Page 18 of Pervade Montego Bay
She was owed the truth.
I caught a blur of movement on my left—another jet ski was barreling towards me. The rider tried to correct his direction and swerved as I dove under the water.
Then pain exploded in my skull.
James
Before
Pain exploded in myskull as I cracked it hard against a ceiling pipe.
I’d forgotten to walk with my right shoulder forward down the passageway and dip my head when those pipes appeared, which were standard on submarines. You’d think this would come naturally having lived on one during my Navy career. Only I was lacking in sleep and it was messing with my focus. Mainly because of that major issue of an agent going rogue not that far away in Macau.
My head pounded and I blinked through stars, trying to hide my embarrassment from the occasional crew member who passed by—smiling at them like I hadn’t just sustained what felt like permanent brain damage.
Damn this mission.
My gut had warned me it was flawed from the start.
We’d gone covert in Chinese waters and were beyond detection, thanks to the sub’s stealth capabilities, which meant the crew was safe. I, however, was developing one hell of a headache, and not just from walking into that damn pipe. My arrogance had been cranked to the max—and now I was on the receiving end of a shot of karma.
I’d spent too long on land as a civilian since leaving and it was showing.
A few minutes ago, I’d left a message with the petty officer that I wanted to see Commander Hague right away. Thoughts of his impending fury had rattled my concentration.
It’s temporary, I reminded myself for the millionth time. You’ll be off this sub and on land in a matter of hours. Even if leaving it meant facing possible danger, it was better than dealing with the claustrophobia. For a man who’d once loved every second of this life, it seemed like a cruel twist of fate.
I’d traveled over five thousand miles on theHMS Renowned, an Astute-Class nuclear submarine, to covertly deliver our agent to the drop off point; a task that I’d successfully completed forty-eight hours ago.
Now, my order was to walk back the damage of our agent’s insubordinate conduct. I’d tried to work out what the hell had happened out there. At least none of the crew members were in on this operation so there was no one to debrief on the catastrophe. That pleasantry would have to wait for when I got back to the U.K.
“Deal with this by any means possible.” The order had been brought to my cabin earlier by a junior officer, a hint from my boss back in London that I had permission to make this problem go away courtesy of my Walther PPK.
As the senior officer on this mission, I’d been tasked with escorting the agent from theHMS Renownedall the way to Macau by sea, letting him loose so he could dohis thing—whatever the hell that was. I wasn’t totally in the loop on this one and it pissed me off.
The agent had entered the infiltration point alone.
The young man wasn’t even out of his twenties, and I recalled his temperament didn’t fit thejob. He obsessed over too many details at the same time. Like one of those gamer boys with fingers on every gadget.
A few days ago, I’d gone to brief him in his cabin and found the young officer reading a book while playing a game of chess and listening to rap music—while eating a hamburger. What the hell happened to recruiting the right character for becoming a spy, for God’s sake? The way he held himself revealed he’d attended a prestigious university where’d he’d garnered a tech degree. Other than that, he was an enigma. Though he’d shared one thing, and that was the fact his Norwegian mum worked for the U.N., which seemed to make him proud.
The second update from London on the mission had come one hour ago by way of VLF radio via the Coms Tech. She’d delivered the private message to my personal cabin. In the transmission, MI6 had informed me that all contact had been lost between us and our operative.
Before I’d let him loose at Her Majesty’s pleasure in our adversary’s country, I’d managed to get his name. Only his first, though, and “Xavier” fit the spoiled boy profile I’d allocated to him. He’d kept to himself, mostly reading in his cabin and eating his meals there, too. He was a geeky kind of loner.
He’d also remained quiet during the journey on the Pearl River boat from Hong Kong to Macau under the cover of darkness. I was intrigued by him, but I resisted the urge to ask more questions, knowing when to leave well enough alone.
Apparently, Xavier had failed to meet his contact at the checkpoint thirteen hours ago. Another field operative had observed him disappearing into the gaudy lights of The 13 Hotel on Rua das Champacas Brancas in Macau. Wearing a tuxedo, no less.
An hour later, the second message was delivered to my cabin from “C” at MI6: “Deal with this now.”
The risk to national security was too great to let Xavier fall prey to capture and interrogation. The fact he had strolled nonchalantly into the most expensive hotel in the world indicated he was offering himself up on a platter. There were choices to be made but I found the final decision unpalatable—seal the intel. A nice way of saying assassinate the bastard.
I felt sorry for him.
There was something unique about Xavier that I’d failed to unravel. Though we’d not spent enough time together to stir camaraderie, we had shared a code of respect that came from working for the same government. Or so I had believed.
His knowledge of this submarine was impressive. While aboard, he’d read up on the specs of this Astute-Class sub and memorized them, sharing his opinion on its nuclear capabilities, which he’d seemed overly fascinated with. In my rearview, that now looked suspicious as hell.
