Blackout

by Nance, John J. ;

  Kat shook her head. “But how, Jordan? Why? And for what?”

  He patted her arm. “Human nature requires bad apples, Kat, and the old adage that everyone has a price is distressingly true. The Bureau is no exception.”

  “You’re saying—” she began. “Wait a minute. You’re saying there’s a faction of how many?”

  He shook his head. “At least two or three, and they’re probably fairly high up. The cooperation they’re providing includes support such as IDs, the creation of agents that don’t exist, giving these fake agents the intelligence information they need, and probably communications interception. That’s why every call you made to Jake Rhoades was fed immediately to those who were trying to silence all of you. Precisely what this Nuremberg group is going to demand, none of us knows, but they’re incredibly well financed, and they’ve bought their way into the Bureau. I know that’s hard to accept, Kat, but you must.”

  She was breathing rapidly, her mind racing to get a logical grasp of what he was saying and how it could happen.

  “As we speak, Nuremberg’s agents could be closing in on this place. We’ve got to get you, and Mr. MacCabe, and Dr.… Maverick, was it?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of you back to my Air Force jet. They’re waiting in Boise for me to call. As long as you’re under my protection aboard that jet, they won’t touch you.”

  “Why not?” The question had popped out of her mouth, bypassing the normal filter of respect and deference she felt for Jordan James.

  He hesitated before replying, as if startled by the question. He stopped patting her arm for a moment, then resumed. “Because, Kat, there is a vast difference between attacking a civilian airliner and attacking one of the presidential fleet. The former will get a unified response of governmental and law enforcement determination to capture and prosecute, but the latter will unleash the fury of the U.S. military. Only the certifiably insane among terrorist organizations would engage the latter.”

  She nodded. The explanation largely made sense.

  “I decided there was no one I could fully trust to come get you other than myself,” he said. “That’s why …”

  Kat grabbed his sleeve and motioned for silence. She was looking intently toward the road in front of the cabin. In the growing light of dawn, she could just make out the dark shape of the Lincoln sedan that had brought Jordan as it idled in front.

  “What?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Sh-h-h!” she replied, kneeling down for a second and pulling him with her, her eyes riveted on the car. “Your car,” she whispered.

  The front door of the car closed and a figure slid behind the wheel.

  Maybe the driver got out for a moment, she thought.

  But there was movement around the back of the car. Two figures, in fact, dragging something down the road and into the trees. With a start she realized they were dragging a body. Jordan James stiffened beside her as he, too, realized what they were seeing.

  “Jordan, stay here. I’ll get Robert and the doctor out of there.”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  She shook her head and took off in a crouch toward the rear of the house. He saw her go in, watched several lights go out in the back, and more come on in the front of the house before realizing that the three of them had slipped out the back door and were running toward him, carrying their bags. As they reached James’s position, Robert finished fastening the hooks over the zipper of the oversized coat he had borrowed.

  “Who are they?” Dr. Maverick asked, panting.

  Kat shook her head. “I don’t know, but what’s behind your place? Any roads or police stations or anything?”

  “No. Nothing. About a mile from here there’s a small shopping center, but it’s too far to walk through the woods.”

  Another vehicle had turned the far corner of the road and was moving toward the house, slowing as it came. It stopped a hundred yards away, behind another parked vehicle, and killed its lights, but no one got out.

  “Reinforcements,” Kat whispered. “It may not take them long to figure out we’ve left.” She turned to Dr. Maverick. “Does anyone around here have a car we could appropriate? And is there another way out of here?”

  He thought for a few seconds, then pointed to the other side of the cabin. “Through that patch of woods, there’s a house with a detached garage that has a small snow tractor—a Sno-Cat, I think they call it. It can seat six people. But I don’t know if it’ll start, and we’d have to break in.”

  “Would the owner be around?”

  “No. Not this time of year. He spends November and December in France.”

