Without looking up from the screen of her laptop, Nicole said, “A new generation is taking over. They’ve evolved from Molotov cocktails, turned themselves into some dangerous fuckers.”
Everyone, including Magnuson this time, took a long, avid look at Nicole. Head down, still focused on her screen, she seemed to Frank to be basking in their attention, then she lifted her head and looked around the room, making eye contact with each one of them until finally settling on Frank. “Wouldn’t you agree, Agent Sheffield?”
The way she spoke his name, the intimate sound of it on her tongue, made his SWAT guys turn to each other with lifted eyebrows and half-hidden smiles. All was revealed. Somehow she’d managed to expose everything that had happened between them with that simple question.
Frank sat back in his chair and looked down at the table. Feeling a flush growing in his face. Had she meant to do that? Then thinking, hell, yes, Nicole was flaunting it, putting herself center stage. You better take me seriously, guys, I’m screwing the boss. Frank raised his eyes, glanced around the room, no one returning his gaze. As if maybe it hadn’t been as obvious as he thought. Either that or they were trying not to make it harder on him.
In the next few minutes they decided they would rendezvous tomorrow at Black Point Marina in south Dade County at 10:00 p.m., hit the island around midnight. The Coast Guard would supply Zodiac rafts with high-powered electric trolling motors for the landing on Prince Key. Forecast was for thunderstorms, possible tropical-storm conditions.
Frank was about to share the reconnaissance photos taken by Agent Sanford in his Cessna when Magnuson clicked his computer mouse and sent each of them detailed images of Prince Key. They were recent satellite images that could only have come from NSA. Frank sighed and pushed his folder of photographs to the side.
The big tent, the obstacle course, a solar panel, and a small lagoon that led to a narrow creek that snaked through the mangroves and joined other creeks and canals, all of them eventually feeding into one broad waterway that led out to the Atlantic. In the various shots, Magnuson counted a total of six ELF members on the island.
They chose the best landing spots for the five Zodiac teams. The attack teams would fan out and surround the island, with one team blocking the entrance channel, and on Magnuson’s signal, all groups would come ashore in unison and head toward the barracks tent, which appeared to be the center of operations.
In addition to the Zodiacs, members of the Special Response Team based at Homestead Air Reserve Base would be manning two UH-60 Black Hawk choppers flying in support. If anyone on the island managed to slip through the net, the choppers would track them.
When Magnuson finished laying out the attack plan, he and Sheffield spent a few minutes hashing out the rules of engagement. Sheffield arguing for operational restraint, Magnuson making the case for a more aggressive approach. In Magnuson’s view, the level of threat that Chee posed was so dangerously high that some collateral damage was acceptable.
“Not to me it isn’t,” Frank said. “I haven’t heard any irrefutable proof that Paul Chee has this stolen HpNC in his possession. Yes, he had the opportunity, and he went AWOL around the time the explosive disappeared, so, yeah, I understand your assumption. But invading a privately owned island in the middle of the Biscayne Bay National Park with guns blazing is not warranted by any information you’ve presented so far.”
“There’ll be no guns blazing,” Magnuson said, looking at his three agents. “Is that clear, men?”
They nodded one by one. Frank studying them, doubting their sincerity.
The meeting lasted another half hour, Magnuson holding forth, going over the attack plan a second time, then a third.
Frank sat quietly at his laptop and replayed the video. That steel-reinforced, indestructible wall disappearing in a whoosh. He played it again and again until the meeting ended.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“HEY, LADY,” WALLY SAID. “YOUR phone’s buzzing.”
“Her name is Leslie,” Cameron said. “Stop calling her lady.”
In the tent, Leslie lay on the weight bench, pressing a hundred pounds again and again, down to her chest, then pumping it overhead, working up a good lather while Prince spotted for her.
Pauly lay on his cot, flat on his back, eyes open, doing nothing, but doing it with such fierce focus that Thorn couldn’t stop watching him.
“You hear me, lady? Somebody’s calling you.”
“She hears you,” Prince said.
Leslie’s arms were quivering when she grunted for Prince to take the weight. He settled it into the rack and Leslie toweled her face and sat up, breathing hard.