Trident's First Gleaming: A Special Operations Group Thriller (4 page)

_______

C
hris stood there, silent for a while. He heard someone nearby speak but didn’t catch the words.

“You okay?” the head minister, John Luther, asked, placing a hand on Chris’s forearm.

Chris groaned. “I don’t know.”

Pastor Luther waited quietly. He was a good listener, and Chris wished he could listen as well as Pastor Luther. He wished he could do a lot of things as well as Pastor Luther. People commented on Chris’s big heart, but next to Pastor Luther, Chris felt like his heart was twenty-two sizes too small.

“Uncle Sam wants me back,” Chris said quietly.

“It must be important.”

Chris tried to think critically about the situation. “Or maybe it’s just a wild hawg hunt.”

“How can you know?” Pastor Luther asked calmly.

“I can’t know until after I accept the mission.”

“And then if you find out it’s an important mission?”

“I don’t know.”

Pastor Luther nodded.

After Chris left the Navy, he’d returned to Harvard to finish his degree and completed his internship under Pastor Luther, who’d invited him to return to work for him after graduation. “In the eleven months I’ve been your assistant pastor, I’ve really felt at home with the congregation,” Chris said.

“You’ve brought a lot of new members to our fold and found some of our lost sheep. You have talents that I don’t have. Is she asking you to quit?”

“She’s asking me to take a three-week vacation.”

“You two were friends?” Pastor Luther asked.

“Colleagues,” Chris replied. “And friends.” The admission came out shy, almost embarrassed.

“I see.”

“I don’t want to go,” Chris said, “but something terrible might happen if I stay.”

“I don’t want you to go, either.”

“But if the Lord wants me to go, and I don’t go, I’m concerned about the consequences,” Chris said. “Not just for myself but for others. Since Hannah walked through that door, my whole world turned upside down. My old job and this job seem in conflict. She’s a colleague and a friend, but there were moments when I wished we could put the world on pause and see if we could be something more.”

“God hears you.”

“But right now, I’m afraid I can’t hear Him. Why would the Lord bring me all the way here to this peaceful place—just to send me back to war? Why would I walk away from Hannah just so she could walk back in? I want guidance, but I’m afraid that I only want to hear the guidance that I want to hear.” While Pastor Luther seemed to have a hotline to God, Chris experienced both good and bad reception days.

“Where does your friend live?” Pastor Luther asked.

“Virginia.”

“It must be important for her to come way out here to Dallas.”

“She said it’s a matter of national security.”

“This was the Lord’s church before you and I arrived. And it’ll be the Lord’s church long after you and I are gone. I’ll be happy to cover for you until you return.”

“Will you pray for me while I’m away?” Chris asked.

“Certainly.”

“I’ve never been too afraid about physical death, but I am afraid of spiritual death.”

“I just have one favor to ask of you,” Pastor Luther said.

“Sure.”

“When you go back to the kind of work you used to do, old habits will return—it’s inevitable. Much of that can be forgiven. I don’t like killing, but I understand that’s what a soldier must do for his country, and I won’t tell you how to do that part of your job. But I saw how she looked at you and how you looked at her. If you fall into serious transgression, I can’t support you. And if you want my recommendation to preach elsewhere, I won’t be able to give it.”

“I understand,” Chris said. “You told me the same before I started work here. I agreed with you then, and I agree with you now.”

“God expects more from you and me. We are His ambassadors. We are His anointed servants. If you marry her, you two can procreate to your hearts’ desire, but until then, you abstain.”

The conversation was awkward for Chris, and he guessed it was awkward for Reverend Luther, too, but he was grateful for Reverend Luther’s straight-shooting character and unflinching dedication. “Yes, sir. I’ll be careful.”

“Shall I pray?”

Chris nodded.

They bowed their heads, and Pastor Luther prayed to protect Chris from harm, both physical and spiritual. “Please keep all cruelty, hate, and murder out of Chris’s heart, even during battle…”

Chris had spent the whole night preparing for his journey back to black. After only a couple hours of sleep, he called a taxi that first took him to Pastor Luther’s home. In the dawn light, a spring wind graced new maple leaves with movement, and tree branches sent off an armada of flat fibers that whirled through the air like helicopters. Patches of fresh St. Augustine grass replaced the winter’s dead, and a cardinal pecked for food in the flowerbed where a small rainbow of petunias and lantanas bloomed. Chris rang the doorbell.

Pastor Luther’s wife answered the door. “Good morning, Chris. You just missed him. He left to visit Zeke Jackson in the hospital.”

“That’s all right. I just needed to drop some things off for him, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” she said warmly. “I was expecting you.”

