Threat Level Black (31 page)

When Howe told McIntyre what had happened, his new vice president for government affairs told him he sounded as if he were making a sales pitch for the Advanced Military Vision radar. And his offer to lend the device and the aircraft that were currently outfitted with it made it seem even worse.

“Why?” Howe asked him.

“Because nobody does anything for nothing in this town,” said McIntyre. “Probably not in the whole country.”

“Isn’t it our duty to do something?” asked Howe.

McIntyre sighed. “I like you, Colonel, and I owe you a lot, but boy, do you have a lot to learn.”

“Other people have a lot to learn,” said Howe.

McIntyre looked as though he were about to launch into an extended lecture about the facts of life when the telephone cut him off. It was from Nelson; Howe told McIntyre to wait and then picked up the phone.

“Colonel, what are we doing with this UAV business?” asked Nelson as soon as he got on the phone.

Howe explained the situation briefly. Nelson was already well informed enough to point out the NSC objection: The UAVs they’d found in Korea had no engines.

“An engine could be supplied,” said Howe.

“Just follow channels on it,” urged Nelson. “All right?”

“Yes, sir,” said Howe. He hung up.

“Nelson gave you flak?” said McIntyre.

“More or less.”

“Well, this isn’t the military,” said McIntyre. “You don’t work for him.”

“He’s head of the board.”

McIntyre shrugged. “The person you have to worry about is the President. Besides, right now they need you a heck of a lot more than you need them.”

“So they all think I’m trying to sell the AMV radar system?” said Howe.

“Yeah.”

“But I’m not.”

“You have to take a step back.” McIntyre’s hand jangled a little, a twitch Howe had never noticed before. “People are a little scared of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Yeah. It’d be like a four-star general calling up out of the blue and saying, ‘Hey, this a problem.’ ”

“A general would have his calls returned.”

“You’d be surprised,” said McIntyre.

“So I should just sit here and do nothing?”

“Yup.”

“I can’t, Mac. It’s way too threatening.”

“Then you have your staff do it,” said McIntyre. “Have them talk to the military people, government agencies. They get the ball rolling.”

“That will take way the hell too long,” said Howe. “I can’t just hang back.”

“Sometimes you have to if you want to get things done,” said McIntyre.

“So, what did it mean that the three slimebag terrorists who’d live in the Washington Heights apartment had actually lived there, with stuff and everything, unlike the apartment Faud had blown up?”

“Jesus, Andy, that’s a real question?” asked Macklin as Fisher sat down on the couch in the living room. “It means they lived here.”

“So Faud must have another place to stay? Besides his apartment.”

“That a question or a conclusion?”

“Both.”

“Maybe you should talk to them yourself. They’re at the new Special Prisoner Holding Area on Plum Island.”

“What are they going to tell me?”

“Jeez, if I knew that, you wouldn’t have to talk to them.”

Fisher got up and went to the kitchen, where Macklin had left the inventory of the items they’d removed. The DIA techies had managed to retrieve most of the files from the hard drive; the inventory included a rundown. It appeared that the three students were running a term-paper Internet site from the apartment. It brought in about six or seven hundred bucks a week, barely enough to support the rent and other expenses.

“What sort of tickets did they have?” Fisher asked Macklin, looking at the inventory. “Parking tickets? They have a car?”

“No. Bastards had tickets to the NCAAs. They even have four tickets to tonight’s finals. Four of ’em. Those suckers are so valuable, I had to take custody of them myself.”

Fisher gave him an odd look.

“I’m just kidding, Andy.”

“Where are they being held?” asked Fisher, grabbing his coat.

The Special Prisoner Holding Area had been constructed off the shore of a secure testing area controlled by Homeland Security at the tip of Long Island. It consisted of two large barges that had once been leased by New York City as temporary jail facilities. The water around the barges was filled with coiled razor wire; there were two posts with machine guns on land and a pair of small patrol craft, also armed with machine guns, patrolling in the water. Fisher had to run a gamut of high-tech sensors to get onto the barge where the three men were held; he was wanded twice and had to turn over his cell phone, all of his weapons, and most importantly his cigarettes before being allowed inside. Even Macklin, who was head of the task force and had been there several times before, was carefully searched before being cleared. The doors were all operated by remote control; none of the guards had keys of any kind.

The first man had given his name as Ali Muhammad, which was a little like calling himself James Smith. Immigration had just identified him as an Egyptian student named Ali al Saad, which was also probably an alias, though Fisher was not particularly interested in his specific identity and said nothing when Macklin quizzed him on it.

“Syracuse or Kentucky?” Fisher asked the prisoner.

Ali gave him a blank stare.

“Thanks,” said Fisher.

“That’s it?” said Macklin.

“That’s it,” said Fisher. “Bring in the next one.”

