Commander-in-Chief

55

Twenty-four hours after the attempted kidnapping of CIA chief of station Peter Branyon, no one in Lithuania knew anything more about what had actually happened than they did during the event.

The two men of The Campus had spent the hours hard at work, beginning the moment Chavez and Caruso drove the wounded Branyon away from the border. Once they were out of range of whatever technology was jamming both cell and satellite signals near the border, Ding called Branyon’s second-in-command at the U.S. embassy. When he got through he put Branyon himself on the phone with his deputy, and the CoS gave a sit rep and orders even as he fought vomiting from the pain and losing consciousness from the blood loss.

The Campus men delivered Branyon to the hospital and handed him off to a team of CIA security officers, another group of whom was already racing to Tabariškės, along with a contingent of Lithuanian troops, to collect Donlin’s body and to check the location near the border where the gunfight had taken place.

Once Chavez and Caruso were clear of the hospital, they headed back to their safe house, conducting a long SDR in the process.

Chavez called Mary Pat Foley while still in the middle of the SDR. He didn’t have to tell her about the incident because she’d already spoken directly with the deputy chief of station, but he filled her in on some key details.

When he was finished with his brief after-action review, Mary Pat said, “What do you think, Domingo? My first feeling is you both need to get out of there tonight.”

Chavez replied, “Of course we’ll do whatever you say, but I think there is still a role for us over here.”

“I’m listening.”

Ding said, “Right now you don’t have a station chief in the city. I know Branyon and Donlin were burned, apparently by the network of agents run out of Tabariškės. I don’t know how many more case officers at the embassy were known to that network and compromised, but we have no reason to believe we’ve been compromised to the Russians, or even to this other group obviously working on their behalf. Let us stay here in the field, continue working under the DataPlanet cover, and get the rest of our images knocked out during the day tomorrow. At night maybe we can support the local station in some way, even if it’s just keeping an eye out here in the city.”

Mary Pat said, “All right. That would be helpful, but I want you two to have a plan to get out of there.”

“Trust me,” Chavez said. “With the Russians peering over the walls on two sides, we are keeping our bags packed.”

The next morning Chavez and Caruso were picked up by the DataPlanet van at six, same as every other day they’d been in country. When they climbed into the vehicle, however, they could immediately tell something was wrong. Herkus Zarkus sat behind the wheel looking ahead. He wasn’t his normal laid-back self.

Caruso and Chavez both instantly assumed he knew about what happened the evening before somehow, and he was scared to be traveling with the two Americans who’d shot it out with some sort of foreign special mission unit.

“What’s wrong?” asked Dom, but he thought he knew the answer to the question.

Herkus let the van idle while he turned to the other men. “Guys, I hate to do this to you, but I just came to bring you the van. I can’t go out with you today.”

Dom nodded sympathetically, certain now Herkus didn’t want to continue the relationship with the American intelligence agents. “I understand,” he said.

But he did not understand at all.

Herkus said, “The president has asked everyone between the ages of eighteen and forty to join the national defense militia. I’m leaving today. I don’t think they know what the hell they are going to do with us, but I figure since I have American military experience, they ought to make me a general or something.”

He chuckled at his own joke, but the two Campus men could see his nerves showing.

Chavez realized he’d been wrong about Herkus. He wasn’t scared of being around the Americans. On the contrary, he was going to volunteer to move even closer to the danger. “That’s very noble, but you were an electronics-repair technician. What the hell good do you think you can do against a Russian invasion?”

Herkus said, “This is home now, guys. I can’t ask you to understand, but I can’t leave Lithuania to the Russians. Better that I die with a gun in my hand than driving my van around repairing the Internet.”

Chavez put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Better you don’t die, friend. Any idea where they are sending you?”

Herkus just shrugged. “I heard they are passing out thirty-year-old M16s they have in their wartime reserves, and sending men to trenches being built at the border. Don’t know if I’m going to the Kaliningrad side or the Belarus side.” He shrugged again. “It’s not like it matters.”

Dom said, “An M16 isn’t going to stop a tank, Herkus.”

“I know.” Dom could see the Lithuanian American was scared but resolute. Herkus said, “My decision is made, guys. I hope whatever it is they have you doing here, it helps us out.”

Herkus drove the van to a streetcar stop near the Neris River, which bisected Vilnius, then climbed out of the vehicle, followed by the two Campus operatives. He already had a backpack ready in the back. He loaded up and shook Ding’s and Dom’s hands and climbed aboard a waiting streetcar without looking back.

