Suddenly animated from the sugar and caffeine, West leaned forward toward Ryan. “You got my message?”

“I did,” Ryan said.

“And?” West said.

“And what?”

“And did we get Calliope?” West asked, exhausted, but sounding to Ryan as if he’d never left the Agency. “If that tech is as Noonan described, it is extremely dangerous. And if the Chinese have it, there is no telling what they might use it for.”

“We’re working on it,” Ryan said. He was unwilling to go into detail in front of Gumelar.

“And Noonan?” West asked.

“Unknown,” Ryan said, looking to President Gumelar. “I’m sure investigative efforts will intensify now that everyone knows the Chinese were involved in your kidnapping and the disappearance of Mr. Noonan.”

“So the Chinese still have the tech?”

“We believe so,” Ryan said.

West closed his eyes and took another drink of Coke. “This has the potential to be very, very bad, Jack. I’m not sure the essence of the situation came through in my text.”

“Tell me now,” Ryan said. “What makes you think that?”

“It was the way Noonan kept describing the thing,” West said. “As a non-player character that could be directed to perform all manner of tasks.”

He suddenly looked around the interior of the helicopter. “How long was I in custody?”

“Over four weeks,” Ryan said.

West blinked, looking as if the wind had been knocked out of him. “Okay, then. I have spent that entire time imagining the havoc an active agent could wreak, were it capable of moving freely through any device with connectivity. In the developed world with the interconnectivity of the so-called Internet of Things, that’s pretty much the whole shebang.”

“Our people at Cyber Com haven’t examined it yet,” Ryan said. “But they theorize it is something like a programmable virus.”

“Not quite.” West shook his head. “This thing is a predator — programmable, yes, but with a mind of its own.”

<p>61</p>

The deck of USS Makin Island was alive with sailors and Marines. To a layman’s eye, the Wasp-class Landing Helicopter Dock amphibious assault ship, or LHD, could be mistaken for her larger sister, the aircraft carrier. LHD runways were short, with no catapults and no arresting cables, but the Makin Island did have aircraft on board — helicopters, Ospreys, and fighters like Harriers and F-35Bs that were capable of short takeoff and vertical landings.

Half as wide and slightly less than one football field shorter than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, USS Makin Island (LHD 8) was not exactly small at 843 feet in length, with a beam of 104 feet. Her aviation assets on this trip consisted of six V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, a CH 53, two MH-60 Seahawks, two Bell AH-1 Super Cobras, two Harrier jump jets, and two F-35B Lightning IIs. She could have carried more, but the mix was mission-specific.

In addition to her air power, LHD 8 was armed with, among other things, Mk 38 chain guns, Sparrow missiles, and four .50-caliber BMG machine guns. The USS Preble and the USS Halsey, two Arleigh Burke—class destroyers out of Everett, Washington, flanked the amphibious ship and provided additional big-stick deterrence.

All the deck guns, aircraft, and support ships were impressive, but the most important component of the USS Makin Island was the eight hundred Marines that could be put on foreign shores to fight at a moment’s notice. Sometimes looked down on by line officers of the big-deck Navy, amphibious forces — or Gator Navy — sailors had a tight, if sometimes competitive, relationship with the Marines they carried. Some sailors called their ship a Marine Corps Uber. For their part, the Marine Expeditionary Units were happy for the lift.

All of them — well, most of them — loved to be at sea.

Captain Greg Goodrich, United States Marine Corps FAST Company, Pacific, stood on the foredeck, looking past the V-22s at the waves while he ticked through the list of his responsibilities for this mission. There was a rhythm to the ocean that appealed deeply to the kind of man he was. He loved casting all lines and leaving behind the distractions of shore. At sea, Captain Goodrich could shoot, exercise, train his platoon — and read. Staring out at the wind and waves was better than watching TV any day of the week. The fantail of the ship provided the perfect location to get his Marines range time, and the deck was big enough for some good outdoor cardio. He’d even organized a couple of boxing matches while under way.