by Jim DeFelice
Obviously intended to impress visiting congressmen.
McIntyre clicked on his phone as soon as the door was closed.
“Hold for the professor,” said Mozelle, Blitz’s assistant.
Using Professor was a subtle warning: The national security advisor was not in a good mood. McIntyre had just enough time to take a breath before he came on the line.
“Mac. I need you in Asia.”
“Asia?”
“India, to be exact.”
“But—” Hawaii then Montana, then New Delhi. Antarctica would be next.
“I want you to assess the readiness situation at as many frontline bases as you can imagine.”
“That’s a military function,” said McIntyre, though he knew it was hopeless. “Parsons would be—”
“Check the C option and report back.”
C option was shorthand for the possibility that India would launch a preemptive attack on the Pakistani military. While American spy satellites covered the area, their flight paths were well known and there was ample opportunity to work around them. McIntyre was being told to confer with embassy officials — in most cases undercover CIA agents — and work off a checklist of indicators, some subtle, some not, to supplement the satellite snaps and intercepts. While the CIA would prepare its own report, Blitz liked the idea of having a person in country he could rely on.
Such as it was.
“Sniff around,” continued the NSC head. “See if you can get to any of the Kashmir bases.”
“Oh God, Kashmir. All the way up there?”
McIntyre turned around in the seat. He could guess at what Blitz was thinking: Probably the conflict would all blow over, but he’d get a firsthand look at what the Indians’ capability was.
“You have a problem with that?” asked Blitz.
“All right,” he said. His plans regarding the lieutenant changed abruptly: He’d bag the movie and go straight for the motel, maybe even settle for his quarters. “I’ll grab the first flight in the morning.”
“There’s one already en route. I’m told it’s about ten minutes from landing.”
Chapter 8
When he finally reached his quarters, Bonham pulled off his shirt and pants and booted the computer before going to take a quick shower. His suite here was hardly that — two nearly bare rooms and a bathroom with a stand-up shower — and he bumped his elbow hard on the wall as he toweled off. Feeling a little less dusty, he went over to the computer and brought up the Internet interface; two clicks later he had ESPN.com on the screen.
The Red Sox had beaten the Yankees with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. Hallelujah.
Spirits buoyed, Bonham clicked over to CNN, making sure, God forbid, that nothing had been reported beyond his early bland release on the accident. It hadn’t; the newspeople were concerned with the augmented-ABM tests, which had just been postponed another day due to technical problems with the monitoring network.
Bonham scrolled around in vain trying to find out what that meant. The reporters hadn’t been told, and it was impossible to divine from the statements they’d been given what was really going on. Delays had a tendency to mushroom, throwing everything off. The tests should have been concluded by now; every sixty minutes’ worth of delay added that many more problems for everyone.
But he had his own things to worry about. Fisher, for one, who had all the symptoms of a class-one trouble-maker. This wasn’t an FBI case — the Bureau had sent only one man, not the dozens or even hundreds it would detail for a blowout job — but Fisher was just the sort of bee buzzing in someone’s bonnet to screw up everything.
Bonham leaned back in his chair. He could find out about the agent easily enough with a few phone calls. But that was a tricky thing: People might interpret it as paranoia, or worse. Better to suffer through the slings and arrows of outrageous behavior. Besides, Fisher was probably more of a problem for Gorman than for him.
Served the stubborn bitch right.
Someone knocked on the door.
“General Bonham?”
“Tom, come on in,” he said, recognizing Colonel Howe’s voice.
“Door’s locked,” said Howe.
“Oh, sorry. Thought I’d be sleeping already,” said Bonham. He killed the computer and got up to open the door. “Checking the Red Sox. Beat the Yankees with a ninth-inning home run.”
Howe nodded. He wasn’t much of a baseball fan.
He also wasn’t much of a late-night visitor.
“Come on in,” said Bonham. “Drink?”
Bonham walked to the small bookcase where he kept a bottle of Scotch.
“No, thanks. I’m flying tomorrow.”
“You’re flying?”
“That’s why I came over,” said Howe. “The engineers want to put Bird One through its paces, and I’m going to do it.”
Bonham poured two fingers’ worth of Scotch into a tumbler, then went to the small refrigerator he kept in the corner of the room. The tiny ice tray in the unit’s freezer was about three-quarters full; he popped out two cubes and put it back.
“Have a seat, Tom. Take a load off.”
The sides of the small, foam-cushioned chair seemed to pop out as Howe sat on it, as if it were a balloon. Howe shifted uncomfortably, right leg over left, then left over right, then back. Bonham thought to himself that he would not have wanted to trade places with the colonel, who until a few days ago seemed to be riding the career rocket to a general’s star and beyond.
Bonham liked Howe. He was a good, competent officer, and while more than a bit impatient with the bureaucratic side of the job — almost a given for anyone with the flying background Howe had — he made up for it by delegating those responsibilities to people who could handle them.
A little unimaginative. But that could be a useful flaw. Bonham would see that his career wasn’t screwed by this. A few bumps, admittedly — Gorman was just the start — but with patience it could be overcome.
