Tom Clancy Presents: Act of Valor

THREE

The home of Dr. Lisa Morales was an average size apartment in a nondescript complex near the small town of Barranca. Very middle class. It was far from the luxury of Costa Rican resorts that catered to foreign tourists, primarily American tourists, on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The structure was concrete and glass set in sterile architecture — a building that attracted no attention. Perfect for someone who wanted to avoid notice and therefore perfect from the CIA’s standpoint for one of their informants.

Lisa Morales had been the resident physician for Doctors Without Borders in Barranca for almost a year. She had made her small, one-bedroom apartment as homey as she could. She was reasonably well paid for her work, including a stipend from the CIA, but her life was designed to look like that of a young, idealistic physician on a modest salary. A rattan sofa and loveseat set, along with a bamboo-and-glass coffee table, took up most of the space in the small living room. The secondhand furniture was underlaid by a worn light-brown carpet. Cheap curtains adorned the two street-facing windows in the room. The adjacent kitchen sported only basic cookware and an ancient refrigerator. There was nothing high-end in the apartment. A small card table with four folding chairs served as the kitchen table. The only thing special about her furnishings was the secret compartment in the back of a battered end table. She seldom kept anything of a confidential intelligence nature, but it was there if she needed it. To even a critical eye, all was average and uninteresting.

“Okay, Lisa, you’ve got eighteen points with a double-word score. But watch this,” Ross said.

“Go for it, Mr. Wordsmith,” she replied as Ross laid down his tiles.

“There it is, ‘seizure,’ that’s twenty-nine points, triple-word score.”

“You don’t like to lose, do you, Walter?”

“After twenty-five years with the Company, if I could stand losing I’d probably be dead by now,” Ross replied.

It was always this way with them whenever Ross visited. They took a simple game of Scrabble and made it a highly competitive exercise. It fed both of their type-A personalities and took their minds off the deadly serious business they worked at — gathering intelligence on drug traffickers so that others in the CIA bureaucracy could take action.

“You getting hungry yet?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am,” he replied. “What did you have in mind?”

“How about Chinese?”

“Here? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, Chinese is universal, you know that. You can get Chinese anywhere. Where have you ever been that you can’t get Chinese? And besides, I order from them all the time. How about chow mein?”

“Works for me,” Ross replied as he continued to fiddle with his Scrabble tiles, rearranging them on his tile holder and plotting his next move.

Morales got up and walked to the phone hanging from the kitchen wall to put in their order. “Si… si… A que tiempo?… si… Gracias.” As she returned to join Ross, she passed in front of one of the windows. From across the street and unseen, a camera clicked. As she passed in front of the second window, a camera clicked again.

“So how long?” Ross asked as Morales sat down again on the loveseat in front of the Scrabble board.

“A half hour. I know, I know, you get it much faster in the States.”

Ross grinned. “What would I know about ordering Chinese in the States? Listen,” he continued, lowering his voice, “we got a response from our last cable to the embassy.” He was referring obliquely to his reporting senior in Mexico City. “We’re still waiting for the Chief of Mission to finalize an updated list of requirements for you. Apparently one of the operations types had some additional questions. We should have it for you in a couple of days.”

Morales merely shrugged on hearing this and laid down her tiles. “ ‘Broken’… that’s twenty-one points.”

“Y’know,” Ross said almost to himself, “I’ll never understand why good old boys from Princeton, who haven’t been in the field since Nixon was in the White House, are the ones who control our playbook.” He stared at the board and put down three of his tiles. “Double-word score. Eighteen points.”

“ ‘Dumb,’ ” Morales replied, shaking her head. “Easy word, good score.”

“Read it and weep.”

“I’m trying not to,” Morales replied.

The game and their banter continued, mixing Scrabble challenges with quiet shoptalk. It was familiar and comfortable. They were intelligence operatives, even though Morales was more informant than agent. They were both, as Robert Heinlein would say, strangers in a strange land. The game progressed, and as the board became a tiled mosaic, they continued to discuss ways their seniors could act more quickly on the information they were providing. Ross, the senior spook, easily shared his experience and his ideas with Morales. And while there was no sexual tension between them, he couldn’t help but embellish on his espionage exploits. For her, it was a cause; for him, it was a way of life.

Morales looked up at Ross and smiled as she put all her tiles on the board. “Thirty-four points!”

“ ‘Adumbrating’? That’s not a word!” Ross exclaimed.

They both paused a moment as the doorbell rang.

“Finally!” Ross said. “I’ll get it.”

“Here,” Morales replied as she threw a dictionary at him. “It’s pronounced ADAM-brating. It means ‘portending’ or ‘foreshadowing.’ You’re buying dinner.”

Ross fumbled with the dictionary, looking for Morales’s word as he ambled toward the front door. “Nice,” he said. “Most case officers get tactical partners. Langley sets me up with some kind of Scrabble hustler.”

“Scrabble Yoda,” Morales replied, leaning back on the loveseat and kicking off her shoes.

Ross looked through the peephole and saw the delivery boy holding their Chinese takeout. He undid the security chain, opened the double bolt, and turned the doorknob to the right. As he swung the door open, he reached into his back pocket for his wallet.

“How much do I owe…”

PSSST! PSST! There was only the metallic clatter that followed the muted explosions as the suppressed automatic chambered new rounds. The silencer and the downloaded rounds did their work as two 9mm hollow points slammed into Ross’s forehead.

