Fire Hawk (57 page)

But he knew damn well that any satisfaction he got from that would be short-lived. It would solve nothing. Particularly not the immediate problem of Carole being in Washington tomorrow with Patty and Dean, walking into unquantifiable danger like tens of thousands of other innocents. Their train from Manhattan was due in at twelve-thirty. Somehow he had to be there at Union Station to meet them – if only to make darned sure they caught the next train back to New York.

His room in Alexandria had a single bed, a wardrobe and a table and chair. A bathroom and shower out in the corridor was shared by one other room. For him it was a
place to sleep, nothing else, its main advantage being its cheapness and its closeness to the Metro. And the landlady did good breakfast for her tenants. He'd chosen it as a temporary refuge until he moved the family down.

He sat on the edge of the bed and removed his shoes, wondering how the heck he was going to manage any sleep with his brain on such overdrive. He kept thinking of all the procedures set in motion by the Bureau that day, convinced they'd forgotten something. But then he always felt that way in the middle of a case.

He lay back on the covers, his eyes on the tasselled satin lampshade that hung from the corniced ceiling. Throughout the evening his mind had kept drifting back to Iraq and to the shock of seeing that Iraqi scientist convulsing on the ground outside the Haji plant. Fanaticism – that's what they were dealing with here. Men so ready to die for their cause they'd prepared themselves in advance. And some of those men must now be here in the USA. Two men at least. One to launch the drone, the other near the target with a command radio to trigger the release of the fatal pathogens.

Two men, one of whom would be Colonel Naif Hamdan.

And no one in America knew what Hamdan looked like. Not a soul. All they had was the hopelessly blurry photograph the British agent had got hold of in Cyprus.

Burgess sat up suddenly. Of course!
Sam Packer
had seen Hamdan in the flesh. And where was
he?
Four thousand miles away on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

Would SIS co-operate? They darned well
had
to.

He looked at his watch. Nearly midnight. Five o'clock Saturday morning in London.

‘Sorry Mister Waddell,' he mouthed, digging into his briefcase for his contacts book. ‘Breakfast's gonna be real early for you this morning.'

SAM WOKE EARLY,
pulled on jeans and a pullover, then walked briskly into Barnes village to buy a newspaper. He'd taken a decision overnight between bouts of sleep – to make an unannounced visit later that morning to his fellow Barnes resident Martin Kessler. He needed to know the truth about Baghdad.

Back in the flat he'd made himself some fresh coffee and had his nose buried in the
Telegraph
when the phone rang.

It was Waddell, ringing to say the Americans wanted him.

‘They need your eyes. Think you might spot our Iraqi friend in a crowd. They've booked you on Concorde at ten-thirty from Terminal Four. Can you make it?'

Sam checked his watch again.

‘Easily.'

‘US Government's picking up the tab, thank God,' Waddell added dryly.

‘Good for Uncle Sam. Do they have a fix on the switched container yet?'

‘No. The Limassol police are holding the owner of the warehouse where the switch took place, but by late last night he hadn't talked. And, surprise, surprise, the
customs files listing the containers stored in the warehouse have disappeared. Khalil's five million dollars have been spread nice and wide, that's obvious.'

‘Can the warehouse owner be made to talk?'

‘Probably. The police in Limassol have been known to dangle a suspect's head in a metal bucket which they beat with truncheons. Usually works.'

Sam rang off. A car was coming in half an hour. Just enough time to pack a flight bag.

Getting the truth out of Martin Kessler would have to wait.

Dean Burgess got back into FBI Headquarters shortly after eight a.m. He'd slept little after his call to Duncan Waddell's home in London. In the CTC he discovered that a fax had come in confirming Packer's flight details. Concorde would get him as far as JFK in New York, then a shuttle would bring him into Washington National at 11.59 a.m.

Burgess had been assigned a position in the SIOC from today. He checked into the Operations Center through the security doors and was immediately grabbed by Ive Stobal, who had a good three inches' height advantage over his own six-two.

