Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

  Burgess concurred. But they both knew it wouldn’t stay secret for long.

  ‘Hey!’ Stobal grinned, clapping him on the back. ‘Why the long face? I’ve got a good feeling we’re going to win this one!’

  Burgess wished he had.

  08.40 hrs

  Lower Layton, Maryland

  The small Maryland community of Lower Layton consisted of just three farmsteads, but the families that occupied them were expecting new neighbours. The plot of building land that old Matt Halcrow had put on the market a year ago had finally sold just four weeks earlier. Why anybody from Philadelphia would want to build a house in this isolated part of the tobacco and corn belt had mystified all concerned. It wasn’t as if the place would have a view worth looking at this far from the creeks of the bay. However, the piece of land that presently supported an old timber barn for which Matt had no further use was to be turned into a country homestead for some well-off migrant from eastern Europe. The timber-frame house, Matt had told his two neighbours, was to be of a Canadian prefabricated type and would be delivered in sections inside a couple of huge shipping containers that were going to find it hard to get down the lanes.

  The first of them had arrived a few minutes ago. Up at the Jones’s place they’d seen it from the kitchen window as they finished their breakfast. A huge steel monster snapping a small branch from a dogwood as it passed. Then Mrs Whitman had caught a close-up of it lumbering past while she was picking up the mail from the box at the bottom of her drive. And finally old Matt Halcrow himself had phoned his friends and neighbours to apologise for the disturbance and to assure them there’d only be one more truck like it, and anyway not for another couple of days.

  Twenty minutes later they saw the tractor half of the truck head back through the lanes at speed, its driver eager to get his wheels onto a highway again.

  In an hour or so both Mrs Jones and Mrs Whitman would find some reason to take a drive past Matt’s old barn – just to satisfy their curiosity. But they would see nothing, because the container had been tucked away inside the huge timber shed and the doors were closed.

  09.20 hrs

  John F. Kennedy Airport, New York

  When Sam arrived in New York, the local time was an hour earlier than when he’d left London. As he stepped from the plane a steward pointed out a heavy-set man waiting for him in the pier to the terminal. Introducing himself as an agent from the FBI’s New York field office he spirited Sam through immigration in minutes and delivered him to the gate for the 10.35 a.m. American Airlines shuttle to Washington National.

  Sam found himself looking at faces, trying to visualise Hamdan. The Iraqi had changed his appearance once already by shaving off his moustache. Recognising him might not be easy, he realised.

  10.30 hrs

  The Executive Office Building, Washington DC

  The President of the United States listened glumly to the intelligence summary being presented by the Director of the CIA. Also listening at the long table in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House were the Secretaries of State and for Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  ‘The British still believe Colonel Hamdan is the primary instigator,’ the CIA Director stated, ‘with up to a dozen co-conspirators. They also still believe he’s acting without the authority of Saddam Hussein. But they cannot be certain of that and nor can we, Mr President. In fact we’re a lot less sure than the British are. One of our own sources has revealed that Hamdan was one of those military officers set up to act against Saddam back in June, although his name wasn’t known to us at the time. Our source is surprised that Hamdan escaped the fate of the others when the coup plot collapsed. He thinks Hamdan may have agreed to work directly for Saddam as the price for being allowed to live.’

  ‘Meaning?’ the President prompted.

  ‘Meaning that this is a plot by Saddam. An anthrax attack on the US being carried out under the guise of a maverick terrorist action. Something he can deny culpability for.’

  ‘But you have no proof of this one way or the other.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘May I put in a word here, Mr President?’ The ever-polite but forceful Chairman of the Joint Chiefs leaned forward with his hand raised.

  ‘Of course, General.’

  ‘The attack that may be about to take place has to be characterised as a military one, not a terrorist action. The delivery vehicle for the anthrax is a military drone. The men directing it are, so far as we know, still serving members of the Iraqi army. If the attack happens, Mr President, this will be nothing less than an act of war, to which there’s only one correct response. A military counter-strike that’s extremely quick and extremely lethal.’

