Red Sky

by Chris Goff

  “The rumor going around is there was a courier on board that flight carrying classified information and that somebody downed the plane in order to keep that information out of the hands of the U.S. government. Can you confirm that?”

  This was where the party line came in handy. “Yes, there was a DSS agent on board, but he wasn’t carrying any official documents.”

  “What about the second body?”

  “Excuse me?” How did he know about Zhen?

  “There were two bodies transported.”

  An observation any of the press could’ve made. The information was bound to come out. “The agent was escorting a fugitive back to the States to stand trial.”

  “Name?”

  “We’re not releasing it at this time. We haven’t notified the family yet.”

  “Did this fugitive know something worth crashing a plane over?”

  Jordan tensed. It was time to nip this line of questioning in the bud. “From what I’ve heard, the IIC believes the crash was an accident, mechanical failure.”

  He seemed to weigh the answer. “Then why the escort?”

  “For your edification, escorting the body of a U.S. DSS agent killed in the line of duty from site of his death to a secure location is procedure. I wouldn’t read too much into it if I were you.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up.” He bounced his heels against the wall. “That leaves just one more question. Why the interest in UAFM?”

  Jordan felt her breath stop halfway to her lungs. Aware that he was watching her, she forced a smile. “That’s personal. It has nothing to do with my job.”

  “Then if I go back there and ask the person at the desk what the pretty redhead came in asking about, I’m only going to learn more about you?”

  “Leave it alone. I’ve answered your questions.”

  “Really?” He jumped down off the wall. “Because I think you’ve only told me what you and the government want me to know.”

  Chapter 11

  Jordan took over the protection detail at 6:00 PM. Keeping a low profile, she waited as Tracy Linwood used the facilities, then trailed her back to the dining room, where she joined a table of five women, a few of which Jordan had to work to ID. She recognized the woman to Linwood’s left. She was Willa Hamish, a British Labor politician. Next to her was Ellis Quinn, CEO of Quinn Industries, a defense contractor. The others presented a challenge.

  This was the eighth year of the Women’s Leadership Alliance, a group of high-powered women from all walks of life, who served as examples for young girls around the world. Their goal—to set an agenda for progress and change in the coming year—seemed a bit lofty.

  After a keynote speech, delivered by a European actress Jordan thought looked vaguely familiar, the dinner party dissolved, and Linwood headed for her suite. There was the normal chitchat and then she asked Jordan about the plane crash. Jordan gave her the condensed version. Back in the room, she did a quick sweep and secured the main door.

  “Do you need anything else, Mrs. Linwood?”

  “A glass of wine. Care to join me?”

  “I’d love to, but duty calls.”

  * * *

  Jordan escorted Linwood to breakfast the next morning, then went back upstairs and slept. The sound of her phone ringing at 1:00 PM woke her with a start.

  The number belonged to the U.S. embassy in Ukraine.

  Linwood? Not likely. If something had happened downstairs, she would have known.

  Henry? It couldn’t be. It hadn’t been twenty-four hours since she’d dropped off the fragments.

  It turned out to be Mary with an order for Jordan to report to Lory’s office immediately. Since she didn’t work for him, Jordan hung up and phoned her boss.

  “You’re being temporarily reassigned,” Daugherty told her. “Something about the situation there on the ground. They have a problem. You know the backstory. The director issued the orders.”

  “Is this about the plane crash?”

  “Lory’ll have to fill you in. Just be sure you pack up your gear. Someone else has been assigned to Linwood. They’ll need the room.”

  “That’s it? No sage advice?”

  “You want some advice? Here it is. Good luck, Jordan. Watch your back.”

  * * *

  It took her forty-five minutes to reach the embassy, and Lory was pacing. As soon as she entered his office, he gestured for Mary to close the door behind her then got right to the point. “We have a problem.”

  Jordan didn’t like the way he said “we.” Had something else happened? Her mind immediately flew to her conversation with Nye Davis.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This.” He threw a piece of paper across the desk. It was a lab report.

  “I can explain.”

  “You can? Then I’m all ears because I’d sure like to know how in the hell we ended up with the wrong guy.”

  Jordan frowned and picked up the report. She’d assumed it was the report on the fragment she’d taken down to the lab. Instead, it was a copy of the repatriation documentation required by IIC.

  She skimmed the results. “Sir, this has to be wrong.”

  “They ran the DNA comparison twice.”

  “Are you saying McClasky was escorting someone other than Zhen?”

  “Either that or our guy got mixed up with another body at the morgue.”

  “That’s not possible. I secured the remains myself and verified the bag reached the morgue. My initials were even on the seal. The tech would have had to break it when he pulled the first sample.” She shook the paper. “This test was run on the man I found handcuffed to McClasky.”

  “Which is why you’re headed to China, Agent Jordan.”

  “Excuse me?” It seemed impossible that she’d heard him correctly.

  “How’s your Cantonese?”

  “Rusty.” In truth, she spoke only a little. Enough to say hello, good-bye, and ask where the nearest bathroom was.

