Nighthawk

7

Emma Townsend sat in a cozy booth in the recesses of El Caracol, the four-star restaurant Kurt Austin had suggested as a meeting place.

Despite Joe’s assessment, there was little about her that suggested ice or frost. In fact, warmth was the first thought her appearance brought to mind. Her auburn hair fell straight to her shoulders and shimmered with a copper hue in the subdued lighting. Her eyes were a soft, hazel color, flecked with green, her lips full and her skin just sun-kissed enough to bring out a smattering of freckles that made her look younger than her thirty-three years.

Entering the restaurant early and waiting for Kurt, she’d already garnered her fair share of second glances and lingering stares. She noticed the gazes but ignored them. It was no worse than Washington.

The restaurant itself was an architectural delight. Its design brought together several styles much the same way the menu did, and the clientele was a mix of hip, bohemian customers, obvious tourists and refined Ecuadorian couples. Perhaps that was due to its location in the hills of Las Peñas, a four-hundred-year-old section of Guayaquil, where brightly painted houses had been turned into art galleries, restaurants and wine bars.

Tourists and locals alike flocked there on warm evenings. They strolled the boulevards and galleries and enjoyed the views, which overlooked the city and the coastline. As night fell, the lights of the Malecón, a restored promenade on the waterfront that had once been the historic Simón Bolívar Pier, came into view.

With only a glass of water in front of her, Emma waited for Kurt and reread the NSA bio that had been sent to her phone.

A quick look told her Austin was a man of action. He and his second-in-command, Joe Zavala, were listed as the principal figures in a series of high-profile missions. They’d averted several international catastrophes, including the recent events in Egypt, where they’d prevented former members of the Mubarak regime from co-opting the sub-Saharan aquifer and establishing authority across all of North Africa.

Further reading made it clear that despite this record, both Austin and Zavala had rubbed plenty of officials the wrong way. It seemed they were not fond of authority, chains of command or doing things by the book. Perhaps that explained his position with NUMA, she thought. NUMA had always preferred to shoot from the hip, right from the day James Sandecker had founded it. Men like Kurt thrived there, while in other agencies they were shackled and held back.

Just as well, she decided. She preferred results over protocol. In fact, she preferred results over everything, including personal friendships, alliances and rules. This had made her something of an outcast in her years at the National Security Agency. It had also vaulted her up the chain of command as quickly as it made enemies. She knew her reputation. Few in the agency wanted to work with her. They were governed by fear, afraid to fail. Afraid to take a chance. In her opinion, it made them ineffective. Which made it far preferable to work with a man like Austin.

If she found the Nighthawk with his help, she would be untouchable. She could name her next position, most likely becoming the youngest department director in the agency’s history. And if she failed… well, the odds were stacked against her anyway. And she could always blame it on NUMA.

She spotted Kurt as he entered the restaurant and spoke briefly with the host. From there, he walked directly to her table, seeming taller and more handsome than his photographs. It wasn’t that his features were any different; if anything, they were a little more careworn and weathered, like a book cover that was slightly tattered and broken-in.

She put her phone away and introduced herself. “Emily Townsend. You can call me Emma. Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Finally.”

Austin sat down. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “I was checking on the preparations.”

“How much equipment do we have?” she asked.

“I meant, in the kitchen,” he said. “I was making sure the chef was up to standards.”

He grinned at his own comment and Emma found his self-assurance a most attractive quality. One that could be used to manipulate, if need be. The small talk continued until the waiter arrived.

“Any preference?” he asked, perusing the wine list.

“Surprise me.”

He closed the list. “We’ll have a bottle of the 2007 Opus 1.”

“Excellent choice,” the waiter said, moving off to retrieve the selection.

“An extravagant bottle of wine on the first night,” Emma noted. “Your expense account or mine?”

“I’ll pay this time,” Kurt said. “Save yours for the big stuff.”

She couldn’t resist smiling at his easy way and had to keep reminding herself why they were there. Before anything else was said, she pulled a small device from her purse. It was triangle-shaped, several inches long. She placed it on the table. At the touch of a button, it began emitting an audible hiss of static.