‘The Cypriots have just ID'd the container,' he told him in a voice that came up from his boots. ‘It came from Haifa. Contents listed as a printing press. And the US port of entry is
Baltimore
.'

‘My God! Do we have it?'

‘We'll know in a couple of minutes. They're checking
the box number on the Automated Shipping Information System. The ship in question docked nine hours ago, but the port gates didn't open for truckers until seven. So there's a chance it's still there.'

‘And we know exactly what's in the box?'

‘Sure. The owner of the Limassol warehouse had his nuts squeezed and has talked. He's admitted doing a deal with a bunch of Ukrainians. He says a technical team flew in from Odessa and worked on the boxes overnight while the warehouse was unstaffed. The container that had arrived from Israel in transit for Baltimore was full of cartons of bad juice, not printing equipment. They took out those pallets and put them into the box from Ukraine bound for Haifa which had brought in the Hawk components. Then they welded launch rails into the empty Israeli box, assembled the drone and fitted it, then closed both boxes and replaced the customs seals. The next day they flew home again and let the shipping agent take over.'

‘Neat. Real neat.'

They stepped over to a computer terminal where a dark-haired woman had a phone pressed to her ear. She turned her head and flashed a smile. It was Jess Bissett.

‘I know she's nuclear, old buddy,' Stobal whispered, seeing Burgess's surprise. His mouth was right up close to Burgess's ear. ‘But she was real hot to be in on this one. Called me up late last night.' He gave a
What could I do?
shrug.

Jess was typing notes straight into the system as she listened to customs. After a couple of minutes she was done.

‘Okay. The good news is they found the container on the Baltimore computer. The bad news is it left Seagirt Terminal by truck at seven-thirty this morning.'

Their eyes turned to the digital clocks above the bank of monitors.

‘Fuck! They've had nearly an hour already,' Stobal griped. ‘Okay, we throw up a seventy-mile-radius road block centred on Baltimore port. You got the licence number of the truck?'

‘Sure. And the names of the shipping company, the truckers, and the importers. It's all on the screen.'

‘Good. Flash it to the FBI field offices and police in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania.' Stobal took Burgess aside again. ‘Dean, I want you to set up a video conference with the emergency services. This thing could happen a hell of a lot sooner than we thought. But make sure they don't give anything out to the media yet. Panic is one problem we can do without just now.'

Burgess concurred. But they both knew it wouldn't stay secret for long.

‘Hey!' Stobal grinned, clapping him on the back. ‘Why the long face? I've got a good feeling we're going to win this one!'

Burgess wished
he
had.

The small Maryland community of Lower Layton consisted of just three farmsteads, but the families that occupied them were expecting new neighbours. The plot of building land that old Matt Halcrow had put on the market a year ago had finally sold just four weeks earlier. Why anybody from Philadelphia would want to build a house in this isolated part of the tobacco and corn belt had mystified all concerned. It wasn't as if the place
would have a view worth looking at this far from the creeks of the bay. However, the piece of land that presently supported an old timber barn for which Matt had no further use was to be turned into a country homestead for some well-off migrant from eastern Europe. The timber-frame house, Matt had told his two neighbours, was to be of a Canadian prefabricated type and would be delivered in sections inside a couple of huge shipping containers that were going to find it hard to get down the lanes.

The first of them had arrived a few minutes ago. Up at the Jones's place they'd seen it from the kitchen window as they finished their breakfast. A huge steel monster snapping a small branch from a dogwood as it passed. Then Mrs Whitman had caught a close-up of it lumbering past while she was picking up the mail from the box at the bottom of her drive. And finally old Matt Halcrow himself had phoned his friends and neighbours to apologise for the disturbance and to assure them there'd only be one more truck like it, and anyway not for another couple of days.

Twenty minutes later they saw the tractor half of the truck head back through the lanes at speed, its driver eager to get his wheels onto a highway again.

