Fallout

by James W. Huston

  “How will I know?”

  “You will know.”

  “How?”

  Gorgov’s voice lost its friendly tone. “Will you do what I have asked, or will you not? You are free to tell me that you will not. I will understand completely. But then your sister’s husband will be very sad indeed, and your mother will wonder how you could have met such a horrible end.”

  “You are scum, Gorgov. You are a disgrace—”

  “Your opinion of me does not matter in the least,” Gorgov interrupted. “I want to know whether you will do what you are told!”

  Vlad was cornered. “Yes, I will do what you ask.”

  “I knew I could count on you. You are a man of your word. Yes?”

  Vlad clenched his teeth. “Yes.”

  * * *

  Luke squinted at the dark brown stain on the concrete in front of the hangar, a dried pool of blood left from one of the guards. He noticed the bullet marks on the hangar door behind the stain, where the jeep had been. Shame washed over him. He’d never even met those guards. Too busy. He’d never even inspected the security in the early-morning hours, as they changed shifts at 0600. Too busy. He hadn’t even given a second’s thought to the security of having Russian missiles on the base, let alone fighters that could do a lot of damage if united with those missiles. It had never occurred to him. Too busy grading his private runway for his biplane fantasy. He hadn’t done his first job first.

  Yellow crime-scene tape was draped from one stanchion to another in front of the hangar, around several of the airplanes, and across the doors to the hangar. There were bullet holes in airplanes and in the walls. The FBI had been through the hangar with a fine-tooth comb. They’d searched every computer, every file, every desk, and every residence within twenty-four hours of the attack. According to Katherine, they hadn’t found anything, at least nothing they were talking to her about.

  Katherine stood next to him, her hands in the pockets of her maternity jumper. “How could they live here for three weeks when they hated us that much?”

  “So no one would suspect them.”

  “I’m really sorry, Luke,” she said with deep sadness.

  “Like you had anything to do with it.”

  “I’m just sorry it happened. We had a great thing going.”

  Her use of the past tense sliced through him like a hot knife. He was about to respond when they heard a car. They turned to look and saw two white sedans pulling up. Helen Li got out of one and walked to them. She looked at the scene, then down at the brown stain Luke had been staring at. She’d already seen it. She nodded and looked at Luke and Katherine. “Morning,” she said. “Somewhere we can talk?”

  “Hi,” Luke replied. “Sure. In the ready room, topside.” They all followed him as he headed up the stairs. All the decor, all the aviation paraphernalia seemed somehow excessive and superficial under the circumstances. Vlad, Stamp, Crumb, and Brian were sitting aimlessly in the ready room. They appeared beaten. Vlad looked away from Luke as they came into the room.

  Helen went to the front of the room. She was glad they were all there. She wanted them all to hear her. The other three special agents stood at the back of the room. “Let’s go over this again,” she said. “Everything Riaz Khan did while he was here.”

  “We’ve done this.”

  “And we’re going to keep doing it.”

  “He started out aggressively and went down from there,” Crumb said. “He was an asshole, which, if he was going to do what he’s now done, you wouldn’t expect. You’d expect him to try to be nice, at least not to rock the boat. He got here and started being an asshole right away.”

  “What else?”

  “He got us to help him plan his whole strike,” Crumb replied.

  Helen raised her eyebrows. “How?”

  “He came in here insisting that we teach him more about air-to-ground. Dropping bombs. That’s not really what we’re here for. We’re here to teach air-to-air combat. Shooting down other airplanes. He wouldn’t hear it. He insisted that we do more air-to-ground. So we tried to accommodate him. We even showed him how we do strike planning.”

  “What planning? What did you help him plan?” Helen asked with intense interest. “Was it the strike on San Onofre?”

  Luke hadn’t even considered the possibility that not only had he and his crew allowed the Pakistanis to prepare right under their noses, but that they had planned the strike for them. Such a thought was intolerable. “I don’t think so. It was in the wrong direction—”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we were talking about flying east, or southeast, at sunrise, and the problem of the sun in your face—”

  “Go on.”