Howe tried to follow McIntyre’s advice and hang back, but when one of the generals he’d contacted earlier got back to him and offered to forward the preliminary report, Howe couldn’t stop himself from saying yes. The report wasn’t much more than what he’d already seen—it was a field briefing forwarded from the scene to a CIA reviewing team—but it did include a set of digital photographs. The shots were a bit grainy, but one thing that caught Howe’s attention were two large arrangements of tubes at one corner. At the center of each one was a large, elongated tube that looked like the cans used on dairy farms to collect milk. Around them were clusters of smaller cans or pipes, like coffee cans soldered on. They looked somewhat like rocket motors, though Dalton pointed out they were too large to fit in the rear of the UAVs.

“Besides, if they’re rockets—and I’m not saying they are—they’d be solid fuel boosters,” added the scientist. “If you used them to propel the plane, you couldn’t shut it off. You’d have the rocket ignite, boost you to altitude maybe, then glide back?”

“Why not?” asked Howe.

Dalton shrugged. He leaned over, trying to get a better look at the photos. “Not enough detail to know what’s going on.”

“I know the guy who took the photos and wrote the report,” said Howe. “Maybe he can tell us something more.”

“Can’t hurt.”

It took Howe’s secretary only a half hour to run down Major Tyler in Korea—one more measure of the power and reach of NADT. It was a little past midnight there, and Tyler sounded as if he’d dragged himself from bed.

Which, he told Howe, was the case.

“Only for you, Colonel.”

“I appreciate it. I’m looking at some pictures you took at the UAV base. There’s some tubes and things on the side of the hangar. Would you mind if one of my technical people went over it with you?”

“Tell you the truth, Colonel, I haven’t a clue what any of that stuff is. I took a whole set of pictures just because of that. I’m lucky I knew which one was the UAV.”

“There are only three pictures attached here, and only one of the hangar.”

“Yeah, probably all they forwarded because of the bandwidth. I have the flash card.”

“Can we get it?”

“I think we can e-mail it over a secure network.”

“Let me see about the arrangements.”

An hour later Dalton went over the images with Howe.

“My guess is that it’s some sort of booster system. This here, this is definitely part of a solid fuel rocket system: The design looks pretty basic, something you’d see around 1960, 1965, but it looks sound.”

Dalton slapped the keys, bringing up a photo of the underside of the robot plane. “It would elevate the aircraft: It would be like something you’d use for a takeoff. I’m not a propulsion expert, but I know rocket-assist packs have been used to help heavy bombers off airfields. This might be something similar, except that my feeling is this aircraft could take off from a really short field as it is.”

“So why would you need them for a UAV?” said Howe.

“I don’t think that you would. Maybe for a really quick takeoff, but this can use a short field as it is.” Dalton shrugged. “Until we have that UAV here, it’s impossible to say if they’re related.”

“How much of an airstrip would those aircraft need to take off?” asked Howe.

“Have to have the engineers do the numbers once they have the aircraft and can model it, but I’d guess not much. Any military field in North Korea would have been more than adequate. I think they could come off a road. Maybe even my driveway.”

“Could the boosters lift them straight up?”

“Not straight up. You’d need a bit of an open area to climb out and get altitude, but not much. I don’t see why you’d need it, to be honest. You have the airfield, so this is a lot of trouble for nothing.”

“I’m guessing there’s a reason,” said Howe. “We just haven’t figured it out yet.”

Dr. Blitz eased away from the Philippine ambassador, squeezing into the press of UN delegates in the center of the reception. The President’s speech had gone reasonably well, though a final assessment on audience reaction wouldn’t be possible until later in the day, after the delegates began cabling home with their true reactions.

A new era for Asia. Or more precisely, the
foundation
of a new era for Asia.

Japan could now safely remain on the pacifist course America had steered for it at the end of World War II. That in turn reduced the pressure on China to expand its military capacity, at least in the short term. Naturally the President had not put it so baldly, speaking only of peace and economic opportunity.

Those were the ultimate goals, and they were achievable as long as America retained its power in the region. There were many in this hall—too many—who did not understand or fully appreciate that; they looked at America’s military and economic might as potentially evil things. They did not completely understand the U.S, its historic perspective and foundation. But then, they could hardly be blamed for that: Many of the people in Congress didn’t understand it.

History wasn’t taught in the schools anymore, Blitz lamented to himself as he smiled his way past several African delegates. Kids didn’t even know the dates of the American Revolution, let alone the Korean War.

A waitress passed nearby, offering a plate of Thai shrimp. Blitz declined: Spicy food at receptions always gave him heartburn.

A buzz at the other end of the hall indicated that the President had changed his mind and decided to attend after all. Blitz took a step toward him but found his way blocked by the Chinese representative to the UN. Xi Hiang was too important to duck; Blitz bowed his head and greeted the man properly.

“Peace, then?” asked Xi.

“Peace, yes,” said Blitz.

“Korea is an interesting country,” said Xi, still speaking like a sphinx. Much like Blitz, Xi had an academic as well as government background, and the national security advisor waited for the lecture about history or at least a remark in that direction. But Xi said nothing else, and Blitz was moved to ask if his country was afraid of peace, aware that he was being provocative.

“Afraid?” Xi spoke English as well as Blitz but he said the word as if he did not understand the meaning.