Morales looked up just in time to see the back of Ross’s head expel a curtain of red mist that dusted the entryway walls.

Tommy and two of his men charged through the door, stepping over Ross’s lifeless body. Morales froze for just an instant, then rolled off the loveseat and dived for her weapon. Tommy and the two men charged directly at her.

The Agency firearms training Morales received at the Farm served her well. She moved instinctively and managed to double-tap the man closest to her. The explosion inside the small apartment was deafening. He went down hard, but she stayed with her first target a fraction of a second too long. As she pivoted to take aim, Tommy elbowed her square in the face, knocking her gun away.

Momentarily stunned, Morales was helpless as Tommy picked her up and slammed her through the coffee table, shattering the glass. Snarling, the enforcer picked her up and again threw her to the floor, knocking the wind out of her. Gasping, she came to her knees when the third man kicked her in the ribs. Fighting back and on an adrenaline high, she somehow struggled off the floor and was almost standing when Tommy took a sap from his back pocket and neatly clipped her on the back of the head. This time, she melted to the floor like a wet towel and did not move.

Tommy and his man quickly duct-taped her arms and legs, and shoved a cloth into her mouth. Then, as Tommy knelt over Morales’s hog-tied body, his man used a razor-sharp carpet knife to cut a section of the dung-colored carpet from around Morales’s bound body. The two men rolled Morales up like a tortilla in the section of carpet. The two hoisted her onto their shoulders and, half stumbling over the inert form of Ross, quickly left the apartment. They dashed down the single flight of stairs to the back alley and threw the carpet holding Morales into the ba Cs iuickly lefck of a battered pickup truck.

The entire operation had taken less than two minutes. Only the two shots from Morales’s pistol and the roar of the speeding pickup disturbed the still evening. When the police finally arrived, they asked few questions. And if any of the neighboring residents saw anything, they were not talking, nor did the Barranca police expect them to.

They began to arrive at Gator Beach just after 5:00 P.M., and by 5:30 there were kids racing between the picnic shelters and the water, often with mothers chasing close behind. Two of the younger platoon SEALs had arrived earlier and had three of the beach fire pits burning gently with a nice bed of coals. A platoon family outing was a logistically intensive affair, and there were coolers, beach bags, food containers, diaper bags, and paper dinnerware stacked on the picnic tables. The beach toys, including boogie boards, soccer balls, paddle balls, and a Nerf football, were soon fully deployed. The platoon was at full strength with sixteen SEAL operators — two platoon officers and fourteen enlisted SEALs. A few single men had their girlfriends in tow, but most of the men were married with kids. The average age of the Bandito Platoon SEALs was just under thirty. When Roark and Jackie Engel arrived, the gathering had swelled close to fifty. The surf was low and the water chilly, about 62 degrees, but that did not deter the kids or the dads — the former too excited at the prospect of playing in the water and the latter professionally immune to cold water. So the women organized and talked, while the kids and SEALs splashed about. The kids outlasted the SEALs in the water.

Jackie Engel moved easily among the other SEAL wives. She came from a prominent family in Indianapolis, and her father was a senior executive at Eli Lilly. She had met Roark during his junior year at Notre Dame while she was a freshman. They dated for two years and became engaged when he graduated. It was a long-distance engagement while she finished college and he completed SEAL training. She would have left school to be with him, but he insisted she stay and graduate. “We’ll have a lifetime together,” he told her, “so stay and get your degree.” They’d talked about her finishing at San Diego State or USD, but neither offered a degree in her field — microbiology. When she offered to switch majors to be near him, he again rejected it. “I plan to be in a dangerous line of work for quite some time,” the ever-practical Roark had told her. “You have to be prepared to step up and be the breadwinner.” He also knew that a SEAL officer in training was seldom home. So they were together for part of the summers and during Christmas and Easter breaks, and they were on Skype nearly every night. It was good training for marriage to a deploying Navy SEAL.

Jackie was tall, blond, and thin. As a young girl she had been awkward and angular, and since she was clumsy, she hated sports. Her ears back then had been too big, and she had always felt disproportionate. But as a teenager she caught up with herself and began to move with a newfound ease and grace. She grew into her features, and although not quite beautiful, she was attractive — striking even. Her parents had sent Jacquelyn, their only child, to the private Park Tudor School, where she excelled academically and dated very little. As she matured, she acquired a soft, ethereal presence that made her appear aloof and often made boys reluctant to approach her. Her grades and College Board scores were such that if her fami Ct iapply had not had the means, she would have attended college on an academic scholarship. When she came home for Thanksgiving her freshman year at Notre Dame, she told her parents she had met the man she would marry. They brushed it off as infatuation and inexperience. Still, they were concerned that this attachment would distract her from her studies — or, worse, cause her to drop out of school. Yet her first-semester grades reflected no such problem. Still, they were wary of this first boy in her life. Jackie’s parents did not meet him until later that spring.

They met Roark during a parent’s weekend at South Bend and quickly realized that this boy was a man, that he was courteous and polite to a fault, and that he was as much in love with their daughter as she was with him. While Jackie completed school and he completed SEAL training, her parents found themselves worrying that the separation might cause the relationship to end. The wedding took place a week after her graduation, followed by a reception at the Meridian Hills Country Club. Jackie was radiant, and the Navy groomsmen were just as handsome and polite as their new son-in-law. And they all wore the same shiny gold pin on their starched, white uniforms — the one they called the Trident.

