Naval Air Station North Island, Coronado, California

 

Chan Dwyer found the hot-spot in the terminal waiting area and fired up her Toughbook laptop. She was anxious to re-read the report from Shake Davis in the Philippines and she had at least an hour according to the sailors who were loading two large containers of SEAL equipment into a Navy C-40A Clipper parked inside a nearby hangar. Much of what Shake included in his encrypted flash email from Zamboanga was stuff they already knew, so it was clear that Davis was outside the information loop to some extent. Maybe that was intentional; standard need-to-know protocol. Or maybe Bayer intended to just send Shake home with a pat on the back now that they’d moved beyond the initial intelligence gathering phase of the operation. Good luck with that, she thought. Shake Davis was as likely to walk away from something like this as he was to appear in public wearing a pink tutu and ballet slippers.

She grinned trying to conjure up that image as she waited for her computer to boot and looked around for Lieutenant Commander Janet Dewey, the only other female on the Task Force go-team. Dewey was a stunning Nordic blond who looked like she’d be just as comfortable in horned helmet and armored breast plate as she was in the Navy working coveralls she wore to last night’s pre-deployment briefing at the Naval Special Warfare headquarters on the Coronado Navy Base.

She’d made it difficult for the ten buffed-out bruisers from SEAL Team 1 to pay attention as Lieutenant Kerry Dale Hunter, the SEAL team commander, issued his terse frag order for the trip from North Island to Guam, where they were all apparently going to meet up with a ship that would take them to the Philippines and then on to the Palau Island group. Janet Dewey was the go-team’s bio-warfare expert and she’d been impressive during a brief presentation on the bio-hazard protocols that might be required at their destination.

She had also been impressive when Chan introduced herself; mentioned her own military background and speculated that the biggest bio-hazard they might be facing was testosterone overload. “No sweat,” Janet Dewey said with a wink. “We get to screwing around with bad-ass bugs and their balls shrink up to the size of BBs.” That was clearly not the prevailing situation around the terminal coffee urn where Dewey was currently chatting with all ten of the enlisted SEALS. Presumably, Lt. Hunter was elsewhere supervising the loading of their gear.

Chan was skimming page two of Shake Davis’ report when her phone buzzed. Caller ID told her Bob Bayer was calling on his classified office number at NCTC in McLean. He’d promised to call when she’d had a chance to digest the field report from the Philippines.

“Hey, sir. You caught me at North Island. We leave shortly.”

“Did you get a look at Shake’s report?”

“Yessir, I got a kick out of the dateline: Zamboanga. Couldn’t help flashing on Lee Marvin singing that song in the John Wayne movie, Donovan’s Reef.”

“What’s that?”

“You know, Lee Marvin is on this tropical island and he sings that song: ‘The monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga. The monkeys have no tails; they were bitten off by whales…’”

“Never saw it. What do you make of the Quds Force thing?”

“I’m a little stunned to tell you the truth. It’s no big secret that those guys are in the business of exporting terrorism. We found their fingerprints all over the area in Iraq. And we know for a fact that they’ve been messing around for some time with bio war stuff. But that’s all been buried under the hoopla over the Iranian nuke program.”

“In your opinion as an intel analyst, could it be that this guy Felodon is working for them? I mean, do they find a shit-canned Filipino, pick him up, school him on bio warfare and then send him out to carry out some grand scheme?”

“I don’t know, sir. He’d provide a whole bunch of deniability if they had something like that in mind, but this is way out of their normal ballpark. It’s the other side of the world and, well, you could connect them in the overall effort, I guess. You know, worldwide jihad and all that garbage. And he would be a very credible cut-out when and if the finger-pointing started.”

“What about the Saudi connection? Is there something to that? It’s this thing with the yacht that’s got me intrigued. Could the Iranians be in bed with the Saudis and they got together and drafted Felodon to conduct an attack? And if so, why? Given motive, means and opportunity they could just do this deal on their own.”

“I don’t have the answers to all that, sir.”

“Well, you’re the intel guru on this thing, Chan. We need answers. Whatever else you do out there, stay on this and let’s get something formulated. What we do and how we do it is gonna depend on what we know. We’ll stop this thing in its tracks, but I want the bastards behind it. That’s the long-range goal.”

“I’m on it, sir. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Do that, and do it regularly and often.”

Chan Dwyer was poring over page six of Shake Davis’ report from Zamboanga when one of the SEALs told her she might want to make a final head-call. They were finished loading now and expected wheels up in twenty minutes.