Hard for Howe to know that now, though. Surely he had no reason to be optimistic.
“Tough to lose a wingmate,” Bonham offered.
“Yeah,” said Howe.
“And Ms. York. I know you two were close.” Bonham swirled his Scotch, then took a long sip. Either because of the drink or the hangdog look on Howe’s face, he suddenly felt paternal. “We get through the inquiry stage, people are going to understand that what we do here is loaded with danger. Tragedy, people will understand. This isn’t a normal situation,” said Bonham. “It’ll be taken into account. You’ll probably be commended for saving the plane.”
Howe gave him a wan smile, surely not believing him.
“You know, when I was a young buck, we lost a Phantom over Alaska,” said Bonham, playing the old soldier who’s seen everything. “Didn’t find it until two years later. Person who found it, flying one of those old Otters or whatever the hell it was they call those things. Utter accident.”
The story wasn’t completely apocryphal; there had indeed been a crash in Alaska, though not while Bonham was there, and not by a Phantom. It had, however, taken considerable time to find, and Bonham knew enough details to use the story to make his point. And the Scotch warmed his mouth and throat in a way that he really, truly wanted to cheer the colonel up.
“Thing is, it can take forever in that wilderness to find a crash. We will eventually,” said Bonham.
“It’s odd that there was no satellite coverage,” said Howe.
The statement seemed particularly pointed. Bonham got up and refilled his drink.
“I guess they took that one out for repair or whatever,” said Bonham. “There are satellites, though. With the weather, where you were operating, they couldn’t see anything. From what Colonel Gorman told me, they have ample assets for the search. We’ll find it eventually. It takes time.”
“Has Fisher spoken to you?”
“The FBI agent?”
“He asked me if Williams needed money.”
B
onham laughed. “What, did he think he crashed on purpose?”
He shook his head as he drank the Scotch. A real bee, that FBI bastard.
“Listen, Tom, I wouldn’t worry about the investigators, especially the FBI and CID people. They run around, kick over chairs, stir up dust, see what happens. This Fisher — he’s probably just trying to rile you.”
Howe rose. “Well, I just wanted to give you the heads-up.”
“I appreciate it. You take care tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you.”
After he locked the door, Bonham poured himself another drink, this one about halfway up the glass.
Chapter 9
They put Fisher and the rest of the investigators up in what passed for VIP quarters in a building near the base of the mountain, reachable via a road obviously built for a donkey cart.VIP here apparently meant you were entitled to running water — cold and colder — in the bathroom. There was a personal coffeemaker on the bureau; its carafe looked like a shot glass with handles. The coffee itself was World War I surplus; if he’d had the equipment, Fisher would have ground up the furniture’s cardboard drawers to add to the aroma.
The only thing that ticked him off, though, was the lack of a brew-and-pour device on the coffeemaker. The FBI agent was as much a traditionalist as anyone, but there were some pieces of technology that you just couldn’t live without. A Mr. Coffee without brew-and-pour was not only anachronistic, it was practically a torture device.
Fortunately, Fisher was adept at dealing with such problems, managing a shuffle with two paper coffee cups that caught most of the dribbling liquid. What missed the cup added a nicely burnt aroma to the room’s musty odor.
Coffee depleted, Fisher ambled out of the room into the long, dimly lit hall, where he was immediately assailed by Kowalski.
“Not going to be fashionably late?” asked the DIA agent.
“I try not to miss breakfast,” said Fisher.
“No, for the briefing. Gorman didn’t call you?”
“I have a policy against answering phones in VIP suites,” said Fisher. “And I was probably in the shower.”
“You don’t smell it.”
“You’re getting funnier, Kowalski. Be joining the circus any day now.” Fisher lit a cigarette as they approached the steel doors leading outside. A pair of Humvees were waiting at the dust that passed for a curb in front of the building. As soon as they reached the entrance to the underground complex, the strong scent of burnt caffeine tickled his nostrils, pulling him in the direction of the conference room.
Two large coffee rigs had been set up outside the room. The sight and smell restored Fisher’s faith in the Air Force; finally a grouchy chief master sergeant had arrived and taken things in hand. His opinion was confirmed by the lavalike liquid that spewed from the urn. Fisher filled three cups, tripling them to keep from burning his fingers, then brought them into the small lecture room. Unfortunately, all the good seats were taken, and he wound up sitting in the front row.
“Glad you could join us,” sniped Gorman as she strode across the room.
“Your health,” saluted Fisher as he sipped the coffee. Its temperature had now dropped to five hundred degrees kelvin, just where he liked it.
“You have anything new?” she asked Fisher. She was in good form for such an early hour; her voice sounded like a cross between a snake and an injured lion.
“Found a few hot porn sites on the Internet. All amateurs.”
Gorman gave him one of her middling frowns. “You’re not being helpful.”
“I’m trying.”
“Would you be willing to interface with the Mounties, flesh out reports about low-flying planes?”
“I don’t speak Canadian,” he told her.
Gorman shook her head, then walked to the podium and began her meeting. She ran through the usual administrative diddly, then briefly summarized the present status of the search. As the team leaders gave their own updates, she stuck her nose into her notes.
