Blackout

by Nance, John J. ;

  “I understand. Ruthless killers, huh?” He shook his head, looking dismayed. “I do have my orders, but I’ll see what I can do.” He leaned closer and touched her arm. “Agent Bronsky, this is very important. You are not to try to call anyone while on the ground here. That order is a security item and comes directly from Assistant Deputy Director Rhoades. Complete blackout. That means your satellite phone, too.”

  “I understand.”

  “They hammered that one into me,” he said, smiling, then let his expression return to seriousness. “I understand these people have been through hell.”

  She related the basics of the crash and the rescue under fire, but stopped short of discussing the details of her suspicions, or the device they’d found.

  “We should go inside,” he said, motioning toward the lounge.

  “I agree. I want to see how Dan Wade is doing.”

  “Can I ask you an off-the-record question?” Hawkins asked.

  “You can ask,” Kat said with a chuckle.

  “Did you find any evidence that the SeaAir Cuban crash and this thing in Vietnam had the same cause? I assume you’re on that case, too.”

  Kat drew a deep breath, thinking over the evidence, and momentarily stepped away from her normal caution about discussing potentially sensitive details. “Well … that’s a very good question, but I’m going to let the higher pay grades in our esteemed Bureau make that determination, if you don’t mind.”

  “Okay. Sure,” he said, shrugging. He reached out to open and hold the door for her, then looked startled, like he’d been caught doing something wrong. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to be sexist.”

  Kat cocked her head and smiled as she patted his shoulder. “Don’t ever apologize for being a gentleman, Rick.”

  He smiled in return and followed her in.

  The ophthalmologist had examined Dan in a darkened inner office. He emerged about the time Kat walked in, and sat with her to explain. “He’s got a chance for at least some vision to return. The receptors—the cones and rods on the retina—have been damaged, but they have not been eradicated. He can see light, but he needs that bandage and he simply needs time. If you’re heading back to D.C., I’d suggest Johns Hopkins, but most of this is the body repairing itself.”

  “Thanks, Doctor.”

  “I was sorry to hear about your captain.”

  “Doctor, how could a beam of light or energy kill a man through his eyes?”

  The doctor shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, unless it was so powerful it burned through the back of the eyeballs and caused a massive hemorrhage. Or the trauma of the pain could have caused a heart attack.”

  “Could a laser do that? A very, very powerful one?”

  He hesitated and studied her before shrugging again. “Maybe.”

  “How about a particle beam?”

  The doctor smiled and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Look, I’m not technically oriented outside of medicine. You’re way over my head with Star Wars stuff like particle beams. Lasers, though? We use them now for cosmetic purposes, to burn off skin one layer at a time, and to cauterize small blood vessels. Could a really powerful laser do extreme eye damage? Absolutely. Could it kill? I don’t know.”

  chapter 32

  HONOLULU INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, HAWAII

  NOVEMBER 13—DAY TWO

  4:15 P.M. LOCAL/0215 ZULU

  The trip from the private jet facility to the main passenger terminal took only five minutes, but the convoluted entry into the building, up a loading dock and back stairway, took longer. With Hawkins in the lead, Kat and Robert escorted Dallas, Steve, Graham, and Dan to the airport office arranged for them, a modest room with several metal desks and a sweeping view of the boarding ramps and central concourse. Sandwiches were brought in, but for two hours they cooled their heels with periodic visits from Hawkins and strict instructions ringing in their ears to call no one. Repeated requests to get them to a shower facility had gone unfulfilled, and despite their best attempts at grooming and rinsing out clothes on the way from Vietnam, the entire group looked bedraggled.

  “We’re having a group bad-hair day,” Dallas had quipped.

  At fifteen minutes past four, Rick Hawkins appeared again. “Kat, we’ve got you on an Air Force flight. It leaves in an hour.”

  She smiled and thanked him, locking the door from within as he departed. Robert MacCabe, she noted, had a strange look on his face. “What?” Kat asked.

  He hesitated. “Nothing.”

