Three o’clock came too early for Zachary. He had packed everything the night before and gone over the plan a dozen times. Still, he couldn’t shake the overarching worry he had about this mission. Slowly, he pushed himself out of bed and changed. He grabbed everything he needed and tossed it into his Toyota Camry then slid behind the wheel. Zachary was saddened that he wouldn’t be able to see the sunrise before he left but he had to get to the Base of Operations on time.
He arrived fifteen minutes before four A.M., Jack was already there sitting inside the lobby near the entrance, a cup of coffee in his hand.
“Coffee’s on the counter.” Jack said as he sipped from his mug.
“Thanks.” Zach walked over to the counter, poured himself a full mug and sat down on one of the couches.
“Nervous?” Jack asked.
Zachary thought for a moment, then looked Jack in the eye. “Terrified.”
Jack nodded, “we all are, every single mission. The feeling never goes away.”
“You would know wouldn’t you.” Zachary chuckled. “You’ve been in this business longer than I have.”
“True.”
“Do you ever regret it?”
Jack pondered his question, then answered slowly. “Sometimes, but I think the pros out way the cons. I spend less time with my wife than I would like but I’m helping our country.” He shrugged, “there are different ways to look at it.”
Gabe entered and sat on the same couch as Zachary.
“No coffee Lion?” Zachary asked.
Gabe shook his head. “Come on Zack you know I can’t stand the stuff.”
Jack scoffed, “you’re missing out on a lot here Lion.”
Gabe rolled his eyes. “Are we really going to go through this again? Every single time someone has coffee we talk about this. Back me up Zack.”
“It’s true,” Zachary answered. “But we can’t really poke fun at you about anything else.” He chuckled. “Be a good sport and let us have a laugh.”
Gabe snorted. “Maybe you laugh too much.”
“In our line of work we need to laugh about something.” Jack said with a lowered voice.
The three of them were silent for a moment after that remark. It was true. All of them had seen some pretty dark things and sometimes you needed something to help you forget, to keep your mind off of it.
Amanda and Elise both walked in together and stopped when they saw their three solemn faces.
Amanda smiled. “Cheer up boys, it’s not the end of the world yet.”
“Just when we were having some good gloom atmosphere.” Jack mumbled into his cup.
Amanda glared at him.
“Were you able to go over the plans I sent you?” Zachary asked Elise as she sat on the couch.
“Yes, I was, and they all looked pretty good to me. I only have one question.”
“Oh?”
“Why didn’t you send me your back up plans?”
Zachary frowned. “I did.”
“Well, I sure didn’t get them.”
“Let me go get my computer and I can double check.”
As Zachary went out to grab a backpack from his car, Gabe whispered to Jack. “That’s bad isn’t it, Zack never forgets anything.”
“Yes, but there is the slight possibility that in the nervousness of our upcoming assignment he’s a little scatterbrained.”
Gabe snorted at this.
“I did say slight.” Jack added.
Zachary sat back down on the couch and pulled the computer out of his backpack. He took in a couple of things on the screen and swallowed. “It’s not here.”
Amanda jumped to her feet from where she’d sat in a lounge chair. “What!? Give that to me.”
Zachary handed her his computer and she scanned through it, then looked up at Zachary. “Zack where have you been with this computer?”
“All I did was stop at a coffee shop on the way home to work on a couple of things.”
“Zack!”
“What!?”
“Someone hacked into your computer!”
“How? I didn’t even connect to the coffee shop’s network!”
“Well hacked may be a bit of an overstatement but still! Did you leave your computer to do something for any reason?”
Zachary looked down at his hands. “I may have left it open when I went to the restroom. But there was no way anyone could have had time to sift through my computer!”
“You’re right, but they could sift through the information you were creating. Were you finished with your back up plans when you left?”
“Yes, I had just sent them to Lizzy.”
“That’s how they did it. They knew they wouldn’t have time to look for any pertinent information, so they took the first thing they could get their hands on.”
“But there’s no way they can read it. Everything I had was in code.”
“Codes can be cracked Zack.” Amanda glared at him.
“There is no way,” Zachary shook his head. “I wasn’t even gone for two minutes. How would anyone know I would be there anyways? To the rest of the world, I’m a nobody.”
“Unless someone leaked information.” Elise said slowly.
All eyes turned to her.
Jack hissed. “This situation is even more delicate than we thought. Zack, did your backup plans specify what time things were going down?”
“No, I never put the date or time in my notes.”
“Good, we need to get on our flights as soon as possible, we haven’t botched this mission yet. Everybody grab your things and lets go, now.”
Everyone quickly gathered their things and packed into Jack’s car.
Jack glanced back at them from the driver’s seat. “Now, someone knows that Zack is on this mission, we have no reason to doubt that we could be being watched at this very moment. There is a mole in our base of operations, if anyone gets separated do not, I repeat do not come back here. We go forwards with the plan and meet up with Liu in China. You all know the drill be aware of your surroundings and don’t trust anyone but this team. As soon as we get to the airport everyone will go their separate ways until we meet up in Yichang China. Be extra careful.”
They all nodded, Jack started the car and they headed down the mountains towards the airport. No one said anything, silence had settled over them like a thick cloud. Zachary was running through everything in his mind. This was his fault, and he knew it. He shouldn’t have gone to a public place right before a mission. He’s grown comfortable with his safety in Colorado and had not been diligent in his awareness.
Looking back on last night he remembered that someone in the coffee shop had been watching him. They were well trained for Zachary not to have noticed them immediately. He didn’t remember who they were, but something had happened that nagged at him. He ran a hand through his hair, a nervous habit, and stared at his feet in the back of the car.
“It’s not your fault Zack.” Elise whispered quietly from where she sat beside him. “How were you to know that someone was keeping tabs on you?”
“I should have been paying attention.” Zachary grimaced.
“What’s done is done Zack. Don’t beat yourself up about it. The best thing you can do now is press forward and complete the mission.”
“What if the mission is compromised?”
“They, whoever they are, only got the backup plans. As long as everything goes well, we have nothing to worry about. There is also no way that they know what our target is, you know that we’re always careful to keep the place and the time out of our planning in case something like this happens. Chin up, we can do this.”
“I’ve let you all down.”
Gabe sitting on Zachary’s left smacked his leg. “Quit beating yourself up Zack, we don’t blame you. We know you would never do anything like this on purpose. Let it go.”
Zachary took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Alright, let’s do this.”
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