Code of Honor

50

As director of national intelligence, Mary Pat Foley rated a spot in the senior staff alcove on Air Force One. Foley found herself on edge, unwilling to be cooped up in the small office, so she sat on the couch outside the medical clinic with Admiral Jason Bailey, the President’s physician. The 747—designated a VC-25A in military parlance — was large, but it was still an airplane, with limited space. The President’s office, sometimes called the mini-Oval, was just forward of the clinic. The Secret Service kept two agents posted outside the door, at a small desk forward of the couch where Doc Bailey worked on a sudoku and Foley waited impatiently for a phone call.

Admiral Jason Bailey traveled on Air Force One with the President, but he was customarily quickly hustled away when they landed, to the backup plane, the Doomsday plane — an airborne version of the NORAD command center — or any number of aircraft or Secret Service vehicles. The doc’s job was to be near enough to provide emergency medical care, but far enough away that he would not be injured in an attack. The stress of his responsibilities had to be fierce, but Admiral Bailey bore it up well. His eyes always seemed to sparkle above rosy cheeks, and the deep laugh lines around his eyes said he smiled even in his sleep. Foley liked the guy. His personality brightened up the room — or airplane — whenever he came around.

He tapped his pen on the sudoku puzzle, still smiling when he was stumped.

“You take some kind of chipper pills today, Doc?” Foley asked.

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Just happy. I attribute it to CrossFit.”

Foley was genuinely surprised. “I didn’t know you did CrossFit.”

Bailey kept reading his magazine. “I don’t,” he said without looking up. “That’s why I’m happy.”

“Har, har,” she said.

She looked at the secure STE telephone on the small teak table beside her seat, willing it to ring with news. She hated this. Not Air Force One, it was beyond comfortable. Even the press got nice seats. What she hated was being out of control. The not knowing. The feeling that things were unfolding on the ground and she was too far away to move the pieces around fast enough. Her first report said that the tech known as Calliope was in hand. Good news. Then the flight of F-15s that had taken off from Kadena had reported a problem on the ground in Manado — some kind of shootout. Bad news. Ding Chavez and Adara Sherman had disappeared along with the tech. Worse news. Then the F-15s had located the small plane carrying Chavez, Sherman, and the tech. Better news.

Then crickets — which felt a hell of a lot like bad news.

Foley’s phone chirped as if she had willed it to. She picked up the handset, waiting to be patched through directly to the F-15 Eagle’s pilot through the communications center behind the cockpit of Air Force One.

She listened intently as Air Force Captain George Ramirez gave her a professional, no-nonsense brief — as if he enlightened the director of national intelligence on a daily basis.

The news was a gut punch. Worse than bad.

They’ve gone down on an island off the Bird’s Head Peninsula in northwestern Papua,” Deputy National Security Adviser and Navy Commander Robby Forestall said five minutes later when he, Foley, van Damm, and a Marine two-star named Exner, who was an expert on Indonesia, gathered around the President’s desk.

Commander Forestall used a laser to point at a National Reconnaissance Office map on the flat-screen television. The red dot rested steadily on a small volcanic bump in the Pacific, west of Waigeo, in the Raja Ampat Islands. It was roughly six miles across at its widest point and encircled by a shallow lagoon and fringing reef.

“Keyhole images show a substantial airstrip here, a half-mile inland on the west side of the island.”

Ryan pushed back from his desk and walked across the office to get a closer look. Small stars decorated the soft beige carpet. He’d seen photographs of Ronald Reagan wearing sweatpants on Air Force One, but for the time being, Ryan made do with rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt and taking off his shoes. “What do you make of this?” he asked, pointing to an array of metal buildings at the end of the remote airstrip.

General Exner leaned forward in his chair. He was a lean, muscular man with a shining bald head, and his father had been ambassador to Indonesia when he was a teenager, leaving him with a love for the people and a better-than-average understanding of the culture. His wife’s parents were from Bali.

“My best guess is narcotics, Mr. President,” the general said. “Industry in this area is mainly tourism and pearl farming. The need for an airstrip with no substantial roads leading into it indicates something more sinister.”

“Seems crazy,” van Damm said. “Smuggling drugs through that area.” He looked away from Ryan, seeming to think better of mentioning the fact that Indonesia executed drug dealers, since Father West stood accused of just that.

