As the Chinese general walked, he glanced around the remote airfield. A few trucks had been parked at the opposite end of the runway, and a couple of French Mirages and early version American F-16s sat on the far tarmac. A herd of white goats grazed in the center of the field, their shaggy coats attracting gnats and black flies. There were very few men around, and all were dressed in military attire. There were more guards than he could see, the general suspected, but if there were, they remained hidden from his view.
The general hacked and spit nervously. The king of Saudi Arabia had agreed to his demands for a personal meeting, which was very important in order for him to keep face. But with the kind of money they were talking about, he would have agreed either way.
The Chinese general was escorted down a long ramp that led under the desert sand, through a set of steel double doors, along a long hallway, down some winding stairs, and through some more steel doors. He ended up in a small conference room. No windows. One door. A single table. Nothing else.
The Saudi king was waiting. He stood when the general appeared.
The conversation was fairly short. It was a simple request.
“Do you understand what I am asking?” the king finally queried.
The general had a few questions. What was in the crate? Was it drugs? Heroin? Counterfeit American bills? Where was it going? What was the hurry? Why must it have an escort? All this, he needed to know.
The Arab king frowned as he raised his hand. “Too many questions,” he answered bitterly. “Too many things, I cannot tell you right now. But what I ask is very simple. Only one crate. That is all. One crate to be shipped across your country, that is all I ask. If you can assure me of its safe arrival in Shanghai, then my people will take it from there.”
The general smiled, mentally counting the money. Five million U.S. dollars. Twenty- and fifty-dollar bills. All for assuring safe passage of a single crate for the king. When he considered the money, his questions didn’t seem so important somehow.
The two men talked a few minutes. Then the Chinese general agreed.
He would allow a single crate to transit his country. But only one. And only once. And, not knowing its contents, he insisted on measures that would guarantee deniability for both him as an individual and his government. No records would be kept anywhere along the way. A Chinese military transport would pick up the crate at a small airport on the border and carry it to Beijing. The transfer to the civilian freight carriers in the city had to be under the general’s direct control. One of the Chinese intelligence organizations at the port facilities in Shanghai would see that the crate was cleared through customs without leaving a trail. Nothing would be documented or written down.
“And there will be no inspections,” the king insisted again. “The crate will never be opened or inspected. You will see to this thing!”
The Chinese general nodded. For five million dollars he would.
“And you will get it across your country in twenty-four hours?”
The general bowed and nodded. He certainly would.
The Arab king smiled. Half the money would be presented up front, half when the crate was safe in Shanghai. The two men stood and shook hands, and the deal was done.
“Soon. Soon,” the king emphasized as the general walked away.
The general left immediately to make the arrangements. Six hours later, he called the king with good news. He had taken care of everything and was ready to go.
That night, in the underground bunker beneath the expansive airfield, a Saudi technician went to work attaching the barometric trigger to the firing device. His work was monitored at all times by three mature and highly motivated Saudi military officers. The nuclear warhead was then carefully extracted from its box and put on a metal stand. A blanket of composite material, very difficult to get, impossible to buy, secretly built in a Malaysian factory outside of Kuala Lumpur, was wrapped around the warhead and heat-sealed with electric blowers. The composite material, a mixture of Mylar, Lenmex, and BHT, would absorb any leaking radiation from the warhead, making it impossible to detect for at least a few days.
The warhead was sealed, then carefully packed into a nondescript, reinforced wooden crate. Under cover of darkness, the crate was carefully put onto the back of a small military truck, carried across the airfield, and loaded on a Saudi military transport, which took off immediately.
Ten armed guards, all of them dressed in civilian attire, accompanied the crate, never letting it out of their sight. They were some of the great king’s most trusted agents, but they worked under the clear threat of death.
The Saudi transport flew across all of southern Asia, eventually landing in a busy airport on China’s western border
From there, the crate was loaded into a Chinese civilian transport, one of the undercover aircraft the general’s organization used every day. The steel and aluminum aircraft took off a little after noon and made its way east toward the glimmering city on the coast. En route, the aircraft stopped to refuel and change crews. After it had taken off again, the original crew members were driven to a deserted spot on the airfield and shot.
Seven hours later, the aircraft touched down again. The new crew members were also silenced, and the crate was delivered to the general’s men in Shanghai.
Shanghai International Airport
Shanghai, China
It took less than a day for the crate to clear customs at Shanghai, and that was a record, for normally it would have sat in a warehouse on the south end of the airport for a week or ten days before its paperwork would move to the top of the pile.
But a single call from a small brick and stucco office outside the fenced perimeter of the airport guaranteed that the crate would move through the international shipping terminal without delay.
Two hours after the phone call came through, the crate was inspected, approved, and stamped for shipment to Taiwan via PacEx Express, the largest commercial air transport that flew out of Shanghai. The freight manifest indicated that the contents of the crate were offshore oil drilling bits and platform braces from a manufacturer in central China. The inspectors at the customs facility were not surprised to see that there was in the system a computer-generated request for the parts from a Chinese-owned supplier in Canada as well as a receipt for the parts from the factory.
