Farrell knew what his successor was thinking. Farrell hadn’t exactly been known as a stickler for Army regulations during his time as head of the J.S.O.C. But then nobody in the special warfare community was especially proficient at genuflecting before all the established bureaucratic icons. And Mayer was no exception.
“Okay, Sam.” The other man sighed. “If you’re so damned sure about this, I’ll send up a flare and we’ll see what scurries for cover.”
Farrell nodded silently. That was more than he had any real right to ask. He just hoped it would be enough.
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
EMPTY
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ALERT—FLASH
PRIORITY
From: Joint Special Operations Command Headquarters.
To: Director,
FBI
N: Reliable
HUMINT
indicates possible nuclear weapon contained in cargo aboard container ship
CARACO
SAVANNAH
. Vessel departed Wilhelmshaven,
GERMANY
, on
JUNE
5. Destination—
GALVESTON
,
TEXAS
. Weapon believed concealed inside smuggled Russian-make jet engines shipped as auxiliary generators. Urgently suggest immediate investigation.
JUNE
14
On Interstate 135, Near Salina, Kansas (D
MINUS
7)
Ninety miles north of Wichita, the driver of the big eighteenwheeler yawned and opened his window a crack. Cold early morning air whipped through the cab, rustling the papers and maps scattered across the dashboard. Feeling slightly more awake, he took his eyes off the road for just a moment and glanced back toward the cot rigged up in the space behind the two front seats.
The driver spoke up. “We’re almost to the junction.”
His partner rolled over and sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his own eyes. “Good.” He climbed forward into the passenger seat and peered out through the dirty windshield. “More of nothing?” he asked.
The driver nodded, looking out at the same flat landscape of fields and isolated farmhouses he’d been watching go by ever since the sun came up.
The two men had been driving almost continuously since leaving Galveston late the previous day—taking four-hour shifts behind the wheel, and stopping only for quick meals at the diners and fast food restaurants liberally sprinkled up and down American highways.
Whenever they stopped, one man always stayed behind to guard the truck and its precious cargo the five crates loaded at the Caraco warehouse.
A big green road sign loomed up on the shoulder of the highway—announcing that they were approaching the junction with Interstate 70. I-70 ran east and west across the central portion of the United States. Turning east would take them through St. Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, and eventually all the way to Baltimore. Going west would set them on a road toward the Colorado Rockies, Denver, and the whole network of highways crisscrossing the Western United States.
The big rig turned west and accelerated.
JUNE
15
Caraco Transport Division, Galveston, Texas
The loading door lock turned slowly—so slowly that the noise it made was almost impossible to hear just a few feet away. The second the latch cleared the frame, two men slammed the loading door up and whirled aside: Half a dozen black-clad figures instantly poured inside through the opening and fanned out across the warehouse. Each man carried an MP5 submachine gun at shoulder level, ready to fire.
Shouts of “FBI!” filled the building—echoing and then gradually trailing off as the assault force realized the warehouse was unoccupied.
And not only unoccupied. The whole building was completely empty—stripped down to the bare, freshly painted walls.
FBI
Special Agent Steve Sanchez heard the “allclear” over his tactical radio and entered the warehouse. He tugged off his gas mask and cradled it under his arm. His nose wrinkled at the overpowering smell of new paint permeating the building. The assault force leader saw him coming and joined him near the entrance to the building’s small front office.
“Nothing?” Sanchez asked.
“Nada,” the other agent replied. He nodded toward the vast empty open space around them. “You sure this is the right address, Steve?”
“Yeah.” Sanchez slowly scuffed at the concrete floor with the toe of his boot, adjusting to the new situation he and his team faced. It was a frustrating end to a very long night. The
EMPTY
QUIVER
alert passed to the Houston field office from D.C. had caught him at his son’s soccer game.
Rounding up the other agents assigned to the field office had taken time. Rousting enough port officials to confirm that the Caraco Savannah had offloaded cargo in Galveston had consumed several more hours. By the time his people had tracked the generators, or jet engines, or whatever they were, to this address on Meridian Street, it was well past midnight. Organizing this raid and securing the necessary warrants had pushed the clock forward to near dawn. To now.
