by Robert Gandt
She will force a meeting with him. Make him to talk to her. There has to be more than “our worlds are too incompatible.” What is he thinking?
No. It won’t work. Not with a man like Pete Brand. He doesn’t reach a decision like this and then change his mind.
Nor would she. The role of spurned lover isn’t Libby Paulsen’s style. The relationship with Brand has been an illusion. Another bitter chapter in her life closed. Over and done with. She should have known.
She continues walking to the end of the shopping district. Then she walks back down the opposite side of the street. By the time she reaches the parking lot where she’d left the car, she knows what she has to do.
<>
“Are you sure?” The voice of Ben Marx, chairman of the national committee, sounds croaky.
“If I weren’t sure, would I be calling you at this hour?” Libby knows that her voice is strident, almost combative. She doesn’t care. It’s a perfect reflection of her mood at the moment. “I told you I wanted some time to think about running for the Senate. Well, I’ve thought about it. You have my answer.”
Marx is silent for a moment. It is nearly midnight on the East Coast, and Libby is sure that she has awakened him. She doesn’t particularly like Ben Marx. He’s a notorious bully, a one-time Pennsylvania governor and a leftover from the days when a cadre of machine bosses picked the party’s candidates for national office.
“Well, I guess I should say congratulations,” says Marx. “May I ask what it took to persuade you to go for the nomination?”
No, you may not, she thinks. After several seconds pause she gives him the answer she has spent the past hour composing. “I want to serve. As trite as it sounds, I happen to think I can serve my state—and our party—better than anyone else out there. With the support of you and the national committee, I’ll do that.”
“If you really mean it, then I can speak for the committee. You’ll get the support. Now let me go back to sleep. Tomorrow we’ll figure out how we’re going to announce this.”
“Thank you, Ben. Good night.”
In her darkened study Libby refills her glass with brandy. She gazes through the blinds at the deserted street outside. Ken hasn’t come home, which is fine with her. Whatever he thinks about the upcoming Senate race—or anything else—no longer matters. It’s done. In the space of one handwritten note and a phone call, a might-have-been life is finished. A new one has begun. The campaign will be brutal, consuming all her time and energy. Exactly what she needs.
And what if you win?
She takes another sip of brandy. She can feel it, that old queasiness in her stomach. And what if you win? She knows the answer and it terrifies her.
You’ll be in over your head.
Chapter 16
Run, Sam, run.
The soles of Sam Fornier’s running shoes skimmed over the damp asphalt. From behind she could hear the chuffing of the two men running after her. She wondered how good these guys were. She’d gotten only a glimpse as they were piling out of the SUV to come after her. They looked muscular and mean, wearing the same polo shirts and khakis as the four who came looking for her at Andrews.
It had been close. She was still kicking open the passenger side door of the Mini when the black SUV rolled up. Sam yanked the backpack out of the upside-down Mini, slipping it over her shoulders while she bolted down the street.
She rounded a corner and notched up the speed. Sam’s breath was coming in rapid gasps. She knew she couldn’t keep up this pace. She was a triathlete, not a goddamn sprinter. She ran for the joy of running, not the race. Until now.
To her left was a darkened park. She knew the park. It had trails and large patches of trees and shrubs. If she could gain some distance on these goons, she might be able to hide. Or she could keep running. She could head for the strip mall a few blocks ahead where there would be lights and people.
Or she could just call 911.
Bad idea, she immediately decided. However this played out, it would be over before any cops showed up. And Sam was growing more certain by the minute that whoever these guys were, they had connections in high places. The law wouldn’t be on her side. Screw 911. She’d take her chances as a fugitive.
She wondered why they hadn’t just shot her. They could have dropped her right there in the street while she was still exiting the Mini. Because they wanted information? The joke would be on them when they found out the truth. She was a nobody computer geek who had been minding her own business when she was sucked into a communications loop between a crotchety general and the pilot of Air Force One.
A hundred yards to the next corner. By the sound of the chuffing behind her, she knew she was opening up some distance. Cut left into the woods, or keep running straight? A couple blocks ahead and to the right was a strip mall with an all night convenience store. Maybe she could—
Ploom. It was a muffled sound, like a hammer blow inside a bucket. At almost the same instant Sam felt the bullet zing past her left ear. Ploom. The next round ricocheted from the pavement a few inches from her left foot.
Now she knew. The goons couldn’t catch her, so they were going to shoot her. The thought sent a fresh surge of adrenaline through Sam Fornier’s veins. She veered to the left. The park was straight ahead. Ten more yards.
Ploom. Ploom. She felt the spatter of concrete dust against her heels. Sam darted right, then zagged back left. Two seconds later she was sprinting into the darkness of the park.
<>
“Sam Fornier?” asked Ripley, squinting at the display screen. “Who the hell is he?”
Keppler glanced up from his console. “A pissant catering clerk out at Andrews. Take a look at this.” Keppler clacked a series of keystrokes and a fresh image appeared on the screen. It was an ID photo of a short-haired young woman, blonde, no make up. She looked like somebody’s college-age daughter except for the blue uniform with captain’s bars on the shoulders.
