The Art of War: A Novel

by Stephen Coonts

  I refrained from commenting that I wasn’t going to mention a word of anything in their hush-hush files except to my boss, the acting director, but refrained. A comment like that would merely bounce off Lansdown. Obviously, it was going to take more horsepower than I had to induce the FBI to share.

  “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Lansdown. I’ll pass your comment along to my boss, the acting director, Admiral Grafton.”

  Lansdown wasn’t going to waste another minute on me. “Escort him out of the building,” he said to my guard, then nodded once in my general direction and strode out.

  I followed my handler like a good dog.

  *

  Chong found it impossible to stay in the van. He got out and looked in the side door at Frank and Joe huddled over the screen of the laptop studying the readouts. Chong looked at the picture on the video screen, a transmission from the color video camera in the Raven, held the radio close to his ear and waited. The drone was now level at ten thousand feet on the altimeter, flying upwind at a stately fifteen knots groundspeed.

  Air Force One called Kippr and was told to transfer to the tower frequency.

  Chong dialed it into the radio and was in time to hear the tower roger the call of the Air Force One pilot.

  Chong told Joe, “He just crossed Kippr at two hundred ten knots. Kippr is five minutes from us. He’ll be abeam us at nine thousand six hundred feet, ready to dirty up.”

  “Three more minutes, I think. Then I turn the bird to intercept.”

  They had practiced this interception a dozen times using a fighter plane that flew a similar track, at the same height and airspeed. The last four interceptions were good, but there were a lot of variables, not the least of which was wind, which would change the drone’s velocity and require a heading correction of some magnitude.

  They didn’t have to fly the Raven into the big Boeing, merely get it within three hundred feet. Then its integrated controls would trigger the explosive charge the Raven carried, generating a large pulse of electromagnetic energy that should be enough to overcome the light shielding in the plane’s computers and control system, burning them out. At that point the 747 would become uncontrollable. The electromagnetic pulse would fry iPhones, computers, pacemakers, the air data computer, the fly-by-wire, the engine controls, all of it. The plane would crash. Presumably all the crew and passengers would be killed. Including the president of the United States.

  Chong used his binoculars to sweep the fields and roads. No one around. No traffic on the road since the farm truck went by. He pointed his binoculars to the north and searched the sky. The seconds ticked by.

  “There it is,” he told Frank.

  “Turning to intercept.”

  Chong focused his binoculars on the oncoming plane. It should have its flaps out, be slowing to gear speed. He just couldn’t tell from this angle, which was almost head-on, but looking up.

  “Got him on the camera … Damn, we have a tailwind. Drone is making ninety over the ground.”

  “Don’t lead him too much.”

  “Denver Tower, Air Force One with you, approaching Japex. We have the glideslope.”

  “You are cleared to land, Air Force One.”

  “The bird is going too fast. It’s too high and won’t come down.”

  “Try to detonate it right over him.”

  Frank was good, really good, but …

  “Drop the gear,” Chong whispered at the Air Force One pilot.

  If the plane would slow, Frank could get the drone down.

  “Shit, the wind changed. It’s driving the Raven to the east. Too fast.”

  Chong glanced at the video presentation on the laptop. The drone had missed the big Boeing to the right. Frank was turning back toward it, steeply, and the camera picture blacked out. The turn was too steep.

  Chong heard the Boeing and looked up. The president’s plane was passing overhead.

  “We missed it,” Joe said, the disgust evident in his voice.

  “Recover the drone and let’s get the hell outta here.”

  “Sorry,” Frank said.

  “We’ll try again when he takes off. He’s only going to be here four hours.”

  *

  I found Zoe Kerry in the CIA cafeteria eating a salad. I dropped into the seat beside her. I had two hot dogs with chili, mustard and onions on my plate. “Hey,” I said.

  “Where you been, Carmellini?”

  “Doing serious hot important things.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. This is the CIA, after all. How goes the investigation?”

  “The piece of plastic they found under Tomazic’s boat was from a diver’s scuba mask faceplate. They even have the brand name.”

  “How long was it in the water?”

  “Less than twenty-four hours.”

  “So it begins to look like murder?”

  “Yes.”

  Boy, this would stir them up. In addition to the director of the FBI, the director of the CIA was also murdered. I could visualize the headline.

  I ate my hot dogs. The chili they used in the cafeteria was actually pretty good. And real beef hot dogs. God only knows what part of the steer the meat came from, but parts is parts.

  Kerry was still messing with her salad when I finished off the dogs and took a long, slow sip of coffee. Not as good as McDonald’s, but acceptable. The upside to not being a gourmet is that you are easily pleased.

  “How about friend Reinicke?”

  “The fire investigators don’t have much to go on. They are sure the epicenter of the explosion was in Reinicke’s apartment. Natural gas. Hell of a fire. Not much left. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day. If there is anything to find.”

  “You up for dinner tonight?”

  “No.”

  “Is that no never, or no tonight?”

  “Never is a long, long time. Let’s just say, not tonight.”

