Jonathan had exchanged the blue of the Persian Gulf for the brown of the Negev Desert. The F-18/A landed at exactly twelve noon at Tel Nof Air Force Base south of Rehovot, Israel. The aircraft taxied past the control tower, past a squadron of F-16 Falcons, and past a dozen hangars, continuing to the farthest tip of the airfield. The pilot pushed back the canopy but did not kill the engine. A ground crew of one waited beside a white utility truck. Without delay, he positioned a ladder against the fuselage and helped Jonathan unbuckle and descend from the cockpit. The pilot slotted the canopy, pushed the plane through a tight 180-degree turn, and took off to the south. The ground crewman climbed back into his truck and drove away. Sixty seconds after setting foot on the tarmac, Jonathan stood alone, wind peppering his face with dust and grit.
And then, in the distance, a glint of blue beneath the midday sun. An automobile approached and stopped next to him. Two men got out.
“Welcome to Israel,” said the driver, who was short and stocky and had curly black hair.
The other man was short and stocky and bald, and reminded Jonathan of an artillery shell. He held open the rear door.
“Are you Frank Connor’s friends?” Jonathan asked.
The answer was an incline of the shaved head toward the open door. Jonathan got in.
They drove for an hour, climbing out of the desert on a series of long switchbacks, and then descending toward the coast and the Mediterranean Sea. Road signs read, “Tel Aviv,” “Haifa,” and “Herzliya.” Jonathan tried several more times to engage the men in conversation, but neither responded.
The car left the highway at the town of Herzliya. Five minutes later they pulled into the forecourt of a small, whitewashed building. A sign on the facade advertised it as the Hotel Beach Plaza, but there was no beach to speak of, rather a stone promontory plummeting into the sea and below, at water’s edge, a jetty of sharp, inhospitable rocks.
They passed through the lobby and went directly to the elevator. No one at the front desk uttered a word, or even glanced in his direction. Check-in had been taken care of. Jonathan’s room was on the third floor. In the hall, the men handed Jonathan the card key. The driver stood with crossed arms, looking Jonathan up and down. “Suit, forty-two long. Pants, thirty-four by thirty-four. Shoes, size twelve.”
“Thirteen,” said Jonathan.
“Boats,” said the artillery shell.
The men left without another word.
Jonathan noted that the door to his room was ajar. He knocked and pushed it open. “Hello?”
A cleaning maid was dusting the night table. “One moment,” she said in accented English. “Almost done.”
Jonathan entered the room, feeling strangely shy without any bags. “It’s fine,” he said. “You can go. I’d like to get some rest.”
The maid smiled and promptly ignored him, returning her attention to an already immaculate desk and countertop.
Jonathan sidestepped her and opened the glass doors that fed onto a narrow balcony. The temperature was a balmy seventy degrees. A few hundred meters up the coast, the rocks gave way to sand and he could see several sunbathers lying on colorful towels. A gull swooped by, cai -ing lustily. The wind was steady, and he observed a line of sailboats tacking against the current. He closed his eyes, enjoying the sun, and realized that he didn’t know what day it was. Friday? Saturday? The last week of his life had woven itself into a violent tapestry. He saw Amina stretched out on the table and Hamid drawing his blade across Abdul Haq’s throat. He saw the top of the Ranger’s head blown clean off and the hardened captain named Brewster shuddering as the machine-gun bullets stitched his chest, and then Hamid again, as he dropped from Jonathan’s grasp. Jonathan jolted, as if awakening from a nightmare. Opening his eyes, he saw that his arm was extended, his hand still searching for Hamid’s. Yet even as he stared out at the diamonds sparkling on the ocean, the pleasant breeze ruffling his hair, he felt a pair of black kohl-lined eyes challenging him from beyond the horizon, silently declaring him a coward and vowing revenge.
