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Rick turned left on West Main Street and waited until he had passed the residential neighborhoods on both sides of him before picking up his phone. He was tempted to call Punky again but figured it would just go straight to voicemail, and he wasn’t sure he could handle the frustration. He had decided on calling his supervisor to update him on the surveillance, but he stopped when he saw a message waiting for him in the secure portal.

“What now?” he groaned.

He logged in and waited for the message to download, glancing up at the straight stretch of road in front of him. He saw nothing but commercial fertilizer tenders and other large trucks on both sides of the road cutting between fields of broccoli, cauliflower, and lettuce. A glance in his rearview mirror revealed the distant grill of a Kenworth semitruck, distorted by the heat shimmering from the pavement.

“Yeah, the M5 was a good choice,” he said, chastising himself for borrowing the low-slung BMW sport sedan.

He lifted the phone to his face and cursed when he read the message he should have caught earlier.

2. ABOARD COD FOR NORTH ISLAND.

Rick exited the portal and dialed Punky’s number. “Come on, kid. Pick up!”

To his surprise, she answered his call after one ring, and he heard the Corvette’s exhaust rumbling beneath the wind noise. “Uncle Rick!”

“Have you seen the latest?”

She ignored his question like she usually did. “Is everything okay? Did she make you?”

He didn’t want to tell her that she had made him and that she had ditched the marked vehicle and was in the wind, so he took a page out of her playbook and ignored her questions. “Listen, she knows the pilot’s name. He’s on his way back from the ship.”

She paused, then said, “He’s with me.”

“With you?”

“Yeah, I’m taking him someplace safe.”

“Punky…”

A flash of movement distracted him from completing his thought, and he glanced up into the rearview mirror in time to see the red-and-white Kenworth logo filling his rear window. Instinctively, he stomped his foot on the gas to feed fuel to the twin-turbo V8, but the subtle lag was just enough to delay accessing all six hundred horses, and the semitruck had already reached ramming speed.

In the instant it took his turbochargers to spool up, the Kenworth veered to the left as if to pass, then pulled even with his rear wheels. He recognized the signs of an impending classic PIT, or Pursuit Intervention Technique, but not early enough to stop the truck from darting back into his lane and clipping his tail.

He felt the rear end give out and tried turning into the skid, but it was too late. He lost control.

San Diego, California

Punky held the phone against her ear in horror as she listened to what sounded like a car accident unfolding on the other end. She heard screeching metal, the faint tinkling of glass, and the pained grunts of her partner and father’s best friend.

“Uncle Rick!” she screamed.

The call ended, and she quickly hit redial.

“What’s going on?” Colt asked from the passenger seat.

She ignored him as she waited for her partner to answer his phone. “Come on, come on…”

“Hey,” Colt said again. “Talk to me.”

Punky threw the phone down in frustration and downshifted, shoving them both back into their seats as she veered the Corvette onto the off-ramp at Kearney Villa Road. She continued accelerating up the hill, barely tapping the brakes as she slid around the corner, regained traction, and raced toward the Interstate 805 overpass.

“Something bad happened,” she said, more to herself than to the Navy pilot sitting next to her.

“What? What happened?’

She followed the road around a bend, but her foot had eased off the gas pedal as she fought to rein in her emotions. She knew Rick had been following TANDY on his own, and there was a good chance he had been made. But did that mean he had been targeted by a countersurveillance team and taken out? She came to a complete stop at the intersection with Aero Drive, then turned right.

“You okay?” Colt asked.

She turned to look at him, surprised to see he appeared calm and unfazed by her erratic driving. “That was my uncle… my partner. He called to warn me that they know your name.”

This did seem to faze him. “They? Who are they?”

She gave a little shake of her head. “We think it’s the Chinese. The Ministry of State Security.”

Colt held his hands out in front of him as if trying to stop the Corvette through telepathy. “Whoa, hold on a second. Why do the Chinese know my name? Why do they even care about me?”