“Afraid of the future?” prompted Blitz, trimming back the question slightly. “The uncertainty.”

“One should never be afraid of the future,” said Xi. “For it comes of its own. As for peace…”

An aide tapped the UN representative on the arm, and Xi turned before finishing. Blitz, too, was interrupted: France’s UN representative told him she thought the President had done very well.

“I’m going to stay in New York this afternoon and into the evening,” the President told Blitz a few minutes later. “We can sneak over to the NCAA championships.”

“Presidents can’t sneak anywhere.”

“Relax, Doc. The IBM box has already been reserved, and we have Secret Service people flanking it. You just don’t want to see Syracuse win,” added the President. “Come over with us. Take the night off.”

“I have a pile of work.”

“State will be there. And I think Claussen from the CIA.”

The President was teasing him: He often joked that if he wanted Blitz somewhere, all he had to do was invite his rivals. Obviously the President was feeling good about the speech and Korea—and maybe even the basketball game.

“Oh, I suppose I can go back later with you,” said the national security advisor.

“Who says there’s room on the plane?” said the President before turning away.

Fisher left the interrogation room as quickly as he could, striding down the caged hallway to the small observation area. Identity confirmed, he was searched again before being allowed out.

Fisher checked his cigarette pack when the guard handed it back to him with his weapons: You just never knew about the ethics of people connected with the prison system.

“It’s going to be tonight,” said Fisher as he counted.

“What?”

“It’ll be at the basketball game. The championship.”

“What is?”

“Whatever they’re planning.”

“How do you know they’re planning anything?”

“Because they know less about college basketball than you do.” His cigarettes counted, Fisher put one in his mouth and lit up. “Call off the game.”

“Oh, yeah, right. You’re talking about the NCAA championships here, Andy. New York worked for years to get this, to bring them to the Garden. You’re out of your mind.”

“Faud left the bomb. That tells us two things: One, he’s not back in Yemen; two, time is running out. I thought it was an early-warning system, but I’m wrong: It’s a diversion.” Fisher took a long drag on the cigarette, striding out to the gangplank that led back to land. It was a gorgeous New York day—sun high in the sky, the odor of dead fish on the wind—but he didn’t stop to notice.

“We got their sarin,” protested Macklin.

“Maybe we didn’t get it all. I’m telling you, you have to stop that game.”

“The security tonight is going to be crazy,” said Macklin. “Half of New York will be locked down. They’ll never get close.”

“The E-bomb,” said Fisher.

“They have it?”

“I don’t know.”

Fisher thought about that as they reached the car. “We have to get the police to stop and search every flower truck in Manhattan. Anything that looks like the ones taken from Pete’s Florist.”

“Man, you’re reaching.”

“I have a thing for roses,” said Fisher, sliding into the car and taking out his sat phone.

Howe was just thinking of leaving the office early when his secretary buzzed him to say he had a call.

“I think I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” he told her.

“It’s somebody named Andy Fisher,” said the secretary. “He said it was important.”

Howe punched the button on his phone.

“I figured it out,” Fisher said. “They’re going to set the E-bomb off in New York tonight.”

“What?”

“Somewhere around eight o’clock. Maybe a little after. By my watch that’s four hours. I have this theory, but it doesn’t have a lot of proof.”

“Share it,” said Howe.

“The Korean is pissed about us beating the crap out of him, so he hooks up with these crazies here. I don’t know whether he sells them a bomb or is going to set it off himself, but it’s hooked into this terrorist cell of assholes with sarin gas. Maybe they got the sarin from him, too, I don’t know.”

“How do you know there’s an E-bomb?” asked Howe.

“Because one of my suspects, the one I can’t find, has night-vision goggles and an injector to ward off the effects of sarin gas. The only thing I don’t have totally worked out is how the bomb goes off, because the tech people I talked to say it’s got to explode in the air. Or that’s the best thing or something; I forget the details.”

“The UAV?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

Howe stood up from his seat.
You could use the rocket pack to launch the UAV like a missile. Once launched, the engines would take over.

“You sure about all of this?” Howe asked Fisher.

“Of course not. Listen, we have to keep air traffic away from New York, and we have to look for a UAV. I have to talk to a million people, and most of them think I’m a pain in the ass, so it’s going to take a while.”

“Have you talked to the Air National Guard?”

“My task force guy will, but I don’t know how serious they’re going to take him.
I
don’t even take him seriously,” said Fisher. “But you’ve got a ton of pull, right?”

“I’ll do what I can,” said Howe.

“I’m counting on that,” said Fisher.

Howe pressed the button to talk to his secretary. “I need to get ahold of the unit responsible for air traffic over New York,” he told her. “I want to talk to the commander personally, right away. And then I need to have one of our planes at Andrews readied for a flight: Iron Hawk. You can get me the numbers I need, right?”

“Yes, sir, but—”

“But?”

“It’s almost five.”

“We’ll pay you overtime,” snapped Howe.

“I meant you better let me call over to Andrews right away,” said the secretary. “Because otherwise the ground people may go home before you get to them.”