“Give me a whistle if anybody’s coming,” said Karr, and before Dean could say anything he began gliding toward the vehicle.
Just like Dean had done with Turk on the third day they were out.
“You got more guts than noodles.” the old-timer had told him. “Before we go anywhere we fully reconnoiter the situation, figure our in and our out, get our signals straight — then we go.”
The old-timer was right; acting impulsively was a good way to get killed.
Old-timer?
Turk was, in a sense, but he’d probably been in his early thirties at most. Maybe less. Certainly younger than Dean was now.
Unlike Rockman, Chafetz said almost nothing while the ops were in the middle of a mission. Karr transmitted the readings back through a link in the com system; she acknowledged with a simple “got it” as each one came through.
Dean saw something moving near the back of the truck. He raised his gun, then realized it was Karr, already on his way back.
“Fake. It’s a fake,” whispered the op. “The readings are all wrong.”
“I didn’t hear the Art Room say that.”
“They will. It’s a phony.”
“You sure?”
“I had a mission just like this in Russia six months before you joined us, babysitter,” said Kan, resurrecting the very first nickname he had given Dean. “Cruise missiles. Pretty much the same gig, though. Come on. Let’s blow.”
60
Rubens picked up the phone to call the White House as soon as he heard from Telach.
Peru’s president had pledged a few hours before to cooperate with “the U.S. and the entire world” in securing the weapon, so Rubens’ plan to retrieve the warhead would probably not have gone forward. But the readings Karr and Dean had obtained ended all possibility.
Still, the information that the warhead was phony would be welcome at the White House, enhancing Rubens’ reputation there.
Not that he needed to do that. Not that it was or should be or could be a consideration now.
If this “weapon” had been involved in Iron Heart, Rubens realized, the fact that it had been fake explained why the CIA had missed it in the jungle. Indeed, it was possible that the agency had known all along that it was a phony and not been worried about it.
No. If they had, they wouldn’t have launched the massive search.
Perhaps it was genuine at one point and material was removed. If so, it could still be hidden somewhere in the jungle.
More likely sold on the black market. But such a sale would have been discovered, Rubens thought, by any of the half-dozen standing missions assigned specifically to watch for them, including the NSA’s.
He’d have them quickly reviewed for gaps.
Rubens took a deep breath as the phone was picked up on the other end.
“Bill Rubens for the president.”
“Go ahead,” said Marcke, coming on the line immediately.
“The warhead does not contain plutonium or uranium,” said Rubens. “We have high confidence on this. It’s a fake.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure. One of my people crawled under the truck with the bomb in it. We have X-rays of the weapon; it does not contain nuclear material.”
“Very good. Very, very good.” Rubens could practically feel the relief in the president’s voice.
“There was one other thing, Mr. President,” said Rubens. “The warhead bears a very close resemblance to warheads Brazil tried to obtain several years before. The CIA had an operation to stop it. One of the warheads was seized in Russia. Another was snatched on the ground. However, there was a possibility at the time of a third warhead.”
“A third warhead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you saying that the CIA missed one, Billy? This one?”
“I’m not really in a position to say. The operation was a CIA operation. I would think that it’s possible that this dummy warhead was somehow involved. I should note that it’s possible that this may have been a legitimate warhead at one point, but the material, the bomb kernel, was removed. Honestly — candidly — I simply don’t know.”
I suspect a great deal, Rubens thought to himself. I suspect that the CIA messed up in a very big way and then covered up that possibility. They also covered up the fact that they had bankrolled an arms dealer responsible, indirectly, for the deaths of dozens of civilians around the world, including several Americans. And then assassinated him.
But it was best to hold his criticism of the CIA, until the immediate crisis in Peru passed. Especially under the circumstances.
“We’re talking about Iron Heart?” asked Marcke.
“Yes,” said Rubens, surprised that the president knew of the operation.
“Ms. Collins informed me that there were questions about it earlier this evening,” Marcke said.
Rubens balled his fingers into a fist. She’d gone to the president ahead of him with the information to make herself look good. She had outmaneuvered him at every turn.
“Please keep me updated if anything else develops,” said the president. “We’ll have a conference call update tomorrow at six. I guess that’s today at six now, actually.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ted will let you know if there’s anything else.”
Ted was Ted Cohen, who’d replaced Art Blanders as chief of staff when Blanders became secretary of defense the year before.
“Yes, thank you, sir.”
The line snapped clear.
61
Fifteen hundred cell phone calls had been made from the region where the guerrillas operated in the twelve hours before their communique was released, much more than Robert Gallo would have thought. A first pass through showed that the calls were made almost exclusively by phones registered to businesses in the area, with the remainder apparently ecotourists. Gallo tried coordinating call times with the length of the data set in the communiqué but couldn’t get a match. Or rather, he could match just about anything by adding or subtracting different encryptions and compression schemes.
Up against a brick wall, Gallo took a break. When the team was working on a project like this, a page was set up in a network file as a kind of journal to allow the members to post different results, hints, and frustrations. It was very much like a Web log or “blog,” randomly organized, with large sections of references to data files rather than Web addresses. The idea was to make it a common, open notebook to share information and provoke new ideas and directions — though in practice it often degenerated into a log of rants and complaints: this didn’t work; this was dumb; can you believe how easy (or hard) it was to get this?
