Holland leaned on the back of his seat and rubbed his eyes. “A little. Couple of hours.”
Robb nodded. “Okay, here’s the latest. They should be ready to load more than three hundred new box lunches through the rear door as we asked, we’ve got an updated flight plan, and they should have a pair of metal shears for us for the broken leg in the back.”
“Shears?” Holland asked.
“The young man in the crew rest loft,” Barb told him. “The Swiss doctor, who’s been an incredible help, by the way, needs to cut the boy’s cast off. His leg is badly swollen, and the doctor’s worried about circulation.”
Holland nodded. “Okay.”
“And the meals are coming on,” Barb added, pointing to the light on the overhead panel indicating door 5L had been opened.
Robb consulted his list and continued.
“I also demanded replacement medication for three passengers who’d left theirs in luggage. That’s supposed to be coming on too.”
Barb agreed.
“And we’re completely fueled up to max takeoff weight, water tanks are filled, and they checked and topped the oil in all four engines. I’ve got the computer programmed, and the three inertial nav systems are aligned.”
Holland slipped into the left seat and turned back to Barb.
“Are we ready from your perspective, Barb?”
She nodded. “The good news is, absolutely no one down there is sick as yet, or showing any symptoms. But, the way I understand it, we have another twenty-four hours to go before we would be seeing symptoms in at least a few.”
He nodded, his eyes focused out the side window. “How’s the morale?”
She shook her head and sighed.
“All I can tell you, James, is that we’ve got some deeply frightened people on this airplane, and it’s showing. A lot of anxiety, scared kids, and scared crew members. Ambassador Lancaster has been wonderful. He’s helped organize a bunch of volunteers to keep helping and checking on people. The man you had to throttle has been quiet as the Sphinx, and even holy Joe down there, Garson, has been helpful. Lancaster’s keeping him in line. Most everyone, though, has been wonderful.”
“And Mr. Erickson?”
“I got him to call home. He talked to his sister-in-law and his kids. Very wrenching, but they were very supportive. I think they’ve all realized his wife had been mentally deteriorating for several years. He’s still in shock, but I feel sure he’ll make it.”
Holland patted her arm. “Get ’em ready, Barb. We’ll roll as soon as you let me know you’re ready. I’m … not sure that going anywhere is a solution of any sort, but …”
“Best medicine I can think of,” Barb said. “We need to get in motion headed anywhere. These people need to see something happening. Just sitting here is killing everyone. All they’ve been able to do so far is worry who’s going to be the first person to keel over with a high fever.”
When the door had closed behind Barb, Robb looked over at Holland.
“James?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been thinking, you know, about some stupid things I said last night …”
James Holland shook his head, stopping him.
“Forget it, Dick. We just need to get ourselves through this.”
Robb bit his lip and looked away. “Yeah, well, I just want you to know I’m with you. Whatever you need, okay?”
“Okay, Dick. I appreciate it.”
Quantum 66 had four engines running and the before-takeoff check completed by 3:45 P.M., when the satellite phone rang again with word from Dallas Operations to hold in position.
“For how long?” Holland asked. “We’re ready to go with engines running.”
“We think more than thirty minutes, Captain. We’re waiting for final release from the Situation Room, and I guess they’re waiting for the Defense Department to confirm the airfield is ready for you.”
The snow showers had ended at midmorning. Holland could see patches of blue in the distance through the fast-moving clouds, but the wind was still blowing from the east and the weather was obviously still changeable. Earlier, the security police in their chemical gear had looked even more alien and frightening as they stood around the red-lined perimeter, freezing their tails off and wishing Quantum’s airplane was anywhere else. Now they had all retreated into various vehicles and removed the barricades. There was no evidence of Lisa Erickson’s death left on the ramp.
At 4:08 P.M. the word came from Dallas to depart, and within three minutes James Holland nudged the control yoke back at one hundred sixty miles per hour and lifted the seven hundred fifty thousand pounds of aircraft, people, and fuel into the Icelandic sky.
At five hundred feet above the surface, he began a turn to the right over the ocean and started climbing on course. Their destination, a string of numbers in the flight management computer reading simply “N2000 W00800,” lay over three thousand miles ahead down the center of the Atlantic.
Robb reported the departure by open satellite telephone to Quantum Operations in Dallas, which reported it by nonsecure telephone lines to their Situation Room contact in the White House. At least a dozen television cameras recorded the departure from a ridge within two miles of Keflavík, the electronic images traveling instantly by as many portable satellite uplinks to geosynchronous communications satellites, which transmitted the signals back to all the major networks and then to a viewing audience that had grown to over two hundred eighty million worldwide.
From the right-side windows of a Learjet 25, another TV camera crew recorded the same scene as the business jet chased the 747 from a respectable distance, their video signal uplinked through a handheld dish antenna shakily positioned skyward from the copilot’s seat.
One hundred miles south of Keflavík, the Lear—possessed of a much shorter range than the 747—peeled away and headed back to the United States.
Flight 66 was on its own again.
