Black Skies

by Leo J. Maloney

“The webcam?” he asked, puzzled.

  Gillespie laughed. “The translator, Buck. Jeez, you’re really out of it, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, right,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “I guess I am. Long day. Yeah, I’ll do it.”

  “Also, we’re not budgeted for that,” she said.

  “I’ll use my discretionary fund. Hell, at this point, I’d be happy enough to pay out of pocket. How’s the team doing? Any update on our status?”

  “Well, Mel and Donna are monitoring online chatter,” she said. “The extremist message boards and chat rooms are blowing up, of course. But so far it’s all fantasy and speculation on that end. A lot of talk about executing the oppressor and bringing the American empire to its knees, but that’s all it is. Talk.”

  “There’s never anything good on chatter,” he said. They turned into the alcove that held the vending machines. “And no idea who’s behind this yet?”

  “Nothing solid, but there’s only one man we know who would have the cojones to pull off something like this.”

  “Haider Raza,” said Chapman. He took a Styrofoam cup and set it on the machine.

  “I’d put twenty-to-one odds on it.”

  “What are you having?” he asked her. “I’m buying.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, I—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I said I’m buying.”

  “Espresso, then.”

  “Have we gotten a list of sensitive information that’s been compromised by the abduction?” he asked, inserting his employee card and pushing the button. The machine whirred and rumbled. “Things the Secretary was privy to?”

  “The interagency liaison is supposed to forward that to us, but they’re dragging their feet on it. My guess is they need to sort through security clearances to figure out what’s going where.” The thick black liquid poured into her cup, and he handed it to her. He set another one and pushed the button for a cappuccino.

  “You want some balls to go with that?” she said, sipping her espresso through a grin.

  He flipped her the bird as he took his drink from the machine. “Meantime,” he began as they walked, “fingers crossed that Raza doesn’t get anything sensitive out of him in time to do something about it.”

  “Is there any word on the field team?” she asked. “This investigation is going to be a whole different animal once we’ve got boots on the ground.” He took his cappuccino, and they started making their way back to the office.

  “The field team’s setting up shop over at the airport in Islamabad,” he said. “We’ve got seven people on site so far.”

  “Is the Pakistani government being accommodating?” she asked.

  “No complaints from any of our guys yet.”

  “What about our assets in the city?” she asked. There were other sources that the department cultivated in the city—a handful of policemen, government functionaries, a few businessmen who performed some key services, all handled by field agents.

  “Scrambling,” he said. “No word on anything useful yet. But who knows. Something might turn up. If anything does, it’ll come straight to me.”

  They reached his office, and he sat down behind his desk. It suddenly seemed as though he were short of breath. He obviously showed it, because Gillespie had a worried look on her face.

  “Buck,” said Gillespie, walking toward him, her voice softening. “Are you doing okay?” She put her hand on his shoulder. It was warm and comforting.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Just—another one of those days.”

  “I hear you,” she said. She withdrew her hand and crossed her arms. “Do you need a nap or something? I’m sure the rest of us can cover you for fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  He stared at the middle distance, then said, “No, this needs my attention.”

  “There’s no end of things that need your attention, Buck. You need to rest at some point.”

  “You don’t, apparently.”

  She smiled her broad, pearly white smile. “Don’t you think I take whatever naps I can whenever I can find the time? Why shouldn’t you, too?”

  “Can’t,” he said. “But thanks for the concern.”

  She shrugged. “Oh, hey, we’re getting Chinese delivered. Wanna pitch in?”

  He reached into the pocket of his jacket, which was draped on the back of his chair, and pulled out a crumpled ten. He tossed it on the table in front of her. “You know what I like.”

  “General Tso’s. You got it.” She took the bill and turned to leave.

  “See what you can do about that translator!” he called out as she walked out his door.

  He looked at his watch. Smith had called with a request earlier, and now it was time to follow through on it. He picked up his phone and dialed.