  “And the distance was wrong,” Luke replied, remembering the planning session as if it were yesterday. “And the attack we were planning was a very low-level attack, against a defended target, in enemy territory, like something into India. They flew against San Onofre at midaltitude, as if they were going against an unsuspecting target—which they were—trying to look like routine commercial traffic.”

  Helen retreated into a thought she wasn’t sharing. A thick silence enveloped the room, full of pregnant implications and fear. She looked up suddenly. “Draw the route you helped plan,” she said to Luke.

  Luke stood, picked up a black marker, and took off its cap. He turned toward the board to start drawing, then turned back to Helen, who had sat down expectantly in the first row of the ready-room chairs. “What exactly is the point of this?”

  “I’m interested.”

  “All the airplanes crashed. All the pilots but one were killed.”

  “But Khan himself wasn’t killed. The other pilots were expendable.”

  Luke and the others immediately grasped what she was implying. “You do still think he has something else in mind?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “You know where he is,” Luke said, reading her face.

  Helen looked at the other FBI agents. “Maybe.”

  Crumb asked, “What the hell else could he have in mind? He’s done more damage than any one person has ever done!”

  “We’re beginning to believe that San Onofre was part of a much larger plan.”

  Crumb asked, “Against the United States?”

  “We don’t know. But against somebody.” Helen was fighting with herself about asking them the next question. “What if someone has heard him planning a mission for three days from now that includes carrying laser-guided bombs?”

  “What? Where did you get that? You do know where he is!”

  “We think so.”

  “Where?” Crumb asked, sitting forward.

  “Air Force base just outside Karachi.”

  “Why don’t you get him?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning anything. Kidnap him. Kill him. Whatever you can do,” Crumb asked. “Hell, I’ll go kill him if you’ll get me onto the base and make me look like a Pakistani for about five damn minutes.”

  “He’s not there as Riaz Khan. He’s there as another Major, which is who he probably is.”

  “A new identity?”

  Helen pondered how much to divulge. “He has resumed his original identity. We think.”

  “The whole Riaz Khan thing was fake?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then how can the Pakistanis say they didn’t know anything about it?”

  “The false papers go back several years. Unless they looked into it deeply, they would have no particular way of knowing.”

  “But all by—”

  “The point is, he is a Major in the Air Force, and is apparently about to do something in the next seventy-two hours with laser-guided bombs. We’re not quite sure what.”

  “In Pakistan?” Vlad asked, listening intently.

  “We’re not sure.” Helen looked at the chart of the world on the wall next to the board. “Would it be possible to attack an aircraft carrier with laser-guided bombs?”
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  “Whose?” Luke asked.

  “Ours.”

  “One of our carriers?” Luke was horrified.

  “Yes. Headed toward Pakistan. They were scheduled to conduct a friendly port visit, but now almost certainly won’t—”

  “You can hit a carrier with a laser-guided bomb,” Luke said, “but they’d have to be out of their minds to try. They’d never get close enough. If we even suspected they were coming, they wouldn’t have a prayer—”

  “Wait a minute,” Vlad said suddenly, jumping up from his chair. He crossed to the back of the room and started looking through a stack of aeronautical charts until he found one of Pakistan. “Where did you say he is right now?” He was practically panting.

  “We’re not sure.”

  “You said you think you have found him. Where is this person?” Vlad said with a demanding tone.

  “At an Air Force base. Near Karachi.”

  Vlad unfolded the chart of Pakistan and began searching for Karachi and the surrounding airfields. He brought it to the front of the room and hung it from the special clips over the board.

  “What are you thinking?” Luke asked.

  “This man is working with big agenda. He did not want to die here because the full mission is not accomplished. Otherwise he would have turned and fought Luke. I have no doubt. It must have killed him to run away. He is going to do something else.”

  The others rose to look at the chart over Vlad’s shoulder.

  “Like what?” Brian asked, his mind spinning.