Gallo added some comments about his efforts and then began paging through what others had written. Certain members of the team could be counted on for off-the-wall notes, and Johnny Bib often put in mathematical dissertations of little apparent relevance. But today the blog was extremely businesslike and to the point, the notes terse.
Not a good sign, Gallo thought.
Intercepts of electronic signals was the NSA’s raison d’être. There were several minor gathering programs active in Peru, and between them, regional listening posts, and a dedicated satellite network focusing on the Southern Hemisphere, there were plenty of electronic signals to sift through. As Gallo cursored through some of the lists, a single entry jumped out, simply because it was surrounded by white space.
RUSSIAN MILITARY SATS?
“Sats” meant satellites, and the question was a suggestion by one of the analysts that someone check and see if any Russian observation satellites passed over the region and might have gotten optical data. But the suggestion reminded Gallo that he had been looking only at wireless cells rather than satellite communications networks — a much more likely source, and yet one he hadn’t even thought about.
But maybe Johnny Bib had given it to someone else. Rather than calling around or instant messaging to find out, Gallo typed the term i
nto the search engine slot on the page. The search engine came up empty as it scanned the blog. Then, a few seconds later, it spit out a list of results from SpyNet and two NSA-only databases tracking intercepts. (The two-part search was a default “simple” search procedure, designed to save time when the analysts were helping on a mission.) The entries included a few lines summarizing the reference. The first one stuck out immediately: the Russian embassy in Peru had been queried a week before about the continuing unauthorized use of a Russian military communications network.
Gallo had to get help from one of the librarians, but within twenty minutes he knew everything that mattered about the Russian system, and a half hour after that he was looking at intercepted cables saying that the Russian embassy had been working with two military specialists trying to track the satellite phones down.
They were roughly forty miles from the village where the bomb had been found.
Johnny Bib greeted the news of this with his highest praise:
“Ha!”
Shouted twice, at the top of his lungs.
“The Chinese record all of the Russian transmissions,” Johnny told Gallo. “Break into their system and get a copy Go.”
“Not a problem,” said Gallo. “But, like, the Russians were complaining that they couldn’t figure out the encryptions that were being used on the messages.”
“Fortunately, we’re not the Russians.”
62
Dean and Karr traveled downriver to a village where an international drilling company had set up a base camp. There they “borrowed” a larger boat, a rigid-hulled inflatable with a conventional engine. The engine propelled the little boat at a healthy clip. Dean sat in the bow, keeping an eye out for logs and shallow drafts. About two miles after setting out, they came to an area of rapids; the boat tipped slightly as they wormed through, but they made it past intact.
“That was a pretty wild ride,” yelled Karr. “There’s more about two miles ahead. Keep bird-dogging for me.”
Dean leaned forward against the gunwale, staring into the darkness. He spotted a thick log ahead, lurking like an alligator in the shadows. Karr made it around it, but as he steered back toward the channel, the river dropped through a jagged set of rock outcroppings.
“Left,” shouted Dean as the shadows metamorphosed into rocks. “Left!”
The next thing he knew he was flying over the gunwale as the boat pitched wildly beneath him. He managed to get his right hand hooked into the rope that ran along the top of the side of the hull; he hung about two-thirds out of the boat, water furling over him as the boat charged through the obstacle course, dragged along by the current despite Karr’s efforts to stop it. As he struggled to get his feet back in, the boat struck something and Dean found himself underwater. Waves twisted around him and the current grabbed him again, pulling him downstream into a pool of calmer water.
Karr bobbed to the surface nearby, cursing a red streak to heaven.
“I just lost it. I just lost it,” Karr complained. “You OK, Charlie?”
“Yeah, I’m OK.”
“I can’t believe I lost it.”
They struggled to shore. Dean lay on his stomach, coughing the water from his lungs.
“Stay here. I’m going to try and get our gear,” said Karr.
“Tommy, wait—”
“No, it’s all right. My mistake; I’ll fix it.”
Dean turned himself around and sat, still trying to gather his senses. He reached into his pockets and began inventorying what he had, but his mind seemed to be working in a different dimension and he handled the objects two or three times before their identities registered. He found his small flashlight and turned it on just as Karr lumbered up the shoreline to his left.
“Boat’s tangled in some branches downstream, in one piece. Motor snapped off,” said Karr. He dropped a pack at Dean’s feet. “Stinking A2s are gone. They’re supposed to be waterproof. I’d really like to see if that’s true. But I can’t find them.”
Dean, still in something of a daze, reached to make sure his pistols were strapped in his holsters.
“Your communications system working?” Karr asked.
Dean reached to the back of his belt and felt for the switch. It had turned off in the tumult.
“Charlie?” asked Rockman.
“I’m here.”
“You guys OK?”
“We just went for a swim,” said Karr, joining in. “We were getting bored.”
Dean’s legs had been battered by the rocks, and they ached as if he’d just run two marathons back-to-back. But otherwise he seemed intact.