Jonathan walked inside, closing the doors behind him. Happily, the maid had left. He checked that the thermostat was set to low, then drew the curtains. The air conditioner rumbled to life, and he raised a hand to check that the air pouring from the vent was cool. His time in Afghanistan had accustomed him to sleeping with a cold head and warm body. He took off his watch and laid it by the bed. He had no idea what the agenda was, but no doubt Connor had everything planned out. For the moment, he was too tired to care. Still standing, he removed his pants and his underwear. He thought about taking a shower, then decided against it. The bed was too inviting. He pulled back the sheets.
Without warning, a sharp blow pounded his kidney. He gasped, feeling the presence of someone close behind him. He spun and saw a flash of powder blue, but before he could turn halfway, iron hands clutched his arm and threw him to the ground. He landed belly down, his left arm wrenched behind him in a police armlock.
“Never turn your back on a stranger.”
“Let go,” grunted Jonathan, his face mashed against the carpet. “You’re breaking my arm.”
“Did you see me leave the room?”
Jonathan recognized the accented English. “No,” he managed out of the side of his mouth.
“Did you notice if there was a service cart in the hallway? See my nametag?”
“No.”
“What about downstairs? Many guests milling about? Lots of cars in the parking lot?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Any reason why I should be servicing your room so late in the afternoon if the entire hotel is empty?”
“Ummm… no.”
“So are you naive or just plain stupid?” A twist of the arm emphasized each adjective. “Never trust anyone.”
“Get off of me.”
“Make me. You’re a strong man. Go ahead. I weigh one hundred and twenty pounds. Surely you can free yourself.”
Jonathan struggled to flip her off his back. Then he tried to get his right arm beneath him and raise himself to his knees. He was no martial arts expert, but over the years he’d picked up a little jujitsu here, some Krav Maga there. And he was strong. Yet his every attempt was stymied with a hold more painful than the last. “Enough,” he said, his cheek wedged against the floor once again.
“Look around you. Ask yourself why, where, how, what if. Don’t just look but see. Observe.”
His eyes focused on the carpet less than an inch away. He observed that it was blue, with green speckles.
The armlock relaxed. The weight on his back lifted. Jonathan lay still, catching his breath. The maid walked to the curtains but, true to her advice, never completely took her eyes from him. “Get up and put something on.”
Jonathan pushed himself to his feet and limped into the bathroom. By the time he returned with a towel wrapped around his waist, the maid had removed her apron and let down her hair. She was tall, more handsome than pretty, maybe thirty-five years old, with weathered skin, blue eyes, and black hair as straight as straw.
Often Jonathan was able to guess a person’s nationality at first glance. Not her. She could be American or French, Argentine or Swedish. The perennial wanderer in him sensed a kindred spirit. Like him, she was at home anywhere in the world. She wore little makeup, and her lips were chapped. Her arms were toned, with the veins running down chiseled biceps. She didn’t need to be a black belt to hold him down-she had enough raw strength. Her nails were trimmed, her fingers thicker than most women might like. It was no wonder the jab to his kidneys had hurt so badly. He also sensed that, like him, she preferred life away from the madding crowd, and that time spent in cities was a down payment against the next foray into the wild. His flash of perception troubled him. He’d felt the same way about Emma.
“What happened to the lei and a welcome cocktail?” he asked.
“This isn’t a holiday, Dr. Ransom. School is now in session. We don’t have much time, and from what I just saw, we have far too much work to do. Now
get some rest. I’ll be by at six to take you to dinner. Your clothes will be here by then.”
“Do you have a message for me from Frank Connor? He told me I’d hear from him.”
“Who?” The blue eyes bore down on him. It was not a name to be said aloud.
“No one,” said Jonathan, backpedaling. “I was mistaken.”
“I thought so.” The woman came closer and extended her hand. “I’m Danni. I’ll be your trainer.”
