Carmody looked at him. Lights from the official vehicles on the adjoining pier strobed over both their faces.

“According to Chen there are three fast attack boats,” he said. “We can’t send drones or helicopters to check their position. We can’t risk tipping them off. So we just have to assume they’re guarding the beach at Kono Head.”

Harper nodded.

“I can handle the seaward approach,” he said. “You need extra resources?”

“I’ve got enough people.”

Harper paused.

“No one answered the phone at the landing station,” he said. “We could try messaging them. But I know we wouldn’t get through that way either. All it would do is the same thing you worry about with drones and copters. Give the bad guys advance notice.”

Carmody nodded.

“What bothers me is that they might have hostages,” Harper said. “I estimate there are between twelve and twenty people at the landing station. That’s staff and security combined. If we move in like gangbusters, we could lose all of them.”

Carmody shook his head.

“Malkira doesn’t take hostages with intentions of letting them go,” he said. “I told you about those kids in New York. He was going to kill them. He was going to kill their father. He killed one of our analysts, and he killed some poor GoRide guy. Most likely, he killed whoever owned that bungalow. And Stephen Gelfland, Wendell Balen... God knows how many others. If anyone’s still alive in that building, he’ll kill them too. Unless we get them out of there first.”

Harper was quiet again. “We still don’t know what Malkira and his men want,” he said. “You take Chen’s word when he says he doesn’t either?”

“Not his word,” Carmody said. “But I believe him because it’s basic information security. And because it makes sense. Keep it compartmentalized so nobody can sing out the whole story. Chen only knows his part in things. There must be engineers in that crew who know theirs. And somebody in that bunch has to know why it’s carrying a deepwater submersible. In a fucking moon pool.”

They were silent. A couple of the Coast Guard vans with detainees were pulling off the dock toward the road. The helicopter chopped overhead.

Harper hesitated. Then he said, “I’m going to tell you something,” he said. “Kono landing station is a data traffic center for all kinds of spooks. The CIA, National Geospatial Intelligence, quite a few people know about it. But what most people don’t know, and what you don’t either, is that it’s also used by ONI.”

“Naval Intelligence.”

Harper nodded. “It’s part of a first alert system against enemy submarines. The Integrated Undersea Surveillance System.”

“And they leave it guarded by a handful of reserve guys with pistols?”