  “Then I suggest you brush up because I need you to locate Zhen. Or find out what happened to him and who took his place on that airplane. I don’t think I need to explain what a diplomatic nightmare this is turning into, for both the U.S. and Ukraine.” He reached down, picked up another piece of paper, and handed her a printout of a boarding pass. “You’re booked on the next flight for Guangzhou. It leaves in two hours.”

  That didn’t give her much time.

  “Mary has the contact information you’ll need. I’ve spoken with our FBI legal attaché in China. He’s stationed in Beijing. He put McClasky in touch with Yang, but otherwise the legat has taken a hands-free approach. However, he expects to be kept in the loop. So do I.” He drilled her with his stare. “I’m reporting straight to the director on this one, Jordan. Good luck. Watch your back.”

  Jordan nodded.

  On the way out, Mary handed her a packet. “I e-mailed you all the intel, but I thought these might help. There’s a guide book of Guangdong Province and a language dictionary.”

  “Thank you, Mary.”

  “No problem. Good luck.”

  “What, no watch your back?”

  Mary tossed her a wave, and Jordan headed for the exit. It was the third time in the last three hours that someone had wished her luck. She wondered what they knew that she didn’t.

  Chapter 12

  Jordan made one stop on her way out of the building—the lab. Rather than wait for an elevator, she took the stairs.

  “I was just about to call you,” Henry said when she came through the door. For some reason his hair looked a little spikier today, like a rooster in full display. “I put a rush on your request. I just got it back.”

  “What does the report say?”

  The fact that she was only interested in the paperwork didn’t go unnoticed. Henry stopped preening and started moping. He grabbed a single sheet of paper off his desk and handed it over. It was a list of components found in each fragment, categorized by element. She skimmed to the bottom b
ut found no written analysis of the findings.

  “There’s nothing that explains what this means.”

  “That’s because I haven’t gotten to the writing-it-down part yet. I can get it for you by tomorrow.”

  “It can’t wait. I need the information now.” She watched him waffle. “Seriously, Henry. I’m booked on a two o’clock flight.”

  “Fine, come on back, and I’ll walk you through it.” He opened the gate in the counter and gestured to an island with a large monitor. “Want to tell me what you were hoping to find?”

  “How about you tell me what was found first,” she said, not wanting to lead him toward any conclusions. Better he draw his own.

  “Not even a hint?” He grinned, his cheeks pushing up his glasses. “God I love a challenge.” Directing a mouse on the laptop, he put a PDF of the breakdown onto the screen. “The very first thing that jumped out was the lack of explosive material or any type of propellant on the fragment. You said it came from the crash site, so one would expect to find some residue. Nada.”

  “So that rules out a missile?”

  “From any traditional weapon.”

  There was only one weapon she knew of that didn’t use explosive materials and could shoot a projectile that high in the air with enough punch to bring down a plane—the railgun. But it was still in the testing phase, not land-based, and presently designed only for ocean-going vessels.

  “Any possibility the piece came from the engine?”

  Henry bumped his glasses up the bridge of his nose and looked over at her. “It can’t be entirely ruled out until we know more about the aircraft, but from what I discovered, People’s Republic Airline flies primarily Boeing jets. The odds of one of their engines being made out of metal containing the elements found in the fragment are slim.”

  “That means we’ve hit a dead end.”

  Henry grinned. “Not entirely. It took me awhile, but I finally located a manufacturer that’s producing steel with the same basic amalgams in nearly identical ratios.”

  Jordan perked up. “Which one?”

  “I can’t definitively prove the fragment came from their stock, but . . .” Henry paused, pulling up the PDF of a company report and positioning it next to the lab report on the screen. “This company, REE Manufacturing, exports steel that’s nearly a perfect match to the fragment.”

  “Henry, you’re amazing!”

  His face grew pink. “If we had some samples of REE materials to compare with the fragment, we might be able to prove it’s the source. The content of your piece indicates the presence of ion-absorbed ore with significantly higher than normal traces of dysprosium and terbium. It’s the exact same content ratio of the ore listed in the metal exported by REE. Do you know the odds of that?”

  “No. Explain it to me, in layman’s terms, the encapsulated version, please.”

  “Basically ion-absorbed ore is multicolored loose sand clay that’s rich in soil, granite, volcanic mineral weathering, and rare-earth elements.” He pointed to the screen. “Dysprosium and terbium, the two listed here, are what we call heavy rare-earth elements, mostly used in manufacturing green items. For example, small amounts of dysprosium can make magnets in electric motors lighter. Terbium helps cut the electricity usage of lights. Light rare-earth elements like cerium and neodymium are more abundant, but—”

  “Henry!” Jordan circled her index finger in the universal sign for “hurry up.” She’d already spent fifteen minutes down here, and it was a forty-minute cab ride to the airport in good traffic.

  “Gotcha. Anyway, once I knew we were dealing with rare-earth metals, I started looking at the other minerals present. In this case, iron and granite.” He started talking faster. “I can absolutely say that there is only one place on earth where you would expect to find the components listed here all together.”

  “You can give me an exact location?”

  “More like a vicinity. The ore comes from a remote mountainous region of the northern Guangdong province.”

  “In China?” She’d been expecting him to say he’d found evidence pointing to the Russians. This supported the theory that the downing of the plane had something to do with Zhen.

