“Yeah.”
“State police have barricade checkpoints around every major highway. Two Coast Guard aircraft are surveying the roads south of Philadelphia and local police departments are stopping every cargo carrier and large truck they see. You know all that?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re holding a marathon cabinet meeting about what to tell the public,” added Rockman. “Mr. Rubens is down the hall, talking to them. They’re debating whether to go to Red Sky even though they haven’t definitely found a bomb. Some of the key personnel have already gone into shelters. Personally, I think it’s overkill. I think this whole thing may just be a wild-goose chase.”
Dean didn’t particularly care to hear the runner’s opinions.
“Red Sky” was a procedure to be invoked in the event of a nuclear terrorist attack. Among other things, it would shut down all air traffic in the country, close the borders, and send cabinet members and other important leaders to bomb shelters. The federal government would exercise direct control over the affected area, in effect declaring martial law.
“Is this radio going to work or what?” he said, changing the subject.
Rockman reminded Dean that they were supposed to maintain organizational secrecy “to the extent possible if the target is discovered.”
Dean smiled to himself, thinking of the cracks Tommy Karr could have made about that.
127
A cacophony of confusion spread out in the darkness below the MH-6 “Little Bird” helicopter Lia and Karr were flying in north of Washington, D.C. The helicopter and its pilot were members of the famed 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Besides carrying surveillance gear that included a forward-looking infrared radar capable of seeing in the dark, the helicopter also had a.50-caliber machine gun, which was loaded and ready for use.
The road network around the capital had been effectively shut down, and while it was very late — or early, depending on how you interpreted 12:30 a.m. — the traffic jams were massive. Air traffic had been curtailed, and civilian flights that were allowed had to fly very precise routes or risk being shot down.
“What’s your estimated time of arrival at Crypto City?” Telach asked Lia over the Deep Black com system.
“Another ten minutes,” she told Telach.
“Good. As soon as you refuel, head up to Pennsylvania. They only have one AEC person covering the area up there.”
“AEC” stood for the Atomic Energy Commission — other bomb experts assigned to work with the local task force. There were already two in the D.C. area and another three in nearby Virginia.
“Where’s Charlie?”
“He’s in a helo en route to Philadelphia with the troopers there.”
“Tell him I said hi.”
“Will do.”
Lia looked out the side of the small helicopter. If you ignored what was going on and just stared at the lights, they looked beautiful.
128
“Town police in Wellington, Pennsylvania, are asking for a license plate ID on a Forester. A Subaru Forester!”
The shout from one of the people at the back of the Art Room was like a bolt of lightning. Everyone stopped what they were doing.
“New York plate,” added the young man, instantly depressed. An assistant computer scientist, he had been pressed into work as a monitor, using a computer tool that watched queries on the various state motor vehicle departments to see if any matched the Deep Black watch lists. He punched the keys to capture the plate number, then thumbed through a menu of state registrations for a search through a Department of Transportation connection arranged when the crisis began.
“Oh my God! This is something! The plate comes from a Nissan Maxima, not a Subaru. This is something.”
Telach walked over to the young man and put her hand on his shoulder. The Forester was a small SUV, with an interior capacity that could just squeeze the weapon inside.
“Easy, Peter. Let’s do this together.” She knelt down next to him and hit one of the function keys, bringing up ID data on the local police agency. “Call the dispatcher on the Homeland Security line and ask for the vehicle ID. Then check it against the stolen vehicles.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Peter, pounding on a numeric keypad.
Telach tapped a large red button that sent the data to a window on Rockman’s console.
“They already have the number,” said Peter. He punched it into the computer. A second after he hit the enter key, the screen blinked back with a long list; one line in the middle was highlighted.
The vehicle was registered to a man in Texas, who lived a few miles from where the abandoned truck had been found.
“Jeff, get Charlie down to look at this car right away,” said Telach.
She glanced down at her belt and hit the key on her communications set to alert Rubens that she needed him.
129
“You ever hear of a place called Wellington?” Dean asked Daniels.
“Little town outside of Philadelphia. It was mostly farms ten years ago,” said the state trooper.
“We have to get there. Local police found a car that was stolen in the same area that the truck from Mexico was found.”
“How come they haven’t reported it?”
“They’re doing it right now,” said Dean, reaching to the switch to connect with the pilot. “Trust me on this — like I say, my information is always a little ahead of the curve.”
* * *
The big helicopter scattered dirt and papers before it as it fluttered down in the small lot near the road of the county highway. Dean hopped out, trotting toward the row of revolving police lights nearby. Two sheriff ’s deputies met him; Daniels and two of his aides trailed behind.
“Where’s the vehicle?” said Dean.
They led him to a battered Subaru Forester, surrounded by local detectives and policemen.
“You FBI?” asked a white-haired man in a blue uniform.