At 4:18 P.M. Icelandic time—8:18 P.M. in Moscow and Kiev—a small electronic chime sounded in the forward cabin of a solitary Gulfstream IV cruising steadily toward the border between the Ukranian Republic and Turkey.
The lone occupant, Yuri Steblinko, climbed out of the captain’s seat long enough to examine the inbound message on the communications computer screen. The message was in Arabic, in which he was fluent.
He nodded to himself and triggered a printout. The target was airborne, and he had an initial ETA along with the coordinates.
Yuri returned to the left seat and began punching coordinates into the flight computer. If the anticipated low-altitude run north along the border took no longer than planned, he would arrive at the planned coordinates fifteen minutes ahead of his target.
Yuri sat back and pursed his lips. There wasn’t much surplus time, and the winds over the Mediterranean worried him.
But the third phase of the mission should work.
He leaned forward and spread out the map again. The fourth phase was the problem. Once the missiles had been fired, there would be only so much time, airspace, and fuel left for a getaway.
Any mistake at all—or a single element of bad luck—and Anya would be waiting in vain for his return.
NINETEEN
WASHINGTON, D.C.—SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23—12:45 P.M. (1745Z)
A shaken Dr. Rusty Sanders sat in the driver’s seat of his Chevy Blazer and wondered what to do next.
Three hours ago he had walked into his condo near Herndon, Virginia, dead tired and ravenous. He remembered calmly walking through his dining room and putting his briefcase and handheld computer on the table. The machine had beeped immediately with a message from Sherry Ellis:
Where are you?
Reply only to my PDA.
He removed the stylus and handwritten the answer on the small screen, watching with the usual fascination as the tiny silicon brain deciphered his loops and strokes and replaced his handwriting with the typed version—which he then transmitted with a few keystrokes:<
br />
I’m home.
In Herndon.
Why?
He’d set the PDA back on the table and gone to the kitchen to find something to eat when it began beeping again. Rusty put down the carton of eggs he’d removed from the refrigerator and walked back to the table.
The message was clear from five feet away:
GET OUT OF THERE!
GET OUT NOW!
CALL ME LATER ON PDA. DO NOT
TRANSMIT WHERE YOU ARE.
For almost three hours he had driven randomly, keeping his speed within the limit and trying in vain to communicate again with Sherry.
All transmissions went unanswered, as did the burning question in his mind: What the hell is going on?
Finally he’d pointed his Blazer toward the heart of the District and found the largest parking garage he could locate, a huge structure on M Street that went down several levels. He’d backed into the most remote stall available and hunkered down, wondering if Sherry’s PDA had been confiscated by someone at Langley—and whether any messages he tried to send could be traced physically to the spot he occupied by tracing the geographic location of the cellular signal.
It would be safer now to be on foot, he decided.
Rusty popped the PDA computer in his briefcase, locked the Blazer, and walked up Connecticut to the Dupont Circle Metro station. In search of a pay phone, he joined a throng of people descending to track level on the escalator.
Wrong! If I’m traced making a call from here, they’ll know I’m riding the Metro system.
He retraced his steps back up to street level and found a pay phone in the lobby of an office building. He punched in his own number for the condo.
It took three rings for the answering machine to pick up. Rusty hit the star button to end his recorded message, then entered a series of three digits—728–which activated the internal microphone. He’d used the feature several times to make sure the TV was off, or to check to hear whether the cleaning lady was really vacuuming the place.
This time the sounds of crashing and banging reached his ears: furniture being moved and drawers being pulled out. He could hear male voices in the background for a few seconds, then sudden silence.
He could hear footsteps then, getting louder as someone moved closer to the counter where the answering machine sat. A voice suddenly spoke in the background: “What are you …” But there was a loud “Shhh!” from somewhere closer.
He could hear the handset being removed from its cradle. There would be no dial tone, of course, and whoever was holding the handset would know that the caller had triggered the internal monitor.
If they were pros, he reasoned, they would also know that the most likely caller to have the necessary code would be the owner.
A strange voice suddenly coursed through the phone, causing Rusty to jump. “I know that’s you, Dr. Sanders. Talk to me.” The voice was soft and almost friendly, but the menace behind the words was unmistakable.
The hair on the back of Rusty’s neck stood up as an involuntary chill shuddered through him. He wanted to say nothing and hang up, but his home had been invaded!
“Who are you? What are you doing in my condo?” Rusty asked as threateningly as he could.
“You have something that belongs to the Company. You tell us where it is, we’ll leave you something to come home to. Deal?”
We?
Rusty’s stomach was quivering. He tried to keep control of his voice. This wasn’t happening!
“What something? Who the hell are you?”
“Your employer, Doctor. The Company.”
“Bullshit! My employer doesn’t break into my home.”
“Who do you imagine yourself to be working for, Doctor? Some rural police force? Wake up.” The words were even and quiet, the voice almost amused. Rusty knew he’d lost control of the exchange from the first.
