said, “Not just any team. Our team. Sort of helps in the chain of command department.”
Dunkin nodded, taking that in, then said, “So why did you guys come over here? What’s your real mission? I knew Pike was bullshitting about a vacation.”
I could see he was about to explode because of Nicole, but was taking my earlier proscription about not mentioning her to heart. He wanted the help, and trusted me, so he was fishing for information without giving anything away.
Knuckles said, “I don’t really have any idea why I’m here. Wolffe told us that Pike was on the trail of some badass Chinese secret agent men. That’s the extent of my knowledge.”
Dunkin looked at me, and I told him the truth. “I really came here on vacation. You getting hit sort of changed that. They’re here because of you. Why don’t you tell us what this is all about?”
Dunkin looked around the table, then came back to me, stuttering out, “I . . . I don’t know. I really don’t.”
Brett said, “Oh, bullshit. You know something.”
He put his head in his hands and said, “All I know is that Jake Shu was doing something hinky, and then I was attacked.”
I said, “You mean I was attacked. What was hinky?”
“Look, my job is classified. I could get fired for talking about it.”
All of us just sat there and looked at him. He said, “I’ll get fired.”
We continued staring.
Chapter 38
Dunkin felt our glares and said, “Okay, okay. There’s this guy named Jake Shu. He’s in my department, and we work on the F-35 program, specifically the artificial intelligence used in the synchronization of the helmet to the sensors around the plane. He’s always acted a little strange, digging into programs that didn’t concern him and asking questions that made no sense for his specific project. I didn’t think anything of it until a few months ago. You remember that F-35 that went down in the Sea of Japan?”
I said, “Yeah. Everyone was worried about the Chinese stealing the tech. But it crashed by pilot error.”
“That’s what everyone believes, but the last guy to work on its assembly was Jake Shu. Outside of Fort Worth, Texas, there was only one final fabrication facility in the world, and that was in Japan. We sent Jake to help them, and then that plane crashed. He came home like it was no big deal. Japan thought it was big enough to stop final fabrication at their plant.”
Knuckles leaned forward and said, “So the Chinese set out to kill you because of this? Doesn’t make any sense. Sorry.”
“No. That’s not the only thing. I reported him early on and my company did a sham investigation, finding nothing, but he kept doing his strange shit. The last day at work—the day Pike showed up—he was on the A2/AD systems outside of our entire F-35 program, and he saw me watching. He still had the golden key and he—”
Knuckles cut him off. “Slow down. What the hell is a ‘golden key’?”
“Because all of our stuff is classified, there is no transfer between terminals. Only people with a certain authorization—what we called the golden key—could do it. Because Jake went to Japan, he had the key, so he could access whatever he needed to remotely. Anyway, he was accessing the A2/AD system—”
Now it was Brett cutting him off. “What’s the ‘A2/AD system’?”
Dunkin glanced at me, looking like he thought we were idiots. I said, “Well, I don’t recognize that acronym either. Go ahead and explain.”
“A2/AD is anti-access/area denial. It’s the systems countries use to prevent encroachment on their terrain. Surely you guys have heard of it, right?”
He got blank stares and said, “Okay, you guys have been doing the counterterrorism thing too long. The Department of Defense has shifted focus to what they call ‘great power competition,’ meaning they’re looking at major wars. Every country on earth has taken the lessons from both Gulf Wars in Iraq, which is if you let America build up combat power, you will lose, so the name of the game now is A2/AD. If you prevent us from getting in, you win the war. Really, I’m sort of surprised you haven’t heard of it.”
Brett said, “Yeah, well, we’ve been a little busy saving the U.S. from real threats instead of theoretical ones. I haven’t had the time to read the latest dispatches from the RAND Corporation. How does this matter?”
Dunkin looked to see if Brett was kidding, saw he was not, and said, “We’re the main contractor for A2/AD artificial intelligence for the Republic of Taiwan. We’re the ones developing the systems for them. The theory works for Taiwan against China just like it works for China against the United States. If Taiwan can prevent the Chinese from entering, then they can win the war, but unlike China—which can monitor U.S. naval deployments and other indicators that measure in weeks—Taiwan needs to do it in hours. That’s all the time they have.”
I was beginning to see the utility of the data Jake might have had access to. I said, “So you think Jake has the ability to delay this time for the Chinese?”