  ‘Lethal to Saddam Hussein?’

  ‘Ah . . . no. Unfortunately there’s no guarantee of that,’ the General conceded. ‘Taking him out is going to be as hard as it’s always been. But lethal against his armed forces, his military infrastructure – and his self-esteem. But we have to hit him, Mr President, both to show our national resolve and to deter further attacks on us.’

  ‘Mmm. We all agree that?’

  There was a murmuring of assent. Then the Secretary of State intervened.

  ‘Before we get to that stage Mr President, I believe we should give Saddam a strong warning,’ he stated firmly. ‘Through his ambassador at the UN would be quickest. Spell it out to him in words of one syllable that we know about the drone and about Hamdan and that if this attack happens the consequences will be extremely serious.’

  ‘That’s wise,’ the President nodded. ‘We should do that right away.’

  ‘Our own ambassador already has it in hand, Mr President. She’s meeting the Iraqi in a half hour.’

  ‘Good.’

  There was a moment’s pause while they all reflected on the enormity of what could be about to happen to their country.

  ‘So, do I have your authority to prepare military contingency plans, Mr President?’ the General checked eventually.

  ‘You certainly do, General. Make us ready for the worst.’

  11.00 hrs

  The SIOC, FBI Headquarters

  Dean Burgess took his seat in the conference room just as the Director arrived. Anxiety had taken hold in the SIOC. The investigation was making little progress.

  ‘I have just spoken with the President,’ the Director announced. ‘He says if the attack takes place we’ll be at war with Iraq. He’s set a deadline for us of two p.m. If we’re no nearer finding the missile by then, he’ll cancel his engagement at the Vets stadium in Philadelphia and bring in the media. Ive, give us an update and for Christ’s sake try to make it sound hopeful.’

  ‘That won’t be easy, sir. But we do have some new data on the container. The importation from Israel was arranged by a Philadelphia-registered printing company set up one month ago – specifically for this operation, we assume. The listed directors don’t appear to exist. There are some indications of Russian-émigré organised crime being behind all this, but we don’t have specific names yet.

  ‘The container was picked up from the port by a regular trucking company this morning, but the driver was under instruction to rendezvous with the client at a truck drop-in on the 1-95 just north of the Baltimore Beltway. A witness there saw him get into a white van. Soon after, the van drove north and another driver took over the truck. The original driver’s not been seen again and his mobile phone’s been switched off, so we can’t get a trace on him.

  ‘The traffic management cameras in the Baltimore area must have picked the truck up somewhere, but the tapes are still being checked. Unfortunately luck isn’t with us today; the recordings for the eastern Beltway are incomplete because of a technical failure.’

  Luck like that was all they needed, thought Burgess.

  ‘We don’t know whether the truck went north, south, east or west. And state police enquiries about disused barns or industrial sites large enough to conceal the container have yielded not
hing so far.’ Stobal turned to face his Director. ‘In my opinion, sir, we should get the media involved right now. A public appeal for information could bring us the luck we need.’

  ‘I agree,’ said the Director immediately. ‘Unfortunately the President doesn’t. He’s still hoping for a miracle. Two o’clock is what he said. No word to the media until then. For now, we’re on our own, folks.’

  12 noon

  Burgess looked up from the computer screen, needing a break. He’d been scouring the registry files of known Russian-émigré criminals for some link that the automated search systems might have missed.

  They called it ROC in the New York field office where he’d worked until a few weeks ago – Russian Organised Crime. An assembly of letters as deadly as LCN – La Cosa Nostra. Two acronyms spoken in the same respectful breath when crime-busting professionals talked of the transnational organisations they did battle with, organisations whose wealth and influence could turn them into a super-power if they ever managed to combine their criminal forces.