Ding climbed behind the wheel, and the two men drove off for a day of high-resolution imagery.

Caruso said, “Is he brave or crazy?”

Chavez replied, “He’s brave, for sure. I don’t like his odds at all, but if this was my country, and my family could be twenty-four hours away from being ruled by a Russian puppet, I’d like to think I’d make the same decision.”

Caruso shook his head. “I’d fight, but I wouldn’t fight with an old rifle in a muddy trench.”

Chavez just shrugged. “Whatever we’re doing here, I’ve got to think we’re force multipliers. We’re going to make the fight easier for Herkus and his side. The harder we work, the more chance he and a few thousand guys just like him make it out of their ditch alive.”

John Clark had put in his second full day as a ship’s captain, beginning at first light. Just after dawn the day before, he’d sailed into Scrub Island Marina and tied off at the back of a massive array of sailboats, easily seventy-five different vessels lined up in neat rows and bobbing in the peaceful water. He climbed into his dinghy and was halfway to the marina dock before he was able to rule out any chance that the Spinnaker II was in the mooring field. But still he tied off and went to shore, where he waited for the harbor services office to open.

As soon as attendants arrived, Clark filled up his dinghy’s gas tank and, in a tone as nonchalant as he could make it, asked them if they’d seen a sixty-eight-foot gunboat. The men knew of the Spinnaker II; they said it was one of the fastest sailing ships in the Virgin Islands, and they told him its home port was Saint Thomas over in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

But the men said they hadn’t seen it in the BVIs in months.

Clark headed back to his boat and then uncoupled from his moorings. He had another dozen stops planned for the day.

Day one of his search for the cobalt-gray catamaran turned up nothing, as did the first six stops on day two. But on his seventh, this time at a dockside bar in Spanish Town in Virgin Gorda, he was told the cobalt-gray catamaran had arrived in the predawn hours, and had only just departed ninety minutes before he arrived. Clark asked if they’d seen which way the boat had gone. Of course, there was no way to pass his line of questioning off as idle conversation, but he was concerned he might not get another good sighting.

The captain sitting at the bar said he’d not paid attention, then he went back to his drink.

Clark left, and a man who had been sitting next to the conversation reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone.

It was after six p.m. on a long afternoon of searching the cays, bays, and marinas around Virgin Gorda when Clark noticed a dive boat returning to the dock in Little Dix Bay. He assumed the boat might have run dives at one of the more remote locations near Virgin Gorda, so he carefully took his Irwin into the bay, following the dive boat toward the dock.

His persistence paid off. The captain of the dive boat told him he’d seen the Spinnaker II sail into a remote cove of tiny West Seal Dog Island, an uninhabited rock a few miles northwest of the bay.

Clark knew he would have to make his approach carefully. The last thing he wanted to do was appear in front of the already suspicious men on the boat. He almost considered renting a new sailboat in Spanish Town to take into the area, but he worried this would just make the men on the Spinnaker II know he was up to no good if they recognized him on a different vessel.

After thinking it over for a long time, he decided he’d go to another nearby island and drop anchor for the night, far enough away from where the men were holding the Walkers that they couldn’t possibly detect him. And then the following day he would move into position along with the other boats approaching the uninhabited West Seal Dog for a day of diving, fishing, and snorkeling.

There would be safety in numbers, he told himself. He’d try to stay out of sight and blend in with the rest of the crowd.

Clark had picked up provisions in Spanish Town, so he decided to spend the night in some secluded spot, just on the off chance that the Spinnaker II might leave West Seal Dog and head to a Virgin Gorda marina for the night. He found a suitable secluded spot on Mosquito Island just before sundown, and he dropped anchor.

Clark had decided he would take up watch on the catamaran the following day, probably from shore on West Seal Dog, and then make a scuba approach to the Spinnaker II, not at night but during the daylight hours. A nighttime raid on the boat might have seemed to give him the most potential for success, but Clark assumed all five of the men he’d seen on his earlier surveillance of the catamaran would be on board during the overnight hours.

But if he arrived close enough to do surveillance tomorrow, he might well catch at least two of the men off the boat and ashore. Confronting three men who were wide awake but not expecting action was preferable to five men, even if some were asleep, especially if they had someone keeping watch.

Clark was all but exhausted from his full day of hunting for the Spinnaker II, but he’d achieved his objective. Now all he could do was get a good night’s sleep, and prepare himself mentally for the confrontation to come.