“Dean. I work with Homeland Security.”
“I’m Chief Dalton. We’re waiting for some crime scene people from the state police.”
“Yeah, they’re on their way. That’s Daniels, from the state police,” Dean said, thumbing behind him as the captain huffed across the macadam. “He’s in charge of the task force.”
Dean took his phone out as he walked over to the car so he could talk to Rockman without looking too peculiar. He bent down in front of the car, reading the New York license plate for verification and examining the front of the car. It looked as if it had been in a light fender bender. Bits of wood were stuck in the front grille. Dean stepped back, looking around.
“Part of a broken crutch.” he told Rockman, walking toward it.
“Mr. Dean, this is Rubens. Describe the crutch as precisely as you can for Mr. Rockman. Then please do two things. Find out if there are any tire tracks or other indications of what sort of vehicle the weapon was loaded into—”
“It’s asphalt pavement. No tracks.”
“I see. Then please describe the pieces of wood you mention to Mr. Rockman, and any other items at the scene, inside and outside of the car. Any items at all.”
* * *
Rubens walked to the front of the Art Room and stood over the communications console. He put his finger on the button of a voice-only scrambled phone, connecting himself to George Hadash in the situation room under the White House.
“We have evidence that Babin has reached the Philadelphia area.”
“The warhead?”
“We have no direct evidence of the warhead. However, we have wood that might have been part of a crate. I urge a full Red Sky alert at this time.”
130
“Tommy, this is Rubens.”
“Hey, boss,” said Karr. “Got something?”
“We’ve discovered a vehicle we believe Babin used about twenty miles southwest of Philadelphia. Mr. Dean is there now. The president is going to declare a Red Sky alert.”
“OK.”
“Instruct your pilot to proceed outside of the probable shock area. Mr. Rockman will give you precise directions.”
“Boss—”
“Stay outside of the danger area until the weapon is located. You understand.”
“Yeah, all right.”
“I have something more. Stand by. Mr. Bibleria’s people are just presenting me with information.”
* * *
“Lia, check this out,” said Karr, poking her in the back with his handheld computer.
She turned around and took the device. The screen was filled with text.
“What am I looking at?”
“They found a vehicle in Pennsylvania they think Babin used. We have to stay away from Philadelphia. This is some data about someone the police a couple of towns over picked up on the highway, nearby according to Johnny Bib. She’s from Peru. Gotta be a connection. Talk to Telach while I get our flight plan worked out with the pilot.”
Lia looked at the information. According to the bulletin, which had been shared over one of the Homeland Security information sites, the young woman — Calvina Adnese, according to her passport — was nineteen. Her address was in Nevas — at the school Lia had gone to, one of the Art Room analysts had noted.
He’d also pointed out that Calvina had taken a flight from Ecuador to Mexico a few days before.
A picture from her passport was included on the next screen. Lia stared at it. It looked to her like the girl she’d seen in the hallway, the one who’d been sick. But of course hundreds or even thousands of girls would go through that school.
Had her name been Calvina?
“Marie?” Lia said to Telach over the Deep Black com system.
“I’m here.”
“This girl the police picked up in Pennsylvania,” she said. “Has she been interviewed?”
“No, the FBI is still en route. We’re setting up our own phone interview with one of our translators in the Art Room.”
“I’d like to talk to her myself,” said Lia. “I’ll put a video bug on the dashboard here so she can see me.”
“We’ll have to see if they have a video hookup. Otherwise you can do it by your com system.”
“I want to see her, and I want her to see me. Have someone go back in the mission tape for the school at Nevas. I talked to a girl there. See if her name was Calvina.”
131
Calvina Agnese—Adnese on her passport — stared as the door of the room in the small police station opened. The officer who had brought her here wheeled in a computer on a small stand, smiling apologetically. He said something to her in English, a long explanation probably, though she had no idea what he was trying to tell her. He’d been very nice since stopping for her on the road, nicer than she expected, even giving her food. One of the men at the station spoke a few words of Spanish, enough to ask who she was and what she was doing on the highway in the middle of the night.
“Running from someone?” he asked.
She’d cringed, then shaken her head. When he asked for identification, she handed over her passport. It seemed to satisfy — him.
She thought they would either put her into jail or send her back home, or somehow arrange to do both. She’d been a foolish girl to dream of being like Senor DeCura; she was just a girl who washed floors and always would be.
The policeman left the room, then returned with a telephone. A long cord stretched out from behind it into the other room. He pulled a keyboard out from the shelf under the computer, then turned it on.
He fiddled with the keyboard. A picture appeared in the center of the screen. It had a whitish-brown tint, and the figure in it moved in jerks and starts. But as Calvina stared, she realized it was the woman she had seen in Ecuador — her angel.
“Hola,” said the woman.
“¿Hola?”
“Do you remember me?”
