by Ward Larsen
“That’s the one. We put together a lookback analysis on these particular aircraft. We’ve got a new algorithm that can channel air traffic control records, ownership history, along with raw surveillance imagery of certain airports. Park’s airplanes have been busy in the last two years—very busy. A lot of their flying was international, and we were able to track quite a few of the movements. Once that was done, we crosshatched some new data.”
“Such as?”
“The files you gave us from El-Masri.”
She gave Slaton a few seconds to put it all together. “Pakistan?” he queried. “Ghana and Kazakhstan?”
“Bingo. Of the five caches of HEU allegedly stolen by Park’s group, we can place these aircraft at a nearby airport, and in the right timeframe, on three occasions. A fourth is probable, and we’re working on Belgium.”
“Okay … so you think you know how Park moved this material. But where was it taken?”
“There’s not as much hard evidence, but I think we figured it out. In each case, after the theft, the aircraft flew in the general direction of Southwest Asia. From there the trail gets more sketchy, but we think we tracked one to a very small island in the South China Sea.”
“Which island?”
Sorensen looked at him quizzically, then smiled. “I forgot—you and Christine were sailing there not long ago. It’s called Friendship Cay today, but the name used to be something different.”
“Glorious Dawn?” he said.
“I think that was it—you really do know the area.”
“I know it was one of China’s first attempts at dredging islands—and one of the few they gave up on.”
“They were there long enough to install a small runway and a few buildings.”
Slaton thought about it. “What better place to hide a couple dozen kilos of highly enriched uranium. Are you looking into this?”
“The Navy is diverting a littoral ship to take a peek. But I don’t think they’ll find much.”
“Why not?”
“Because these airplanes both left the island—one last week, and the other early yesterday.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“I explained that we don’t hack Chinese domestic air traffic control. I didn’t say anything about Vietnam or the Philippines.”
He looked at her incredulously. “Have I told you that I’m glad you’re on my side?”
“No, but I’ll take it under advisement.”
“Do you know where these airplanes are now?”
“Almost. At least one of them turned up right under our noses. It’s been found abandoned—Marshall Islands International Airport, in Majuro.”
“When?”
Sorensen looked at her watch. “Less than two hours ago. The airplane is empty, but we have a team en route to go over it. The crew seems to have disappeared.”
“You figured all this out since last night?”
“This is reaching critical mass back at Langley. Half the staff in my section are working various angles. The second Colt is the one we need to find. We’re coordinating with the Navy and Air Force, going over radar logs, even reallocating a few satellites. Oh … and Director Coltrane wants to talk to me directly. I’ve got a call scheduled in ten minutes.”
“Good. Have a nice chat, and tell him I said hello—right after you get that aircrew out to my jet.”
“I figured as much. The crew will want to know where they’re going.”
“Right now, east.”
“In the general direction of the Marshall Islands?”
“It’s a start. Last I heard, my family is heading to North Korea, so it at least puts me within a few time zones. In the time it will take me to get there, I’m guessing you’ll have something more specific.”
He waited for Sorensen to argue against his logic. What she said was, “Sounds like a plan, but I can make it even better.”
“How?”
“I’m going with you.”
Slaton stiffened only slightly, then said, “Yeah, well … I guess it is your jet.”
* * *
By six o’clock that evening, Hawaii-Aleutian Time, three sets of travelers were converging on a single point in the Pacific. They closed in at wildly divergent speeds.
The slowest was the trawler Albatross, making a steady twenty-four knots on dead-calm seas, her engine humming at redline. The four men on board were busy: managing the boat, preparing for their mission, and making regular entreaties to Allah for guidance.
Far to the southwest, a single-engine Y-5A churned methodically northward at sixteen thousand feet. Her weary pilots never gave a thought to divine intervention, concentrating instead on a Bendix weather radar to avoid lines of tropical thunderstorms. They did their best to conserve fuel and find smooth air as convective turbulence shook the little airplane mercilessly. After one particularly heavy jolt, the captain and first officer exchanged a look of concern. They both turned to see the heavy container in the cargo bay—which they knew held nuclear material—swaying ponderously beneath its tie-downs.
Five miles west, a Citation X sped inbound at nine-tenths the speed of sound. It carried two passengers, one of whom tried to sleep, while the other interacted nonstop with an intelligence agency halfway around the world. Both had marginal success.
SIXTY-THREE
Thousands of miles from any continent, and centered precisely in the world’s most expansive body of water, a small ring of coral rises from an indigo sea. Little more than an uninhabited necklace of rock, it is shaped in the general outline of a nesting bird—an apt analogy for an atoll that serves as home to hundreds of thousands of seagoing terns, boobies, and frigates.
Nestled on the right shoulder of the international date line, the tiny island chain serves as an eternal counterpoint to Greenwich, England. Noon translates to midnight, day compares to night, and the urban London horizon is countered by endless expanses of sun and featureless sea. One of the most isolated places on earth, the atoll is called Mokupāpapa by native Hawaiians, Kure by the Americans, and far less agreeable names by the handful of sailors and airmen unfortunate enough to have been castaway on her shores.