When Engel returned to their small Coronado efficiency after his lunch with Nolan, he was worried about having broken the news of Jackie’s pregnancy to his chief. He was still trying to figure out how to tell her when she saw him and smiled.

“You told Dave, didn’t you?”

“Well, you see, he just sort of found out. I didn’t actually tell him.”

“And he’s the only one who knows, right?” she asked, knowing the answer full well.

He shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, it sort of went a little further than that.”

She came to him and they hugged. “Yeah, I know. Brothers by different mothers and all that.” They had stood in the kitchen-dining-living area for some time and just held each other. That afternoon they went for a long, easy bike ride together, their last for a while. Then they loaded the cooler in the car and headed for the platoon beach party.

The sun dropped behind the clouds before it dropped behind the ocean. No green flash tonight. The SEALs and the kids gradually played themselves out and began to straggle back to the food tables. It was a standard beach spread with chips, burgers, hotdogs, potato salad, and coleslaw. The other wives fussed over Jackie, and Roark moved from one table to another, taking a few moments with each extended family group. Dave Nolan was on the move as well. Their circuits converged when they reached a couple comfortably ensconced in two beach chairs on the edge of the group. Their kids were older and off doing what teenagers do on a Sunday night.

“Evening, Senior Chief. Hello, Mary. Good to see you again.”

“Evening, sir,” he replied. Then to Nolan, “How goes it with the Bandito, Jefe?”

“It goes well, Senior — even better knowing Cetty g that you’ll be with our detachment.”

Mary, sensing they needed to talk, pushed herself to her feet. “Think I’ll go and see what the girls are doing.” She paused, then gave Engel a hug. “I just heard the news, Roark. I couldn’t be more tickled. Blessings to you and Jackie.”

“Thanks, Mary. We won’t be long.”

They watched as she made her way over to a group of wives. Engel sensed that the collective mood of their ladies was much lighter than it had been during previous pre-deployment parties. Those rotations had been to Afghanistan or Iraq, with the prospect of certain and continuous combat. This deployment, with the task unit away from the active theaters in a contingency posture, held the prospect of probable engagement, but not the daily combat operations nearly all of them had known since 9/11. On this rotation, they would be looking for opportunities to get their guns in the fight. Currently in Afghanistan, as it had been in Iraq a few years before, the environment was target rich, and quite often, the fight found you.

The SEAL wives were for the most part bright, attractive, outgoing women and, in many cases, much more than the home half of a marriage. SEALs tended to marry women like themselves — capable, self-reliant, and independent. Many, including Jackie, were professionals whose income exceeded that of their husbands. Most worked until the children arrived. Some then became stay-at-home moms while others retained nannies and continued their careers. Yet because many SEALs and their wives shared the type-A gene, divorce rates were high — not noticeably higher now than before 9/11 but still high.

“Senior, I didn’t speak with you before I asked the skipper if you could detach in support of us. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No worries, sir. I’ve been to Southeast Asia many times, and before this deployment’s over, we’ll all probably be back out in WESTPAC with the rest of the task unit.” He grinned with some satisfaction. “It’s a chance to work a new area of operations. Other than that, I go where they tell me, just like you do. That much hasn’t changed.”

At thirty-nine, Senior Chief Otto Miller was older than any of the platoon SEALs and one of the older hands at Team Seven. He was also a legend in the SEAL Teams. As a platoon leading petty officer at SEAL Team Five, he had been badly wounded in an urban firefight during the Battle of Ramadi in 2006. His squad had gone out to rescue an Army patrol that was pinned down by insurgents. Early in the fight, his face had been raked by shrapnel, and a bullet found its way under his body armor and lodged itself in his spine. Yet he kept his gun in the fight, and his actions saved many lives in the beleaguered patrol. The bullet left him with permanent nerve damage and only the partial use of his left leg. He could have taken his Navy Cross and a substantial disability pension and retired, but Otto Miller was not finished serving his country. While he was still in physical therapy, he asked to have his Navy rating changed from Special Operator First Class to Intelligence Specialist First Class. Intelligence Specialists are among the Navy’s smartest sailors, and their rating is known to be one that demands a great deal of ability. Miller got his rating change, but he also had to pass the IS1 exam to keep it — no easy task for someone new to the Ce nlitspecialty. He passed the exam and then some, exceeding the scores of other more-seasoned sailors, specialists who had been working in military intelligence for years.

The ten years of continuous combat since 9/11 produced a good many wounded SEALs, men physically unable to return to duty. Not all of them handled it well. They had not joined the Navy and the SEAL Teams because they couldn’t find work or because college proved too difficult or to receive job training. They joined to become professional warriors. Once in the Teams, they entered this elite brotherhood and came to know the sometimes-narcotic thrill of special-operations combat. When their battle wounds forced them out of combat rotation, either they adjusted or they did not. Most got to where they were because they were goal oriented and success driven. The disabilities imposed by combat simply brought on a new set of challenges. A great many left the Navy and began a new life, usually with great success. Others, like Otto Miller, found a different way to serve in uniform. For a few, what they had come to know and what had been taken from them proved to be too much. They became the emotional casualties that every war produces.