  “He wanted to demonstrate his anger toward America. You did not support them after we—the Soviet Union—left Afghanistan. They turned to France for submarines and airplanes. But I believe his focus is somewhere else. He is—what do you say?—obsession . . .”

  “Obsessed,” Crumb offered.

  “Yes, obsessed with India. We have to look at India.” He grabbed a pen, measured three hundred miles from the Air Force base near Karachi, and drew an arc. His eyes darted across the chart until he recognized one area. “Chort!” he exclaimed. “Right here!” he said, pounding his finger into the chart again and again. “The Kakrapar nuclear plant! Here, in Surat! It is three hundred miles southeast of a forward-deployment airfield east of Karachi.” Vlad looked at the others. “He is trying to start a war between Pakistan and India. There is a large group of people in Pakistan that want a war with India more than anything else. They will do anything to achieve it. It is all about Kashmir. About Islam against Hinduism. Do not forget, there are many hard-line Islam with ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan who have been waiting for this moment for years. This is it!” Vlad exclaimed. “We talked about this all the time in Russia. It was big headache with the countries that border Russia on the south.” He was breathing hard, his face full of satisfaction and fear.

  “He may be right,” Brian said, nodding as he scratched his head. “He may be completely right.”

  Helen asked, “But how can you know all this?”

  “I have flown many times with the Indian Air Force. I was part of the team that delivered the MiG-29s from Russia to India when they bought them. I have spent many days in northwestern India training the Indian Air Force pilots to fly the MiG-29. I heard all the stories of the war that will come between Pakistan and India. They both expect it. It is just a matter of when.”

  “I need to pass this on to our intelligence people. They will decide whether to pass it on to India or not,” Helen said.

  Vlad was already headed toward the door. “This man must be stopped. If they go to war, it will be terrible. India has publicly promised never to use nuclear weapons first, and Pakistan has refused to make the same promise.

  “Believe me,” Vlad said. “The Indian Air Force is no match for the Pakistanis. The Pakistanis have more flight hours, they are better trained, and now Khan has been trained by TOPGUN instructors. They will not be able to stop him.”

  “India has more airplanes,” Brian reminded Vlad.

  “Yes, and poorly trained pilots. Plus the Pakistanis have F-16s and new Mirage aircraft. The Indians fly some MiG-29s, but mostly older MiG-21s and -23s. They often fly them into the ground because of poor maintenance.”

  “So what now?” Stamp asked.

  “I don’t know,” Vlad answered, assuming a position of leadership. “There isn’t much time. Seventy-two hours from when?” he asked Helen.

  “From yesterday.”

  “That means we have forty-eight hours,” Luke said. “If we warn India, and they start moving their Air Force, Pakistan will claim it as provocation.”

  “Yes, yes, exactly.” Vlad nodded. “They need something much more clever than that.” He looked at Helen and Luke. “Perhaps I could call some people I know. They have certain contacts within the Indian government. They might be able to suggest something.”

  Helen looked at him. She studied his face. “Call them.” She then turned to Luke. “One of our most difficult problems, of course, is confirming his identity. Pakistan continues to be outraged at the conduct of its former Air Force officer. We’re not so sure. But we need to identify him. Can you think of anything that would help us?”

  “He wouldn’t let us take any pictures . . .”

  “So you said. We went over his room for fingerprints. There weren’t any. None. Wiped completely clean. Just like the cars we found in the desert.”

  “Fingerprints?” Katherine asked suddenly. “Luke, the vase!”

  “What vase?”

  “The Indian vase at our house!” She looked at Helen. “It’s an ornamental Paiute vase. He was fascinated by it and picked it up—”

  “What is it made of?” one of the other FBI agents asked.

  “Clay.”

  He looked at Helen, who nodded. “We need to dust your house,” he said to Katherine. “Now.”