18
It was called “the Bubble,” but the official name for the soundproof chamber on the third floor of the Rayburn Office Building, one block from the Capitol, where testimony graded classified or higher was given to the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, was a SCIF, or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. The Bubble looked no different from a large, windowless office. It had four walls, a ceiling, and the usual painful fluorescent lighting. But the differences were there. The floor, walls, and ceiling were constructed of three-inch-thick cement and lined with soundproof acoustic tiles. To enter, one passed through a double set of alarmed doors and stepped up a half foot, the distance necessary to separate the Bubble from the original floor. A low level of white noise played constantly to frustrate any eavesdropping device. Finally, the Bubble benefited from its own power supply, connected to an independent generator in the building’s basement. Once the Bubble’s door closed, no sound could get in and no sound could get out.
“Hello, Joe,” said Connor, ducking his head inside the door of the SCIF. “Got a minute?”
The Honorable Joseph Tecumseh Grant, representative of the eleventh district of Nebraska and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Intelligence, stopped putting the day’s testimony into his satchel. “Frank? That you? What are you doing out of your coffin? I thought you spooks only came out at night.”
“Must have me confused with someone else.” Connor stood by the door as the last few stragglers left the chamber. “I’m a mortal like anyone else. Haven’t you heard? We do things aboveboard now. In daylight.”
Joe Grant crossed the room with alacrity, one hand extended for the shake. His birth certificate stated that he was sixty-five years old, but the combination of his lopsided grin and the thatch of shoe-polish black hair hanging over his forehead gave him the air of a man half his age. “By golly, it’s been a while,” he said, gripping Connor’s hand as if he were the last voter in a tight contest. “I think it was March, after that blowup in Zurich. Your confirmation hearing, right?”
“That sounds about right,” said Connor.
It was a memory he could do without. The hearing was a referendum more on Division than on who should head it next. The level of sanctimonious bullshit had reached historic heights. Never again could a covert agency be allowed to overstep its boundaries so grossly (true, thought Connor), or meddle in the political affairs of another nation (false), or take human life without a two-thirds majority vote of Congress (pure and utter nonsense). Yet when presented as the man to best repair Division’s tattered reputation, Connor had been met with a barrage of disbelieving stares. Despite his sterling service record, the portly man in the wrinkled gray suit with his ruddy cheeks and cascade of chins did not meet expectations. For all the talk about reining in Division, it was painfully apparent that the august members of the House subcommittee wanted a carbon copy of the square-jawed, blue-eyed, uniform-wearing patriot who had nearly taken the world to the brink of nuclear conflagration. Or, at the least, they didn’t want Connor. The final vote had been 5-4 in favor, and had required considerable arm-twisting behind the scenes.
Still grinning, Grant put his hand on Connor’s shoulder and guided him to the tables at one end of the room.
“You know, I saw a line item tucked away in that last defense spending bill that looked like it might have had your signature,” said Grant, perching himself on the edge of the table. “A fifty-million-dollar request for a Counterintelligence Resource Analysis Program. C-R-A-P. That you?”
“I’m not that clever, Joe.”
“The heck you’re not.”
The last staffer left the room, closing the door behind her. Without bidding, Grant flipped a switch under the table, activating the lock. A subtle hum was instantly audible. The Bubble was secure.
“So, Frank,” said Grant, losing the smile, “why do I get the impression that I should not be happy to see you?”
“Broken arrow,” said Connor. “You remember what that means, don’t you?”
“The signal a pilot gives if he loses a nuke. Everyone knows that. You don’t need me to tell you.”
“How often has it been given?”
“Luckily, not very often. That’s not an incident you can hide. It’s a matter of public record.”
“I know about the public record.”
In fact, Connor had memorized the details of each incident.
March 10, 1956. A B-47 bomber carrying two nuclear cores, or detonation devices containing fissile uranium, vanished during a routine flight over the Mediterranean. A thorough search turned up no trace of either of the weapons.
June 25, 1957. A C-124 transport flying off the eastern seaboard jettisoned two nuclear weapons without their radioactive material after experiencing mechanical problems. Neither weapon was found.
February 5, 1958. Following a midair collision between a B-47 bomber and an F-86 Sabre fighter, a nuclear weapon without its fissile core was lost in the waters of Wassaw Sound near the mouth of the Savannah River, not far from Tybee Island, Georgia. Again, no trace of the weapon was found.
