Chapter Ten
Phoenix
Cypher answered on the third ring. “Busy.”
“This trumps it.” When the little trespasser was on board the Paragon, she had a journal.
In that journal was a quote. The same quote I’d heard once before from a SEAL on another Team.
It wasn’t a thoroughly unique quote, but that page in her journal had been written with heavy, masculine block letters, not feminine script.
A month ago, I’d dismissed it.
Now, I wasn’t. “I need you to run background on a former SEAL. I don’t know his first name, but he was Severn “Coast” King’s son. His call sign was Legend. Nickname Wolf.”
“I don’t need to run it. Trahern Wolf King was his name, and he’s dead. Drowned at sea while I was still on the Teams.”
Still parked outside AES HQ, I scanned the light traffic and mostly dark high-rise. “I didn’t hear about this.”
“No one did. Brass called it a training accident and redacted the hell out of the After-Action Review. They blamed human error, said Legend was encumbered by the weight of his gear when he went under, and buried it. Then they doubled down on training for the emergency supplemental flotation devices. It was total bullshit. It happened on a mission intercepting weapons aboard a ship heading to Yemen. Conditions sucked. Twelve-foot rolling seas, turbulent as hell. One of the Teams guys slipped and went under while attempting to board the vessel. Legend went after him. He was the Team’s strongest swimmer, and he grabbed him.
Got the guy to the extension ladder, but it was submerged.
Then the swells slammed both of them into the hull of the ship. First guy made it. Legend didn’t.”
“Was the body recovered?”
“No.” Cypher exhaled with a heaviness all Tier Ones understood. “Twelve-thousand-foot sea depth, Indian Ocean, middle of a storm. They called it. You know the drill.”
I did. “Fit and final resting place.” Sea burials were nothing new to the Navy. “What about living family?”
“I’m running his background now, but you know the rumor about Legend. Coast, too.”
“I’ve heard a lot of rumors about Coast.” The Teams were full of them.
“They’re all true, but I’m specifically referring to the proclamation Legend made that originated with his old man, but he adopted.”
“Which was?”
“A violent threat aimed at any Tier One who so much as spoke to, let alone messed with, his sister.”
“What was the threat?”
“Certain death, graphically detailed, but it didn’t end there.
” Cypher downloaded the details that first Coast had used to threaten every Teams guy he served with, then Legend had reiterated.
“Crazy part? No one ever saw a picture of, let alone met a King woman. There was speculation that Legend and his old man were full of shit. That the threat was purely for show, aimed at garnering a reputation. As I’m looking now, I don’t know what to think.
Legend didn’t have any next of kin or family listed in his records besides his old man, and no one’s seen Coast in decades. Presumption is that Coast is deceased.”
“How?”
“No one knows. Before the Teams, Coast came from the woods. Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, if I remember correctly. After his service, rumor was, he headed back. Probably died in the woods.”
“But no confirmation?”
“No.” Cypher typed for a second. “After Coast was medically discharged, he fell off the grid. Never collected a dime of his retired pay. Can’t tell you much more than that because the rest of his records aren’t electronic. Why are you asking about the Kings?”
“Call it a hunch.”
“You don’t have hunches. You operate on intel, then either execute or dismiss.” Cypher made the connection. “This is about the sniper and female on the property in France last month, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know yet. “Anything new come up on Isla Sennan?”
“You told me to drop it.”
“When have you ever left anything unfinished?”
“Never.” Cypher’s typing resumed. “Sennen trekked across the port at Tenerife and got on an MSC containership, as you know from your own search. It was docked for repairs for three days before it set sail again.”
“To where?”
“The better question is where didn’t it go.
The ship left Tenerife, then made three stops in Spain before it refueled five days later in Valencia.
The next day it stopped at the Port of Sines in Portugal.
Then they were at sea for ten days before they docked for twenty-four hours in Freeport, Bahamas. A day later, the ship was in Miami.”
Fucking Christ. “She’s here?” I turned the engine over on the SUV.
“I don’t know where she is. Six stops, eighteen days at sea, and not one sighting of her at any of the ports.”
“Could she still be on the ship?”
“Doubtful. It went into drydock for scheduled maintenance a day after it landed at the Port of Miami.”
Where the hell was she? “When was that?”
“Six days ago. Ship’s still in dry dock. And before you ask, I already checked their security cameras. The CCTV network was offline the entire route from Tenerife to Miami. They only had thermal video running. No way to tell if or when she was on board.”
Fuck. “Text me the port stop dates and times.” I’d searched her backpack when she was on board the Paragon. I knew what clothes she had. Cypher was good, but he might have missed something. “Find the crew or captain. I want to know if she was on that ship.”
Cypher didn’t reply.
“Copy?”
“I hear you.”
But he wasn’t acknowledging my order. “Problem?”
Cypher inhaled. Then he let me have it. “I’m in a warehouse in Miami with eight armored Yukons, a third of my old servers, uncrated new ones, rigging shit so I can half-ass my job while you get caught on every fucking security camera between here, the hotel, and Miami Beach.
That’s just during the day. Come oh dark thirty, you’re driving past a damn compound in Golden Beach that you haven’t said shit about while an unvetted construction crew digs a fucking underground tunnel—in South Florida.