“And yet here we are,” Foley said. “Our people say the plane leaving Manado was definitely carrying heroin. Probably bound for Australia out of Malaysia. This remote airstrip in the Raja Ampat is likely a stopover point. That means smugglers, which puts our people in danger while they’re on the ground. They went down with a load of hijacked narcotics. Our people on the ground believe the pilot of the Cheyenne flew to this location on purpose. We have to assume local smugglers have been notified and are coming to take back the drugs — and punish the people who took them.”

Ryan studied the map, thinking. “What do we have in the area?” He needed the thumb drive that contained Calliope, but he was more concerned about his people. He didn’t know Adara Sherman well, but along with John Clark, Ding Chavez had run his protection detail when he was with CIA. Now it was time to return the favor. Humans over hardware — every time.

“USS Fort Worth is one hundred ninety nautical miles to the south,” Commander Forestall said. He was one of the most consistent briefers Ryan had ever seen. “She’s steaming out of Darwin, patrolling her way to the Philippines on antipiracy duty. NOAA reports a sea state in the Banda Sea between two and three so the Fort Worth could push it and be on scene in under four hours.”

“She has a helicopter on board?” Ryan asked.

“That’s correct, Mr. President. An MH-60 and an MQ-8 Fire Scout UAV.”

“Good,” Ryan said. “This reef looks like it would make a boat rescue problematic.” Ryan arched his back, feeling it snap and crack. “All possible speed,” he said, then looked up. “Out of curiosity, who’s the skipper?”

“You’ve heard of him, Mr. President,” Forestall said. “Capable man.”

The sun was up, and Chavez could see at least a dozen of Deddy’s heavily armed compatriots waiting at the end of the airstrip. At least he thought he could see them. His head was on fire, and his vision skewed like he was looking through two pairs of glasses at once.

Grinning maniacally, the copilot attempted to line up on final. Deddy argued that he should land there because the nearby road Adara had pointed out had been abandoned because it was too rocky and short. It was, he said, overgrown with vegetation, and far too dangerous. Chavez explained in none-too-gentle terms that, though the men waiting below would surely kill him and Adara, he would shoot both the pilots in the head as soon as they were on the ground. Where landing on the nearby road was risky, landing on the airstrip meant certain death for everyone on the plane.

The Hawker had broken off to land on the actual airstrip. The F-15 pilot was reluctant to shoot a business jet out of the sky when it wasn’t an immediate threat. Chavez couldn’t blame him. The Monday-morning quarterbacks would have a field day with that one. Still, Chavez was certain that he was going to get to meet Habib very soon on the ground.

They were supposed to rendezvous with the Fort Worth on the south side of the island — but there was no place there to land.

The Hawker’s impact with the Cheyenne’s tail gave little horizontal control on landing. They hit hard, slamming Chavez sideways into the wall of the cabin. Reflexively, he reached for the armrest, feeling the bones in his wrist snap in the process. Well, shit, he thought. That was going to be a problem. He could shoot left-handed, but a fight wouldn’t be much fun. The break didn’t hurt much, at least not as bad as his pounding headache. He was still too hyped on adrenaline — but before long, that wouldn’t be enough. Chavez caught Adara’s eye. They’d worked together long enough that she would be able to tell from the strain on his face that something was terribly wrong. He didn’t want to advertise his injury to Deddy, but she needed to know he was far from a hundred percent.

Other than a cut on her chin, she seemed to be all right. He touched his wrist and shook his head to try and silence the pain before switching the pistol to his left hand.

The airstrip was a scant two miles from the road where the Cheyenne touched down, both on the north side of the island. Adara flung open the back door and they were down the stairs as soon as the plane skidded to a stop, leaving Deddy and the chuckling copilot still on board. Chavez didn’t hold much hope that they would make it out of this alive since they’d allowed themselves to be hijacked, but he had no time to worry over them.

He’d gotten a look at the terrain before the plane landed. The island was small and, apart from the fishing settlement on the north side, sparsely populated, with just a few pearl shacks around the periphery. Only five or six miles across from north to south shores, the interior of the island was a long hogback ridge. The northern slopes looked slightly steeper, while the southern side stepped down into a narrow valley before reaching the protected lagoon. The navigation chart put the tallest point at four hundred and fifty meters, not too tall in the great scheme of things, but every inch of it covered in thick jungle vegetation.

