The Ajax Protocol

CHAPTER 43

They sailed past Martinique and St. John's. They passed north of the British Virgin Islands and set a course for the US mainland. Four days out from Selena's island, Puerto Rico lay off the port bow, a blue-green haze in the distance.

The boat was named Island Angel. She was powered by a single Caterpillar diesel that drove them at a steady nine knots. The Island Angel was double decked, with a glassed-in bridge that provided a sweeping view. She had a raised, flush foredeck and a high, sharp prow. There were three small staterooms on the main deck. Nick and Selena were in one, Stephanie and Harker in the second and Ronnie and Lamont in the third.

Lamont's cough was worse, a racking, heavy sound. Ronnie had taken over the wheel. Lamont was in his room, lying down. The others were in the main cabin.

"He needs a doctor," Selena said.

"It's that hit he took in Jordan," Nick said. "He didn't have enough time to get over it before everything went down."

"I think he has an infection," Harker said. "Maybe pneumonia. He's running a fever."

"We're still at least a week out," Stephanie said. "Nick, what are we going to do?"

"Hope he gets better," Nick said. "There are antibiotics in the medical kit. Start feeding him pills and aspirins and soup. He'll get through it."

"What if he gets worse?"

"We'll deal with that if we have to," Nick said.

Elizabeth said, "I sent a copy of the Ajax protocol to Hood. It shook him up. He decided to take a look at the Pentagon."

"That's domestic surveillance," Nick said. "He could get in a lot of trouble for that."

"It wouldn't be the first time Langley overstepped the bounds," Stephanie said. "But at least this time there's a damn good reason to do it."

"Has Hood found anything out?" Nick asked.

She nodded. "There is a small group of senior military officers, politicians and bankers who call themselves the Augustans. They meet for drinks and conversation on an irregular basis, a few times a year. All of the members have expressed dissatisfaction at one time or another with something President Rice has done."

"That doesn't mean much. Sometimes I don't like what Rice has done."

"Yes, but Hood thinks there may be more to it. Several judges and CEOs are part of the membership as well. "

"It sounds like a typical Washington power group," Nick said. "There are dozens of them."

"That's true," Elizabeth said. "Except that the chief figure in the group is a four-star general in charge of SATWEP and the station you raided in Alaska."

"What's his name?" Ronnie asked.

Elizabeth drummed her fingers on her knee. "Westlake. Louis Westlake. I want you to run a full background on him, Steph. Find out if he has any connection with Edmonds. Can you hack into the White House computers?"

"Sure. Compared to the Pentagon, it's easy. I've done it before."

"Get into the visitor records and see if Westlake has visited Edmonds recently. He could be the one who told Edmonds we were interfering with a secret military project. It would take someone with a lot of rank to put that story across."

"Will do," Stephanie said. "I'll log into the computers back in Virginia. From there I can tap into the White House and the NSA database. It shouldn't take long to find out everything about him."

Later, Selena was in her room. She lay on the narrow bed she shared with Nick, reading a dog eared paperback novel about pirates and Scotsmen she'd found in the main cabin. She across a sentence with the word ravish in it and smiled. Elizabeth knocked at the door.

"Busy?" Elizabeth said.

Selena sat up. "More like bored. Come on in."

Elizabeth entered the tiny room and sat down on one end of the bed.

"I can't stop thinking about the man I killed," Elizabeth said. "It was horrible, all that blood. Different from that man I shot in Virginia."

Selena marked the page and put the book down. "I can sympathize with how you feel," she said, "but that probably doesn't help very much."

"I remember when you came back from your first mission, you were different. I watched it all on the satellite. I saw you kill that soldier. How did you handle it, afterward?"

"Nick helped," Selena said. "He helped me see that I'd made the right choice, even though everything I'd been taught told me it was wrong. He didn't try to sugarcoat it, or come up with some platitude about defending our country, anything like that. He told me it would take time to let it in and that the best I could do was to try not to think about it and move on."

"Did it work?" Elizabeth asked. "Not thinking about it?"

Selena laughed. There was no humor in it. "No, not at all. I still think about it. But he was right about it being the right choice. Remembering that helps, that and knowing the person you killed didn't give you an option."

Elizabeth looked down at the floor.

"I was trying to reload," she said. "Emile was dead. The man I'd shot was lying on the ground with his head blown off and I couldn't get the shells into the gun. Then one of those men pointed his gun at me. I thought I was going to die. Then Nick or somebody shot him."

Selena laid a hand on Elizabeth's arm. "I shot him," she said. "Sometimes that's the only option. If you hadn't pulled the trigger on that shotgun, you'd be dead."

Elizabeth took a deep breath and let it out. "I know you're right. I guess I just needed to talk about it the someone."

"Just give it some time," Selena said. She didn't say that no matter how much time there was, it would never be enough to erase the memory.