  She walked over and pulled out a chair for him. Dallas lounged on a couch while Steve searched the airport with a pair of binoculars found on the windowsill. Dan, meanwhile, talked quietly to Graham about the ophthalmologist’s diagnosis.

  Kat pulled up a chair for herself and sat facing Robert, her leg brushing his knee for a second, a tiny stimulus that surprised her by resonating through all the fatigue and adrenaline. She discreetly pulled her leg back, worried she’d sent him an unintended message. But Robert seemed oblivious to the encounter.

  “Something’s bothering you, Robert,” Kat said. “What is it?”

  “Something he said about thirty minutes ago when he brought our Starbucks order in here.”

  “Hawkins?”

  “Yeah. I mean, you’re the FBI agent, so if it rings true to you …”

  She leaned forward with her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes on his. Her hair cascaded around her face. “I’m a psychologist by training, Robert. I’ve been an FBI agent a little under three very fast-moving years. I don’t know everything about FBI-speak, and I’m not a member of the good-old-boy network.”

  “‘I was never a Marine.’”

  “What?”

  “That’s what he said when I asked him when he first trained at Quantico. He chuckled and said he was never a Marine.”

  “Well, Quantico is primarily a Marine base.”

  Robert nodded vigorously. “I know. But it’s also the location of the only FBI Academy you’ve got, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t get to be an FBI agent without going through training at Quantico. Correct?”

  Kat looked at him for several seconds without moving. “That is strange, but he’s FBI, all right. His ID was standard issue. There’s even a … well, I can’t tell you, but there are methods we have of instantly authenticating one of them, and I did.”

  Robert raised his hand in a dismissal gesture. “Good. I was hoping that was paranoia talking.”

  There was the sound of a key in the door and Hawkins reappeared, sticking his head just inside. “Okay, Agent Bronsky. The Air Force is ginning up a crew to fly all of you in one of their Gulfstreams back to Andrews. We’re making the arrangements now to move you over to Hickam to board the plane.”

  Kat stood up, smiling. “That’s great.” She began walking in his direction. “Say, I was trying to place your name a while ago, and I was wondering if you were at the Academy about the time I was.”

  Hawkins smiled and raised a finger. “I need to get back down the hall, here. We’ll talk in a few minutes, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, and stood with her arms folded as he closed the door.

  Kat turned and looked at Robert as she chewed on her lip. She moved swiftly to one of the desks where a computer screen was displaying a screen saver full of The Far Side characters and tapped on the keyboard. The screen snapped to a standard Windows program and she entered a flurry of keystrokes to call up an E-mail form.

  “What’re you doing, Kat?” Robert said as he quietly moved up beside her.

  She looked up at him and shook her head. “Just checking.”

  She turned her concentration to the keyboard and entered a quick message routed as a “Deliver Immediately—Emergency” communiqué to Jake Rhoades.

  JAKE … PLEASE CONFIRM USAF TRANSPORT FOR ALL 6 OF US FROM HONOLULU TO ANDREWS AFB IS OKAY. ALSO, CONFIRM ACTIVE-ASSIGNMENT STATUS OF FBI HNL FIELD AGENTS HAWKINS, WILLIAMS, WALZ, MONCRIEF, ALL OF WHOM ARE
HERE WITH US. REPLY ONLY TO MY NATIONWIDE BEEPER W/ ALPHANUMERIC ANSWER. KB

  She hit the key to launch the message and waited while the computer dialed itself into a network and flashed confirmation on the screen. She erased the message and dug her beeper out of her handbag to make sure it was on before sitting down with Dallas and Dan.

  Within six minutes her beeper began chirping. Kat pulled it out of her handbag again and casually punched the button, causing the message to pop up.

  WHERE ARE YOU? SECST.JJ INFORMED ME DEST. WAS HNL, THEN REC’D WORD YOU DIVERTED MIDWAY ISLAND. ARE YOU IN HNL? ALSO, NO SUCH FBI AGENTS ASSIGNED TO HNL OFFICE OR ANYWHERE ON WEST COAST. BE CAREFUL.