“You all right?” Dean asked Karr.
“Yeah. I keep telling you: I’m still numb from all those painkillers they gave me in France. I figure I won’t feel anything for another year yet. You feel like walking?”
“No,” said Dean, opening the pack. “But it beats standing here.”
“Or swimming.”
Dean traded his sodden boots for a pair of dry walking shoes. After two miles through the rough terrain his ankles began to ache so badly he took some aspirin from the small first-aid kit in the pack.
Following directions from the Art Room, they headed toward a nearby village used by an ecotourist company as a jumping-off point for tours through the local jungle. They arrived about an hour before dawn and waited on a bench near the water for something to open. Small, modem wood buildings dotted the main area of the settlement, muscling out huts that seemed to have been left standing for atmosphere. There were signs in English as well as Spanish advertising everything from “native” handcrafts to AAA batteries and shaving gear. Karr joked that the handcrafts probably came from China; since they included coffee mugs and T-shirts, he might not have been far off.
Dean sat on a bench, resting his legs while Karr went to explore. Barely five minutes later, Karr returned with a ceramic mug filled with coffee.
“No Styrofoam,” said Karr, handing the cup to him gingerly. “Watch this stuff — it’ll burn holes in your throat going down.”
The smell alone was enough to wake the dead. Dean took a small sip and felt his sinuses loosening up.
“We can catch a ride in a half hour over to Iquitos,” said Karr. “Have the Art Room arrange a room for us there. We can use a generic cover as adventurers.”
“That’ll fool them,” said Dean sarcastically.
“No one there we have to fool,” said Karr. “And we won’t be there long anyway.”
“I’d like to get some sleep,” admitted Dean. “About twenty-four hours’ worth.”
“Yeah.”
Dean could tell from Karr’s answer that sleep was unlikely anytime soon. There were alternatives stronger than the coffee — the Deep Black ops had specially formulated “go” pills, supposedly high-tech stimulants that were non-addictive and had no adverse side effects. Dean didn’t trust them; he’d heard the same sort of bull in Vietnam and later in the first Gulf War. Anything artificial always came back to bite you somehow. At least the coffee was predictable.
“There’s a place we can wash up a bit,” Karr told him. “They even have these vending machines with little shaving kits in them. When we’re done we have to head over to what they call the south dock. It’s about a quarter mile from here.”
“Where are we meeting Lia?” asked Dean.
“In Nevas,” said Karr. “She should be there this afternoon. We’ll have to get an airplane or at least a boat — it’s pretty far from Iquitos.”
“She shouldn’t do the switch without backup.”
“I’m not saying she should, Charlie. Let’s go get a shave, all right? My chin gets cranky if I don’t shave off the peach fuzz every forty-eight hours or so.”
63
Considering that her bed was under a rats’ nest, Lia slept comparatively well, waking only when Fernandez knocked on her door. She dressed quickly — all she needed were her shoes — and got an update from Farlekas in the Art Room, which told her that the nuke w
as a phony and that the Peruvians did not yet seem to realize that.
“What’s this mean for me?” she asked.
“That you continue as assigned. Fly up to Nevas and do the swap.”
“Fine. What about Charlie?”
“Dean and Tommy are on their way to Iquitos,” said the Art Room supervisor. “They may meet you there.”
“May?”
“Things are still up in the air right now, Lia. I’ll let you know what’s going on the second I know. I promise.”
Fernandez was waiting downstairs in the small breakfast room. There were two other tables of guests, and they were listening intently as a radio at the side of the room proclaimed the latest on the plot by the “notorious and desperate enemies of the Peruvian people” to destroy the country’s capital. The hero of the moment was a general named Atahualpa Túcume, who had fought valiantly against the Ecuadorian bandits and was now engaged in a battle to the end against the guerrillas. A small snippet was presented from an interview with the general. He declared that “luck and the grace of our ancestors” had allowed the army to foil the terrible plot to destroy the nation and Lima.
A commentator followed, giving some biographical information about Túcume. “He is not well known in the coastal areas of our country, but should be,” said the man. “He believes he is descended from the Inca aristocracy….”
Fernandez hunched over the table, his face pale and his eyes bloodshot from all the alcohol he had consumed the evening before. Clearly, he had had his last taste of aguardiente for a while.
“Can you deal with the helicopter?” Lia asked him.
“I’ll survive. Let’s get going.”
64
Rubens’ helicopter was about five minutes from the White House when Johnny Bib buzzed him on the secure line. One of the computer experts — Johnny Bib hated the term “hacker”—had broken into Chinese intercepts of a Russian satellite phone system and obtained several conversations that had taken place not far from where the warhead had been found. The transmissions used an encryption popular among some members of the Russian mafiya. The NSA had the “keys” to decrypt it and the conversations were being translated now. They were extremely brief and unenlightening: in one case, a ride was apparently solicited; in another, a question was asked about how much it would cost to buy a truck. The analysts were divided on whether these might not be code for something else. But the implication of the dated Russian encryption and the use of the phone network were much more important at the moment than anything in the conversations: it suggested that the CIA agent involved in Iron Heart was still alive.
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