Miller was heavily scarred about his mouth and neck, and no amount of plastic surgery would ever make him what he was. He wore a beard and mustache that hid most of the damage, but that was not why he let his facial hair grow. Among his many talents was his knack for languages and his skill as an interrogator. In Iraq, a man wore a mustache; and in Afghanistan, men wore beards and mustaches. So did most of those detained as terrorist suspects. He was merely conforming to the culture of those from whom he wished to extract information. Miller’s record of successful interrogations now exceeded his considerable operational success. It was said that he could get a hardened criminal to dime out his own mother and to feel good about having given her up. When he was an operational SEAL, he was in high demand in the platoons. Now every task unit wanted Miller in their intel shop. Both Engel and Nolan considered it something of a coup to have him in support of their detached squad. That they were given Miller was a further indication that there could be some activity in or around Central America that might require an on-call, special-operations response element.

“Any idea what’s going on down there?” Engel asked the senior chief.

Miller considered this, thoughtfully pulling his hand down his beard in a professorial gesture. He wore his hair longish and combed it straight back over his head. His deep green eyes seemed to be backlit. During interrogations, they became incandescent and piercing, and he used them on his opponent like he had once used the targeting laser on his automatic weapon.

“It could be just about anything,” he finally replied. “Drugs, extortion, a kidnapping. I’ll know a little more tomorrow morning once I’ve had a chance to run the agency alphabet trapline. But something’s got someone’s attention, that’s for sure.”

After more than ten years of war, the military special operators and the diverse appendages of the national intelligence apparatus had finally become synched. They now talked to one another, and the talk led to cooperation — the kind of cooperation that had resulted in the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Miller had good contacts at the CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, and DIA, and with their human and technical collec Chniof tion organizations. The intelligence community and the military were also now linked by sophisticated and secure communications networks. Early Monday morning, Miller would be pushing his agency and military contacts in Central and South America for any breaking leads. Usually, but not always, bits of information came from the opposition’s use of unencrypted cell phones or some other technical collector. There was also the occasional agent on the payroll of some hardworking CIA case officer who came up with some obscure but related fact. And that fact could be linked to another fact and to still another until the mosaic produced operable intelligence in the form of a target folder. This was called operations-intelligence, or ops-intel, fusion, and it was making life dangerous for terrorists worldwide.

“It’s like this, fellows,” the senior chief continued, “over in the sandbox, in the jihad-land, it’s all about religion and tribalism. Down south, it’s all about money. The money comes from drugs. There are the drug-support industries like gunrunning, the bribing of officials, assassination, and so on, but the big bucks come from producing drugs and moving drugs to the U.S. and European markets. It’s a sixty-billion-dollar-a-year industry. The U.S. military mission down south has to do with training — training the Colombians and the Salvadorians to fight drugs. But we don’t fight drugs down there, they do, or at least that’s the idea. We’ve had the Green Berets and some of our special boat teams helping with this training, but not a SEAL direct-action element in this mix, which, gentlemen, is what you are.”

“What we are,” Engel interrupted. “You’re a part of this team.”

“Thanks, sir. The money from drugs only comes when the product gets moved north. So the druggies have some very efficient and sophisticated ways to get the stuff across our southern border. And God knows there are plenty of illegals moving south to north. The big concern has always been that the jihadists and the druggies might climb into bed with each other. It’s got the boys and girls at Langley scared shitless. See, the jihadists have money and motivation, and the druggies have the mules to move contraband into this country. So the fear is that some deal gets cut to bring chemicals or radiological materials across the border. I know the Agency and Homeland Security have people working on this. So our going south may have something to do with this. My guess is they wouldn’t pull a SEAL detachment down there unless there was something afoot. Someone’s concerned about something. There are probably indicators, but nothing solid yet. But, hey, you fellows have been around long enough to know it could be something or it could be nothing.”

Engel nodded. It made sense. “Chief, what else?” he asked, looking at Nolan.

Nolan simply shrugged. “It is what it is. We’re ready to fight — as a platoon or now as a detached squad. All we need is a target folder and a mission-support package, and we’re good to go.” He paused and glanced over to where the platoon SEALs were gathering expectantly, in two separate groups: one, the squad that would be deploying with the task unit to the Philippines, and the other, the detached squad that would go south. “Boss, the guys all know about the change, but a little fatherly platoon officer advice might be in order right now.”

“Understood. Senior, you want to excuse us for a Ccus/di moment.”

“No problem, fellows. I’ll let you know if and when I learn anything.”

It was the custom on the eve of a deployment for the senior platoon officer and the platoon chief to each give a short, private out-the-door speech to the SEALs before they broke off to finish the evening with their families. Since the Bandito Platoon would be splitting into two squads for at least the initial part of this deployment, Engel had elected to make the break now. His assistant platoon officer and the next senior enlisted leader, the platoon leading petty officer, would caucus with the task unit squad, while he and Nolan would quickly meet with their detached squad. The platoon SEALs sensed this, and the two groups of SEALs separated and moved apart — from the families and from each other. Engel and Nolan led their group to one of the outlying picnic tables. There were five others besides the two of them, making it a light squad. The task unit squad would have a total of nine SEALs, which Engel knew would make his task unit commander more comfortable. He had his own responsibilities. Engel and Nolan had selected the five for their individual skills but had not cherry-picked them; they would fight alongside any of the Bandito Platoon SEALs.

