“Wow,” Doc began to disparage the idea, but then his lips and eyes narrowed.
“I dreamed of arrests of congressmen for doing their jobs,” Jack mused. “The appeals to patriotism in the face of a manufactured crisis.… I’ve seen all this before. A debt ceiling battle would lead to the imposition of emergency powers by the president. Take over the purse strings completely, and there would no longer be a check on the presidency.” He looked up at Doc. “They called Nixon’s administration the Imperial Presidency, but that would be child’s play compared to this.”
Doc slowly nodded, but instead of supporting Jack’s new theory, he said, “You’re adding more trees, Jack. We don’t need more trees. We got plenty of trees already.”
Jack considered that. “Are we missing the forest?”
Doc jutted out his chin. “Yeah. They’re being blocked by a German industrialist, a fake base in the desert, and a pit of dead bodies.”
Jack stood and shook his head just to jar his thinking. “Some people see what they want to see, some people see what they need to see, and too many people in authority explain away what they see.”
Doc pondered that. Doc remembered the time he was hunting in the back forests of northern California and became hopelessly lost. Because he tried to rely only on his instincts, not on his instruments like a simple compass. He remembered following a stream down a mountain. Until it ran into a slightly bigger stream. He was sure this would eventually lead him to an open clearing and back to where he wanted to go. Instead he recalled how his heart dropped when the last stream led him not to a clearing but to a wide raging river, too deep and too fast to cross. The feeling of absolute terror and hopelessness. The understanding in a flash through his bowels that his instincts had led him to a fatal miscalculation.
“If there isn’t another explanation for what we’ve seen and heard, what is the answer?” Doc asked.
“Who was it who said that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, has to be the truth?”
“I think it was Sherlock Holmes,” Doc said. “Eliminating the impossible is not going to be that easy after our interview with Brooks.” Doc shook his own head now, seemingly overwhelmed by the possibilities.
“An empty bomb … maybe a missing bomb,” Jack mused.
Doc stood up beside the desk. “I’ve been proceeding on the basis that another bomb might be in play,” he told Jack. “So is the prince. So while he’s thanked us for our service, he’s given us the go-ahead to leave the country. While you were busy having your nightmare, I was having the jet fueled and prepared for takeoff at dawn.”
Jack snapped from his reverie at the mention of sunrise. “What time is it?” he asked, looking for any clock.
“Five A.M.,” Doc informed him. “Whatever the truth is, we should get to the airport and into the air.” Doc lowered his head regretfully. “If Brooks wasn’t lying, it’ll be quite a view out our aircraft windows! Funny…” he said, his voice trailing off.
Jack knew that reflective tone of voice. He turned his head toward his friend. “Funny? What’s funny?”
“Flying out at dawn,” Doc replied. “Coincidentally and ironically, that’s the same time the military is planning to send General Brooks home.”
Jack’s eyebrows shot upward. “Not tonight?”
“No,” Doc said. “With a high-profile passing like this, that would smell like there’s something to hide—like they want to keep it from a day’s news cycle. Still, tomorrow A.M. is a pretty quick turnaround. They want him out of town and under a rug ASAP.”
Suddenly Jack was no longer playing catchup. Doc recognized his expression, saw that his old friend was chewing on something … hard.
“What is it?” Doc asked.
“We got everything?” Jack asked sharply.
“In the limo,” Doc reported.
“Then let’s go,” Jack said strongly. He called the chauffeur who had gone into an adjoining room. “Can you get me close to Brooks’s plane?”
“I can get you as close as possible without running people over,” he replied.
“As close as possible will do it,” Jack assured him. He looked at Doc. “Don’t talk. I’ve got to think.”
Doc raised his hands in surrender as he followed Jack and the driver out.
The prince’s chauffeur proved as capable as ever, getting the two onto the tarmac just as the first sliver of dawn was cracking the horizon. The G650 pilots helped load the plane with the pair’s few bags, but Jack only had eyes for the C-17 making its own final preparations for takeoff across the field.