Chris nodded. “These are the keys to my house and car. And I’ve included some instructions and important papers in this file.” Chris handed the keys and file to her.

She smiled as she took them.

“My will is in the file, too,” Chris added as an afterthought.

Mrs. Luther froze for a moment, as if it was her first time sending a man off to combat. “Don’t worry about your things,” she said. “We’ll make sure they’re taken care of until you return.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll miss you,” she added.

“I’ll miss y’all, too.”

She wrapped him in a hug. She started to release him but then hugged him again—tighter—as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether to keep hugging or let him go. Finally she released him. “Be safe,” she said.

Chris walked away with a wave good-bye, not knowing when—or if—he’d see her and her husband again. She waved back, standing in the doorway until Chris’s taxi pulled away.

He considered himself unworthy to be treated so kindly. As a SEAL, he worked on Sundays, deceived and killed people, but that was all part of the job, and he didn’t feel guilt over it. While in the Teams, he’d never gotten any tattoos and never drank. But he’d swore like a sailor and had sex with a number of women. In the Teams, the guys teased him about his high moral standards, but compared to Reverend and Mrs. Luther, he felt as far from the Lord as angels could fly.

It was reassuring to know that, in spite of all the darkness on the earth, there were still places where the sun shined. Although he felt sadness at leaving, he also felt a calm peace that what he was doing was right.

The taxi driver dropped him off at the La Quinta Inn. Inside, people were eating their continental breakfasts, checking out, and hurrying to catch their rides. Hannah was nowhere in sight.

Chris hadn’t eaten, and he didn’t know when he’d find another chance to eat, so he grabbed some breakfast, sat down in the back of the lobby, and ate—keeping his eye on the entrances and exits.

Always know your escape routes
.
Stay away from the windows in case a car bomb goes off.

His old mindset was coming back to him already.

He finished eating and looked at his watch: 0658.
Only two minutes. Maybe I have the wrong hotel.
He checked the sheet of paper. The hotel was right.
Maybe I remembered the wrong time.

Then Hannah arrived at his table. “I’m happy you showed,” she said with that twinkle in her eye. “The taxi is on its way.”

A fresh burst of oxygen filled his lungs. “I was worried I had the wrong time.”

The cab took them to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, where they caught their flight to DC. As tempted as he was to engage Hannah while he had her alone, after such a busy night preparing for the trip and being unable to sleep, Chris needed a nap. Besides, he didn’t know when he’d have another opportunity to sleep.

His eyes grew heavier as he tried to relax, his body more and more lethargic. He had only one more thought, a remembrance of a Proverb, before he drifted off.

Be not afraid of sudden fear.

_______

C
hris woke up at 1335 as they touched down at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. He followed Hannah to the short-term parking lot, where they located her yellow Mustang convertible, and twenty minutes later, they arrived at the CIA headquarters in Langley. It wasn’t Chris’s first visit, but he couldn’t help spending a moment to get an overview of the layout. The front building was unchanged from the last time he’d been there, the original concrete structure still in place. The glass and steel New Headquarters Building, however, lay to the west. Conversations inside couldn’t vibrate the specialized glass, thwarting outsiders from eavesdropping with laser microphones.

Hannah parked in a side lot. She didn’t lead him through the front entrance, where the CIA seal was inlaid in the granite floor and a marble Memorial Wall stood with 103 stars carved into it.

Instead, she led him to a side entrance, where she showed the guard her ID, handed him her car keys, and signed in. Hannah gave Chris a temporary badge. He put it on and followed her through a maze of halls. Hannah worked for Special Operations Group (SOG), which conducted high-threat military and intelligence operations that the US government might deny knowledge of, such as when SEAL Team Six had raided bin Laden’s headquarters. SOG also utilized Army Delta Force operators and others. When Chris and his teammates had rescued Young, they’d been working with Hannah under SOG.

It was a world in which Chris had once been comfortable, but now he experienced reverse culture shock. He’d expected becoming a pastor was going to be different—attending religious classes at Harvard, praying often, reading the Bible daily, attending frequent church meetings, maintaining high moral standards, and so on—so he’d experienced little shock in the transition from SEAL to pastor. He hadn’t expected returning to the world of black ops would feel like a new experience, but he felt like an alien landing on a new planet. Even the pace of walking was faster than he remembered. He increased his speed to keep up with Hannah. They reached a room with an armed guard posted at the door. Hannah showed the guard her ID, and he opened the door for her.

Inside was a conference room with a feast laid out on the table. A slightly overweight man in his fifties wearing a suit jacket, slacks, and cowboy boots greeted Chris. “Howdy, Chris. Welcome to the family.” His fatherly voice rose and fell with a slow sweetness like molasses. “I’m Jim Bob Louve.”