  “Let’s go,” Kat replied, letting Dr. Maverick move out first.

  The lock on the garage was stout, but the screws on the hinge were weak enough to wrench free with the handle of a rake, and there was enough room for all four in the cab. Kat jumped behind the wheel, relieved to find the ignition didn’t require a key.

  “How do we get out of here?” she asked as the engine rumbled to life.

  “Right turn out of his driveway.”

  The answer momentarily stopped her. “That would take us past your house!”

  “No other way … oh! Of course. It’s a Sno-Cat. Turn left. We’ll crush a few gardens, but there’s another road about three hundred yards in that direction.”

  “I’m going to keep the lights off,” Kat said, slipping the machine in gear and moving out of the garage. “It’s getting close to sunrise anyway.”

  The sound of an engine in the predawn quiet caught the immediate attention of Arlin Schoen as he crouched behind one of the rented Suburbans. He lifted a small radio transceiver to his mouth. “What is that?”

  “Don’t know,” the answer came back. “It’s a block or more away. Sounds like a road grader or snowplow.”

  Schoen thought for a second, studying the bright lights in the living room of the Maverick cabin. He lifted the radio again. “How many do you see inside the house now?”

  “Ah, at the moment, maybe one. Hard to tell. I see no movement.”

  “Anyone talking?”

  “No. They’re probably whispering.”

  “Anyone watching the back?” Schoen snapped, standing bolt upright.

  “No. We can see the back door through the front windows.”

  “They’ve left, you idiots!” Schoen growled, and turned to the others. “Get in! Head for the sound of that motor.” He raised the radio to his mouth again as he climbed in. “Move in on the house. Now! Report back.”

  The engine of the Suburban roared to life and the lights came on. The driver fishtailed away from the side of the street and accelerated as much as he dared. The headlights were picking up nothing as they crested a small rise on the other side of the cabin and followed the road to the left, braking hard to avoid sliding through a grove of trees at the end.

  “This is a damn dead end. Where’s that sound coming from?” Arlin Schoen asked, leaping out to stand on the running board and listen. The engine could be heard in the distance ahead, moving away, but also to the right.

  He jumped back in and slammed the door. “Turn around! Turn around! There’s got to be a road over there.”

  The radio crackled to life as they roared past the house again. “Ah … you were right. There’s no one inside.”

  “Find MacCabe’s damned computer and follow us!” Schoen barked.

  “There’s a larger road just beyond,” Thomas Maverick said. “If we get to it and go a couple of hundred yards, we can go across meadows toward the town.”

  “Which way to the airport?” Kat asked.

  “Same way.”

  “What are you thinking, Kat?” Jordan asked.

  She turned partially in his direction as she kept the machine moving steadily forward. “Can you call your Gulfstream back? I’ve got my phone …” she offered.

  Jordan pulled out a small digital cell phone. “I’ve got one.” He dialed in the appropriate number and made
the necessary arrangements, then disconnected.

  “They’ll be here in an hour and a half.”

  Kat glanced at him with a stricken look on her face. “That won’t be soon enough.”

  chapter 46

  SOUTH OF SUN VALLEY, IDAHO

  NOVEMBER 17—DAY SIX

  9:20 A.M. LOCAL/1620 ZULU

  The driver of the Suburban was sweating as he turned around at the third snowy dead end and accelerated back toward the one road he was sure of.

  “Hurry, dammit!” Schoen barked, as he sat with his nose practically against the windshield, his eyes searching for any sign of the tracked vehicle they were trying to intercept.

  “Probably a snowmobile of some sort,” the driver said.

  There was no response from the right seat.

  They rocketed down the feeder road and skidded to a halt just past another turnoff. The driver threw the Suburban into reverse, backed up, and turned onto the road. His headlights caught the glint of something crossing a half mile ahead.

  “There they are!” Schoen muttered, his hands opening and closing around the Uzi he was carrying. “Go! GO, GO, GO!”

