by Tom Clancy
The flower arrangements had to be fastened in place. They were mainly white roses, nice ones, Chavez thought, and the little green sticks that held them in place looked like they belonged. Ding next went downstairs and looked at the forward washrooms. In the trash bin of one he dropped a very small, Japanese-made tape recorder, making sure beforehand that it was operating properly. He met Clark at the base of the spiral stairs and then both left the aircraft. The advance security people were just starting to arrive as they disappeared into the terminal’s lower level.
Once inside, both men found a locked room and used it to change clothes. They emerged dressed like businessmen, hair recombed, both wearing sunglasses.
“They always this easy, Mr. C?”
“Nope.” Both men walked to the opposite side of the terminal. This put them half a mile from the JAL 747, but with a direct line of sight to it. They could also see a Gulfstream-IV business jet liveried as a private aircraft. It was supposed to take off right before the Japanese aircraft, but would head on a diverging course. Clark took a Sony Walkman from his briefcase, inserted a tape cassette, and donned the earphones. In fact, he heard the murmurs of the security men on the aircraft, and the tape was recording their words as his eyes scanned a paperback book. It was a pity that he couldn’t understand Japanese, Clark thought. As with most covert operations, the main component was sitting around and doing precisely nothing while he waited for something to happen. He looked up to see the red carpet being rolled out again, and the troops forming up, and a lectern being set up. It must have been a real pain in the ass for the people who had to handle these things, he thought.
Things picked up rapidly. The President of Mexico personally accompanied the Japanese Prime Minister to the aircraft, shaking his hand warmly at the base of the stairs. That might have been evidence right there, Clark thought. There was elation that the job was going well, but sadness that such things as this really happened. The party went up the stairs, the door closed, the stairs were hauled off, and the 747 started its engines.
Clark heard the conversation pick up in the airplane’s upstairs lounge. Then sound quality went immediately to hell when the engines fired up. Clark watched the Gulfstream begin taxiing off. The 747 began rolling two minutes later. It made sense. You had to be careful sending aircraft into the sky behind a jumbo. The big wide-bodies left behind wake turbulence that could be very dangerous. The two CIA officers remained in the observation lounge until the JAL airliner lifted off, and then their job was done.
Aloft, the Gulfstream climbed out to its cruising altitude of forty-one thousand feet on a heading of zero-two-six, inbound to New Orleans. The pilot eased off on the throttle somewhat, coached by the men in the back. Off to their right, the 747 was leveling off at the same altitude, on a course of zero-three-one. Inside the bigger aircraft, the supposed bottle of scotch was pointed out a window, and its EHF transmissions were scattering out toward the Gulfstream’s receptors. The very favorable data-bandwidth of the system guaranteed a good signal, and no less than ten tape recorders were at work, two for each separate side-band channel. The pilot eased his course as far east as he dared until the two aircraft were over the water, then he turned back left as a second aircraft, this one an EC-135 that had struggled to get out of Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, took up station thirty miles east and two thousand feet below the larger Boeing product.
The first aircraft landed at New Orleans, unloaded its men and equipment, refueled, then lifted off to head back to Mexico City.
Clark was at the embassy. One of his additions to the operation was a Japanese-speaker from the Agency’s Intelligence Directorate. Reasoning that his test reception would be useful to determine the effectiveness of the system, he had further decided that it would be better still to get an immediate read on what was being said. Clark thought that this was a reasonable demonstration of operational initiative. The linguist took his time, listening to the taped conversation three times before he started typing. He generated less than two pages. It annoyed him that Clark was reading over his shoulder.
“‘I wish it was this easy to make a deal with the opposition in the Diet,’” Clark read aloud. “‘We merely must take care of some of his associates also.’”
“Looks to me that we got what we want,” the linguist observed.
“Where’s your communications guy?” Clark asked the Station Chief.