  Kat suddenly felt the room undulating, as if they were rolling through an earthquake. She glanced at a hanging light fixture, but it was motionless.

  “Kat?” Robert said, startled at her response.

  She said nothing, but bolted from the chair and walked quickly to where Steve was standing at the window. “I need your binoculars. Quickly!” she said, her voice terse. Wide-eyed, Steve handed the binoculars to her. She raised them to her eyes, adjusting them as she searched back in the direction of the private terminal where the Global Express had been sitting since their arrival.

  It was gone. She scanned the airport and found it at the end of Runway 4L.

  “Oh shit!”

  “What, Kat?” Robert prompted. “WHAT?”

  She pulled the glasses away and pointed. “See that jet starting takeoff?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s Two-Two-Zulu.” She lowered the glasses, her shoulders slumping. “My God, Robert. I’ve lost the weapon, I’ve lost the jet, and I’m sure I’ve lost Pollis, too.” She handed him the beeper and he read the message quickly.

  Kat turned into the room, surveying the others. She turned back to the windows and began searching for a way to open one of them.

  Dallas noticed Kat’s agitation and moved over toward them. “What’s up, boys and girl?”

  Robert held up a finger to silence her, then dashed to the far end of the window array and turned back. “Kat, there’s a section here with a ledge that leads to a fire escape!”

  “Get it open. Break through with a chair if you have to.”

  “Hey, what’s going on here?” Dallas was asking.

  Kat took Dallas by the shoulders, her gaze moving rapidly between Dallas and the others in the room. “I’ve screwed up big-time, Dallas! These guys are not FBI. They’re the enemy. There’s no time to explain, but we’ve got to be gone before they come back.”

  “I thought we were going over to the Air Force,” Dallas said.

  “Dallas, if we get in their van, our bodies will never be found.”

  Dallas swallowed hard. “Well, that’s pretty definitive. Let’s go!”

  Robert and Steve had been struggling with a window lever. “Got it, Kat!”

  “Okay. Graham, take Dan. Dallas, you and Steve go out together. Robert, lead us out of here. We need to get to the concourse unseen.”

  Kat stopped and looked at her roll-on bag, trying to decide whether to risk bringing it. Graham, Dallas, and Dan had rescued nothing. Robert had his computer, and Steve his backpack. Steve noticed her hesitation and dashed over to get her bag.

  “No, Steve! I’ll leave it,” Kat said.

  “Not a problem,” Steve said, and shoved it through the window.

  The balmy humidity of the Hawaiian air flooded into the room from the open window. They rapidly stepped out and onto the fire escape, following MacCabe as he moved quickly to a ladder. They descended two stories before running across a tar-and-gravel roof to a metal door that was already propped open.

  “This way. Quick,” Robert said to each of them as they ran through the door. Kat pulled him along and shut the door behind them.

  “Okay, hold up,” she said, moving past several closed office doors through a hall to a glass door that opened into one of the main concourses outside security.

  Kat turned and motioned them together in a huddle. “We’re outside the security perimeter. I can’t get us all in by flipping my badge, and if we force open the wrong door, we’ll set off alarms. The concourse security screeners will act like morons, so our best bet is to come out of this door, go through security like normal, then regroup on the other side. There are three lanes there, so we split up.”

  “Where on the other side do we meet?” Dallas asked.

  Kat licked her lips and shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s a gate right over there. Let’s assemble in the waiting area, then we’ll go from there. Dallas? You and Dan and Steve first. We’ll follow. Hawkins is likely to find us gone any minute.”

  Dallas nodded and opened the glass door, escorting Dan as Steve followed, carrying his own backpack along with Kat’s roll-on bag. When all three were safely through, Kat motioned for Robert and Graham to move.

  “You coming?” Robert asked.

  “Yeah,” Kat said. “I’m trying to decide what to do about my gun.”

  “Use your badge. You don’t have a choice.”

  Kat nodded and followed, staying back as first Robert, then Graham, cleared the metal detector and reclaimed their pocket change on the other side.

