The base was vast, and it was a long walk back along the pier and across the large parade ground to the barracks where he and his team were being put up. He had refused the offer of officer quarters from the dockmaster, preferring to stay in a small private room in the large barracks where the master had placed his men. It would give him more freedom to get the job at hand completed. Entering the barracks, he headed to his room, closing the flimsy door to the small, sparsely furnished bedroom as he stepped in. He poured himself a small glass of whiskey and settled down to calm his nerves. He was about to embark on the closest thing to espionage he had ever undertaken and he found that up close it really wasn’t as glamorous as he had thought.

He looked at the two other glasses he had procured from the mess and thought of what he was about to do. The plan seemed simple. John and an operative that Admiral Hamilton had assigned to the operation were going to head over to the shed where the new warhead casings were being stored and commandeer the two trucks that Jack had ordered his men to load with twenty-six of the large crates they had arrived with earlier. They would then drive to the Royal Navy pier to unload their contents on to the HMS Dauntless.

But the plan was far more convoluted once you got into the details. Firstly, British naval warships did not let other nationals, even members of allied military organizations, on board without the express written permission of the captain. Secondly, the loading of large pallets onto the ship was always orchestrated by either the boatswain or the ship’s engineer, Bill Shadley, without exception. And of course, like a perverse cherry on this mountain of obstacles, there was also a satellite cruising above them watching their every move, and if it spotted John Hunt doing something it did not consider appropriate, even the Agent would not be able to survive the destruction it would rain down upon him.

Their plan to counter these obstacles was fraught with risk and it was going to require some less than officer-like behavior on the part of one Major Jack Toranssen of the United States Air Force. Jack knocked back the last of his whiskey then reached for a refill. His glass full, he placed the half-empty bottle back on the table and picked up the small metal vial Ayala had given him before he left Hanscom. Inside were several small pills. He took two of them and dropped them into the neck of the bottle of whiskey and watched the pills dissolve in the potent brown liquid.