Final Winter

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ten miles out of Memphis International Airport, Carrie Floyd stretched her fingers for a moment, above the control yoke of the AirBox McDonnell Douglas MD-11 that she and her co-pilot, Sean Callaghan, were piloting in the last few minutes of AirBox Flight Twelve, San Jose to Memphis. She was thirty-five years old and a veteran of the US Navy, and while she loved flying for AirBox — truth be told, she was lucky to be flying for any commercial outfit with the current airline industry slump — she hated the hours. AirBox was one of the handful of companies that guaranteed overnight delivery in the continental United States, which meant a hell of a lot of flight crews and package handlers worked vampire hours. Not fun for a single mom, and she thought briefly about seven-year-old Susan, down there dreaming, safe and snug in her own home and bed.

‘AirBox Twelve, switch to the tower now on one one nine point seven,’ came the quick, professional male voice of Memphis Approach Control through her earphones.

‘Roger, AirBox Twelve, switching,’ Sean said, toggling the radio-microphone switch on the control yoke.

Before them were the bright lights of Memphis, home to a hell of a lot of history and to Graceland — which Carrie had yet to visit, and doubted she ever would — and the international airport. Stuck in Tennessee but home to lots of cargo carriers like FedEx and Airborne and AirBox, and the number one airport in the world for moving packages. A hell of a thing. She focused on her flying, let her co-pilot handle the communications.

‘Memphis Tower, AirBox Twelve, checking in on the visual to three six right,’ Sean said, noting the number of the runway ahead of them, 36R.

‘AirBox Twelve, cleared to land, three six right, winds at five zero four zero.’

Sean replied crisply, ‘Roger, AirBox Twelve, cleared to land, three six right.’

In front of Carrie now were the lights of the airport, and the white marker lights that outlined all nine thousand feet of their runway. Compared with what she’d had to deal with during her Navy career, flying S-3 Vikings off and on aircraft carriers, the airport runway looked huge, as big as the county. There was plenty of room to land, and with light winds and a clear night it should be routine. Now, try landing on a couple of acres of steel, rolling and heaving and pitching, with no room for error, no room for anything going wrong — though, of course, things do go wrong and maybe that was the real reason she was shuttling packages at midnight across CONUS and not ferrying passengers to London during the daylight and working for a real airline—

Her co-pilot said, ‘Five hundred feet, on airspeed, and sinking seven hundred feet per minute. Looks good, Carrie.’

She blinked her eyes. Damn woolgathering.

‘Yep.’

One last scan of the instruments: everything looked good, airspeed at 135 knots on glide slope, flaps down, wheels down and locked, the yoke in her hands trembling just a bit as she imagined she could feel the entire vibration of the cargo jet, letting her know through the sense of touch and her other senses what was going on. And what was going on was a nice, normal landing, and…

Here we go, she thought.

The last few seconds, it seemed like the runway surface was on a giant elevator, rising right up, fast and fast and fast, and—

Slight bang.

Main gear down and…

Nose gear down.

Sean next to her, calling out the decreasing airspeed as she reversed the engines: ‘One hundred knots, eighty knots,’ and Carrie applied the brakes, and ‘Sixty knots.’

Good. Now they were at taxiing speed, no longer an aircraft, just a big old bus on the ground, and in her earphones Memphis Tower said, ‘AirBox Twelve, switch to ground control, point nine, on Yankee one.’

‘Memphis, ground,’ Carrie said, toggling the radio switch on the yoke. ‘AirBox Twelve is clear on Yankee one.’

A different voice now: ‘AirBox Twelve, proceed to ramp AB12.’

‘Roger.’

Now the jet felt heavy and slow, like an overweight Greyhound bus, waddling its way into the Port Authority terminal. With gravity now in control and working its magic touch, Carrie felt like she was driving a luxury car whose power steering had just cut off.

She made the left turn, headed to the processing terminals up ahead. She switched on the number two radio on the center console, allowing her now to talk to the AirBox dispatcher.

‘AirBox center, this is AirBox twelve,’ she called out.

‘Evenin’, Twelve,’ came the soft twang of the dispatcher working tonight. Hank something-or-other.

‘Where do you want us tonight?’

‘Ramp four,’ came the reply.

‘Ramp four it is, thank you kindly,’ she said.

A chuckle. ‘Not a problem, Splash.’

Her hands tightened on the nose-wheel-steering tiller bar. She could sense Sean stiffen up in his seat, decided not to say anything about that crack. Okay. Carrie turned and said, ‘Got that? Ramp four.’

Sean had the post-flight checklist already in hand. ‘Ramp four, boss. And we’re five minutes ahead of schedule. The General will love that. Get a jump on getting all those letters and packages on their merry way.’

‘It’s what we do, Sean. It’s what we do.’

Now that they were nearing the ramp, fatigue started setting in, especially around Carrie’s shoulders and hips. With only one other crew member, there wasn’t much down time flying from San Jose to Memphis, and with most of the cabin space back there taken up with cargo there also wasn’t much room to walk around. There were rumors that General Bocks was considering expanding his reach to the Pacific Rim countries, which made perfect business sense, but Carrie knew that something would have to change before she’d be up to make that kind of grueling flight.

There. Halted and everything else was on auto, and in a matter of minutes she and Sean had de-planed, carrying their heavy kit bags full of manuals and charts. Both were now wearing the uniform caps of AirBox. Sean didn’t seem to mind the uniform — he had flown C-141 Starlifters for the Air Force and was still in the Reserves — but it was too Air Force for Carrie’s taste. She preferred the old Navy flight suit, which reminded her of something…

They walked to the entranceway leading to the inside of the AirBox terminal system. Around them workers in AirBox jumpsuits were hustling to unload their flight, and Carrie spared a glance back to where the scissors-cargo unloaders were sidling up the fuselage. With the way they worked, the damn plane would be empty in less than twenty minutes. A hell of a system. Still had to give the General credit, though the damn penny-pinching during the last quarter had been a royal pain in the ass. Everything from reduced fuel burn and landing reserves to the per diem being cut back — there were struggles going on out there, and she hoped the General would win this one without too much of a fight. She really needed to fly, and with her record she really needed the job.

Then she spotted another man out there in the unloading crew, with a jumpsuit that looked cleaned and ironed. This guy wasn’t manhandling pallets of freight off the MD-11. He was standing there, holding something in his hand, wearing a set of earphones that connected to the wandlike piece of equipment in his grasp. Every now and then he went over to one of the passing pallets. The other crew members ignored him.

Sean saw where she was looking and said, ‘Homeland Security on the job again.’

‘Yeah, but it still gives me the creeps.’

‘What’s the matter? Afraid we slipped a suitcase nuke into Memphis, on its way to Manhattan?’

‘Nothing to joke about,’ Carrie said, and she walked across the tarmac, her co-pilot at her side. She knew she had been snippy but she was tired and she was in no mood for jokes about terrorism.

As they climbed up the stairs to the main floor of the freight terminal, she said, ‘Sean, see you in a bit.’ Sean looked over, a bit surprised.

‘What’s up?’

‘Got to see a man about something.’

‘Where?’

‘Dispatch.’

He frowned. ‘Be careful.’

Carrie smiled at him. ‘There are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots, and I’m not feeling too bold. Just a tad cranky. But I’ll be careful.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, and added: ‘I like flying with you, Carrie. Don’t screw anything up.’

‘I won’t.’

Sean went on, while Carrie kept walking down the hallway, noticing with her mom’s eyes how untidy parts of the building were beginning to look. Despite the cheery commercials on television and the media’s continuing love affair with the General and his somewhat unorthodox way of doing business, AirBox was barely hanging on. And when you’re hanging on from a cliff by your fingernails, worrying whether your hair was combed was way the hell down on your list of concerns.

Down the hallway, up two flights of stairs, and she was outside the dispatch center. There was a row of light orange plastic chairs — and why in hell did these chairs always have to be light orange? Why not blue? Or yellow? — and she took one, placing her kit bag down by her feet. In front of her was a door marked Dispatch with a keypad by the doorknob, and she waited. She should have been checking out with Sean. She should have been getting ready to get home and spend some time with Susan before her daughter went off to school. She should have been doing something else instead of sitting here, but instead she waited.

Carrie hoped that she wouldn’t have to wait long.

And what the hell, her hopes came true.

The door clicked open and two people came out, a heavyset woman and a tall, thin guy with a stringy mustache. Hank, the soft-spoken dispatcher. He must have just cracked a joke because the woman was laughing as they stepped through the door, which snapped shut behind them. Either they didn’t see Carrie or didn’t care. Just another pilot. Down the hallway they went, to the restrooms, and as the guy went into the one marked Gentlemen Carrie stood up and went down the hallway, carrying her kit bag.

She caught Hank as he stood in front of the sink, a comb in his hand. She noted the look of shock on his face as she came through the door. Then he gave her a brief glance of recognition, and started out with a little joke. ‘Hey, Carrie, didn’t you notice the sign outside, the one that—’

Not a word from her side. She stepped up and swung her black leather case at the back of his legs, hitting him hard, and followed that up with a kick to the ankles. Hank yelped and fell down in a tangle and then she was on him, her knees slamming down on his chest, her hand now on his throat.

‘Hey, hey, hey!’ he called out. ‘What the hell do you think—’

Carrie grasped his thin throat and squeezed, making him squawk.

‘You shut the fuck up and listen,’ she said, leaning down to him. ‘Shut the fuck up. Got it?’

A muffled squawk, his eyes wide.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Listen and listen well, pal. You call me Splash one more time, either over the air, in private, or in your home while you’re whacking off in the bathroom, then I’m gonna come back and tear your balls off and feed ’em to the catfish. You got it?’

Yet another squawk that she figured was an affirmative signal, and she relaxed her grip, got up. Her legs were shaking. She hoped he didn’t notice.

Hank sat up, face mottled red, his hand to his throat. ‘You…you crazy bitch! I’ll have you fired! Today!’

Carrie bent down again and he tried to scramble away, like a crab with broken legs, and she was sure that she surprised him when she kissed his forehead. ‘Sure, Hank. You do that. You tell everyone how a girl beat you up in the boys’ bathroom. Just like high school, right? You go on and do that, and just remember what I said. No more Splash. Ever.’

Carrie picked up her bag and walked out, and within two minutes had joined Sean in the checkout process. He kept silent as they signed and processed forms, and then he said, ‘You okay?’

‘Never been better.’

‘Sure?’

‘Positive.’

He didn’t seem to believe her. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Give you a ride home?’

‘Absolutely.’

The ride home took about twenty minutes, ten of which were spent nodding in sleep against the passenger’s-side door of Sean’s Ford Explorer. He kept the music low and his mouth shut, a perfect co-pilot. At the northern end of Memphis’s sprawl, where there were pleasant neighborhoods with one- and two-family duplexes, Sean stopped to let Carrie out as the sun was coming up.

He looked over to her and then leaned over and gave her a kiss. She kissed him back and said, ‘Knock it off. You know the rules about fraternization.’

‘Screw the rules.’

‘Another kiss and you’ll be wanting to screw something else. Later, co-pilot man.’

‘Tomorrow?’

She smiled. ‘Call me and we’ll work something out.’

‘I want to raise Topic A again, you know.’

‘Raise it and we’ll talk. Honest.’

Another kiss. ‘All right, then’

She got out and Sean drove off. It looked to be a beautiful day. She let herself in the side door and let her bag drop in the kitchen. Dishes piled in the sink, and she felt a flash of anger. Work all night and come home to dirty dishes and…

Carrie was tired, but she also tried to remember what it had been like when she was nineteen. Somewhere in this duplex two young girls were still slumbering. Her seven-year-old daughter Susan and her cousin Marilyn. Poor Marilyn. The young girl was struggling to make it through her sophomore year at the University of Memphis, and Carrie recalled her own times, joining the Navy ROTC to get a degree in history — like that was going to do anything for her — and then, after graduating from ROTC, finding out that she actually thrived in the Navy. Hard to believe but there it was. One of her heroes when she was younger had been Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and through her aviation training at Pensacola that had been one thought at the back of her mind: that she would someday take Sally Ride’s place up there in the cosmos. Maybe the first woman on the moon. That would have been something.

Carrie went out of the kitchen and into the small living room, and then to the bathroom. Washed her hands and then her face. Looked at the tired eyes, the short blonde hair. Hat hair again, and she recalled the really vicious helmet hair she’d get out on deployment, flying her S-3 Viking jet, off and on the USS Enterprise…

And there you go. From Smash to Splash.

For ‘Smash’ had been her call sign, indicating who she was in the pantheon of aircraft carrier pilots. The real gods of this particular pantheon were the fighter jocks — and just a few jockettes — who wrestled F-14 Tomcats up into the air and down onto the deck with vim, vigor, and a few touches of arrogance. She hadn’t quite made it to F-14s but had done all right with the S-3 Viking. That little jewel of a four-seater had originally been designed for ASW work -anti-submarine warfare — for if there was one thing that the admirals overseeing carrier task forces were terrified of, it was some sub sneaking its way into the defensive cordon around an aircraft carrier and sinking the damn thing. But with the Cold War over and what was left of the USSR submarine force rusting and sinking at the dockside, the Viking went through a few changes to make it a new aircraft. There was the airborne-surveillance Viking and the cargo Viking and the airborne-refueling Viking, and one humid night, in the Sea of Japan, Smash was doing a routine landing after a routine mission — topping off a number of F-14s — when that evening’s landing quickly became everything but routine, as she slammed the aircraft down and powered up the throttle, as the tailhook snagged one of the arresting wires, and there was a movement to her right, as her co-pilot, one Tom McGrew, jerked against his shoulder harness.

And with the sound and the lights and the force and everything else, there was a thump and trouble, my God, the trouble in River City for — as Carrie later found out — that damn tailhook had snapped clean off so instead of coming to a nice and abrupt halt, the Viking bolted on the deck and started tilting off the port side, and slamming the throttles to full power didn’t do a damn thing, as the Viking slewed off and both her gloved hands reached down and she tugged the lower ejection handles, and maybe she yelled, ‘Eject, eject, eject’ and maybe she didn’t — depended on what day the remembering was going on — and she and her co-pilot, Lieutenant Tom McGrew of Seattle, Washington, blew out of the doomed aircraft. Carrie had been plucked out of the water, legs and arms bruised, coughing up sea water, to find out that her multimillion dollar aircraft was now several thousand feet below them in the water, and that her copilot had actually drifted under the damn bow of the Enterprise, steaming ahead, where he was either drowned, crushed, or shredded into pieces by one of the four twirling propellers.

Well.

There were investigations and a hearing and eventually Carrie was returned to flight status, but her little steps up on the way to the top of the female flying pyramid were faltering. She would shake and tremble during each landing. More and more times, she would miss the very last arresting wire and would have to bolt from the carrier deck and come around for another approach. Soon enough, she was under the spotlight as a possible candidate for grounding and while this was going on her well-earned and hard-earned call sign had mutated, thanks to the rough humor of carrier pilots, from the proud ‘Smash’ to the shameful ‘Splash’. A pilot who couldn’t make it, a pilot who didn’t have what it took to take a hit and keep on flying. A pilot — God forgive them for using such a cliché — who didn’t have what that writer had called the Right Stuff. Though she was never grounded, her flying reputation was permanently blackened.

Soon afterwards, Carrie left the Navy. And trying to get a regular airline job, flying passengers… well, the airline industry was still grinding along in its recession — isolated from the rest of the goddamn US economy, it seemed — but she was finally able to get a job for the General, flying for AirBox, for the General had a soft spot for all ex-military pilots, male or female, perfect records or not. She was lucky, she knew, even though she never flew into any exotic locales, and she grew intimately aware of which motels were safe enough around some of the places she flew into — AirBox pilots never could afford to stay at a regular chain motel — and the hours sucked. Especially around Christmas, where a young girl always wanted to know why mommy couldn’t attend those special parties or recitals…

Carrie walked to the rear of the house, down a narrow hallway. Past the first door, and through that door she could hear the snoring of her cousin Marilyn and the soft droning of a television set. Marilyn had this awful habit of falling asleep while leaving the television on all night, and since it didn’t keep Susan awake Carrie put up with the waste of having the damn thing suck electricity all night.

Now to the second door. She opened it gently and then stepped in, taking a breath, enjoying the scent of her little girl and her little-girl things. There. A little routine she did, whenever coming back from a flight, was to step into this little cocoon, this little-girl universe, and just let the stress and tension ease on right out of her. She walked to the bed where Susan slept, and knelt down, barely seeing her light blonde hair spread over the pillow. The bedroom was neat and orderly, nothing like her own room down the hallway, and nothing like how Carrie had treated her own things when she’d been a child. That little piece of Susan’s genetic makeup must have come from her father, one Robert Francis O’Connor, another pilot from UPS and with whom she had had a brief and satisfactory affair six years ago, an affair that had produced some wonderful pleasures, some good times, a quick and harsh break-up, and this little bundle of joy beside her.

Carrie took another breath of the room, leaned over and kissed the top of her girl’s head. In this little room, at least, Carrie was known as mom or mommy, but never, ever, was she called Splash.

In the darkness and quiet of his kitchen, Randy Tuthill sat at the kitchen table, his first mug of coffee before him, just resting. It was just after five a.m. and already he was dreading the day ahead. From the light over the stove the kitchen was barely illuminated but he could still make out the bay window overlooking the small yard — installed several years ago, after more years of gentle nagging from his wife Sarah -and the nearby refrigerator. Its white enamel was almost entirely obscured by recipes, doctor’s appointment cards, and photos of their two sons — Eric and Tom, both serving in the Air Force — and their grandchildren.

Randy picked up the mug, took a sip, put the mug back down. Looked down at the table. The mug was bright yellow and black, advertising AirBox, his home for the past fifteen years. He stared at his hands…huge and scarred and heavily callused from years of moving machinery and tools and parts in and out of aircraft. First in the Air Force, traveling across the world to bases like Incirilik in Turkey and King Khalid in Saudi Arabia, Anderson in Guam and Utapoa in Thailand, hot and cold places, rain and wind and snow, making sure those big damn gray birds flew and flew well. A twenty-year man, he would’ve been content to pull the plug and fish and chase his wife around the house for the rest of his life, but a retiring general had caught his attention, a retiring general who said he was going to set up an airfreight company and needed a good wrench-turner to set up the very first mechanic bays in a rented hangar in Memphis…

Another sip of coffee. Many years ago, many ups and downs ago, many union contracts negotiated and debated and settled. And now…well, not so good.

Randy looked down at his hands again. Funny how when he was younger, that was the thing that bothered him the most. Whether or not he would ever find a woman who wouldn’t be put off by these rough fingers and palms. And then Sarah had come along… Sarah who had worked as a civilian clerk-typist at Nellis in Nevada, and after their courtship and eventual engagement he finally had asked her that important question: hadn’t these rough hands been a liability of his, something she would have to overlook, in the years to come?

Sweet girl! She had kissed the top of his head — at a time when there had been a lot of hair up there — and said, ‘Dear heart, I’ve been with a number of boys, boys with soft hands and soft skin and soft minds and bodies to go with them. When I’m with you, either at work or at play in the bedroom, I like the feel of your hands on me. It lets me know I’m with a real one, a real man, one who’s not soft.’

And as if on cue, there was a murmur of noise and Sarah came into the kitchen, yawning. ‘Up early again.’

‘You know my habits.’ True enough, for at any point in time, when it was possible, Randy liked to get up before anyone else. His own private little oasis of time. Sip his coffee and plan the day and just let those thoughts come right up to the surface…

Sarah ambled over to the coffee pot, poured herself just a tiny bit. Being polite, she called it, since she didn’t like coffee that much, and he smiled at her as she came over to the table. Twenty-five years of marriage and two boys later, she had added on a number of pounds and a few laugh lines, but he still felt like he had come out on top. She had on a thin robe and a knee-length nightgown that had a nice expanse of cleavage, and even at this early hour her short brown hair didn’t look mussed at all. Most of his own hair was gone, his love handles and gut were a daily embarrassment, but she still would smile and say he was the sexiest man alive, and during some brief moments he sometimes fooled himself into believing her.

‘What’s going on in that mind of yours?’ she asked as she sat down.

There was a snappy response back there, like ‘seeing you topless’, but Randy knew her moods and tone of voice, and said, ‘Teeth.’

‘Teeth?’

‘Yeah, teeth. Like dental plan.’

‘Oh,’ Sarah said, raising the mug. ‘Dental plan. The contract talks.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, shifting his legs under the table. ‘The damn contract talks.’

She eyed him as only a wife married to a lead machinist and union local president could, and he said, ‘The talks have been dragging on for months. We’re without a contract right now. We’ve made progress on a bunch of items…but it’s the damn dental plan. We pay a twenty-buck-a-month premium, with eighty percent coverage. The General wants to double the premium, reduce the coverage to seventy per-cent. And he won’t budge.’

‘And you won’t either, will you?’

That familiar flash of anger sparked through Randy. ‘We’ve had years and years of concessions, givebacks and cutbacks. This is where we’re gonna make our stand, Sarah. I know it sounds petty and crappy and all that, but we’ve got to draw the line sometime. And this is where it’s gonna happen, and if they don’t budge, then by this time tomorrow the talks will be off. Shit.’

He took a swallow from his coffee and Sarah rubbed her hand across his right forearm. She said quietly, ‘Times sure have changed.’

‘Shit, yes, they sure have,’ Randy said. ‘Time was, contract negotiations like this would take up an afternoon. Me and a couple of guys and the General and his accountant, we’d have a catfish barbecue, drink a few beers, and by the time it got to cigars and cognac we had a contract. Shit. Didn’t even have to sign any paper that night. Just a handshake, that’s all. Worry about the details later, and you know what? Didn’t have to worry about the details. The General’s word and handshake were his bond.’

‘Still are, aren’t they?’

He shook his head. ‘Back when we flew from Memphis to Seattle, Memphis to LA, and Memphis to JFK. Back when the aircraft we used were one step away from being sent to a boneyard in Arizona. Back when payroll was sometimes met when the General maxed out his credit cards. That’s when his word was bond. Now…Christ, the goddamn number crunchers and pencil pushers are in charge. The General’s forgotten what made him rich, what made the company work. It wasn’t the pencil pushers. It was us.’

Sarah stroked his arm again. ‘So what happens next?’

Another shrug. ‘The talks will break down. Today or tomorrow.’

Sarah said, ‘And what then? Take a break? Begin again?’

Randy looked down at the coffee cup, with its bright and cheery logo for a company that he had helped found, all those years ago, and whose success had been due in part to some very long working hours, some very hard dedication, and even a little blood, here and there, spilled onto aircraft tools and hangar floors.

‘No,’ he said, his voice just a tad shaky. ‘No. The talks won’t begin again. And we won’t take a break.’

Sarah was one bright woman, and he was sure that she already knew the next answer. But she pressed on, like she needed to hear those words.

‘Then…what will happen?’

‘Strike,’ he said. ‘We’ll go on strike. And AirBox will be grounded.’

Sarah brought her coffee mug up to her face, stopped, and then lowered it to the kitchen table. ‘I read the news-papers, Randy. That might drive AirBox out of business.’

‘Then that’s what’s gonna happen. AirBox will go out of business.’

Sarah shook her head. ‘Over teeth.’

‘Yeah,’ Randy said, looking out the bay window, to the brightening sky in the east. ‘It’s all about teeth.’

In his sixth-floor office Brigadier General Alexander Bocks, US Air Force (retired) sat behind his desk, looking across its clean and shiny expanse at the man he had depended on these past six months, and a man he admired for his intelligence, tenacity and imagination. And, also, a man he had come to despise.

Frank Woolsey, his chief financial officer, crossed his legs and said, ‘Alex, you know and I know there’s no way around it.’

He looked at the lean man who — even at this early hour -looked like he had been well-dressed and groomed since two a.m. Outside there was the faint gray of an approaching dawn, and Bocks heard the low-pitched hum of his airfreight empire out there, bringing in and sending out packages, flying hither and yon across the United States. Right now, as his CFO sat before him, this whole empire was being held up by fraying black threads, ready to part and toss everything down to disaster.

Bocks said, ‘I know you’re making sense. I just hate hearing it again.’

Frank looked down at a yellow legal pad and said, ‘The numbers are what they are. To keep AirBox flying and working, you’re gonna need to expand. And if you’re planning to expand into the Pacific, you’re gonna need investors. And you’re gonna need investors who have confidence in what you’re presenting, what you’re planning, and how you’re gonna deal with your mechanics’ union.’

Bocks eyed his sharp-eyed and smooth-shaven CFO, knowing that the bright little bastard had been passing one test after another. Bocks knew his strengths, knew his weaknesses, and one particular strength was that he knew he got his best ideas and best output early in the morning, while everybody else dozed or worked-out or grazed through their morning breakfast. He had thought Frank here would have bulked at getting his gym-buffed body out so early, to break bread with the company president and CEO, but the sharp little guy had done it without complaint.

‘“You”?’ Bocks asked. ‘What do you mean, “you”?’

‘Excuse me?’ Frank was questioning but he wasn’t rattled. It was like he had the supreme self-confidence of either knowing the answer to the question instantly, or knowing that he had the answer’s source.

‘What you were saying, back there,’ Bocks said, leaning slightly back in his chair. ‘You kept on saying “you”. What you’re planning, what you’re going to need. There was no “we” spoken, Frank. Don’t you think you’re part of the team?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Not saying “we” doesn’t give me a good feeling.’

A brief pause, and Bocks knew what the man was thinking. Frank was the outsider, the one member of the AirBox hierarchy who had never served in the military, had never belonged to a group that looked out for each other, who were part of something bigger. Bocks hadn’t wanted to hire Frank in the first place, but the financial crisis he and the other airfreight carriers were still facing — thank you very much, al-Qaeda, you fuckers — meant that something drastic had to be done. Like hiring a sharp outsider and number cruncher who could come up with the tough recommendations.

Still didn’t mean he had to like it.

Frank said, ‘Nothing implied there, Alex. Just the way the words came out.’

‘Yeah,’ Bocks said, leaning forward now in the chair. He rubbed at his chin and said, ‘What’s the latest on the labor committee?’

‘The contract negotiations are probably going to collapse today. Over the dental-plan issue.’

‘And our fallback?’

Frank’s gaze was steady. ‘Once the union goes on strike, we give them one last chance. Then we bring in the contract force.’

‘Scabs, then.’

Frank said, ‘Scabs that are going to save this company. Scabs that will ensure that you still have a job, the AirBox drivers and package handlers still have a job, and the pilots and the ground crews. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, Alex. Surely you know that, because of your history.’

Bocks felt his hands clench into fists. He took a breath. ‘Frank, in the time I’ve known you, I’ve come to admire your skill, your fortitude and clear-thinking.’

A slight nod of appreciation, it seemed.

Bocks said, ‘But if you ever again try to bring in my military experience of life-and-death decisions to try to score a point about some budgetary problem, then I’m going to punch out your fucking lights, and then fire you. And no doubt you’ll come back at me with a civil complaint of assault and a lawsuit for improper dismissal, and I will gladly mortgage my home here and my vacation place up in Maine to settle it. Just for the satisfaction of punching you out and firing your ass. Have I made myself clear?’

‘Quite,’ Frank said.

‘Good. Now get the hell out of my office.’

And when Frank left, Bocks slowly swiveled his chair, to look out at the aircraft arriving that were part of his empire, an empire that was slowly crumbling away.

Damn this day, he thought. Damn these times we live in.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Adrianna Scott emerged from her third shower in as many hours, carefully wiping down her body with the towel, checking underneath her fingernails and examining her body carefully to make sure that there was not a shred or piece of anything on her — tissue, blood spatter, even dandruff — that had once belonged to the late Henry Spooner, whose flaccid body was no doubt still cooling down at the motel about twenty miles away.

Even though the bathroom was warm, she shivered as she wiped her body down again. It was always like this, always -and how many times, this was the ninth, right? — she felt depressed and blue and angry and everything else, like it would be for a drunk the morning after an all-night bender after successfully navigating years of sobriety through AA.

She took a brush, started working it through her hair. Number nine. Another shiver. She knew what it was, why it happened. Easy enough. She had been in this country for years and years, holding herself in tight, living a lie day after day, always wondering if today, this day, the CIA’s Office of Security would come into her office and take her away to a safe house somewhere out in Maryland, to be injected full of babble juice and squeezed dry of what she had been planning all these years.

All these years. From the very start, when Adrianna knew she was going to get revenge against her parents’ murderers, she knew that it would be something big, something spectacular, something lethal. And she knew that the only way to do that was to get into the power centers of this mongrel country and to take that one chance to do something spectacular, something that would make them pay for what they had done to her and to her family…

It had been hard, long, bitter work. And keeping everything closed up led to sleepless nights, shaky days, and a feeling that somehow, somewhere, she had to let off steam, make her feel sharp again, and to resurrect those old feelings of rage.

An accident, the very first time. Adrianna had been working for the CIA for two years, and the burden of carrying the secret had seemed almost too much to bear. She had been lonely, too, and had occasionally dated the sharp and muscular young men who worked for a number of agencies and administrations that sprouted immediately outside that enormous ring of power known as DC. Yet in dating those men — who’d always been track stars or football stars or baseball stars at college — she had often remembered those innocent but loving touches from her first boy, poor young Hassan, probably dead now, after all these years, no doubt wondering to the end what had happened to his special girl.

Ah, yes. His special girl. And her first special man. Craig Poulton. Some sort of liaison to Congress with the Department of the Army. First date, back in his apartment, he showed off his war souvenirs, for he had served in the first Gulf War, and proudly displayed a framed Iraqi flag, tattered and stained with blood, that he had retrieved from the Highway of Death after the ceasefire. When he had turned to put the framed flag back up on his apartment’s wall, Adrianna had picked up an unopened bottle of wine and had smashed it against the back of his skull.

Again and again.

And had finished him off with a knife.

The very first one. Never caught. And after the shock had worn off that first night, when she hadn’t been questioned, hadn’t even been considered a suspect in Craig’s murder, Adrianna had felt a thrill that she had killed, had killed the enemy in his own home, and never had she felt better.

That had lasted for many months, before the tension returned, the sleepless nights, the jittery days. Then she realized what she had to do. To keep that edge up, that hate, that anger that allowed her to pass through this American culture day and night with a smile and bright eyes, meant that occasionally she had to strike back.

Just like tonight. Against that lumpy Henry Spooner.

She sighed with satisfaction. The last one, no doubt, until…

Until Final Winter.

That brought forth a smile.

She looked in the mirror again, just before leaving the bathroom. Adrianna Scott was not looking back at her.

It was Aliyah Fulenz.

And she knew it was going to be a good day.

Brian Doyle waited impatiently outside the man’s office, sitting there, reading the day’s Washington Post. His left foot jittered a bit while he waited. The wait-and-see tremor, his old partner called it. Whether on surveillance at some bodega in Queens, or waiting in an ER while one of his precinct buddies was being worked over, or waiting outside some office like this one, the old wait-and-see tremor would start.

Especially when waiting outside an office. Brian had no good memories of waiting outside any such place while on the Job, especially when it involved something with Internal Affairs, a/k/a the Rat Squad, and this time it was worse. Instead of being interrogated by some flunky from the Rat Squad, this time Brian was the Rat Squad, and he hated it, hated every second of it.

The door opened. A tall man with broad shoulders that indicated lots of weights being tossed around in a gym some-where leaned out.

‘Detective?’

He stood up. ‘Sir.’

‘I’m ready to see you now.’

Brian walked into the office, heard the muted roar of jets taking off and landing from the base outside, Andrews Air Force Base, and he idly wondered where the hell Air Force One was being kept when he sat down across from the Director, the man in charge of Foreign Operations and Intelligence Liaison, the so-called Tiger Teams. The Director, a former Army Special Forces colonel, was limping as he went around his desk and sat down with a muffled grunt.

The Director said, ‘You did a good job on the Darren Coover investigation.’

‘Thanks.’

The Director seemed to eye him in a peculiar way. ‘Your tone of voice suggests otherwise.’