Ripley peered at the image. “A woman? That’s the Sam Fornier who’s been texting Air Force One? Why haven’t they shut her down?”
Keppler snorted. “Because the Galeforce dipshits at Andrews let her slip off the base, that’s why. Then they missed her again when they tried to grab her at her residence.”
“You mean she’s still at large?”
“Still at large, still communicating. Even though we shut down her server. She’s apparently cobbled together some kind of workaround. And it looks like she’s hacked the tracking mode on the issue phone she swiped at Andrews. Our scanners are having a bitch of a time getting a lock on it.”
“If this is some insignificant catering clerk, how is she able to stay ahead of your SigInt guys?”
Keppler gazed for a moment at the face in the screen. “Because she’s good. I’ve seen kids like this before. Hackers who crack the system just to prove they can. Dangerous as hell if they figure out how to breech your security net. It’s like this one had it already figured out, just waiting for a chance to use it.”
Ripley thought he detected a note of admiration in Keppler’s voice. Ripley had observed this phenomenon among the techies who ran the cyber warfare panels. They tended to regard their adversaries not as enemies but as opponents on a game board.
Keppler’s official title was Director, Information Systems at the Defense Intelligence Agency. A recent recruit to Capella, his job was to coordinate the signals intelligence feed to the Briar Club headquarters. Keppler was like most of the SigInt spooks Ripley had ever known. Twenty-some pounds overweight, thinning slicked-back hair, black-rimmed glasses, acerbic disposition. The opposite of military officers like Ripley and McDivott.
Ripley asked, “Where’s Fornier getting the information she’s feeding to Air Force One?”
“From somebody with access to major command encrypted sources. Probably in the Pentagon.”
“Probably? You can’t locate him either?”
Keppler let out another derisive snort. “Look, General, let me expla
in in a way you can understand. What we’ve got here is a moving target with an untrackable phone. She’s calling one of about twenty-thousand possible numbers, which may or may not be cellular and may or may not be trackable. This may take a little while.”
“What am I supposed to tell Big Mac?” asked Ripley. Big Mac was Capella’s in-house name for McDivott. “That Paulsen is still the President because you guys can’t stop some skinny girl from relaying classified information?”
Keppler shrugged and turned back to his console. “Tell him we’re getting close. We’re getting a fix on the leak at the Pentagon. When we get that leak plugged, trust me, the game’s over.”
<>
Thank God for the darkness. The night was Sam Fornier’s only advantage.
She knew the park, even in the pre-dawn darkness. She ran these same paths nearly every day. She could hear the goons crashing through the brush behind her. Rounding a corner on the narrow path, Sam glimpsed what she was looking for. She took a running leap and grabbed the hanging limb of a sprawling Ash tree. Sam hauled herself onto the limb, then shinnied up the trunk of the tree until she was twenty feet above the ground. She was still trying to enclose herself in the leafy folds of the top branches when the pair came trotting down the path.
They stopped almost directly beneath her.
“Where the fuck did she go?”
“She’s close. I could hear her running, and now I don’t.”
Sam’s heart was pounding like a jackhammer. The beam of their high-intensity flashlight was probing the bushes. The light swept up, down, through the trees. Sam wrapped herself tighter around the tree trunk. She tried to shield her white face with her shoulder. The beam flashed through the tree, paused, then slowly moved lower again.
“Like chasing a cockroach. She could be anywhere in here.”
“Or headed for the other end of the park.”
They started on down the path, probing the bushes on either side with the light. Sam didn’t move. Dawn was coming in another hour. She couldn’t stay in this damned tree. She had to get back on the line with General Cassidy, and she didn’t dare do it from here. She had to get the hell out of this place.
Sam waited until she no longer heard them moving through the bush. Carefully, making no sound, she slid down the trunk of the ash tree. At the low branch she paused, listened again, then dropped to the soft ground.
She trotted quietly back the way she had come into the park. She stopped long enough to peer up and down the darkened street. No cars. No sign of the goons.
Sam darted across the street and into the shadows of the buildings on the far side. At a slow trot, stopping every half minute to gaze around, she worked her way toward her target. She slipped down an alley, coming out on the far side, then turned left again down a residential street with rows of adjoining townhouses.
At the end of the next block she saw it, and—thank God—the place appeared to be open. The store was lighted inside. The sign glittered over the entrance: Starbucks. Sam darted inside and took a table at the back.
<>
This mission sucks, thought Lt. Col. Stu Apte. His F-15C was climbing through 20,000 feet, outbound over the Atlantic. The rim of the eastern horizon was turning pink.
It wasn’t the first time the thought had occurred to Lt. Col. Stu Apte. In the briefing at their base in Westfield, Massachusetts, Apte had experienced a sinking feeling when the wing commander, Col. Darrell Waugh, told him what they were going to do. This was bullshit. A hot potato scramble like this was supposed to be led by the squadron commander, Lt. Col. Fred Walstrum. Then Waugh shows up, bumps Walstrum off the mission, and orders everyone out of the room except Apte.
“Intercept what?” Apte had said when they were alone.
“You heard me. Air Force One has been hijacked, and the terrorists are going to crash it into Washington. It’s our job to intercept them.”