  Henry nodded. “Science doesn’t lie, and REE has a mill there. I’ll send the report to your phone.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t the in-flight time of long-distance overseas travel that drove Jordan crazy, it was the layovers—this one for three hours in Bangkok. When she tried napping, images of the crash site and the flaming ambulance haunted her. But what really kept her from sleep was the idea of a state-of-the-art weapon making its way into the heart of Ukraine.

  Finally giving up on rest, she settled into a seat near an outlet with her back to the wall, pulled out her tablet, and started searching the Internet.

  The U.S. Navy had recently publicized upcoming trials on their railgun system. She started there. Logging in through a secure server, she searched the federal database for everything on the U.S. development of the railgun.

  The Navy contracts belonged to Quinn Industries, the same Quinn as the woman who’d been seated next to Tracy Linwood at the Women’s Leadership Alliance. Her company was based out of San Diego. The latest reports showed field testing on the railgun currently under way. There was a land-based version mentioned that was in the early stages of development, but up until now, the size of the power source required to fire the gun prohibited making it portable.

  Jordan wiggled up straighter in her seat. Zhen could have hacked the Quinn Industries computers. It would explain the charges. But if he’d traded or sold secrets to the Chinese, they wouldn’t want that to get out. There was no way they would’ve allowed his extradition from China.

  Frustrated with hitting dead ends, she opened the Quinn Industries website and read its overview. The company specialized in drone, railgun, laser, and advanced guidance and defense system development. Privately owned, analysts estimated the company value at $2.5 billon. Ellis Quinn, age forty-five, was listed as the CEO. No wonder she was being feted by the International Women’s Leadership Alliance.

  Pulling up the dossier on Quinn, Jordan was surprised to find she was actually one of three women heading up major U.S. defense companies. Born and raised in Seattle, she professed a lifelong dedication to aviation and earned a PhD in astronautical engineering from MIT. Some D.C. analyst had attached a five-year-old photo from when she was voted People magazine’s hottest bachelorette over forty.

  Jordan studied the photo. Dark-haired and strong-boned, Quinn had a hawkish air about her. Jordan couldn’t see her risking a billion-dollar company selling weapons technology to the Chinese.

  Next Jordan searched the report database for anything suggesting Quinn Industries had ever been hacked. She came up empty. By all reports, there had never been an external or internal cyber threat. She found it hard to believe.

  According to Henry, the fragment had originated in China, so she went there next, searching everything she could find on China’s “new concept weapons” program—xin gainian wuqi. The program included lasers, high-powered microwaves, particle beam weapons, coil guns, and railguns. It was clear from the intel that when it came to hypersonic and laser weaponry, China was winning the arms race.

  The railgun was the only weapon listed in the Chinese program that used a projectile but no propellants or jet fuel, so Jordan searched for intel suggesting they might be close to producing a transportable electromagnetic weapon. Nothing popped up. Either there wasn’t one currently in development or China excelled at keeping secrets. Jordan was betting on the latter.

  Flipping through the documents, a definite pattern jumped out. With every advance in Chinese weaponry, somewhere in the world there existed a corresponding technology heist.

  Chapter 13

  Kozachenko moved away from the camp and placed the call he’d been avoiding since rendezvousing with Barkov and the other men.

  “Pakhan,” he said in a show of respect. In trut
h, he didn’t care much for the man. However, he was the leader of the bratva and currently the only one who could help them out of this jam. “We need to talk.”

  “What happened?”

  Kozachenko filled him in on the events since leaving Dykanka. “We’re safe here, and Yolkin is improving. But with the helicopters flying overhead and the increased patrols on the highways, we have no way to move. The window is closing on our opportunity.”

  “This mission cannot fail.” His tone carried a rebuke.

  Kozachenko’s face burned, but he kept his voice level. “It was a combination of decisions that brought us to this point, Pakhan.”

  His words were measured, but he hoped his message was clear. Kozachenko and his men had fired on the plane on the pakhan’s orders. He was not willing to shoulder the blame.

  The pakhan remained silent.

  Finally, Kozachenko asked, “What do you want us to do now?”

  “Stas is working on a plan.”

  “Do you think it wise to keep him involved? Aren’t you afraid they might figure out he’s our man on the ground?”

  “Nyet. He’s been very careful. Besides, he is who we have.”

  “Forgive me if I lack confidence.” After all, they were talking about a man who’d shown a certain impotency when confronted with a simple task.

  “Vasyl, you may not trust him, but I believe you trust me.” The pakhan’s voice held the timber of a threat. The head of the Russian bratva was not someone used to being challenged, and it was clear to Kozachenko that he had crossed a line.

  “Of course, Pakhan.”

  “Once Stas works out the details, he’ll be in contact. Now tell me, what was in the envelope?”

  Kozachenko had been dreading this moment. He hesitated to tell him the truth for fear the pakhan would think he was lying.

  “There was only one thing written on the page. It must be a password of some kind.” Kozachenko read it out loud. The pakhan repeated it back. “That’s right. It seems odd, but we must look on the bright side. It means Zhen gave him nothing.”