There was Diego Weimy, or just plain Weimy. He was one of the platoon snipers and now the lead sniper for their squad. Like many SEAL snipers, he did not grow up hunting or shooting with his father or uncles. In fact, he grew up on the south side of Chicago, where the closest he came to a rural experience was the trash-strewn vacant lot where the kids played baseball and hid from local merchants after they’d boosted a candy bar or a radio from their store. The SEAL sniper instructors liked men who had limited shooting instruction, as it meant there were fewer bad habits to break in teaching them long-range shooting. Weimy had been stocking shelves in Albertsons when he decided to go into the military. He chose the Navy because he wanted to get away, and there was no saltwater near Chicago. He volunteered for SEAL training on a whim, having no idea what he was getting into. In training, Weimy had been what they called a gray man — someone you never noticed. But after Hell Week had caused most in his class to quit, he was still there. He was good at all SEAL skills, but by SEAL standards, not great at any except for shooting. Still, he had the right temperament, the shooting mechanics, and the cold efficiency of a natural-born sniper. Weimy, like the rest of them, was now anxious to learn more about the squad’s detached duty. He was also anxious to get back to his wife and infant son.

Ramon Diamond was the one SEAL they selected because he was the best. He was the most experienced of the two platoon radio operators, and since they would not have the support of the task unit’s communications team to draw on, they drafted him for the squad. Ray was an electronics geek first and a SEAL second. Everyone came to Ray — with a new cell phone that they needed to learn how to operate or with a laptop that had fallen prey to a particularly nasty virus. Engel suspected that Ray quietly hacked into national-security databases for satellite imagery. On their last deployment to Afghanistan, he always seemed to come up with great aerial imagery of their targets. When Engel had asked where he got them, Ray had been evasive, saying that you just had to know where to look. They had worked well together on that last deployment. Ray normally stayed close to Engel, as communications were critical in the modern fight — comms with the engaged SEAL fire teams as well as comms with the support elements and higher headqu Chig inarters. During one particularly vicious firefight, Engel had looked around and couldn’t find Ray. A teammate had gone down, and Ray had raced through a hail of fire to drag the injured man to safety. That action led to Ray’s second Silver Star. One of the big dichotomies with their platoon geek was that his arms were covered with gang tats, which he refused to discuss. “Some guys are reborn in Christ,” Ray would say when asked. “I was reborn in the Navy. That’s all you need to know.” In addition to his IT skills, he had a dry sense of humor and a knack for pushing other people’s buttons.

Sonny Guibert was perhaps the only one of the group who looked like a SEAL, or what those outside this tight-knit community thought a SEAL should look like. In a word, he was a wall. At six feet two and 225 pounds, he was the largest SEAL in the squad or the platoon, and movie-star handsome. He had thick blond hair and perfect teeth. When the Bandito SEALs parachuted without equipment, they often said they were jumping Guibert rather than jumping Hollywood. He towered over SEALs like Weimy and Ray, who were under six feet and fifty-plus pounds lighter. Dave Nolan accused him of having weight-lifter genes, as he was naturally cut and buffed. For that reason, he did only nominal upper-body work, but he was a highly competitive triathlete. He was the squad’s automatic-weapons man, which meant he carried the M48 machine gun — a compact SEAL weapon that digested the heavy 7.62 NATO rounds — and in a squad action, his weapon was the biggest dog in the fight. He also served as the squad’s armorer, which meant he had sub-custody of all the squad weapons and night-vision equipment. He made sure the detached squad had extra weapons and spare parts, so they could operate independently from the task unit. In one word, Sonny was reliable. It was Chief Nolan’s job to check all those with platoon and squad responsibilities, but he did so very carefully with the big SEAL. Sonny took an immense amount of pride in knowing that he kept the squad’s weapons package up to standards and that everyone’s work gun was up and running. Sonny’s personal responsibilities also extended to a wife who could pass for Miss California and two blond, towheaded daughters. The family was Hallmark material.

Alfonso Joseph Markum had joined the Navy in his late twenties and needed a special waiver to enter basic SEAL training at twenty-nine. A.J. was born in Trinidad and came to Miami with his mother when he was six. She married a Cuban exile and they all settled in little Havana. Neither spoke English; they were poor but proud. A.J.’s stepfather worked as a security guard and his mother cleaned homes. A.J. was left alone after school and had flirted with gangs, black and Cuban, but two things kept him from serious trouble: One was the example and sacrifice of his mother and stepfather. The other was a youth-club mentor who introduced him to Muay Thai fighting, or Thai kickboxing. A.J. was small, compact, and quick. His heroes were ranked fighters like Tony Jaa and Buakaw Por. Pramuk. Had he been introduced to the sport earlier, he might have become a professional, but it was a discipline that took decades to master at that level and he had started too late. His inclinations led him into security work and to several years with the Dade County Sheriff’s Department. But he found police work frustrating, and he ran afoul of department politics. His troubles usually began with a fight between his large Anglo partner and a local gangbanger. When things began to go badly for his partner, A.J. would step in and settle things. Three Miami hoodlums, albeit ones with criminal records and aggressive personal-injury lawyers, were left with permanent physical disabilities. While A.J. Markum was protecting and serving the citizens of Dade County, the C Co crimlawsuits against the county began to mount, and he was let go. So A.J. went looking for work where a man was supposed to have his buddy’s back, and this took him to the Navy SEALs. Most who survive the rigorous SEAL training have to dig deep within themselves to make it through. A.J. was not one of those. He was the squad’s point man, and he was one of the best with Team Seven. Contrary to popular myth, SEALs seldom killed silently with their hands; they had suppressed weapons that did that at long range and up close. But if it came to a quiet kill, hand-to-hand, then the go-to SEAL would be A.J. Markum.

