Blackout

by Nance, John J. ;

  “How good of you to ask, Mr. MacCabe. That’s precisely what we were looking for, as a matter of fact. Pity you didn’t leave it in your room.” He held up the computer case with his left hand as he let the aim of the pistol in his right hand drop toward the pavement, its barrel clearly visible to Robert.

  There was no silencer.

  The energy behind the sudden kick of Robert MacCabe’s right leg encompassed every ounce of his will to live. His aim was perfect; the toe of his size-eleven shoe catching the gunman squarely in the crotch and literally lifting him into the air. A piercing cry of pain punctuated the air, followed by the roar of the gun firing wildly as it left the injured man’s flailing right hand. The crowd cringed and turned in his direction to see what was happening.

  The force of his kick propelled Robert backward against the car, but he lunged forward instantly, diving to catch his computer case as it fell from the gunman’s hand. Robert grabbed the computer in midair and fell to the pavement, rolling once before leaping up and regaining his feet. He ran for his life, literally, past the hotel entrance and across the crowded street beyond, ignoring the commotion in his wake. The screech of brakes and honk of horns accompanied his frantic, broken field run as he darted left and then right. He spotted what looked like an alley a hundred feet away, dodged between and behind everyone he passed, and skidded around the corner through a loose stack of cardboard boxes into the middle of a bazaar full of startled people.

  He could hear running footsteps and shouts behind him, but he had the advantage of surprise, if only for a few seconds—along with the horrid certainty that his paranoia had been justified. Someone really was out to kill him for what they thought he knew.

  A jungle of handcarts and tables full of wares were spread like an obstacle course in front of each of the tiny shops that opened into the street. A cacophony of music from Asian rap to the Beatles filled the street as he wove back and forth, his computer case flapping alongside. He darted beneath colorful awnings and through myriad aromas of food and smoke as he eyed first one entryway, then another, trying to decide which might have a rear exit.

  Toward the end of the second block he shoved too hard past an angered merchant, and the man caught him by the sleeve to yell at him in Mandarin. Robert twisted away, apologizing in English. He looked back at the crowd and tried to spot his pursuers. He knew they would be following him, or even waiting for him on the other end.

  He had to disappear, and quickly.

  A small shop full of exotic fabrics appeared on his right and he hunched down behind a row of wares to dash through the entrance. He ran straight for the back, bursting through beaded curtains into the presence of a surprised man and woman hunched over their evening meal.

  The man came to his feet, his eyes wide, his chopsticks held out like a weapon.

  “Quick!” Robert said, gasping for breath. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I need a back way out of here.”

  “What?”

  “A back door. Do you have a back door?”

  “Why?” the old man asked with suspicion, chopsticks at the ready.

  “Because I’m being chased. Not by the police or the army. But by someone who’s trying to kill me, okay?”

  “She come now?”

  “What?”

  “Chase you?”

  “Yes!” Robert said, confused.

  The old man brightened and nodded. “I understand. Come this way!”

  He pushed through another beaded curtain to a small door, which he opened, stood aside to let Robert pass, then caught his arm, speaking urgently in his ear, his breath reeking with garlic. “Two blocks that way, go into shopping mall, down one level. Buy ticket for movie, go inside, then slip out back exit near screen. You come up on street two blocks away. Big secret. Never fails.”

  Robert paused and looked at the man quizzically. “This … happens a lot?”

  The man shook his head. “No, no, no. But when my wife chase me, that how I get away!” He grinned, showing a mouth of imperfect teeth. “She like to chase me down the street, yelling and carrying on. Family tradition. All our friends laugh.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No, no, no. Just a game, but when that woman get angry, she scary.”

  “Women,” Robert said with a smile.

  The old man nodded with the same wide, toothy grin. “Women.”

  The movie theater was fairly new, and Robert tried to blend into the crowd as he pushed through the turnstiles, then moved quickly through the exit the old man had described. There was a long underground hallway leading to steps and, as promised, an exit to the street above.

