Author's Notes: I swear, there will be some "action" coming. I just didn't realize that it was more than halfway into the story.

Chapter 14

Unable to get any information from the computer tech, Lucas followed him down the hallways, stairs and deep underground into the highly secure Command Center. He had to hustle to keep up with the older man, as Linus was in a very big hurry to get back to work.

As they slipped past the security guard and raced down the hall towards the main room, Lucas attempted to engage the man again.

"Hey Linus, what's going on?"

"She established contact. At least, we think it was her. Gus is working on breaking the encryption and deciphering the code now."

"Wait. The missing agent established contact? How?" Lucas just about stopped before the glass enclosure.

"Yes," Linus sighed, his exasperation evident.

Even with Linus' back turned towards him, Lucas could hear the eye roll in his voice.

"At least, we think it's from her. Pretty sure. An encrypted message sent to the COA. Wasn't directed at anyone in particular, but had a high alert code attached."

Over the course of the past few weeks, Lucas had learned that each agent handler and covert agent used their own personal code to conceal the content of their correspondence. While the agency as a whole maintained a constant method for encryption, the information sent between the agent and handler were even more secure. The deciphering key was kept highly classified, and was only shared with another if something – such as death or abduction –was to befall the agent. Since Gus was Tanaka's handler, he was the one who had the responsibility of deciphering her message. If for some reason they were wrong, and this particular alert came from someone else, Gus would get nothing.

"What do you need me to do?"

By this time, they'd reached the conference room. Lucas was not surprised to see that the space had been taken over by the small team assigned to this situation. The walls were covered with maps, and the computer monitor mounted on the main wall was lowered to reveal what looked to be a very detailed topographic map of the island and surrounding waters. As Lucas looked closer, he saw that the map was not a map. In fact, it was a live satellite image of the area. Very cool.

"We can't trace it." Linus now stared at him directly. His need to hurry now gone.

"Okay." Lucas was confused. Surely they traced everything that came in? As far as he was aware, they'd been able to pinpoint the exact location of every piece of information, email, attempted call, etc, that had made it's way through the agency's security. Why was this any different? "Why not?"

Now, not only was Linus staring at him as though he had two heads, but his arrival had been noticed by the rest of the people in the room.

Nina, hunched over a palm-top at the far end of the conference table, was the one to respond. "Because we've got the best damned trained covert agents in the world and they just are that good." She winked at Lucas, before pulling up a screen to replace the satellite image. "Even the embedded agents are phenomenal with just about any computer they can get their hands on. They are trained to make sure that anything they sent to us in HQ goes through more IP addresses in more countries than the average computer genius can follow. That's what happened with this alert. If we knew where she was, we could have placed a watch on the area of origin to pin point her location exactly, but we don't even know if she's still on the island."

"And you want me to see if I can find the origin of the message?"

"We've all tried. We can't get it."

"Unless you get another one."

"Exactly." Nina gave him a sly smile. "But we haven't let you have a crack at it yet? Think you can do it?"

Suddenly, Lucas no longer felt tired. In fact, he felt surprisingly rejuvenated. He loved a good challenge, and while he wasn't sure he would succeed where the other's failed, he was certainly going to try.

"I don't know." He paused for a minute, thinking about what he'd need. "I'm going to need my computer. Who first pulled the message?"

Linus piped in, "I did."

"Okay, I'm going to need everything you got right before and right after. Also, her last known location?"

"Alright, go. I'll pull everything for you." Nina waved him off. "Sarah's going to be out in a minute and she'll probably want to know where you are when Gus breaks the code."

Lucas rushed to his desk and immediately got to work. He needed to know as much as he could in order to back track the path the electronic message had taken. It took a second to get his fingers moving as fast as he'd like, but in no time, he had multiple lines flashing across the map on his screen. Whoever had sent the note – presumably the missing agent – was good, but he was pretty sure he could figure out at least a general location of the origin. He just needed a little time.

