by Vince Flynn
“Yeah,” Rapp said, sliding off the edge of his bunk. “What time is it?”
“Four in the morning,” Bailer said, motioning Rapp down a corridor fashioned from a concrete pipe twenty feet in diameter.
“Have you found anything?”
“After we made sure it was safe, we gave the forensics guys priority. They wanted prints, DNA, fibers, and God knows what else before my people contaminated it any more than it already has been. When they were done, we started with X-rays, MRI, and metallurgy.”
It was hard not to notice that Bailer was avoiding his question. “And?”
“Well, it’s definitely safe,” he said in an enigmatic tone. “We’re most of the way through the teardown—getting pictures and working on a virtual 3-D model.”
They came out of the pipe and arrived at a set of titanium blast doors that were part of the fifty million dollars in modifications the CIA had made. He pressed his palm against a pad set into the wall and the doors slid open to reveal a world of bright fluorescent light, stainless steel, and glass. No fewer than twenty people were milling around what had once been one of Pakistan’s most advanced nuclear weapons. Now it was nothing more than endless rows of individual parts laid out on a stark white floor.
“I hope you know how to put that thing back together,” Rapp said as the doors slid closed behind them.
“No worries. I took pictures with my cell phone.”
Rapp had always found watching Bailer in his element to be a bit surreal. Despite looking like a truck driver, it was abundantly clear that he was the smartest guy in the room. Gray-haired men in lab coats approached him with clipboards to sign, deferential nods were aimed in his direction, and numerous people vied for his attention to get approvals, ask questions, and have their work checked over. Rapp didn’t bother to pay attention to any of it. Computer screens full of complex diagrams and math equations were well outside his operating theater. Which was exactly the reason they went to such lengths to keep Bailer happy.
“What aren’t you telling me, Craig? The thing’s not going to blow up, right?”
“Definitely not.”
Bailer motioned him onto a platform that ran across the back wall. The people working on the computer terminals there suddenly found reasons they needed to be somewhere else, increasing Rapp’s apprehension. They knew who he was and didn’t want to be around when he got the news.
“How bad is it?” Rapp said as Bailer brought up a false-color image of the nuke on a monitor.
“Pretty bad, Mitch. We stitched this together out of the scans we made. “Metal shows blue, plastics and carbon fiber are black. Radioactivity comes up red.”
“What do you mean? There is no red.”
“Exactly.”
Rapp considered what he was seeing for a moment. Was it possible that Umar Shirani was smarter that they gave him credit for? That he was circulating decoys along with live nukes to keep the endless list of Pakistani terrorist groups off-balance?
“So this is a fake?”
“No. This is a working bomb. But the canister that should contain its nuclear fuel is empty.”
“Empty,” Rapp repeated quietly. “So the Pakistani army removed the fissile material before they moved them? They’re shipping it separately?”
Bailer’s face transformed into something that was between a frown and a wince. “That was my initial thought, too. But it doesn’t add up.”
“Explain.”
“The empty canister is a really good fake, but it isn’t made from the same steel as the other parts.”
“So? It makes sense that they wouldn’t have been manufactured at the same time as the device. That useless prick Shirani could have had them produced later as an additional security precaution.”
“Two problems with that theory. One, my gut says that the canister wasn’t made in Pakistan.”
“And two?”
“That’s the bigger problem: how the original canister was removed. Whoever did it knew what they were doing and had the right tools, but I can tell you they were in a hurry. There are some pretty deep gouges, a disconnected wire, and a cracked switch.”
Rapp thought about the warehouse where the terrorists had pulled the nuke from the truck and opened the crate. “What are we talking about, Craig? How much time?”
“With a little training, you could change out the original canister with a fake in as little as four minutes.”
“How big and heavy is it?”
“Call it a fifty-pound hatbox.”
“Shit,” Rapp said.
“My thought exactly.”
Rapp turned and walked a few paces, staring out over the activity below as he dialed his phone.
“Hello,” Irene Kennedy said. By the sound of her voice, she hadn’t been asleep.
“We have a problem.”
“Yes?”
“The canister holding the fissile material has been replaced with a fake.”
“So the Pakistani army decoupled it?”
“Craig says no. My guess is that the people in that warehouse got out with it. We were watching for them to move the entire unit and we didn’t have the manpower to track them all.”
There was a long silence over the phone. “It doesn’t make sense to me, Mitch. I can understand them taking it but replacing it with a decoy? Why would they go through the trouble? And how would they have built it? Was it a convincing fake?”
“Yeah, but Craig’s betting that it wasn’t made in Pakistan.”
“That’s even less believable, then. I’d be skeptical if this was al Qaeda or ISIS. But al Badr is—”
“The minor leagues,” Rapp said, finishing her thought.
“Exactly. The fact that they were even going after a nuke was surprising. Now you’re telling me they figured out how to not only remove the fissile material container but manufacture a convincing replacement? That strains credulity to the breaking point.”
“Al Badr or not, someone’s got the critical piece for building a nuke, and I’m guessing it’s not one of our friends.”
“Agreed. Have Craig reassemble the weapon so we can get it back to Pakistan. The situation’s heating up and we can’t afford to keep it any longer.”
