by Marcus Wynne
“Suicide bomber with a firing switch?” Lisa said.
“Yeah,” Hunter said. “Most of the time there’s an additional detonator, remote or radio controlled, for the controller to stand off and detonate if the bomber gets cold feet or otherwise flubs it. No trace of that here, though it would be easy enough to rig that as a separate circuit and attach it to whatever initiation device was set up in the cab.”
“So why leave her there? Do you think he’s coming back?”
“You’ve got the satellite footage, right?” Hunter said. “He took off in the direction of Decatur…he could be on the interstate now since we don’t have real time tracking on him.”
“I’m putting out an alert on his vehicle, Ford F-250 pick up,” Lisa said. “See if you can wring anything else out of this woman, we’ll hold her for a bit and see if there’s anything useful rattling around in her head.”
“Little harsh, aren’t you?” Hunter said.
“Frustrated,” Lisa said. “We’re one red hair from catching one of these operators…and we’ve got yet another enigma.”
“We’re not far behind him, Lisa,” Hunter said. “Maybe two hours. We’ll just keep whittling away at that window. Sooner or later we’ll be in the same place at the same time.”
“That’s what we’re counting on,” she said.
“Agent James? Ole? We got trouble,” Barry Panera said.
“What’s up?” Ole said.
“Press,” Panera said. “TV. Two vans, coming down the access road.”
“Shit,” Ole said. “Now how the fuck did they get wind of this?”
“What’s wrong?” Lisa said.
“Press inbound,” Hunter said. “Television. You know anything about that?”
“How did they….”
“Question of the day,” Hunter said. “You want to stay live on the cam? We’ll have to manage this…”
“Yeah,” Lisa said. “Do what you have to.”
The lead van skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust. A young reporter, in his middle twenties maybe, with the carefully coiffed hair and regular features of a store window mannequin, bounded out, and looked over his shoulder for the camera man, a world weary long hair in his forties with a much patched and abused photographer’s vest over a tie-dye t-shirt.
“Who’s in charge?” the reporter shouted even as he came forward. “Are we rolling?”
The reporter’s eyes widened when he recognized Hunter. “Agent James! Agent James! We have a tip that there was an arrest of a terrorist ring here…”
Hunter sighed.
10
In Washington DC, Congressman Sam Waters watched the breaking news on the big screen TV mounted on his wall, a present from one of his constituents who owned a successful electronics retail franchise.
“Now, just how did they get that tip?” Sam said out loud. “Jeannie May?”
His assistant stuck her head in the room. “Yes, Sam?”
“Tell me something, darling…don’t you think this Hunter James is good in front of the camera?”
“He is, Sam. I’ve been watching from the other room. Thinks fast on his feet, but I reckon you’d expect that from a guy in his business. He wouldn’t be alive if he couldn’t think quick on his feet.”
“He can talk, too,” Sam observed.
“Yes sir, he can. Real well.”
“Jeannie, who do we know at NBC? Up high?”
“The Vice President of Programming for one, off the top of my head.”
“Get him on the phone, honey. I’d like to know who tipped off a Podunk local news station about the biggest breaking terrorist story. I surely would like to know who did that.”
“I’m on it, Sam.”
11
In his hidden headquarters, Ahmed Samir Said toyed with an expensive custom fighting knife, a rare Jerry Hossom Retribution. The knife spun on his palm, into fore grip then into reverse, then back, then forth, again and again. The gleaming blade looked like a buzzsaw in the light as it rotated to and fro. His fellows stood well back, fascinated by the blur of steel in his hand.
“Perfect,” Said said. “Just perfect. I love it when things comes together…”
“Do I launch it now?” the red headed computer operator asked.
“Yes. Now,” Said said.
“Would you like to….”
“No,” the leader said. “You’ve more than earned the right, my friend. We’ve all earned the right, but you are first among equals today. You launch it.”
The computer operator nodded, then pressed the ENTER key on his keyboard.
“Launched,” he said.
When he pressed the key, an execute command went out over the broadband line to access portals hacked into the porous security software in the Indianapolis, Kansas City, Cleveland and Minneapolis Air Route Traffic Control Centers. Within a heartbeat, a program inserted weeks earlier was activated. The first thing that happened was that the coolant towers for each center, the critical cooling towers that kept all of the antiquated computer hardware in the centers operating, malfunctioned…they shut themselves down. And would never start again, because within a few more heartbeats, the logic boards fried themselves, through a simple program that boosted their electrical use to exceed the safety parameters.
And then, as the back up coolant system (in the centers that had one) kicked in, the display terminals the center relied on began to go crazy. First numbers transposed themselves, then altitude readings and compass headings reversed, and then, after ten minutes of chaos, the systems shut down.
Within ten minutes, the only functioning Air Route Traffic Control Center was Chicago, and every other Center in the Midwest had sent all control and traffic there.