‘It does, does it? If you don’t like my tone of voice, then release me from my Tiger Team. I wouldn’t mind going back home.’

The Director smiled. If the gesture was meant to cheer him up, Brian thought, then it didn’t work. ‘We all have places we don’t want to be, detective, but there are places where we belong. For now, you work and you belong with us. And again, you did good work on Darren Coover.’

The Director opened up a file folder and Brian said, ‘So. What happens to Darren?’

The older man shrugged. ‘He enjoys viewing pornography of large-breasted women on the Internet. So what? Any other place, especially in the private sector, such interests can get you fired. We’re at war. And in wartime, when you have someone talented working for you — like Darren — I don’t give a shit if he enjoys looking at some knockers.’

‘Some war,’ Brian said.

‘Only one we’ve got,’ the Director said. ‘And don’t sell yourself short. You’re playing an important role.’

‘Some role,’ Brian said, rising to the conversation. ‘You know what I am? I’m a fucking rat, true and simple. I work with these people and do missions with them, travel with them and eat with them, and you’re asking me to betray them, one right after another.’

The Director said, ‘Catholic, are you?’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

‘Too young to have gone to the Latin Mass?’

‘Yeah,’ Brian said. ‘And I haven’t been to Mass in a hell of a long while. Look, sir, what I’m saying is—’

The Director interrupted with a sentence of Latin words. Brian stopped, and said, ‘All right. Say that again, will you?’ ‘I said, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” A Latin phrase from the first century. It loosely translates as, “Who will guard the guardians?” Or, “Who will watch the watchers?” Different phrases, same meaning.’

The Director spread an arm out, as to emphasize a point, and said, ‘Since 9/11, we’ve been working in the shadows. The Tiger Teams — thank God — haven’t received any news-media attention at all. If any of our work ever does get out to the public, it’s always attributed to intelligence agencies. That’s it. The title and concept of the Tiger Team hasn’t been revealed. Which has allowed us to do tremendous work, here and abroad, in disrupting terrorist cells, disrupting terrorist planning, and even helping some regimes see the error of their ways. We have been given great power to protect this country.’

The Director leaned forward slightly over the desk. ‘But with that great power comes great responsibility. A little secret for you. Just after 9/11, after the shock and terror, there was an opening, and some took advantage of that opening. We knew there was only a slim opportunity to set something up that would protect us and kill our enemies. Not merely reshuffling office cubicles in some government agency, or setting up a color-coded alert system. Speaking of which…what color are we at today?’

Brian shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘Don’t know. Orange, I guess.’

The Director smirked. ‘Here you are, a valued member of Tiger Team Seven, and even you don’t know our alert level from the Department of Homeland Security. So there you go. And as I was saying… with this power comes great responsibility. We have minimal oversight, but what oversight there is has to be tough. Which is where you and a number of other Tiger Team members come in. In addition to your regular duties, you check out your comrades. You see what they do. You take a fresh look into their background. Nine-hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, there’s nothing there. And what is there is something minor. Like looking at porn while on company time. Big deal. But we can always say later, when the Congressional investigations start — and, my friend, they will start, that you can believe, it’s the nature of the beast — that we had oversight in place. That’s your job. To guard the guardians.’

‘The job sucks.’

The Director said nothing for a moment. Then his voice changed, became softer, more reflective. He said, ‘Two months after 9/11, I was in Afghanistan. I was a liaison to an anti-Taliban group that was operating near Kandahar. We were moving at night and some of the mujahedin had stopped a Toyota pickup truck, running without lights along this long dirt road. Took the men out of the truck. There were four of them. They weren’t from Afghanistan. They were Saudis — volunteers who had come there to fight for the Taliban. To the Afghans there, they were outsiders. Interlopers. Arabs. So you know what happened to them?’

‘Something not nice, I’d imagine.’

The Director said, ‘Here, let me help you with your imagination. Besides myself, there were two other Americans there. And a few dozen mujahedin. And those mujahedin took the four Arabs away and took turns buggering them, and when they were done their throats were slit. Our allies had raped and murdered these men, and left their bodies in the Toyota truck as a warning to other outsiders about what happened to those who were captured by Afghans. And our Afghans were happy and were singing, and there we were, representatives of twenty-first-century America, witnessing a war crime, and we didn’t do a damn thing. That, detective, is what sucks. Sorry you don’t like your job. Get over it.’

The Director opened up a desk drawer, pulled out a folder which he tossed in Brian’s direction.

‘Your next assignment,’ he said. ‘As soon as possible.’

Brian picked up the folder, opened it up. Adrianna Scott’s photograph looked up at him. He looked to the Director and said, ‘Adrianna? Are you sure?’

‘Nobody is immune from oversight. Not even myself, not even her.’

Brian said, ‘It’s going to be busy this month, with…well, you know. Final Winter and all.’

The Director nodded. ‘I’m sure you’ll find the time. If you’ll excuse me, detective, I need to get ready for my next meeting. And by the way, the Homeland Security threat level today is yellow. Not orange.’

Brian was dismissed. So what? He got up and left without a word, the bad feeling leaving an even worse taste in his mouth. The Rat Squad membership was to continue. How joyful. Out in the hallway he looked at the folder and thought, Adrianna. My apologies already. What a fucking job.

And as he was walking down the hallway, something odd came to him, what the Director had said back there. Or hadn’t said back there.

About Final Winter.

With Final Winter breathing down everyone’s neck, you’d think that the Director would have given him a pass about looking into Adrianna’s background.

Yeah. You would think that.

But the Director had almost brushed aside Final Winter. Like it wasn’t as important as finding out whether or not Adrianna Scott had really, truly lettered in soccer when she was in high school or some damn thing.

Odd.

And before Brian could think about that anymore, his pager started vibrating at his side.

Darren Coover woke up, groggy and tired, mouth sore, body sore, whole damn body aching. Last night had been a wild one, he had just felt the need to let loose, so it meant a night of clubbing and drinking and…well, a few minutes of fumbled passion in the back seat of a Toyota 4Runner, like he was a college kid or some damn thing.

He just stayed quiet in bed, let his eyes rest, let the seasick feeling in his gut ease. He probably shouldn’t have gone out last night, but with Final Winter and the thought of what was out there pressing against him…he’d just needed it. That was all. The next few weeks were going to be hell and he needed all his energies and focus to pay attention to that. Nothing else.

Darren opened his eyes, looked up to the white plaster ceiling. He rolled over, checked the clock. Damn. He was late. He reached over to the phone, knocked over a pill bottle, picked up the phone and dialed.

It was going to be one hell of a day, and he could hardly wait to see this man’s face when he was done.

Montgomery Zane yawned as he left the bathroom after a nice long shower, rubbing his head and back with a soft white bath towel. Charlene was sitting before her vanity unit, running a brush through her hair, and he bent over and kissed the back of her neck. She had on a bathrobe and he enjoyed the view of her freckled cleavage as he brought his head up.

Charlene noticed the gaze and gently thumped him with her elbow. ‘Get your eyes where they belong and get dressed. You’re gonna be late for work.’

Monty smiled and tossed the towel back towards the bathroom. ‘Babe, you’re the best excuse for being late there ever was.’

‘Hah. Hush and get going now.’

He started dressing and thought about the day ahead, and about how much he had enjoyed that long motorcycle run, out into the countryside. Probably the last piece of relaxation he was going to have for a long, long time, and he felt queasy for a moment, remembering what he had thought about, out there in the deserted countryside.

A deserted country. For years and years to come.

He quickly finished dressing and went back to Charlene. He rubbed her shoulders, kissed the top of her head, did some quick calculations and said, ‘Four weeks from now. What’s going on with you and the kids?’

She lowered the hairbrush. ‘Four weeks? Hell, hon, trying to figure out what’s going on four days from now is a hell of a stretch. Why four weeks?’

Monty tried to keep the tone light. ‘Thought you and the kids might go on a trip. Visit my aunt in Georgia, at Miller’s Crossing. That’s all.’

He noticed her hand tightening around the handle of the hairbrush. ‘Aunt Clara? Honey, God bless your aunt and all, but she lives in a town with one street light and four stop signs, and…’

Monty kept quiet. Charlene was a very bright woman.

‘Georgia,’ she breathed. ‘There’s a reason, isn’t there?’

Not worth trying to fool a military wife. ‘Yes.’

‘Good enough reason?’

Final Winter. Suppose that damn vaccination program didn’t work? And suppose the children got sick from whatever stuff was going to be sprayed from overhead? Then those obscure men in rental cars would start driving around his country, dropping off plastic baggies of death in his cities, and…Jesus.

‘The very best,’ he said.

Tears came to her eyes. ‘Can you tell me anything else?’

‘No. And you can’t ask any more questions, Charlene.’

Her hand went from her hairbrush up to his hand on her shoulder. A gentle squeeze.

‘Yes, my love,’ she said through the tears. ‘I think a visit to your aunt will be a wonderful idea. Can you come, too?’

A pause.

‘No. No, I can’t.’

Charlene squeezed Monty’s hand tighter as her tears continued to flow.

Victor Palmer was in the kitchen of his small apartment, about a half-hour drive from his Tiger Team’s offices. He had just finished breakfast and unread copies of the day’s Washington Post and Baltimore Sun were on the kitchen counter in front of him. Next to the newspapers was a cellphone, a bulky object that most kids would have sneered at for being large and ungainly and without a camera included in the handset.

Ah, but if those benighted children only knew the things this cellphone could do, the way its classified technology allowed one to make an encrypted and untraceable phone call with the greatest of ease.

He picked up the phone, looked at the keypad, and then started scrolling through the directory until he reached a number beginning with a 404 area code. He keyed the dial pad and brought the phone up to his ear.

It rang twice. On the third ring, a woman’s voice answered: ‘CDC, operator four, may I help you?’

He gave her a four-number extension. Waited.

‘You have reached the Alpha Directory,’ an automated voice said. ‘Please enter the subsequent extension.’

Take a breath. Could drop the phone here, leave. The call unfulfilled. Miss the late-afternoon meeting with the rest of the Tiger Team. Head north. Maybe Canada. Nice simple village. Probably could survive Final Winter or anything else. Nice Canada. Quiet country. Nobody lining up to fly airliners into the CN Tower in Toronto or the Parliament building in Ottawa or to drive suicide trucks into embassy buildings. In this bloody new century, there was something to be said about living in a country that didn’t attract so much hate.

The voice returned. ‘You have reached the Alpha Directory. Please enter the subsequent extension.’

He sighed. Slowly keyed in the six numbers. Waited again.

There was a low-pitched tone, followed by a series of high-pitched ones. The encryption device in his government-issued cellphone, synchronizing with the encryption device at the other end. Hey, how you doin’? One phone to another. Boy, wouldn’t Doc Savage be impressed with that. And maybe this phone’s being answered in Atlanta at the Centers for Disease Control, but maybe not. Doubtful such delicate work as this anthrax vaccine went on in Atlanta, though everything obviously went through the central phone station and—

A man’s voice. Definitely not automated.

‘Harrison.’

Victor cleared his throat. ‘This is Doctor Palmer calling. I need a status report on the packages you’re developing.’

‘Hold on.’

Victor waited. Looked around the rented apartment, the rented kitchen, the rented kitchen table. Rented by someone whose soul was being rented. How goddamn appropriate. He closed his eyes. Hoping that Harrison would say it wouldn’t work. Hoping Harrison would say that the whole Final Winter scheme had been overruled. Hoping Harrison was struck dead by a coronary before coming back with—

Harrison returned to the phone. ‘Slightly ahead of schedule. The canisters will be in place at the Upper Mississippi Delta Storage Facility in two weeks.’

‘Two weeks,’ Victor said. ‘Got it.’

‘Good.’ Then a pause, as if the prim-and-proper government man just had to know. ‘Ask you a question?’

‘Sure.’

‘Is… is this really going to happen?’

‘Looks that way.’

‘God help us all.’

Victor said, ‘Think God’s a bit busy nowadays.’

And then he hung up.

In the Pacific Ocean near Vancouver Island it was barely daylight as the ferry plowed its way through the cold waters, heading through a fog bank. The visitor stood at the bow, bundled up, hands in his pockets, seeing nothing but the tendrils of gray swirling around him. The wide bow of the ferry rode up and down in the waves, and the visitor kept his balance on the trembling deck.

A movement at his elbow. The young man called Imad Hakim stood there next to him, shivering, wearing a long wool coat and gloves, a hat and scarf wrapped around the top of his head. Imad held a cup of tea in his gloved hands, the steam rising up past his dark face.

Imad muttered something and the visitor said, ‘What did you say?’

‘I said, I cannot believe how cold it can get in this cursed land, that’s what,’ Imad said. ‘I spent six years here, growing up with my mother’s brother, and still I can’t get used to the cold. I feel like my balls have turned to ice.’

He stood there, proud that he could stand next to this barbarian who kept his head uncovered. The man said: ‘Cold? This is nothing. I will tell you what cold is, my friend. Cold is when you step outside and you spit into the snow, and you hear a crackle as your spittle freezes before it hits the ground. Cold is when you can shatter metal with a sharp blow of a hammer. Cold is when the slightest bit of exposed skin turns deathly white from frostbite, in a matter of moments. That is cold. This…this is nothing.’

‘Bah,’ Imad said. ‘You stay out here if you like. I’m going back inside to try and get warm. If that is possible.’

‘Very well. Go back, then, and dream of camels. If that is what you dream of.’

Imad spat on the metal deck and went towards the lit windows of the main cabins of the ferry. The other man stayed behind, hands in his pockets, feeling the cold breeze around his ears and hair, wondering and thinking. Just how far he had traveled in these years, to finally have the opportunity to come here and do what he had trained to do, years ago, when he had been a proud member of the greatest empire the world had ever known.

Recently he had been living in some Third World shit-hole country, advising the Health Ministry — and, Mother of God, the laboratories they had there were nothing more than children’s chemistry sets, set up proudly in rooms that had no consistent heat or air-conditioning or pure water — when the first messages had arrived. At first he had thought that it had been an elaborate trap: some enemies of his out there — no matter the news of reconciliation and understanding — still had long memories and even longer-lasting hatreds.

But the messages had intrigued him. He had answered the first one, waited. And his Caymans bank account had seen a dramatic increase within a week. Then he answered another one, replying to a highly technical question that established the bona fides of whoever was on the other end of the line. And with that answer, another bump in the bank account. One test after another, to see if the message sender had actually been for real, including one particularly deadly request on his part, just to see how serious the message sender was.

Sure. That had been something. In the Health Ministry was an even more corrupt-than-usual doctor, who had been distilling cancer medications supplied by the United Nations and selling them on the black market. The adviser’s own wife, years ago, had died of cervical cancer, and the sheer greed and evilness of this particular doctor had galled him. So he had requested of his message giver his own test of that person’s abilities. Remove the doctor from the scene.

And it had happened, just a week later. A car bomb.

A few more messages, here and there, and here he was now, on the deck of a ferry, heading towards his enemy of so many years, now face to face, with a childish Arab at his side to help him along.

He coughed, shifted his weight from one leg to another. Strained his eyes, looking out at the fog.

There. Coming clear. One light, then another, and then an entire constellation, appearing now ahead of the ferry, and, as if on cue, the ferry horn sounded. His chest tightened with glee and pleasure. The enemy he had sworn years ago to smite was finally in front of him.

‘Hello, America,’ the man called Vladimir Zhukov, once of the Kromksy Institute of Infectious Diseases, murmured, as the lights of Washington State finally appeared through the fog off to the starboard side of the craft. ‘So nice to finally be here.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

At home again, Adrianna Scott took one more shower — for luck, she whispered to herself, as she scrubbed her body clean one more time — and with a towel about her hair and a bathrobe about her body, she went over to the mantelpiece where the photo of herself and her aunt was placed. Even knowing that she was home alone, she looked around to make sure no one was watching. She took the photo down and deftly undid the snaps at the rear, holding the cardboard placement against the frame with her fingers. Now she could stick a fingernail behind the loose cardboard and drag something out.

The something, of course, being another photo. Of a very young Aliyah Fulenz and her mama and papa, seated on a couch in some photo studio for a formal portrait. Mother and daughter were wearing identical dresses, some white and black lace piece of magic that mama had gotten from Paris, and father was in his Ba’ath Party uniform, standing firm and proud behind the two of them, his protective hands on their shoulders. Father hadn’t been much of a party member — to go anywhere in that society, you had to belong to that gangster organization — and the tales he told could have—

Enough, she thought. Quite enough. No time for reminiscing. She gently kissed the faces of her dead parents, replaced the photo in the frame, and put the frame back up on the mantelpiece. Another touch to the glass and wood, and then she went down to the basement of her condo unit. The floor of the basement was concrete and it was cool and slightly damp. In one corner was a workbench, unused since she had moved in — the previous owner had had a woodworking hobby, making toys for underprivileged children, how sweet — and most of the rest of the basement was taken up by old moving boxes and bits of furniture that she had never had the energy to sell or donate to Goodwill.

Adrianna padded across the concrete floor in her bare feet, wincing at the cold. She went around to the other side, behind the stairs. There was a wardrobe bureau standing there, heavy and immovable. She reached behind the wardrobe, flipped a switch. Inside the wardrobe, hidden casters at the bottom were suddenly released. Well-oiled and balanced, the casters allowed her to move the wardrobe easily to one side of the cellar.

Now revealed beneath the stairway was a small door with a combination lock. Flipping through the combination with ease, she unlocked the door and ducked down, entering the small space underneath the stairway. A light came on and she closed the door. Then she relaxed, sitting down on a small office chair. Before her was a horizontal wooden plank, serving as a desk, and on the plank was a laptop computer. She switched it on, waited for it to power on and boot up. She looked around the small space, which had a network of cables running across the wooden walls and the concrete floor and the ceiling which was also the bottom of the steps. She had spent months putting the wiring in place, working quietly and taking her time, making her own bubble.

Ah, yes, the bubble. An open secret for many members of the media and readers of obscure books about foreign policy: whenever American diplomats went overseas and were not staying at their own embassy, they would use a bubble -sometimes the size of a small tent — to discuss matters they wanted to be kept secret, knowing that if they were within the bubble, they were impervious to any forms of electronic surveillance. Bubbles were kept close to the chest and weren’t something one could pick up at the local Radio Shack, but someone smart and dedicated (like moi, Adrianna thought) could make one at home.

Which was what she had done. Which meant no electro-magnetic radiation at all could leave this small space under her cellar stairs. Not a bit. And with sensing devices available to certain intelligence agencies that could record the minuscule signals created whenever a laptop keyboard was used, that meant a lot.

She moved the laptop closer. It was in a black case and had no identifying insignia at all: no Apple or Sony or Dell or IBM. Zilch, because this particular laptop had been made within the CIA’s own Technical Services Division, and she had stolen it nearly four years ago. Pretty simple: it had been left in someone’s car in plain sight in one of the satellite parking lots at Langley, and Adrianna knew that particular lot’s surveillance camera gear was out for maintenance that month. So, with the skills learned at Camp Perry, she had entered the car and stolen the laptop. Later she learned that the analyst who had allowed the laptop to be stolen had been fired.

Oh well. Collateral damage.

But it meant that she had one of the most powerful and secure laptops in the world for her exclusive use, and my, had she put her own little laptop through its paces these past years, even managing to upgrade it here and there by doing some deft access work to one of the CIA’s mainframe systems.

There. The screen snapped into focus. She typed in the password that allowed her entry and got to work. So many files, so many records, so many dead ends over the years…

Yet look at what she had accomplished, all she had done, from the safety and security of this surveillance-proof cubbyhole in her condo unit. Something that would make a wonderful book or movie, if the world would allow such a thing when she was done.

There. A file opened up and she stared at the list of names there. She rubbed her chin, shivered some in the cool cellar air.

Amil Zahrain of Pakistan.

Ranon Degun of Bali.

Henry Muhammad Dolan of Great Britain.

Three men from around the world, three men who had similar things in common: living on the edge, crippled in some way, and all infused with an undying hatred of America and all it represented. Easy enough to locate them — being a Tiger Team leader meant so many case files and intelligence briefings were open for your perusal — and it was also easy enough to figure out what to do with them once you had their locations and their backgrounds in your eager little hands. For one of the perks of being a Tiger Team leader was being able to see what kind of message traffic was flowing among the various terrorist cells out there, and to see what the messages were saying.

And once you knew what kind of codes were being used, and once you knew the way the codes were passed from one cell to another, from one cell member to another, it was also quite easy to plant fake messages. Fake messages that increased the ‘chatter’. Fake messages that made the cell members think that they were part of some grand, glorious plan.

And fake messages that let her own people think that an anthrax attack was imminent.

She had to smile at that. There was no attack. There were no cells. Nothing. It was all made up, made up by one Iraqi Christian woman, working from her cellar.

Such a life! Such a country!

A wonderful joke, of course, and what made the joke even more wonderful was that there was going to be an anthrax attack upon this country, in just a few weeks…but it wouldn’t be coming from the ground, from plastic baggies, from Arab men in automobiles.

It would be coming from the air, and it would be coming from her.

Brian Doyle stepped outside the building at Andrews Air Force Base, cellphone in his hand, returning the page he had just received. A familiar voice answered and Brian said, ‘Darren? What’s up?’

A slight cough coming from the receiver. ‘Sorry. Rough night. Look, Brian, I’ve got to see you, right away.’

Brian looked at his watch. Less than two hours to go before their next meeting, and he still had to review Adrianna’s file, and he owed a phone call to his son, the boy’s Little League season was about to start…

‘Is it important?’

‘Yes.’

A jet roared overhead, and then another. Brian looked up, saw two F-16s crawl their way up into the sky. Any other place, any other time, they would be two Air Force fighter jets, up for a routine patrol, but these weren’t routine times. Brian knew that the two Falcons were going up as part of the CAP — Combat Air Patrol — over the Washington DC area. News accounts rarely reported on their presence, sometimes noting they were dispatched whenever there was an uptick in the Homeland Security threat level. But Brian knew differently. The CAP was always up, and had always been up there since a certain September 11.

‘Come on, Darren,’ he said. ‘Can’t it wait until our meeting?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s personal, that’s why.’

Brian said, ‘Look, Darren, I need to know—’

‘Brian, how do you think the other Tiger Team members will react when they realize you’re a snitch, reporting on us to the Tiger Team Director? Think they’ll be happy? Do you?’

Brian lowered the cellphone for a moment, shook his head. Shit. Caught. He brought the cellphone back up and said, ‘All right. I’ll see you. When?’

‘Soon as you can get here.’

‘And where the hell is here?’

‘My apartment, silly,’ Darren said. ‘And don’t say you don’t know where I live. I already know that you know that, Brian, with a lot of other stuff as well. See you soon.’

And then the call was cut off.

Damn it. Brian shoved the cellphone back in his coat pocket, started walking to his car, as another brace of F-16s went up into the clear and dangerous sky.

Montgomery Zane went into the garage, just as Charlene followed him out. Her face was puffy and she had been crying, though she tried to hide it. She said, ‘No more questions, hon, except this one. Are you gonna be safe?’

He grinned at her, gave her a big hug. ‘As safe as I can be, babe. As safe as I can be. Now. You just worry about gettin’ the kids ready and your bags packed over the next couple of weeks. You go on to my aunt’s place and don’t worry a bit.’

‘The hell I won’t,’ she said. ‘The hell I won’t.’

He went to his Jeep Cherokee, black duffel bag in hand, and Charlene, arms crossed, said to him, ‘How long do we stay there for?’

‘Until I send for you.’

‘A day? A week? A month?’

Monty shook his head. ‘Less than a week. That’s all I can say. You just keep on packin’, girl, all right?’

And she nodded and he knew he should go over and give her a big hug. But he was late already, and these days he couldn’t afford to lose any more time.

Monty backed out of the open garage, waved to his wife, who waved back, trying to look cheerful, trying very hard to look happy, and failing miserably on both counts.

Darren Coover opened the door to his apartment, noted right away the severely pissed-off expression on the face of Brian Doyle. The face in question was reddened and his lips were pursed, and Darren knew he had just a few seconds before the detective started blowing up in his face. Darren had always found himself liking the scrappy New York guy, nothing like the actors on NYPD Blue or any of the other detective shows on television. Brian was the real deal.

Through the clean kitchen he took him, to the small living room, where one of his laptops was running on a coffee table, next to copies of the Washington Post and Washington Times. Darren sat on a couch and Brian sat down across from him on a chair as Darren said, ‘Okay, I used harsh language there a while ago. I apologize, Brian.’

Brian nodded, and Darren said, ‘No offense was meant. Seriously. My goal was to get you over here to talk.’

Now the anger in Brian’s face was replaced by puzzlement. Darren liked what he saw. Brian said, ‘Mind telling me what the hell that’s supposed to mean?’

He smiled at the cop and said, ‘I’ve always enjoyed having you on our Tiger Team, Brian. Just so you know. There are some — and I’m sure you know who they are — who think having a detective working with us is somehow beneath them and their abilities. So be it.’

Brian said, ‘Tell me something I didn’t know. Go on.’

Despite himself, Darren enjoyed this feeling, enjoyed being in charge, knowing secrets that either the person sitting across from him was supposedly holding or had no idea existed. It made up for his lousy childhood, the way he had kept to himself through high school and college, always knowing he was the smart one, the bright one, but also that he was the different one.

Darren said, ‘I’m used to giving out information in briefings, so please bear with me, all right? Trust me. It’ll be worth your time.’

‘Go ahead.’

Darren smiled. He was enjoying this. Most briefings there was always somebody senior in rank or somewhat senior in smarts, putting on bored airs, but this guy seemed to want to know what was going on. He wasn’t going to disappoint him.

‘Information is what we play with, day in and day out,’ Darren began, sitting back on the couch. ‘Sometimes that information is dramatic, like an Order of Battle for the Medina Armored Corps of Iraq, back when they had an armored division to play with. And sometimes that information isn’t so dramatic, like that misused and popular phrase, chatter. The trick is to identify the sources of your information, and to make a best guesstimate of what it means now, and what it might mean in the future.’

Brian said, ‘I’ve heard about a dozen different versions of that little speech since I came aboard, Darren. Thought you weren’t going to waste my time.’

A nod. ‘All right. I’ll get specific, then. Since you came aboard, I’ve known from the start that one of your roles was to play…Rat Squad, I guess is the correct term… for the Tiger Team Director. The Colonel. Your job was to follow the directives of Adrianna and work for the team, but your other job was to look into the backgrounds of your fellow Tiger Team members. Correct?’

Brian’s face was colored red again. ‘How did you know?’

‘My dear boy, before I was detached to Tiger Team Seven, I worked for the National Security Agency. The biggest and baddest information-collection agency in the world. Finding out what you were doing was quite simple. The matter of finding one memo sent through the ether that should have been encrypted. There you go.’

‘And you’re telling me this… why? A threat? Blackmail?’

Darren tried to put a shocked expression in his voice. ‘Not at all. My goal is to make sure you do your job better.’

Now the confusion was back on Brian’s face. Oh, this was so much fun. Darren said, ‘Surprised, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then here’s another surprise. I bet I know what was said in your report. That Darren Coover is a valued member of the team, has problematic social skills, and has one flaw. And here’s that one flaw. He enjoys viewing on-line pornography of women with large breasts. Am I correct?’

Brian said, ‘I shouldn’t be saying so, but yeah, you’re correct. That’s what the report said.’

Darren grinned, got up from the couch, went to the coffee table and spun the laptop around. Brian looked at the upright screen and then raised his head. ‘Why are you showing me this? A big titty page. So what?’

‘Ah, but watch. Tell me what’s going on.’

Brian returned his gaze. ‘The pages — they’re moving on their own. They’re bringing up photos and…videos. Quicktime videos. That’s what I’m seeing.’

Darren turned the laptop around again, and returned to the couch. ‘Delightful program that I found on the net, and which I tweaked on my own time. It’s an avatar program. Do you know what an avatar is, Brian?’

‘Enlighten me, why don’t you.’

‘Very well. An avatar is a construct, an artificial person. If you go on-line and play a computer game against somebody else, you might want to call yourself Brian the Magnificent, Slayer of Dragons and Savior of Maidens. That would be your avatar.’

Darren pointed to his laptop. ‘That’s my avatar, Brian. For somebody monitoring my computer usage — like you did, no doubt with the assistance of my agency’s Technical Security Department — would quickly determine that I was a heterosexual male with an unhealthy fascination with large mammary glands. Correct?’

Brian nodded slowly. ‘Correct.’

He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a black and gold matchbook, which he tossed over. Brian caught it and Darren said, ‘What’s it say?’

‘It says The Wilde One. What’s that?’

‘It’s a private club outside of Baltimore. A members-only club. The membership requirement is quite simple. One has to be a male homosexual. Guess you and the agency didn’t spend any time performing a surveillance on me, tailing me to see where I went and what I did.’

Brian’s response was better than Darren had anticipated. He just nodded again and tossed the matchbook back, and Darren was pleased that he was able to catch it. Having always been bad at student athletics, it was a very small but fun victory.

‘Okay. So you’re gay. I don’t care and probably most of the team doesn’t care either. What’s the deal with the surfing of the titty sites?’

‘To prove a point.’

‘Point being…?’

‘Information. What you can trust and what you can’t trust. Brian, you probably had a checklist of items to review for me. Am I correct? Schooling, contacts with friends and neighbors, bank accounts, credit-card debt, and everything else. Lot of work for one guy to perform, especially with a deadline handcuffed to you. So you did what you could. You looked again at old interviews. Maybe made a few phone calls. And relied on others who went before you to really look at my background. I was able to spoof the investigators quite easily. You see, they tend to look for secrets, for embarrassing little background items. A perfect person doesn’t exist. So if you give them something to write about — like a preference for women with huge breasts — they’re satisfied. They have found the flaw that they’ve been looking for, and they go on to other assignments. Especially during these troubled times, when so many-people are being investigated, from Cabinet secretaries to Saudi students to FBI job applicants. The investigators were able to check off their little boxes. But their jobs weren’t done. Not by a long shot.’

Brian now seemed amused. ‘You want I should go back and rewrite my report? Say that you’re gay?’

Darren shrugged. ‘In these alleged enlightened times, it doesn’t make much of a difference anymore. Back during the Cold War, there was the fear of having homosexuals in sensitive areas because their background meant that they could be blackmailed by the KGB or others. But nowadays…hell, there’s nothing there to blackmail about. But I do enjoy keeping the secret. It keeps me on my toes, and it tells me how we’re managing information.’

Brian said, ‘Secret’s safe with me, and thanks for the lesson.’

‘You’re quite welcome.’ Darren was enjoying this moment with the detective and didn’t want it to end. He folded his arms and said, ‘We all need to do a better job about the information we receive. Yet we don’t.’

‘I don’t get what you’re saying.’

Darren paused, and then said, ‘Oh, what the hell. You’ve got the proper clearance, or you wouldn’t be part of the team. It’s just that… well, you know what the big advantage is of having the Tiger Teams in place?’

‘Unless it’s going to screw with my pension, tell me.’

Darren unfolded his arms, leaned forward a bit on the couch. ‘It’s broken down the barriers. Information was kept in the different agencies, like big old vertical office buildings, everybody guarding their little turfs, their little pools of information. Very little in terms of cooperation and information-sharing. But the Tiger Teams broke that all apart. It’s like these huge office buildings suddenly had sky-walks installed between the different floors, letting information flow side to side, besides bottom to top, like it used to. Which means a lot of shared information. But a lot of shared questions, too.’

‘Like what?’

Darren said, ‘Just my paranoid nature, I guess. It’s just that…well, I’ve been poking around into other agencies. Like Homeland Security. FBI. Border Patrol. You would think that with Final Winter barreling down on us within a few weeks, that they would be on heightened alert, would call back their people, cancel all vacations and overseas trips. But if it’s happening, I’m not seeing it. And there’s another thing.’

‘Which is?’

‘The chatter,’ Darren said.