“Active noise cancellation,” she said, easing the device to the edge of the table. “It listens to our words and distorts them with interfering frequencies as they pass out of this cozy little booth. Anyone trying to record or eavesdrop on us will pick up nothing but garbled static.”

“What about a bug on or under the table?” he asked.

“I’ve already swept for it. Trust me, we can talk freely.”

He seemed only half convinced, and based on their conversation throughout dinner, perhaps less than that.

She noticed that he kept glancing around, eyeing everyone in the restaurant, in particular a Chinese couple who had arrived shortly after he had and were now sitting directly across the main room. Every time she was about to get into specifics, he changed the subject to something innocuous. At one point, when she was ready to force the subject, he offered her a bite of his entrée, holding out a fork toward her.

She accepted and changed the subject. He must have his reasons.

“So how did you end up in NUMA after working for the agency?” she asked.

“Admiral James Sandecker shanghaied me,” he said. “That’s how he gathered all his best people.”

Sandecker was now the Vice President. She was impressed that Austin knew him well enough to joke about him. And that he hadn’t name-dropped him earlier.

“And how did a sworn pacifist end up at the NSA?” he asked.

“I see you have your own sources.”

“In low places,” he insisted.

“I was a pacifist,” she insisted. “That’s why I joined NASA. To better the state of humanity by exploring the universe in the name of peace. Unfortunately, life doesn’t conform to the ideas of a naïve twenty-four-year-old. Not for long anyway.”

“Something go wrong in paradise?”

“Doesn’t it always?”

He offered a wry smile, obviously waiting for more.

“After a year at NASA, I was selected for a new team,” she said. “A follow-up to the relatively famous Daedalus project, which hoped to use nuclear explosions or some other form of exotic propulsion like matter-antimatter combustion to power future spacecraft at tremendous speeds. Much faster than we can achieve with chemical rockets. It was exciting. Intoxicating, really. The project demanded long hours, at close quarters. And as you might expect, with eight people spending almost all their waking time together, we became a very tight-knit group. Then, out of the blue, we began receiving threats.”

“Because of the work?”

“Apparently,” she said. “A fringe group I’d never heard of began accusing us of militarizing space. At first we thought it was a bunch of nonsense. But the threats became deeper, more personal. We were sent pictures of ourselves in vulnerable areas, in our houses, in our cars, at restaurants with our colleagues. Whoever these people were, they were obviously stalking us.”

“I assume the FBI got involved,” he said.

“They did. And they were able to link the threats to an anti-American group that had killed two scientists in the Arctic and sent letter bombs to several high-tech companies. We thought with the FBI on the case, we’d be safe. Two weeks later, our team leader and a friend — a man named Beric — was killed.”

Across from her, Kurt nodded thoughtfully but said nothing.

“Beric was an incredibly kind man,” she told him, surprised at the emotion it brought up after all these years. “If anyone needed anything, right down to the cafeteria workers and janitors, he made sure they had it. If there was an underdog cause without much hope, he championed it. And he was brilliant. A genius in several fields, everything from software development to astrophysics. Above all else, he was committed to NASA’s mission of peace, committed to a world where all men and women treat each other with decency.”

She took a deep breath, gathered herself and then continued. “That someone would target him, accuse him of being a militarist and kill him for it, was a disgusting irony. It affected me. Lifted the blinders from my eyes. It proved to me that the pacifist mind-set is nothing but a childish dream. Peace is fragile, not a natural state. It can only be secured through strength. And when that strength fails, disaster ensues.”

“In many ways, I’d agree with that,” he said. “Mind if I ask how it happened?”

“Like many of us at NASA, Beric loved to fly. He owned his own plane. Took it up every chance he could. If we had to go somewhere, he’d fly himself instead of going commercial. One day, on the way to an astrophysics conference, his plane exploded. From the wreckage, the FBI was able to determine what we already knew: the explosion was caused by a bomb. Three of us were supposed to be on that plane. But, as it turned out, Beric went alone.”