  I gave her my most charming let’s-get-laid-soon smile, picked up my tray and headed off for more serious hot important things. She actually gave me a small smile in return. It must be that old Carmellini charm that worked so well for dear old Dad, and Granddad … and Great-Granddad …

  I got in to see Grafton about three that afternoon. He was on his computer. I waited, and when he finished he swiveled his chair to me. “Anything?”

  I told him about the morning visit. About the special agent in charge of records, George Washington Lansdown. Tossed the piece of notepaper on his desk. He picked it up, held it under the light so he could see the faint indentations of the file numbers.

  “Is this worth following up on?” he asked.

  He wanted an opinion. So I gave him one. “They don’t want to share it, so presumably it is interesting reading. Her computerized files that the dragon lady said didn’t exist might be, too.”

  “Kerry lied about PTS.”

  “And she is sitting on Tomazic’s murder, which may be coincidence or cause and effect. She says that piece of plastic in the water came from a scuba diver’s faceplate. If there was a diver in the water when Tomazic drowned, it was murder.”

  “I heard about that.” Grafton sighed and rubbed a hand over his hair, smoothing it down or scratching his dome. I don’t think he even knew he did it when he was thinking.

  “I’ll see what I can do about this,” he said, nodding at the notepaper. “Thanks, Tommy. Stick with her.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  *

  After Carmellini closed the door behind him, Jake Grafton looked again at the file number indentations. He held the paper up to the light and jotted down the numbers on his own notepad. Then he picked up the phone and called the FBI assistant director, Harry Estep. After ten minutes and two executive assistants, he got through to the man himself.

  “Harry, Jake Grafton. My man Carmellini came over there this morning and read Zoe Kerry’s files. No problem there … Thanks. Anyway, he wanted to see the two files she got in shootouts over before she came here … Uh-hu
h … Case files.”

  “You know we can’t show you those, Jake.”

  “Oh, bullshit, Harry. Like I’m gonna call a reporter. I’ve got this woman waltzing around Langley and I’m up to my ass in Chinese spies and she was involved in a couple of their messes. I’m curious.”

  “Sorry, Jake. Department of Justice regulations.”

  “I hate to put our professional relationship on that basis, Harry, but you’re pushing me.”

  “I have my orders.”

  “Have a nice day,” Jake Grafton said, and hung up.

  Chinese espionage seemed to be cropping up with distressing regularity, he thought. A coincidence, or cause and effect? The CNO, Cart McKiernan, was worried about the Chinese, and Jake had the greatest respect for him. Just that morning at a department head meeting he had asked for a synopsis of everything the agency knew about Chinese cyber-espionage and naval force readiness. Once again, he was appalled at the reliance of the U.S. intelligence services, including this one, on satellite reconnaissance and electronic intelligence. Only spies on the ground could tell you what the other side was thinking, and unfortunately the United States had far too few of them. In part that was because the U.S. intelligence services had both traitors and moles, who had in the past betrayed human assets with fatal results.

  But there was nothing to be gained by fretting over what America didn’t have.

  Grafton looked up a telephone number in his private address book and dialed it on his secure outside line. After the third ring, a female voice answered.

  “Sarah Houston.”

  “Jake Grafton, Sarah. How’re things?”

  “You know, after I read in the papers that you were the new acting director at Langley, I wondered how long it would be before you called me.”

  Grafton smiled. Sarah couldn’t see it on the phone, of course, so he let it show. Houston was at the National Security Agency, the intelligence service that used batteries of supercomputers to monitor electronic communications all over the planet. Some of their activities in the United States had been revealed to the press by Edward Snowden, another traitor, a revelation that had caused a political firestorm worldwide and crippled the service. Just how much, no one in the know was saying.

  “I thought after Snowden you might be looking for a job,” Grafton said.

  “You never know,” she replied coldly. “If they can me, I’m thinking of buying an RV with my severance money and becoming a gypsy.”

  “We could always use you over here.”

  “Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

  “The reason I called, I need some help.”

  “Well, duh. I didn’t think you were calling to wish me Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas.”

  “Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas. Just in case. I need some help getting access to a couple of FBI files. They are being sticky, and I want a look. Probably nothing to it.”

  He paused to give her a chance to say something but got only silence.

  Grafton continued, “They’re case files. May I give you the numbers?”

  “Damn, Admiral. You’re going to get me sent right back to prison.”

  “Not unless you’ve lost your touch.”

  She said a word that was illegal to use on the telephone. Grafton had helped the U.S. attorneys prosecute her a few years ago. She pled guilty to thirty-seven felonies and went to prison. Then he had gotten her out, not paroled, but temporarily released, when he needed her hacking and data-mining expertise. She was still temporarily out, unofficially, but with a new name, a new life story, a new driver’s license and a new Social Security number. Still, the prison sentence was always there, hanging over her neck like the sword of Damocles. Grafton knew she resented him for it. Owed him and resented him.

  “You want the whole files or a synopsis or what?”

  “Whatever you can get.”

  “Give me the numbers,” she said flatly.