Jack and Doc got out of the car.
“Doc,” Jack called. “You got the digicam ready?”
Doc didn’t bother answering. He simply walked over and held it out on Jack’s eye level. The chauffeur emerged and joined the two.
“Zoom in on the man directing the others,” Jack instructed.
The fellow in the suit was just an insect-size stick figure from that distance, but Doc started to get a close up on him. The driver was trying to figure out what the pair was focused on.
“The man in the black Brooks Brothers,” Jack said.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Peter Andrews, the general’s event coordinator. Quite the wald dhroot.”
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“Son of broken wind,” the chauffeur translated.
Jack looked at him. “Who’d he burn and how?”
“Everyone,” the chauffeur said. “Nothing anyone did was good enough for him.”
But both men were alerted by Doc’s sudden stiffening. Jack looked over quickly, thinking his friend may have been struck, or even shot, but Doc was just ramrod straight, staring into the camera eyepiece viewfinder.
“What is it, Doc?” he asked. “What’s up?”
But as he was asking, Doc was already fiddling with the digicam’s playback. “Look,” he instructed Jack, holding up the playback screen so it was next to the view of the event coordinator directing his aircraft’s crew.
What was playing on the screen was Doc’s video from the morning Schoenberg had been killed. It was near the end, when Doc had raced for the tower that the assassin was escaping from. He freeze-framed at the moment when he got his clearest, distant view.
Jack looked from the screen to the distant man, and back again. Same height, same weight, same build. And, on the evidence of a single lock of hair emerging from the assassin’s hoodie, same color mane.
“Have we gone completely nuts?” Doc asked incredulously.
“No,” said Jack with certainty. “I think we just went totally sane.” He looked at Doc and the chauffeur. “We’ve got to get into the air.”
“Why?” Doc asked.
“I don’t understand,” said the chauffeur. “If there’s a problem, why do you not just tell someone what you suspect?” The chauffer’s question was as innocent as it was direct.
“Did you ever hear the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf?” Jack asked.
The man shook his head.
“The authorities back home didn’t believe me before,” Jack said. “Do you think they’d believe anything I say now?” He stabbed his finger at the C-17 in general and at Peter Andrews in particular. “We’ve got to beat that plane back to America!”
52
San Francisco, California
Anastasia was worried. Israel and Mecca still stood, but Ana was still worried. Sammy had not eaten and not slept. While the others would eat, shower, rest, and even allow themselves to be comforted by their friends, Sammy would only begrudgingly accept coffee, and then only take time to relieve himself of it in the bathroom. Then, quickly as possible, he was back in front of the computer screen.
Ana had stopped trying to convince him to rest even his eyes. Even after Brooks’s deadline had come and gone, and the world had not been plunged into war, Sammy drove himself relentlessly. Finally she walked up to him and hopelessly said, “Sammy … dear … you don’t have t
o prove yourself to anyone.”
“I’m not trying to prove myself to you!” he snapped, then realized who he was talking to. Finally he turned from the screen and attempted a weak smile. “I’m sorry,” he confessed. “Here, come here, sit down.” He put out his hands, she placed hers in his, and he brought her into Ric’s seat beside him. “Maybe I’m trying to prove something to myself.” He dropped her hands and turned back to the keyboard and the screen. “Jack’s in the air, racing Brooks’s plane back here, and now we know this Peter Andrews guy might be involved.” He started back to work, his eyes ever closer to the screen. “I agree with him, Ana. Finally, after all these years, I agree with my brother. I think there’s danger. Great danger, and I’m going to do everything possible to help find out what it is.”
“What can I do?” Ana asked.