  Dean Burgess wished he was back in New York, working on his sources in Brighton Beach. Somebody must know of a Russian-émigré organisation stupid enough to get mixed up in an act of war. Only a handful of the ROC gangs in the US operated on a grand scale like the Sicilian ‘families’ and the FBI had chopped the head off one of those in 1995 with the arrest of Vyacheslav Ivankov. Over two hundred of the thousands of Mafiya gangs in the former Soviet Union had operations in the USA however, but most used freelance hoodlums here instead of creating permanent gangs. It was their lack of a ‘mob’ structure that had made them so hard to corral.

  He checked the wall clock. Ten after twelve. In twenty minutes Carole would step off the Amtrak from New York with Dean and Patty, expecting him to be there at Union Station. And he wouldn’t be. It was impossible to leave the SIOC for the half hour to an hour it would take.

  But hell! She’d surely understand why he’d let her down. When it all came out what he’d been involved in, no way was she going to finish with him like she’d threatened. They shouldn’t be here at all, that was the trouble. Back home in the safety of Westchester was where he wanted them. Still, he told himself, if they’d been planning a day in Philadelphia he’d be worried a heck of a lot more.

  He concentrated on the screen again. Then the phone rang. Security down at the E Street visitors’ entrance, telling him Sam Packer had arrived. He asked for a messenger to bring him up to the fifth floor so he could meet him in the elevator lobby. Stobal had given enthusiastic approval to Burgess’s overnight initiative, and had arranged a pass for the Englishman to enter the secure spaces of the SIOC.

  Sam followed the wiry black security guard out of the elevator. The building, he noted, had that smell common to all American public buildings and motels. A dead, artificial smell, something to do with the air conditioning or with the stuff they used to clean the carpets.

  ‘Hi! Good to see you!’ Burgess was marching towards him along the blue carpeted corridor with his hand outstretched and an attempt at a smile. Sam had forgotten how tall he was. ‘Flight okay?’

  ‘Wouldn’t dare say anything else after the Concorde treatment,’ Sam grinned.

  ‘Good. Can’t tell you how glad we are to see you.’

  He led the way into the SIOC.

  ‘Coffee?’ Burgess checked, once they were through the security hatches. ‘Or maybe something to eat?’

  ‘Coffee’s fine.’

  ‘Cream and sugar?’

  ‘Black, thanks.’

  As Burgess tapped menu codes into a drinks dispenser, Sam took in the banks of screens in the operations centre and the couple of dozen heads bent over them. It was like the citadel of a warship, and he felt instantly at home.

  Burgess took him into a side room to brief him.

  ‘Top guess is Philadelphia. The president’s date at the Vets stadium tonight has been in the public domain for a couple of weeks at least.’

  He spelled out what they knew about the container and the fact that it hadn’t yet been found.

  ‘Surely the President’s going to cancel his rally?’ Sam asserted.

  ‘If we don’t have that container by mid-afternoon, yes he will. Then we’re back to guessing again. First question is will Colonel Hamdan know that the Philadelphia meeting’s been terminated?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sam affirmed immediately. ‘He’ll find out. This man’s thorough.’

  ‘Our opinion also. So, next guess . . . Will he go for an alternative target?’

  ‘Again, yes. He won’t hang around.’ Sam narrowed his eyes. ‘What’s going on in Washington today? I saw crowds converging on the Mall.’

  ‘Pledge for the Family. A right-wing religious outfit. Thousands of born-again men committing themselves to spending more time with their kids,’ Burgess explained uncomfortably.

  Sam whistled. ‘That’s a tempting target,’ he stated. ‘Particularly if Hamdan wants to create a frenzy of hatred against Saddam Hussein.’

  For a while Burgess just stared at him.

  ‘I sure as hell wish you hadn’t said that,’ he murmured eventually.