  “I’m going! There’re limits, you know,” the driver replied.

  “It’s a Sno-Cat,” Schoen said, watching the machine move off the right side of the road and accelerate toward a grove of trees, and open fields beyond. The driver skidded to a halt where the tracks crossed the road into the adjacent field.

  “Follow him!” Schoen demanded.

  “We’ll get stuck.”

  “DO IT!”

  The driver cut the wheels to the right and moved into the ditch, where the Suburban sank instantly up to the running boards in snow, its wheels spinning uselessly.

  Schoen was already out, leaping into knee-high snow and struggling to run in the direction of the accelerating Sno-Cat. It was obvious he couldn’t catch it, but he could stop them with a lucky shot. He made it to the first tree and used it as a platform, taking careful aim with the snub-nosed weapon before squeezing the trigger.

  The chilling impact of multiple bullets pinging into the metal in the back of the Sno-Cat was unmistakable. Kat glanced in the rearview mirror, looking for the source of the shots. She jammed the accelerator to the floor and turned to the others. “Stay down!” she yelled, struggling to be heard over the engine. “Everyone okay?”

  “Yes,” Robert answered, surveying the others and turning to look out the back. “I think they got stuck in the ditch. I see the headlights, but they’re not moving.”

  “Dear Lord,” Dr. Maverick was saying to himself. “I’ve never been shot at.”

  “The airport’s ahead, maybe a mile,” Kat said. “I can see the flashers.”

  “They’ll know where we’re going, Kat,” Jordan said, his face ashen.

  She was nodding. “If they’re in the ditch, it’ll take time to radio for help. Maybe we can scramble the local sheriff.”

  Jordan was shaking his head. “No. This group will have covered that angle.”

  Kat glanced at him in alarm. “What? Bought off the sheriff?”

  “Neutralized him, somehow.”

  “Your jet won’t be here for another hour, Jordan. We have to do something.”

  Robert was leaning between them from the backseat. “Kat, we’re sitting ducks in this thing. It took those slugs because he was firing low, but this is thin metal around the cab.”

  “I know it,” she said, correcting their direction as the vehicle lurched to the left.

  “So what do we do?” Robert asked gently, almost in her ear.

  “We can hide—or find another plane. Quickly.”

  “Hiding won’t work,” Robert said.

  She looked around at him, then at Jordan and Dr. Maverick. “You’re right. We commandeer a plane. Hang on. I’m going to run this machine flat-out.”

  Arlin Schoen held the radio to his lips and kept his voice under control. “We’ll leave this car and use yours. Just get here. We’ve got them now.”

  He pocketed the radio and safetied the Uzi before wading back through the snowdrifts to wait at the side of the road. It would take the other Suburban less than three minutes to reach him, he figured, and perhaps another ten to drive the circuitous route to the airfield. But there would be no place to hide. With the exception of their chartered Caravan, the airport had been all but deserted. He turned to his driver and motioned him over. “Bring the guns. Hurry.”

  “Robert, I just remembered something,” Kat said as they bounced violently over a patch of rough ground and stabilized. The airport was less than a mile distant.

  He leaned forward. “What, Kat?”

  “Don’t ask me why I just thought of this. But in Walter Carnegie’s file that we downloaded?”

  “Yes?”

  “He said the Air Force had stonewalled his requests for information about a test they were running off Key West with an old F-one-oh-six drone the day and hour the SeaAir MD-eleven went down.”

  “I read that. What about it? You think it’s connected?”

  She shook her head while looking back at the rearview mirror, half expecting to see headlights bouncing across the field after them.

  The landscape was clear behind them, no vehicles or people in sight.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “But that business jet we flew wasn’t stolen until after the MD-eleven went down, so it wasn’t the firing platform. They could have used another airplane, but what’s been bothering me is, Carnegie said the air traffic control tapes around Key West showed no other aircraft in the area. That means not one but two airplanes are missing from the radar tracks. The one that fired at the MD-eleven, and whatever Air Force aircraft was working with the F-one-oh-six drone.”