At high tide the circle of cays remains but a few feet above sea level, as if taunting the warming globe to make its move. The largest strip of land, if it can be called that, was referred to as Green Island. Less than half a mile long, and a quarter mile wide at its greatest reach, it is the site of the only enduring human mark—a tiny World War II–era runway left to ruin. Since those tumultuous years, the island had fallen to what it had always been: a tiny shelf of constancy surrounded by an ever-changing sea. Hard-scrabble plants sprout foliage year-round, rain comes like clockwork, and the sky keeps an unvarying shade of blue. Any notion of seasons is roundly ignored. The tropical wind blows incessantly, and on those few days when the sun goes missing, the balmy water takes over to avert a chill.
Against the white noise of the modern world, Kure Atoll was more ignored than forgotten. Its shoals are well marked and recorded, yet because the atoll lies in protected waters, fishermen keep well out to sea. Indeed, the only true pocket of human interest comes not from tourists or navies or even the odd scuba diving charter, but from one tight-knit group of individuals who come for the same reasons others do not: Kure, for all its glorious isolation, is celebrated by the world’s ornithologists.
A few times each year, always during nesting season, they motor ashore in small groups. They set up tents and propane stoves, and for a week, sometimes two, they patrol the desolate beaches to count nesting pairs of various species with the lust of sailors on shore leave. When their mission is done, they break down camp, pick up their trash responsibly, and head home to enter data.
This narrow window each year, when humans can be found on Kure, is in fact quite predictable. What would come as a surprise to even the most committed ornithologist was that this research schedule had been painstakingly documented in a very recent, and narrowly viewed, rep
ort produced by North Korea’s SSD.
The conclusion: through the long dregs of January, and at the height of the northern winter, there would be not a single mating pair of terns on the island’s white coral shores.
* * *
The sun was touching Albatross’ transom as everyone gathered near the bone-dry nets. Boutros had decided to convene his meeting on deck—the boat’s autopilot was having no problem with the calm seas, and as the tropics took hold everyone was increasingly eager to escape the stifling air of the wheelhouse.
If he was thankful for anything, it was that the weather had cooperated during their crossing. They’d had one rough day early on, a few rain showers since, but the Pacific had, by and large, cooperated magnificently. Having done his research, Boutros knew it could have been otherwise. Winter on the North Pacific was a wildly unpredictable affair. These were the months when surfers in Hawaii watched the rise and fall of obscure weather buoys thousands of miles away, waiting for swells that would build for days to become twenty-five-foot monsters thundering down on the North Shore of Oahu. So far, Albatross had been blessed. The short-term forecast was for more of the same.
One more day, he thought. God willing, that is all we need.
“The charges are prepared,” Saleem said proudly. “I will not connect the wiring until we are near our target. I have also checked the initiators and both batteries—there is a primary and a backup.”
Boutros nodded, then looked expectantly at Rafiq.
“The device is ready,” he said. “I had some difficulty setting the cap into place, but it was easily solved with a bit of filing and lubrication—the threading was still rough from the machining process. We need only the projectile rings to make our weapon complete.”
All eyes went to Sami.
“I am ready,” he said, his voice unwavering.
Boutros nodded respectfully.
Sami’s involvement had so far been minimal. There was always room for a fighter if they were challenged by a patrol boat, and one could never have enough deckhands. As it turned out, Sami proved to be a quick learner and had become useful around the boat.
Yet his primary reason for being here would play out in the next twenty-four hours. Rafiq had explained everything to the young Libyan during the early planning stages, making sure Sami knew what he was getting into. He told him there was nothing particularly hazardous about handling highly enriched uranium. That would come in the form of a dense metal, heavy slugs machined to fit the weapon. Yet what made HEU good for nuclear bombs—its fissionable properties—had little bearing on its rate of radioactive decay. Due to an extremely long half-life, HEU was a low emitter of radiation. There were alpha particles, and a bit of gamma activity thrown in, but for the most part it was harmless. Best practices involved wearing gloves during handling, and taking every precaution not to inhale dust particles.
Yet there was a greater problem. The North Korean weapon they’d been given included a neutron initiator, and this was composed of polonium and beryllium. Because polonium is highly radioactive, with a very short half-life, the only option had been to include it separately in the final shipment. In any laboratory or weapons production facility, installing polonium would be done robotically. In the cabin of a fishing trawler in the middle of the Pacific—the only option was to do it by hand. If not fatal in the near term, it was an almost assured death sentence. Boutros would never forget Sami’s response after that briefing—he had never hesitated.
“When will we arrive?” Saleem asked.
“Very soon,” Boutros replied. “I think shortly after nightfall.”
“Is that not a problem?”
Boutros frowned. “I had wanted to make our approach to the island in daylight. Unfortunately, the currents have been against us all day. Yet we will find a way, God willing.”
“There are no new changes?” asked Saleem. “We are still being told to attack the secondary target?”