Apte was stunned. “May I ask who’s ordering this mission?”
“No, you may not. It comes down from the Joint Chiefs and forwarded by the Commander, 1st Air Force. That’s as much as you need to know.”
“How do we confirm that they’ve been hijacked?”
“It’s been confirmed. Now we follow the rules of engagement. ID, determine compliance or non-compliance.”
Apte wasn’t liking it. Not a goddamned bit of it. “Compliance with what?”
“With orders to land at Dover. If they don’t, we take them down.”
“What weapons?”
“AIM-9 Sidewinders. I’m the shooter, you’re the back up.”
Apte nodded. The Sidewinder was a heat seeker. It could be fired from any angle, but best was from behind where the missile could get a lock on any of the four jet tailpipes. The Sidewinder was a passively-guided weapon, emitting no radar signal.
Apte had never liked Waugh. He’d known him for nearly twenty years in the Air National Guard but never warmed up to the guy. Waugh never mixed with the other Guard pilots. He seemed to be on a track of his own, making squadron commander way out of seniority, then advancing to wing command. Waugh had already been named as the next state Air National Guard commander, with the rank of brigadier general. It was obvious that Darrell Waugh had a patron somewhere high up in the chain of command.
Now Apte was keeping his F-15C in a loose combat spread off Waugh’s left wing. They already had the bogey on their radars—seventy five miles on the nose, level at about 28,000 feet. It was a fat target. The size of a 747.
At twenty miles Apte had a visual. He knew the rules. The two fighters would swoop beneath the target, pull up in a high reversal, drop back to a parallel track with the bogey. The rules of engagement required the lead fighter—Waugh—to fly up the left side of the 747. He was supposed to exchange hand signals with whoever was in the cockpit. Determine compliance.
Apte couldn’t shake the feeling that Waugh had his own interpretation of compliance. As if the decision had already been made to take out the bogey. Apte was just along to provide cover.
“Bulldog One tallies the bogey, twelve o’clock low.” Waugh, call sign “Bulldog One,” was reporting that he had his own visual on the target. Apte stayed with Waugh’s fighter as the F-15Cs pulled up and offset their heading twenty degrees to the left. Topping out nearly abeam of the 747, the two fighters made a hard turn back to the right. Apte had a good view of the 747. He could see the graceful swept wings, the four engine pods, the distinctive bulbous nose. Even from this distance he could make out the blue-and-white paint scheme. They had the right target.
Apte’s bad feeling worsened. This really sucks.
Chapter 17
Do it, Fornier. Do it, then disappear. Disappear before they kill you.
Sam’s heart rate had slowed almost to normal. She was seated at a table near the rear of the shop where she couldn’t be seen except from the counter where a lone attendant was restocking the pastry display. She sipped at a Venti Café Mocha while she pulled the laptop out of the backpack. She kept her eyes on the counter while she awakened the computer. WhooHoo—this was what she loved about Starbucks. There was the little symbol for a solid Wi-Fi signal.
Now for the real test. Sam tried logging onto the Chowhound server. Another WhooHoo. There it was, still working. The numbnut techs at Comm Security Ops hadn’t yet figured out how to shut the makeshift server down. She opened up the message template, then began typing.
To: A/C commander SAM 28000
Colonel Brand:
This is my final message. For your information, a force of civilian security agents in blue uniforms are swarming over Andrews. Since our last comm I have been pursued by these guys, shot at, and have now gone into hiding. My career is ruined and I fear for my life. If I’m not dead in the next few hours I plan to move to another country. Maybe another planet.
Very respectfully,
Capt. Sam Fornier
PS: I hope you make it.
Sam gave the message one more read. She shouldn’t send it. It h
ad no purpose other than to let this guy Brand know how she really felt. And, in case he cared, to let him know that she was still alive and running. She should delete it. Whenever they got around to an official investigation of what happened to Air Force One, her messages would become part of the historical record.
Tough shit. What difference would it make if she was dead? Without further hesitation, she hit SEND.
Sam finished the Café Mocha. One more time she checked her phone. The screen was blank. To hell with it. She logged off the server and shut down the laptop. She stuffed the computer back in the backpack and took it with her to the ladies’ room. When she emerged a few minutes later, she gazed around. The shop was still empty. After half a minute’s hesitation, she returned to the table in the back and booted up the laptop again.
There was a fresh message on the screen.
To: Capt. Sam Fornier
From: SAM 28000
Sorry about the rough treatment you’ve been getting, but it is critical that you remain in the loop with Cassidy. The President needs you. Your country needs you.
Hang in there, son.
Col. Pete Brand
Sam almost laughed. Hang in there, son. All her life she’d played games with her first name. She loved the effect when the truth sank in that the tough-talking, butt-kicking Sam Fornier was a girl. But this was the best ever.
Why should she hang in there? Out of loyalty to some failed politician like Paulsen? Forget it. There was only one reason she would hang in there one minute longer. Because she wanted to see Brand’s face when they finally met. If, of course, they managed to live through this.
It was then she became aware of the buzzing of the cell phone in her backpack.
<>
It was the same croaky voice. “Cassidy.”
“I know,” said Sam.