“Hear me out,” he said, pointing at the screen. “I’ve got to talk this through. There’s nothing about the bomb or the plot. I spent hours going through defense alerts, security blogs, and message boards, trying to see if there were even any rumors. Nothing. Then I began cataloging everything we knew so far. One: there had been a conspiracy to bomb Mecca. This was what the code word Firebird referred to. Two: it involved Brooks and some foreigners—maybe from Russia and Israel. Three: it had been responsible for moving sensitive bomb parts to Saudi Arabia, where we think the device had been assembled. It was also responsible—or maybe it had only received—the bomb material stolen from Russia, which involved a plane crash. All that could only mean that the conspirators were not just highly capable and well-placed, but also extremely brave, or maybe ridiculously foolhardy.”
“But Mecca has not been bombed,” Ana said, equally as quiet. “And your brother said that the material for the bomb was missing when he got there.” It was eerie the way the two seemed to exist only in the light of the computer screens, their voices hushed.
“Yes, yes,” Sammy agreed tightly. “What are we missing? What am I overlooking?” He looked at Ana, but only seemed to see her face as another screen. “I went back to the chat room that had the info about attacking Israel. It no longer existed. Everything there was gone.”
Ana looked lost. “What does that mean?”
“That even though Brooks is dead, someone else is still active in the plot.”
“The event coordinator?”
“I think so. But there’s absolutely no information on a Peter Andrews that I can find. At least not about a Peter Andrews attached to General Brooks’s staff, and/or a Peter Andrews who advertises services as an event coordinator.”
“A false name, then.”
“Yes, of course.”
“What could his real name be?” she wondered.
“Ahhhh,” he said. “See, that’s why I wanted to talk with you. You’ve just reminded me: it doesn’t matter what his real name is. Not on the web. It only matters what screen name he’s using.” His fingers started to plunk on the keys with renewed purpose. Ana watched as he went back to the web-building sites that Morton had used. These hadn’t been wiped clean. “A conspiracy within a conspiracy?” he murmured absently. “Israelis who didn’t want Jerusalem destroyed? Arabs who didn’t want Mecca destroyed? Mossad or CIA cleaning up traces?” He shook his head. “No. Sol would know. Dover might know. Scratch that.”
Sammy tried using the credentials he’d obtained on different websites and obscure message boards to probe around, trying other web builders and chat rooms that he thought might have something. “Nothing’s working,” he complained. “Think!”
Sammy’s head drooped. Ana put her arms around Sammy’s shoulder and waist, snuggling closer.
“When I was lost back in Belarus,” she said softly into his ear, “when nothing worked, I would go back to the old ways. The ways that had worked for generations. The ones proven by experience.”
Sammy’s head snapped up, his eyes fully open. “What did you say?”
Ana blinked. “Experience?”
“No, before that.”
“The old ways?”
“Yes!” he exclaimed, then hunched, looking over his shoulder to make sure he hadn’t roused the others. He brought his fingers back to bear on the keyboard, typing furiously. “I think I’ve got OCD or something. Once I uncovered the American building site, I only explored it superficially. I was distracted by the Israeli site. Don’t you see? I changed the old for the new when the old might still have something to tell us…!”
Ana watched in confused wonder as Sammy typed and typed and typed. “Security,” he grunted, “on the larger IPS … stubborn. Credentials I used before not working … not offering me the choice of a new password.” He turned to smile at Ana. “Okay, they want to play it rough? Two can play at that game.”
He hunched over even farther, with his chin practically on the keyboard. “Don’t look,” he joked. “I’m going to some notorious secret hacker sites. Need to find a nice RAT worm.”
“Rat worm?”
“Remote Access Trojan worm program,” he translated. “Pretty much been around since the dawn of the PC. They weren’t always malicious; similar programs allowed techies to run diagnostics, and repair machines from afar. But even the crudest allowed a remote user to do things to a computer that users would never allow on their own.”
He typed some more, his face looking craftier and craftier in the glowing light of the screen. “Oh, no,” he said. “You’re not getting away that easy. Come to papa!” He glanced at Ana. “I designed the RAT I’m inserting. It’s considerably more sophisticated and completely nefarious.” He chuckled. “Originally designed by a Russian hacker to steal money from bank accounts, it has been tweaked by a dozen users, most recently by a black hat hacker known as Tex, who claimed it was immune to detection by the major antivirus programs.”