Finally, there was Mike Bennett, or Mikey. The youngest and least experienced SEAL in the squad, this would be his second deployment. Mikey was one of the platoon’s two medics. In dividing up the platoon talent, Chief Nolan had chosen Mikey first. When Engel had lifted an eyebrow in question, Nolan simply shrugged. “He’s good to go, but I’d like him where I can keep an eye on him.” Nolan had no need to explain himself. Engel felt the same way. Mikey would win the nicest-guy-in-the-world award. He’d been an Eagle Scout and a National Science Fair finalist. He had a degree in sociology from the University of San Diego, he’d married his high school sweetheart, and he came from family money. He struggled in basic SEAL training, failing once and finally making it on his second try. On his first deployment, he had done well, both with the dirty jobs assigned new SEALs on their first rotation and with the running and gunning that were an every-night occurrence in Afghanistan. He’d taken life quickly and professionally, so his SEAL skill set was good — even better than good. If Engel or Nolan could put their reservations into words, it would be about the dial. All SEALs have to dial it up in the fight and dial it down in garrison or at home. This allowed them to be tenacious and lethal during the adrenaline high of a firefight and still be able to lose graciously at cards in the barracks or read bedtime stories to their kids at home. Mikey’s dial didn’t seem to be calibrated like the others. On the everyday/normal side, it extended to a range well past the others; he was simply an easygoing, nice person. On the combat side, he did his job, but with seemingly no aggression or emotion. On his first patrol, an insurgent stepped from a doorway and brought them under fire. Everyone reacted, but Mikey was the fastest, ringing the insurgent up with a perfect double tap to the head. He looked back at Chief Nolan with that gee-whiz, how’d-I-do-it grin and simply continued on the patrol. He might well become the best among them, but he was different.

Engel surveyed the men around him. “Guys, I only have so many stay-tight, stay-focused, stay-professional speeches in me. You’ve all been there; you all know the deal. I know nothing more about what may be waiting for us downrange than you do. I do know that while we’re detached from the task unit and the squadron, the communications back home may not be what we’ve enjoyed in the past. Let your families know that there may be times when we’ll be in the wind, and they’ll not hear from you.” He paused to carefully frame his words. “Regarding families, I’ll say again what goes without saying. If there are any issues — personal, emotional, financial, whatever — get them fixed. If you need help, there’s the chief and myself. Our wives are there to help as well. We’re all here for you. But get it right and get it locked down. When we leave, I want a total front-sight focus on the mission. Everyone’s got everyone else’s back. That’s how we go to war; that’s how we all come back from war. We good with that?” He met each man’s eyes in turn, and each nodded in agreement. “Chief?”

“You’ve said it all, Boss. So let’s drink to our brotherhood.” Nolan raised his beer and was quickly followed by others, including a few who were raising water bottles. “For all of those who go downrange — to us and those like us — damn few.”

“Here, here.”

“Friggin’ right.”

The two squads broke from their separate gatherings, much like they had peeled from their free-fall V-formations, and rejoined their families. It was full-on dark, and most people had pulled in close to the fires. The wives handed off sleeping kids to their fathers. The older kids drifted back to sit between their parents. Mikey and his wife joined the Nolan tribe and took one of the little boys between them. Ray and A.J. sat near Engel and Jackie and observed a comfortable silence. Some talked quietly, others just listened. An occasional joke or war story kept the melancholy at bay, but it was a holding action. Finally, the Banditos and their families began to drift away. Jackie walked Julia Nolan back to their car, leaving only Nolan and Engel. Always the good Scout, Mikey had doused and inspected all the fire pits. No glowing embers or rekindles while he was on duty.

“That’s it, Boss. I think we’re ready.”

“I think you’re right.”

“And don’t worry about the other squad — they have good veterans and good leadership.”

Engel smiled. His chief knew him well; he was thinking just that. “I’ll do my best. Can’t worry about what you can’t control, right? Just like back here on the home front.”

Nolan nodded. “Two days and a wake up, then the long good-bye.”

Engel again smiled, but it was a sad one. “Yeah, the long good-bye.”

The following day, despite Senior Chief Miller’s best efforts, there was no further clarity on what might await them. Something seemed to be brewing, but no one seemed to be able to communicate what it might be. The day after that, the task unit and their single Bandito Platoon squad mustered at the North Island Naval Air Station for the flight that would take them west, halfway around the world. Actually, they would fly north on a great circle route, pausing at Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa for fuel before continuing on to Manila. Lieutenant Engel and Chief Nolan were there to see them off. Following the good wishes and the good-byes, the big C-17 swallowed up the SEALs, the task unit combat support team, and their gear. For Engel, Nolan, and the remaining Bandito squad, they and their support team would be staging gear at this same location for most of the day. Their departure was scheduled for early the following morning.

Every SEAL leaves on deployment in his own way. For some it’s highly ritualized and formatted. Others go to great lengths to make it just another day. A few try to make the last minutes pass slowly; others want it over and done so they can be Co ts tgin the countdown to the homecoming. Above all, it’s individual — each SEAL and SEAL family handle it in their own way.

The night before, just as he had for previous deployments, Roark Engel arranged for the Coronado Livery, the oldest cab company on Coronado, to call for him at the street entrance to their condo building. For him, the leaving was in the details, and he busied himself with them. Roark Engel faced a common special-operator’s dilemma. His professional calling was that of a combat team leader in combat rotation. He loved his wife dearly, yet his calling demanded that he leave her for long periods of time. So he immersed himself in the details.