  23

  Renee opened her eyes to peer at the blue dial of the digital watch she always wore when not trying to look like a Pakistani woman. It was two o’clock in the morning. The knock was unmistakable and insistent. Her heart started to race. She’d never before been bothered at her apartment at night. She quickly reviewed what was in her apartment, what might implicate her in anything, but she knew it was clean. This was just where she slept. It wasn’t where she changed before going out into the city; it wasn’t where she kept her weapons, or her brown contacts, or dirty fingernails. It wasn’t where she wrote down anything in a report, or typed anything that anyone would care about, or had the computer on which she drafted e-mails. She knew she was clean. It was what allowed her to sleep at all.

  She wrapped a robe around her nightgown and walked barefoot to the door. She looked through the peephole. “Yes?” she asked, turning on the light. She could see a large man standing at her door, with three others standing behind him.

  “Open the door,” he demanded in Urdu.

  “What? I don’t understand,” she replied in English.

  “Of course you do,” he said, still in Urdu.

  “What?” she said, ignoring him.

  He switched to English reluctantly. “Open the door, now.”

  “Why should I?” she said, implying offense. “It is two o’clock in the morning!”

  “Because I have told you to! If you don’t, I will kick it in.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Internal Security. Open the door immediately!” The ISI. The Pakistani Secret Police, FBI, and CIA all in one.

  She took her eye away from the door and looked around the room for some solution. Her chest heaved. She turned back to the door and yelled, “I am an American citizen! You have no right to enter my residence. I will go straight to the ambass—”

  He stepped back and kicked.

  She jumped back in time to avoid the door that tore away from the cheap frame and burst open.

  “Stop!” she screamed. “You can’t do this!”

  The man struck her and knocked her down on the floor, her face pressed against the hard tile. He climbe
d on top of her and pulled her arms behind her. The other three men entered the apartment and began tearing it apart. “You are under arrest for espionage,” the man hissed into her ear, his lips touching her hair. “Did you think we were stupid?” he then yelled, handcuffing her and pulling her to her feet.

  * * *

  The special agents and crime-scene technicians swarmed all over Luke and Katherine’s house: the bathrooms, the kitchen, the living room—everywhere.

  Luke stood next to Helen watching as one latex-gloved FBI agent dusted the coffee table in the living room. “He wasn’t even in this room,” Luke told him.

  “We do everything,” he replied.

  Luke shrugged and spoke to Helen without looking at her. “Think it’s him in Pakistan?”

  “We’ll know in just a few minutes.”

  “How?”

  “Our technician has the other prints with him.”

  “Whose?”

  She just watched the tech do his work.

  Luke realized she wasn’t going to answer. “How’d you get them?” he asked, amazed.

  Helen still didn’t reply. She reached for her cell phone, which was vibrating on her belt, and put it to her ear. “Li,” she said.

  Luke watched as she frowned, listening to whoever was on the other end.

  “Where is he?” She listened intently. “No, don’t wait for me. I’ll never get there in time,” she said, glancing at her watch. “Pick him up now. If you think he’s willing to talk at all, call me, and I’ll be there. . . . No, we’ve got to keep going here. Call me as soon as you bring him in.” She signed off, closed the phone, and replaced it on her hip.

  “What’s that about?” Luke asked.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Is it related to this?”

  “The Undersecretary.”

  “Where is he?” Luke asked.

  She ignored him.

  The FBI technician had set up shop on the dining room table. He had cases opened, special lights set up, microscopes, and a laptop computer. The tapes that he’d used to pull fingerprints off the pot were carefully placed on slides to be scanned, digitized, and visually examined. He typed on the keyboard and brought up two images: the fingerprints he’d just taken off the mask and prints from another location that were already stored digitally on his laptop. He examined the two side by side, then adjusted the size of the new print to match the other one, overlaid the new print on the stored print. The correlation was nearly perfect. He didn’t have an entire print from the Paiute pot, but the one they got was 80 percent complete. He glanced at Helen, who was watching him carefully out of the corner of her eye. He put the first slide under the bright light of the double microscope, then put the other next to it in the second slide platform. He examined them together with the double eyepieces.