Brian shook his head. ‘I swear to God, I’m sick and tired of hearing the word. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Makes me think of those old dime-store chattering teeth you wound up and put on your kitchen table. Chatter.’

‘I’m sick of it too, Brian, but I’ve been reviewing the chatter. And you know what?’

‘What?’

‘It’s exactly the amount and level of chatter one would anticipate if a major attack like Final Winter was being undertaken. A lot of code phrases and sentences, being sent to and fro among a number of terrorist and support cells. And coming from different parts of the world. Pakistan. Great Britain. Bali. Among others. And then there’s the Predator surveillance of that car doing a test run in Damascus. Not to mention our dead Syrian friend in a Canadian hospital. It’s all pointing to that one thing: Final Winter, and coming soon to a metropolis near you.’

‘And what’s the problem?’ Brian asked.

Darren rubbed at his chin. ‘The problem is what I just said. Don’t you see?’

Brian, sharp operator that he was, picked right up on it. ‘I get it now. The amount and level of chatter you’re seeing is exactly what you’d expect. Nothing less, nothing more. It’s like… it’s like somebody is trying to warn us beforehand. Nothing dramatic. Quiet. So he or she isn’t putting themselves at risk for giving away secrets. Like somebody within the cells wants us to know what’s going to happen. A sympathetic ally, buried deep within the organization? Someone who secretly enjoys Britney Spears or X-rated video or racks of beer?’

‘Perhaps. I mean, that’s a simplistic answer to a complex problem, but as one of our late lamented presidents said, sometimes simple answers are just the hard ones. I just don’t know. I’m just one analyst, Brian. I know that there are better and more experienced analysts out there who are probably looking at the same problem, right now.’

‘So if you had the power, what would you do?’

‘I’d recommend that the people who are performing this chatter, that some of them get picked up and squeezed. In fact, I’m surprised that it hasn’t happened yet. And I may do just that at our meeting this afternoon. Ask Adrianna to have some of these characters picked up.’

Brian said, ‘Typical response from those who make the rules. If I knew about some low-level street dealers setting up shop in my precinct, sometimes we’d string them along. See where they went and who they saw. Makes sense.’

‘Sure, but if the intelligence is correct, a major terrorist attack is set to take place within a month. I’d think you’d want those people in your control, debriefing them, before that date arrived.’

‘Well, that’s for the higher-ups to decide, I guess. All I know is that I’ve got lots of work to do and precious little time to do it.’

Darren said, ‘Adrianna’s the next one on your investigation list, am I right?’

Brian said, ‘Christ, is there anything you don’t know?’

‘Sure. Lots. What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know, smart one, you tell me. What should I do?’ Darren thought for a moment and shrugged. ‘Hell, I’d wait until after this Final Winter thing is completed before digging into the Princess’s background. What’s the point?’

Brian seemed to agree. ‘My thoughts, too.’

Adrianna noted the time from a little clock icon up on the corner of her screen. Time to get out of this little hole and get dressed, but not before one more task was done. She toggled open a familiar file and looked again at the names. Amil Zahrain of Pakistan.

Ranon Degun of Bali.

Henry Muhammad Dolan of Great Britain.

They had performed their roles, and had performed them well. They had taken messages and rebroadcast them, and had added to the din of the chatter out there. They were good soldiers.

Just like poor Hamad Suseel of Palestine. Brought over to the United States for one purpose, to raid the offices of Tiger Team Five. Things had been too quiet the past several months. She needed something to shake up the increasing complacency, to make the higher-ups and her own Tiger Team members fearful of the hard-core men out there who wanted to kill for the sake of their God.

Of course she felt bad about the deaths in Connecticut. Two of the Tiger Team members she had counted as friends.

But it had had to be done.

Just like now, with what was going to happen to the men from Bali, Britain and Pakistan.

Adrianna wrote up a file protocol, with information and JPEG photos of the three, plus their home addresses and habits. All placed into a file which was compressed and encoded.

There. Done.

She disconnected the laptop’s power cord, picked the machine up, and left the cubbyhole underneath the stairs. Walking back out to the cellar, she left the door open and walked upstairs, carrying the laptop, her bathrobe still fastened around her waist.

Now she was in the small dining room where she had dined the other night with Brian, that good-looking, interesting young man from—-

Cut it out, she thought harshly. No time for that.

She placed the laptop on the table, moved the screen around so she could look at it properly.

Took a breath.

Pressed a key.

A quick dialogue box appeared.

There. It was now in somebody else’s capable hands. Just a second or two earlier, a compressed chunk of data had been uplinked from her CIA laptop to a satellite 23,000 miles overhead in geosynchronous orbit. The transmission had lasted less than a second, if that. Any type of surveillance being conducted at her home — quite unlikely — would have registered, if the watchers were very, very lucky, a tiny burst of static. That would’ve been all. But the data package squirted up to the CIA satellite had been received and the information was being extracted and expanded, and with the proper code phrases and authorizations the data now stored in the memory banks of the overhead satellite would be rebroadcast to certain individuals back on the ground.

And the satellite’s own data-processing software would indicate only that it had received a burst of data from a certain point in Maryland, where dozens and dozens of offices that could have been the source of the information were located.

Quite simple, quite delicate — and quite deadly.

Especially for those three men.

Adrianna powered down the laptop and then looked outside. It was a sunny afternoon and there were children at play on the lawn outside her window. About half a dozen children, maybe six or seven years of age, playing with a couple of large rubber balls. They were laughing and yelling and bouncing into each other, and she smiled at their energy and youth. How wonderful. How purely joyful, to see them at play, and she looked at them…

And thought of something else.

Adrianna thought of these children, their parents. How much love their parents had for them. How much work their parents did to feed and clothe them and keep them safe. How they had chosen this comfortable suburban condo complex as their own little shelter, to keep their loved ones — My God, with such hope, dreams and love invested in those tiny little bodies — safe from the ravages of the outside world.

Safe. So safe.

And she thought of what it would be like, in just a few weeks, when the illness came, for she had no doubt this place would be one of the blighted ones.

At first it would start like any other respiratory illness. Fever, chills. Then labored breathing. Frantic phone calls to the doctor’s office. The doctor’s office crowded. The ER overwhelmed. Patients lining up outside for treatment. Television and radio reports, breathless and shrieking in their reporting of what was going on in New York and DC and Los Angeles and elsewhere…

These poor children out there. Would they die in their perfect little bedrooms, choking to death, with their parents watching them? Or would they wander through their pretty condo units, wondering why mommy and daddy weren’t waking up, and why wouldn’t somebody feed them or take care of them…

What would happen to them?

She knew what would happen. She knew because she was going to do it.

Adrianna looked again at the laughing children.

Odd, when you got right down to it, it was easy to plot and plan for years and years to take your revenge. But when she looked right at those pretty faces, the faces of the children who would play on the sidewalk outside, or ring the doorbell at Halloween, she had to ask herself, could she do it? Could she kill them, just like that?

Adrianna snapped the laptop cover shut.

Of course she could.

In a war, there was always collateral damage.

Just like mama and papa.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Vladimir Zhukov stood in the motel parking lot outside Bellingham, Washington State, sipping a cup of coffee, hating the taste but knowing he needed the caffeine to stay awake. He would have preferred to have a cup of tea, ah, now that would have been something. A nice freshly brewed pot of tea in a samovar, pulling the little toggle, letting it settle in a china cup. Drink it in the old way, a cube of sugar tucked inside your cheek, my God, how many cups of tea he had swallowed over the years, back at the Institute, back when…

He sipped at the coffee. Back when things made sense. Back when things worked. Back when he was privileged, was someone, was part of the elite, the nomenklatura, the ones who would work very, very hard to protect their Fatherland and their Party. Which was what he did, all those long years of studying, everything from molecular cell structure to Marxist theory, climbing up that long, rugged path to be someone, to be respected, to devise weapons to protect everything he held dear…

And to be betrayed. By Gorbachev and the rest of the lackeys who had rolled over on their backs and spread their legs, like whores or whipped dogs, begging for mercy, begging for hard currency credits from the West so they could buy Sony or Chrysler or any other damn thing. And he… he had left, had peddled his wares to various shit-holes around the world, knowing in those dark places in his soul at two a.m. that he was a veteran, like one of those Japanese bastards hanging out in an island jungle decades later, never knowing the war was over.

Well, that was the truth. The war might have been over for everyone else, but not for him, not for Vladimir Zhukov, he who had the same last name as the famed Marshal of the Soviet Union, Giorgiy Konstantinovich Zhukov, who had led millions of Red Army soldiers to crush Hitler and destroy the fascists…and whose own people, decades later, would allow the Germans to reunite and become one again. And who would later toss in their lot with the capitalists, with the West, with those who would have crushed them if the spirit had moved them.

He looked around at the buildings, the roadways, at all the hustle and bustle of what appeared as progress. Some progress.

Vladimir finished the coffee, tossed the cup to the ground. One more piece of garbage to join the others. And speaking of garbage, here he came, his comrade, his partner, who was to help him in this very last battle. A Freightliner tractor-trailer truck, bright red, with no trailer behind it, roared its way into the parking lot, Imad sitting proudly behind the wheel, smiling like a trained chimp from the famed Moscow State Circus, showing off his talents. Imad parked the truck and switched off its engine. Vladimir went over to join him. Imad opened the cab door, leapt out, still grinning.

‘See? I told you I could drive this. Not a problem, no problem at all.’

‘So you can,’ Vladimir said, looking over the truck, seeing that the tires appeared to be in good shape, the bodywork was clean and recently washed. ‘And you rented this for the agreed amount of time?’

‘I did,’ Imad said proudly. ‘One full month. They were eager to rent it. There were many more in the lot, but I chose the best one.’

Vladimir got on his knees, examined the truck’s under-side. Nothing blatantly out of place, but he was not a mechanic, nor was he a diesel-truck driver. Which was why he was burdened with this child to accompany him. A gift from his mysterious benefactor. He got up, brushed gravel and dirt from his knees. A cold wind was blowing, smelling of salt and exhaust.

‘And the paperwork? You used the proper credit card, the proper identification?’

Imad’s smile faltered. ‘Of course I did. Do you think I am a fool?’

‘I don’t know,’ Vladimir shot back. ‘You tell me. The first time your friends tried to take down the World Trade Center, one fool went back to the rental agency, to get back his deposit for the truck that carried the bomb. That led to his arrest and the arrest of many others, and it s only because the Americans wanted to arrest you instead of kill you that you fools succeeded the second time around. Will you do that here, Imad?’

‘No,’ Imad said, his face darkening. ‘No, I will not. And remember this, my friend: despite whatever that “fool” did, we did come back. We came back and we did it right. So don’t forget that. No one else has.’

Vladimir shook his head. ‘No, it has not been forgotten.’

Imad grabbed his upper arm. ‘And do not forget this. My own cousin… my own cousin, I did what had to be done. I did what I was ordered to do. The poor boy…all he wanted to do was to come to Canada and marry a Canadian girl and someday own a small restaurant. And I infected him with that awful anthrax and dumped him off at a hospital like a bag of shit, so that whatever must be done is happening. So don’t doubt me.’

Vladimir shrugged off the boy’s touch. ‘I don’t doubt it. Just do your job.’

‘And you do yours, Russki. You do yours.’

‘I shall,’ Vladimir said, walking back to the motel room. ‘And get your belongings ready. I want to be over the border by nightfall.’

Imad kept up with him, now smiling, like a man who would cheerfully feed you a sumptuous meal and then strangle you later that night. Imad said, ‘Very well. Over the border at nightfall, all to defeat the enemy.’

‘Yes,’ Vladimir said, finding himself finally agreeing with the child. ‘To defeat the enemy.’

Montgomery Zane was driving to his Tiger Team office when his pager started vibrating at his side. He grabbed the pager, toggled it, and then read the text message. He shook his head. A hell of a fucking time for a trip. He looked ahead, found a place to turn around, and did just that.

No Tiger Team visit today.

Brian Doyle looked out the window of the Delta airliner, saw the city of Memphis and the Mississippi river unfold beneath him. Elsewhere in the cabin was the Princess, Adrianna Doyle, looking very quiet and unflappable over there by the other aisle, and behind her sat a very unhappy and apparently nervous Dr Vincent Palmer. Although they traveled on the same flight, there were rules against sitting together, probably to prevent some idle chitchat that could be overheard by either a New York Times reporter or a terrorist cell leader, both of whom were hated to different extents within the Tiger Team management.

Below Brian the view of Memphis seemed to tilt up and down as the aircraft descended. He hated flying. Not that he was some Luddite who thought that transportation progress had ended with the arrival of the steam locomotive; no, he just hated being strapped into a thin aluminum tube and having his life completely in the hands of a pilot he had never met, a mechanic whose work he didn’t know, or an aircraft assembler who might or might not have had a bad day when putting together an intricate piece of machinery.

So there you go. He much preferred to have his life in his own hands, thank you very much, and being in control of the situation. Being 30,000 feet above the earth in the hands of somebody else didn’t strike him as being in control.

The descent continued, the ground getting closer and closer, and Brian couldn’t help himself, he closed his eyes for a moment as the wheels hit the runway. In control. The past several months, being at the beck and call of Adrianna and her bosses, that sure didn’t meet the definition of being in control, now, did it?

After long minutes of wading through the people exiting the aircraft, each juggling a piece of carry-on luggage, and passing the poor flight crew with their robotic ‘’Bye now’ — and did they do that because some marketing whiz a thousand miles away thought such greetings would mean a point five percent increase in return flyers? — he joined Adrianna and the not-so-good doctor outside the jetway. Adrianna nodded to him and Vincent just looked miserable. He was holding a silver metal case in one hand. Brian went up to him, grasped the doctor’s left wrist for a moment, and said, ‘The joys of technology, doc, am I right?’

Victor looked surprised. ‘What? What do you mean?’

Hand still on the doctor’s wrist, Brian tugged at a thin steel cable running from the handle of the case to a handcuff hidden under the shirt sleeve. Brian said, ‘Back in the bad old days, there was a thick chain running to the case. Now it’s just a thin steel cable. Harder to spot. But still, it’s easy enough to get the case off your wrist.’

‘How’s that?’

Brian couldn’t help himself. ‘Just use an axe. That’s all.’

Adrianna said, ‘Brian…’

Vincent said, ‘But I was told the cable was resistant to all cutting devices.’

Brian grinned. ‘Who said anything about cutting the cable? All it’d take to get the case away is to cut off your hand.’

Adrianna came around, grabbed his upper arm. ‘Come along. No time for games, Brian.’

Despite it all, he enjoyed her touch. ‘You got it, Adrianna. No time for games.’

They exited the terminal, got into a cab, and the cabbie snorted when he heard the address from Adrianna. ‘Man, what a waste of time…’

Brian was sitting in the front, letting Adrianna try to cheer up the doctor. ‘Don’t worry, pal. We’ll give you a big tip, just the same.’

‘You will?’

‘Sure,’ Brian said. ‘Unlimited expense account. For any-thing and everything we want. Even if it’s for a cab drive a couple hundred yards away.’

The cabbie got them out into the steady flow of airport traffic. ‘Must be nice, throwing money around like that. You guys must have one hell of a job.’

Brian said, ‘Pal, you have no idea.’

Alexander Bocks stood alone in his office, looking out the window at the collection of hangars and outbuildings that belonged to him at the Memphis International Airport. Oh, lawyers and bankers and accountants would put up a hell of an argument, saying that these structures did not belong to him, they belonged to AirBox and a bunch of subsidiaries and stockholders and this and that, and Bocks would nod at all the right places and then say, fuck you, they’re mine. They weren’t there before I started, and they are there now, and they belong to me.

He raised a hand, touched the window, felt the vibrations that came from the jet engines and ground equipment and luggage handlers. He pressed his hand tighter against the glass, as if trying to remember well what the sensation was like, what it was like to stand here and feel that thrumming sensation against your skin, that sensation that meant decades’ worth of work and dreams were finally being fulfilled, that he had something he could call his own, something that in a very few hours would—

The door opened. Bocks dropped his hand as if he was a twelve-year-old boy caught in a bathroom by his mom, a copy of her Cosmo magazine in his hands. He turned and Elizabeth stood there, Elizabeth Bouchard, a retired warrant officer from the Air Force, who had taken early retirement to come join him at this crazy venture, to go after the big boys at UPS and FedEx, and who was now a very wealthy woman, stock options and all, but still preferred to come to work every day for the general.

He said, ‘I really wanted some quiet time, Liz.’

‘I know, sir, but you have a visitor.’

Bocks went over to his desk, to the clear piece of square Lucite that stood up six inches and which held his day’s schedule, like the menu of some restaurant or something. He glanced down, then looked up and said, ‘First appointment isn’t for an hour. Who is it?’

‘An Adrianna Scott. With two associates.’

‘Tell her to go away.’

Liz came forward, her fiftyish body still looking uncomfortable in civilian clothes, like she should be wearing BDUs instead of a ridiculous pants suit from Talbots, and she passed over a business card. He looked down, saw the woman’s name and the very familiar emblem and main phone number of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Bocks handed the card back to her. ‘Sorry, I don’t go all weak in the knees anymore when unannounced visitors from Langley turn up. Tell her to make an appointment. Preferably for next week.’

Liz held the card and said, ‘She asked me to say something to you.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Sky Fall, sir,’ she said. ‘She told me to say “Sky Fall”.’

Now there’s irony for you, Bocks thought, for when Liz said those two words something indeed made his knees quiver for a moment. Good goddamn. Well, another day shot. And the possibility was now there for a whole host of nasty days ahead.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Show her and her associates in. And be prepared to cancel everything else for today.’

‘Today?’ Liz replied. ‘Are you sure? I mean, it looks like—’

‘Yes,’ Bocks said, heading back to his desk. ‘Everything. And no phone calls, Liz. And give me a minute before you show them in.’

‘Very good, sir,’ she said, walking out. Bocks sat down in his chair and then let his head rest in his hands, started rubbing at the temples, and closed his eyes real tight. In this position, he thought that the vibrations had returned, but no, it was probably just an illusion, make-believe — which he desperately hoped was what this entire day would become.

Adrianna Scott walked into the general’s office, Victor and Brian right behind her. There was the quick exchange of handshakes, and she said, ‘General, allow me to introduce my two associates. Doctor Victor Palmer, of the Centers for Disease Control, and Detective First Class Brian Doyle, of the New York Police Department.’

The general looked fit and trim, like most military men she had ever known, and as she expected the mention of Brian’s rank brought a quick smile to his face. ‘NYPD? What are you doing here? Going to come after me for some unpaid parking tickets in the Big Apple?’

Brian smiled back at him. ‘It can be arranged. If you’d like.’

‘What’s that? Arranged to be arrested, or arranged to be let loose?’

‘Whichever makes sense,’ Brian said. The general laughed and they sat down and Adrianna was so glad she had worn the longest skirt she owned, for her legs were really trembling with the tension of being this far along. Before leaving on the trip she had taken a dose of acrimophin, a beta blocker that was supposed to ease her racing heart, but she guessed that she should have taken another dose, for her heart rate was roaring right along.

She took a quick glance around the office, saw something that surprised her, and the general picked up on it, right away. ‘Something wrong, Miss Scott?’

Good for you, Adrianna thought. Don’t underestimate this one, don’t even come close to having him think you’re bullshitting him, because it could collapse and end right now, with her on a flight to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and all those years of dreaming and working would be gone in an instant.

‘Forgive me,’ she said, ‘it’s just that I find your office…well, different.’

The general eased back a bit in his leather chair. ‘Different how?’

She nodded in the direction of the solitary framed photo, up on the wall. There were bookcases full of books and what looked to be a tiny bar in the other corner, but just the one photo, of a young man with big ears in an Air Force enlisted man’s uniform, looking very young and very serious. Over the many years the chemicals in the photo had faded out, giving the man’s skin a greenish-yellowish tinge, but she could still recognize a young Alexander Bocks.

Adrianna said, ‘Where’s everything else?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The plaques, the photos, the—‘

‘—framed photos, framed certificates, all that framed crap,’ Bocks said back to her. ‘Yeah. The ego wall. Look at me shaking hands with the President. Look at me with the Pope. Look at me, getting pinned when I became a general. The hell with that.’

Bocks swiveled in his chair and said, ‘See that? That’s a skinny kid with big ears who grew up in a small town called Arapahoe, Nebraska, and who knew he didn’t want to farm like his father and grandfather. So he joined the Air Force and worked hard and the Air Force found a place for him, educated him, sent him around the world a few times and made a man out of him. That’s the only thing that’s on my wall. To remind me where I came from, to remind me what I had to do to get here.’

Adrianna stayed silent as Bocks moved his chair back. His gaze was now focused right on her. ‘All right. You didn’t travel here unannounced to admire my empty walls. You need something. You used a coded phrase, telling me who you are and establishing your bona fides. You’ve got my attention, miss. Use it well.’

She nodded. This was where it was going to pay off, for she had been practicing this presentation for months — years, even! — and being so close, she wasn’t going to fail. She said, ‘General, we need your help.’

‘How?’

‘We’re going to be attacked in just under three weeks, simultaneously and across the country. Major metropolitan areas. Our best guess is that the twenty largest population centers have been targeted.’

‘Nukes?’

‘Anthrax.’

‘Delivery system?’

Adrianna said, ‘Teams of four or five operatives in each city. Each has a vehicle, a rental car or truck. They have weaponized airborne anthrax virus in baggies. Delivery system is absurdly simple. Drive into each major city and drop Baggies off at intersections, where foot and vehicle traffic will spread the spores.’

Bocks’s gaze never wavered. ‘Casualties?’

‘Horrific. Tens of millions of deaths within weeks. Total collapse of economy and government. We—’

He held up his hand. ‘Don’t need to go into any details. And you need my assistance? How? Transport of medical supplies? Evacuation? What the hell can I do that the government can’t?’

Adrianna said, ‘Doctor Palmer will explain, sir, if you permit.’

‘Go ahead.’

Now it was Victor’s turn, and Adrianna was even more nervous. During the past few days, Victor — never a calm one to begin with — had become more erratic. He did his job just fine, but there’d been a day or two when she’d noted a patch of stubble on his face where he had missed shaving. And food stains on his shirtsleeves. And a frayed necktie. Telltale indications of stress that had never been there before.

But he rose to the occasion as he opened up the silver case, removed a dark green canister with the yellow stenciled markings, and started talking. Though Victor’s voice was a monotone, Bocks paid rapt attention to details of the experimental vaccine, the spraying mechanism, and the radio-altimeter switch that both armed and triggered the canister’s operation. Victor’s briefing went on for eleven minutes exactly, and when he was done and had replaced the mock-up canister in the metal case the only thing audible was the sound of the aircraft, out in Memphis, taking off and landing.

Bocks shook his head. ‘A hell of a thing. And where exactly does this canister go?’

Adrianna said, ‘Your air fleet consists mainly of McDonnell Douglas MD-11 jets, retrofitted from passenger use to cargo use. In each aircraft, in the aft portion of the fuselage, there is a port and starboard exhaust system for the on-board air-conditioning system. Our aircraft analysts believe that the vaccine canisters can be installed as an addon to the exhaust system. The pilots would have no control over the distribution. The radio-altimeter switches would take care of that. It would be automatic.’

‘So you want to use my aircraft to secretly immunize millions of Americans against anthrax,’ Bocks said, his voice rising some. ‘Is that it?’

‘Yes.’

Bocks paused, then said, ‘And that’s all you’re going to say?’

Adrianna felt the trembling increase again. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I was answering your question. That’s why we’re here, that’s why I used the “Sky Fall” protocol. We would not have come here if there was any other option. To immunize publicly would tip off the attackers that we knew they were coming, and would allow them to advance their schedule. To start a public immunization program would result in chaos, confusion and panic. The only alternative — and not a good one, but at least better than doing nothing — is a secret immunization program. We’re calling it “Final Winter”. And using government or military resources would simply not work. We need to use aircraft that are seen publicly every day. Aircraft that travel to every major metropolitan center in the United States. Aircraft owned by one man who has shown his commitment and dedication to this country. General, you’re our only option.’

Bocks glared at each of them. ‘Again, a hell of a thing. You realize the kind of liability I’m being exposed to, just by sitting here and listening to you? I could go to jail for conspiracy, for one thing. Not to mention that if I do go along I’ll be partially responsible for a number of deaths and injuries. Am I right? You’ve war-planned this out, haven’t you? How many deaths will occur if I lend you my airfleet one night for your secret immunization? Don’t bullshit me.’

‘No bullshit, sir,’ Adrianna said. ‘Doctor Palmer and others have gone through the numbers. Best-guess scenario is an additional ten thousand deaths over a period of a month. Infants, the elderly, those with weakened immune systems. Cancer patients, transplant patients, AIDs patients.’

Bocks stared right at her again, and she wondered what it must have been like to be in the Air Force and to have this man in command over you. ‘Just so we’re clear on this, then, you’re asking me to take intimate part in a venture that will result in the death of ten thousand Americans. Just so we’re clear. Ten thousand people killed. By me and you and your nice doctor with his green canister.’

‘True, sir,’ Adrianna said, keeping her voice level even as his rose. ‘Ten thousand will die. Which is truly unfortunate, and the thoughts about those deaths have given me many a sleepless night. But what keeps me going, what has brought me here, is that we will also save tens of millions of Americans. Ten thousand will die to save scores of millions. An awful equation, but one we must face. We cannot see any other way.’

A pause, and Adrianna waited expectantly, knowing that whatever counter-argument or point the general would raise she was ready, ready for anything. She had an answer for anything that Bocks would bring up, and she waited.

And in two seconds, she was proven wrong.

The general’s voice softened. ‘Miss Scott, you’ve made the start of a compelling argument, but I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

‘Why?’

Bocks looked at his watch. ‘Because in ninety minutes, my machinists’ union will be going on strike, and my air-fleet will be grounded. That’s why.’

Adrianna couldn’t help herself. She closed her eyes, just for a moment.

Oh mama, she thought. Oh papa. How I’ve failed you.

CHAPTER TWENTY

In the small village of Goresh, about fifty miles away from Lahore, Pakistan, nineteen-year-old Amil Zahrain leafed through a copy of the Karachi Daily Jang, the country’s largest newspaper, feeling that little knot of anger and depression grow inside of his chest. Since his meeting with the Sudanese weeks ago and his visit to the Internet cafe in Lahore — which still gave him the shakes sometimes at night, thinking how close it had seemed, when the two policemen had entered the place — he had scanned the newspapers and had listened to the BBC and watched al-Jazeera at his uncle’s store and…

Nothing!

Nothing at all!

The Sudanese had promised him that something would happen, something dramatic, something that he, Amil, would have helped along through his dangerous journey to Lahore. He couldn’t sleep at night that first week, knowing the news would come out, like that glorious day when New York and the Pentagon were attacked, and that he could take praise from his family for having taken part in such greatness.

But the papers had been silent. Al-Jazeera had said nothing. All had been quiet, save for the usual gunplay and atrocities in Palestine and Jordan and Iraq and other places.

And there had been no death in America. Nothing.

Had the Sudanese been lying?

Amil crushed the newspaper in his hands, stood up from the stone bench where he had first met the Sudanese all those months ago, the Sudanese who had promised him everything: fame, pride, and at last, a sense of belonging, of being part of a jihad, of something that would make his club-foot irrelevant. He walked awkwardly out of the village center, past the stores and booths and stone buildings with the loud radios playing immoral music, knowing that nothing really awaited him when he got home, save for his mother and his sister, and they would argue with him and demand that he find work, even with a clubfoot, he should do something for the family, and even though he was the sole male he knew he deserved better, and—

A man’s whisper caught his ear, coming from a narrow alleyway. He turned.

The whisper was louder. ‘Amil?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Who wants me?’

‘Come here, my friend. You’ll know me when you see me.’

He turned, saw a man standing there in the shadows, barely lit by the gas lamps from the dirt street he had been walking on. The voice did seem familiar… he walked into the shadows and then the man stepped forward, and Amil’s heart started thumping. It was the Sudanese!

‘Amil,’ the man said, smiling. .’You do remember me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, yes, of course I do…tell me, what has happened? Why are you here? What news?’

The Sudanese smiled. ‘So many questions from such a brave young warrior. I do have so much to tell you, but we need to go to a place that is private, out of sight. There are Jews and Americans out here, even in a place like this, who seek to halt what work we have done.’

Amil nodded in excitement. ‘Yes, yes, I know of a place. Follow me. It’s not far.’

They exited the alleyway. Amil had spoken the truth, but he wished that he hadn’t, for the place was indeed nearby, but he would have rather walked a distance with the Sudanese, with hopes that he could meet friends or cousins or aunts or uncles, and say to them later, that black man, the Sudanese, he is truly a holy warrior, and he has asked for my help.

A short distance away — Amil walked as fast as possible with his poor foot — there was a home that was being built. The home had a view of the Hindu Kush and it was said that the rich man who was building it for one of his wives had run out of money, so the place was only half-built. A wire fence surrounded the property but Amil and others knew how to get in, and long ago the place had been stripped of its wiring, windows and piping. There was a gap near an old pine tree and though it was dark there was light enough from the other buildings to light their way. Amil led and the Sudanese followed until they were on the property, near a half-built brick wall.

Amil turned to his friend. ‘Sir — please tell me what is going on.’

The Sudanese clasped Amil’s shoulder. ‘Yes, all is going to plan.’

‘But…nothing has happened! You promised that I would strike a mighty blow against the Jews and infidels, but I’ve not seen a thing!’

‘All in God’s time, my mighty warrior,’ the Sudanese said. ‘All in God’s time.’

Amil was confused but happy. ‘I understand now… I think I do…but tell me, sir, why have you come back? Is there more to be done?’

The Sudanese said, ‘There is always more to be done. But I need to know something. Your work that day, going to the Internet place in Lahore. Did you tell anybody what you did there?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see anybody in Lahore who would recognize you?’

‘No.’

‘And you have kept your secret well, all these weeks?’

Amil nodded eagerly. ‘Yes, yes, I have.’

The Sudanese slapped him gently on the back. ‘You have done so well, my friend. You truly have. Here, I must show you something.’

Amil watched as the Sudanese reached into his robes and pulled out a small pistol. It was a dark and ugly thing, and there was something odd attached to the end of the stubby barrel, like a short length of pipe wider than the barrel itself. Amil eyed the pistol as the Sudanese raised it.

‘Is…is that for me?’

‘In a way, yes.’

‘But I have no experience in using such a thing!’

The Sudanese shook his head. ‘No experience is necessary. But I have one more thing to tell you, Amil.’

‘Yes, what is that?’

The Sudanese’s easy smile disappeared in an instant. ‘Greetings from the people of the United States of America.’

And the end of the pipe-length was pressed against Amil’s forehead, and all was darkness.

On the island of Bali, Ranon Degun looked out through a window of his aunt and uncle’s home, watching the rains fall. The exhilaration and joy he had experienced at making that cellphone call and feeling that he had been doing something great and exciting had dribbled away, like ice melting in a glass. What worth had it been? What great thing had he accomplished? There was so much to do and he thought he had done his part… and silence. Nothing. He looked back into his uncle and aunt’s home, saw the disarray of dishes in the kitchen, laundry to be folded, floor to be swept — women’s work, not work for a man, yet his uncle had demanded that the home be cleaned before he and his wife came home later that night. ‘You must do something here to support yourself,’ his uncle had shouted, ‘for we cannot feed you for free! You understand? We are not your slaves, to feed you and clothe you at your demands!’

So there it was. Women’s work. When just a while ago he had been a proud jihadist, taking the first step to fight against the enemy, to free his beautiful island from the filthy—

A man was coming down the pathway, a tall man, a black man—

The Sudanese!

Ranon ran out of the small house, went down the stone path, the sodden leaves on the tree branches slapping him in the face and on the shoulders, and the Sudanese gave him a wide grin as he met up with him. He grasped the black man’s hands with his and said, ‘How wonderful! How wonderful! Do you have any news?’

The Sudanese smiled back at him. ‘Yes, wonderful news… but only if we can speak quietly. Can we do that?’