For Jackie Engel, the last days were measured in the degrees of seriousness that began to overtake her husband as the time for deployment drew closer. She knew he held it off as best as he could, but as the time to leave approached, he took on responsibility like the layers of clothing one puts on to go out into a cold night. She could almost see him bend under the weight of it. She knew it was a double burden. He was bending under the weight of the responsibility of taking care of his men and of leaving her and their unborn child. She also knew that once he was gone and could focus only on the men and the mission, he would do fine. Jackie Engel didn’t resent this; she understood and accepted it. More than that, a part of her welcomed it. She knew that his total attention to his duties was the best insurance she had that he would come home to her intact.

The day before, he and Jackie had gone over everything that needed to be in place before he left. This morning he wanted to think about nothing; he wanted to make their parting as gentle and painless as it could be. Mechanically, he showered, shaved, dressed, and got ready for the day just like any other. They shared a simple breakfast and tried to be cheerful. These little practiced routines helped him fight through the emotional strain of leaving his wife. So they went through the routines together. They talked about their next breakfast together, and future breakfasts with a high chair between them.

His operational gear, uniforms, files, computer, and the few civilian clothes he would take were long since packed and staged for the deployment. The only thing he put in his bag the night before leaving was always the flag. His flag had adorned the coffin of his grandfather, who was killed in action in World War II. His grandfather on his father’s side had piloted a B-24 during the Ploesti raids. On his final mission, he kept the dying Liberator in the air until the rest of the crew had bailed out. Then he rode the stricken aircraft to a fiery grave. There was no question: Warrior blood coursed through Roark Engel’s veins. Roark always took the flag with him on deployment; he said it kept him safe — that the spirits of the warriors in his family would protect him while he was in harm’s way. The day before, the flag had been over the mantel in a small rectangular shadow box. The next morning, it was gone, spirited quietly into the canvas document case that contained his orders and deployment authorizations.

Then it was time. He was dressed the same as he was every morning — camouflage uniform, rough-out desert boots, and utility cap. For Roark and Jackie, their established point of departure was the front door of their little condo. He would go out the door, and she would remain behind.

“Got the flag?” she asked, C /p> just as she had on previous deployments.

“Got the flag,” he responded. Then came the litany of advice and cautions that she knew was coming and for which she loved him.

“Now, promise me you’ll stay away from your sister Carol. I know it’s only secondary smoke and she sits by the fireplace, but its still bad news.”

“And stay away from processed food,” she said, mimicking him, “and deli meats and diet anything.”

He smiled affectionately and added, “And sushi and ice cream and alcohol,” even though neither had touched a drop, save for his Bushmills at Danny’s, since they learned she was pregnant. She pulled him close and rubbed his closely cropped head. “It’ll be okay, Lieutenant. Just come back to me with a decent head of hair.”

“You know, Jackie, I not only love you, I’m very proud of you.”

“Ditto, Boss,”

“Any other orders?”

“Yes. I want to look into your eyes when our first child is born.”

“Honey, you know I’ll do my best.”

Both were misty eyed and holding each other closely. He bent over and kissed her gently on the mouth. “I love you.”

“And I love you.”

They continued to hold each other for another long moment, then he took up his document case, turned, and walked away. Only after she had gently closed the door did tears flow, and once they started, there seemed to be no end to them.

At the North Island terminal, there were the squad SEALs and the hastily configured support package that would accompany the squad. The aircraft, a newer C-130J, had arrived at noon the day before, so all of the gear was aboard and strapped down. Those like Engel who had said their good-byes at home were essentially already on deployment. For those whose families came to see them off, they were still multitasking — juggling their family and team responsibilities. Julia Nolan was there with all five kids and seemed surprisingly cheerful, but then she’d had far more practice at this than Jackie. Engel greeted each of the kids, then turned to Julia.

“Ready to go, Roark?” she said as he hugged her.

“As ready as I can be,” he replied.

“Got a deal for you. You take care of Dave and I’ll look in on Jackie, okay?”

He gave her a feigned look of surprise and a smile. “But isn’t it Dave’s job to look after me?” Then more seriously, “You got a deal, Julia, and thanks — I really appreciate it.”

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Engel said hello to Mikey’s wife, who was dressed as if she were going to a garden party and crying as if she were at a funeral. Like himself, Sonny had also said his good-byes at home and was ready to launch. At this point, there was little else for Engel to do. The loading and the manifesting were Nolan’s responsibility, and he knew that all was well in hand. Senior Chief Miller had taken charge of their support package, and that, too, was done. He found the pilots standing off to one side and joined them. They looked on while the others completed their farewells.

“Ready when you are, Lieutenant,” the pilot said.

“Then let’s do it,” Engel announced. Nolan had kept an eye on Engel for the high sign, even as his family pressed closely about him. Engel had only to nod his head; his platoon chief would do the rest. Engel boarded the plane, stowed his case under his seat, and strapped himself in. Then he closed his eyes and thought of Jackie, totally detached from the commotion of the others clamoring aboard the aircraft. Twenty minutes later they were climbing out over the Pacific and turning south.