And for what? Whatever had been stored in this warehouse was long gone.
Frowning, Sanchez turned to one of his subordinates. “Get the Caraco operations manager in here—right now!”
Frank Wilson, Caraco’s Galveston port operations manager, was a big man—nearly a head taller than Sanchez. He was fighting both hair loss and a growing potbelly. Right now he was also fighting sleep.
FBI
agents had come hammering at his door at four in the morning.
Sanchez swung toward the disheveled Caraco executive.
“Well, Mr. Wilson? Would you care to explain what was going on in here ?”
Wilson blinked, staring at the empty warehouse around him.
He turned innocent eyes on the
FBI
agent. “Explain what, Agent Sanchez?”
He shrugged. “As I tried telling your people earlier this morning, I’ve never set foot in this building in my life.”
“Now how is that possible?” Sanchez asked sarcastically. “You are the top dog for your company in Galveston, right?”
Wilson nodded. “That’s right. But Caraco’s a big corporation, Agent Sanchez. Very big. We’ve got more than half a dozen subsidiaries here in the States alone—and more overseas. I run the port operations for the company. We mostly handle shipments of refinery and pipeline equipment for our energy division.”
He shrugged and continued. “But this warehouse was leased by Caraco Transport. That’s a separate outfit entirely.”
“How separate ?”
“Different personnel. Different chain of command. Different procedures. Hell, different pay scales, for all I know!” Wilson said.
“That’s the way the higher-ups like it, Agent Sanchez. It’s part of the whole new wave in corporate management—less topdown direction, more bottom-up innovation.”
Sounds more like a recipe for potential chaos and ducked responsibility, Sanchez thought cynically. He was a Bureau man through and through, and good or bad the
FBI
ran on procedure and centralized control. He tried again. “Did you ever meet any of the people working at this facility, Mr. Wilson?”
The Caraco executive shook his balding head ponderously.
“Nope. But then I never had any reason to. Like I said, we’re separate outfits—and I’ve had a ton of work on my plate these past few weeks. We’ve got a big contract to build a pipeline in Central Asia coming up.”
“What about any of your other employees, sir? Did any of them have any contact with the people running this warehouse?”
“You’d have to ask them that question, Agent Sanchez. I sure don’t know.” The big man shrugged again. “I suppose some of my guys might have run across these folks in the bars after work, but I don’t make it my business to pry.”
“I can see that.”
“Look, Agent Sanchez,” Wilson said kindly. “If you want to know more about this operation, why don’t you contact Caraco Transport’s headquarters directly? I’m sure they’d be happy to answer your questions.”
“I’ll do that, Mr. Wilson,” the
FBI
agent replied. “Any idea where exactly that might be?”
“Sure. They’re based in Cairo.”
“In Egypt?” Sanchez heard himself ask.
Wilson chuckled. “Like I said, we’re a big company.”
Already imagining the tangle of official forms, mounting phone bills, and foreign language translators he was about to wade into, Sanchez signaled one of his subordinates to take the Caraco executive away and get a written statement from him.
He turned back to face the warehouse. Caraco employees or not, he knew the characters who’d leased this place weren’t just model tenants when they’d stripped this place down to the bare floor. They’d systematically tried to destroy any trace of their presence. Nobody did that without a damned good reason—like hiding illegal activity.
The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was: What kind of illegal activity? An
FBI
addendum added to the
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alert questioned J.S.O.C’s
HUMINT
source—implying the goods being smuggled were far more likely to be some kind of illegal drugs than nuclear weapons.
Well, Sanchez sure hoped the higher-ups in the Hoover Building were right, and the Army was wrong. Missing a big shipment of coke, heroin, or pot was bad. Missing a smuggled nuke … He waved his section leaders over and started issuing orders.
“Okay, let’s start tearing this place apart. Check the Dumpsters.