“Nothing has changed,” Boutros said flatly.
Saleem nodded. The subject would not be brought up again.
Boutros looked forward, through the windscreen over the helm. His posture suddenly stiffened.
Sami was the first to notice. “What is it?” he asked.
Boutros took a moment to look at each man in turn. He then raised a bony finger, pointed to the horizon, and said in an oddly subdued voice, “We have arrived.”
SIXTY-FOUR
For an assistant deputy director of the CIA, SAD no less, the idea of transiting Russian airspace in the course of an operation was a complete nonstarter. Resultingly, Slaton and Sorensen were denied a great circle route that would have gotten them to their destination hours sooner.
The question of what that destination was became solved somewhere over Bhutan. Sorensen returned from the cockpit after using the jet’s communications suite for the sixth time—Slaton had seen the system, and recognized state-of-the-art technology when he saw it. Along the same lines, no expense had been spared on the jet’s interior. There were chrome fittings, plush carpet, and six supple leather seats, all of which adjusted into sleepers. Courtesy of the American taxpayers.
“Midway Island,” she announced.
Slaton paused a beat. “That’s where our missing Colt is headed?” he asked. Visions of the great World War II naval battle filled his head.
“Probably not—but that’s where you and I are going. Military radar logged hits tracking north out of the Marshalls—a low and slow target navigating through thunderstorms. Very few airplanes operate in that airspace, especially at low altitude, so it’s almost certainly the one we’re looking for. We projected the general course and took into consideration the airplane’s range. There’s no way they can make it to the main Hawaiian Islands, so they’re heading to one of the islands west of there.”
“You’re sure?”
“The only other option is ditching in mid-ocean. But that still leaves a lot of ground to cover. The Leeward Hawaiian Islands extend for almost a thousand miles.”
“And Midway is our best option?”
“It’s the farthest-west airfield in the archipelago where we can land and get fuel.”
“Okay. That makes sense.” He glanced out the window, saw the Himalayas passing in the distance. “Can we get there from here?” he asked. They had already refueled once in New Delhi, and Slaton figured Midway had to be thousands of miles ahead.
“The pilots say we’re good. This jet’s got some long legs—one of the reasons I like it.”
“Good. The sooner we find this Colt and put a stop to whatever the Koreans are up to, the sooner we can get around to finding my family.”
Sorensen didn’t reply.
“Anna…” he said cautiously. “Is there something else?”
“There is. The jet Christine and Davy were on, the one that passed through Urumqi … we think we know where it landed.”
* * *
The sedan climbed smoothly uphill, its headlights slicing through darkness. For a time Christine saw only forest, thick and evergreen, with rough-hewn terrain in the gaps. There was a sensation of climbing, affirmed by a straining engine. Then, all at once, the foliage disappeared.
The night was clear, the moon bright, and in its glow she could see the compound clearly. It was relatively small, built into the side of a forested hill. On first impression it looked more like a fortress than a home, the bastion-like foundation lifting as if by some tectonic process from the valley of rock below. The upper levels of the house were completely at odds, almost Alpine in appearance.
The approach road was narrow and new, constant switchbacks hairpinning higher. The headlights illuminated the kind of jade forest that might be found in a hundred different places in the world. She wished she were in any of the others right now.
Christine was in the back seat, the big man in front, passenger side. He was silent as ever. There had been a few hand gestures during the flight, and he’d issued orders to his men in a language she didn’t
understand. To Christine the man had spoken few words since she’d dressed his wound so many hours ago. Four to be precise. Perfectly clear and distinct, expressed after they’d landed.
It had been a short ride from the airport, which seemed a mercy in itself. After thirty hours of travel and half a world of time zones, Christine was severely disoriented. She wished it was only the fatigue, but she felt herself falling into a bleakness she’d never before experienced. Had she been alone, it might have overtaken her, reduced her vigilance to something catatonic.
Only one thing kept her going.
Davy was awake at the moment. Bleary-eyed from the circadian upset, he was nestled to her right hip. He actually seemed to be enjoying the sights. For a boy who’d spent most of his life cruising featureless ocean and exploring palm-tipped islands, the surrounding hills must have seemed like mountains.
“Are there bears outside?” he asked.
“No, honey. I don’t think so.”
“When will we be there?”
“Soon, I promise.”
“Will Daddy be there?”
Christine pulled in a great breath. “No … but we’ll see him soon.”
The big man turned and gave her a stern look—the only one he possessed, apparently. Christine considered asking how his leg was holding up, but her compassion was forestalled by a thought she’d had many years ago with regard to another abductor—the one she’d eventually married: Where was gangrene when you needed it?
In the end she said nothing.
Neither did he, which left his input since landing at the four words he’d uttered back at the airport.
The four most unsettling words Christine had ever heard.
“Welcome to North Korea.”
SIXTY-FIVE
Boutros looked out the window into blackness, his hands steady on the wheel. He turned his eye to the adjacent navigation display and pressed a button to zoom in. He didn’t like what he saw.