The crate was postmarked to Québec. Like most international package carriers, PacEx would make several stops along the way, including a stop in Taiwan, where the huge crate from China would be loaded onto another aircraft. That aircraft would in turn make stops in Honolulu, L.A., and Washington, D.C., before ending up in Québec.
* * *
The PacEx Express Airbus 300 lifted off the runway at Shanghai International Airport, its wheels dropping a few inches against their pistons as the aircraft elevated into the night air. The humid atmosphere, hot, wet, and steamy from the afternoon storms, created miniature vortices off the wingtips of the jet, misty horizontal tornadoes that funneled through the air and dipped toward the tarmac before fading away. The intricate maze of blue, green, and white airport lights receded as the Airbus climbed into the night. Onboard the aircraft were six crew members, four tons of mail, 12,700 small packages, each of them boxed in the bright green and yellow PacEx Express colors, and various larger boxes and industrial crates.
The crate from China was packed in the rear of the aircraft and strapped down carefully.
As the aircraft lifted into the air, the pilot, an English gentleman who had earned a whopping three hours of combat flying time during the first Gulf War, climbed to 500 feet, then pulled the nose skyward to an angle of ten degrees. With the leading edge slats at 60 percent and the engines at full power, the aircraft climbed quickly through 1000 feet while maintaining a perfect heading of 270 degrees.
“Departure, PacEx 687 is with you, passing through one-thousand for nine thousand feet,” the pilot spoke into the tiny microphone attached to his headset. His accent was only one of many in the
skies, for the Asian airways were filled with accents from all over the world, some barely understandable over the busy radios.
The departure radar controller answered immediately. “PacEx 687, direct to Ryukyu, climb to flight level one-two-zero. Switch over to my channel on one-two-four point six.”
“Direct to Ryukyu, up to one-two-zero, switching to you on one-twenty-four point six.” As he spoke, the pilot nudged the aircraft to the right, banking to 20 degrees. He was so smooth on the controls that the copilot didn’t even notice the turn.
The copilot glanced at his instrument panel. The three lights depicting the main and nose landing gear turned momentarily red as the gear finally tucked into the belly of the jet. A solid thunk could be felt as the gear locked in place on their hydraulic arms. “Gear up,” the copilot announced.
“Slats and flaps retracted,” the pilot called back.
The sound of the rushing wind over the aircraft began to abate as the wings became a clean airfoil once again. The huge aircraft passed through a thin layer of smog and cloud around 1400 feet, creating another series of wingtip vortices. The pilot concentrated on flying the aircraft as he rolled out on heading.
* * *
Below, the East China Sea slipped into view, the moon illuminating the whitecaps against China’s eastern shore. As the Airbus passed over the coast, the air became very clear, providing the cockpit crew members with an unlimited view. The lights along Shanghai’s shoreline snaked both north and south, millions of flickering candles illuminating the night. As the aircraft turned, the towers of downtown Shanghai moved into view. The web of lights from the high-rise office buildings reached up for the aircraft, concrete barriers stretching into the sky. They looked dangerously close, as if they were scraping the jet’s wings. It was a visual illusion that took the copilot’s breath away. He reached absently up and touched his cockpit window, superimposing his hand over the outline of the buildings. Beneath the skyscrapers, the curving lines of the highways flowed continually with light. Shanghai never slept. It was the hub of so many international corporations, organizations doing business in virtually every corner of the earth, that there was not a time when business was not being done. There was no time to sleep when there was money to be made.
Continuing to climb, the Airbus turned on its heading. The lights along the Chinese shoreline faded in a thick bank of fog that had blown in from the sea. The pilot sat back, adjusting himself in the seat. The aircraft engines created a comforting and powerful drone. It was a three-hour flight to Taipei, and he expected to enjoy it.
At 0235 local time, PacEx 687 passed over the international reporting point called Ololo Teypa. After making the required radio call, the copilot noted the time, heading, fuel, altitude, airspeed, and outside temperature in the flight log. The Airbus was cruising at 33,000 feet and 520 knots. The skies were crystal clear, unusually so, with a deep Milky Way spreading overhead and Venus so bright, it looked more like an orb than a star. Visibility was thirty miles or better, but the night was very dark, for the half-moon had just set. There was no visible horizon between the sea and the sky, only a complete, sullen blackness between the stars and the water.
Inside the cockpit, the two crew members took turns “flying the aircraft,” which consisted of nothing more than monitoring the instruments before them. Neither pilot had touched the controls since leveling at 33,000 feet. The autopilot held the course, altitude, and airspeed with precision. The copilot, who was “flying,” stared into the night, glancing at the displays every sixty seconds or so.
The aircraft landed at Taiwan’s international airport at 0258 local time.
The crate with the nuclear warhead was the first thing unloaded from the jet.
As the crate was extracted from the belly of the jet, a digital timer clicked on. The internal GPS searched, then locked onto the orbiting satellites, providing its position down to a few feet.