Two hours later, Lucas dropped his head on the desk and lightly hit it against the wood a couple of times before leaning back in the seat. He hated to admit it, but he was stumped. He'd tried every logarithm he knew, but he couldn't get past one particular block. He raised his hands and placed them behind his head. Chewing on his bottom lip, he stared at his monitor, hoping to see something he hadn't seen before.

"Ha! Got it!" He heard Gus exclaim from the workstation next to his. The older handler stood up in a hurry, knocking his chair onto the floor, and rushing towards the conference room.

Lucas quickly followed Gus, knowing that there could be something in the message that could help him pin point the origin of the note. It was also possible that she would have given them a specific location. It was highly doubtful, but not out of the question. The conference room filled quickly. Everyone was on edge, waiting for the older agent handler to finally break the code. Lucas wasn't sure if it was typical for the decoding to take such a long time, but regardless, he wanted to know what was sent and if it really was from Agent Tanaka.

Gus scrambled to the CPU and inserted the disk. Immediately the monitor flipped to the encrypted and coded message. As the older man typed furiously on the keyboard, the letters, numbers and symbols stared to rearrange themselves and transform into intelligible words.

Alive. Safe. Possibly made. Low. Contact soon. P1 Intel to come

There was an audible sigh of relief from the collective group. For the past month, they'd all assumed the worst. In reality, their embedded agent was safe and that was all that mattered. While she may be made and trying to keep from being picked up, she hadn't been handed the same fate as the three previous agents.

Lucas did know that P1 indicated information of the highest priority. Perhaps Tanaka had found something that jeopardized her position. Maybe it wasn't the mole after all. Regardless, it looked as though she was going to need a bit of help getting out of there. While it was of the highest importance to get agents out alive, the COA was adamant that their involvement in a mission, or uninvited presence in an enemy country, be kept completely under wraps. They were an agency that technically did not exist. They did not want that cover blown. Now, they'd have to wait and see what kind of information the agent could leak out, or if her next message would be a call for an extraction.

Sarah stood in front of the group and started the discussion over the message, the possible implications and the scenarios they were to begin to explore. Before the next message came through, they were going to have a selection of plausible next steps to insure that this agent came home soon, and alive. Even if she wasn't in danger, the reality of being identified as a 'spy' was enough to bring her home. They couldn't jeopardize the agency as a whole. It would be best that she slip out with as much information as she could gather.

Lucas found himself looking towards his own desk and the tracing system. From his seat in the conference room, he could see his monitor and the bright red lines moving rapidly other his monitor. He wasn't needed in the room right now, and he was itching to get back to work.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Roberts slip into the room. He immediately made eye contact with the older man. As if he could read Lucas' mind, Roberts raised his eyebrows and lifted his chin, indicating that Lucas should get out of there and back to work. The young recruit nodded in appreciation, and tried to sneak out of the room without causing too much disruption.

He hadn't expected Roberts to follow him out, but found the seasoned agent bumping into him in the door. Lucas looked up to the man in confusion. In response, he got a quick nod and saw the man pat his own right pocket with two fingers. The younger man frowned, but kept walking. Roberts did not follow.

When he reached his desk, Lucas slipped his hand into his own right pocket, and wrapped his fingers around a small wad of paper. Looking to see if anyone was paying attention, and finding that most people were too enthralled with the turn of events surrounding the missing agent's position, Lucas pulled the paper from his pocket. He quickly smoothed the tiny torn piece until he could read the text. All it said was 'We got him.'

Looking towards the glass walls of the conference room, Lucas could see Roberts glance at him out of the corner of his eye. The older agent nodded slightly, then turned his attention back to the interior of the room. Lucas wasn't sure what to make of this. What the note implied was that they had the mole. Did that mean they'd taken him in and were questioning him? Or, that they were tracking him? Who was the mole? Then finally it dawned on him. His role in the COA was over. Did this mean that Roberts was going to ship both Piccolo and himself back to seaQuest as soon as possible, or were they going to get to see this play out to the end? He felt a little guilty for wanting to delay his return home, but Lucas also was very curious to witness the process of getting an agent out, from this perspective, rather than being one of the people needing an extraction.