12
Hunter walked slowly through Gene Polchek’s farm house. What struck him was what was similar, and different, from the house that Master Sergeant Torkay had lived in. Same sense of loneliness; this was the residence of a man who’d lived alone for a long while.
But he hadn’t always been alone.
The house was like an abandoned memorial, or a house inhabited by someone else. Pictures and knick knacks were covered with dust, some of the knick knacks knocked over and he hadn’t bothered to set them up right…pictures of a heavy set woman in an old fashioned address, not so different from what Margaret Simmons had been wearing when they pulled her out of the truck. But there was something else…a picture of a youngish man, a soldier, in full dress uniform. Army, Special Forces, a Ranger tab. A big, burly, meaty man, like his father. The resemblance was obvious. Hunter lifted the picture. There were finger prints in the dust on the picture frame, prints of thick fingers.
He’d looked at this picture of his son often.
There was something familiar about this soldier’s face; something nagged at Hunter. He’d seen this face before, but where? Hunter had never been in Special Forces, but he’d spent plenty of time in and around the special operations community.
Where had he seen this guy?
He opened up his cell phone, called Lisa.
“Coronas,” she answered crisply.
“Lisa, can you get somebody to run a name through the DOD database for me?” Hunter said. “Harold Polchek, showing rank of Master Sergeant, Special Forces, Ranger. Don’t know the dates of service.”
“Do you want to hold?”
“Yeah.”
Lisa gave directions to someone in the background. “Finding anything?”
“There’s a strange sense here,” Hunter said. “Like Torkay’s place. Like something’s missing. Wife’s missing, and so is the son, the soldier…”
“Wife is missing?”
“I mean as in long gone. Divorced or dead, I’m betting the latter.”
“Wait one,” she said. There was a moment’s silence, then she said, “Hunter? I’ve got the screen on Harold Polchek.”
“What do you got?”
“He was SF and Ranger. Assigned to Defense Intelligence for his last tour, i
n Beirut in 1988. He was working with the Intelligence Support Activity…”
“ISA?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s dead. Went down on Pan Am 103 along with the other members of his action cell. They were tasked with finding William Buckley.”
“Pan Am 103?”
“Yep. And we just got something else…there’s been a massive cyber attack on the FAA’s Air Route Traffic Control Centers. All of the Midwest centers except Chicago went down fifteen minutes ago.”
“Are your hackers on it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Lisa said. “They went through the FAA’s security like hot knives through butter. They’re in there tracking back now.”
“Chicago is still up, though?” Hunter said.
His glance fell on a disordered bookshelf. The glossy spine of a book protruded out from the rest of the paperbacks jammed in there. He wandered over to the bookshelf. The book protruding was a new copy of The 36 Stratagems.
“Wait a minute, Lisa,” he said.
Hunter slipped the book out. It was earmarked to a chapter. He opened it. Display In The East and Attack In The West.
“Lisa?” Hunter said. “Send everything you got to the Chicago Center. Tell them to lock down tight.”
“Why?”
13
Gene Polchek sat in the passenger seat of a rented Ryder truck and studied the driver. She was a very attractive woman, sharply dressed like an executive who’d taken the day off from work, maybe in her early forties, or maybe older, he couldn’t tell. Expensive women like this were hard for him to figure out; they were way out of his experience.
“You don’t need to do this,” he said.
She had a patrician tone to her voice that made him want to melt into the floorboards. “You don’t need to do this either. You’re welcome to get out.”
“No,” he said. “I need to do the work.”
“As do I.”
He hung his head. “I’m sorry. Guess I don’t know what to say.”
She was silent. She gave the truck some gas and turned down the road that went directly to the guard shack and the gate in front of the Chicago Center. The truck rolled slowly toward the gate. The guard in the shack looked up, then stepped out of the shack and held up his hand for them to stop.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” the woman said. “I guess I don’t know what to say either.”
“I’m just glad not to be alone,” Gene Polchek said.
The woman looked at him, and for a moment the fear and apprehension showed on her face. “It’s not going to hurt, is it?”
He reached out and patted her hand, something he would never have dreamed of doing at any other time. “No, ma’am. It’s not going to hurt.”
She nodded at the picture in his hand. “Is that your boy?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She turned and looked at the gate, increased her speed. “I didn’t bring one of my daughter.”
14
Roger Stillwell heard the phone ringing in the guard shed, but he had to deal with this truck first. The Standing Orders were clear: no trucks other than scheduled delivery trucks were allowed to approach the center. But this couple looked lost, and they sure didn’t look as though they were going to stop.
But people always stop, don’t they.
Not this time.
By the time he realized that they weren’t going to stop, it was too late to do anything but try to jump to one side; the bumper clipped him hard on his legs and pelvis and flung him into the powered gate. The woman driving the truck looked as surprised as him to see him fly. A fat old farmer limped past him and into the guard shed, hit the switch that opened the gate, then stepped over his body and got back into the truck.
Dimly, he could hear the phone ringing.