  “I don’t understand,” Robert said, aware that both Dr. Maverick and Jordan James were listening intently.

  “Well, they don’t fly a target drone aircraft unless there’s someone up there to shoot at it. So, there should be another radar track from the Air Force craft, and according to Carnegie, there wasn’t. Second, there should be a radar track of some sort on the aircraft that shot the laser at the MD-eleven.”

  “Maybe the Air Force craft was a stealth fighter. An F-one-seventeen, or something new,” Robert said.

  Kat steered the machine around the end of a gully and accelerated again. “No, I mean—well, yes, that’s possible—but … what if there was another aircraft up there, not a stealth, and it purposefully wasn’t using its transponder? Carnegie said the FAA tapes showed an intermittent target.”

  “Kat, that’s the road we came out on. We’ll have to cross it,” Robert said.

  She nodded. “I know. If there’s a fence, we’ll just plow through it.”

  “Okay.”

  “What is a transponder, Kat?” Dr. Maverick asked.

  “A little black box,” she said, “that electronically listens for an incoming radar beam from air traffic control. When it senses one, it sends an answering burst radio transmission back to the same radar site with altitude and identification information, so the controller knows who you are and precisely where you are.”

  “And without it?”

  “Without it, or if you purposefully turn it off, all the controller can do is look for what we call a ‘skin paint’ target. Just the raw radar beam bouncing back to the antenna from the metal of the airplane. That’s what military stealth technology prevents. The skin of the aircraft absorbs the radar beam so nothing bounces back, and, without a transponder, they’re essentially invisible to radar.”

  “But a normal airplane without a transponder will still show a skin paint target to the controller?”

  She nodded. “Usually. Like a shadowy, intermittent target, which were Carnegie’s words. So why would an Air Force test aircraft turn his transponder off?”

  Robert tightened his grip on an overhead handrail as they bounced over a small depression. “Kat, what are you thinking? That the F-one-oh-six was involved?”

 
She glanced at Robert as they neared the road. There were no signs of cars coming in either direction. A barbed wire fence loomed ahead of them, and she gestured to it. “Hang on.”

  The Sno-Cat plowed easily through the wire, and climbed onto the road and off the other side as she steered across the grounds toward a row of hangars.

  “What am I thinking? They use F-one-oh-six drones for target practice. So who was shooting at this one, and why were they trying to stay hidden from radar? We know it wasn’t a stealth, because a stealth wouldn’t leave an intermittent target.”

  “Wait,” Robert said, shaking his head. “You mean, who was shooting at the drone, or who was shooting at the MD-eleven?”

  Kat looked at him. “What if it was one and the same, Robert? What if the test went bad and they got an airliner instead?”

  In the growing light of dawn the flight line looked deserted at first. There were rows of light aircraft and a few light twins, all of which had obviously been out all night in the storm. Only a Cessna Caravan on floats at the other end of the field appeared to be free of snow.

  “Okay, everyone. Time to borrow a bird.”

  “How about the float plane?” Robert asked.

  “Possibly. Those are easy to fly.”

  “You don’t want to get close to that one,” Jordan said in a firm voice.

  “Why?” Kat asked.

  “It was in Boise when I left. Now it’s here, as are a bunch of assassins.”

  Kat braked to a halt. “Oh, Lord. You think they came in on that?”

  Jordan was nodding. “Count on it.”

  She looked around quickly, spotting a hangar with its doors partially open. She let out the clutch and accelerated toward it, trying to make out the type of aircraft inside. Something large with high wings that were a shadow through the upper windows of the hangar. An Albatross!

  She stopped and jumped out to peer into the hangar, returning in less than thirty seconds. “This will have to do.”

  “Can you fly it?” Robert asked, raising his hand suddenly before she responded. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”