Ranon released the man’s hands, quickly nodded. ‘Yes, yes, right here. I know the place. Come along!’

He walked quickly, not minding the downpour, as the Sudanese kept pace with him, following behind him, as he peppered the older man with questions. Did his phone call really make a difference? How goes the jihad? Why was there no news of a major strike against America? Was the day coming soon? Could he, Ranon, join the Sudanese and leave Bali to do God’s work?

They came into a small clearing. Almost out of breath, Ranon said, ‘This is my secret hiding place. It’s where I come to pray and think when my uncle and aunt… when they yell at me too much. This is where I come to be alone.’

The Sudanese nodded, and Ranon noted something odd, as if the man was troubled by what he said. But the Sudanese simply said, ‘And of my visit. And what you did. Was anyone told?’

Ranon shook his head. ‘No one. I swear.’

‘Very good.’

The Sudanese slid a large hand into his clothing, took out a pistol. Ranon was fascinated with the black shape. The Sudanese said, ‘Ranon, do you know how to use one of these?’

‘No, I do not.’

The Sudanese shrugged. ‘It does not matter. I do, and that is all that, is important.’

And while Ranon was trying to figure out what the man meant, he felt the touch of the cold metal upon his forehead and flinched. Something inside him froze when the last words he heard were, ‘Greetings from the people of the United States of America.’

Henry Muhammad Dolan yawned as he exited the Tube station, carrying a plastic bag of groceries. It was a five-block walk home and his feet hurt with every step. He didn’t like picking up groceries — women’s work, of course — but since his wife was ill he had no other choice. He walked slowly, burdened not only by the weight of the bag in his hand but by other things as well. His wife had nagged him in that gentle way which wasn’t nagging, asking why she and their daughters could not go to Detroit to visit her sister. He had forbidden it, over and over again, but still she had come back to it, like a cat circling a meal, going around and around, until late one night he had lost his temper and said, ‘Because, woman! There will be something bad happening in America, and soon, and I do not want you or the girls to be there when it happens!’

Oh, curse it, for what had happened then was the probing and nagging and questioning. While Henry had said very little, he had said something about his meeting with the Sudanese and the work he had done and the warnings he had received and…

He stopped at an intersection. And another thing. The Sudanese should have come back. Should have told him more. Should have—

And, God’s beard, like something out of a fairy tale, the Sudanese was there, standing next to him!

The Sudanese smiled. ‘You look surprised, my brother. Hide your shock well. I do not want to draw attention to either of us. Continue your walk.’

‘I… I was just thinking of you, and what you asked me to do… tell me, can you tell me when—’

‘Hush, now,’ the Sudanese said. ‘I cannot tell you a thing. Not yet, at least. But I need to talk to you in private. Do you have the time?’

‘Of course!’

They walked among the crowds, the lines of people flowing about him, and Henry Muhammad Dolan was proud that the Sudanese had returned, for it meant something of importance was going to happen. Of that he had no doubt. None whatsoever. Like the vision he had once, that the black flag of Islam would one day fly over Whitehall, there was not a doubt. It was to be a reality, and sooner than anyone would think—

At a small hostel, the Sudanese went through a side door, up a narrow set of stairs. Henry followed. A television was playing loud and there was music and cooking smells, but it all meant nothing to him. All that mattered was the tall Sudanese dressed in a shabby dark brown suit, walking ahead of him. The Sudanese took out a key, opened another door. He walked ahead of Henry, put his own grocery bags on the floor. The room was simple, with a small bed, a table with a television on it, and a washbasin in a corner. The window shade was drawn, and on the floor was the oddest thing: a square of green plastic, two or three meters to a side.

The Sudanese said to Henry, ‘Before we begin, I must ask you something.’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘The task I assigned you — did you tell anyone of what you did?’

Henry felt his face grow warm and was wondering what to say when the Sudanese looked at him sharply and said, ‘You will speak the truth to me. Did you tell anyone?’

Henry looked down at the floor. ‘My wife. I told her a little. About you.’

‘And what else?’

‘Only that she was forbidden to travel to the United States next month. To visit her sister. I told her something bad was going to happen to America. That she had to stay home.’

The Sudanese seemed upset at something, but not at what Henry had just said. It was like some inner struggle was taking place. Then the Sudanese closed his eyes for a moment and said, ‘Very well. What is done is done. But no harm will come to your wife and children. None.’

‘Very good,’ Henry said, confused. ‘But what does all of this mean?’

The Sudanese reached underneath his coat, pulled out a pistol of some sort, and Henry knew what was about to happen, could not believe it. He started to say a prayer and the shock of what the Sudanese said next — ‘Greetings from the people of the United States’ — caused him to halt in mid-sentence, just before a split-second flash of light preceded a final darkness.

The man known as the Sudanese was now in a men’s room, staring at a mirror. He had the room to himself. He looked at the dark face and brown, impassive eyes. Water was running in the sink, and before him was an open container about the size of a yogurt carton. He took a washcloth, dipped it in water, and then dipped it again in the container, and started rubbing at his face. Rub, rub, rub, and the dark color started to wash away, revealing a lighter skin, brown but not as black as before. More rubbing and something else began to emerge, a pattern, a display of scar tissue, of facial skin that had been badly burned, years ago. More rub, rub, rub, and when he was done there was no longer a Sudanese looking back at him from the bathroom mirror.

Instead, it was Montgomery Zane, of Tiger Team Seven.

‘Welcome back to the world,’ he whispered to the mirror.

Outside the restroom, Monty walked into a wide, open room with a low ceiling. There was country and western music being played somewhere, and in the middle of the room were a number of tables and chairs. Men were there, eating and drinking and smoking, and some were playing cards. Men were also two-deep at the bar, on the other side of which was a grill, open 24/7, where someone could order anything from frog’s legs to bacon and eggs to a milkshake to Maine lobster to caviar. Anything and everything. The men’s voices were loud and boisterous, though some of the men were quiet, sitting by themselves, reading or sleeping or listening to music through headphones or watching a movie on a handheld DVD.

Monty felt his body relax, for that was the purpose of this room. It was in a nondescript building stuck in the corner of a training facility at Hurlburt Air Force Base in western Florida — home of Air Force Special Operations — but there were about a dozen other facilities like it scattered around the world. Its purpose was simple: it was an oasis, a recharging place, a room to re-enter The World after doing the dirty work of the United States. For each and every man in this room was a member of an elite, either Special Forces or Delta Force or Navy SEAL or Air Force Special Ops or any other black-budget group, who in fact were known as the ‘point of the spear’, and here they relaxed for a while, after killing the enemies of the United States.

At the bar Monty leafed through a thick menu, ordered a plate of barbecued ribs. After getting a Sam Adams, he went back to a table and sat down. There was a day-old USA Today newspaper there and he started looking through it. He yawned. Man, going through so many time zones in just a few days fucked up his inner clock so bad the poor thing probably didn’t even know what year it was anymore. The beer was cold and good and as he sat there, feet stuck out, he thought about the past couple of days. Some strange shit, though he was no newcomer to strange shit. His job was to be the hammer. Somebody’s else’s job was to be the architect, the designer.

Another swallow of the beer. But what kind of design lay behind his latest run? He had spent a fair amount of time over the past few years playing around with these contacts and others, passing along spoof information, knowing that it was for a good cause. The spoof information could cause enemy higher-ups to react, to make plans, to be caught on the radar of all the God-loving forces involved in this war on terror. So that had been the job, and he had done good with it, playing the devout Sudanese, paying attention to terrorist-wannabes.

So why were they whacked? What possible threat could they have posed?

Somebody kicked at his feet. He looked up, and smiled in recognition. ‘Yo, Bravo Tom, have a seat.’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said the other man, a bulky redhead whose hair was cropped short and whose muscular shoulders looked like they were about to burst through his black T-shirt. Bravo Tom was a second-generation Croatian, whose father had taken him to the United States when the Yugoslav civil war began in earnest. He had a twelve-syllable first name that began with the letter ‘B’ and, thankfully, his middle name was Thomas. His last name was also a jumble of consonants and one vowel, and everywhere he was deployed he was just called Bravo Tom. Monty had met the man in a SEAL refresher course a few years back, and had run into him, off and on, all across the great globe.

‘Buy you a beer?’ Monty asked, and Bravo Tom laughed back at him. Everything was free, and buying a beer just meant walking up to the bar and retrieving same. Bravo Tom said, ‘Nope, I’m good for now. How you been?’

‘Good. And you?’

‘Just fine,’ Bravo Tom said. ‘Good to see your ugly mug. How’s business? Still with the Tiger Teams?’

Monty smiled at the easy give and take. This was one part of the military that civilians never quite understood. You made a friend, a good friend, and despite deployments hither and yon you could run into that friend in the most Godforsaken places and they’d show you the ropes and help you fit in and watch your Six. It was a big organization, the military, but it was like one big-ass family if you looked at it right.

‘Busy, quite busy, but it’s all right. Tiger Team is treating me okay. And you? Still with the Hymen Squad?’

Bravo Tom seemed to blush at that. Monty knew that his friend had been stationed with a secretive group that was tasked to provide quiet and clandestine support to the US Border Patrol and Customs. There were very strict rules against the use of military resources in domestic law-enforcement affairs — rooted in the old concept of the posse comitatus — but since a certain day in September 2001, rules were pretty much what whoever made them — and who could get a Federal judge, usually in secret, to sign off on them — wanted to make them. Officially, Bravo Tom’s group was known as the Border Support Task Force and, using Kiowa helicopters and cut-down armored Humvees, they worked both the Canadian and Mexican borders to interdict smugglers of drugs and smugglers of people. But since their job was, as some wise-asses had noted, to protect the purity and sanctity of the nation, their unofficial name was the Hymen Squad.

So far their work had gone well. They’d intercepted nearly a dozen teams trying to infiltrate, said teams either being killed in vicious firefights never reported in the news media or captured and sent to the tender clutches of the rapidly growing prison system in Guantanamo Bay.

Bravo Tom shrugged at the question and said, ‘Hymen Squad’s doing all right, I guess. I’m going on a thirty-day leave this weekend and, let me tell you, I am counting down the hours.’

Monty lowered his beer bottle to the table. ‘Leave? You’re going on leave?’

‘Sure. Why not?’

Monty looked at his friend to see if he was joking but there was no humor there. He said, ‘You’re going on leave. For thirty days. Tell me, you guys spun up about anything coming down in the next couple of weeks?’

Bravo Tom shrugged. ‘Nope. Everything’s about as normal as it can be, Monty. Some training down in Lower Baja, and some work going up north with the Aussie Special Forces, out in Montana, but that’s it.’

‘Regular schedule? Regular ops?’

‘Yeah. Hey, no offense, mind telling me what the fuck is going on?’

Monty toyed with the edge of the Sam Adams label. His fingers felt cold, his feet felt cold, the whole damn room felt cold. ‘Bravo Tom, you ever hear of something called Final Winter?’

His friend thought about that for a moment and said, ‘Nope.’

‘You sure?’

‘Damn sure I’m sure. Look, pal, I know who you are. Your name is Monty Zane. You sure as hell weren’t named for a street, but you should have been, ‘cause the traffic’s all been one-way. And if you don’t start yapping, I’m moving to a friendlier table.’

Monty was stuck but he knew that fair was fair. At this level of classification, Bravo Tom didn’t have a ‘need to know’, but Monty sure as hell needed to know what was going on with his buddy’s unit. If that meant horse-trading with information, so be it.

Still toying with the beer label, he said, ‘My Tiger Team has been riled by something coming up in a couple of weeks. Something known as Final Winter. Major attack on a number of cities. Those doing the attack are supposed to be Syrians, infiltrating through the borders. I did some background work, passed my recommendation up the usual and customary chain of command. Thought for sure you guys would be heading up any response. I can’t fucking believe you’re not at high-level alert.’

Bravo Tom said, ‘Sorry, pal, we’re not And if we were, I’d know about it.’

‘Shit,’ Monty said.

Bravo Tom said, ‘Looks like somebody in your group has some explaining to do.’

Monty nodded, saw that his plate of ribs was coming over, carried by a male airman wearing BDUs. ‘You better fucking believe it,’ he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Vladimir Zhukov sat next to the Arab boy as he drove the tractor-trailer truck through the confusing maze of roadways and parking areas of the Port of Vancouver. There were three terminal areas that handled container cargo — Deltaport, Centerm and their destination, Vanterm — and Vladimir was pleased enough to let Imad do the driving and dealing. The place was filled with parking areas, service stations, railway yards, and long lines of belching tractor-trailer trucks, coming out with their containers firmly fastened at the rear.

Imad was singing some high-pitched tune that grated on Vladimir’s ears, but he let the boy go on. Even though Imad probably weighed no more than sixty or seventy kilograms and looked like such a child behind the wheel of the Freightliner he handled the massive truck with ease. Between them was a metal clipboard with a sheaf of papers and documents, and Vladimir smiled at the memory of crossing the US Customs station not more than an hour ago. The Americans didn’t care who was leaving their benighted nation, and Canada was only too eager to allow tradesmen and businessmen and truckers through. Their papers had gotten a perfunctory glance and then they’d been on their way, passing from US Route 5 to Canadian Route 99. Imad commented immediately on the rougher roadway.

Vladimir said, ‘The joy of a socialist economy. They would rather spend money on making immigrants feel good than on good roadways.’

Imad grunted. ‘This is one hell of a bad road.’

‘So it is. I will tell you a story. After the end of the Great Patriotic War, the—’

‘The what?’

Vladimir folded his arms. ‘What others call the Second World War. We call it the Great Patriotic War. As you call the Six Days’ War between Israel and the Arabs the Great Betrayal. At the end of the Second World War, Canada had the third-largest navy in the world, after the United States and Great Britain. They were a world power, and they pissed it away, like a drunk peasant getting a fortune and spending it on vodka. Now they have an Air Force that relies on American castoffs, a Navy that depends on leased ships, and an Army that cannot even fill a football stadium. Pathetic.’

Imad had laughed. ‘Like a nuclear-armed empire that sees half its land given away, its mighty submarine force rusting at the dockside, and an Army that is still getting its ass kicked in Chechnya.’

Vladimir felt his fists clench. ‘We’ve lost our way. We will be back.’

Imad laughed again. ‘Surely you will, Russki. You keep on believing that.’

Now they were in the middle of the Vanterm container terminal, having followed a map provided by a security guard. Imad had opened the window and the smell was of diesel fuel and chemicals and salt air and exhaust. Imad sang another little ditty as he drove, irritating Vladimir with its stupidity, but the Russian let the boy do his job. Other vehicles traveled on the access roads as well, mostly tractor-trailer trucks like themselves, hauling away containers that just a number of hours ago had been transiting the Pacific Ocean. He found that the palms of his hands were moist. He wiped his hands on his pant legs. Everything would be fine.

They came to another gate. Imad passed the paperwork over, chatted to the terminal worker. The man was Chinese. Lots of workers here were Chinese, and Vladimir hated the sight. The damn Chinese were pressing against his homeland, buying up land and mineral rights and pulp mills in the eastern part of his Russia, and the damn people were here as well, taking over the western part of Canada. Were the Canadians so blind that they fretted and complained about the behemoth to their south — who usually ignored them, except when it came to UN votes — and overlooked the true behemoth to the west, who was going to overtake their pretty little country by buying and breeding, two things at which the Chinese excelled?

The truck barked into motion again. As they went down a narrow roadway, flanked on each side by overhead cranes, more containers that marked the oceanwide business here — P&O, Freightline, Haatz-Merlin and Stagway — Vladimir said, ‘Are we there yet? Are we?’

‘Just another minute,’ Imad said. ‘Aaahh…here we go.’

There. Vladimir could feel his pulse racing at the sight of the bright yellow Comex container and trailer, sitting by itself off to the left. Imad honked the air horn in celebration as he slowed down and passed the trailer. Working the gears and looking in the side view mirrors, he backed up the tractor-trailer and Vladimir winced at the sudden jolt as the truck seemed to hit something.

‘Damn fool, what did you do?’

Imad’s head was turned but his voice was sharp enough. ‘I am young but I’m no fool, you pampered doctor. Haven’t you ever ridden in a truck before? We’ve just hooked up the trailer. Nothing unusual. Damn fool yourself.’

Imad opened the driver’s door, leapt out. Vladimir followed him and dropped down to the cracked pavement, enjoying stretching his legs. He looked around at the mess of containers and cranes. He felt a flash of anger that such a place existed here, in a joke of a country. Canada! Something like this should be in Vladivostok, an ocean away, feeding his home country, helping it to grow strong again. Not in this Western fairyland of a place… He walked to the rear, saw Imad at work, connecting cables and hoses from the Freightliner to the trailer.

‘How much longer?’

‘Just a few more minutes, that’s all. What’s the rush?’ Vladimir rubbed his cold hands, looked to the south and the horizon and the haze that marked the homeland of his enemy.

‘You’re right, no rush,’ he said. ‘I’ve waited decades. I can wait just a bit longer.’

Imad laughed. ‘We’ve waited more than five centuries. We too can wait a bit longer.’

In Memphis, Alexander Bocks spent just a few seconds looking over at his three visitors, gauging their reaction to the news he had just given them. The doctor looked like he was relieved, as though something bad he had signed up for was not now going to happen. The detective just looked uncomfortable, like he knew he didn’t belong here but should be back home in Manhattan, investigating an assault at a bodega or something. And the CIA woman… when he had told her that AirBox was going to be grounded in less than two hours, something more than disbelief or anger had flashed across that pretty face. It had been as if something she had cherished and hoped for had been snatched away at the very last moment.

Adrianna Scott said, ‘Less than ninety minutes? Are… are you sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure,’ Bocks shot back. ‘What the hell kind of question is that?’

Yep, the CIA woman was rattled. He wondered how in hell she had gotten to the position she was in. She seemed to pull herself together and said, ‘Yes, you’re right. Of course. The question I should have asked is, why? Why are your mechanics going on strike?’

Bocks managed a small smile. ‘Over teeth.’

‘Teeth?’ the detective asked. ‘What’s the matter, they don’t like their dental plan?’

The general turned to look at Doyle. ‘Sure they do. That’s the problem. They love their dental plan, but they don’t want to pay more than their fair share. In order to be more competitive, we’ve got to cut costs even more. Neither side is going to budge, so by the time you nice folks get back to your hotel rooms the strike will be on.’

‘But don’t you have contingency plans?’

Plans, Bocks thought, sure, plans thought up by my slug CFO. Aloud he said, ‘Sure we do. We have mechanics lined up. Scabs, the poor bastards. But the FAA isn’t going to allow us to shut out our old mechanics and bring in a new crew without certifications and training being checked. So we’ll be down. A week, maybe two. Maybe even three.’

‘Over teeth,’ the CIA woman said, a tinge of wonder in her voice.

‘No, not just teeth. It’s more than that. It’s a struggle, like other companies struggle. How to make it to the future. How to survive. Hell, how to thrive so you have jobs, and stockholders have dividends, and nice little people get their nice little packages on time.’

Adrianna said, ‘That’s very nice, general, but unless we do what we have to do there isn’t going to be a future, most of your stockholders will be dead, and those nice little people won’t be looking for nice little packages. They’re going to be looking at digging graves in their front lawn to bury their children, and they’re going to worry about getting food this winter. That’s the reality. And teeth isn’t going to cut it.’

Bocks was going to say something but the woman plowed right over him. ‘By my side is Doctor Victor Palmer. One of the best and smartest physicians working at the Centers for Disease Control. He could quit this afternoon and by tomorrow have his own hospital wing in New York or Los Angeles or Phoenix, to do whatever kind of research he wants. But he gets paid shit by the government and puts in tremendous hours, and suffers for it, all to protect his countrymen. And for what? Knowing he might fail, that millions might die, and that even if he succeeds people alive this instant will be dead by this time next month because of what he’s devised.’

Adrianna shifted in her seat, her voice sharper. ‘Then you have Detective Doyle. He’d rather be home in New York, rather be involved in his son’s Little League team and schoolwork, and put bad people behind bars, than be working for us. He’s sacrificed time with his son, he’s sacrificed his career with the New York Police Department, and for what? For being involved in something that could see him disgraced, see him sent off to jail. A New York detective whose own father was killed on September eleventh.’

Bocks looked at the detective. ‘That true?’

Doyle looked irritated. ‘Yeah.’

‘Tell me about it.’

He shrugged. ‘Thousands of people lost family or friends that day. My story’s no different.’

Bocks said, ‘Maybe so, but still I want to hear it.’

Doyle cleared his throat, shot a glance at the woman seated next to him — Bocks wondered what kind of dynamic was at work there — and said, ‘The story is simple. My dad’s name was Sean Doyle. Spent nearly thirty years on the Job. Raised me and a brother and a sister. Retired as a sergeant, decided he was going to be a handyman and single-handedly renovate the family home on Ridgeway. But the poor guy didn’t know one end of a hammer from the other and thought heat magically came out of the basement by itself. And my mom — well, she was used to having him out of the house during the day, and truth be told, he was used to being out too. So he got a job as a security officer, for a finance firm in Tower Two. He and nearly everybody else in that firm was killed that day.’

‘Did anybody see him that last day?’

‘An admin aide — Jackie somebody — she thought she saw him go into the offices, to try to get the people out of there, just as the smoke got real thick…that’s about it.’

Bocks looked at the quiet detective, tried to imagine what it must have been like to lose one’s father like that. In his years in the Air Force, Bocks had lost many friends and acquaintances, and tragic as their deaths were they made sense, in a grim sort of way. Aircraft crashes in bad weather or enemy fire or mechanical problems… in the back of your mind, what you expected could happen to you or somebody you knew. But to die in one of the world’s tallest buildings, from a terrorist attack, when you had retired safely after years on the street? Not only did it not make sense, it was obscene.

Bocks looked at the detective and said, ‘Your dad was a hero. You should be proud.’

‘No, he was just doing his job. That’s all. And nothing else.’

‘I respectfully disagree, detective. He was a hero.’

The detective didn’t say anything else. Bocks shifted to the CIA woman again, and said, ‘You’ve told me about the good doctor and the good detective. But nothing about yourself.’

‘There’s nothing to say,’ she said.

‘Of course there is, and I want to hear it,’ Bocks said.

Adrianna Scott looked at the sharp face of the general, knowing what she’d like to say. She’d like to say:

Arrogant man, it was men like you, men from your Air Force, who killed my family that February morning. Arrogant and powerful men, thousands of miles away, choosing which targets in my blessed city should be destroyed. Men in comfortable offices eating fine meals at the end of the day, choosing the targets here and there, deciding who would live and who would die. And then other arrogant men, in their high-powered machines, flying high above the ground, high above a place where the people would have fought you hand-to-hand if possible, but, the cowards in their machines came far above my land…and in a matter of seconds incinerated my family and hundreds of others.

Now you sit here, she thought, one more arrogant man among others, showing no regret, no remorse, no apology for what you and so many others did to my country, and to other poor countries, from Vietnam to Bosnia to Somalia and so many others, blundering around with your sledgehammer weapons, speaking of piety and democracy and human rights, and slaughtering all those who get in your way.

This is what I would say, arrogant man, that the time has come for this Iraqi woman to use your machines, your arrogance, your power against you, and in a matter of weeks the world will not be able to sleep at night for the crying and rending of the robes and the gnashing of the teeth from those cold and huddled and scared survivors in what was once known as the United States of America.

That was what she wanted to say.

Instead, Adrianna said, ‘The story is nothing exceptional. Nothing like those of the good doctor here and the detective. My parents died at a young age. I lived in a poor neighborhood in Cincinnati. Raised by an aunt who passed away while I was in college. Decided then in college that my country — my homeland — was in danger. No matter what the talk shows or newspapers or opinion polls said, I just knew my country was in danger. I entered the CIA and worked well and quietly until September eleventh.’

She kept her steady gaze on the general, who was looking right back at her with a direct expression. She said, ‘Now we’re approaching an imminent threat that will make September eleventh and everything that followed it look like a schoolboy brawl. Something that will destroy what Lincoln called the world’s “last, best, hope”. And I cannot believe that you, General Bocks, will allow this nation to face something like this without your help, your aid, over the matter of a union and a dental plan. I cannot believe that a man as powerful and as dedicated as you will allow that to happen. Am I right?’

The air seemed heavy. She knew that Victor and Brian, flanking her, were no doubt looking at her but she kept her stare fixed on the general. She wondered what machinations, what thoughts, were going on behind those eyes. The general stared and stared and then he smiled, and she caught herself. No, she thought, not yet. Too soon, too soon.

‘Very well put, Miss Scott,’ he said, shifting in his chair. ‘Very well put. Yes, you’re right. I’m not going to let a simple matter of a dental plan derail what you’ve asked of me. That’s not going to happen.’

Brian said, ‘If you’ve got a strike going down in less than two hours, how in hell are you going to stop it?’

Bocks said, ‘By going back to the past. By going to my roots. By seeing someone who I once thought of as a good friend, and bringing a six-pack of beer and some ribs. And we’ll work it out.’

Adrianna forced herself to breathe slowly, not to let any excitement show. ‘So… so we can count on you and your carrier company?’

A hammer blow, right to the gut. ‘No,’ Bocks said. ‘Not yet. I require something else.’

She could not speak. Only nod.

Bocks said, ‘No offense to you and your companions here, Miss Scott, but I need to verify your bona fides. All right? Every other op I’ve ever done for the CIA and anybody else in DC, I’ve checked and rechecked what’s been requested of me. Everything from sensitive packages to sensitive people, I’ve risked equipment and aircrews for my nation. But this one…this one dwarfs everything, miss, and I’m not going to proceed until I’m comfortable. So. Who do you have?’

‘Hold on, general,’ Adrianna said, and he wasn’t sure, but the woman seemed more pale than when she came in. What was going on there? he thought. The pressures? The responsibility? The burden of having to come to this office and plead a case that could end with all of them going to prison?

She went to her leather bag, took out a notepad, scribbled something and passed it over. Bocks glanced at the name and number, nodded. ‘I recognize the name. That’s a big point in your favor. We ran some items into Bagram couple of years back on his say-so. How’s his leg?’

‘He never talks about it.’

‘Figures.’

He put the slip of paper down, picked up the phone, dialed the number. It rang just once and a female voice answered the phone by repeating the last four digits of the number.

‘Four-one-twelve,’ she said.

‘This is General Alexander Bocks, of AirBox air freight,’ he said. ‘I need to speak to your Director. The Colonel.’

‘Hold on, sir,’ came the voice.

Dead silence.

Bocks looked over again at the trio sitting across from his desk. ‘I’m on hold,’ he said. ‘At least there’s no elevator music.’

No reply, nothing, just the somber looks on their faces. He had no envy for what they did and what they lived with, day after day. Running a multimillion dollar business was tough, but the spreadsheets he worked with didn’t have collateral damage of tens of thousands of civilians.

A click. ‘General Bocks?’ came a male voice.

‘That it is, colonel, that it is.’ He switched the receiver to his other hand. ‘I have before me three people who say they work for you. An Adrianna Scott. Doctor Victor Palmer. Detective Brian Doyle. True so far?’

‘You’ve got it.’

‘I’ve just been briefed by Adrianna Scott of an operation called Final Winter. You’re familiar with it?’

‘Yeah, quite familiar. And I’ll remind you, general, we’re not on a secure line.’

‘Understood. Question I have for you, has Final Winter been vetted?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re comfortable with what’s been presented, its outcomes and variables?’

A sigh. ‘Never comfortable with something like this, but as best as I can say, yeah, we’re comfortable.’

Bocks kept his eye on Adrianna. She looked like she had been carved out of marble. ‘I’m concerned about the liability on my part.’

‘There’s protocols that have been signed with you and your company and the Justice Department, am I correct?’

‘Yes, five or six years ago. When I first started…doing favors.’

The colonel laughed. ‘Now that’s a word. Favors. Yeah. General, the liability is covered. Don’t worry about it. The question I have is that Adrianna probably mentioned a tight deadline. Can you do it?’

Bocks took a breath, looked at the solemn faces of the people sitting across from him. ‘I don’t think I have a choice, now, do I.’

‘I don’t have to tell you the debt we’ll owe you if you’re able to provide this assistance, general.’

‘No, no, you don’t.’

Another pause. Bocks said, ‘All right, then, you’ve answered my questions. Thank you.’

‘No, sir, thank you…’

Bocks hung up the phone, looked at his visitors.

Adrianna had one thought, and one thought only:

Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.

Somehow she knew the general would have to do something to verify what she was proposing, but she hadn’t thought that he might go right to the colonel heading the Tiger Teams. The briefing she had given the Director a few days ago had so far worked well; all that anyone knew in the Tiger Team oversight was that Final Winter was merely a harmless bacterial test to determine air patterns and detection methods over various American cities. My God, if Bocks had said one word about anthrax, one word about deaths being caused and lives being saved…

Could she have gotten out of the building in time?

Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up.

Bocks shook his head. ‘All right, I’ll take care of my machinists. In the meantime…Miss Scott, it looks like you’ve got me and my aircraft.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Adrianna said, disgusted at how weak her voice sounded, exhilarated at what she had just pulled off.

My word, wouldn’t papa have been proud.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Now there was a line of traffic forming up before them, as Vladimir Zhukov and Imad drove south to the American border. They had left the Port of Vancouver with their cargo, and while Imad wanted to chat about what mighty blows the two of them were preparing against the infidel oppressor -blah, blah, blah — Vladimir was more concerned about what was ahead of them. Back again on Canadian Route 99, Vladimir was under no illusions of what they were about to face, for the Americans were finally beginning to tighten up their long border with their dull Canadian neighbors, years after that glorious Tuesday morning in September.

At his side was the long leather wallet that held his identification, Imad’s identification, the papers from the Port of Vancouver, and the bills of lading for what they were supposedly carrying back there in the shipping container. According to all the paperwork — which had originated from Shanghai, China — there was nothing back in the trailer but a collection of children’s toys, from dolls to footballs. Which was true, for about the first six feet’s worth of packaging. Once you got past those brightly colored boxes, other items began to appear, specially constructed canisters of metal and plastic, packed in foam and securely fastened, for not one of the canisters could have been put in place with a risk of breakage or rupture, since an accident like that would have quickly killed everyone on the container ship, and the crew of any curious vessel coming by to see why things were amiss on a ship manned by corpses.

Vladimir folded his arms. So far it had gone well. From that shit-hole of a tribal state that dared to call itself a nation, to a number of other hotels and hostels and way stations on the route across Asia and Siberia, his hidden contact out there had pried, prompted, promised, and, of course, had paid him. He had no idea if his contact was a man, a woman, a committee, part of some group or some nation. All he knew was that the contact knew a lot about him, and knew just how to interest him enough to get him to do what he was doing.

It had worked out fine, so far, and Vladimir’s Cayman Islands account had grown fat indeed. But late at night, in the quiet stillness when he opened his eyes and stared out into the darkness, he liked to think that of course it was more than just the money, more than grabbing his chunk of the capitalist system that was strangling the globe. He saw it as a perfect revenge, a perfect dish served so very cold. A time that—

Imad said, ‘We’re getting close.’

‘I see,’ he said.

Up ahead there was an exit for COMMERCIAL TRAFFIC, which he and Imad and this truck certainly were.

Imad looked over at him, licked his lips. Vladimir smiled. ‘Nervous, boy?’

‘Don’t call me boy!’

‘Very well — nervous, child?’

Imad’s face was tense, his lips trembling, as he downshifted the big truck, easing into the Customs lane. Ahead were a number of other tractor-trailer and container trucks, pulling over for inspection, and Imad said, ‘Watch your fucking mouth, Russian. I don’t take that from anyone.’

Vladimir said, ‘Watch your own fucking mouth, Arab, because we want these Customs people to see two ordinary truckers, entering their ordinary country, not knowing that we’re going to slaughter millions of their ordinary people in just a few days. Understand, child?’