“Hey, guest speaker coming up,” whispered Kowalski, who’d managed to find a second-row seat almost directly behind him.
“How do you know?” said Fisher.
“She always checks her notes for pronunciation before mangling somebody’s name.”
Sure enough, Gorman did have a guest, whom she introduced when everyone else was through. “For those of you who don’t know him, Stephen Klose is from the NSA. He doesn’t have a job title.”
That was obviously meant as a joke, since all of the Air Force people whose evaluations she could affect laughed. Klose came forward with an ultra-serious face, launching into the usual NSA bullshit about what he was going to say being “VSK”—very secret knowledge was the actual term the crypto-dweebs used at their dark castle in Maryland.VSK must not be used in any way that a normal human being might actually use it, and had to be permanently erased from the listeners’ brain cells upon the end of its period of usefulness, which by definition had already passed.
Klose then launched into a fairly technical ramble, which meandered through various alphanumerics before his tongue stumbled on the words a code variant common in high-level VPO connection communications.
“Whoa fuck,” said Kowalski with more than his usual eloquence. “You’re telling us the Russians stole the plane?”
“No. There was, uh, uh spying operation, and the transmissions came from them,” stuttered Klose amid gasps from the service people and titters from everyone else. “We’d have to decrypt the transmissions to be sure. We’re working on that. But given previous patterns, we’re reasonably sure.”
Klose rambled on about possible Russian motivations, clicking different maps and pictures onto the large screen. The spy plane’s route had been tracked: It was nearly a thousand miles away.
“It’s picking up telemetry with a towed antenna probe,” said Klose.
“Can it?” asked someone from the safety of the back row.
Klose shrugged. “Not effectively. But maybe. Definitely maybe. The capabilities—”
“So, basically, you’re just pulling our puds here,” said Fisher.
“Mister Fisher.”Gorman’s hiss was so perfectly snake-like, Fisher expected her tongue to poke him in the eyes. That hideous thought sent him back to his coffee, which, though considerably cool, was still pleasantly acidic.
Klose added a few technical details about the probable strength of the radio that had transmitted the signals, an explanation that involved sine curves and something about amplitude. The bottom line was that the Russians were probably aware that something had happened, but thus far there was no evidence that they had had anything to do with it. A thousand miles was, after all, a thousand miles.
“Fits with your stolen-plane scenario,” Kowalski told Fisher out in the hall when they broke for coffee.
“Nah,” said Fisher.
“The Dragon Lady thinks so,” said Kowalski. “Didn’t you see her eyes glowing when Klose started talking about the intercepts?”
“What Dragon Lady?” said Jemma, coming up behind them.
“Colonel Gorman,” said Kowalski, “I think you mis-heard.”
“I’m sure I didn’t.” Her glare drove the DIA agent away. “Andy, if we start looking in those lakes, can you head the team?” she asked.
“What lakes?”
“Bonham is pushing the theory that the plane is in one of the lakes. He wants to start close to the base, then work north.”
“He’s in charge?” said Fisher.
After he got the frown he expected, he added, “How does it fit with the Russian theory?”
“What Russian theory?”
“Klose’s.”
“That wasn’t a theory,” said Gorman. “The Russians were monitoring the flight. It’s just information.”
“You think they caused the malfunction?” asked Fisher.
The idea actually seemed not to have occurred to her. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I don’t think so,�
� Fisher said.
“Andy, don’t do that.”
“What?”
“You float out an idea and then clam up. I can’t tell if it’s serious or not.”
Fisher shrugged. “Neither can I.”
Chapter 10
Howe applied full military power, rocking the F/A-22V upward as the first phase of the check flight was completed. The readouts were green and glowing; the engine absolutely purred and the jet seemed eager to erase any doubt that she was fit. He rode the monster thrust from the P&Ws through thirty thousand feet, roaring toward the stars with an acceleration that would have made an Atlas-series rocket envious. He started to level off as the HUD laddered through 35,000, still burning a healthy share of dinosaurs and still nailing every indicator to its sweet spot.
The techies on the ground gave him a verbal thumbsup as the Velociraptor’s thick shark’s skin brushed off a stream of turbulence at 43,000 feet. Howe slid into an orbit over the Montana wilderness, keeping the base in the center of his circle. Sweeping his eyes across the multiuse displays that flanked his tactical screen, he carefully examined each digit.
There were now about a dozen theories for the flakeout. Most involved some as yet unexplained energy spike through the shared radar-avionics system that somehow took out the main flight computers. But no simulation had been able to duplicate the problem.
Strip away the high-tech jargon and arcane formulas, and what the eggheads were saying came down to: Damned if I know.
Howe’s own opinion was that something in the telemetry exchange unit freaked out when the Cyclops weapon cycled up. The engineers, of course, said this was impossible — but they would find out for sure in a few minutes, when they cycled up the unit in Cyclops Two, sitting safely on the ground on the ramp in front of its bunker.
Howe pushed his head down, stretching the muscles in his upper back. His right shoulder had started to cramp; he could use a good back rub.