Hunter's Moon Read Free Page A

members; very select. ‘The Negotiators.’ Sound familiar?”
    I’d replaced the slide containing the sea urchin embryo with another—a blank slide, I realized, but I pretended to concentrate.
    â€œIt was deep-cover intelligence. Members were deployed worldwide as something called ‘zero signature specialists.’ An unusual phrase, don’t you agree? Zero signature. It suggests they were more than a special operations team. Just the opposite. It suggests that each man worked alone.”
    They weren’t killers in the military sense, he said. They had a specialty.
    â€œTheir targets disappeared.”
    The celebrated man studied me as if to confirm I wouldn’t react.
    I didn’t.
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    TO PADDLE A STRAIGHT COURSE, I FOCUSED ON THE canopy of palms that punctured the mist. Their trunks were curved. Fronds drooped like sodden parrot feathers.
    The breeze was southwesterly, warm on my face and left arm—another directional indicator—but the mist was autumnal. I should have been shivering. My clothes were soaked, but I was too focused to be cold.
    I was dressed for a dinner party, not a canoe trip: dark slacks, dress shirt, a black silk sports jacket tailored years ago in Southeast Asia. I’d dressed for the role I would have to play if the Secret Service intercepted me. It could happen.
    To get on and off the island undetected, I had to know how the Secret Service operated so I did my homework. I spent time at Sanibel’s library and on the Internet. More valuable was a discussion I had with an old friend, Tony Stoverthson, who’d worked for the agency prior to passing the Florida bar.
    I knew the island would be protected by a dozen or so agents working in three shifts. They would’ve created an on-site command post that would include liaison people from the local sheriff’s department and the Coast Guard. The command post would maintain direct contact with the agency’s intelligence division in Washington and also their main headquarters in Beltsville, Maryland. Unique code names would be assigned to the island, the protectee, members of the protectee’s family (if any), even the protectee’s boat.
    Tony told me, “The agency’s dealt with all types of celebrities and they’re all assigned a name. Prince Charles was ‘Unicorn.’ Ted Kennedy,‘Sunburn.’Amy Carter was ‘Dynamo’; Frank Sinatra, ‘Napoleon.’ A protectee’s limo might be called ‘Stagecoach.’ An island might be called ‘The Rock’ or ‘Fort Apache’—a name that’s immediately understood but still maintains security.”
    The more I learned, the more I came to think of Ligarto Island as The Rock.
    The agents would be armed with MP5 submachine guns and semiautomatic SIG-Sauer pistols, although some older members might still carry Smith & Wesson Model 19s. Other tools, such as night-vision goggles, Remington street-sweeper shotguns, and antiaircraft ordnance, would be included in their arsenal.
    Security might include sharpshooters from the uniformed division of the agency’s countersniper team. The team would establish a shooting post on one of the island’s highest points—a tree, maybe, or water tower. In agency slang, the sniper would be armed with a JAR (Just Another Rifle), which, in fact, was a high-tech weapon custom-designed for the Secret Service. The sniper team would be in radio contact with Beltsville, which would provide the shooter with sight adjustments, depending on the island’s temperature and humidity.
    I’d also learned there would be at least two boats. One would be smaller, capable of running onto the beach if necessary. The other would be a fast patrol boat.
    Daunting. So I planned on being intercepted. Because I didn’t want to be arrested or shot, I also planned on lying my ass off. A believable lie, I hoped.
    I would tell agents I was on my