Imad said nothing, braking the truck, the air brakes sounding like the howls of some Siberian creature out there on the taiga. Vladimir smiled, couldn’t help himself. It was fun, needling the little shit. Needed to be put in his place. But he had to watch it, he knew: there were many more kilometers left ahead of them.

In Memphis, they were in Overton Park, about five miles away from her home, and Carrie Floyd watched as her daughter Susan flew a kite, her chubby legs pistoning back and forth as she giggled while the little piece of plastic fabric and string struggled to get up into the sky. Next to Carrie was a light blue blanket, the remains of a picnic lunch and one satiated and somewhat groggy Sean Callaghan, her co-pilot and companion. He was dozing, his head in her lap, and she almost had a fit of giggles at what to call him. She was really too old to be calling him a boyfriend, and ‘companion’ was a term that belonged to those members of the gay community — not that there was anything wrong with that, of course (which almost caused her to burst into laughter again), and ‘significant other’ seemed too cold and sterile. Sean was many things, but cold was not one of them, and she was sure — though she had no evidence — that sterility wasn’t an issue either.

This time, the giggles burst through, and Sean opened his eyes, smiled up at her. ‘Did I say something funny in my sleep?’

Carrie touched his forehead, smoothed aside some of his hair. ‘No, you didn’t.’

‘Didn’t burp or pass gas?’

‘Nope.’

The smile grew wider. ‘Then I must be as damn near perfect a man as you’ll ever see.’

That caused a laugh and he laughed with her and said, ‘Marry me, then.’

‘Oh, Sean.’

Carrie looked up and saw Susan now dancing with glee as the kite held steady in the breeze. Some great genes the kid had, for even at this young age she was getting the hang of aerodynamics and lift and wind pressures and—

‘I’m serious,’ Sean said.

She leaned down, kissed his nose. ‘I know you are. But you know the rules.’

‘Yes, I know, and I’ve been thinking about that.’

‘Oh? Care to share?’

‘That’s what I’m doing, love. Sharing. I know the rules. We get married, one of us has to leave. And you have seniority. Got that. But I’ve got a line on a good flying job, out west.’

‘How far west?’

‘Anchorage.’

‘Alaska!?’

The cocky grin that endeared him to her, looking up with confidence. ‘Sure as hell don’t mean Anchorage, Arizona.’

‘Uh-huh,’ she said. ‘Didn’t know Alaska Air is hiring.’

‘They’re not. It’s a corporate deal. Some CEO nut, moved his corporation headquarters up to Anchorage so he could be close to the best huntin’ and fishin’ in the world. Air Force Reserve buddy of mine, O’Toole, he’s decided to re-up and get activated, so the CEO’s pilot job is opening up. Great salary, good bennies, best thing is that you don’t do much flying at all. Just some bush stuff and occasional trips to Seattle or Portland. You’ve got to be on call 24/7, but O’Toole said you can go for weeks without getting paged, and still pull a salary.’

‘Sounds good. For you.’

Sean grabbed her hand. ‘No. For us. It’d be a stretch but we could do it, the three of us, without you having to hold down a full-time gig. And you could spend some quality time with Susan. Isn’t that all I’ve heard about, these past months: seeing your girl growing up without being there for her? Just seeing her on the occasional weekends, early mornings and late nights? You’d be off the cargo-air treadmill, Carrie. You’d get a life back. And we’d have a life together. All of us. Besides, who in hell knows if the General can keep AirBox afloat?’

Something started aching inside Carrie as she watched Susan running back and forth, knowing how she would cherish this sight. How damn attractive, she thought. Not to juggle schedules, doctor’s appointments, school appointments, school plays and presentations. Just retro out and be Donna Reed, staying at home, doing something else for a change, instead of the cargo treadmill. How attractive…

Yet… never to fly again? Never to be the boss of your air machine, ever? Be a hausffau in Anchorage and swap cookie recipes with the neighbors? And Alaska! Sure, a pretty state but she was used to the Memphis weather and—

‘You’re thinking too hard,’ Sean said.

‘No, I’m thinking quite straight,’ she said.

‘All right, then think about this,’ he said. ‘Alaska will be good not only for us, but for your daughter.’

‘Susan? Why’s that?’

Sean shifted his head in her lap, looked over at her daughter and her kite, and the tone of his voice changed, changed so much that it quickly terrified Carrie. ‘Last time I had reserve duty, I was ferrying an intelligence unit over to Hurlburt for a briefing. Stayed the weekend, went out drinking, met up with them. We had a nice chat. Nothing classified, you understand. Just general bullshit. Guy was telling me about our glorious war on terror. You want to know how long they estimate it’s gonna last? Do you?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Six, seven years, maybe.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he said. ‘Try sixty or seventy years. Or a hundred. Understand that? The past few years, we’ve been in the opening shots of the next Hundred Years’ War. That’s what we’re facing.’

Carrie felt chilled and said, ‘I’ve never heard of that. A hundred years…that’s crazy!’

‘Of course it is, and of course it’s been kept quiet. Do you think Joe American, do you think he and his family and friends, do you think they have the stones to put up with a fight that’s going to involve their children and grandchildren? Do you? No offense to Joe American, they pay the taxes that paid our salaries when we were on active duty, but he puts up with higher taxes, two-hour security lines at airports, and a lessening number of countries each year that welcome American tourists because he believes this war is worth winning, and that we’ll win it, one of these days.’

Sean moved his head again. ‘But how much stamina do you think he’ll have, knowing that this war is going to last another century? He’d say to hell with it, and the hell with the world, and he’ll listen to those politicians and pundits who think Fortress America can keep all the bad guys away.’

‘Maybe it can,’ Carrie said.

‘Hah,’ Sean said. ‘How secure are our borders, Carrie? Tell me that. All it takes is one guy slipping across, carrying a suit-case nuke designed for the KGB back in the 1970s and bought on the black market, and overnight we lose DC or a good chunk of Manhattan or LA. And that’s why the war is going to last for decades. Every other previous war, including the first Hundred Years’ War, was a war between states. You could conquer that state by killing its armed forces and holding the ground. But that’s not the war we’re fighting. We’re fighting an idea, a radical version of a religious belief, and the only way to win that war is to change societies, change people’s minds. And that’s going to take decades. We’ll fight them by killing terrorist cells and overthrowing nations that support them, but the only victory will be when young men growing up in Karachi or Riyadh or Jakarta or even in the slums of London and Marseilles, when those young men decide, they want to live and have families and have good jobs, when all of that is more attractive than strapping on suicide belts and going on jihad. It’s not going to happen in our lifetimes, Carrie. It might happen in Susan’s, if we’re very lucky.’

Carrie felt cold, though it was a beautiful day and a warm breeze was caressing her skin. ‘Why Alaska?’

Sean said, ‘Because except for the pipeline and a military base or two, it’s safe. There’re no real target areas up there. Terrorists like big targets, like big shopping malls, big office buildings, big cities. We could find a place up there and raise a family, and be much safer than living here, in the lower forty-eight.’

‘Sounds like running away.’

‘No, we’ve done our duty, you and me, in the Air Force and Navy. We’ve given our time and talents to the military, put our lives on the line, eaten bad food and slept in strange places, and now it’s time for us to look out for each other. You know I’m making sense, Carrie. You know I am. So marry me and let’s get our lives in order.’

‘North to Alaska?’ she asked, smiling.

‘More like northwest to Alaska,’ he said.

Carrie bent down, kissed Sean’s lips, kissed him again. ‘I’m not saying yes, but I’m not saying no, Sean. Give me some time to think. All right?’

Sean said, ‘Sure. But you know I’m right.’

‘No, I just know you have good taste,’ she said.

‘How’s that?’

Another kiss. ‘Because you spend time with me, that’s why.’

At the US Customs checkpoint at the Route 99 crossing in Washington State, Tanya Mead of the Customs Service walked up to the Freightliner that was hauling a bright yellow Seamarsk container. She carried a clipboard in her hand, and she eyed the truck as she approached it. The license plate was clean, not having been flagged on any of the search-&-seize lists, and the neutron-emission detectors buried along the decorative shrubbery flanking the off ramp to the commercial vehicle crossing area hadn’t flickered as the truck went by. There was a driver and a passenger, both looking down at her as she approached.

She went up to the driver’s side, looked up at the open window. Young guy, dark skin, Mediterranean type. Greek, maybe, or Turkish. Who knew?

‘Good morning,’ she called up to him. ‘What’s your destination?’

‘Julius Distribution, Port Bellingham,’ he said. His voice had a trace of an accent. Sounded Middle Eastern but please, let’s not get into racial profiling, all right?

‘Cargo?’

‘Toys. Bats, balls, dolls.’

‘Your paperwork, please.’

‘Sure,’ he said. He ducked in, leaned back out, handed the papers down to her, and then — son of a bitch — he let them go, obviously on purpose. The papers fell to the ground and as Tanya bent down to pick them up she was sure she heard the driver say two words, the first being ‘dumb’ and the second being the n-word, that nasty n-word that she wasn’t going to allow any male fucking driver to use in her presence, and she stood up, glaring at him. Tanya Mead had been with the US Customs service for three years and she loved her job and took it seriously, and the fuck she was going to let anybody push her around.

She smiled sweetly up at the driver. ‘All right, pal. You and your friend get out of the truck. Hope you don’t have dinner plans tonight, ‘cause for the next few hours your ass and his ass and this fucking truck and all its cargo belong to me.’

Also in Memphis, Randy Tuthill was in his small backyard, his head buzzing a bit from the beer and the strange and wonderful thing that had just occurred. A while ago he’d been at the union hall, going through the hundred thousand or so details that had to be taken care of just before a job action, when his wife had called. ‘You need to come home, right now,’ Sarah had said.

‘Why?’

‘Don’t ask why, just do it,’ she had said.

‘Are you okay? Is it about the boys?’ And his heart had almost seized at the thought of something happening to Tom and Eric, their young bodies burnt or shattered or blown up or—

‘The boys are fine. I’m fine. Come home now.’

‘Look, babe, I’ve got so many—’

‘Randy Buell Tuthill, you’ve known and trusted me for years, so trust me on this,’ she had said. ‘You need to get home. Now.’

Sarah had hung up the phone, Randy had sworn and hung up his own phone, and he had left, and less than a half-hour later he was home, smelling the barbecue out back, Sarah meeting him with a cold Coors, and then shoving him out the back door.

And there, standing in Randy’s backyard like nothing had happened, nothing had changed, was the General himself, with a barbecue apron wrapped around his torso and a set of tongs in his hand, and he had said, ‘Hungry?’

‘Damn straight.’

‘Feel like eating and straightening everything out?’

Oh my, a long pause there. Randy thought of the guys and girls back at the union hall, depending on him and the contract-negotiation committee and the strike committee and the relief committee, and Randy knew what was proper and what he should do, and what he should do was politely excuse himself and say, shit no, General, we’ve gone too far. We’ve got to do it by the book.

So he had looked at the General and had said, ‘Pass over those tongs, General, ‘fore you burn up my backyard. And then, yeah, we’ll eat and straighten everything out.’

Which is what they had done. It hadn’t taken that long and both he and the General had to make some phone calls to head off certain things, but it had taken place. There wasn’t going to be any strike.

Now, the barbecue eaten and the beers drunk, and Sarah having shuffled them off to the flagstone patio, Randy sat next to the General, cigars and cognacs in their hands — just like the old days! — and listened to the hum of the night insects out there in the brush.

Randy said, ‘Okay, I’m sure I can get this deal through. Question is, how about you?’

‘What do you mean?’

Randy laughed. ‘Word out on the hangar floors is that shiny new CFO of yours has your balls and checkbook in his back pocket. You think he’s gonna let this deal go through?’

‘It’s my company,’ Bocks said.

Randy sipped from the cognac, taken out only on very special occasions. He would have preferred another beer but cognac was what they had drunk during previous successful contract negotiations, and he wasn’t going to spook the tradition. ‘Beggin’ the General’s pardon, but it isn’t just your company. It belongs to stockholders and mutual funds and your board of directors, and I’m wondering what they’re going to say when they see what kind of deal we reached. They might even force you out in a month or two.’

‘A month or two?’

‘Shit, yes,’ Randy said. What the General said next chilled him right to the core.

‘A month or two… that’s plenty of time. After a month or two, they can do what they fucking want.’

Randy whipped his head around to look at his boss. ‘You feeling okay, General?’

‘Feeling fine. Why you ask?’

‘Christ, what you said right there, makes it sound like you don’t expect to be around in a month or two. Like you got cancer or something. You sure you’re okay?’

‘Had a company physical last month. I’m all right, Randy. Just like you. And how’re those boys of yours?’

‘Both fine,’ Randy said. ‘Eric is assigned to a maintenance wing out at Lakenheath. Tom…well, he’s a disappointment. Not following in dad’s footsteps.’

The General chuckled. ‘Randy, you old fool, the boy’s flying a KC-135. He’s doing fine.’

‘Shit, yes, but a pilot? Only thing a pilot is good for is taking a perfectly maintained aircraft and screwing it up somehow.’

They both laughed at that. The cognac and beer and full barbecue were settling in, and Randy looked at the tiki torches flickering in the yard that Sarah loved, and thought about what had happened, how everything had just come together, right at the last minute, and Christ, it had looked like a strike was going on, something must have happened, something must have—

Oh.

Shit, yes.

That’s what.

Damn.

‘General?’

‘Yeah, Randy?’

Randy’s fingers were tingling some, holding the cigar and the cognac glass. ‘This settlement — what happened?’

‘Happened? Decided to settle it, that’s all.’

Randy let that comment sit in the air for a moment, and said, ‘Sir, no offense, but that’s a load of shit. You came here and we have a settlement and for that I’m damn proud for what I did for my union, but you got practically shit from this agreement.’

‘You complaining?’

‘I’m observing, sir. That’s what I’m doing. And what I’m observing is that we were about an hour away from a job action and something got under your ass to make you move. Something that made you come to my house and get some-thing settled out real quick.’

‘I just didn’t want a strike, Randy.’

‘Yeah, but that could have been settled last week or last month. General, seems to me that you got a hell of an incentive to keep AirBox flying. An incentive coming from DC or Langley.’

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Sure you do. Look, most of AirBox is ex-military. We know the score. We know how to do our jobs and keep our mouths shut, and we know that sometimes favors get done. Small favors, big favors. And the fact this strike’s not gonna happen — some big favor is coming due, right? A favor that needs AirBox up and running. Am I right?’

The General took a leisurely puff from his cigar, looked up at the darkening sky, and said, ‘Randy?’

‘Sir?’

‘Next couple of weeks…I’m going to need your crews working their best. Oh, I know they always work hard, but this is going to be an important time. I’m going to need a hundred and ten percent effort. Our airfleet… there’s going to be some unanticipated but very important installation work that’s going to be scheduled over the next fourteen days. About thirty aircraft are going to be retrofitted, and don’t ask me why, or what for. I’m just going to need to have it done. No arguments, no discussions, minimal paperwork. It just has to be done, Randy. Got it? It just has to be done.’

It was a tone and manner of voice that Randy had heard from the General only once before, when they were both active-duty and the General had been a major, overseeing a maintenance unit on Qatar, just before the first Gulf War had kicked off, when men and women were going to fly into harm’s way with the equipment that Randy and his crews were servicing. Randy swallowed. Some heavy shit was going down, no doubt about it.

‘General,’ he said. ‘We won’t let you down.’

The General said, ‘I knew you’d say that, Randy. And I can’t tell you how pleased I am.’

Vladimir looked over at Imad, stunned at what the stupid boy had just done. What had gone through that simpleton’s mind to cause him to insult the American Customs officer like that? The Arab had a silly, triumphant grin on his face, like he had machine-gunned a school bus filled with Jewish children or some such, and Vladimir hissed, ‘What the fuck are you doing, idiot?’

Imad said, ‘I don’t bow to any woman, especially not to a nigger woman like that.’

‘You fool, you’re going to—’

Imad said sharply, ‘I acted like a man! Like you should!’

A woman’s voice, from outside. ‘Come along, fellas. I want to see what’s in that truck, and now.’

Vladimir’s head and hands felt thick as he let himself out of the truck, descending to the asphalt. It was noisy, with the other tractor-trailer trucks rumbling by, heading for the open highway, only meters away. But because of this…creature, this mis-spawned creature from that hellhole of a region that produced only oil and fanatics, all his years of dreaming and planning and all his hopes of revenge were about to come tumbling down.

Imad joined him at the rear of the truck, by the locked rear doors of the shipping container. A small black box with a thin cable secured the rear lock. Vladimir looked at the Customs officer striding over to them, a fierce look on her face, and he bowed and said, ‘My apologies, officer. My young driver has been on the road for a very long time. He didn’t mean what he said.’

The woman was having none of it. ‘Don’t care if he gets down on his knees and kisses my ass. He did what he did and now I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. The rear of the trailer is getting opened, and after I get the drug-detecting dogs over here to look at every single package in there, you’ll be on your way. Probably by tomorrow.’

Imad stood there, smirking, and Vladimir knew now there was more going on than the boy’s attitude towards women. The boy was challenging him, was trying to see how Vladimir could pull this off, how he would do anything to prostrate and humiliate himself before this black woman so that they could get into the country.

Vladimir took a breath. ‘Again, madam, our apologies. We are behind schedule. Please. This time. Could you let us proceed? If we are late, we do not get paid. We could lose our business. Please, madam.’

The Customs officer shook her head. ‘Not going to happen, pal. Open it up.’

Vladimir’s legs refused to move. He could not believe this was happening. The trips across the dusty plains of Asia, following diesel buses belching thick clouds of soot, working and wheedling and bribing, all his years of schoolwork and study and lab work and Party membership and kissing the right asses of the right overseers — that it should all come to this? So that the great-great-granddaughter of some slave or tribe member from the Dark Continent would thwart his plans? It could not happen!

The woman was now in his face, her eyes flashing. ‘Get a move on, pal. Unless you and your buddy want a full body-cavity search as well. Is that what you’re gunning for?’

‘But… the lock, it’s a lock secured by—’

‘Mister, shut the fuck up and open the door. Now.’

The keys. The keys were in Vladimir’s coat pocket. How long could he stall her? How long?

Imad was looking over, still grinning.

Vladimir’s hand went into his coat. Felt the hard metal of the keys.

‘Move,’ the woman said.

The keys were now out of his pocket and in his hand. He moved up to the door.

Imad had disappeared. Where had the little shit gone?

Vladimir’s throat was dry. This could not be happening, could not be happening. He looked over to the woman again, to see if he could once more appeal to her. But there was no possibility of appeal there, not with that anger.

He went up to the lock, the key in his hand, and—

‘Tanya!’

Vladimir turned, as did the woman. An older Customs officer stood there, clipboard under his arm.

The woman’s tone changed instantly. ‘Sir?’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘No problem, sir,’ she said. ‘Just pulling this one out for a random check.’

The older man came over, looked at Vladimir, the truck, and then eyed the square black box under the lock. From his own coat pocket, the older Customs officer pulled out a scanning device, ran it over the black box, and said to Tanya, ‘Cut them loose.’

Her mouth was agape. ‘Sir?’

‘You heard me, cut them loose.’

Vladimir could hardly believe what he was hearing. The older Customs officer said, ‘You haven’t kept up with your circulars, Tanya. Recognize the box?’

‘Sir, I know it’s a SmartSeal, it’s just that—’

‘Right, a SmartSeal. Which means one of your brother or sister officers overseas, either in Tokyo or Singapore or Shanghai, cleared and verified what’s in the container. The scan I just did shows that nothing’s been disturbed since it was loaded last month. So Customs has already taken a look inside. Don’t waste your time or my time. Let ’em go.’

‘Sir, I just wanted to do a random-’

The older man said, ‘You’ve already surpassed your quota today for randoms, Tanya. Now let’s get a move on, before the fucking Chamber of Commerce people start howling again at how we’re strangling international trade, all right? So they go south and you get back to work.’

The male Customs officer walked away and the younger, female Customs officer stared at him with such contempt and hate. Vladimir knew that he should feel triumphant, but all he felt was cowed. This had been, as the Duke of Wellington had said about Waterloo, a close-run thing.

And where in hell was Imad? He walked over to the driver’s side, saw Imad standing there, grinning, arms crossed, the door to the cab still open.

‘Come along,’ Imad said. ‘Didn’t you hear the man? We’re free to go.’

Vladimir shook his head, still not believing what had happened.

Tanya Mead stood there silently, still furious at what had happened, as the truck containing the young boy and the man with the Eastern European accent drove away. The young snot looked triumphant, the older guy looked like the two of them had just gotten away with murder.

Sure, she had gone over quota, but so what? Something was still hinky about those two and she hadn’t liked their attitude, even before the little dark-skinned one had called her a nigger. And then there was her supervisor, Herbert Corner, known to everyone — except himself, of course — as Captain Commerce. He was a regional office hack who had been demoted and sent down because of some indiscretion — the latest rumor had him surfing for Internet porn during his lunch hour — and his single goal was to keep the wait times down, the searches to the minimum, and the business concerns in Washington State and elsewhere happy.

Some damn attitude, Tanya thought.

She also thought about her heroine, Diana Dean, a Customs officer on duty years ago, back on- December 14, 1999. Dean had stopped a guy coming in on the Vancouver ferry, to Port Angeles. Something about the guy had made her look twice at him and his car, and when Dean went to talk to the character — later found to be a member of al-Qaeda — the little fuck had fled, before being tackled to the ground. And in his rental car? In the trunk, they found 130 pounds of plastic explosives, two 22-ounce plastic bottles full of nitro-glycol, and a map of LAX, Los Angeles International Airport. That had been going to be al-Qaeda’s contribution to the millennium festivities on December 31 — blowing up the airport at Los Angeles. And that plot had been stopped dead in its tracks. Not because of the FBI or CIA or NSA. Not because of some whizbang satellite in orbit, snooping on cellphone conversations and e-mail messages. And not because of some multibillion-dollar agency.

No, the airport had been saved from destruction and people who would’ve been killed had lived because some sharp Customs officer had been doing her job.

Just like me, Tanya thought. Just like me.

Except for goddamn Captain Commerce.

She watched as the suspect truck made its way to the clear area, on its way into the United States. She took out a small memo pad and wrote down a description of the truck, its two occupants, and the British Columbia license plate number.

Tanya Mead had an idea that she would hear about this truck again.

As the truck crossed into the United States, photo equipment hidden in light poles, highway signs and ornamental planters at this station and so many other border crossings continued their quiet work, documenting every male and female who passed through into a frightened and increasingly paranoid nation.

Imad laughed as they made their way onto the American Interstate 5, heading south. Vladimir felt his hands shake, his arms quiver. How in the name of God had they made it through…?

His voice was low and even. ‘What were you doing back there?’

Imad laughed again, pounding the steering wheel with his fist. ‘I was putting that bitch in her place. Did you see it? I put that bitch right in her place. And her boss came over and backed me up. Oh, the joy, it was so funny!’

Vladimir said, ‘You realize what you did back there? You almost compromised everything. Everything! And all for your stupid boy ego!’

Imad shifted gears as the truck grumbled its way south. He said, ‘You’re overreacting.’

‘Overreacting! That Customs officer was only moments away from having me open that door. And what do you think would have happened after that? Hmm? After she went through the toys and the dolls and the soccer balls, and found the compartment with those canisters. What then?’

Imad turned, grinning. ‘It wasn’t going to happen. You had that SmartSeal there, just like the older man said. The container had already been checked overseas. Right?’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Ah, but it is a point, my friend. You see, I never knew about the SmartSeal. You never told me. Care to tell me now?’

Vladimir looked around him as he entered America for the second time in less than a week. He said, ‘Part of the arrangement to ease Customs bottlenecks after 9/11. The United States set up overseas Customs offices. They would inspect containers at the point of origin. Seal the doors with an electronic lock and tracing device. Container coming into the United States didn’t have to be reinspected. I had this container inspected a month ago.’

‘Some inspection. How did this happen, without your mystery canisters being discovered?’

‘A hefty bribe to a Customs officer suffering through an opium addiction will work wonders.’

‘But suppose he changed his mind afterwards? Decided to confess all?’

Vladimir said, ‘A boating accident took care of that.’

‘And you didn’t tell me this earlier? About the SmartSeal and the bribed Customs officer? Why?’

‘Because… because I didn’t think you needed to know, that’s why. You just needed to drive. That’s all. Which doesn’t excuse a thing. You could have still jeopardized everything. Suppose that woman’s boss had not come over right then. What would you have done?’

‘Taken care of everything, that’s what.’

‘And how would you have performed this miracle?’

Imad was still smirking as they made their way south. He reached under the seat, pulled out a leather case, tossed it on the seat between them. Vladimir picked up the case, unzippered it, and looked inside. A semi-automatic pistol was in there. Holy shit.

He zippered the bag shut and threw it across the cab, where it bounced off the windshield.

‘Hey!’ Imad protested. ‘What the fuck is your problem?’

‘The problem is that you smuggled a pistol into Canada and then resmuggled it into the United States, you stupid shit — that’s what the problem is.’

‘Didn’t get caught, did I?’

Vladimir felt his breathing quicken. ‘Stupid fool. Worthless pile of shit.’

Imad said, ‘Well, I had a plan, which is more than you had. Shoot that black woman between the eyes and then roll across into the highway. Who could have stopped us?’

Vladimir knew that he could no longer have a reasonable conversation with the boy. He folded his arms, looked out at the Washington landscape. A kilometer or two passed.

‘Well?’ Imad demanded. ‘Why don’t you answer me?’

Vladimir took a breath. ‘Imad, why didn’t you tell me about that? About having a pistol with you?’

Another bout of laughter from the boy. ‘Maybe it’s because I didn’t think you needed to know. Hah. How does that sound?’

No reply. The truck and its cargo continued to speed its way into America.

Twenty miles east of the US Customs crossing station, Dan Umber sat in front of his computer terminal, trying to stifle a yawn as he came close to the end of his shift. He worked for the Department of Homeland Security, and his office was in the basement of an anonymous glass and steel cube that had sprouted up around Redmond after Bill Gates started making some serious change.

All around him in the dimly lit room were waist-high cubicle walls and terminals, just like the one he was sitting in front of. In front of him on the large plasma screen was a collection of faces — brown, white, yellow, red and every color in between, and male and female and a whole bunch of ‘I’m-not-really-sure’.

Another yawn. The photos were coming in at a rapid pace from the Customs station just up the coast. Must be having a busy day there, for Dan was already over quota, and it might mean a chunk of overtime, if it played right. Which was not a problem, because he had his eye on a new WaveRider, and the extra cash would be just fine.

Face, face, face. Dan’s job was to set them in some sort of order, following a template of ethnic appearance and background — hello, racial profiling — and then feed it along another chain of command until the photos, using the latest facial-matching software, were compared with the CIA, FBI and everybody else’s watch-list of terrorists. Or, as some memos primly put it, ‘persons of interest’.

Another sip of coffee. Most of the photos were straight-on head shots, but sometimes you had to deal with other types as well. Like those two. He clicked on the mouse, froze the program. Two guys standing outside, arguing, it looked like, with a female Customs officer. The head shots weren’t so bad, but he had seen better. One guy was white, the other dark-skinned. Maybe Mediterranean. Hell, maybe Caribbean. Who knew?

Dan clicked the mouse one more time, as the program went on its merry way. He finished off the coffee. Just another day, he thought, in the front line against terrorism.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Brian Doyle sat in his room at a Sheraton Hotel in Memphis, staring at the phone. Another in a series of lousy phone calls with the growing young boy who was his son, and who still couldn’t understand why dad couldn’t do a better job of being around. Good question, boy, and time to get somebody to answer it for you.

He got up and left the room. It was late at night: he didn’t know the particular hour and he didn’t particularly care. The hotel was nice, with an outdoor cafe covered with canvas awnings and an outdoor pool, but he didn’t give a shit about that stuff right now. He strolled down the hallway until he found the door he was looking for, and he gave it a good pounding.

No answer.

He resumed the hammering on the door.

Down the hallway, a young guy poked his head out from an open door.

‘Hey, will you shut the fuck up down there?’ he called out.

Brian turned and glared at the guy. The guy rubbed at his face, muttered something, and went back into his room. Brian raised his hand again and then the door opened. Adrianna was there, yawning, wearing a white terrycloth robe.

‘Brian… what is—’

He pushed by her and went into her room. ‘We’ve got to talk now, princess, and I mean now.’

He turned to her, just as she closed the door. She tightened the robe around her neck. There were a couple of lights on in the room but the television wasn’t on. He guessed that he had woken her up. He didn’t care.

‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’

Brian said, ‘Lots of things. Let’s start with the first. Why am I here?’

‘You know why.’

‘No, I don’t. Explain.’

Adrianna said, ‘I needed some security assurance, with what Victor was carrying. It was essential that Victor and his package arrived at General Bocks’s office without any difficulty.’

‘Bullshit.’

Her expression didn’t change. ‘That’s not bullshit.’

‘Sure it is,’ he said. ‘Except for our regular meetings, most of us are out in the field, working on our own little assignments, whatever they are. When was the last time I was assigned security for anything? Short answer: never. So. Why am I here?’

Adrianna was silent. Brian stepped up to her, feeling the blood and the anger race through him. ‘You know why I’m here. I’m the super-patriot sock puppet, brought out to help close the deal. The good general was waffling there yesterday and then you went into this God-bless-America routine that mentioned my dad died in the World Trade Center. That’s why you brought me along. Nothing more than that. When it came to crunch time, you trotted out the story of the bereaved New York cop and his dead hero dad. Don’t tell me anything else, Adrianna. Don’t insult my fucking intelligence.’

She pushed at her hair with a free hand. ‘I won’t insult your intelligence, Brian. Security was one aspect of why you are here. And I confess the truth. Your personal history is another reason you are here. For that, I make no apologies.’

‘Well, goodie for you. I’m getting the hell out of here, and the hell back to my job.’

Brian started to brush past Adrianna and she held on to his upper arm. ‘Please. Just for a moment. May I say something?’

When Brian was in a pissy mood like right now, and especially when he was on duty, having someone grab his arm usually meant a quick slap and takedown or something equally violent. All right, but not now.

‘Okay. Say whatever the fuck you want. But I’m still leaving here and paying whatever I have to pay to fly out of Memphis tonight and get back to New York and my boy and my job. And I don’t care if the big nasty Feds cause me to lose a grade on my job or even bust me back to patrolman. So you say your piece.’

Her hand was still on his arm. ‘I used you. For that, I apologize for hurting your feelings, but I do not apologize for using you. Brian, this war has been on for a few years and it is going to continue for a very long time. And if I use what I can to shorten this war, to protect my country, I will do what it takes. If it takes long hours and using trickery and bribes to achieve our objectives, so be it. And if it means causing the untimely deaths of ten thousand of my fellow citizens to save millions, then, I will do it. And if it means using a trusted colleague’s heartbreaking story to help sway a man who can help save millions of Americans, then I will do it. With no more apologies than what I have given you.’

‘All right,’ Brian said, when she was done. ‘Fair enough. Now it’s my turn to say something.’

‘Of course.’

He took a breath, felt the hot hammering in his chest. ‘You talk about my heartbreaking story. You want to hear my real heartbreaking story, princess? Do you?’

Adrianna nodded, her touch still light on his arm. He said, ‘All right, then. Here’s a story for you. A story about a dad who got never higher than a sergeant in the department because he loved the bottle as much as he loved the job. And his family…who in hell knew what he loved there. He beat me and he beat my brother and he beat my sister. My sister is living somewhere in California, don’t ask me where, because when she moved out she never told anybody where she was going. Only California. My brother is a psychologist on Long Island, no doubt because he wanted to learn more about what my dad was like and what made him tick. My father came home mean most every night, and you know what, sure, he died on September eleventh. But he was no fucking hero.’

The breathing was quicker now, and he was stunned that his cheeks were moist, which meant he had to be crying. But why in God’s name would he be crying? ‘And the day he died, like all those others, the story about him going back to look for people was just that. A story. He was in a men’s room, probably sleeping off what had happened to him the night before, and when the plane hit his tower he got up and stumbled out. Knowing drunk old dad, he took a wrong turn and never made it out. That’s the story of my dad, the hero, the story that you wave around like a pair of black lace panties, trying to get your way.’