“Shirani’s going to blame us,” Rapp pointed out. “He’ll say we took the fuel and use the accusation to pump up the religious fanatics. It could be enough for him to take over.”
“No question. But I’m not sure what we can do about it at this point. We need to focus on making sure no more fissile material is removed from the Pakistani arsenal.”
“Mas and I can jump a plane back to Pakistan, but this makes our job a hell of a lot harder. We’ve been looking for people moving against entire nukes. They’re big, heavy, and visible. If all they need is a wrench and a few minutes alone, we’ve got an entirely different game. Now it’s just a matter of slipping some low-level army officer a few grand or sneaking into the back of a train or truck while it’s on the move.”
She didn’t respond.
“Irene?”
“I need you to come to Maryland before you leave, Mitch.”
He tensed. “Why?”
“The surgeons in Afghanistan missed some perforations in Scott’s small intestine. Our people have repaired them but Scott has a serious infection.”
“Bottom line?”
“They’re doing everything they can, Mitch—”
“Bottom line, Irene!” Rapp said, the volume of his voice rising. Some of the scientists working below turned and shot him a nervous glance.
“They think he’ll be gone before sunrise.”
Rapp disconnected the call and turned back to Craig Bailer.
“Everything okay, Mitch?”
“You’re done. Get that thing put back together.”
“Can I shave a little off that canister? No more than a few thousandths of an inch. With some time to analyze it, I might be able to tell you where it came from.”
“As long as you can do it in
the next few hours.”
“Not a problem.”
“Craig, I need a favor.”
“Sure. What?”
“My plane’s gone and I need to get to Bethesda. Fast.”
Bailer nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. I think I can help you out.”
CHAPTER 24
NEAR DOMINICAL
COSTA RICA
GRISHA Azarov eased his pickup along the badly rutted dirt road, keeping his speed under thirty kilometers per hour. Not that he couldn’t go faster. He’d paid almost two hundred thousand U.S. dollars to have the vehicle custom built. It looked like a thousand others roaming Central America, but beneath the stock Toyota body was a 600-horsepower offroad racing machine. Based on his tests, he could maintain almost two hundred kilometers an hour on roads that most people crawled along at the pace of a horse-drawn cart.
He was relieved to be out of Pakistan, away from the CIA men operating there, and outside Maxim Krupin’s intelligence network. It was a beautiful day in Costa Rica. Humid, but unseasonably cool. Skies were clear and the sound of the jungle around him calmed his mind. In many ways, this was home. Or at least the closest thing to a home he would likely ever have.
Azarov turned onto an even rougher road and began climbing, scanning the dense trees on either side but keeping his window open and his left arm hanging out. The glass wasn’t bulletproof and even if it had been, anyone Krupin sent to punish him for his failure would use a weapon sufficient to defeat any armoring.
Azarov had given his situation a great deal of thought on the flight to Panama and the long overland drive that followed. He was reasonably confident that Krupin wouldn’t attempt to have him killed in the near term. Not certain enough that he didn’t have a loaded pistol resting in his lap, though.
At thirty-five, he was probably at the peak of his abilities and on the verge of his inevitable decline. He assumed that Krupin recognized this and would be looking for a replacement. Perhaps he’d even found one and was now in the lengthy training and grooming process that Azarov himself had endured. Would this new recruit one day be sent for him? Would that be the boy’s test to prove his worth?
Perhaps. But for now, he suspected the benefits of his continued existence outweighed the drawbacks. Still, he had never known Krupin to completely ignore a failure by one of his people. The Russian president felt it set a bad example.
Azarov came to the top of a rise and reached for his cell phone, knowing that he would have a signal until he started dropping down the other side. He dialed and tossed the phone on the dash.
“Hola, Grisha.”
“Hola, Juan. Are you well?”
“My back went out again last week,” the man responded in Spanish.
Azarov smiled. Juan Fernandez had been running a fruit stand outside the small town of Dominical since he was a child. He knew everyone in the area and was the clearinghouse for local gossip. If anyone suspicious was hanging around the area or asking questions, Juan would know.
For the very reasonable price of three million colones per year, they had an ongoing agreement that Azarov would call him when he was approaching the area. If Juan’s answer to the inquiry about his health was bueno, then there was a problem. Conversely, if it was an honest recitation of the Costa Rican’s many real and imagined infirmities, he had noticed nothing unusual.
“Sorry to hear it. Have you gone to see the doctor?”
“Doctors,” he spat. “What do they know? They tell me I’m healthy. But I’m eighty years old. I ask you: How can I be healthy at my age?”
“Clean living,” Azarov suggested. “Does Olga need me to pick anything up?”
“No, she was in town shopping just yesterday. But I hear a rumor that there’s a problem with your refrigerator.”
Azarov was feeling better and better about his situation. If only Russian intelligence had people as thorough as Juan Fernandez.
“Thank you, my friend. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll have a drink.”
He disconnected the call and dialed Olga, the woman he lived with. She didn’t pick up, but that wasn’t unusual. She wasn’t terribly reliable and had been angry at him when he last left. If Olga had any gift beyond her startling beauty, it was her ability to hold a grudge.