See when the trash was last collected. Calder, you start interviewing the businesses nearby. Find out what they’ve seen. I want every license number of every car or truck that’s ever been parked within a hundred yards of this place. And get the physical evidence teams in here ASAP?
An agent speaking into a cell-phone caught his eye. “Do you want NEST?” she asked.
The highly trained specialists of the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team were standing by on high alert.
If the
FBI
raid had turned up any evidence at all of illicit nuclear material,
NEST
would have come swooping in to find the stuff and remove it safely.
Sanchez shook his head. “Tell
NEST
there’s nothing for them to do here.”
He didn’t know whether that would make the
DOE
folks happy or unhappy.
Sanchez moved outside—away from the fresh-paint stink and the maddeningly empty building. For now, he suspected they’d run into a dead-end. The Caraco Savannah herself was halfway across the Atlantic, bound for Germany again. It would be days before her crew could be questioned.
Whoeever these people were, he thought, they’re pros. But nobody could vanish into thin air. They’d made the job of tracking them harden-but not impossible. If he had to, he’d interview everyone in Galveston until they found somebody who could give them a name or a description.
Hell, if need be, he and his agents would scrape that goddamned paint off the walls a square inch at a time.
Sanchez narrowed his eyes. Somewhere, somehow, they’d find something.
It might take days, maybe even weeks, but he and his fellow
FBI
agents would find the trail. He pushed the thought that it might already be too late far to the back of his mind.
JUNE
15
Middleburg, Virginia (D
MINUS
6)
Prince Ibrahim al Saud’s habit after morning prayers was to check his e-mail, listen to the
BBC
news, and get caught up on the night’s developments in his various business enterprises. He never forgot that the world kept moving while he slept.
The private study in his Middleburg home was actually a suite, with an office for his personal secretary, a meeting room wired for satellite teleconferencing, and his own palatial inner sanctum.
Ibrahim’s desk faced a wide picture window that overlooked the lush, green Virginia countryside. Bulletproof glass ensured his personal security. Double panes and vacuum sealing offered protection for his personal secrets—thwarting any attempted hightech eavesdropping.
Like the rest of the house, the study reflected his heritage, position, and wealth. Priceless handwoven Hamadan rugs covered the floor—matched by other rugs on the walls. Dozens of precise, colorful geometric patterns covered the rags and wall hangings, each hiding a single flaw that served to remind the viewer that only Allah could attain true perfection. Tables of beaten, handworked brass held bowls of fruit and dates, and a coffee urn.
Ibrahim scanned the front page of the New York Times. Nothing of great interest, he thought. Only one item caught his eye.
Algeria’s Islamic rebels had slaughtered another four French nuns—this time in the capital city itself. He made a mental note to funnel more money into the rebel leadership’s secret accounts.
Even civil wars were expensive, and good work should be rewarded.
The phone rang. He snatched it up. “Yes.”
“This is Reichardt. We’ve had some trouble.”
Ibrahim slid the newspaper aside. “I’m listening, Herr Reichardt.”
“The
FBI
raided our Galveston facility an hour or so ago.”
Ibrahim felt a cold calm settle over him. “And?”
“The Americans found nothing, Highness,” Reichardt assured him. “I took the precaution of accelerating our operation there two days ago.
I’ve prepared a full report.”
Ibrahim swiveled in his chair to face the low table behind his desk.
It held a highspeed fax machine. “Send it.”
Within moments of his order, the fax machine clicked and hummed—spitting out several typed sheets. Reichardt remained silent during the transmission, and Ibrahim quickly skimmed each page of the report before dropping them, one at a time, into the shredder next to the machine.
Reichardt’s report was thorough at least. It summarized everything the ex-Stasi officer had learned about the progress and intent of the FBI’s investigation. But very little of the news was good.
Caraco Transport’s Cairo headquarters reported receiving an urgent query from the American embassy about the Galveston warehouse. They were requesting instructions. And the master of the Caraco Savannah had radioed that he had received orders from both the American and German authorities to proceed at his best possible speed to Wilhelmshaven—where agents of the two governments would board his ship and interview his crew.