“I’m sorry,” Kurt said.

“Anyway,” she continued, “the propulsion study was cancelled a short time later and the whole project was eventually shut down. Feeling like I was drifting, I began casting around for something else to do. When the National Security Agency began recruiting scientists for their space program, I jumped at the opportunity.”

He nodded thoughtfully and then changed the subject to something more cheerful. But even as he spoke, her mind lingered on Beric. She hadn’t thought of him in years. He wouldn’t have approved of her career change.

She shook off the thought and focused on Kurt once more. They continued to chat and enjoy the meal. Halfway through the second glass of wine, he paused midsentence and then pulled his phone from his pocket to study a text that had just come in.

“Checking your phone,” she said. “Am I really that dull?”

“Anything but,” he said, putting the phone away. “In fact, I think it’s time to see how adventurous you truly are.” He slid the triangular, noise-cancelling device toward her, pulled out several hundred dollars in cash and flagged the waiter down. “For the meal. And a tour of the kitchen.”

The waiter examined the cash briefly. Then he smiled and said, “This way.”

Emma stood and went along with whatever Austin was up to. If anything, she was interested in seeing how his mind worked.

They followed the waiter through the kitchen and out the back door, where Kurt gave the waiter another instruction. “Block this door for a few minutes, if you can. Don’t let anyone follow us.”

The waiter nodded and Kurt led her out into a dimly lit alley behind the restaurant.

“I think you’ve got this backward,” she said. “People normally sneak out of a restaurant when they realize they can’t pay, not after overpaying. And never before dessert.”

“We were being watched,” he said, leading her down the alley toward the main street.

“We’re American agents operating without cover in a foreign country,” she said, “of course we’re being watched. I’m sure the Ecuadorian government is following us, especially considering our last-minute travel and sudden arrival.”

“These weren’t Ecuadorian police or federal agents,” he insisted. “It was a young Chinese couple. They were waiting at the door and took a booth directly across from us. They never touched their food.”

“Chinese couple,” she said, remembering their features. “I saw them. Not a big surprise either. We know the Chinese are looking. But I promise you, no one could hear what we were saying as long as the interference processor was running. Our best people haven’t been able to crack it.”

He stopped. “They didn’t have to hear what you were saying. They were reading your lips.”

She froze for a second, trying to remember anything she might have accidentally said and suddenly thankful that he’d interrupted her at every turn. “I was wondering why you kept asking me to try your dinner, even though we ordered the same thing.”

“Less talk, that way,” Kurt said. He continued to lead her down the street.

“I’m still not sure why we left,” she said. “If you knew they were watching us, it might have been a good chance to plant some false information.”

“Not a bad idea,” he admitted, “but I’m more concerned with real information, some of which I’ve just received. And I’m not interested in letting them get their hands on it.”

“What kind of information?” she asked.

“The whereabouts of the Nighthawk,” Kurt said. “I know where it landed.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “Impossible.”

“Not the exact point. But I can narrow it down to less than a hundred square miles.”

“How?” she said.

He stopped in his tracks but didn’t say a word. At the end of the alley, a trio of men had suddenly appeared. They stood there implacably, waiting under a streetlight and blocking the path.

Emma eyed them. “Something tells me they’re not tourists.”

“I’d have to agree,” he said, looking around. “And they seem to have brought some backup.”

At the sound of a commotion, Emma turned around and glanced down the alley. The rear door of the restaurant had come flying open. The Chinese couple came rushing out, the man shouting something at the kitchen staff. The argument ended when he pulled out a gun and fired into the doorway. The staff scrambled to safety and the door was slammed shut.

“Didn’t count on them having backup,” Kurt said, “and probably shouldn’t have counted on a waiter keeping two armed agents from making it through the back of the house.”

“Are you armed?” Emma asked.

“Afraid not,” he said.

“Me neither,” she replied. “Not exactly an auspicious start to our relationship.”

In simultaneous precision, the two agents at the back of the restaurant and the three new arrivals began to close in on them from opposite sides.