“So if Andrews is using the site,” Ana said, “he won’t know that you’re peeking in.”
“Exactly,” Sammy gloated. He looked at Ana while his fingers still typed—as if he were doing a cycle-riding trick. “Want some new dresses or shoes?” he asked. “I might even be able to access his credit card numbers.”
Ana slapped him playfully on the arm. “Pay attention.”
Sammy nodded, suddenly serious. “You’re right. You’re right, you’re right, you’re right. Any RAT was dangerous—it could easily be configured to turn on me so I had better pay attention all right!”
He clicked the ENTER button, and seemed to hold his breath. So Ana did, too. Just as it seemed that she had to let out her breath, scrolls and scrolls of information started sweeping down Sammy’s computer screen.
“It’s reading the directories as if it were at the computer itself!” he exulted, turning off the virus checker. “Downloading his drive onto one of mine … now!” He clicked on the ENTER key again, then stood, shooing Ana from Ric’s seat. “Come on, come on,” he said. “While mine is downloading, I can check e-mails on his.”
Ana made way, but stood behind him, her hands on his shoulders as he typed even more. Within seconds he had not only accessed the accounts he’d already found, but two more Google accounts and a third from a private ISP.
“Anything?” Ana asked intently.
“Keep your expectations low,” he advised, eyes locked on the screen. “It’s a slow job, but hopefully a beneficial one. There!” He suddenly pointed, straightening up.
“What is it?” Ana asked.
“An encryption program,” Sammy cheered. “That means they’re trying to hide something.” He began typing more ferociously. The documents that the word processer generated were bland; two personal recommendations for men whom Brooks had served with, and a Christmas shopping list from two years before. But there were a dozen partly deleted files in the directory. Sammy chose one at random and ran the encryption program. Much of what it returned was nonsense; the program was confused by the missing data. But then he discovered two partial paragraphs, time stamped and dated earlier that day—after Brooks had died. He clicked the first one into
view.
“Look,” he said, pointing again. The two read the message. It said that in order to minimize early detection and still do the most damage, the aircraft should be flown at precisely 18,500 feet on a precise course as delineated on the map insert. At detonation, the result would be doses of toxin in excess of survivable levels well beyond the five-mile radius of the population center.
They looked at each other. “They still plan to detonate a device,” he said.
“But where?” Ana wondered.
He turned and clicked the second message into view.
At first glance it looked like a dead end—a simple message from one friend to another, commending each other for jobs well done. It read as if it had been absently written simply to fill time—on a long flight perhaps? But then both Sammy and Ana read the last line at the same time. It was a postscript, a pun, a play on words, a variation of a famous song.
But instead of reading “hooray,” it read “Who Prays for Hollywood?”
The bellow Sammy let out woke everyone.
“What?” Anastasia cried, both frightened and excited by her love’s exclamation. “Sammy, what is it?”
“I know the real target!” he exclaimed as the others came running over.
“What is it?” Ric asked grimly.
“L.A.,” Sammy instantly retorted. “Hollywood, Tinseltown, the Dream Factory, La La Land. Brooks hated it, the extremists hated it, so that has to be it. That’s where they plan to detonate the bomb.”
Ric looked convinced, but his expression also communicated that he wasn’t sure the people who could also help stop it would be convinced as well. They had already denied more compelling evidence. “I don’t know if that’s going to be an easy sell.…”
“It doesn’t have to be,” said a certain, somber voice behind them. Anastasia, Miwa, Ritu, Sammy, and Ric turned to see Sol standing there. “No more waiting for others to do the right thing. If we’re certain, we can do something about it.”
53
Dover waited until she saw Montgomery Morton leave the house. He may have been going to the mailbox, he may have been going to sit by the pool, he may have just been going for a walk. It didn’t matter. She had been waiting quite some time, and she didn’t have a lot of time to spare. If their fears were true, no one had a lot of time to spare.
Countdown to Mecca Page 31