  Robert opened the door to find a taxi sitting at the curb in front of him. He yanked open the taxi’s rear door and dove in, giving the address of Katherine Bronsky’s hotel as he hunched down out of sight.

  “Only the hotel?” the driver asked, calculating whether this strange intruder was worth the small fare.

  “No. Then to dinner, then to the airport. Big fare, big tip, no more questions.”

  The driver nodded and gunned the car down the street.

  chapter 4

  HONG KONG, CHINA

  NOVEMBER 12—DAY ONE

  10:10 P.M. LOCAL/1410 ZULU

  Kat Bronsky stood under the covered drive of the hotel, breathing exhaust fumes, and looked at her watch in disgust. It was time to give up.

  That’s it. I’ve been stood up.

  Until MacCabe had appeared in the equation, she hadn’t planned to wear the same clothes back to L.A., nor to check out early. But now she was without a room, her luggage sitting on the drive beside her. She could carry her bags back in and go eat at one of the hotel’s restaurants, or she could take a cab by herself to the new airport, which sounded like the better idea.

  When MacCabe shows up on that flight, he’s going to get an earful.

  Kat caught the eye of the gaudily uniformed doorman and indicated the need for a taxi. He whistled one into the breezeway with practiced flair and opened the door, motioning the bellman to load her two bags. She had one leg in the backseat when another taxi squealed to a halt behind them. The rear door flew open to disgorge the prodigal journalist, his eyes wild as he rushed up to her.

  “I … ah, I’m sorry … I’m late. Something happened.”

  “Apparently,” she said, getting out of the cab and approaching him with her hands on her hips. He was out of breath, which seemed strange for a man riding in a cab. “Forty-five minutes, you said,” Kat reminded him.

  “I can explain, but not here.” He was looking behind him as he turned back to her. “We really need to get the hell out of here.”

  They transferred her bags to his taxi and she joined him in the backseat, barely getting the door closed before the driver shot off into traffic again.

  “So, where are we going for dinner?”

  “Ah … first, we’re going to an overlook of the harbor that I know,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t go to overlooks with strange journalists on the first date. Not even on a beautiful evening like this do I watch submarine races.”

  He twisted completely around in the seat to search the traffic behind them, oblivious to her attempt at humor. “I think we’re okay,” he said quietly. “I don’t see anyone back there.”

  She reached out and grabbed his arm to get his attention. “Earth to Robert MacCabe! What’s going on here? Why are you so spooked?”

  He licked his lips and looked around again before sitting back in the seat and relating the events of the previous hour, finishing as they pulled into the overlook.

  “Good Lord!” she managed. “What, exactly, did they want?”

  “They didn’t say, but there’s nothing else I’ve been exposed to but the … information I was mentioning.”

  Kat nodded. “Okay. We’re here. Now tell me the whole story.”

  Robert leaned forward and winced. “Oh, jeez! They got my suitcase.”

  “Anything important
in it?”

  He shook his head. “The computer’s all I care about.” Robert slapped several bills in the driver’s hand and asked him to turn his engine off and wait. “If someone comes up to you, you’re just enjoying the night. No passengers, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Kat followed Robert MacCabe off the pathway to a grove of trees. The twinkling lights of the city formed a glowing carpet beyond, set off by a freshening breeze that carried the unmistakable aromas of a busy harbor metropolis.

  “In here,” he said, motioning her behind one of the tall shrubs into a small glade brightly illuminated by the reflected glow of the city lights. “You want to sit on the grass?” he asked.

  “In this suit?” She laughed, motioning to a concrete bench and inspecting it closely before sitting down. “This will do. I think it’s clean.”

  He sat down beside her and put his arm on the back of the bench in order to face her. His face was drawn and serious as he waited for the noise of a newly airborne 747 to pass, its lights winking as it climbed past them at what appeared to be a sedate speed.