Calvina didn’t answer.
“Should I speak Spanish or Quechua?”
“Spanish.”
“You were in the hallway and I asked if you needed help. Am I right?”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Calvina, how did you get to the U.S.?”
“Two men helped me. One was older and very kind.”
“Did the other walk with a cane or crutches?”
“Yes. ”
“Can you describe them please?”
She did. When she was finished, the angel asked her about the truck she had been in. Calvina described it carefully.
“And the men used another car or truck, didn’t they?” said the angel.
“Yes,” said Calvina Agnese, nodding.
“Tell me about the last vehicle they got into,” said the angel, leaning closer to the screen.
132
The city was a confusing tangle of one-way streets, and Túcume feared that he would make the wrong turn every time he came to an intersection. They could hear police sirens in the distance but had seen no police cars since they had left the main roads. Their maps were not very detailed, they had gotten lost several times, and even Babin wasn’t sure exactly where they were.
But they were very close to the center of the city.
“That way, go that way,” said Babin, pointing to the right. “You see the sign? Independence Mall.”
Túcume did not see the sign but turned anyway. Babin leaned forward against the dashboard, looking past him.
“Turn!”
“Where?”
“Just turn.”
He did and found himself on a narrow one-lane street.
“There were police and military trucks on that street. We have to stick to the side roads.”
“Which way?”
“I don’t know,” said the Russian, studying his map.
* * *
Babin had trouble reading the map in the dark but feared doing anything that would attract any attention to them, including turning on an interior light as they drove. He’d mapped the route earlier, avoiding what looked like the larger streets. He wanted to be on Chestnut, he thought, but he couldn’t find it now.
Anywhere nearby would do. They were close to the famed Liberty Bell and the center of the city. His heart pounded crazily; he could feel the pulse throughout his body, throbbing in every bone and muscle.
“Take a right,” he said.
Túcume turned left. They went about halfway down the block, then saw it was a dead end.
“I told you right,” Babin said angrily.
“It was one-way.”
Babin rolled down the window and looked out. “Back up. Back up quickly before someone comes.”
“If you can do better, you drive.” Túcume opened the door and jumped out of the truck.
Babin cursed and pounded on the dashboard. He pulled out his pistol, then realized there was no sense going after the general. What difference would it make a few seconds from now whether the bomb exploded here or a few blocks away?
Babin left his gun in his lap and bent to retrieve the cell phone from the well between the seats. He picked it up, his fingers jittering.
He’d never felt anxiety like this before, the anticipation of revenge, the final payoff to Evans and the CIA people who had betrayed and maimed him.
He pressed his thumb on the button to activate the phone.
“No!” yelled Túcume, suddenly at the open passenger window. In the same instant, Babin felt the general’s fist hit him square in the side of the head.
133
“If the time they picked the girl up is even close to being right, they may be in Philadelphia already,” the state police captain told Dean as the helicopter became airborne.
The girl had described a long light-colored cargo van, with no windows. An Army surveillance aircraft and a Coast Guard plane normally used for work against drug smugglers recalibrated their search grids and began hunting for the vehicle in and around the city. At the same time, police and National Guard units moved to shut down the roads completely. The alert going out over
the police and Homeland Security networks added a description not only of Babin but of a man who was probably General Túcume. The Art Room was supplying several *.jpg files, digital photographs that could be shown on computer screens or printed out.
It was after 1:00 a.m. The city loomed in the distance, its well-lit skyline proclaiming that it would survive even this challenge. It had witnessed the birth of democracy more than two hundred years before and withstood the wrath of what was then the greatest army in the world. It would not cower tonight.
“If I were going to blow up Philadelphia,” Dean said to Daniels, “I’d make Congress Hall ground zero. That or the Liberty Bell. We should start searching there.”
“We will,” said the trooper, pushing his headset lower on his head. “They’re in the city by now,” Lia told the helicopter pilot. “We can help the search.”
“Uh, I have orders to get out of the blast area,” said the pilot. “Specifically, Red Sky—”
“Nah, that doesn’t apply to you,” said Karr, leaning forward. “Let’s go.”
“Sir—”
“We’re looking for a light-colored van,” Lia told the pilot, reaching for the controls to the forward-looking infrared radar.
134
Babin fell over to the driver’s side of the truck, the phone bouncing from his hand to the floor. He raged against the whirlpool of pain that enveloped him, screaming and flailing and refusing to give up, refusing to be cheated of his revenge. He rolled and tried to grip his assailant, remembered his gun, then saw the cell phone a few inches from his head; unsure which to grab, he hesitated, and in that moment the pain increased exponentially. He felt himself falling, surrounded by flames — he was back in the aircraft, back in the ambush, screaming at the pilot and yelling at himself, tricked by the CIA liar, murdered, murdered, murdered.
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