‘Brian, I—’

‘And one more thing. At my dad’s funeral, I couldn’t cry a single fucking tear, and neither did my brother. But my mother did, she cried these big long bouts of tears, and in the funeral-home car, heading back after my dad was buried, she sat between us, her fists clenched, and she whispered something, something I think she let slip out, because she never repeated it, not once. But you know what she whispered?’

‘No, Brian, I don’t know what she whispered.’

‘“Finally, he’s gone,”’ Brian said. ‘That’s what my mother said, after burying a man she’d spent nearly forty years with. “Finally, he’s gone.” And this is going to sound like the worst blasphemy, but she’s been a happier woman ever since September eleventh, ever since that old drunk never came home. That’s the story.’

Now Adrianna’s hand went away from his arm, up to his shoulder, up to his cheek, to gently touch the tears, and he took a deep breath and lowered his head and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, and she moved towards him, and he stepped back, and together they fell back onto her bed.

They drove east, along the long stretch of Interstate 90 that was flanked by forests and rocks and desert and scrub grass, and up ahead the silent and sharp peaks of the Rockies rose. It was night and the grumbling of the diesel engine made Vladimir sleepy. Up ahead, just a few more kilometers, was their destination, a small town in Idaho called Pinehurst. Imad was driving well, he had to give the little shit that, but the boy’s smell and his incessant singing irritated him no end. There was a radio in the truck but the country and western twang-twang shit that they all played out here was enough to make him prefer Imad’s singing.

Imad yawned and said, ‘Such a big country.’

‘Not as big as ours.’

Imad laughed. ‘Still pissed at losing the Cold War, eh?’

‘We didn’t lose the Cold War. We were betrayed.’

‘Bah. Same outcome, that’s all. Your country humbled and prostrate. America astride the world. And here we go, fighting for what is right.’

‘What is right… what do you think is right?’

‘Me? What is right? I’ll tell you this. What is the meaning of Islam, eh?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Islam means submission, submission to God and his holy word, through the Koran. Submission. The world will be at peace only when all submit to God’s will, when all are believers. Islam. When the black flag of Islam flies over the White House and the baseball fields and football fields and schools here and elsewhere, then there will be peace. And I am fighting to secure this peace. This is what is right.’

After leaving the highway, they passed a street sign: WELCOME TO KIRKLAND: POP. 1661.

‘We are almost there,’ Vladimir said.

‘And you? What do you fight for?’

‘Later,’ he said. ‘Later. Find the address. Here.’

From his leather folder, Vladimir pulled out the directions for their destination. Imad eyed them and soon buildings appeared, one- and two-story buildings — how depressing to be out here in the middle of this desolate area. How to survive? How to live? And how did these odd people in this even odder country get the energy and the drive to accomplish everything they had done?

‘Slow it down,’ Vladimir said. ‘I don’t want some constable or deputy sheriff pulling you over for speeding.’

Imad muttered something. Vladimir knew it was an obscenity and didn’t care. Imad took a left and they headed out from the center of town to a small shopping plaza. It was late and the stores were closed, but there was one place, well lit. The Space Station. Shoshone County’s Finest Self-Storage Area.

‘There,’ Vladimir said. ‘Pull over.’

The truck grumbled to a halt and he opened the door, stepped down, wincing as a cramp shot through his left leg. They were at a chain-link fence and a central gate, secured by a keypad. Vladimir punched in a series of numbers and there was an audible click. The gate automatically creaked open, its electric motor whining. When the gate was fully open, Imad shifted the Freightliner and the truck drove into the large parking area. Ahead of them were four low-slung buildings made of concrete blocks with slanted metal roofs, and with rolled-down doors that were secured by locks. Imad drove over to the furthest building on the left and Vladimir followed. Imad pulled ahead until the rear of the trailer was adjacent to one of the locked doors.

Vladimir walked up to the door, took the combination lock in his hands. The metal was cold. He waited for a moment before working the tumbler. For the past several months, his unseen handlers out there — he doubted it was a single man, for who could have done this all by himself? — had enticed him from his self-imposed exile in Central Asia, across Asia to Shanghai and elsewhere, paying him and pleading with him, and easing his way out here. From money transfers to package deliveries in out-of-the-way post offices, he had secured his fake identification, the travel papers, even the trucking documents that had gotten him and Imad through Canada.

At first he had thought the whole thing was an elaborate trap, to pull him out of his exile and to place him in a position where the American Special Forces could seize him and what he’d made… but that no longer made sense. They could have gotten him and Imad days ago — hell, weeks ago! If he had been left unmolested by the desire of some intelligence agency out there to find fellow travelers or co-conspirators, then by now the intelligence agency must know that they didn’t exist. There was just him and Imad, the driver, and when this was through he had plans for Imad.

So.

Vladimir jiggled the lock in his hand. To carry on, or to walk way? There was enough money in his Cayman Islands account for him to live comfortably for the next decade or so, but he wanted more. And the ‘more’ he wanted wasn’t just money. _

Imad stuck his head out of the passenger’s side window. ‘What are you doing?’ he called down. ‘Have you forgotten the combination?’

Vladimir didn’t bother to reply. He started turning the tumbler. There was a chance that it would all end here, that when the lock was unsnapped — like now — and the lock was pulled away — like now — and when he rolled up the metal door, black-suited American military men would tumble out, seizing him and Imad and beating them to the ground, and—

The door rattled up. From the outside illumination he could make out a light panel. He flipped on the switch.

Save for three black plastic cases, about a meter long and a half-meter wide, the storage compartment was empty.

So we go on, Vladimir thought. We go on.

Late at night in Maryland, Darren Coover sat in his easy chair in his condo unit, his NSA-issued laptop on his lap, the encrypted-data line working just fine, and everything was just fine, save for the throbbing headache he had at the base of his skull.

He was ego surfing, something most people did by keying in their names to Google and other search engines, to see what was out there on them. Big deal. He was ego surfing in a whole ‘nother realm, trying to find out just how much weight his Tiger Team was carrying under the Final Winter scenario. He did that by searching through the various classified message boards out there to see what references there were for either Final Winter or Tiger Team Seven. Little-known fact after the cluster-fuck known as 9/11 was the extent that information sharing was going on among the various intelligence agencies and groups out there. Oh, the heads of the intelligence agencies would troop up to Capitol Hill every several months to get grilled by the senators and congress-critters on why intelligence sharing wasn’t proceeding, how come agencies weren’t talking to each other, haven’t we learned anything since September 11 — and the whole damn thing was a fake and a fraud.

Truth was, communications had improved, communication was taking place, but why in hell would you want to publicize it? So it wasn’t publicized, even as it grew. Poor intelligence-agency heads. Darren was certain that in their classified job descriptions there must be a sub-section or paragraph that stated, ‘When required, the Director of Central Intelligence (or fill in the blank here of whatever agency you would like) will proceed to Capitol Hill, to experience filibustering and questioning from a group of people with the collective inquisitive intelligence of a tree sloth, and during that time the Director will express shock and dismay and will promise to do better concerning the state of his intelligence agency.’

Blah. Hope they got tidy bonuses for putting up with that shit.

So. Here he was, this late night, going into secure chat areas and message boards, trying to see what was there in preparation for Final Winter. And what he saw there terrified him.

There was nothing.

Nada. Zilch. Nothing.

Key in Final Winter and there were old reports about the anthrax-attack scenarios that Adrianna had previously outlined, and really old reports about Japanese attempts to bomb the Western (US) mainland with bubonic-plague-infested fleas during the Second World War by using huge helium balloons, but now…Anything about Final Winter and what was coming down the pike shortly, which had caused him and his Tiger Team such heartache and grief?

Nothing. Except a cryptic comment in a minutes report for a Tiger Team meeting held last week at Andrews Air Force Base, where it was stated that A. Scott had briefed the Director about Final Winter, and that authorization had been granted to proceed.

Authorization? All right, then, but where in hell was everybody else? The security hunts for the Syrian teams supposedly moving in the States, with their rental cars and plastic baggies of anthrax spores? Where were the public -health and CDC teams? Hell, where were the classified call-ups of certain National Guard and Reserve units?

Nothing.

It was like Final Winter didn’t exist.

Darren paused, chewed on a thumbnail.

But if it didn’t exist, what in hell were they doing? What was going on?

Puzzles and questions. As a proud member of the NSA, he hated them both.

Adrianna Scott rested her head on Brian’s shoulder, her heart still pounding, still reeling a bit from what had just happened. It shouldn’t have happened, couldn’t have happened, it threw a lot of things in the air, it put a lot of things in jeopardy. Just a few minutes ago, when their breathing had eased and things had calmed down, the two of them had had The Talk about how this was a mistake and it shouldn’t have happened, enjoyable as it had been, and things were too hectic and Final Winter took precedence over everything, and after The Talk she knew everything should have been fine. But it wasn’t.

Adrianna could not help herself, but something about this New York City cop was calling to her, was making her giddy like a schoolgirl, a feeling she had not experienced for many, many years, all the way back to that sweet young boy in Baghdad and—

‘Hey — you okay?’ Brian asked her, in the darkness of the room.

‘Yes, yes, just fine,’ she said.

‘Okay,’ he said, squeezing her shoulders with his strong arms, kissing the top of her head — ah, how sweet the touch -and he said, ‘You shook there for a moment. A tremble. Like you were falling asleep and suddenly had a bad dream.’

A bad dream, yes, a dream about Baghdad… and she pushed that thought away.

‘Yes, I was falling asleep, but no bad dream,’ she murmured. ‘I was just thinking…’

‘About what?’

Adrianna rubbed her face against Brian’s hairy chest. She liked hairy chests. She said, ‘Work, what else? I think the team should come out to Memphis. Stay close to here and oversee the project at AirBox. Perhaps we should take rooms in the hotel.’

She sensed his smile in the darkness. ‘Perhaps. And perhaps we will share room keys?’

Adrianna raised her head and kissed Brian on the lips. ‘Perhaps. We will talk about it later…right now, no…’

‘Okay,’ he said, pulling her down again with his strong arms. Adrianna felt safe and secure — and puzzled at how this man was affecting her. He said, ‘What do we do now?’

She snuggled into his arms again, feeling content and sleepy, and smiling at the thought that this was the first man she had slept with in a very long time that she had not killed. It was an odd and glorious feeling.

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘We do nothing.’

In Idaho, the switch took just a few minutes, the time it took to empty out some of the Chinese-made toys from the trailer and fill up the empty space with the heavy black containers that had been in the storage facility. Vladimir and Imad then put some of the toys back into the truck. There. Still looked nice and peaceful. Imad leaped up, grabbed the leather strap at the rear of the trailer and pulled down the sliding door. The rattling noise was loud in the empty lot. Vladimir went back to the storage trailer, closed the door, locked it. There were probably ten or twelve cases of toys in there.

Imad joined him. ‘So what happens to those toys now?’

Vladimir said, ‘They will stay here forever, I suppose.’ Imad said, ‘A pity. I know some children from poor families in Vancouver. They would enjoy them. Forever, you say?’

Vladimir looked around at the empty parking area, the lights from the sleeping town. This is what it will be like, he thought, in so many places across this country. The streets will be empty and there will be no traffic and, so long as the power generators keep working, the lights will come on at night, all the while the bodies in the bedrooms and living rooms and hospital rooms will decay and dry out and rot…

He said, ‘I suppose the owner of the facility could open it, but what for? In a matter of weeks, there will be much more important things to concern themselves about than toys in a storage area. No, they will be here forever, until archeologists from Russia or China or Brazil come here to explore the dead cities and dig up the bones.’

Imad rubbed at his hands. ‘I’m cold. Let’s get out of here.’

‘That sounds fine.’

In a few minutes they were back on the highway, heading east, and Vladimir felt more awake. Being outside in the Idaho air had woken him up, and seeing another checkpoint’s assignment successfully carried out cheered him. Just a few more things to do before they reached their destination — and before he reached his destiny.

Imad shifted the truck into a higher gear and said, ‘I asked you earlier, before we got to that town. What do you fight for?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘What do you fight for, Vladimir? Do you fight to see the red banner rise again? To see the Soviet Union come back upon the world stage and take its leading role? Do you want to have Russians take over this land? What do you want?’

Vladimir looked out at the painted lines flashing before them as they rolled along the highway. He said, ‘Nothing as complicated as that. I just want to smash. And kill. That’s all. There are times for politics and discussion and great thoughts, and there are times to be barbarians. I want to be a barbarian. I want to smash and kill.’

Imad laughed at that. He kept a merry smile on his face as they continued their drive, and the sun rose on their faces.

In a chair that had been occupied a day earlier by Dan Umber, Blythe Coonrod worked the evening shift in a part of the government archipelago in the United States that was the Department of Homeland Security. It had been a quiet evening, just going over the previous shift’s downloads, making sure the in-house servers were chugging along merrily. But as she sipped her first cup of tea of the evening and thought about heading out of the room for a comfort break, it looked like the screen on the monitor had frozen.

Everything on the screen had turned black.

‘Christ,’ Blythe whispered as she leaned forward — her ID badge, hanging from a thin chain around her neck, clinked against her keyboard — and then she dropped the cup of tea when a bright red icon with a flashing light appeared.

A real-time hit. Be damned.

She moved the cursor, double-clicked on the icon.

‘Holy shit.’ Blythe couldn’t remember the last time — if ever! — her shift had experienced a real-time hit on the watch list. She made another move with the mouse. Waited. Somewhere deep in the pedabytes of information that the numerous American intelligence agencies stored were thousands of photographs of men and women of interest who were on the watch list. The system she was working matched those photos with all the people coming into the United States at any recognizable crossing — JFK airport, LAX, San Diego, little burgs in Maine or Vermont, for example — and it looked like she had just received a live one.

There.

Photos came up… and…

‘Fuck,’ Blythe whispered.

Both shots taken yesterday at the Customs crossing in Washington State. The original photos were displayed, showing two men talking to a Customs officer. And there, the photos in the intelligence database, showing what had been triggered. She didn’t know all the particulars, but she did know that the facial-recognition software looked at key points on a person’s face, everything from the size of the nose to the distance between the eyes to hair length and color.

First up, Yemeni national called Imad Yussef Hakim, age twenty-three, connected to al-Qaeda and other Islamic groups, traveling with—

A Russian national believed to be dead. Who certainly wasn’t. Jesus.

Vladimir Zhukov.

And then Blythe saw his background and—

She opened a side drawer so hard that people around her craned their heads in her direction to see what was going on. In the drawer, sitting alone, was a thin folder, bound by a red paper ribbon. She lifted up the folder, broke the paper seal, and opened it. Her hands were shaking. She had never opened this type of folder before, except during training, so many innocent months ago.

Blythe flipped open the thin red cardboard cover. A single sheet was stapled inside with three instructions:

With a black Bic pen, she did just that.

She picked up the phone, dialed the four digits.

A bored young man’s voice: ‘This is Operator Four-four-four-four.’

‘This is Blythe Coonrod, Redmond Station. I have a Watch List match.’

‘Your monitor identification?’

She peered at the letter and number sequence embossed on the sleek black plastic case.

‘Four one two, B as in Bob, C as in Charlie.’

‘Repeating, four one two, B as in Bob, C as in Charlie.’

‘Correct.’

The man said, ‘Remain at your station, please. You’ll be contacted in sixty seconds or less for follow-up. Understood?’

‘Understood.’

The man hung up. So did Blythe.

She folded her arms. She suddenly no longer had the urge to go to the bathroom.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It was early morning in Memphis, and Brian Doyle sat alone, back in his room, sipping a cup of coffee, watching the hazy early-morning sunshine over the Mississippi River. He felt tired and flat and tangled up. What had happened last night with Adrianna had happened, and he didn’t feel guilty about it. Not at all. It had been nice and delightful and tasty and all that good stuff. But what was pissing him off was what had happened about an hour ago. The woman had woken up in a panic, like she had realized that instead of bedding Mr Right she had bedded Mr My-God-I-Can’t-Believe-What-I’ve-Done.

So Adrianna had bustled him out of her room, thoughts of having breakfast together put aside, thoughts about what he had said about his dad put aside, his demand to be sent back to New York put aside. All put aside. Hell, even what he had going on for today: put aside. As he had left Adrianna had called out, ‘Take the day off, Brian. I’ve got other meetings with the General and his people… please, take some time.’

Which was a pretty clear message. Brian had fulfilled his duty earlier, with Adrianna using his father’s death to score points with the General, and to get the General and his company to sign on for Final Winter.

Duty.

He went over to his luggage, picked up a carry-on case. It was locked and he put in the combination, popped it open, and from inside he took out a file folder. Presented to him a few days ago by the good colonel, the Director of the Tiger Teams. A peek into Adrianna Scott’s life and background. Part of his job with the Tiger Team, part of his secret duty.

Brian held the file in his hand. He’d remembered earlier that he was going to review this file once Final Winter was done and over, and that had made sense at the time. But now…What the hell, if Adrianna had told him to take the day off, then what was he going to do today? Go to Graceland? Stay here and watch soaps and order room service?

He went over to a small round wooden table, sat down, opened the file and started to read.

In Maryland, Montgomery Zane was in the small kitchen area near the conference room, which was next to the offices for his fellow Tiger Team members. The damn place was empty, with the Princess, the cop and the doc out on a run to Memphis, and the code-puzzler not having shown up yet. Which was fine, since lots of times the Tiger Team members kept to their own lives and schedules and long ago, coming in, he had reserved the right to go on special missions without much oversight from the Princess. Like his recent adventures overseas, triggered only by pager and text messages from those who had the power. No big deal.

Monty poured himself coffee in a big mug that had Seal Team Six and the trident-and-eagle insignia of the Navy Seals glazed onto it. He leaned against the counter, wondered about what to do next, which was a very big deal. In his old units, having something squirrelly come up just meant going to your CO about what was what. And what Bravo Tom had told him yesterday had kept him up for most of the night. If such a heavy shit-storm was heading their way in just a couple more weeks, then why was Bravo Tom going on leave? Why was his unit involved in nothing more arduous than the usual deployment and training schedule? What in hell was going on?

He took a swallow from his mug and looked up and saw that an answer to what was going on had just come into the kitchen.

Victor Palmer sat in his hotel room, staring at the locked case on the table. The cable was once more connected to his wrist. Adrianna was coming over to pick him up, to head over to the AirBox facilities to brief the General and his head machinist over what they were going to do with the dreamy little canisters that Victor’s crew had thought up, and his stomach churned at what was going to happen in just a few short days. The whole idea of the terrorists slipping past the border with their little plastic containers of anthrax was still esoteric to Victor’s mind. This, the canister in the metal case at his side, this was real. It was something that he could touch and feel. It was going to happen and what was going to happen sickened him.

It was easy enough to think of what was out there. Thousands upon thousands of innocents… slumbering in their beds, hanging on to some sort of life in hospital rooms or hostels, the very young, the very old, the very sick…thousands for sure, and each one of them counted, each one of them was cared for and loved and had a life and history…

Thousands upon thousands.

All up until that night in the future, when the aircraft of their nation would take off in the middle of the night, and silently and secretly descend upon their cities and homes, spraying out something invisible to the eye. And in a matter of weeks they would all be dead.

Thousands upon thousands.

And Victor had helped it along.

My God, he thought, his stomach spasming and rolling: this is what it must have been like to have been a medical officer at Auschwitz or Birkenau or Bergen-Belsen…this is what it must have been like to have the fate of thousands in your hands, and to wash yourself of concern about it, to leave it alone, because it was your duty. It was what had to be done. The few sacrificed for the many. Work will make you free. The lies of the ages.

My God. How could he go through with this?

He picked up the case, headed for the door. He wouldn’t, that was how. He would walk out and run away, and maybe the Final Winter project would go on, but it would go on without him, and wouldn’t Doc Savage be proud of what he was doing, to face up to evil and to fight it and—

Victor’s hand was on the doorknob. All right, let’s be honest, now. We’re not facing evil. We’re not even fighting it. We’re just running away, and that’s all we can do and—

Victor opened the door. Adrianna was standing there, wearing a smart black business suit. A slight smile was on her face and she was carrying her leather briefcase.

‘Very good, Victor,’ she said. ‘You beat me to it. Are you ready?’

He looked at that confident woman’s face, took a breath, felt the quivering in his knees ease up.

‘Yes, Adrianna, I’m ready,’ he said.

Darren Coover went into the kitchen near the conference room, saw Monty Zane standing there, leaning against the counter. The counter probably had to be pretty strong to handle a weight like that, all muscle and bone and sinew. Monty nodded at him and Darren nodded back, and he was going to grab a cup of coffee when Monty said, ‘Ask you a favor?’

Darren tried to hide his amazement. He had always enjoyed what little interaction he had with Monty, and he had always been thankful that the military man had treated him with respect. There was usually very little love lost between those in the field and those ‘info pukes’ in safe areas who sometimes determined when and how military options would be used. There were untold tales out there, of Special Forces groups being sent into harm’s way on the basis of information gathered by people like Darren only to have those ops turn disastrous because of bad info or bad intel.

So Darren was always grateful for Monty’s attitude, and when the question was asked Darren quickly said, ‘Absolutely.’

He grabbed his own cup of coffee and followed Monty into his office, which was austere compared with those of the other Tiger Team members. Desk, chairs, bookcase, computer terminal, and only a few photos, and then only of Monty and his wife and two kids. Having visited a number of military officers over the years, one thing Darren always counted on was a display of plaques or certificates or some other memorabilia. But not for Monty.

Monty settled back in his chair, the chair creaking ominously from his weight, and he said, ‘Just come back from a job.’

‘All right.’

‘What kind of job doesn’t matter. It was a job. But it was the afterwards that freaked me out.’

‘Go on.’

Darren held his coffee cup still in his hands. If some-thing was freaking out this soldier in front of him, he wondered if he really wanted to know what was going on. But he had to. His damnable puzzle-curiosity would not allow anything else.

Monty said, ‘Don’t know if you’re aware, but there are… places where guys who are on jobs go to unwind before being sent back to their home base. Allows them to let off steam, relax, get a good meal and a drink. That’s where I was yesterday, unwinding.’

Darren just kept his mouth shut, knowing the story would come at Monty’s own good pace. Monty took a swallow of coffee and said, ‘Met a guy there. Friend of mine. Done some training together, one op. He works for the Hymen Squad. Heard of them?’

‘Yes,’ Darren said, feeling pleased that he could show Monty that he was in the loop. ‘Deep black support group. Working the borders, north and south.’

Monty nodded. ‘Yeah. Pretty secret. Thing is, this bu4dy of mine’s been assigned to the Hymen Squad for over a year. We got to chatting. Tell me, Darren, you being a bright guy and all, with Final Winter coming down the pike like it’s supposed to be, what do you think my buddy would be doing?’

Even though he had just poured coffee into it, the mug in Darren’s hands felt suddenly cold. He said, ‘I know what he should be doing. But you tell me what’s really going on, Monty, after you’ve let me guess. Nothing. Am I right?’

The skin around Monty’s eyes tightened a bit. Darren felt that for a guy like Monty that was a good way for him to show a surge of emotion. ‘How did you know?’

‘I didn’t. But there’s something you should know.’

‘What’s that?’

Darren shifted his legs, which had started trembling. ‘You and I have clearances for lots of things. Not sure if you have it but I’ve got one called “Gatekeeper”. Lets me go into classified and compartmentalized bulletin boards, discussion areas, that sort of thing. One of the changes since 9/11 was breaking down the information barriers. If a guy in the field from the CIA needed to know the background of a Pashtun chieftain in some remote village in Baluchistan, it might take a week or two through normal channels. But by using Gatekeeper, he could hear from an FBI source who fingered this character as an opium smuggler. Or it could be a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who helped this chieftain smuggle out some SA-7 missiles. Guy could get the answer he needed in minutes, not days or weeks.’

‘Sounds good. What’s your story, then?’

Darren said, ‘Pretty damn simple. I wanted to do like you did. Check out what other people were doing about Final Winter.’

Monty grimaced. ‘Let me guess this time. Nobody’s doing a damn thing.’

Darren nodded. ‘Just found one contemporary reference, from a week ago, when Adrianna got the clearance from the Colonel to proceed. Besides that… nothing.’

Monty raised his coffee cup and then, as if he’d changed his mind, lowered it to the desk. ‘Don’t like this, don’t like this at all.’

‘Me neither.’

‘What do you think’s going on?’

Darren said, ‘Maybe Adrianna’s got bum info. Or maybe people higher up aren’t taking her seriously. Or maybe this damn thing is so secret and need-to-know that nobody else, ah, needs to know. Could be a lot of things.’

Monty said, ‘Lot of things, none of them good. Look, Adrianna should be back from Memphis tomorrow. I think it’d be time for a meeting, don’t you think? I want to feel good about what we’re doing and right now I don’t feel good at all.’

‘Sure… unless, well,’ and Darren found himself laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘Unless Adrianna’s working for them. The enemy. Then saying something tomorrow might be bad for our health. But she doesn’t fit the profile.’

‘And what profile is that?’

‘Angry Muslim male.’

Monty nodded, ‘Yeah. Thank God for that.’

‘True,’ Darren said, not sure if he even believed in God. But still, it wouldn’t hurt. ‘Thank God for that.’

Now Vladimir and Imad were in a rocky area of Wyoming, flat sand and scrub brush and sharp peaks and not a hell of a lot else. Along the way Imad had stopped for a few short naps, and the Russian was amazed at how these naps had re-energized the youth. Imad had also driven the truck and its cargo with ease, impressing even Vladimir with his skill. He had said something and Imad, almost shyly, had replied, ‘You learn a lot, driving in Damascus and Yemen. My uncle, once he moved us away from Canada, he owned a trucking company. He taught you once, and he taught you again with the end of his belt if you failed him in any way.’

Despite everything else, Vladimir was impressed with the young man. It certainly took skill to drive such a big rig, and to drive it on such a poor road, just dirt and rocks, indicated a rare talent. They had gotten here with the aid of a detailed map provided along with the other documents and, as before, the map had been right to the point, indicating a turnoff from the interstate near a town called Dayton, and yet another turnoff that had led to this dirt road.

‘Up ahead,’ Imad said. ‘We will have gone two point three miles. I see where we are supposed to go.’

Vladimir nodded, saw the spot. There was a large expanse of rocks and boulders that rose up to the left, in a sort of overhang. Imad maneuvered the truck underneath the overhang and switched off the engine. The sudden lack of noise made Vladimir’s ears ring. Imad opened the driver’s-side door and got out, and Vladimir followed from his own side. The dirt crunched underneath his boots. It was hot and the air was dry and still. He shaded his eyes from the sun and looked out. Nothing. He looked up at the overhang of rocks. Good choice. Hidden away from any prying eyes, whether it were a Cessna or a Predator or a Keyhole satellite thousands of miles up.

Vladimir said, ‘Feel like home?’

‘What?’ Imad said, coming over next to him.

‘The desert. Doesn’t it feel like home?’

Imad laughed. ‘What do you think, all Arabs are Bedouins, longing for the simple life of tents and camels and oases and the shits? No, thank you. I like the cities and I like electricity and flush toilets. And I’d like to get this job done before this damn air dries out my face.’

‘All right, then. Let’s get it done.’

They went to the rear of the truck, where Vladimir unlocked the sliding door. It clattered up and again he and Imad dumped the brightly colored boxes of Chinese toys onto the dirt. This would be the last time they would have to use these damn plastic trinkets. The black plastic cases came out and Imad unsnapped the lids, propping them open. Vladimir looked at the equipment nestled in the gray foam, and Imad said, ‘Who are they?’

‘What do you mean? Our paymasters? Our bosses?’

‘Yes,’ Imad said. ‘Who do you think they are?’

Vladimir said, ‘Does it really matter?’

‘No, not really,’ Imad said. ‘It’s just that…well, whoever they are they must hate America very much.’

Vladimir reached down to help the boy take the equipment out. ‘Then they have plenty of company, don’t they?’

Alexander Bocks was in his office with two members of the Tiger Team and Randy Tuthill, who was sprawled out in one of Bocks’s chairs and who didn’t look very impressed with what he had heard. Earlier, Adrianna had protested that she only wanted to make the presentation to the General and no one else, and he had not allowed that. He had said, ‘Randy knows my aircraft better than I do, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to pull this off without his say-so. Miss Scott, Randy stays or you can find yourself another airline.’

So Randy had stayed, right through a repeated briefing about the upcoming anthrax attack and the options the Tiger Team and the intelligence community had reviewed and rejected — save for one, the clandestine immunization of a large chunk of the American population. At that little gem of information, Randy had raised an eyebrow and looked over at Bocks.

‘So because of anthrax, the union got dental?’ he asked.

Bocks said, ‘What use is anything if the anthrax gets through?’

Randy shook his head. ‘What a cluster-fuck. All right, then, why am I here?’

Bocks looked to Adrianna, who looked over to Doctor Palmer, who was pale and seemed to be sweating. Palmer cleared his throat and said, ‘A section of the Centers for Disease Control has been working on the airborne immunization system for some time. The canisters with the vaccine are almost completed. They look like this.’

He reached down to the floor, pulled up his small case, opened it up. He pulled out the green canister — about the size of a large thermos bottle — and passed it over to Randy. The mechanic turned it around in his big hands and said, ‘The vaccine will be contained in this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it safe?’

Bocks felt uneasy, knowing that this was going to be a tough one.

No one answered.

Randy looked at each of them.

‘I said, is it safe?’

Bocks said, ‘Doctor Palmer? If you please?’

The doctor looked like he was in the dock of a courthouse. He said, ‘Like any type of vaccine, there will be side effects. The vast majority of the population exposed won’t suffer any ill effects, or if they do, it will be minimal. There will be others — statistically, only a few — that may suffer severe effects.’

Randy said sharply, ‘Up to and including death, right?’

‘Correct.’

Bocks said, ‘It’s tough, Randy. But there doesn’t appear to be any other option.’

Randy sounded grim. ‘Of course there’s always another option.’

Adrianna said, ‘And what do you suggest?’

The mechanic kept on turning the canister in his hands. ‘Killing the fuckers over there, instead of waiting for them over here. That’s a better option.’

Bocks felt his breathing relax. Randy was going to be okay. Sure enough, his chief mechanic changed the subject with the next question.

‘How will it be controlled?’

Palmer said, ‘Entirely automated. There will be a two-part radio-altimeter switch. When the aircraft rises to a certain altitude, the canister will be activated. When the aircraft descends to a certain altitude, the canister will cycle open, and the spraying will commence.’

Randy said, ‘And where in hell do you expect this to go? Duct-taped on an outside wing?’

Back into the case the doctor went, and he came out with a bunch of documents. He leafed through them until he pulled one out. Doctor Palmer said, ‘AirBox flies the Boeing MD-11 aircraft, configured to haul cargo. It has twin Pratt and Whitney engines, and associated with these engines you have two air-conditioning packs. One for each engine. Correct?’

Randy said, ‘You’re doing fine, doc. Go on.’

Palmer said, ‘These air-conditioning packs take hot air from the engines, pass it through a heat exchanger, and it’s then compressed and cooled. This air is used to pressurize the cabin and cool the air in it. With each air-conditioning pack, there is an exhaust system. We’ve examined the schematics. There is a way of installing the canisters such that they bleed into the exhaust system. Entirely automatic. Nothing to be controlled from the cockpit.’

Bocks looked at the expression on Randy’s face, wasn’t sure what was going on there. He said, ‘Doctor, if you could, please pass over the schematics to Randy. I want him to have a look at it.’

The papers went over. Adrianna sat there, hands folded. She seemed tense, coiled. Bocks could not imagine the pressure the woman was under. Randy flipped through the pages, grunted a couple of times, and then flipped through the pages again, more slowly. Outside, the sound of a jet taking off made the windows rattle for a moment.