“I can do it myself.” It was, indeed, easy enough. The Station Chief transcribed the two typed pages into a computer. Attached to the computer was a small machine that looked like a video-disc machine. On the large disc were literally billions of random digital numbers. Each letter he typed was randomly transformed into something else and transmitted to the MERCURY room at Langley. Here the incoming signal was recorded. A communications technician selected the proper description disc from the secure library, slid it into his own machine, and pressed a button. Within seconds a laser printer generated two pages of cleartext message. This was sealed in an envelope and handed to a messenger, who made for the seventh-floor office of the Deputy Director.
“Dr. Ryan, the dispatch you were waiting for.”
“Thank you.” Jack signed for it. “Dr. Goodley, you’re going to have to excuse me for a moment.”
“No problem.” Ben went back to his pile of papers.
Ryan pulled the dispatch out and read it slowly and carefully twice. Then he picked up the phone and asked for a secure line to Camp David.
“Command center,” a voice answered.
“This is Dr. Ryan at Langley. I need to talk to the Boss.”
“Wait one, sir,” the Navy chief petty officer replied. Ryan lit a cigarette.
“This is the President,” a new voice said.
“Mr. President, this is Ryan. I have a fragment of conversation off the 747.”
“So soon?”
“It was made before engine startup, sir. We have an unidentified voice—we think it’s the PM—saying that he made the deal.” Jack read off three lines verbatim.
“That son of a bitch,” Fowler breathed. “You know, with evidence like that I could prosecute a guy.”
“I thought you’d want this fast, sir. I can fax you the initial transcript. The full one will take until twenty-one hundred or so.”
“It’ll be nice to have something to read after the game. Okay, send it up.” The line went dead.
“You’re welcome, sir,” Jack said into the phone.
“It is time,” Ghosn said.
“Okay.” Russell stood up and got into his heavy coat. It would be a really cold one outside. The predicted high temperature was six above, and they were not there yet. A bitter northeast wind was sweeping down out of Nebraska, where it was even colder. The only good thing about that was the clear sky it brought. Denver is also a city with a smog problem made all the worse by winter-temperature inversions. But today the sky was literally cloudless, and to the west Marvin could see streams of snow being blown off the Front Range peaks like white banners. Surely it was auspicious, and the clear weather meant that the flight out of Stapleton would not be delayed as he had feared a few days before. He started the engine of the van, rehearsing his lines and going over the plan as he allowed the vehicle to heat. Marvin turned to look at the cargo. Almost a ton of super-high explosives, Ibrahim had said. That would really piss people off. Next he got into the rental car and started that one, too, flipping the heater all the way on. Shame that Commander Qati felt so bad. Maybe it was nerves, Russell thought.
A few minutes later they came out. Ghosn got in next to Marvin. He was nervous, too.
“Ready, man?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Russell dropped the van into reverse and backed out of the parking place. He pulled forward, checking that the rental car was following, then headed off the parking lot onto the highway.
The drive to the stadium required only a few uneventful minutes. The police were out in force, and he saw that Ghosn was eyeing them
very carefully. Marvin was not concerned. The cops were only there for traffic control, after all, and they were just standing around, since the traffic had scarcely begun. It was almost six hours till game time. He turned off the road onto the parking lot at the media entrance, and there was a cop he had to talk to. Qati had already broken off, and was now circling a few blocks away. Marvin stopped the van and rolled his window down.
“Howdy,” he said to the cop.
Officer Peter Dawkins of the Denver City Police was already cold despite the fact that he was a native Coloradan. He was supposed to guard the media and VIP gate, a post he’d been stuck with only because he was a very junior officer. The senior guys were in warmer spots.
“Who are you?” Dawkins asked.
“Tech staff,” Russell replied. “This is the media gate, right?”
“Yeah, but you’re not on my list.” There was a limited number of available spaces in the VIP lot, and Dawkins couldn’t just let anyone in.
“Tape machine broke in the A unit over there,” Russell explained with a wave. “We had to bring down a backup.”
“Nobody told me,” the police officer observed.