  Grafton read them off. “Call me if and when,” he said, and read off the number of the secure phone in his office.

  “It’ll be a day or two.” Her lack of enthusiasm was palpable.

  The admiral ignored it. “Fine,” he said heartily and closed with “slave labor is so rewarding.”

  She hung up on him. Jake Grafton smiled again and cradled the instrument.

  *

  Chong had the handheld radio transceiver tuned to the Denver Ground Control frequency, 121.85. The wind was still out of the south, and the cloud deck had come down to ten thousand feet. He knew that because he had listened to the Automatic Terminal Information System. Denver was still landing and taking off planes to the south.

  But the airport was silent just now, without a single airplane in the air. That was because the president’s plane was about to depart, so all traffic into Denver was holding at various fixes all over Colorado. Planes waiting to take off were still at the gate. No doubt the passengers in the terminals were peeved beyond endurance, calling on their cell phones, worrying about connections and missed business meetings, and queued up at the restaurants, bars and restrooms. All to prevent a suicider from ramming the president’s plane as it took off and climbed to altitude.

  Air Force One had called for its clearance twenty minutes ago, probably while the president’s motorcade was en route from the University of Colorado in Boulder, where the president had made a speech to his favorite fans, liberal college students who knew in their hearts he was on the side of history and the angels.

  The van was slowly cruising a dirt farm road south of the airport, parallel to and a mile or so north of the east-west highway that ran by Front Range Airport, a general aviation airport, and out across the high plains through various hamlets on its way to Kansas.

  Joe and Frank were in the back with the Raven, its battery fully charged, its little EMP bomb wired up with its detonator and ready to pop. The concussion would destroy the Raven, of course, and pieces of it would flutter down into the pastures, there to be found by investigators. The van would also be found, abandoned and burned to ensure there were no fingerprints and DNA samples to be obtained from it. Not that it mattered. The four men would be long out of the country by the time FBI and Secret Service investigators put it all together.

  Good luck finding us, Chong thought. Not that the Americans wouldn’t try. They would move heaven and earth to find the president’s assassins. They would never give up, but the trail would lead them nowhere.

  All the precautions had been taken. Every possible lead was a dead end. Months had been spent setting up this operation. He sat there holding the handheld, scanning the roads for security vehicles and thinking about loose mouths. The only possible way for the investigators to find them, Chong believed, was a wagging tongue, a tongue loosened by alcohol or the need to inflate an ego.

  He didn’t know the other men’s real names, nor did they know his. They all had separate escape routes, passports that would not be questioned. The plan was as solid as very careful, well-financed professional criminals with adequate time to prepare could make it.

  All four of them would be rich, of course. Rich and ready for a life of leisure, women, the good things in life. By God, Chong was ready. He assumed the others were, too.

  The radio hissed, and then words came out. “Denver Ground, Air Force One ready to taxi.” So the president was aboard, the plane was buttoned up and the engines were turning.

  “Air Force One, taxi Runway One Seven Left. Route at your discretion.” In other words, the airport was empty of taxiing airplanes, so the ground controllers didn’t care which taxiways the pilot chose to get his plane to Runway One Seven Left. Other pilots listening on the frequency must be green with envy.

  One Seven Left. The departure route would be behind the van.

  Cheech turned the van around in the road, carefully so it wouldn’t go into a ditch, and drove a half mile or so, until Chong told him to stop. They were on a tiny swell in the prairie, and he could see the entire runway with binoculars.
/>   There it was! Taxiing.

  He looked east along the highway, then stepped from the van and looked west. The road was empty in both directions. He swept the binoculars around the fields north and south. Some horses, a few cattle. Fences, plowed wheat fields … and little else.

  “Let’s get ready.”

  Cheech shut down the van and climbed out. Opened the hood.

  Frank and Joe piled out. Got the Raven ready to fly.

  Chong stood beside the van with his binoculars up. He watched Air Force One taxi toward the departure end of One Seven Left. No doubt the tower would clear the pilot for an immediate takeoff and he would roll as soon as he taxied onto the runway.

  “Launch it,” Chong said over his shoulder. As Joe threw the Raven into the air, he dialed the tower frequency into his radio, 133.3.

  “Under control and climbing,” Frank reported.

  “Air Force One, Tower. You are cleared for takeoff at your convenience.”

  “Roger that. Cleared to go.”

  The big Boeing reached the end of the taxiway, turned broadside to Chong for just a moment and sat there. It was at least four miles away. Parked along the runway were several small security vehicles and a fire truck.

  “A thousand feet and climbing,” Frank said. “Tell me when to turn to intercept.” He was climbing the Raven into the wind, southwest.

  Now the president’s plane began to move. Onto the runway. Slowly, probably so it wouldn’t jostle anyone still standing and moving around. Chong doubted if the pilot was going to tell the president to sit, fasten his seat belt and turn off his iPhone.

  “We got company coming,” Cheech said from his station in front of the van. “From the west.”

  Shit!

  Chong checked the oncoming vehicle. An airport security pickup with emergency lights on the roof. They were off just now.