Randy said, ‘General, it looks like it can be done…but where’s the Supplement Type Certificate? You can’t just add something to an aircraft without an STC from the FAA.’

Bocks said, ‘Miss?’

Adrianna said, ‘We’ll take care of the FAA.’

Randy shook his head. ‘Maybe so. But Jesus, somebody there’s gonna raise hell about us doing something like this. I mean, doing this without—’

Adrianna interrupted. ‘Like I said, we’ll take care of the FAA. The question I have is, can security be maintained? We can’t have scores of mechanics installing the canisters and then talking about it later. There has to be some way of keeping this confidential.’

Bocks said, ‘Don’t worry about my crews. My big question is the time-line. What are you looking for in terms of aircraft?’

Adrianna said, ‘Forty. We determined that with forty of your aircraft, we can successfully complete the immunization of about seventy-five percent of the urban population. The intelligence information we have indicates a half-dozen of our largest cities are targeted, as well as Washington DC.’

‘What the hell happens to the other twenty-five percent?’ Randy asked. ‘They get written off?’

Bocks was beginning to admire the woman, for she had a sure touch with answering the tough questions. He had served with similar women in the Air Force, especially with those women who ran maintenance squadrons and who had ready answers and a poor appreciation of bullshit.

Adrianna said, ‘The anthrax attacks will take place in our major cities. It doesn’t make sense for an attack to take place in rural areas, so those areas won’t be treated with the immunization program. We also realize that we have a limited number of aircraft. A number will be tasked to one city. Five, for example, for the New York City metropolitan area alone.’

By now, Randy was scribbling on the back of one of the sheets of paper with a pen. Bocks waited patiently, knowing that the answer Randy was about to give was going to be the right one. It might not be an answer that the group was looking for, but it was going to be the only answer that counted.

Randy dropped his pen. ‘When do you want to fly?’

‘As soon as possible,’ she said. ‘We believe the attack will take place in just under three weeks, on May 29.’

‘We can do forty aircraft in four days, if we’re lucky, if the FAA isn’t up our ass, and if you get the canisters to us. When can you get them here?’

‘Day after tomorrow.’

‘You sure?’ Bocks asked.

Adrianna’s voice was full of confidence. ‘Guaranteed, gentlemen.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

For a while, the silence in the Wyoming desert was interrupted by the low hum of machinery as Vladimir and Imad worked to change what they had been driving. All exposed areas that weren’t part of the main body of the truck and the trailer — tires, mirrors, windshield, mudflaps, front bumper — had been covered by heavy-gauge brown paper and secured by equally heavy tape. It had been long, hot work, and both men had stripped off their shirts. When the paper had been secured and double-checked against guidelines from one of the black plastic cases that they had picked up in Idaho, they had continued their work. Portable spray-painting machinery and folding aluminum scaffolding had helped them to turn a bright yellow trailer with Seamarsk markings into something olive drab and military-looking.

Now Vladimir stood back, eyeing the truck and the trailer, matching it up with sample photos and schematics helpfully provided by their unseen bosses. Imad came up to him, clear plastic goggles pushed up over his head, respirator hanging around his neck. His chest was dark brown and scrawny, with a thick mat of black hair. Behind him was the scaffolding surrounding the truck, and the chugging air compressor that powered the spray gun, the compressor in turn powered by cables leading to the truck’s battery.

‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Are we done with this darkie work?’

‘Soon,’ Vladimir said. ‘Very soon. We let this coat dry and then we can put on the new license plates and serial numbers, and other identifying marks. Another two hours, then we’ll be done.’

‘Good, because I’m about—’

There came the sound of an engine, overpowering the noise of the compressor. Vladimir turned and so did Imad. Vladimir said something in his own language — ‘Fuck your mother’ would have been the best English translation he could have come up with — and Imad said something in his own language as well.

Coming down the dirt road was a dark brown Jeep Wrangler with oversized tires, bounding its way towards them.

‘Don’t say anything, don’t do anything,’ Vladimir said. ‘If we’re lucky, they will pass us by. There must be something in here they want. They don’t want us.’

But God and luck were not with them. The Jeep Wrangler skidded to a halt about a dozen meters away. Hanging from the rear of the Jeep was a collection of sacks and ropes, and two young men and two young women got out, talking and laughing. They wore T-shirts and sunglasses and expensive-looking sport clothes and sport footwear. They talked among themselves for a moment, and then the two men started towards Vladimir and Imad, shaking their heads.

‘Not good,’ Imad said.

‘You are correct,’ Vladimir said. ‘Not good.’

In his rental GMC Pontiac — and why in God’s name were so many rental cars white? Was it a global rental-car rule somewhere? — Brian Doyle sat on a side street in the Mt Auburn neighborhood of Cincinnati, going over his notes for the day. The Princess had supposedly given him the day off, and he had taken the day off, but being the enterprising sort he had taken a commuter shuttle from Memphis to Cincinnati to see what he could find.

And so far, in the few hours he had been here, he had found a lot of nothing.

He scratched at the back of his head.

This part of Cincinnati was a large hill that years and years ago had been the home of the city’s best and brightest, including President William Howard Taft. But the years hadn’t played nice with Mt Auburn, and it had fallen into the urban cycle of poverty and decay. Now it appeared that it was coming back, as gentrification worked its magical market ways. The changeover in home ownership and such had no doubt led to Brian’s problems, for Adrianna Scott’s presence here was as thin as a piece of paper soaked in the rain. There had been almost nothing, nothing at all, save for two things. One came from a visit to her high school, known here as the Hughes Magnet School. The place had been a seemingly well-managed chaos of students and teachers and administrative staff, and a half-hour there had produced paper records that matched what had been in his file, save for one thing that he had been looking for. Adrianna had told him that she had come here after her parents had died, and neither the high school nor the earlier report had any record of her transfer. It was as if she had arrived out of nowhere and had slipped right into the classes without any problem.

And she had done well, scoring high honors in almost everything. But her previous life, before her parents had died in that car accident… gone.

And the other lead, slim as it was, had led to this address. Adrianna’s apartment, which she had shared with her aunt — one Elyse Annanova — had been flipped so many times with new tenants that no one had any memories of an older woman and her young niece who had lived there. The few neighbors home this day that he approached also gave him blank stares. Him being a white man in a suit in this neighborhood, asking nosy questions, probably didn’t help either, though a local grocery store had helped just a bit. The older man there, wearing a spotless white apron and welhshined black shoes, had said, ‘No, sir, I don’t remember anything about that woman and her aunt. But I have somebody who might know something. That’d be Mamma Garrity. She lives over on Prospect Street now, but she used to live here, and I don’t like to speak ill of the elderly, but my God, that woman can talk a hole through a tin pot, and if that woman and her aunt lived here, she’d know, by God.’

So by way of thanking the helpful grocer, Brian had bought a couple of six-packs of Coors that he didn’t want. Now he was on Prospect Street — a bit of punnish humor from the Big Guy Upstairs? — and he got out of his rental car and walked up to the small house, ready to ring the doorbell and keep on digging.

And why was that? he thought. Because it was his job, or because he was pissed at the cold treatment he had gotten this morning from Adrianna?

Who knew? Brian rang the bell.

The two young American men came over to Vladimir and Imad, gave them quick nods. Then one of them took off his sunglasses and said something. Vladimir couldn’t understand what he said, the boy talked so fast, and so he replied, ‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, man, what the fuck is up here?’ the youngster said. He had a goatee and there were earrings in both ears. His companion kept his glasses on and nodded, arms folded. There were tattoos on both forearms. His companion said, ‘This place is protected, dude. You can’t be painting your truck here. Do you have a permit?’

Vladimir thought as quick as he could, but these two young males in front of him seemed as foreign as if they had stepped out of a spaceship from Mars. Imad said quietly, ‘Why don’t you mind your own business, then?’ The young man with the folded arms stepped forward and said, ‘This place is our business, dude. Earth is our business. Protecting it is our business. And we don’t know what the fuck you’re doing, but we came here for a day of rock climbing, and we see this…this fucking mess here. What’s up with that?’

The boy without the sunglasses said, ‘Like I said, do you have a permit? Do you? This is National Forest land, man.’

The young girls had been busy, taking the gear from the rear of the Jeep, and one shouted out something and the guy said, ‘Jackie’s right, man. You get your stuff cleared up and out of here, and like now, or we report you to the rangers. Got it? Get your shit clean and out of here. You don’t belong here.’

Imad stepped forward and Vladimir grabbed his arm. ‘Please,’ Vladimir said, ‘We’re almost done. We will be on our way shortly.’

‘Nope,’ the tattooed guy said. ‘Out now.’

Vladimir said, ‘Perhaps a payment for your troubles, some compensation, and—’

And then the goateed one, the one with earrings, actually spat at Vladimir. Spat on the ground!

‘That’s what we think of your cash, man. Nothing. We can’t be bought. So get the fuck out, or the rangers get the call.’

The two strolled away and Imad looked at Vladimir, eyes dark with fury. ‘We can’t let them call the police or the rangers or anyone else. You know that.’

‘I know.’

‘Then what do you plan to do about it?’ he demanded.

‘I… I… something must be done,’ Vladimir said.

‘Yes, but what?’

Vladimir stammered, then went silent.

He looked over at the Jeep where the four were still busy, though they kept on looking over at him and Imad.

Imad looked at Vladimir with contempt, and said, ‘You. Brave man who plans to kill millions. Strike a blow. Smash. Be a barbarian and kill. All talk. All empty air unless you are safe, away from seeing what you are doing, what must be done. You don’t want to get your fingers dirty, your precious fingers. Am I right? Am I?’

Vladimir felt the burning of humiliation in his cheeks as the young savage in front of him spoke the truth. He could not say a word. He just nodded.

Imad now looked satisfied. ‘Good. I will do what has to be done, Russian, so you know. I will do what has to be done, and from you there will be no more dismissive words or gestures or insults. Understood?’

Another nod.

Imad said, ‘I did not hear you, Russki.’

‘Yes,’ Vladimir said. ‘Understood.’

‘Good.’ Imad strode to the truck and Vladimir stood there, just watching, an observer.

From the Jeep Wrangler, some more laughter, and a shout from one of the men: ‘I don’t see you moving, asshole. Get moving or you’ll regret it!’

And so Vladimir stood.

The interior of the living room was dark, with the lights on low and the shades drawn. Mamma Garrity was an old woman, in her eighties or nineties, who moved slow and whose dark skin was wrinkled and lined, but whose tongue was sharp to go along with an equally sharp mind. She had invited Brian in after he had shown his identification, and now he was sipping a lukewarm glass of lemonade as she sat across from him in an overstuffed easy chair that looked like it was ready to swallow her whole. For about a half-hour she had talked to him about growing up in Cincinnati, about her youth and courting and marriage and two sons and three daughters and numerous grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, about her hip-replacement surgery and her sore knees and cataracts, and using the listening skills that he had developed over the years at the NYPD Brian had nodded at all the right places, until finally Mamma Garrity had slowly used up her memories and stories, and had seemed to focus .

‘Mmm… Detective Doyle, you’re asking me about that Scott woman… and her aunt — correct?’ she said.

‘That’s right, ma’am,’ Brian said, trying not to show any expression as he swallowed the warm, sour mixture. By his side was a fireplace, blocked off, with rows of photographs lined up on the mantelpiece, photos of families and young men and old women and serious-looking men in uniform, firefighter uniform, Navy uniform… a whole spectrum of an old woman’s life, frozen forever with photo paper and chemicals.

The old woman said, ‘Yes, I remember her now. Elyse Annanova… kept to herself. A well-dressed woman. Went to church every Sunday. A clean, quiet life… and then her niece moved in suddenly. There had been death in that young girl’s family. So she came in and she kept to herself — the both of them. Just went to church every weekend, saw them in the local markets… kept to themselves. Quiet neighbors. Wish we had more of them.’

‘Did you ever see if they had any visitors?’

‘Not that I can recall… you see, it was different, back then. Before the money came in. Before those yuppies bought up buildings and such…not that I mind much, I mean, money is green and doesn’t really care what color your skin is, am I right?’

Brian said, ‘Yes, I believe you’re right.’

Mamma Garrity smiled at him, like a retired teacher pleased at the progress of a long-ago student. ‘Yes… yes, I do believe I’m right. So. Is there anything else I can help you with?’

He managed another sip of the sour lemonade. ‘No, I’m afraid that’s all. I’m very grateful for your time, Mrs Garrity.’

She smiled. ‘It’s so nice to have visitors… and this pains me to say this, detective, but… well, you said you’re with the Federal government, am I right?’

‘I’m attached to the Federal government, yes, in assisting them with inquiries about certain issues.’

‘Like Miss Scott’s life, right?’

‘That’s one of my roles, yes.’

She nodded, her smile in place. ‘And this all confidential, am I right? Everything I say to you is just as if I was talking to the government. Right?’

This was going in an odd direction. ‘Yes, you’re right. All confidential.’

Mamma Garrity seemed pleased as she nodded again. ‘Good. I’ve been wondering for a very long time who I should complain to. You see, ever since I moved here, after my oldest son moved to Detroit and gave me this home, I haven’t been getting my money. And I wonder if you can help me out.’

Brian said, ‘You mean your Social Security?’

She laughed. ‘Oh no, not that. My Social Security comes right as it’s supposed to — one of the few things in God’s world you can count on. No, it’s the other money that I’ve missed, ever since I moved. The support money.’

Brian’s head felt foggy, as if he had woken up from an unexpected afternoon nap. He had been seconds away from leaving this musty old house and tossing the Adrianna Scott file into his luggage, ready to ignore it for another few weeks. Until this.

‘Mrs Garrity, I’m sorry that I don’t understand about the support money, but if you let me know what it’s about I’ll see that you get it.’

Now she was a bit suspicious. ‘Including the past months? I warn you, it’s going to be a large number.’

‘Sure. Whatever it is, I’ll make sure.’

‘Well… I hate to bring it up, but I was promised. And the others, we were promised, too, and we all got those checks, month after month. After a while, you got to depend on them. We surely did. And trust me, I think I might be the last one alive… but still, a deal is a deal, right?’

‘Yes, you’re absolutely right,’ Brian said, looking at that old, calm face. Mamma Garrity’s words were making his fingertips tingle at the thought that something was going on.

He said, ‘Tell me all about it, right from the beginning, and then I’ll take care of it.’

Another sweet look. ‘That’s nice. I mean, we were told never to open our mouths, never to say anything. And we were told that if we did say something the money would stop, and the IRS would be called in, and we’d have to pay back taxes and penalties, and maybe even go to jail — for breaking our deal. So I’m not in trouble, am I? I mean, I’ve always kept my end of the deal. I’ve never said anything, until right now. It’s her fault, you know, since the money’s stopped. She broke the deal first.’ The old woman’s voice was now defiant, and he found himself liking her spirit.

‘And who’s “she”, ma’am?’

The old woman seemed to struggle for a moment, and then said, her voice just above a whisper.

‘Adrianna.’

Oh, Brian thought. Oh, shit. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘From the beginning, Mrs Garrity. Tell me what happened.’

She said, ‘Oh, it was some years ago. Right after she had graduated from college. She came back and talked to me and talked to Mrs Grissom, from upstairs, and Mister Conklin, he served in the Navy, he was downstairs. Just the immediate neighbors, the three of us. She showed us some paperwork that said she was working for the government. For the CIA. It was a very important job that she was going to get, very important, but there was one thing she asked us to do, and it wasn’t really a lie, it was part of the program, to get in. She said officers needed a… what did she call it? What do you put on a book? You know… a…’

The tingling in Brian’s fingers was now up to his forearms. ‘A cover. That’s what she said. A cover. Am I right?’

A little series of nods, like an old bird dipping her beak into a water glass. ‘That’s right. A cover. She had to have a cover story in order to do her job well, and she asked the neighbors if they would help her out. And who wouldn’t? Such a nice girl! And she promised us that we would be paid, every month, one hundred dollars, if we told the same story to anybody who came by and. asked questions about her.’

Brian tried to pay attention to what he was hearing, but his mind was racing along on another path. He thought about a young Adrianna Scott who had graduated from college, who had gotten an interview with the Central Intelligence Agency, was going through the vetting process. Somehow, she has something in her past that must be hidden. Something that can’t be uncovered by the back-ground checkers in the employ of the CIA. She’s fortunate in that her circle of neighbors are poor and are quite limited in number. So payments — all right, bribes — are made to present the perfect cover story. And what was the perfect cover story?

Brian said, ‘Ma’am, I’ll be able to pay some of your back payments today, and I promise that you’ll get the rest by the end of this week. But can you tell me, what was the story that you were asked to provide?’

‘Well! It was all kind of strange, you know… it was very simple. We were asked just to tell anyone who came by to ask questions that Adrianna had moved in with her aunt at a very young age. When that wasn’t the truth at all.’

‘I see. And when did Adrianna move in with her aunt?’

‘Oh, I don’t know the date… but I do know that she was a teenager, a young girl. A very pretty young girl but a teenager nonetheless. And unlike the other girls of her time…she was different.’

‘How was she different?’

And the old woman gave Brian a knowing look, one mature adult to another. ‘Oh, come now, Mr Doyle. You know what I mean. Tight blouses, tight jeans, skirts up to here… wearing that awful jewelry…strutting their wares so the boys would notice. But not Adrianna. She spent two years here, I believe — before going off to college — and not once did I ever see her with a boy. She was very serious, too serious. Always seemed to be studying…like she had some big goal in front of her… and we respected her, yes, we did. Which was why we agreed to that odd request of hers.’

‘And her aunt? What was her aunt like, during all of this?’

Mamma Garrity clasped her hands together. ‘Oh, the poor dear. Do you know what happened to her? She died, just before Adrianna left for college.’

‘She did, did she? And how did she die?’

The old woman made a cluck-cluck noise as she shook her head. ‘Poor dear was murdered. Suffocated in her own bed by someone who held a pillow over her head. Can you imagine that? What an awful coincidence, just as Adrianna was getting ready to move out.’

Brian nodded slowly, feeling cold. ‘Yes. What an awful coincidence.’

Vladimir saw the whole thing unfold in front of him, as if he was an extra in a stage production, destined to observe and stand still and watch all that happened.

Imad strolled over to the four young men and women, confidence in his step, one hand held out in a friendly greeting, the other behind his back, holding the automatic pistol. There was bile at the back of Vladimir’s throat as he saw what was going on, and a part of him that he thought was civilized, a part that he had left behind in Mother Russia, that part of him wanted to warn the four rock climbers out there — children, really — of what was approaching them. For death was walking near, with a friendly smile and a hand held out in friendship. He wondered if this was what it was like in Palestine, when the suicide bombers approached a school bus or a nightclub or a pizza parlor with that same mystic confidence that they were doing God’s work.

Vladimir did not believe in God, had never believed in God. But now, in this American desert, he was sure that he believed in the Devil.

One of the young men called out something and Imad replied in a friendly voice as he approached them. He said something else, and the four came to him. Vladimir thought, how sly, he got them to come to him and—

Imad’s hidden hand whipped out, and Vladimir saw the confusion in the rock climbers’ eyes. What could this mean? How was this happening? How had a safe day of rock climbing and adventure and a lunch eaten in the wilderness and a night ahead planned, perhaps a restaurant with a good meal and cold beer and lots of laughs and lovemaking later — how had it turned into this?

How?

They started to move but, like sheep before a wolf, they moved too slow and they moved separately. If they had been smarter and tougher — there were four of them against Imad -maybe something could have been done. But this was not a day for maybes and—

The first shot seemed to hit the tattooed man in the chest. He fell to his knees. The next shot caught the other young man in the side as he was turning, his goateed face twisted in fear and horror.

Vladimir thought, the Arab boy’s doing well, shooting the men, the obvious threats first, and now—

Now the women were screaming, turning to flee.

Imad shot each of them once in the back.

He paused.

All four young people were moving some. The tattooed man was on his knees, hands at his chest.

Imad stepped behind him, placed the muzzle of the pistol against the back of his skull, fired again. The tattooed man fell forward.

The goateed man was yelling, ‘Please, Jesus, don’t, please, don’t…’ as he tried to get up, one hand on the ground, the other hand against his side.

Imad moved again. Pistol barrel against the rear of the head.

Another shot.

Vladimir closed his eyes.

The girls were screaming and crying and then there were two more shots.

Then silence.

The Russian opened his eyes.

Imad strolled back, smiling, the pistol now tucked in his waistband.

‘We have work to do,’ he said.

Vladimir said, ‘Yes, we do.’

He swallowed and followed Imad back to the Jeep Wrangler. It took a while. From the gear of the rock climbers, he and Imad took out ponchos and tarpaulins. Once the material was spread over the bodies, it was easier to work, for they didn’t have to look at their victims’ faces, didn’t have to look at the blood and exposed bone and brain tissue. Vladimir worked with the Arab in wrapping up the bodies and tying them tight with bungee cords.

It took some work, but the bodies and the gear were eventually placed in the Wrangler. Vladimir was breathing hard and his legs and arms hurt when they were through. He said, ‘It looks like you have experience with this, wrapping up bodies.’

Imad laughed. ‘Yes. Bodies in the desert. Some experience. We don’t have time to bury them, so to wrap them up like this is the next best thing. Keeps animals and vultures away for a while, so there are no curious people wanting to know why the animals are excited. Not good enough to last very long, but long enough for us to be on our way.’

Vladimir nodded, rubbed his shaking hands. Imad said, ‘I will drive this Jeep away and be back in a few minutes. It shouldn’t take long to get out of here.’

Another nod. Vladimir couldn’t think what to say to the boy.

He walked back to the truck and started packing up gear they had used. He stripped away the heavy brown paper and then put on the new license plates. Using large decals, he followed the design schematics and made the truck into something else.

Imad came back after a bit, whistling, and they broke down the scaffolding, not saying anything except what had to be said to get the job done. Vladimir watched the boy work, wondering what was going on behind those calm brown eyes, those eyes that had seen what had to be done and whose owners had then done it. Killed four complete strangers, two young men and two young women, with hardly a moment of hesitation or guilt.

And he, the mighty doctor from the old, terrifying Soviet Union? He had almost pissed his pants like a Gorky Park drunk at the thought. But the barbarian youth, he had killed when necessary — and had done it with skill.

Now the truck, smelling of fresh paint, was loaded. Vladimir went up into the cab. Imad turned the key, the diesel engine grumbled into life and, once more singing some Arab tune, Imad maneuvered the tractor-trailer truck back out onto the dirt road. In a matter of minutes they were on the interstate highway, heading east. The air-conditioning had kicked in and Vladimir felt himself relaxing, just a bit. He said, ‘Where did you put it?’

‘Put what?’

‘The jeep. The bodies.’

Imad said, ‘The Jeep went down a ravine. The bodies stayed inside. The Jeep may be found tomorrow, or next week, or next month. And by then, who cares?’

Vladimir looked in the rearview mirror. The sun was beginning to set. If all went well, they would be in Memphis in just under two days.

‘You… you did well, back there,’ he said.

Imad grinned. ‘Thank you. And hold on, I have a souvenir for you.’

The boy steered with one hand as he put his free hand into his pants pocket. Out the hand came, stretched across the cab interior.

‘Here,’ Imad said. ‘Evidence. Just for you.’

Something metallic tumbled into Vladimir’s hand. He looked down. Empty shell casings. Imad said, ‘Evidence. A good shooter picks up after himself. So this is my gift to you. Evidence of what I just did.’

Vladimir looked at the little bits of worked metal, wondered how things so small could be so deadly. And he thought of the canisters that rested comfortably behind his head, back there in the trailer, ready to kill millions. Also small and deadly.

He rolled the passenger’s-side window down, stretched his arm out, and tossed the empty brass casings to the side of the road.

Imad laughed again. Vladimir rolled the window back up, and kept quiet for another hundred miles.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It was dusk as Brian Doyle finally emerged from Mamma Garrity’s home in Cincinnati, trying to factor in what he had learned and what it might mean. He was thinking these things through as he got to his rental car, which was when they jumped him.

Brian’s first thought as he heard the approaching fast foot-steps and felt the hands grabbing him was, oh man, did we fuck up, and won’t our partner laugh his ass off at what just happened. And then the punching and voices started.

‘Get the motherfucker…’

‘Grab ’em…’

‘Shit ass, where’s your fuckin’ wallet…’

Brian was spun around and he threw a punch, caught someone a glancing blow on the side of the face. He took quick stock — four of them, four young ’uns, pukes, scrotes, yutes, whatever you wanted to call them — and he lashed out with a fist, catching one of them on the nose. A yelp and then something sharp sliced through his shirt and there were more punches, and his belt felt so light, so fucking light, because back home he’d be carrying his Motorola hand-held, a quick toggle of the panic switch or call for a 10-13, requesting back-up, but now there was nothing.

Save for one thing.

He reached around to his rear waistband, breathing hard and struggling, the young men clearer now in the glow from a nearby streetlight, more hands punching and slapping at him, something warm on his chest, and he got it, he got his 9mm Smith & Wesson out, out enough to slap one guy in the head with it, and the sight of the metal got everybody’s attention. Like a sudden breeze they were gone, their sneakers slap-slapping on the sidewalk as they faded out.

Now Brian was tired, very tired, and he leaned back against the hood of his rental car, the pistol wavering in his grip. It was heavy, as heavy as he could ever remember it.

‘Shit,’ he said, his mouth dry. ‘Damn.’

He touched the front of his shirt. It was wet. He touched it again. The cloth had been tom away. Now he felt lightheaded. He put the pistol back in his waistband holster, touched his skin again.

It burned.

And it was very wet.

Brian held up his hands to the illumination from the street lights.

His hands were covered with blood.

From the Homeland Security building in Washington State that had first detected the border crossing of Vladimir Zhukov and Imad Yussef Hakim, the information was reviewed, enhanced and sent upstream to the Homeland Security office near Spokane that was responsible for the entire Northwest United States. A helicopter was dispatched to the Customs border crossing and by day’s end two very tired and confused Customs officers were being debriefed by an ex-Air Force Special Operations Master Sergeant named Jason Janwick. This man loved his country, loved his service, hated terrorists, and would be out capping them with his crew had it not been for a bad heart that threatened every day to drop him like a gut-shot deer, and while he didn’t particularly like his present job it was the best he could do.

Now he was talking to a bright Customs officer named Tanya Mead, who seemed almost relieved as she gave him her read on what had happened earlier in the week with Zhukov and Imad. Janwick kept his eye on her as she talked, gauging her response, seeing what kind of words she chose and how she said them. Janwick had a pretty good built-in bullshit detector — you had to, when you worked with guys who sometimes packed each other’s parachutes — and he liked what he saw. He sure as hell hated the fucking message he was receiving, but he liked her.

With the two of them in this small meeting room were members of his staff, some of whom joined in with the questioning. When they were done, he stepped in.

‘These two — they had valid travel documents and identification. Correct?’

‘Yes, sir, that’s correct,’ Tanya said.

‘Accents?’

‘Yes — both very slight. Hard to pin down.’

Janwick said, ‘You’ve given us some good information. What else can you tell us?’

‘Sir?’

Janwick tried to be patient. ‘Something that we’ve not asked you. Something that stuck in your mind. Anything else you can come up with.’

Tanya said, ‘Well…’

‘Go on.’

‘I think they hated each other.’

‘What?’

The young woman looked around the room for a moment and said, ‘You see a lot of truckers crossing where I work. Part of the job. Most times it’s single truckers… it’s expensive for trucking companies to send out a two-man crew. And when you see a two-man crew, sometimes it’s a man-and-woman crew. A married couple. And when you do get a two-man crew…they, well, they get along. They have to. Otherwise they’d end up killing each other or abandoning their partner at a rest stop somewhere. But not these two. It’s like…it’s like the older guy couldn’t believe he got paired with that younger guy, and the younger guy, it was like it was all he could do to keep himself from cutting the older guy’s throat. I think they really hated each other.’

Janwick saw his team taking notes. They were a good bunch. He said, ‘You’ve done well, Officer Mead. If you like, we can get you back home tonight. Or you can spend the night here. We’ll put you up in a nice place. Oh. And one more question.’

‘Sure.’

He said, ‘I know this is forward and all that, but would you like a new job?’

‘Sir?’

Janwick liked the expression on the young woman’s face. He also liked to surprise people. He said, ‘Would you like something different? We could get you out of Customs, get you here in my group. Working for me. Hours would be longer, pay probably wouldn’t be much better, but I can guarantee you it’d be a hell of a lot more interesting.’

That made Tanya Mead smile. He liked her smile. He liked intelligent young women — please, no sex involved, he was happily married and though he had a wandering eye he never once thought of cheating — and this one looked like a keeper.

She said, ‘I think that’d be fine, sir. But my supervisor might have other ideas.’

Janwick looked at a notepad in front of him. ‘Right. The gentleman who flew in with you. The one who wouldn’t let you search the truck. Known as “Captain Commerce”, right?’

Tanya tried to hide a smile and failed. ‘That’s right.’

‘Don’t worry about it. He’s no longer working in the Customs Department.’

‘Sir?’

‘Gone. Out. If he’s lucky, he’ll be a night-shift stockboy at WalMart in a year or two. Officer Mead, thank you for your service.’

Tanya took the hint and left the conference room. Janwick’s staff, a good mix of young men and women, looked at him expectantly. He took a deep breath, tried to ignore the tightness in his chest. He said, ‘I need to make some phone calls. When I come back, I want a plan in place to get the photos of these two characters and a description of their truck out to every law-enforcement agency within… Paula, how long have they been in-country?’

‘Forty-three hours.’

‘Right. Forty-three hours. Work out how far they could get in that truck within forty-three hours. Postulate no overnight stops. Just occasional fuel stops. Write up a “be on the lookout for” alert. Work a geographical arc, showing the territory they might have covered. Want to know what possible targets might be in that arc. Nuclear power plants, dams, shopping malls, airports, weapons facilities — everything. And we want that BOLO in the hands of every cop, customs, sheriff, game officer inside that arc. Got it?’

No replies. Just nods. Janwick stood up.

‘Good.’ He left the room, thinking that his crew might not be as tough or as smart as his Air Force buds but they were good enough for what had to be done.

Adrianna Scott stood in Terminal B at the Memphis International Airport, tapping her left foot, knowing that it was a nervous gesture, knowing it was something that she couldn’t control. Their flight was leaving in under a half-hour, and Victor Palmer stood with her at the gate, sweating some in the cool air.

‘He’s late,’ Victor said.

‘I know.’

‘And he hasn’t answered his cellphone, or his pager. What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know, Victor, I just don’t know.’

Which was only partially true. She knew that Brian was gone, and had been gone for the day. He had been upset with her earlier and who could blame him? A night of anger, a night of arguments, a night of recriminations… followed by a night of passion, a hot night for both of them, and then, in the morning… the cold shoulder from her to him.

But what else could have happened?

Just days away from attainment, after years and years of all this work and sacrifice, to complicate things even more with a love affair with someone who was not only a co-worker but a cop with a cop’s suspicious mind — she couldn’t allow it.

So.

Where in hell was he?

Brian had been telling the truth yesterday: the only real reason for his presence on this trip was to sway the General’s opinion, to appeal to that rock-solid and insane patriotism that most military types cherished, like a piece of the True Cross or something, and it had worked. And for that Adrianna felt no guilt.

So why the guilt now?

Victor said, ‘We’ve got to start boarding, Adrianna. Even with our clearances, we’ve got to get to our seats. They won’t hold the aircraft for us.’

‘I know.’

Maybe Brian was done with it all, had taken a flight back to his beloved New York City, ready to take whatever heat the NYPD might deliver for backing out from his commitment to the Tiger Teams. Knowing Brian, maybe that’s what he’d done. She wouldn’t put it past him. She knew he was growing restless with the Tiger Teams, was getting ready to break out, and this little trip out Memphis way had probably tipped the scale. Still…

Maybe he was hurt. Injured. Dead.

Jesus, she thought, that’s morbid…

But easy. It would be easy.

She looked over at Victor. ‘Let’s get on.’

He said, ‘Aren’t you going to put out an alert? Maybe Brian’s been in an accident. Or worse.’