  “This is Philip Chapman, Crisis Response Team Leader at Langley,” he said, then sipped his cappuccino. It was still too hot. “Who am I speaking to?”

  “This is Special Agent Pacheco.”

  “Listen, Pacheco,” said Chapman. “I need a favor. I’m going to need you to put a name on your guest list. This does not go in the logs, you understand?”

  Chapter 8

  May 27

  Boston

  Dan Morgan pulled his Mustang into the garage of the Hampton Building in downtown Boston and went to the lowest level of the garage, to a northeast corner far from any stairwell or elevator. He got out, locked his car, and walked to an unassuming plain off-white door in the concrete wall, with a simple key card reader mounted on the wall next to it.

  He swiped his card and was admitted into a pitch-black room. Once the door was closed, fluorescent lights came on, revealing a small chamber, all in concrete to match the parking lot, with a reinforced steel door ahead of him. He opened a breaker box next to the door, then unfastened the breaker panel via a hidden latch. The panel swung open to reveal a retinal and fingerprint scanner. He laid his hand on the panel then put his eyes up to the scanner. The machine beeped, and the door unlocked.

  Morgan shivered as he entered the air-conditioned environment. There was a short, brightly lit corridor, wood-paneled and carpeted in a way that seemed to call for ambient Muzak. The corridor led to the top of a staircase which in turn led down into the War Room. The vast chamber, with its long conference table and walls lined with monitors, had three corridors going off into the various recesses of the facility, which took up several levels and the entire breadth of the building under which it had been built. There were offices, debriefing rooms, living quarters complete with kitchen and gym, and even an engineering lab for their genius-in-residence, Eugenia Barrett. This was the heart of Zeta Division, where everything came together. And above it all, opposite the big screen, up a curving flight of open steel and glass stairs, overseeing everything, was Diana Bloch’s office, suspended from the ceiling and closed off by glass walls that could become opaque if she wanted them to.

  Half a dozen people occupied the War Room. Of these, Morgan only knew three well. At the table engrossed in something on his laptop was Lincoln Shepard, their computer security wiz, pale like he rarely, if ever, saw the sun, with permanent red eyes, his blond hair standing up at every angle like he had just gotten out of bed, wearing jeans and a rumpled red T-shirt with some sort of old video game character on it.

  Standing next to him and looking on his screen was Karen O’Neal, a lean, petite half-Vietnamese woman of about thirty, dressed, as usual, professionally but always, Morgan noted, with a casual flair. Talking at the foot of the stairs to her office was the capo herself, Diana Bloch. She was an impeccable woman, always dressed like she was going to meet the President, hair in a tight bun and always bearing an expression of steely professionalism. She was with Paul Kirby and a woman he did not recognize. The operation had grown significantly in the past year, and gave them a good deal more resources while still keeping the team small and agile. It had been a good year for them.

  “Morgan.” Bloch had spotted him, and was walkin
g toward him. As she drew closer, Morgan noticed that her hair was not as precise as it had seemed, and she had bags under her eyes. “What took you so long?” He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t let him, cutting in with the terse, clipped tone that she adopted whenever she was in a hurry. “Never mind, I don’t care. Kirby,” she said to the analyst who had followed her over, “fill him in. I need to check in with our contacts in Washington. Oh, and Morgan,” she added, “this here is Louise Dietz. She’s new. I’ll let you make your own introductions. And don’t go easy on her. She may be shy, but she knows what she’s doing.” Bloch walked off in the direction of Lincoln Shepard and Karen O’Neal.

  “So, this is Louise Dietz,” Kirby repeated, barely raising his eyes from the file he had in his left hand, waving his right in halfhearted introduction. Paul Kirby was one of the newcomers. His head was large and oval, with a receding hairline that only accentuated the effect, a thin pointed nose and small eyes that gave him a vaguely weasel-like aspect. He was meticulous and precise, which was in itself an asset in his work, but tended to rub Morgan the wrong way.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Dietz, shaking his hand, trying to hide her nervousness. She was slightly taller than Morgan, but she still had the body language of a scholar, quiet and introverted, with shoulder-length brown hair and plain clothes in muted colors that said that she groomed and dressed to be presentable but to call as little attention to herself as possible.

