Palmer bristled and said, “You’ve been doing it for years. Don’t give me that crap. You work for me. For the Oversight Council.”
“What the hell are you even saying? I’m your personal kill show?”
“No, no, of course not. Just get the men ready.”
“We don’t even have a target. That’s what we do.”
“You don’t have a target yet. Get the men ready. Get off of Islam and start studying China. I want a team ready to go in the next week. Nothing big. Alpha exploration only. Any team but Pike’s.”
Wolffe said, “So now you’re going to tell me the team to send? Kurt’s dead, but his ethos is not. You assholes can’t run roughshod over my organization. And it is my organization now.”
Palmer opened the door and said, “Don’t get aggravated. This is from the president.”
Wolffe turned, “President Hannister said any team but Pike’s?”
“Well, no. That’s coming from me. You have plenty of teams to send, and Pike’s a little hot right now dealing with the child.”
Which was bullshit, and Wolffe knew it. Palmer just didn’t like Pike because Pike never listened to him. But he always succeeded.
Palmer said, “We’ll talk again tomorrow, with the Oversight Council.”
Wolffe took the door handle and said, “Get one thing straight. I pick the team. You want one, you got it, but I pick them.”
He was starting to leave when Palmer caught the door, saying, “What’s that mean?”
Wolffe looked him in the eye and said, “Pike’s on his way to Australia right now, with Jennifer. He thinks he’s going on vacation, but I’m pretty sure you’ll change that plan. There’s your team. Reap what you sow.”
Palmer said, “That’s not going to fly.”
“It’ll fly if I say it will.”
Palmer started to say something else and Wolffe cut him off. “Let me give you some advice. Kurt is dead. I’m his heir. Kurt didn’t play politics because of who he was. I do. You want to go to the knives, I’ll do so. And I’ll win.”
Palmer looked at him with his mouth slightly open, amazed at the brazenness.
Wolffe locked eyes with him and said, “It’s sort of my specialty. Outside of using a knife for real.”
Chapter 9
Clifford Delmonty—AKA Dunkin—pulled into his designated parking spot and removed his smartphone from his pocket, intending to drop it into his center console like he did every single day he came to work. Due to the classified nature of his job, dealing with sensitive components of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s artificial intelligence engine, the entire office he worked within was designated as a SCIF—a sensitive compartmented information facility—meaning that no outside communications devices were allowed.
He opened the console, then saw a text alert from Pike Logan.
Despite himself, Dunkin was a little surprised.
Pike had talked about visiting for the last year, and then had said he was coming for real. They’d planned the trip to coincide with the Christmas holiday break, but Dunkin knew Pike’s career, and had half expected him to say he had been delayed, without any reason why. In what seemed now a lifetime away, Dunkin had once worked for the Taskforce and understood that the Operator’s life was not his own.
In truth, he was a little nostalgic for those times. The sense of mission. The sense of doing what was right for the world. Now he only worked for the almighty dollar, and while that had been very lucrative, he didn’t have the same job satisfaction as he did before—even if his time in the Taskforce had meant Operators like Pike ripping him a new asshole on operations, asking for computer miracles about things they didn’t fully understand.
He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he missed it.
The text told him Pike would be here in less than four hours. With the Christmas schedule, he could leave midday and make it home before Pike showed up. He typed out a quick message saying he wouldn’t be able to text when Pike arrived because his phone would be in the car, but he was looking forward to the visit.
Pike had said something about diving the Great Barrier Reef, and Dunkin’s girlfriend had been talking about that for a year, so it was the perfect opportunity to do so. Christmas break was coming up, and as it was the middle of summer in Australia, it would be perfect. Especially if he could get the Taskforce to pay for the trip.
Pike had said the entire thing was a vacation, but from past operations with him, Dunkin knew half of the time he was lying, doing some government business under the cover of his company. In the past, he’d been on the inside, knowing the lie. Now that he was on the outside, he wondered if he was being lied to for the support of some operation. But he honestly didn’t care.
Pike had mentioned some wild story about an operation in Europe culminating with a Syrian refugee he’d brought back to America, with him wanting to make sure she was able to survive on her own and thus he was leaving her in Charleston, and the story was so crazy Dunkin knew it was a lie.
It sounded like a Taskforce operation. Who the hell would come to Australia because of a Syrian refugee? Pike himself used to make fun of some of the ridiculous cover stories they used, and this sounded just like one.
But if he could get his girlfriend on a dive trip that was paid for by the U.S. government, he’d be more than willing to open his small apartment for a night’s stay with Pike and Jennifer. He just hoped his girlfriend didn’t get jealous about Jennifer. And that Pike didn’t mention his previous infatuation with her, which had almost caused Pike to pummel his ass.
Unlike his own girlfriend, Jennifer was a hammer in the looks department, but she was also quite possibly the most honest human he’d ever met. She was . . . well, just a good person. Different from Pike, she saw the hope in people, and always sought it out. Pike gave you one chance, and then just broke you in half when you failed to live up to his expectations.
And he liked that too. Pike was an apex predator, but he understood skill, especially when it was directed at the enemies of the United States. Something Dunkin had in spades in his own unique way, and it was a respect he missed in his current job.
He missed them both. Missed the life. Missed being respected for his skills. Missed it all. He shoved the phone into the glove compartment and exited, heading to the front gate of his company.
Located in what was known as the Edinburgh Defence Precinct—a squat, military-looking expanse of concrete buildings that spanned the size of a small town—it was adjacent to the RAAF Base Edinburgh and the Australian Defence Science and Technology center. With every compound surrounded by razor wire, and every building with a security entrance, the entire complex was made up of defense companies of all stripes, a veritable smorgasbord of military contractors. BAE, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, you name it—they all had offices here. And the security was commensurate with the stakes involved.
He walked up to the gate, showed his badge, and then leaned into a retinal scanner, a biometric device that would prove he was what his identification claimed. He pulled back and saw another employee approach. Jake Shu.
A short man with a wide waist from too much time behind a computer, Shu looked like an Asian Danny DeVito, complete with a balding head, ponytail, and a small gold hoop in his right ear.