“Nobody told me either until six last night. We had to bring the goddamned thing down from Omaha.” Russell waved his clipboard rather vaguely. In the back, Ghosn was scarcely breathing.
“Why didn’t they fly it down?”
“’Cause FedEx don’t work on Sunday, man, and the damned thing’s too big to get through the door of a Lear. I ain’t complaining, man. I’m Chicago tech staff, okay? I’m Network. I get triple-time-and-a-half for this shit, away from home, special event, weekend overtime.”
“That sounds pretty decent,” Dawkins observed.
“Better’n a week’s normal pay, man. Keep talking, officer.” Russell grinned. “This is a buck and a quarter a minute, y’know?”
“You must have a hell of a union.”
“We sure do.” Marvin laughed.
“You know where to take it?”
“No problem, sir.” Russell pulled off. Ghosn let out a long breath as the van started moving again. He’d listened to every word, sure that something would go disastrously wrong.
Dawkins watched the van pull away. He checked his watch and made a notation of his own on his clipboard. For some reason the Captain wanted him to keep track of who arrived when. It didn’t make sense to Dawkins, but the Captain’s ideas didn’t always make sense, did they? It took a moment for him to realize that the ABC van had Colorado tags. That was odd, he thought, as a Lincoln Town Car pulled up. This one was on his list. It was the President of the NFL’s American Conference. The VIPs were supposed to be pretty early, probably, Dawkins thought, so they could settle into their sky boxes and start their drinking early. He’d also drawn security at the President’s party the night before and watched every rich clown in Colorado get sloppy drunk, along with various politicians and other Very Important People—mostly assholes, the young cop thought, having watched them—from all over America. He supposed that Hemingway was right after all: the rich just have more money.
Two hundred yards away, Russell parked the van, set the brake, and left the engine on. Ghosn went in back. The game was scheduled to start at 4:20 local time. Major affairs always ran late, Ibrahim judged. He’d assumed a start time of 4:30. To that he added another half hour, setting T-Zero at 5:00, Rocky Mountain Standard Time. Arbitrary numbers always had zeros in them, after all, and the actual time of the detonation had been set weeks before: precisely on the first hour after game start.
The device did not have a very sophisticated antitamper device. There was a crude one set on each access door, but there hadn’t been time to do anything complicated, and that, Ghosn thought, was a good thing. The gusting northeast wind was rocking the van, and a delicate tumbler switch might not have been a good idea after all.
For that matter, he realized rather belatedly, just slamming the door closed on the van might have ... What else have you failed to consider? he wondered. Ghosn reminded himself that all such moments brought up the most frightening of thoughts. He swiftly ran over everything he had done to this point. Everything had been checked a hundred times and more. It was ready. Of course it was ready. Hadn’t he spent months of careful preparation for this?
The engineer made a last check of his test circuits. All were fine. The cold had not affected the batteries that badly. He connected the wires to the timer—or tried to. His hands were stiff from the cold, and quivered from the emotion of the moment. Ghosn stopped. He took a moment to get control of himself and attached them on the second try, screwing down the nut to hold them firmly in place.
And that, he decided, was that. Ghosn closed the access door, which set the simple tamper switch, and backed away from the device. No, he said to himself. It is no longer a “device.”
“That it?” Russell asked.
“Yes, Marvin,” Ghosn answered quietly. He moved forward into the passenger seat.
“Then let’s leave.” Marvin watched the younger man get out and reached across to lock the door. Then he exited the van and locked his. They walked west, past the big network uplink vans with their huge dish antennas. They had to be worth millions each, Marvin thought, and every one would be wrecked, along with the TV weenies, just like the ones who had made a sporting event of his brother’s death. Killing them didn’t worry him a bit, not one little bit. In a moment the bulk of the stadium shielded them from the wind. They continued across the parking lot, past the ranks of early-arriving fans and the cars which were pulling onto the lot, many of them from Minnesota, full of fans dressed warmly, carrying peanuts and wearing hats, some of them adorned with horns.