“We know you copied information onto your computer, Doctor, from the terminals in the upstairs conference room. You shouldn’t have done that. Big mistake. We know you erased the file on your computer before you left, and we know you transferred it to a disk. Another big mistake. Makes us think maybe you’re stealing information to sell to someone.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Is it? The files you copied are top secret. That’s a very serious security violation, but you might be able to minimize the seriousness by telling us where the disk is immediately.”
Rusty fought to gain control of his breathing. He knew he sounded panicked. Why wouldn’t they have called on his cellular first? Why send a team to break into his home?
There was silence on both ends.
Is he telling the truth? Did I download something I didn’t intend to see?
“Doctor? You still there?” the man said.
“I’m here, but you’re wrong. I copied no sensitive files at all. Nothing outside my clearance, and the last thing in the world I’d do is sell information.”
“There are several people spending their lives in federal prisons who said the same thing, Doctor.”
Rusty’s head was spinning. The quiet little program he’d planted in the nonsecure conference room computers had been found. The program—a trap to collect any newly created files whenever someone tried to erase them—had been only a precaution. If the Cairo message had been written in the conference room, the secret program might catch it as soon as the person who wrote it tried to erase the evidence.
But how could they have found it so fast?
And more important, what had it collected that was so vital?
“Either tell us, Doctor, or we’ll have to take a crowbar to every corner of this place.”
Wait a minute! Rusty thought. There’s no way they could know whether I dumped the files to a floppy disk or not. Personal computers don’t keep track of such things. They’re guessing!
He thought of Sherry Ellis, wondering where she fit into the equation. He couldn’t mention her name, of course. If they didn’t already know she’d helped him …
“Doctor? Last chance. Where’s the disk? Give it up right now, and maybe we can save your job.”
Rusty felt the floppy disk in his coat pocket. Once again he’d run afoul of the system, but this time he’d really screwed up.
But the bastards are in my home!
There was another pay phone next to one he was using. Rusty grabbed the receiver and punched in 911, holding the second receiver to his right ear and keeping the first one to his left.
The dispatcher came on for Washington, D.C.
“This is an emergency! Please connect me with the Herndon Police!”
“Hold on,” the dispatcher said.
The man in Rusty’s apartment chuckled. “That’s not going to do you any good, Doctor. Your job and your personal freedom hang in the balance here.”
The Herndon dispatcher came on the line, and Rusty passed him the information on the burglary in progress. “Use lights and siren. I can hear them moving around in there right now.”
Rusty could hear the man turn to his partner and say something. He heard the other man murmuring in the background.
Why? Rusty wondered.
The dispatcher was asking a question. “Sir, I asked you, are you listening in on some kind of burglar alarm?”
“No. I’ve got the bastards talking to me on my own phone.”
“Okay. What are they saying?”
“Not much,” he lied. “They put the phone down and they’re trashing my place. Throwing things around. Please hurry.”
There was a voice in his left ear. “Not bad, Doctor, for someone with no time in the field. But those clowns will take twenty minutes to get here, so you’ve accomplished nothing.”
The dispatcher put him on hold, and Rusty again heard the murmur of a voice in the background in his condo. He tried to envision one of the others hunched over a cellular phone, talking to someone.
Why would someone do that?
Because they’re running a pho
ne trace on this pay phone with the very police department I’m talking to!
“The disk is not there!” Rusty snapped. “Now get the hell out of my house. I’m coming back to Langley with virtually everything I had when I left.”
He slammed both phones down and ran from the building, retracing his steps to the Metro station. He stuffed several bills in one of the ticket machines and took the fare card, using it to get past the turnstiles and onto a southbound train, feeling his stomach tighten even further.
He had to think! But there were people in every direction, and by the time the train rolled into Metro Center station, he was suspecting half the people around him to be CIA operatives tracking his every move.
Rusty bolted from the train and jumped on the next southbound Blue Line. He got off at L’Enfant Plaza station and rode the escalator to the surface. Less than a block away, the National Air and Space Museum sat open and full of tourists. Rusty walked directly there and lost himself in the crowd, then slipped into the IMAX theater, where he found a seat near the back.
The movie had just begun when he heard a faint beep from his briefcase.
It was a message from Sherry, the first in hours:
Could not communicate before. High risk. Someone here thinks you found something in files threatening current operation. Very strange. Mark apparently involved. Several field operatives I’ve never seen descended on the conference room and locked the rest of us out. Not sure what operation is involved, but suspect QNFLT66. Can’t discuss w/ boss until his return from W/H. He knows nothing as yet. Renegade action. Watching my tail too. Warning: Team looking for you not mainstream Company! Don’t come in. Not sure who to trust. I’ll be in touch if poss. Sorry for melodrama, but this is serious. Sending this from ladies’ room.
Rusty saved the message to the computer’s memory and sat in silence for a second before composing a response:
Understood. They were trashing my condo looking for a disk. Talked to one on the phone. I don’t know what they think I have. Thanks for the help.
The disk. What on earth could be on it? The download he’d done should have been of routine communications. He’d intended to study the list at length at home. Now he had to find a place to read its contents.
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