The compound was designed to blend into the dense foliage and surrounding mangrove, and it did just that. The few dilapidated buildings that were scattered over the five-acre compound were completely hidden by the vegetation. It would have looked like any other poor Costa Rican jungle enclave were it not for the eight-foot-high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounding it, the two forty-five-foot wooden guard towers, and the armed men patrolling the area. The property was ten miles from the coast but at least an hour’s travel over the unimproved roads. There was standing water on one side of the compound and a brown, slow moving river that crawled past a quarter mile north. Any aircraft flying over would not know it was there, save for the two rut-filled dirt roads barely wide enough for one car to navigate, and they were but shadowy creases in the canopy. The small compound was protected by its remoteness as well as its security force.

Several miles away, a small village provided a link to civilization and housed an additional security force. Like numerous small inland villages, there was a main road; a cluster of huts; and a central building that was a cantina, a general store, and a Pemex station. There were two armed forces in the area: the Costa Rican national army and the local drug cartel. The cartel considered the village and this isolated compound a part of its turf and under its protection. These two forces seldom confronted each other. This was not because of the normal practice of bribing officials, at least not out here at the foot-soldier level. Theirs was a practical accommodation. Both were well armed, and neither the cartel security men nor the federales wanted to end up facedown in the mud and the mangrove. So they gave each other a wide berth.

Inside the compound’s largest building, a long, low structure, Lisa Morales hung from a rafter in a 20x20 foot end room — the tips of her bare toes just able to gain a purchase on the plank flooring. Old Spanish newspapers and mildew covered the room’s peeling clapboard walls, and a single yellow bulb dangled overhead. It was just enough light to cast her slim shadow on the wall and floor. The door pushed open from the exterior and filtered daylight spilled into the ro Cd icast her som, illuminating Morales’s bloody face and filthy clothes. Tommy filled the door for a moment, then walked up to the battered physician. She raised her head and peered at him through slitted, swollen eyes.

“I am a doctor, and my organization will pay a generous reward.”

Tommy stood a foot from Morales and smiled. He was a brutish figure with a pocked face, narrow eyes, and a thatch of unruly, unkempt hair. He wore a rumpled polo shirt and pleated slacks — both with streaks of blood on them. Just under six feet, he weighed close to 250 and was running to fat. Yet he exuded a raw animal power that was both compelling and cruel. He held a cell phone on speakerphone in front of her swollen and bruised lips.

“I am a doctor, and my organization will pay you a reward,” Morales said again, her voice pleading and weary.

Half a world way, sitting in a Lincoln Town Car on a deserted street in Brovary, Ukraine, Christo sifted through a collection of photos of Morales and Ross. They showed the two of them in her apartment window, sitting at a café, and walking through the streets of Barranca. Christo himself was dressed in a hand-tailored Bond Street suit, with a crisp white shirt and floral tie. He frowned, shifted in the soft leather seats, and gave his attention to the image of Morales on his iPhone.

“Tell me, what is it about you Americans that makes you feel entitled to interfere in my affairs — affairs which are of no concern to you whatsoever.” He was smiling, but there was a hard edge to his voice.

“What… what are you talking about? My name is Lisa Morales. I am a physician, nothing more.” She struggled to continue as Tommy held the phone closer in his enormous hands, but she could only squint at the cell-phone screen through blood-laced eyes.

“I know who you are, Miss Morales, and I know who you work for. I know who Mr. Ross works for, or worked for. What I don’t know is how much you know. So why don’t you make this easy on both of us and tell me just exactly what you think you know.”

“I’m a doctor. I try to prevent mothers from dying at childbirth,” she replied, rallying somewhat. “I treat children with malnutrition who are half starved because of you and your dirty business. I work with—” but her sentence ended when Tommy slammed his open palm into the side of her head.

“How did that feel, Miss Morales? Not good, I think. So I want you to think about what I have just said,” Christo replied with the same forced smile, “and what I want from you. Now, you have a nice day at the spa.” Then to Tommy, “Take me off speakerphone.”

Tommy disengaged the speakerphone, put the cell phone up to his ear, and stepped away from her.

“Keep her alive, and don’t call me back until she talks.” Then, thinking of Tommy and the headache that this meddlesome woman and her CIA handler had caused him, he added, “And after she talks, you may do what you want with her.”

“As you say, Patron,” Tommy replied with a twisted grin.

Christo rung off and exhaled deeply, suspecting it would take a while to get what was needed from Morales. He sensed that she might be a tough one. The women, he mused. They were always the tough ones. He paused a moment to reflect on the passion and stubbornness of the ideologically committed. Fools, he concluded — an irritant but nothing more. He sighed and stared passively out the window of the Town Car into the bland Brovary landscape.

At the compound, Tommy cupped his hand and slammed it against Morales’s left ear.

“Diga me,” Tommy shouted. He was close enough to spray spittle across her cheek.

“Diga me,” he shouted even louder and aimed another blow at the near-lifeless Morales.

High above the dense, emerald-colored jungle canopy, a King Air 350 twin-engine turboprop flew at fifteen thousand feet. It was stacked with the finest high-end monitoring equipment U.S. taxpayers could buy, all focused on the compound directly below.

The American Surveillance Technical Officer — or STO — monitoring the plane’s equipment had his headphones on as he huddled against a rack of electronic listening gear. He put his hands over the headphone ear cups to seal out the whine of the aircraft’s twin PT6A-60A engines. The STO nodded his head slowly as he listened.

Finally satisfied that he had heard all he needed to hear, his hands flashed to his laptop and raced over the keys. After no more than a few minutes of typing, he hit the SEND key. His message, and a copy of the intercept, was encrypted and uploaded to an orbiting communications satellite.