Chris held out his hand to shake Jim Bob’s, but Jim Bob hugged him instead. The overabundance of affection caught Chris off guard.

“Thought you might be famished, and since I was having a late lunch,” Jim Bob said, “well, please, sit down and join me.”

Chris thanked him and took a seat at the table with Hannah. Another man already sat across from them looking at papers in a file.

Jim Bob seated himself at the head of the table. “Help yourself,” he said.

The other man continued to look at his papers rather than grab some lunch, but Jim Bob and Hannah reached for plates. Chris put fried chicken, cornbread, coleslaw, black-eyed peas, and fried okra on his—southern cooking was one of his favorites. He waited for Jim Bob to eat first.

“Don’t be shy, dig in,” Jim Bob said. “Oh, I almost forgot. Where are my manners? Chris, this is Victor.” His hand gestured toward the quiet man, who glanced up from his papers. Victor had that thousand-yard stare like so many combat veterans Chris had known. “Victor was a case officer like me. Until we made the switch to SOG.”

Chris nodded.

“You worked for SEAL Team Six in Iraq, didn’t you?” Victor asked.

“I’m not aware of any such unit,” Chris replied. Maybe SEAL Team Six was public knowledge now and had a history of working with the Agency, but Chris wasn’t used to casually discussing such things with strangers, and Victor was already rubbing Chris’s rhubarb. Maybe he was testing Chris to see if he had loose lips.

“Oh, right,” Victor said. “But you were part of Task Force 88, Operation Snake Eyes?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny such a task force or operation.”

“On 12 September 2009, you killed a number of Syrian insurgents while rescuing a kidnapped CIA technician named Young Park.”

Chris felt even more uncomfortable, but he said nothing.

Victor leaned forward in his chair. “That mission cost you your right ear, and now you wear a prosthetic.”

Now Chris was pissed at having his personal history laid out so casually, but he hid his irritation out of respect for Hannah and Jim Bob—and because he didn’t want the others to think someone could get him riled so quickly. “Piercing and tattoos are so yesterday,” Chris said with a grin. He chewed a hunk of warm chicken breast. It tasted almost as good as home cooked.

Jim Bob chuckled. “Now Victor, you should show Chris more hospitality than that,” he said in that fatherly tone.

“Yes, sir,” Victor said, straightening in his chair.

“This chicken ain’t half bad,” Jim Bob remarked.

Hannah hungrily bit chunks out of a drum stick and chewed the meat quickly before swallowing. She cleaned off the remaining meat from the bone before moving on to a wing. She’d become so immersed in her eating that she seemed oblivious to her surroundings.

“Victor, would you give our non-disclosure agreement to Chris so he can take a look at it?” Jim Bob asked.

“Yes, sir.” Victor produced a form from his file and politely passed it to Chris.

Chris wiped his hands before taking it. He’d signed such agreements before, but he still took the time to read through it. Centered at the top were the words
Secrecy Agreement
. In the middle of the paper was a watermark of the CIA seal. After several pages of text, near the bottom, Chris signed and dated the contract. He gave the papers to Jim Bob, who signed and dated the last lines as a witness before returning the form to Victor, who placed it in his file.

“Wonderful,” Jim Bob said. “Victor, would you cut the lights and start the presentation?” He spoke it casually as if they were in an everyday business meeting instead of a secret government operation briefing. Jim Bob seemed so comfortable with it all that Chris guessed he’d probably been at it for close to a couple of decades.

“Yes, sir,” Victor replied. He flicked a switch on the wall, and a projection screen descended from above. Then he pressed a button on a remote control, and a projector mounted in the ceiling came alive. After dimming the lights, he began the brief. On the screen materialized a photo of a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). “This is the Navy’s newest UAV, codenamed
Switchblade Whisper
,” Victor explained. “With its wings collapsed, the UAV is stored in a canister small enough to fit in a backpack. Or the trash tube of a submarine underwater at periscope depth.” Victor showed a computer graphics simulation of a submarine. “The Switchblade Whisper in the canister is ejected from a submarine’s trash tube, floats to the surface, and launches into the air, where each wing flicks out like the blade of a switchblade. In the submarine’s combat control room, the operator controls the Switchblade Whisper’s flight, conducting reconnaissance and surveillance. Visual data is encrypted and streamed live back to the submarine. The drone also backs up the gathered intelligence, so even if the live stream is compromised, intelligence can still be retrieved from the Switchblade Whisper itself. Then it flies back to the submarine, retracts its wings, and splashes down in the water where it floats until the submarine’s diver retrieves it.”