In an hour or so both Mrs Jones and Mrs Whitman would find some reason to take a drive past Matt's old barn – just to satisfy their curiosity. But they would see nothing, because the container had been tucked away inside the huge timber shed and the doors were closed.

When Sam arrived in New York, the local time was an hour earlier than when he'd left London. As he stepped from the plane a steward pointed out a heavy-set man waiting for him in the pier to the terminal. Introducing himself as an agent from the FBI's New York field office he spirited Sam through immigration in minutes and delivered him to the gate for the 10.35 a.m. American Airlines shuttle to Washington National.

Sam found himself looking at faces, trying to visualise Hamdan. The Iraqi had changed his appearance once already by shaving off his moustache. Recognising him might not be easy, he realised.

The President of the United States listened glumly to the intelligence summary being presented by the Director of the CIA. Also listening at the long table in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House were the Secretaries of State and for Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

‘The British still believe Colonel Hamdan is the primary instigator,' the CIA Director stated, ‘with up to a dozen co-conspirators. They also still believe he's acting without the authority of Saddam Hussein. But they cannot be certain of that and nor can we, Mr President. In fact we're a lot less sure than the British are. One of
our own sources has revealed that Hamdan
was
one of those military officers set up to act against Saddam back in June, although his name wasn't known to us at the time. Our source is surprised that Hamdan escaped the fate of the others when the coup plot collapsed. He thinks Hamdan may have agreed to work directly for Saddam as the price for being allowed to live.'

‘Meaning?' the President prompted.

‘Meaning that this
is
a plot by Saddam. An anthrax attack on the US being carried out under the guise of a maverick terrorist action. Something he can deny culpability for.'

‘But you have no proof of this one way or the other.'

‘No, sir.'

‘May I put in a word here, Mr President?' The ever-polite but forceful Chairman of the Joint Chiefs leaned forward with his hand raised.

‘Of course, General.'

‘The attack that may be about to take place has to be characterised as a military one, not a terrorist action. The delivery vehicle for the anthrax is a military drone. The men directing it are, so far as we know, still serving members of the Iraqi army. If the attack happens, Mr President, this will be nothing less than an act of war, to which there's only one correct response. A military counter-strike that's extremely quick and extremely lethal.'

‘Lethal to Saddam Hussein?'

‘Ah . . . no. Unfortunately there's no guarantee of that,' the General conceded. ‘Taking
him
out is going to be as hard as it's always been. But lethal against his armed forces, his military infrastructure –
and
his self-esteem. But we
have
to hit him, Mr President, both to show our national resolve and to deter further attacks on us.'

‘Mmm. We all agree that?'

There was a murmuring of assent. Then the Secretary of State intervened.

‘Before we get to that stage Mr President, I believe we should give Saddam a strong warning,' he stated firmly. ‘Through his ambassador at the UN would be quickest. Spell it out to him in words of one syllable that we know about the drone and about Hamdan and that if this attack happens the consequences will be extremely serious.'

‘That's wise,' the President nodded. ‘We should do that right away.'

‘Our own ambassador already has it in hand, Mr President. She's meeting the Iraqi in a half hour.'

‘Good.'

There was a moment's pause while they all reflected on the enormity of what could be about to happen to their country.

‘So, do I have your authority to prepare military contingency plans, Mr President?' the General checked eventually.

‘You certainly do, General. Make us ready for the worst.'

Dean Burgess took his seat in the conference room just as the Director arrived. Anxiety had taken hold in the SIOC. The investigation was making little progress.

‘I have just spoken with the President,' the Director announced. ‘He says if the attack takes place we'll be at war with Iraq. He's set a deadline for us of two p.m. If we're no nearer finding the missile by then, he'll cancel
his engagement at the Vets stadium in Philadelphia and bring in the media. Ive, give us an update and for Christ's sake try to make it sound hopeful.'