I’d promised to have Dunkin bring it, and then had demanded to hear Nicole’s voice. He’d done so, letting me talk to her for all of five seconds—and it was heartbreaking. I’d asked her a question only she and Dunkin would know, and in between sobs, she’d answered correctly. I so wanted to tell her that I was bringing vengeance to the men who held her, but I couldn’t, knowing they were listening.
She had ended by saying, “Tell Dunkin I don’t blame him. Tell him not to grieve for me.”
And I understood she thought she was dead. In situations like this, be it a captive in a cave in Afghanistan or a house in Australia, given enough pressure, people just resigned themselves to their death, waiting on the hammer. Nicole had reached that stage of resignation. Truthfully, most of the time that was an accurate assessment of a situation like this.
This time it was not.
I’d told the man on the phone again not to hurt her, and he’d agreed, saying he only cared about the drive, and that it had better be real. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about, and neither did Dunkin, but after I came back, he’d spent three hours building up a fake thumb drive that would fool even the CIA.
When I returned, I could hear the team still spitballing ideas about how to breach and which way to clear, and I wanted to join them, but I had one other headache to take care of, and that was the Oversight Council. Since I’d been jerked off of my vacation and activated for an Alpha mission, I’d sent the required Project Prometheus situation reports—leaving out the Nicole rescue—but George Wolffe had sent back that he wanted an actual SITREP via our VPN. I had no idea why, and really didn’t want to do it, because Wolffe had a sixth sense when it came to me going off the reservation, and seeing him face-to-face might be a giveaway.
I went upstairs to our bedroom, looked over the balcony at them plotting, and thought about making Jennifer take the call. But she was down there planning right in the middle of them. Sometimes it sucked to be the leader.
I dialed up the VPN, waited for it to connect, and then saw Creed’s face on the screen. He said, “Pike, you got me?”
I said, “Yeah. Where was that last trace? The one from thirty minutes ago?”
“Same spot. Called from the same location. Stand by.”
Which was good news. I waited, and then saw George Wolffe’s bushy gray mustache take over the screen. He sat down, pulling back from the camera until I could see his whole face. He said, “Hey, Pike. Got the last SITREP. How’s it going?”
“Going well, sir. No police trace to us, Dunkin is free and clear, and I’m tracking the men who attacked him. Still no real clear view of why it happened, but my report details what Dunkin thinks. You got any track on this Jake Shu?”
“We have a data dump on him now, and looking at it in hindsight, he has had some significant interactions with Chinese nationals. Given his job, it wasn’t enough to spike, but put together with what you found, there’s plenty of smoke.”
“Perfect. Where’s he now? I’m sure you’ve looked at phone data, credit card statements, that sort of thing.”
“We got one hit in Brisbane at a hotel. He paid cash, but they took his passport. After that, he’s a ghost. No known phone, no use of credit cards. If he’s got that stuff, it was provided for him. Probably bank cards loaded for use at ATMs and a burner phone. You’re going to have to find him for us.”
That took me aback. I usually leveraged the Taskforce for leads, not the other way around. I solved the problem they provided. I didn’t find the problem. I did the fix and the finish. But I made a mistake in my answer, because George assumed my mission in Sydney was precisely to find Jake Shu, not realizing the two sets were related but distinct missions.
I said, “How am I supposed to find him? Dunkin said he was heading to Cairns for a vacation, but that’s probably bullshit. What am I going to do?”
He narrowed his eyes and said, “Do? You’re going to explore that phone we’ve been tracking. By the SITREP, you said, you had a target house to explore. Go explore it.”
I couldn’t tell him that everyone in that house was going to be dead, and the exploration would end with the barrel of my gun. I backpedaled, saying, “We’re taking a look at it tomorrow morning. We’ll conduct a CTR and see what we can find. Use Dunkin to explore the systems in the house, maybe find another lead, but it’s pretty weak.”
He said, “It’s always weak until it isn’t. You’ll find a link to continue. Look, this is getting more serious. We’re receiving a lot of intel from multiple agencies and sources saying the Chinese are going to attempt to upset the Taiwan elections. They’ve already gotten their preferred candidate neck and neck with the incumbent, which is insane. With the intel you’ve picked up, we think it’s bigger than the election. The Chinese are going to try to erode the actual defense of Taiwan, and if that candidate wins, he’ll help them do it. We can’t do much about the election, but we can stymie their attempts to degrade the defense posture. We concur that Jake Shu may be the key. Find him.”
I told him I would and disconnected, wondering what the hell I was going to do. I’d been given a critical mission by the national command authority of the United States, but to execute it, I’d have to kill Nicole. I couldn’t make this hit a capture mission. Maybe we’d get someone, but odds were, with our limited force, we’d have to kill them all just to rescue her. Maybe we’d find something inside, but I wasn’t counting on it. These guys were professionals. They wouldn’t be leaving another golden egg on the dining room table.
So I could completely rearrange this mission, focusing on capturing one of the men or penetrating the house surreptitiously for information, which would take three or more days of work, or I could rescue Nicole. There wasn’t a way to do both. In fact, letting her die would probably be the catalyst to break open Jake’s location, because it would cause the team to move, most likely linking back up with Jake Shu.
I’d gone back downstairs and the team had briefed me on several courses of action. I’d settled on one, but Jennifer could see I was distracted. We’d sent the men off to their own rooms and then gone to bed. Once the lights were out, she’d said, “What’s going on?”
I said, “Nothing. Just ignoring the national command authority of the United States. That’s all.”
She turned the light back on and said, “What’s that mean?”
I told her about the call, and that something bigger than Nicole’s life was in play, and I was about to screw all of that up by this assault. We’d win tomorrow, of that I had no doubt, but we’d lose the bigger mission. And it didn’t sit well with me. It was an impossible choice.
She looked at me, seeing the conflict, and said, “There isn’t a choice here. It’s a duty. I know I’m not in command, and it’s not my decision, but if I get a vote, you made the right one.”
“Have I? I mean, sometimes we have to do bad things for the good things to happen.” I touched her neck, where a circle of gold like a thick washer hung on a necklace, the Bible verse Romans 3:8 engraved upon it. I said, “Sometimes we do evil that good may come. This time I’m doing good to let evil roam free.”