  She stepped up to the guard and motioned toward the police officer standing in the background, flipping open her ID wallet. “FBI agent. Will you please ask your officer to step over here?”

  The security woman’s eyes grew big. She disappeared and returned with the officer. Kat handed him the credential case, speaking in an urgent, low voice. “Whatever you do, do NOT call attention to me, okay? We’re on an active stakeout, something has gone wrong, and you’ll blow a federal investigation if you so much as raise an eyebrow. I am armed with a standard nine-millimeter weapon, but I am a federal peace officer and authorized to enter secure areas.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he said, his eyes wide.

  “When you’re satisfied with my ID, slip it quietly back in my handbag and instruct the security guard here to let me through without comment. Understand?”

  “You got it, Agent Bronsky,” the officer said.

  Kat could hear voices shouting and footsteps in a full run behind her as she cleared the security area and motioned to the others to follow her down the concourse. She chanced a look behind in time to see Hawkins skid to a halt at the same portal and pull out what was obviously a well-done fake ID.

  There was a departure reader board next to them, and Kat scanned it quickly, choosing a Seattle-bound DC-10 several gates down that was boarding. “This way!” she commanded, breaking into a trot. The others followed. Hawkins and his two compatriots were streaking into the main concourse now, looking both directions. Kat slipped in front of Robert, and they moved as fast as possible without breaking into a full run.

  “Don’t look back!” she told Robert as she peeked around him.

  Hawkins had stopped and was jerking his head in both directions. He dispatched two of his men to the east concourse while he headed west. Kat realized Hawkins had not seen them, but he was coming in the same direction they were.

  “Okay! In here!” Kat ordered, guiding the six of them to the right and out of sight behind a concrete wall that formed the boundary of one of the gates.

  The gate was still open, and the airline gate agent was fanning the computer boarding cards she’d collected before closing the door.

  Kat ran ahead and identified herself. “You don’t have time to think about this!” she told the agent. “On my authority, I’m commandeering us aboard this aircraft, and you must close the door behind us and say absolutely nothing to anyone else except your operations people.”

  The woman’s eyes were huge, and her mouth was moving up and down. “I … I … don’t—”

  “Is this flight full?”

  “No, but—”

  Kat motioned the others past her. “Get on! And have the lead flight attendant standing by to get me to the captain.”

  She reached out and turned the a
gent’s face to hers. “This is a matter of life and death for the six of us. There is a man about to appear around the corner. He has fake FBI credentials and he is armed and dangerous. If he sees me here talking to you, or you help him in any way, he will probably end up killing you as well as me. Understood?”

  The gate agent nodded and swallowed hard.

  “Good. I’m gone. Remember, my last name is Bronsky. Call the local FBI office. They will validate me through Washington. Now put your head down, sort your cards, and wait a full minute. Close the door naturally.”

  Kat turned and ran through the door, disappearing down the jet-way at the very moment Hawkins walked into view, scanning the gate and the agent as she worked with her boarding cards. He hesitated briefly, then moved on, having noticed a glut of people around the next gate.

  Kat sailed through the entry door of the DC-10 and into the face of an agitated flight attendant holding on to Robert. Kat flipped open her credential case and explained.

  “You say somebody’s chasing you, Agent?”

  “Yes.”

  “You say they’re pretending to be FBI, but they’re not?”

  “Correct.”

  “With guns?”

  “Probably.”

  Dan Wade had hesitated just inside the door, pulling Dallas back toward the sound of Kat’s voice. Kat could see him listening, then fumbling for his wallet and opening it as the lead flight attendant asked her questions.

  The flight attendant shook her head. “Miss …”

  “Bronsky. Special Agent Bronsky.”

  “Look, you come running down here to board six disheveled people without tickets on the strength of an ID—how do I know you’re not the one with false ID?”

  Dan’s hand was flailing the air near the flight attendant’s shoulder. He connected at last, turning her around to face him.

  “Look in this wallet. Find my ID card and pilot’s license.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Just do it! Did you hear about the crash of the Meridian seven-forty-seven yesterday in Vietnam that killed over two hundred people?”