Do you know what the water table is on that property? ”
He didn’t pause long enough for me to answer.
“Then you had me call Christensen, compromising my location and identity when I’ve been off the grid almost as long as you, which is fucked in itself.
But not nearly as fucked as you trying to buy the high-rise right next door to Trefor’s outfit like we haven’t been ghosting AES’s ops for years while you played opportunist. Then you ordered Helios and Ares to pull in every damn plane we had strategically located across Europe and the Middle East, and park them at Miami Executive and Opa Locka.
Leaving the fleet with their current tail numbers was bad enough, but leaving everyone in the field without wings is a whole new level of fucked, even for you.
Meanwhile, you’re doing what? Holing up in the hotel suite so you can fuck your cover all to hell, ask me about a trespasser you should’ve handled a month ago, and pretend you’re not setting us all up to get sniped? ”
“Have you ever hacked into the U.S. Marshal Service database?”
“What?”
“USMS database.”
“I fucking heard you. Purpose?”
“Not an answer.”
“You’re on a burner I didn’t encrypt. Not answering that. You on a domestic watch list I don’t know about?”
“No.” Possibly. But that wasn’t what had me concerned or why I was asking. I needed intel, but I wasn’t going to risk a hack like that from a burner.
“What intel are you after?” Cypher demanded.
“Anyone looking for me.” There was only one reason a U.S. Marshal would be tracking me, and it was not fucking good.
“Besides Alpha and whoever the hell that sniper was in France, that should theoretically be a short to nonexistent list. Minus the blonde trespasser, you’ve terminated all other threats.”
“Terrorist cells run generations deep and have long reach.” Cypher knew that as well as I did, and we’d both been at this too long not to have enemies. Even if my digital identity was currently secure, I wasn’t under any disillusion that a decade of covert ops didn’t make me a constant target.
“Name one terrorist cell that has an ID on you,” Cypher challenged.
“I’m not questioning your cybertech capabilities.”
“Didn’t think you were. If you did, you’d run your own interference. Which you haven’t done in a while. Not looking to have my dick stroked. The question was rhetorical, and I was making a point. Still doesn’t answer how the USMS ties into this. What are you really looking for?”
Hopefully not what I was thinking, but the fact that Conlon had mentioned USMS at all was a fucking problem.
One I needed to handle. “I’ll take care of it.
Anyone besides Tauk on the ship?” Six weeks ago, I’d given the entire crew leave from the Paragon.
Then me, Ares, and Helios made way to the Cap d’Antibes property.
Tauk, a former SEAL assaulter, was the only permanent Paragon crew I kept.
He knew the ship as well as I did, and despite claiming he was only the cook, he could handle her in any conditions.
The rest of the operators I’d recruited for Paragon Operations all knew how to navigate the Heesen when needed, but I only used them as crew when I didn’t want anyone else to know where I was.
“Ares is on board,” Cypher replied. “Helios tendered him out there this afternoon after they landed at Executive.”
“Copy. I’m heading out there now.” I glanced at my watch and gave Cypher a timeline. “Bring everyone in.”
There was a beat of dead air.
Then, “Everyone who?” Cypher demanded.
“The core six and you.” I turned the SUV around. “Nineteen hundred hours tomorrow.”
“Nix—”
“Make it happen. Location pending.” I hung up and drove to the marina.
Forty minutes later, I’d tendered to the Paragon and was in the chief engineer’s office that doubled as the ship’s command room.
Ares showed up. “Cypher said you were coming on board.”
I logged into my servers. “You’re here late.” I made a bank transfer.
“Research” was all Ares said.
“Copy.” I emailed the contractor, told him there was a bonus in his account, and that there’d be another matching six-figure bonus if he got the house ready by close of business tomorrow.
Ares scanned the office. “Anything I can help with?”
“You know where Judas is?” Former SEAL, my most reclusive operator, Judas was my version of a Conlon in terms of following his own playbook, one even I couldn’t decipher. Unlike Conlon, though, he didn’t have an alter ego.
“Off-grid,” Ares replied. “No one’s heard from him since that mission with Ghost.”
I didn’t comment on the infamous shit show that’d precipitated Ghost’s retirement and almost killed Helios and Ares. “Copy. You going home tonight?” When off assignment, Ares usually stayed at his stepsister’s house with her and Helios.
“No.” Not elaborating, he pushed off the doorway. “Tauk’s asleep. I’ll be at the helm if you need me.”
“Ship’s anchored.”
“I know.” Ares retreated.
I pulled up security cameras I had on a residence in Virginia and scanned them for anything unusual. Nothing.
Then I hacked into the USMS database.
An hour later, I had nothing.
I took the tender back to shore, drove to the hotel, and walked through the lobby at oh three thirty.
Bar closed, no hotel guests loitering. No tail. Nothing unusual.
The desk clerk gave a polite nod as I passed him on the way to the elevator.
I stepped inside, swiped the key for the penthouse, then scanned the lobby one more time before the doors closed.
No one lurking in the shadows, no new security cameras, no other staff present, but Helios was right.
Something was off.