All of a sudden, a small alert icon on his desktop started flashing. Shoving the small piece of paper back into his pocket, Lucas put all thoughts of the mole and his possible identity aside. He switched screens, keeping the location tracker on Jen's message in a minimized window, and immediately started to look through what his recently designed and buried program had just found from within the small country's highest level of government's files. It didn't take long for Lucas to pull some data that at first glance looked harmless. There was something that didn't mesh though. Lucas scrolled through row after row of numbers – the further along he got into the information, the more it didn't make sense. He was looking through financial records of the country, and scrutinizing the funding allocations over the course of the past twelve months. He wasn't a financial expert, nor did he really wish to be, but the numbers appeared to be 'off' and the sudden changes in allocations to national security, military resources, and the executive office were alarming.

Lucas stopped for a minute, taking a break to close his eyes. With a sudden jolt of memory, Lucas sat up straight in his seat, his eyes wide and alert. Of course! Fingers moving quickly to keep up with his brain, the young recruit pulled up email after email from within the country's highest office, that he'd flagged earlier that week. Alone, they didn't make sense, but with the financial information at hand, Lucas had a good idea of what was going on within the borders of that country and he needed to get it to the team as quickly as possible. Hitting 'save,' first, Lucas ejected the data disk and raced back to the conference room.

His entrance was not graceful. He plowed through the door and immediately made his way to the CPU, where Sarah Durrow was standing. With his mind so focused on his finding, he didn't even acknowledge the fact that he'd interrupted the Head Agent Coordinator in the middle of a sentence, or that most of the people in attendance were staring at him with their mouths open. It wasn't until he had the data disk in the drive and had frantically pulled the information up onto the screen that he realized his mistake.

"Uh, sorry." He directed his apology at Sarah, but then immediately hunched back over the keyboard, flicking through the files until he had what he wanted, visible for all to see. "This is important and I think it has relevance to what Agent Tanaka has been doing." He paced back and forth at the head of the table, unable to control the animation in his hand gestures.

"Go ahead, Lucas. What have you found?" It was evident that Sarah was not exactly thrilled at the way in which the young recruit had barged into the discussions, but she was well aware of his ability to pull from a computer what no other agent on her team could – despite each of them being the best in the world.

"Okay, so by itself this appears harmless. A memo from the President to one of his advisors - who just happens to be the Commanding General of the Army - indicating that he's starting to think that an alliance with the UEO would be most beneficial to his country. He goes on about how he's had meetings with some strategic experts and while he's still not certain this is the route to go, he wants to look into it further. He specifically requests some scenarios on how the neighboring countries would react to this particular direction. I imagine that because of their location within the East China Sea, this probably wouldn't go over too well."

Lucas paused and glanced over at Roberts, who was still leaning up against the glass wall. While the man looked to be taking him seriously, he couldn't hide the glint of amusement in his eye. Lucas scowled slightly before moving on. "Anyway, there is a lot of back and forth conversation, some attachments that indicate that the Commanding General is not too thrilled with this idea."

"Hey Wolenczak, we get it. The head of the Army disagrees with the President. What's the significance?" This interruption came from one of the other handlers who'd been assigned to one of the lost agents.

"This." Lucas quickly pulled the financial data up on the screen and scrolled up through the dates. "Today, this information was flagged. Let's look back at an earlier date, one that precedes the first correspondence between these two key players. Here. Take a look at this. Funding allocations for weapons and vehicles for the military. For the past few years, this amount has not varied much. You can justify for the slight annual increases as an increase in overhead costs. It's the same across all divisions of the government. Nothing interesting. But, if you look at the months following the first messages sent from the President, you can see that the military budget gets a significant bump here -" Lucas pointed to one entry, "here, and here. That's three significant increases in three months."

He stopped and looked around the room. It was apparent that they were all starting to see what he had.

Roberts stepped up and was the first to speak, "So the assumption we can make is that the Commanding General of the Army is in disagreement with President Itou's decision to pursue and alliance with the UEO as opposed to staying neutral or aligning with Macronesia. Any evidence the General is sympathetic to Bourne?"