Qati and the rental car were on a sidestreet. He simply slid over from the driver’s seat, allowing Marvin to get behind the wheel. Traffic was now becoming thick, and, to avoid the worst of it, Russell took an alternate route he’d scouted out the previous day.
“You know, it really is a shame, messing with the game like this.”
“What do you mean?” Qati asked.
“This is the fifth time the Vikings have made it to the Super Bowl. This time it looks like they’re going to win. That Wills kid they have running for them is the best since Sayers, and because of us nobody’ll see it happen. Too bad.” Russell shook his head and grinned at the irony of it all. Neither Qati nor Ghosn bothered to reply, but Russell hadn’t expected them to. They just didn’t have much sense of humor, did they? The motel parking lot was nearly empty. Everyone staying there must have been a fan of one sort or another, Marvin thought as he opened the door.
“All packed?”
“Yes.” Ghosn traded a look with the Commander. It was too bad, but it could not be helped.
The room hadn’t been made up yet, but that was no big thing. Marvin went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. When the American emerged, he saw that both Arabs were standing.
“Ready?”
“Yes,” Qati said. “Could you get my bag down, Marvin?”
“Sure.” Russell turned and reached for the suitcase that lay on the metal shelf. He didn’t hear the steel bar that struck the back of his neck. His short but powerful frame dropped to the cheap all-weather carpet on the floor. Qati had struck hard, but not hard enough to kill, the Commander realized. He was weakening by the day. Ghosn helped him move the body back into the bathroom, where they laid him faceup. The motel was a cheap one, and the bathroom was small, too small for their purposes. They’d hoped to set him in the tub, but there wasn’t room for both men to stand. Instead, Qati simply knelt by the American’s side. Ghosn shrugged his disappointment and reached for a towel from the rack.
He wrapped the towel around Russell’s neck. The man was more stunned than unconscious, and his hands were beginning to move. Ghosn had to move quickly. Qati handed him the steak knife that he’d removed from the coffee shop after dinner the previous night. Ghosn took it and cut deeply into the side of Russell’s neck, just below the ri
ght ear. Blood shot out as though from a hose, and Ibrahim pushed the towel back down to keep it from splashing on his clothes. Then he did the same thing to the carotid artery on the left side. Both men held the towel down, almost as though to stanch the blood flow.
It was at that moment that Marvin’s eyes came completely open. There was no comprehension in them, there was no time for him to understand what was happening. His arms moved, but each man used all his weight to hold them down and prevented the American from accomplishing anything. He didn’t speak, though his mouth opened, and, after a last accusing look at Ghosn, the eyes went dreamy for a moment, then rolled back. By this time Qati and Ghosn were leaning back to avoid the blood that now filled the grooves between the bathroom tiles. Ibrahim pulled back the towel. The blood was trickling out now, and was not a concern. The towel was quite sodden, however. He tossed it into the tub. Qati handed him another.
“I hope God will be merciful to him,” Ghosn said quietly.
“He was a pagan.” It was too late for recriminations.
“Is it his fault that he never met a godly man?”
“Wash,” Qati said. There were two sinks outside the bathroom. Each man lathered his hands thoroughly, checking his clothes for any sign of blood. There was none.
“What will happen to this place when the bomb goes off?” Qati asked.
Ghosn thought about that. “This close ... it will be outside the fireball, but—” He walked to the windows and pulled the drapes back a few centimeters. The stadium was readily visible, and a direct line of sight made it easy to say what would happen. “The thermal pulse will set it afire, and then the blast wave will flatten the building. The whole building will be consumed.”
“You’re sure?”
“Completely. The effects of the bomb are easy to predict.”
“Good.” Qati removed all the travel documents and identification he and Ghosn had used to this point. They’d have to clear customs inspection, and they had already tempted fate enough. The surplus documents they tossed in a trash can. Ghosn got both bags and took them out to the car. They checked the room once more. Qati got into the car. Ghosn closed the door for the last time, leaving the Do Not Disturb card on the knob. It was a short drive to the airport, and their flight left in two hours.