  “Dietz does criminal psychology and profiling,” Kirby said.

  “Terrorism, mostly,” she said. “I wrote my PhD thesis on Haider Raza.”

  “Well, you should feel right at home, then,” said Morgan, raising an eyebrow.

  “It’s a trial by fire, of sorts,” she said with a half smile.

  “Hell of a first day.” He turned to Kirby. “What did I miss?”

  “Come on, walk with me. What do you know?”

  “Only what was on the radio,” said Morgan as they walked down a corridor, with Dietz following. “The Secretary of State’s motorcade attacked in Islamabad. At the airport. Apparently there were explosions, and the Secretary of State is missing, but they’ve not been generous with the details. Whatever else there is, it’s not being broadcast to the public.”

  “In here,” said Kirby. He turned into an office and Morgan followed. It was a medium-sized office, windowless like the rest of Zeta, but with bright, yellow lights designed to mimic sunlight—something to do with making people more alert, according to Barrett. A printer, a scanner, and two monitors were neatly aligned on a desk that stood against the wall. He sat down on a leather-upholstered office chair, and motioned for Dietz to sit beside him.

  Morgan pulled up a chair on the other side of Kirby. “We’ve got some preliminary surveillance footage,” he said. “It came in through our CIA contact, from the team they have in place at the airport.” He pulled the video up on the screen, black and white and jerky, showing a line of black cars moving along the tarmac toward a large airplane—Secretary Wolfe’s convoy. “It’s not exactly high-definition video.”

  “Not going to be easy to see anything useful in these,” said Morgan.

  “We might be able to get some better quality video from the local press, but for now, this is what we have. Watch. Here’s when the first rocket hits.” The rocket itself was a blurred blip on a single frame of video. Following that there was a bright flash of white on the lead car, which resolved itself into flames in about two seconds. “And the next.” A few seconds after that, there was another flash—the third car was hit. “As you can see, this isn’t a random attack. They knew which cars to hit, and which to spare.”

  “That spells leak,” said Morgan.

  “Maybe,” said Kirby. “But I prefer to have all the facts before coming to a conclusion like that.”

  Morgan turned to Dietz. “What’s your professional opinion?”

  She stammered, drawing her hands to herself in alarm. “S-successful terror attacks tend to show a great degree of planning, but I think you’re right in this case. The video seems to show that they have information they shouldn’t be privy to.”

  “We’re working on getting a list of people who had access to the details of the Secretary’s protocols from the Diplomatic Security Service,” said Kirby. “We’re also getting regular updates from our contacts in the CIA, NSA, and Pakistani intelligence. I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t let them do the heavy lifting on this.”

  “Not unless you want to make sure it’s done right,” said Morgan, still eying the video. A member of the Secretary’s security detail had gotten out of the car and was taken out by a sniper.

  Kirby ignored him. “No one has yet claimed responsibility, but—”

  “But there’s a name on everyone’s mind,” said Morgan. “Haider Raza. Do you think he’ll claim the attack?”

  “That’s assuming he didn’t take the Secretary just to extract whatever he could get out of him,” said Kirby testily.

  “Actually, information is probably not the reason they abducted him,” broke in Dietz. She seemed to be surprised by her own boldness. She opened her mouth to continue speaking but faltered. She started up again, animatedly now. “The Secretary of State is at too high a level to have information immediately useful to a terror cell. He might know about general strategies, and maybe they get lucky if he has knowledge of a surprise attack, but mostly it would be useless to Raza. Usually, terrorists prefer targets that provide a tactical advantage. Commanders out in the field who will know about particular troop positions and movements—that kind of thing. With the Secretary of State, it’s more likely that they will have demands.” She cast her eyes down, as though she suddenly remembered she was supposed to be shy. “At least that’s what I think.”