15
Her name was Marissa Evenwell, and before yesterday, she had never driven a truck, much less a rented Ryder truck. But she’d practiced in an open parking lot the day before what she would have to do. And there really wasn’t much to it.
She steered the truck through the parking lot, aimed around the corner of the building. There were two large cooling towers that powered the air conditioning units that kept the antiquated computers cool enough to operate; they were located right next to the back up generator units.
And inside the building, just on the other side, was the lunch break and cafeteria for the facility.
“Center unit,” Gene Polchek said.
“I know,” Marissa said. She drove forward, taking her time. She reached over and took Gene Polchek’s scarred and calloused hand in her own soft, scented palm. “Remember why we do this.”
Gene nodded, sudden tears in his eyes. “Yes.” He touched the test button on his firing panel. The LED glowed green. “God, did I love him…”
The massive blast of the truck bomb took out the entire cooling towers, the back up generators, collapsed the wall and destroyed the cafeteria, and toppled the main control center on the floor above into the wreckage below.
And with that, all traffic control for flights between towers over 10,000 feet was lost in the entire Midwest.
16
“Hunter? Hunter? We’ve lost the tower, there’s been an explosion…” Lisa said. “How did you know?”
Hunter held the book in his hand. “Truck bomb, right?”
“We don’t know yet…but that’s what it looks like. How did you know? What did you find?”
Hunter weighed the book in his hand. “This,” he said, holding the book up. “I know who’s doing this.”
INTERLUDE: KNIFE HIDDEN UNDER THE SMILING FACE
Chapter One
The water purled and curled around mossy rocks in this, the widest and shallowest part of the river. It was a good place to stand and watch, as there was a broad expanse of grass here that declined gradually into the river, almost like a graduated wading pool. It made for a great place for a gathering, and if Hunter hadn’t been so sweaty, tired and yet exhilarated, he might have wanted to spend some time just watching the water run in the river and the sun glinting like jewels across the surface of the river.
But if he did that, he might get a knife in his gut, and that was certainly no way to end an otherwise glorious fall day on the river, now was it?
Joe Hartlaub, tall and lean with an array of wrinkles that could fall into a smile or a frightening frown, shaved head gleaming in the sun, gestured Hunter forward to demo with him.
“Okay, simple cuts now,” Joe said. “First come in on the one line…” his hand with a gleaming training knife in it arced through a cut from one to seven o’clock. “…with a feint…when your opponent’s hand comes, then cut through on the three line…” and the master knife fighter brought his knife around Hunter’s guard across his belly.
“You’ll see the blue worm then, men,” Joe said, a mean grin on his face. “Upsets your opponent, I promise you.”
He didn’t have to say more than that; Hartlaub’s reputation as the real deal in the martial arts world, especially the outlaw world of the blade, was cemented in stories whispered behind his back, and in the array of scars he wore on his arms and chest, including one bad slash across his left hand that left it always curled, as though a prehensile claw.
Hartlaub gestured with that same claw, urging Hunter back into the line of the other knifers working together in huddled little groups. It looked almost like a medieval battlefield; men in camo pants or sweat pants, wearing combat boots or hiking shoes and a variety of shirts, or none at all; head wraps in abundance and in each and every hand a length of steel, drone trainers now, but on occasion, with the advanced guys, a live blade and all that that engendered. Joe Hartlaub stalked through, encouraging and urging them on, his voice a whiplash on occasion, most often a throaty rumble punctuated with erudite observations and a steady stream of creative profanity.
“Jesus’s ass,” Hartlaub said as he stood by and watched two grossly overweight siblings s
lash feebly at each other. “You two look like the final round of the butter carving contest. Move like you’re cutting meat, not air!”
He stepped between them, pushed them to make room. “You guys, I know it’s hard, but it’s in your mind, that’s where the work gets done, you got to get through the flab in your brain, what’s on your ass don’t matter if the brain is there…look.”
Suddenly a length of live blade appeared in his hand as though from nowhere: a massive bowie, at least 12 inches long, Hartlaub’s favorite weapon and one he’d learned first hand from the modern master James A. Keating during the intensive training Keating did on a different river, the Riddle of Steel training event.
The two brothers stepped back, eyes widened. A sense of danger, a vibrancy, rang off Hartlaub.
“Feel that?” Hartlaub hissed. “That’s the fear of cold steel…respect that. Make every cut with that in mind. Never forget that…or the steel will remind you. Remind you in blood. Treat the mistress of steel with respect or she’ll taste your blood. You understand me?”
“Yes sir,” they said, voices in trembling unison.
“Oh, Joe-Seppi,” came a loud, amused voice from a little hillock to the north of the open area they trained in. Hunter looked, as did all the other students, and saw a man, middle aged by the look of him, thinning gray hair cut short and a neat, short beard; trim and fit looking without being exceptionally so, in a faded T-shirt with a logo on it Hunter couldn’t make out and well worn sweat pants and hiking shoes.