Chavez and Adara hit the line of vegetation at a run, wanting to put as much distance between them and the Cheyenne as possible before Habib’s friends arrived.

The gnarled limbs of large hibiscus trees arced overhead, forming dark roomlike spaces in the jungle. Coconut palms gave way to thick walls of mountain banana, towering beech and merbau, and razor-sharp pandanus trees that reminded Chavez of a cross between a yucca and a palm. Insects and birds droned and chirped among the foliage. Abundant flowers perfumed the hot and sticky air.

They’d made it a half-mile up the slope when they heard the first shots.

Adara stopped beside the smooth trunk of a tall merbau tree to catch her breath. “Idiots,” she spat. “You told them. How’s your wrist?”

“This running isn’t helping,” Chavez said, reaching out to touch her forearm. “I need to tell you something.”

Adara reached out and took his arm, careful not to torque the wrist. “You should let me splint this.”

“Later,” Chavez said. “Listen to me. Those guys did a number on me back at Suparman’s. I’ve got a roaring headache. I feel like I’m about to puke. And I can barely see.”

Adara went into full medic mode in a flash, using her thumb to lift Ding’s brow so she could get a good look at his pupils. “Yeah,” she said, keeping her tone calm. “Your eyes are all wonky.”

“Give it to me straight, Doc,” Chavez said. “None of those big medical terms like wonky.”

“I’ll keep an eye on you. At least take this,” she said, digging in the first-aid pouch she kept on her belt for some Tylenol. “I don’t want to give you ibuprofen with a head injury. Too much of a risk for bleeding.”

Ding washed it down with a bottle of water he’d brought from the plane. He couldn’t very well call in sick. He pointed to the vegetation behind them. “Our trail isn’t going to be hard to follow in this foliage. We need to keep moving. Our exfil boat is supposed to be here in four hours. We may need all of that to make it up and over — and that’s if those guys don’t catch us first.”

Commander James “Jimmy” Akana, United States Navy, had been in command of the USS Fort Worth for a total of twenty days, a month earlier than his normal rotation. USS Fort Worth, or LCS 3, was one of several littoral combat ships that worked under what the Navy called the 3-2-1 Rule. Three crews, rotating every four months, would keep two ships maintained, and one deployed at all times. The previous skipper had been stricken with a burst appendix while on port call in Darwin. Akana, previously of the patrol vessel USS Rogue, and now part of the Rough Rider Crew, had been temporarily assigned to shore duty in Singapore as part of Destroyer Squadron 7 for Seventh Fleet forward operations, when he was dispatched to take command of LCS 3. He hated that his fellow officer had taken ill, but Jimmy Akana had not joined the Navy to sit in an office. Command of any vessel at sea was a gift.

USS Fort Worth was a Freedom-class littoral combat ship, three hundred eighty-seven feet in length, with a fifty-eight-foot beam. Purpose built for patrolling near-coastal waters, she was fast, maneuverable, and handsome. Though not equipped with the weapons of a destroyer or cruiser meant for sustained Naval battles, she was well-armed for her size with a Bofors 57-millimeter deck gun, rolling airframe missiles, and Mark 50 torpedoes. Twin .50-caliber machine guns rounded out the firepower. Her surface warfare package included, among other things, a Sikorsky MH-60 Romeo Seahawk and a remotely piloted helicopter called a Fire Scout.

Akana planned to steam northward, meandering through the islands of Indonesia as part of a joint antipiracy operation with that country, Malaysia, and Singapore. His father had been a policeman in Honolulu and antipiracy duty made him feel like he was channeling his law enforcement bloodlines.

The message came in directly from Admiral Jenkins, Akana’s boss with the Seventh Fleet in San Diego. The communications specialist handed him the headset so he’d be able to hear over the hustle-and-bustle noise of the bridge.

The orders were clear, and according to the admiral came directly from the President. Not that that would have mattered. Akana was a Navy man. As far as he was concerned, an order was an order, whether from a captain or the commander in chief.

Akana ended the call and handed the headset back to the radio operator before motioning his executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Nicole Carter, to the chart table.

“Bird’s Head Peninsula on the northwestern shores of New Guinea. Take her up as close to flank speed as you can without breaking something.”

“Our mission, Skipper?” the XO asked.

“Rescuing a couple of operatives,” he said, leaning forward so only the XO could hear. “And possibly a tiny invasion of Indonesia.”