The crate was then loaded onto a Boeing 757 aircraft that would fly it to the States. Strapped to the side of the warhead, the internal computer and GPS receiver tracked its way across the Pacific. The tiny computer recognized the descent and landing at the three intermediate stops: Taiwan, Honolulu, L.A. Then it tracked the aircraft’s course across the United States en route to Washington, D.C., recognizing the aircraft’s descent and approach for landing at Ronald Reagan International Airport.
The coordinates of the target were already fed into the machine. When the package carrier began its descent into Reagan National Airport in downtown Washington, D.C., the barometric trigger would kick in. Passing through 3,000 feet, the firing device would explode. The nuclear warhead would go into final two-minute countdown and then detonate.
Five hundred milliseconds later, most of Washington, D.C., would be gone.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Washington, D.C.
Sara Brighton got up at her usual hour, which was early, and walked down the old wooden stairs to the high-ceilinged kitchen. Her two sons were still sleeping, and she stood alone by the sink, staring at the huge oak trees that lined her backyard.
A sudden shiver ran through her and she snuggled against her own arms, wrapping them around her chest and holding them tight. She’d been anxious all night. She’d been anxious for days. She’d fought it and fought it, but it would not go away, this feeling of dread and oppression and anxiety in her heart. She had felt this feeling before. It was a warning, she knew. And it was as clear to her now as the morning sun on her face. It was as clear as the marble tile or the cup of juice in her hand.
She turned and picked up the telephone and dialed her husband’s cell number. It rang only twice, then went to his voice mail. She didn’t leave a message; it was at least the tenth time she’d called. She knew that the White House was jamming all incoming and outgoing cell phone signals—standard procedure when there was a national security crisis. It was irritating, but it was also the only way the White House could ensure communications security during a critical time.
She hung up the phone, sipping her orange juice again. She hadn’t heard from Neil since the morning before, when he’d called very quickly just to see how she was. He couldn’t talk long. He had sounded utterly drained—not merely stressed, and not tired. He was far beyond that. He sounded . . . used up. Worn out. Like a patch of thin cloth.
It had been four days since the nuclear bomb had gone off over Gaza, four days of continual world condemnation of Israel and her ally, the United States, four days of panic in the stock markets, a flat-out collapse, four days of $200-a-barrel oil, gas shortages, military posturing, and a continuous stream of vile invective and hatred directed against the U.S. It had come from all corners: Europe, Asia, Russia, China, South America, Africa, and, worst of all, of course, the Middle East. No one seemed willing to stand up and defend the Americans. They had no allies now—not even the United Kingdom, where the prime minister had already resigned, forced out of office, his personal relationship with the U.S. and Israel simply too much for his people to bear. And certainly not Germany and France, who declared their continued opposition to American and Israeli interests abroad. In Italy, the United States’ second closest ally in Europe, the prime minister had not been seen for two days, after a nearly successful attempt on his life.
No, the U.S. stood alone now, completely isolated from the rest of the world.
Even within its own borders, there was an almost frenzied dissent. Two million protestors filled the streets of D.C.; anti-war vigils were held in every city, every night; calls for the immediate withdrawal of the military from the Middle East were issued from the Senate and House. Having learned they were unlikely to persuade enough of the people through public protests, the anti-war activists were ready to try something new. Turning to their federal courts, they sought emergency decrees. It wasn’t hard to find willing judges. A federal court in California issued an order freezing all Israeli assets within the country as well as prohibiting international aid to Israel until the appropriate use of
the money could be reviewed by the courts. Another federal judge in Massachusetts issued an emergency injunction opening the door for the federal courts to hold senior military commanders and even the Secretary of Defense as war criminals if it was determined they had colluded with Israel in the nuclear attack.
It had been four days of extreme crisis such as the world had never witnessed before. Not since . . . Sara didn’t know, there was nothing in her experience she could compare it with. Pearl Harbor, perhaps, but this was far more dark. It was as if a suffocating blanket had been hanging and then suddenly dropped, draping the world in an uncertain cloud. This was a nuclear drama of a category beyond anything she had to compare.
She huffed in frustration, then dialed her husband’s cell phone again. She got the same message and hung up the phone. Then she dialed his office number, but the White House switchboard picked up.
“White House,” the operator said. “Is this an emergency?”
“No, no,” Sara answered softly. “My husband works in the West Wing.”
“Is this an emergency, Mrs. Brighton?”
Sara hesitated. “How do you know who I am?”
“Caller ID, Mrs. Brighton.”
Sara knew it wasn’t as simple as that. The White House communications office was a very powerful thing.
“I want to speak to my husband.”
“All of the national security staff have been sequestered, Mrs. Brighton. I’m sure you know that is standard procedure during a time of crisis, ma’am. Now, if this was an emergency, we could pass a message to your husband, but otherwise, the president is asking for your patience. He and the national security staff are working through some very tough issues right now, and security is obviously the highest concern. Communications will probably be limited for just a few more days. Meanwhile, the president wishes to convey that he appreciates the sacrifices of all the families of the national security staff.”
Sara huffed once again. “There is nothing I can do, then?”
The Great and Terrible Page 84