He accelerated to fifty kilometers per hour and passed by a partially hidden right turn. After a few hundred meters, he saw another, but decided at the last moment to pass it by, too. Finally, he drifted onto the third.
The locals had thought he was crazy when he’d had five separate roads built to his mountaintop home. The land itself had cost less than half a million U.S. dollars. Another million had built the house. The kilometers-long driveways, though, had cost more than the land and buildings combined.
They were yet another insurance policy. Anyone hired to come after him would be hesitant to try to take him at his house—the home field advantage was difficult to overcome. Much better to do it during his approach. The five different routes created a situation where one would need a fairly large team to cover every possibility. Just the kind of team that Juan Fernandez would be likely to notice.
The quality of road was bad enough to make it impassable for cars available from standard rental agencies. Again, this was accomplished with significant forethought. As obvious as Russian assassins would be in this quiet surf haven, ones piloting unusual four-wheel drives might as well simply announce their presence personally to Juan.
He pressed the accelerator a bit harder, increasing his speed to over a hundred kilometers an hour. The sound of the engine became deafening—something the people who built the truck had refused to correct, insisting that they worked tirelessly to give it just the right growl. When he approached a small bridge, he slammed on the oversize brakes and diverted right, plummeting down the bank and hitting the stream below hard enough to send water arcing over the roof.
The massive shock absorbers barely cycled through half their travel and the snorkel kept the motor running smoothly during the crossing. When he came to the top of the opposite bank, the truck lofted a good meter in the air. He hated bridges. Too exposed. But Olga insisted on them and he had to admit they could be quite useful during the rainy season.
Azarov accelerated further, reaching a speed that would make it difficult for even a topnotch sniper to track him from the jungle. Difficult, but not impossible. He wondered sometimes if it would have been safer to live in a city. He owned high-rise flats in both New York and London, cities with countless security cameras, twenty-four-hour crowds, and sophisticated police forces. But he hadn’t set foot in either for years. He needed this place. The remoteness. The silence. The distance from the reality he’d become trapped in.
When the house came into view, he began to slow. It was a massive stucco-and-glass structure, open in a way that, if he skidded to a stop, the dust would drift through the living area. In light of that, he continued to ease back on the throttle. What he didn’t need was for his reunion with Olga to begin with her screaming at him for an hour in Russian.
Her car was parked in the driveway but she didn’t come out to greet him. Normally, he would have slipped his weapon in his waistband instead of keeping it in hand, but the depth of the silence bothered him. Even the insects that sang in the surrounding jungle seemed unusually subdued.
“Olga?”
No answer. It was possible that she was up at the gym, but unlikely. She tended to maintain her spectacular figure through youth and starvation more than exercise.
Azarov had designed the house to allow him to efficiently clear the rooms while making it impractical for anyone to get behind him. He worked his way through it quickly, finding nothing unusual until he reached the master bedroom.
Olga was sitting on the bed wearing a yellow bikini he remembered her paying over a thousand euros for in Paris. She was held upright by her arms, spread wide and secured to the headboard with wire. Her chin was resting on her chest, causing her blond hair to hang down enough to hide her face, but not e
nough to hide the long gash across her throat.
Blood from the wound had dried across her breasts but was still wet where it had soaked into the mattress. He slid his gun into the back of his pants and stood motionless in the doorway, staring down at her.
Olga Smolin had been a gift for a particularly difficult job he’d completed in Ukraine. A runway model from Tomsk, she’d been beautiful, reasonably good in bed, and a passably competent administrator of his household affairs. On a more basic level, she had been a deeply unhappy young woman. She didn’t like the remoteness of Costa Rica, but even in the world’s great cities, she seemed to feel nothing was good enough. It made taking pleasure in the simple things impossible for her.
Or maybe she just felt trapped. Like he did.
Azarov freed her and covered her body with a bloodstained sheet. Though she wasn’t a woman he would have chosen, he would miss her. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Krupin once again demonstrated his skill. Azarov had been punished in a way that was extremely visceral but not sufficient to start a war between them.
He heard the crunch of gravel out front but didn’t reach for his gun. His punishment had been meted out. There was nothing more to fear.
“Hello?” he heard a familiar voice call. “Is anyone here?”
Azarov came out of the hallway just as a young woman with a cooler in her hands took a hesitant step into his living room. She was an American surf instructor who provided home management services for some of the wealthier foreign owners.
“How are you, Cara?”
She jumped at the sound of his voice, but managed to keep from dropping the cooler. “Oh, hi, Grisha. I’m fine, thanks. What about you? What happened to your face?”
“A car accident. The window shattered.”
“Oh, man. I guess you should consider yourself lucky that nothing hit you in the eye, huh?”
“Very lucky.”
Cara Hansen was in many ways the complete opposite of the woman Azarov had spent the last two years living with. She was just as beautiful, but in a natural, perpetually disheveled way that contrasted with Olga’s icy perfection. She always had a smile on her face, and seemed to think neither of the past nor the future. While Olga had everything and appreciated nothing, Cara had very little and loved all of it.