  13.20 hrs

  Lower Layton

  The barn smelled of decayed animal excrement. In one corner lay the camping mats and sleeping bags the two Iraqis had used during the night, although sleep hadn’t come easily to either of them. A cardboard carton still held most of the food Hamdan had bought yesterday but which neither of them had had much stomach for.

  They’d both felt greatly relieved at the arrival of the container. Relieved and anxious to get it over with, because the sudden appearance of the huge box in this gossipy corner of nowhere land was tantamount to putting a match to a beacon.

  They’d begun work soon after the taciturn Russian-born trailer driver had left, checking first through a split in the barn’s walls that nobody was near enough to hear the noises they would soon be making. They’d opened the container doors with trepidation, half expecting it to contain rotting fruit juice or printing equipment. Seeing the dull grey paint of the drone’s nose cone, however, they’d smiled at one another and solemnly clashed their fists together in the way they’d done over the candle flame in Hamdan’s flat in Baghdad all those weeks ago.

  There’d been checks to be made. They’d started up a small petrol-powered generator to produce the current needed for the VR-6 control system. First, Sadoun had tested the firing and guidance circuitry, programming in co-ordinates for the waypoints and for the target itself which Hamdan had acquired through the use of a handheld GPS plotter. Then Hamdan had walked a couple of hundred metres to a copse of poplars and tried out the disguised VHF transmitter that he would use in a few hours’ time to vector the drone’s final moments and to trigger the warhead’s electro-magnetic shutters.

  They’d discovered a glitch in the aileron controls, which Sadoun traced to a loose wire. Then, satisfied with the drone itself, they’d called each other up on their rented cell phones to check they could communicate.

  Now they were ready for the final part of the preparation. They stood back from the rust-streaked container and, without looking each other in the eye, donned respirators, easing the rubber over their chins and sucking in air to check the seals were tight against their smoothly shaven skin.

  Hamdan entered the container first, ducking under the stubby delta wings of the drone to reach the far end. There, secured against the container wall by an elastic strap, was a dustbin-sized insulated drum. Remarkably, when they lifted the thick polystyrene lid they found the inside still cool from the ice-packs that had been crammed into it in Cyprus. Reaching in with gloved hands Hamdan extracted a metal canister the size of a large vacuum flask. Weighing five kilos and wrapped in transparent polythene, the cylinder contained enough anthrax spores to wipe out the population of a small town.

  First, Hamdan checked visually that there’d been no leak from the warhead’s seals. Then, satisfied it was intact, he carried it forward to the front of the drone an
d cut away the plastic wrapping. Between them they installed it into the drone’s empty camera bay.

  Hamdan stepped down onto the floor of the barn to let Sadoun complete the wiring.

  Finally, when the Major was satisfied, he joined Hamdan on the ground and removed his mask.

  ‘It is done,’ he whispered. ‘The weapon is ready for firing, Colonel.’

  14.55 hrs

  FBI Headquarters

  Dean Burgess watched Iye Stobal’s heavily jowled face grow steadily longer as each minute passed with no breakthrough in the hunt for the container. Highway video cameras had detected the truck heading south from Baltimore, then lost it after it turned onto some smaller route. At this stage of the game they badly needed the help of the public – and needed it right now.

  The President had cancelled his Philadelphia rally nearly an hour ago and was due to go live on TV and radio in a couple of minutes.

  Sam had been assigned a spare terminal in the SIOC and had been reading computer files on Russian-émigré crime in the faint hope he might spot some link with Dima Grimov that Burgess had missed. The Odessa connection dated back to the seventies, Burgess had told him, when a Russian crook named Balagula had migrated from there to Brooklyn. He’d quickly grown rich on gasoline tax evasion and fraud, and spread his tentacles abroad to South Africa and Israel.

  Most of the ROC criminals with FBI files had the ruthlessness to be acting for the Voroninskaya gang in America, but discovering which were actually doing so would take up more time than they had. Burgess was right. What they needed now was the intelligence of the streets – the eyes and ears of Joe Public.