  “Agent Bronsky, I think—”

  “Wait,” she said, holding up a finger. “Call me Kat, okay? ‘Agent Bronsky’ sounds too much like my dad.”

  “Oh?”

  “My father was career FBI, too,” she explained. “An assistant deputy director when he died. Sorry to interrupt.”

  He shrugged. “Kat, what I didn’t want to say within earshot of anyone else is this: I think evidence exists that the crash of that SeaAir MD-eleven in Cuban waters was a terrorist act.”

  She nodded solemnly. “You think evidence exists? That’s a strange way to put it. What evidence?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said.

  She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know?”

  “I need to explain that.”

  Kat nodded slowly. “You certainly do. What, for instance, makes you think SeaAir was a terrorist act as opposed to a mechanical failure or a Cuban missile?”

  “Because my life has been threatened within the past hour, Kat, possibly for talking to you, and definitely because of something that happened in D.C. several days ago. I think our intelligence community is scared to death over something they can’t control and are trying to suppress.”

  She raised her hand. “Okay, whoa. Let’s start at the beginning. You said someone had given you information. Is that the evidence you’re talking about?”

  “No. And yes. That was Walter Carnegie of the FAA, an old friend of mine. We go back twenty years to when he joined the Defense Intelligence Agency as a terrorist analyst and I was a cub reporter in the Beltway. Wally racked up fifteen years at DIA and then CIA before moving to the Federal Aviation Administration to try to give them a better, more intelligent ability to sort out terrorist threats.”

  “But what did he give you?”

  “Nothing,” Robert said. “It’s what he told me.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “A month after the SeaAir crash near Cuba he called me one afternoon, scared silly, from a pay phone. He told me he’d stumbled into something related to the SeaAir accident that had him very, very upset and worried.”

  “Did he tell you what it was?”

  “No details or supporting facts, but he said he’d been asking questions about SeaAir that were apparently upsetting someone, because his life had just been threatened by a couple of goons in a Metro station. At first he thought they were Company operatives—CIA. But by the time he called me, he wasn’t sure. He told me that nothing like that had ever happened to him before.”

  “But, Robert, what the heck did he have? What was he probing? How was he involved? You say he was asking questions …”

  “On behalf of the FAA, in his official antiterrorist role. Wally said that when he went to our intelligence community, he found them totally spooked over SeaAir.”

  “You said that.”

  “Let me finish. He said they’re spooked and totally uncooperative because they think the crash is the first major act of a new, sophisticated terrorist group about whom CIA and DIA know nothing. They know nothing and don’t want to admit it.”

  “What else?”

  “Wally also said the airline industry is pushing the President to flat-out tell the public that SeaAir was not a terrorist act. Is FBI getting the same pressure?”

  Caution led her to sidestep the question. “Go on about Carnegie.”

  “Wally said he had hard evidence, and he was scared. He wouldn’t give me any more details. He wanted a deep-throat meeting, and we set a place and time. He was desperate to tell what he’d found. Time, he said, was running out.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I wish I knew. I asked him if he could get me a copy and he said he had the file all locked up. He repeated that twice.”

  “‘Locked up’?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Robert held up his hand to stop her from continuing.

  “Well, is Wally a credible guy?”

  “Completely, though he did sometimes see the shadow of conspiracies that weren’t really there.”

  “So, he didn’t tell you what the evidence was, or what he had, and he didn’t give you anything directly. Did he tell you what he thought this so-called new terrorist group wants? It makes no sense to blow an airplane out of the sky if you’re not trying to accomplish something. Even hijackers have a goal.”

  “I don’t know. As I say, he never showed for the rendezvous. I couldn’t reach him by phone or with messages the rest of that day or the next. I even dropped by his house. He wasn’t there. A day later I had to leave for Hong Kong on this trip.”

  “Have you tried to call him from here?” Kat asked, noting the pained look on his face as he nodded.

  “Kat, Walter Carnegie is dead.”