  “I think you’re gonna do fine here,” said Morgan, impressed. “In any case, I wouldn’t want to be in the poor bastard’s shoes.” Then, to Kirby, “So what can I do?”

  “For now?” said Kirby. “Look at the tapes, and whatever else comes in. We could use expert eyes on everything we’ve got. That goes for you too, Louise. Plus, you want to know whatever you can if you’re called on to spring into action. Meanwhile, we’re working on getting our own man on the ground. Bloch tells me you know him. Guy named Cougar.”

  “You could say that I do,” said Morgan. Code Name Cougar was Peter Conley’s alias in the field.

  “Is he good?” asked Kirby.

  “Almost as good as I am.”

  Chapter 9

  May 27

  Over the Gulf of Oman

  Peter Conley had not taken his eyes from his laptop computer as he traveled on the Cessna Citation X that had brought him from Yemen, where he’d been touching base with Zeta assets on the ground, looking into Raza’s possible sources of funding. Updates came in constantly, compiled in real time by people at Zeta from their key people in various intelligence agencies.

  Conley knew he looked incongruous in the luxurious aircraft, wearing his khaki shirt, denim, and sneakers, but he wasn’t the type to dress up when he could avoid it. He certainly had no time to enjoy the amenities that the aircraft boasted—it was a loan from a Yemeni businessman friendly with Zeta—except maybe the wide, comfortable leather seats. And yet even those beckoned him to sleep, something he was craving after a few recent sleepless nights, but that was out of the question. The work he had to do now was too urgent.

  From the bar fully stocked with the most expensive alcohol in the world, he only drank water and one cup of coffee on boarding. He barely looked twice at the statuesque, bored-looking blonde who was serving drinks—he wasn’t rich enough to warrant the all-smiles treatment. Normally, he’d be planting the seeds that would get her to come back to his hotel room at their destination. Ruefully, he thought, casting a quick glance in her direction, there’d be no time for that today.

  Instead, Peter Conley kept his eyes on the pictures of the site of the attack, which were already circulating in the intelligence communi
ty—official cars spewing heavy smoke, the ground strewn with dead bodies, blood darkening the tarmac, and the airplane, whose flames reached up to twice its own height. Two hours into his four-hour flight, the sun was already low in the sky, and the people on the ground had only begun to sort out all the evidence.

  The President appeared on TV and made the official announcement to the nation. Conley followed the closed captioning, the video on silent. The speech was short and dry, stating that the Secretary of State had been abducted by unknown terrorists, and that the entire US Intelligence community was mobilizing en masse in response to the crisis.

  New information was coming in at a trickle, and nothing much worth noting, so he spent most of the rest of his time on the plane catching up on the latest developments of the major players in Pakistan. He struggled to keep awake as time ticked by slowly, until something came up on his screen. A video, taken by a member of the press that had been near the airplane when the convoy was approaching. It showed the cars coming near, and then jolted from the explosion on the airplane.

  The videographer took cover, the camera bucking wildly as he ran, but then he turned back to the scene. It focused on the attackers’ Jeep—the closest one, then another, off to the right. It showed as they pursued the Secretary’s car and mowed down several of the Diplomatic Security Servicemen. Some of them shot back, however, managing to take cover from sniper fire near the burning airplane. As the attackers left their Jeep to take the Secretary, two were shot as they ran toward the car, then a third straggler was shot going back. It cut off a few seconds after they disappeared out of the airport. Conley watched the video carefully, again and again, taking note of every detail, as the sun dipped in the sky and evening approached.

  The Cessna touched down on a private airfield outside Islamabad. The main airport had been shut down following the attack. Conley knew it had taken significant connections to secure even this landing—if he’d been less lucky, he might have ended up in Peshawar or Nowshera, both at least an hour and a half away from the Pakistani capital.