January 24, 1961. A B-52 bomber carrying two fully operational nuclear weapons broke apart in midair over Goldsboro, North Carolina. Both bombs were equipped with parachutes for this eventuality. Only one parachute opened. The second bomb broke apart on impact. After it was retrieved and examined, the military determined that five of six safety switches had failed. A single switch prevented the hydrogen bomb from detonating its twenty-kiloton fissile core.
The most famous occurred above the town of Palomares, Spain, when a B-52 collided with a KC-135 tanker during midair refueling. Four hydrogen bombs plummeted to the ground. The high explosives in two exploded on impact, resulting in a “dirty bomb” that spread radiation across a two-square-kilometer area. A third was recovered safely, and the fourth fell into the Mediterranean Sea and was recovered intact after a two-month search.
“I didn’t come all the way up here to talk to you about something on the books,” said Connor. “I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on any incidents that didn’t make it into the public record.”
“Why are you asking me? A lil’ old congressman from Nebraska?”
“I think you know the answer to that question.”
Grant leaned back in his chair, pushing the hair off his forehead. Prior to seeking elected office, he had spent thirty years in the air force. He’d started off flying B-52s and ended up a major general assigned to the Strategic Air Command, or SAC, as it was better known. One important element of SAC’s mandate involved overseeing the nation’s airborne nuclear arsenal, including interfacing with NEST (the Nuclear Emergency Search Team), which was tasked with locating and retrieving lost nuclear materials.
Connor went on: “Anything you want to tell me about? You have my word it’ll stay between us.”
“Sure, there have been unrecorded incidents,” said Grant. “We just called out one of our squadron chiefs for allowing a few of his planes to overfly the States with nukes aboard. But have we lost a nuke since the seventies? No sir, we have not. You have my word.”
“Scout’s honor?”
Grant gave the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. “Cross my heart. Now it’s your turn, Frank. Spill.”
Connor helped himself to a glass of water sitting on the table. He was obliged to give Grant something, but he didn’t want to tip his hand. “Got wind of something turning up on the black market,” he began cautiously. “Just a rumor, mind you, but one of my operators thought enough of th
e source that he passed it on.”
“Go on.”
“There may be an American cruise missile for sale.”
“What kind? Tomahawk? ALCM?”
“A big one. An air-launched cruise missile. Swept-back fins. Whole package.”
“You said it was a rumor. Has your operator seen this thing?”
“There’s a photo making the rounds. Who knows if it’s real?”
Grant appeared unfazed by the disclosure. “If it is real, then the missile will be carrying a conventional warhead. I wouldn’t worry.”
“So it’s not the other thing?”
“A nuke? Are you kidding me?” Grant laughed as if this were the most far-fetched notion he’d heard in years and Connor was a damned fool for even considering it. “No way we’d lose a nuclear-tipped cruise without all hell breaking loose.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Connor. “Apparently it’s an old one. Maybe twenty years or so. Still, word is that the broker is claiming it’s a nuke.”
Grant began to tap his foot. “He’s bullshitting. There is no way on God’s green earth that anyone could get ahold of a nuclear-tipped ALCM.”
“Glad to know it, Joe.”
“Where did you say this thing’s for sale?”
“Pakistan,” said Connor. “Right on the Afghan border. Apparently someone stumbled across it high in the mountains. We’re talking very remote. It had been buried for years.”
At the mention of the word Pakistan, Grant froze. His foot stopped tapping, and the animated face turned waxen. “Now hold on, Frank. Your story’s changing awful fast. Are you telling me that someone actually has this thing? I mean, physically possesses it?”
Connor took his time answering, observing the steady blanching of Grant’s ageless features. “Not that I know of,” he said finally. “Like I said, there’s a photo, that’s all.”
“Just a photo?”
“Yeah.”
Grant regained his color. “Sounds like quite some story.”
“That’s why I’m here. You were a B-52 pilot. You used to fly around with those things in your payload every day. It’s impossible, right? We couldn’t lose a nuclear-tipped cruise missile and just forget about it?”
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