"No. At least nothing I've found so far." Lucas shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. "I have my search programmed to immediately flag any mention of the Chaodai or Macronesia, but nothing has come up other than these particular notes."

"Anything else we need to be filled in on?"

"Uh no. Still no luck on tracing the message from the embedded agent, but I still have my search running."

"Okay." Roberts nodded at Lucas and the younger man took this as an indication that he should sit back down with the rest of the group. "First of all, we don't know if this is the intel that Agent Tanaka alluded to. We also don't know who she suspects has evidence of her position with this agency. At this point, it could be someone in the military, the President's Office, or someone completely unrelated to this particular information. What we do know is that it appears as though the military is building up to something big. Much bigger than this country has seen in years. So, with the new information on hand, we are going to have to make some adjustments to our scenarios. Let's get to it."

Roberts turned to Sarah, who again moved to the head of the room. It was her agent, her team, and she was skilled at making the calls on what her people needed both in the field and in the office. As she had been before Lucas had interrupted, she'd take the lead on developing the options for getting Jen Tanaka out of her mission and back on UEO soil.

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Later, Lucas found himself sitting back at his workstation, fighting to stay awake. The longer he stared at the red lines jumping from point to point across the map on his screen the blurrier his vision got. At one point, he wasn't even aware that he'd closed his eyes until the sound of someone dropping something heavy, woke him from his sleep-deprived state. He'd jumped at the sound, knocking over a stack of papers and almost spilling a half-full glass of water. Now, he found himself staring at the clock debating whether or not it was worth it to get an hour of sleep before he had to report to Extractions Training for a review of their final simulation, or if he should just tough it out here. Regardless of the choice, he was past the point of productivity.

In his youth, he'd never have thought twice about pulling an all-nighter in order to complete an assignment, or get the information that he needed. Although, in his defense, he hadn't spent half the night fighting for survival and taking a physical beating before sitting down in front of the computer back then either. Sighing heavily, Lucas gathered the items he'd need for the classroom review, and turned his security settings on his machine. He wanted the program to continue to run while he was gone, he just didn't want anyone to fiddle with it before he could get back.

The walk to the training classroom was short, but the fresh air did nothing to revive his energy. He was completely burned out. Lucas stopped short when he realized that they would probably spend the next three hours sitting in the dark, going through the simulation footage frame by frame, while Chief Shan pointed out their errors and initiated a discussion of alternative responses. Three hours in the dark seemed like a nightmare right now. If he couldn't keep his eyes open in the busy Command Center, how was he going to stay awake through this? He contemplated just going back to his dorm room and plopping down onto his own bed, but knew he'd never make it to the classroom on time if he fell asleep.

Even though he'd known Shan for many years, there was no way the Extractions Chief was going to cut him any slack. In fact, over the course of this particular training, Shan had pushed Lucas harder than the other recruits. It was almost as if he had something to prove. Lucas assumed it was because they were both from seaQuest and the boat was known equally for the quality of her crew as she was for her physical attributes. At least Piccolo was being pushed equally as hard. Lucas wasn't bitter. Not at all. Because they'd been picked on a little more than the rest, he felt as though he and Tony had improved the most. Plus, Lucas had been hell bent on trying to prove that he wasn't just that teenage computer nerd anymore. He was a UEO Navy officer, even without the official Navy training.

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear the cobwebs, Lucas pushed on towards the classroom. He would grab a cup of coffee from the break room before the review started, and if he had to drink ten cups during the course of those three hours just to stay awake, then that's what he'd do.

He didn't quite make it as far as he thought before he found he weight of his eyelids becoming too much to bear. Less than five minutes after he'd set his cup down and slipped into his usual seat, Lucas rested his head in his arms and fell asleep lying over the desk. Slightly confused and disoriented, he awoke fifty minutes later when his teammates started to filter in. Rubbing his face with his hands, he steeled himself to stay awake for a while longer.