  She crossed her arms and looked at him for a moment. “How?”

  “Suicide, so his secretary told me.”

  “And you don’t believe it.”

  He was shaking his head. “The pope would be a better candidate for suicide.”

  “Did he leave you anything in writing?” she asked. “Of course there’s no way to know yet. You haven’t been back.”

  “That was just this morning. I’ve been trying to assemble the pieces in my mind ever since. Why would someone murder Wally unless they wanted to suppress or reclaim whatever information he had? He said the crash was terrorist-caused, and the group was new and powerful and unknown. Three days later he’s dead. That’s too coincidental for me, even before I have a chance to start asking questions.”

  Kat was chewing on an index finger, recalling the afternoon conversation with Jake Rhoades. He’d used the word “spooked” to describe the administration’s attitude. But MacCabe was still a dangerous ace reporter for a major paper …

  She turned to him suddenly. “On deep, deep, permanent, unbreakable, blood-oath background, okay?” she said, as she tracked another jumbo jet climbing past them with a throaty whine that even a private pilot like her could not resist watching.

  He nodded, his eyebrows raised. “Of course. Absolutely deep background and unattributable. You know something?”

  Kat shook her head. “Probably not, other than the fact that he was right about the administration wanting a cause other than Cuba or terrorists.”

  “That much was accurate, then.”

  “But we don’t even have a viable theory, let alone knowledge of a specific terrorist group who might have wanted to shoot down that MD-eleven, and we don’t know what this so-called evidence is.” She slapped at a mosquito, the only one she’d seen.

  “But you are getting administration pressure not to label it terrorism?”

  “I didn’t say that, Robert. Not officially. In fact, I didn’t say anything,” she said slowly. “Truth is, we’re not even having this conversation, and come to think of it, I’m not even here.”

  “Okay, okay. But, Kat, none of that really helps with this mystery. My
friend’s dead and I know in my heart he was murdered, especially now that I’ve been attacked. If those guys back at the hotel had pushed me into that backseat, I’d probably be dead by now, too.” He shifted around to face her more squarely. “You disagree? You think I’m paranoid?”

  She shook her head. “Just because you’re paranoid, the old saying goes, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. No,” she sighed, her words coming in a quieter tone. “From what you just told me, they could easily have intended to kill you. The psychology is right. A professional doing a kidnapping who doesn’t mind showing his face is not expecting to have to deal with a witness in the future.”

  Robert MacCabe swallowed hard. “Oh, Lord. I just realized that if they knew where to find me, they know what flight I’m on tonight. They could be waiting at the airport.” He turned to her. “You could be in danger, too.”

  She got to her feet and began pacing back and forth in front of the bench. “This is nuts, Robert! What you’ve told me is all you have, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, other than speculation on Carnegie’s death and the attempted abduction, all we’ve got is general speculation based on his statements,” she said, turning to look at the harbor lights through the trees. “I’m sorry, but that’s not even enough to launch an investigation of whether an investigation needs to be launched.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She whirled back around. “Look, we don’t know for sure that Walter Carnegie had anything but a theory in regard to the SeaAir crash. You said yourself he tended to be spring-loaded to the conspiracy position. And at least as of this moment, standing here with me in Hong Kong, you can’t even be certain he was murdered.”

  “So who were those guys who ripped my room apart and tried to kill me?”

  “I don’t know, and you don’t know. Do you have enemies?”

  “Probably a lot, including the phone company back in Virginia. But no one’s ever come after me before.”

  Kat resumed pacing, smoothing her hair against a gust of wind. “If there’s a new terrorist group, and if they found Carnegie had talked to you, and if they know Carnegie had evidence or information they didn’t want released, then they should also be sophisticated enough to know that you two never got together, which means you couldn’t have received any damning information. That, in turn, means they shouldn’t be worried about you.” She turned to look at him for a few seconds of uncomfortable silence. “You don’t have any information, do you?”