The technology was impressive, but in Chris’s experience, technology without brave boots on the ground was always a goat-screw. He patiently listened for what his role might be.

Next, Victor displayed an actual photo of a submarine. “Three days ago, off the coast of Syria, the USS
Mississippi
took part in a covert mission during which they launched the Switchblade Whisper. The
Mississippi
was in the process of collecting critical intelligence when the Switchblade Whisper’s live streaming went out, and the
Mississippi
lost control of the UAV over land near the port city of Latakia, Syria. We need to retrieve that drone.”

Chris looked over at Hannah, but she was currently more engaged in her coleslaw than the brief. Maybe she already knew more about the mission than him. “I still don’t understand the urgency of this mission,” he said.

Hannah stopped eating her coleslaw and wiped her mouth. “I recruited an asset who was a technical analyst for Syria’s cyber warfare unit. He reported that the unit’s commander is Professor Yushua Mordet. During the Switchblade Whisper’s surveillance mission, it experienced a malfunction, and Mordet exploited the malfunction by jamming satellite and submarine signals to the Switchblade Whisper. He fed the Switchblade Whisper’s internal navigation system false information that it was being attacked. Then he gave the drone navigation data, spoofing a landing back on the submarine, so the Switchblade Whisper would actually land in Syria. But Mordet lost control of it before he could land it.”

The gears in Chris’s mind turned to figure out what could happen if Mordet got that data.

“I left a payment for my asset in a prearranged drop,” Hannah went on, “but he never picked it up.” She paused. “His head and some other body parts were found in the parking lot of an international food market. Mordet is obviously still trying to get his hands on the Switchblade Whisper, and we have reason to believe he’s going to use the technology to attack the US.”

Jim Bob cleared his throat. “We recently discovered that similar technology used in the Switchblade Whisper is being used by the same government contractor to protect utility and transportation information technology in New York, Virginia and Washington, DC,” he said. “We believe that Department of Defense weapons systems are also vulnerable. But the Department of Defense and Washington, DC disagree with our assessment. If Mordet gets ahold of the black box on the Switchblade Whisper before we do, we think he is capable of using that crypto, security and authentication to hack into the Department of Defense and DC’s critical infrastructures.”

“Do we have specific information about attempted hacks on the US that we can trace to Syria?” Chris asked.

“The FBI’s Computer Investigation and Infrastructure Threat Assessment Center discovered a Syrian hacker cell breaking into New York City’s electrical grid,” Hannah said, “and the agents stopped the cell before they succeeded in introducing a virus into the system. Now New York is changing its utility and transportation IT security systems, but the Department of Defense and Washington, DC deny there is a credible threat. The Secret Service has contacted the DC mayor about concerns of an attack against the White House, and the mayor has agreed to reexamine the threat.”

Chris shook his head. “Reexamine the threat? What if Mordet acquires the black box on the Switchblade Whisper, and he figures out an algorithm capable of breaking into their IT systems?”

“Exactly. He could obtain our military’s secrets, destroy computers and satellites, shut down electricity and water, and cause billions of dollars of damage,” Hannah said. “Change all traffic lights to green, for example. DC has the second-busiest rapid transit system in the U.S. and the second-busiest train station—Mordet could reroute them for derailing and head-on collisions. I don’t know exactly what his plan is, but I do believe he’ll cause as many human deaths as possible.”

Chris’s nostrils flared, and his eyes opened wide. “We have to stop him.”

“Our cover will be as Adventure Tours, scouting for a new thrill for our wealthy clientele,” Jim Bob said. “The four of us will fly to Cyprus, where we’ll board a yacht and sail to Syria. From there, we’ll drive up a mountain and recon the location near Tishreen Lake where intel reports say the Switchblade Whisper should be. A tracking device was designed into the black box, and we’ll have a GPS tracker to help us pinpoint its location. Then we’ll return to the location at night and retrieve the black box and as much of the plane as is practical to carry. What we can’t take out with us, Chris, you will destroy with explosives.”

Chris didn’t react. There was nothing to say, only to do. His background seemed a perfect fit for the mission.

“Then we’ll sail out of Syria with the Switchblade Whisper,” Jim Bob continued, “and transport it to the USS
James E. Williams
, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, anchored in international waters near Cyprus.” He met Chris’s gaze. “The purpose of this mission isn’t to kill people, but if our lives are in danger, we’ll need you to help us shoot our way out.”

“You mean kill people,” Chris said. He hoped the op would go down smoothly and there wouldn’t be a need for killing. But with Mordet involved, that seemed unlikely.

“Yes, do what you have to do. Since our government doesn’t want to be overtly associated with this mission, if we are compromised, the United States will deny any knowledge.”