Adrianna touched his arm — the one not carrying the canister, hooked up to his wrist — and said, ‘Brian’s a New York police detective. He can handle everything and anything that’s thrown at him. If I put out an alert, that means a lot of involvement from a lot of agencies, looking for him. Suppose he’s on a drunk? Or at a strip club? Having a Memphis police SWAT team raid a joint, looking for him… well, the embarrassment would be something else.’

‘If I was missing, I sure as hell would hope you would take it more seriously, Adrianna.’

She started to the jetway, Victor trailing next to her. ‘Victor, if you ever went missing I’d put out an alert within the half-hour. It’s not your nature to be anything but predictable and punctual. Brian is neither predictable nor punctual. I’ll give him one more day to report in before getting the world spun up.’

Adrianna strode down the gentle incline, thinking of what she had just said. And another thing, too, was that it would be easier for all concerned. Final Winter, just days from kicking off, and having Brian out of the picture… that would make it so much simpler.

For two reasons.

The first, of course, was that she didn’t need to have his questioning mind at work, the closer they got to the day.

And the second…

A possibility that she found hard to believe, even in her most private thoughts.

She was falling in love with him.

And that could not be tolerated.

At the open door, leading to the cabin, a male flight attendant smiled and checked her boarding pass.

‘Welcome aboard,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ Adrianna replied, thinking that those were probably the two most honest words she had uttered today.

Brian Doyle looked again at his hands. Soiled red, turning brown as the blood dried.

‘Fuck,’ he said.

He looked up at the street, saw headlights approach. A car passed. And then another.

A third car passed, then made a U-turn.

Could it be?

Blue lights started flashing from the radiator grille.

Luck, he thought, luck of the Irish…

The car stopped and a beam of light came out from a side searchlight, illuminating him and his rental car. He held out his hands and two Cincinnati cops came towards him, flanking him on either side, holding out their flashlights.

One called out, ‘What’s the problem?’

He said, ‘The name’s Doyle. I’m on the Job. I just got jumped and I think I’ve been knifed. Could you get some EMTs over here?’

One of the cops started talking into a portable radio as the other approached, cautious, one hand holding up the flashlight, the other hand on his service weapon. Smart. Don’t trust anybody you don’t know on the street. Anybody.

The second cop said, ‘You got identification, Doyle?’

‘I do. But just so you know, I’m carrying. Nine-millimeter, rear right of my waistband.’

‘All right,’ the second cop said. ‘You just keep your hands where I can see them, and don’t make any sudden moves.’

‘You got it. All right if I bleed?’

‘Bleed away,’ the cop said. ‘Just don’t reach for anything.’

‘Yeah.’

The second cop now joined the first one, and after a brief talk the first cop said, ‘My partner’s going over to see you, to check your weapon and ID. EMTs are on the way. You just stay still. All right?’

Brian said, ‘It’d be easier for him if I stand.’

‘Go ahead. Stand. But that’s it.’

So he stood, feeling dizzy, and then the cop was there, pulling out Brian’s gun and then his wallet and his other thin ID holder, and another confab was underway. Then the first cop whistled and said, ‘You’re with the Feds, then, huh?’

‘On temporary duty.’

The cop’s partner said, ‘I guess. Says here you’re a detective from New York City.’

The sound of an approaching siren grew louder. ‘That’s right.’

The first cop said, ‘Man, you are so far the fuck away from home.’

Brian said, ‘Truest thing you’re going to say tonight.’

After getting home from Dulles Airport, Adrianna Scott collapsed on the living-room couch in her condo, stretched out her legs and closed her eyes, refusing to think about anything for a while. Anything at all. Just keep everything blank. It had been one long day in a series of very long days, and her feet were throbbing. She had them resting on a small pillow, elevated up on the end of the couch. More long days ahead, that was for damn sure… and right now there were decisions to be made, choices to be analyzed, and phone calls to complete.

She looked at her watch. Nearly midnight. Still… it would be nice to take care of this one chore. She went to her soft leather briefcase, pulled out her PDA, looked to the cellar door. She should go downstairs to her homemade bubble, make the phone call by using the stolen CIA laptop.

That would be the safest thing to do, to ensure that maximum security was maintained.

Still… damn it, she was so damn tired.

Back to the couch. She sat down, looked at the phone. Just one phone call. That was all. And what were the possibilities of something untoward happening?

Very, very slight.

And she was so tired. The thought of going down to the cellar, manhandling that huge piece of furniture away from the hiding place underneath the staircase, powering up the laptop, setting up the phone-calling software… ugh.

Adrianna keyed in her PDA, found the number she was looking for, grabbed her cellphone and dialed away.

It rang three times and a woman’s voice answered. ‘CDC, operator two, may I help you?’

Adrianna gave her a four-number extension. Waited.

‘You have reached the Alpha Directory,’ the automated voice said. ‘Please enter the subsequent extension.’

Which she did, entering six more numerals. Then, with a practiced touch, she raised the cellphone slightly from her ear so that the low-pitched and then high-pitched squealing of the encryption devices coordinating their signals didn’t burst an eardrum. The squealing stopped and then a man’s voice answered.

‘McCartney.’

She took a breath. ‘This is Adrianna Scott calling. I’m the director of Foreign Operations and Intelligence Liaison Team Number Seven. Also known as Tiger Team Seven.’

‘Yes.’

She looked to her PDA. ‘You have a shipment ready to be made to the Memphis Airport, under a protocol called Final Winter.’

‘Yes.’

‘My authorization is Bravo Tango Zulu Zulu twelve.’

‘Mark. Repeating, Bravo Tango Zulu Zulu twelve. Go ahead.’

‘That shipment is to be canceled. Stand down and do not deliver. Please repeat.’

‘Message repeat. Shipment is canceled. Stand down and do not deliver packages.’

‘Very good. Scott signing off.’

She powered down her cellphone, felt a tingling in her chest. There. Nothing leaving from the CDC to Memphis. No, ma’am. But oh, there was going to be a delivery there, no doubt about it, and a very special delivery at that.

Adrianna yawned. Time to go to bed. Tomorrow was going to be another busy one.

Something woke up Vladimir Zhukov, and he wasn’t sure what. It was night, somewhere in South Dakota. Or maybe Iowa. He rubbed at his eyes and looked over at Imad. From the glow of the dashboard dials he could see that the Arab boy’s expression was concerned, and he knew what had awoken him. The Arab had the habit of muttering when something wasn’t going right, and Vladimir was sure that was what his subconscious had heard.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘There is a police cruiser following us.’

‘So?’

‘It’s been following us for the last several kilometers.’

Vladimir rubbed at his eyes again. ‘Are you speeding?’

‘Just a little,’ he said. ‘Only a few miles over the limit. But not enough to— shit!’

Vladimir looked at the sideview mirror, saw what had gotten Imad’s attention. Blue flashing lights from the cruiser. Damnation.

Imad started cursing under his breath, and Vladimir said, ‘Pull over.’

‘What?’

‘Pull over, now! What do you think, that we can outrun him in this rig? Pull over, and do it slow and polite.’

For once Imad did as he was told, switching on the turn indicator, downshifting the engine and braking. Vladimir looked around. A long, deserted stretch of highway. It was three in the morning. What a dark hour.

Imad braked the truck to a stop, the cab shuddering slightly as they halted. He reached under the seat and Vladimir held back his arm.

‘No,’ he said sharply.

‘We don’t have much time!’

‘No, I said! Listen, that patrol officer back there, he has called in what he has done to his police unit. They will know that a truck has been pulled over and they will have a description and license plate number. What then, if you shoot him dead?’

‘We get away!’

‘And for how long? Listen, that is a police officer back there. Not some degenerate young people in a Jeep who won’t be missed for days. If that officer is killed and they believe we did it, every police officer in this country will be looking for us. This is not your country or my country. Here, they love their men in uniform. Kill him and we won’t make it to Memphis.’

Imad withdrew his arm. ‘What, then? What do we do?’

Vladimir looked to the sideview mirror. Doors to the cruiser were opening up. Just their luck, there were two of them back there.

‘We wait. We see what they want.’

Imad glanced over at his mirror. ‘They’re coming. You better know what you’re doing.’

‘I do,’ Vladimir said, lying to the boy. ‘I do.’

The phone call that Adrianna Scott had made to the secure CDC facility had been tapped and traced even before she hung up. The particulars of the call — her phone number, the CDC number, duration of the call and key words mentioned — was placed in a routine notification file and sent to a classified internal security mailing list; Among the recipients on the mailing list was one Durlane Foster, an overworked security analyst working for the National Security Agency, who was currently on one week’s medical leave to take care of a prostate problem.

Unknown to Durlane Foster was the fact that as part of his e-mail address, an enhanced BCC — blind carbon copy -program sent a copy of the message to another NSA employee, who had been detached to a program called Foreign Operations and Intelligence Liaison, known by those in the know as Tiger Teams.

That NSA member was Darren Coover, member of Tiger Team Seven.

The phone rang and rang and rang and Alexander Bocks sat up in bed, wondering for a moment just where in hell he was when he realized he was in his big old bed in his big old empty home. He looked at the empty spot near him, which should have contained the sleeping and loving form of his wife, Amy. Poor, dear Amy, who had gone with him through all those stations and deployments, keeping things together with love and good wishes, hardly ever complaining, just wanting to share a life with her man, and upon his retirement, share him 24/7, never to share him with anyone else, just lots of travel and rest and catching up for all those missed meals and appointments because of some foul-up on the flight line…

Dear, sweet, patient Amy, who had been taken away from him just after his retirement, by a carcinoma that had no patience at all.

The phone was still ringing. He looked at the bedside clock, saw it was just past four in the morning, which meant—

Disaster. A crash somewhere. An AirBox jet down, crew dead, cargo destroyed, a major emotional and financial hit and, oh Christ, grab the damn thing.

He picked up the phone. ‘Bocks.’

‘First thing first, don’t hang up.’

‘Don’t hang—Jesus fucking Christ, is that you, Frank?’

‘Yeah, it is,’ said Frank Woolsey, his CFO. ‘Look, don’t hang up.’

Bocks sat up against the headboard. ‘Okay. I won’t hang up. I’ll just sit here and let you hang yourself.’

‘Me? Hang myself? Look, first you don’t answer my phone calls, you won’t see me, you won’t answer e-mail, you won’t—’

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘Busy! I guess the hell you have been busy, settling the labor contract all on your own. Jesus Christ, General, you realize what you’ve done?’

‘Yes.’

Bocks could make out the breathing on the other end of the line. Frank said, ‘I’ve already heard from a number of board members. They are fucking shitting bricks. You’ve put the company in an untenable position.’

‘It’s my company.’

‘Oh, sure, it’s your company, but it also belongs to the stockholders, pal, and the board of directors are there, representing their interests, and if you think they’re going to let you run the company into the ground because of some old concept of loyalty, why, you’re off your rocker. It’s not going to happen.’

‘It’s going to happen, Frank. Just wait and see.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s a new world, General, one that won’t allow you to run this company like your own private air force or something. I’m calling a meeting of the board, and if you’re still running things by the end of the week, I’ll be—’

Bocks hung up the phone. He picked up the base, found the phone wire that led into it from the wall, and pulled the plug. Shut off the light and lay back down, and gingerly, quietly, ran his hand across to the empty space beside him. Some nights, dear Amy would just lie there, listening to him bitch and moan about missing parts, missing personnel, missing directives, or whatever other nonsense he had to put up with, and despite the hour and time, never once had she seemed to mind.

A good woman. He could use her now, to talk to her about what he was doing for the next few days, for he was doing more than just opening the company up to financial ruin because of a dental plan for the union. Now it was much more than that: he was using his aircraft to save his country and his people from some terrible disaster that was approaching.

But now, would an eleven-member board still let him run AirBox? That was going to be the question. And what would happen if his fleet was grounded because of some court injunction, while those terrorists planned their anthrax attack? What then?

His hand stayed on the empty side of the bed as he waited for answers, as he waited to fall back asleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Vladimir Zhukov thought about those four young people back in Wyoming. Had somebody seen them approach the truck as it was being painted? Was it possible that they were being traced? What was going on—

By leaning over he could look into Imad’s sideview mirror and see the approaching police officer come up on the driver’s side. Imad rolled down the window and the officer called up, ‘Your license and registration please.’

‘Certainly,’ Imad replied, and Vladimir was pleased at the boy’s quiet tone. Imad passed over the paperwork through the window and said in a low voice, ‘What now?’

‘We wait.’

Imad snorted and Vladimir checked his own sideview mirror. The other officer was standing there at the side of the road, flashlight in one hand, his other hand resting on top of his service pistol in his holster. What were the options? What was to be done?

‘Well?’ Imad said. ‘He’s going back to his cruiser. What do we do now?’

Vladimir felt his palms moisten. ‘We wait. Nothing has happened yet. We wait.’

So they waited.

Imad said, ‘He’s coming back.’

And Imad’s hand reached down for his pistol.

‘No, not for a moment,’ Vladimir said. ‘Leave it be.’

Imad said, ‘I will give you your moment, but I will not end up in Guantanamo, or in any American jail. Understand?’

Vladimir looked over again. The second policeman was still standing there.

The first one approached the open window. Imad turned awkwardly, still holding his right hand at his side, ready to reach for his pistol.

‘Here you go,’ the policeman said. ‘The reason I stopped you is that you have a taillight burned out on the right side.’

‘Oh,’ Imad said.

‘Here’s a chit, saying we stopped you. You’ve got twenty-four hours to get it fixed. All right?’

‘Sure,’ Imad said.

‘Have a good trip.’

‘Thank you.’

The policeman walked away. Vladimir closed his eyes and said, ‘All right. Leave. Nice and slow. Don’t give them any excuse to stop us again. All right?’

‘Sure,’ Imad said. ‘Stupid fuckers. Didn’t even ask to look in the trailer. What kind of country is this, when the police don’t want a payoff or a cut?’

‘Shut up and drive.’

Imad chuckled as he started shifting gears, and the truck lurched out onto the empty highway. He said, ‘I never thought I’d say what I’m about to say.’

‘Which is what?’

‘That you were right back there.’ Another laugh. ‘If it were up to me, they would both be dead.’

Vladimir folded his arms, closed his eyes. ‘Thankfully, it wasn’t up to you.’

Late morning, Memphis International Airport. Brian Doyle sat in a waiting area near his gate, legs stretched out, resisting an urge to scratch at his chest. It had been one long goddamn night. When the EMTs had gotten to him outside Mamma Garrity’s house, it had turned out to be not as bad as it had first looked. The two EMTs — professional young women who managed to ratchet down his tension with their soft voices — had wiped and cleaned the wound, which had only needed a few butterfly strips. No stitches necessary. They had suggested a trip to the ER but filled as he was with memories of how chaotic urban ERs could be on a busy night he had politely but firmly declined.

But Brian hadn’t declined a ride to the local precinct house, where he had spent several hours going through mugshots of local perps — although mugshots was now an obsolete term, for the head-on photos of criminals were stored on a computer system, which meant just clicking the mouse and watching the grim faces parade by. The exercise had been useless, of course, but it had been a joy to be back in a real police station for a while. The phone calls, the parade of suspects into the precinct house, the foul and fun language of the cops and detectives — it had been bracing, like having your first real drink after a six-month dry period. One of the cops had lent him a clean shirt that actually fit, and all in all it had been a good night, after that tight spot he had gotten in.

One of the detectives in the precinct had shaken his head after learning what had happened. ‘Goes to show you, man like you should always have a vest on, especially when traveling in strange places.’

Good advice. The detective — Joslynn had been his name — had also slipped him his business card and said he would dig up the report on the death of Adrianna’s aunt. ‘Strictly unofficially,’ the detective had said. ‘Paperwork is strangling us nowadays. I’ll give you a ring in a day or two.’

And Brian had said that would be fine. After an early breakfast at a diner outside the airport in Cincinnati he caught a flight back to Memphis to fetch his luggage and here he was, waiting to go back to DC. But that faint taste of police work hours earlier made him want to change his flight to JFK or LaGuardia or even Newark. Anyplace but back to the Tiger Team.

His cellphone started vibrating. Brian picked it up, saw the incoming number, recognized it right away. The Princess, no doubt calling in to see what was wrong with one of her squires. He had ignored all her pagings and her phone calls from yesterday. Today was no doubt payback time, and he could give a shit. With one hand he answered the phone; with the other, he finally scratched at his chest.

‘Yes?’

‘This is Adrianna.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Are you all right?’

Good question. Any answer would be a lengthy one, and Brian didn’t have the energy or the inclination.

‘I’m fine. And you?’

She said, ‘I was asking because I was worried. You weren’t answering your phone or your pager.’

‘That’s right, I wasn’t.’

Adrianna started speaking faster. ‘What we did the other night was special, Brian. It meant a lot to me but I don’t have the time to handle something like that, not now. It may happen again. I hope it does. But the next few days… they are going to be crazy ones, Brian, and no offense to you, none at all, but I have all that I can handle right now. Do you understand?’

He scratched at the bandage again. ‘Sure. I understand.’

He could hear her take a breath. ‘I’m not sure that you do. But do know this… I do care for you. Care for you very much. And I hope you feel the same towards me.’

Another hell of a question. And he would like to ask her about her childhood: why did she bribe her neighbors to present a cover story, and what in hell really did happen to her aunt, all those years ago? But instead he said, ‘I do, Adrianna. And I wanted to leave yesterday on better terms… I’m sorry we didn’t.’

‘I’m sorry, too.’ Another deep breath.

‘I have something important to say to you.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘What you can do for us in the Tiger Team over the next several days… will be minimal, at best. And I say that while admiring and appreciating all that you’ve done for us so far.’

‘All right.’

‘So I’m putting you on leave, Brian. Right now. Go back home, go see your boy, get caught up on things. I don’t plan on seeing you for another week. All right?’

Talk about synchronicity. He’d just left the tender clutches of the Cincinnati Police Department, and now he was getting a Get Out of jail Free card from the Princess. Part of Brian knew that he should talk to her, debate the issue, find out what in hell was going on with her and the Tiger Team… but he was tired and his chest itched and he didn’t want to be in Memphis and he sure as hell didn’t want to be in that concrete bunker in Maryland.

So he said, ‘You got it,’ hung up, and walked across the terminal to an American Airlines ticket counter, where he paid an outrageous amount of money to change his flight from Baltimore to JFK.

The day was certainly looking up.

Adrianna hung up the phone from her office in Maryland. Nicely done. One down, three more to go.

Victor Palmer was standing in his kitchen, staring at the counter, when the phone began to ring. He had been doing that a lot lately, losing himself in thoughts and dark fantasies. He would open up the refrigerator door to find something to eat and would imagine that he was looking at a hospital refrigerator, at little vials of medicines or vaccines, and that would lead into what was going to happen over the next few days, when the vaccine spraying would begin, when the old and the sick and the very young would choke on their own fluids and die… Sometimes he would stand in the shower and stare at the near wall, letting the water run down his back, thinking of the fake showers in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Birkenau, and how, in this world, he was now the one manning the showers for the innocents. But instead of being sprayed with Zyklon-B they were being sprayed with something from a different arsenal of evil and the spraying was going to be done in a spirit of idealism, the sacrifice of the needs of the few for the good of the many…

And the phone kept on ringing.

He felt a little snap as his head shook, as he came back to whatever terra firma he was standing on. He walked over to the counter, picked up the phone.

‘Doctor Palmer.’

‘Victor? Adrianna Scott here.’

‘Oh.’

‘Victor, I have some news for you.’

‘Okay.’

His mouth felt thick, unwieldy. He was not sure what this bitch was calling about, but whatever it was he knew that some day he would probably have to testify in a secret Congressional hearing about how this whole disaster took place, and—

What?

Victor cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry, Adrianna. Could you tell me that one more time?’

‘My pleasure, Victor. Final Winter. It’s been canceled. No flights, no mass vaccinations. It’s standing down.’

‘But… but… I…’

Adrianna’s voice was soothing. ‘I just got word a few minutes ago. I wanted to make sure you were the first to hear it. Homeland Security got a break and they rolled up the Syrian squads that were in country. All of them. Double- and triple-checked, all taken in with their weaponized anthrax. There’s one hundred percent confidence that they’ve been captured.’

‘Oh… oh, please…’ The phone receiver was slippery in his hand.

Adrianna said, ‘I know you’ve been under a lot of pressure, Victor. We all have. But you most of all. I want you to turn off your pager, switch off your phone, and take a week off. All right? I don’t want to see you in the office. Hell, I don’t want you to even think about going into the office. You just take your time and enjoy yourself. Relax. Okay?’

It felt like the kitchen floor was gently quivering under his feet. Oh… how sweet, how sweet…

Adrianna said, ‘Victor? Are you all right?’

He switched the phone receiver to his other hand. ‘All right? I’m great… I’m… I… thank you, Adrianna. Thank you for calling. This is the best news… well, the best news I’ve ever received…’

She chuckled. ‘Glad I could make your day. Now. You do what I told you, all right?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

‘Good. See you in a week.’

And she hung up.

Victor hung up as well, turned — and the next thing he knew he was staring up at the kitchen ceiling. At first he thought he must have slipped, but as he sat up and checked the time he realized that he had fainted.

Which was fine. He got to his feet, swayed some, and pulled the phone jack free. He stumbled into the bedroom, found the pager, and not only switched it off but took the batteries out and threw them in a wicker wastebasket. Then he collapsed into bed and slept for almost twenty hours.

Adrianna looked at her watch. Two down, two more to go, and back home that little automated program that was running on the stolen CIA laptop should have uplinked the signal… now.

Good.

Montgomery Zane was in the parking lot in front of Callaghan Consulting, their Tiger Team home, when the page came in. He toggled the side switch of his pager and read the text message:

So there you go. This time of the month, any three-code group line that began with the letter C and ended with the letter E was legitimate. And the itinerary looked standard. From Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to Lakenheath Royal Air Force Base in Great Britain, and from there to Aviano in Italy, and ending up in Al-Udeid in Qatar. Monty liked Qatar, had a number of friends there, and looked forward to that part of the trip at least.

And what waited for him in Qatar? Well, he would know when he got there. No time to get worried about that particular. All he knew was that he hoped the job was going to be brief and bloody, like that little whirlwind trip last week that had taken him to Britain, Bali and Pakistan. He hoped this trip was a one-fer — in and out with one little mission. These long missions were getting to be a bear…

And speaking of long missions, there was a good chance that he would be overseas when Final Winter started up in a few days. Not a problem, not with the wife and kids now safely tucked away in rural Georgia — and God, wasn’t that a positive comment on the times, when the white wife of a black man and their mixed-race kids would find peace and security in rural Georgia, when just a couple of generations ago they would have been targeted for a beating or a lynching — but there was still a bit of business to attend to.

Monty looked at the pager readout again. ‘Soonest’ was what it said and ‘Soonest’ was what it meant. Which meant leaving here and driving hard-ass to Andrews. He was supposed to have met with Darren Coover this morning, to go over those funny bits of information that he and the NSA guy had gathered on Final Winter and what was — or wasn’t — going down. But he was sure he could talk from Andrews to the little guy, find a secure phone there, and find out more about what was going on.

In the meantime, time to leave.

Monty backed out of the spot and left Callaghan Consulting.

Adrianna felt the little glow of good news starting to mellow through her. Brian was on his way back to his beloved New York. Victor was probably getting drunk or getting laid or just staying in bed, reading those pulp magazines he was so in love with. Monty was going to be on a plane shortly. And Darren… soon enough, she would meet with him and send him on some stupid assignment to Toronto or some such. Then the board would be clear and she would leave here and go back to Memphis, to oversee the installation of the canisters, and she wouldn’t have any worries about what her Tiger Team members might be doing or learning or questioning while she was away.

She reached for the phone to make a call to Darren when there was knock on the door frame.

And wouldn’t you know it, there he was.

Darren Coover stood in her doorway, face set, holding some papers in his hand.

‘Adrianna,’ he said. ‘We need to talk.’

The little glow of triumph was gone.

‘All right… well, my schedule is pretty tight this morning, but maybe we could—’

He shook his head, stepped in. ‘You don’t understand. We have to talk. Now.’

Complications, she always knew complications would come up, but at this very moment…

‘Very good, Darren. Come in and close the door.’

He stepped in, closed the door, and then sat down.

Earlier Darren had been in his office, scratching at his chin, viewing and re-viewing the computer screen before him. Things weren’t making sense, weren’t making sense at all. After his talk yesterday with Monty he had gone back into GATEKEEPER, trying to find out more information about Final Winter. There had been a new reference, from an FBI operative working for AirBox. A routine report to his field office, stating that he had overheard a machinist supervisor talk about something called Final Winter that was going to be implemented at the airfreight company within the next few days. All right, then, that at least made sense. And the fact that he hadn’t been seeing any other Final Winter references hadn’t concerned him all that much, despite what he had told Monty. Lots of classified ops went under different names, depending on what groups were involved. Tiger Team Seven and its members might know the vaccination program as Final Winter, and other agencies involved could call it Ocean Foam or Mountain Breeze or some other damn thing.

Still… where was the urgency? Where were the alerts? Where was the heightened security within the major cities? Why in hell hadn’t Homeland Security bumped up the Threat Level?

Then there was the other thing he had learned, just this morning…

The Princess had been a naughty girl, using her home phone to make a call that should have been secured. Adrianna had contacted a CDC facility in the wilds of northern Alabama that had been cooking up the experimental vaccine for the Final Winter project and she had told them that Final Winter had been canceled.

Fair enough.

But the FBI guy had stated — six hours after Adrianna had made the phone call — that Final Winter was proceeding and that a delivery associated with Final Winter was expected that day.

Hell, the government was slow. The government was always slow! But for something like Final Winter…there was no way any type of delivery was going to take place if the entire operation had been canceled.

And another thing. Monty Zane was supposed to have been here about a half-hour ago. They were going to match intelligence and then go into Adrianna’s office to find out what the hell was going on, and now he wasn’t here. And Victor wasn’t here. And Brian wasn’t here.

So it was up to him. And so off he went.

Now Darren looked over at the Princess. Even though she was well dressed and groomed and made-up she didn’t seem quite right.

‘Adrianna, something doesn’t make sense.’

‘Go on.’

Darren was surprised at how he didn’t feel uncomfortable at what he said next. ‘I have a slight confession to make. I’ve been performing some duties that are above and beyond what’s been required of me.’

Adrianna seemed to try to smile. ‘That sounds like you, Darren. What have you been up to?’

‘I’ve been placing some rogue programs on some of the server systems, trying to enhance the information stream we’ve been able to play with. You know us NSA guys: there’s no such thing as too much information.’

‘True.’

‘One program that I’ve used sends me copies of certain e-mails that have keywords flagged to a mail account I control. This program is called a BCC program. Stands for Blind Carbon Copy — funny, of course, since who in hell uses carbon-copy paper anymore?’

‘Darren—’

‘I’ll get to the point. One e-mail I got in the system overnight was a report filed with the CIA Office of Security. You know what they do, am I right?’

Adrianna seemed to freeze right there in her chair. ‘I do. What did the report state?’

‘It seemed routine. It was… well, I’ll just say it… Adrianna, it was a transcript of a phone call that you made to a CDC facility in Alabama. A facility that is preparing the vaccination canisters. The transcript said that you canceled Final Winter. You had all the proper authorizations and code phrases, and your command was accepted.’

Adrianna was quiet. Darren said, ‘But I’ve got other information, from an FBI operative working undercover at AirBox in Memphis. This report said that something called Final Winter was taking place — he didn’t have any details -and that a delivery associated with Final Winter would be made today. Adrianna… it doesn’t make sense. And other things don’t make sense either.’

‘Like what?’

‘I’ve talked to Monty Zane… and I’ve done other digging. Adrianna, there’s nothing out there that shows any kind of preparedness in anticipation of Final Winter. Border security isn’t on any type of alert. Monty told me that a friend of his, working in a classified border-security group… they’re even allowing vacations and training sessions. I haven’t found anything remotely associated with increased surveillance in any American cities — no one seems to be looking for those Syrian men who are going to attack us with anthrax.’

Adrianna nodded slowly, rolled her chair back from her desk. ‘Who else have you told, besides Monty?’

‘No one,’ Darren said. Then, in a flash that seemed to last a long time, he realized that he should have lied, should have told her anything to protect himself, should have said that lots of other people knew that something wasn’t right with Final Winter, that he had contacted his friends in the NSA and CIA and FBI, that a flying investigative squad was coming right now to check into her. He should have done that, should have done anything, he knew, as Adrianna came at him from around her desk. And punched him square in the throat.

In a small room at a terminal building at Andrews Air Force Base, Monty Zane tried one more time with his secure cellphone, and gave up after another long series of unanswered rings. Darren wasn’t answering his phone or his pager, and calls to his apartment weren’t being answered.

He looked at the cellphone, thought about calling Adrianna. To say what? For one thing, she’d probably want to know why in hell he had been detached again, and he didn’t like going into those swamp arguments. He just did what he had to do. He stood up, clipped the cellphone back onto his belt, and picked up his tote bag. Time to fly.

Monty walked up to a senior airman who was standing by a wooden lectern, examining a clipboard full of papers. The senior airman — wearing camo BDUs — looked up as he approached and said, ‘Help you, sir?’

‘Yeah,’ Monty said. ‘You’ve got a C-20 transport leaving in ten for Lakenheath. I need to be on that aircraft.’

The senior airman shook his head. ‘No can do. That’s carrying a Congressional delegation, complete with wives, staffers, and luggage. Especially luggage. No room.’

Monty nodded, reached into a jacket pocket, pulled out a plastic-sealed embossed card that had his photo and lots of words around it. He silently passed the card over to the senior airman who glanced at the card, glanced again longer, and then — eyes widened — looked up at Monty.

‘Man… you must have had to impress God Himself to get travel authorization like that.’

‘Not God. Just one of his servants on earth.’

‘Maybe so, but it’s good enough.’ The senior airman picked up a hand-held radio, motioned Monty to follow him as they went through an open doorway, out to the flight line. Military aircraft of all types were stationed on the tarmac, as far as the eye could see.

‘Come with me, sir, we’ll get you on that jet. There’s a Congressional staffer there who kept on asking me for tea with honey this morning and pissed me off. I’ll be glad to leave her sorry ass behind.’

Monty shouldered his tote bag. ‘Won’t she put up a fight?’

The senior airman laughed. ‘Who can win a fight against God?’

Adrianna rubbed at her punching hand, glad that Darren had closed the door behind him. Darren was sprawled out on the floor, gurgling and wheezing, his face red. She knelt down next to him, lowered her head close to his.

‘Sorry about that, Darren, but your larynx has been crushed. One of the many talents I learned at Camp Perry. Eventually you’re going to choke to death. It will take a long time and be very painful.’

She leaned in further. ‘My name is Aliyah Fulenz. I am an Iraqi Christian woman, and because your country killed my family many years ago I am going to kill many Americans in just a few days.’

The gurgling and wheezing grew louder. She said, ‘I am doing all this for revenge. For hate.’

She reached out, gently touched his forehead. ‘But Darren… I always liked you, always. And what I am about to do to you, I do out of friendship.’

And with her strong arms she clasped Darren’s head close to her and broke his neck.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The BOLO alert that went out from the Northwest Homeland Security office was distributed, as ordered, to a variety of law-enforcement agencies that fell within the arc that showed how far the Freightliner tractor-trailer truck could have traveled after passing through the border checkpoint at Washington State.

At a South Dakota Highway Patrol substation off 1-90, the incoming alert from the Homeland Security office was faxed to the on-duty dispatcher, who was a replacement officer filling in for a dispatcher who had had to go home sick that evening. This particular dispatcher was a fresh graduate from the South Dakota Highway Patrol Academy in Pierre, and in the hours he was on duty, because he was busy with fielding calls and trying to refamiliarize himself with on-air radio protocol, he did not notice that the fax machine near his elbow was out of paper.

The fax machine would not get refilled with paper until the next shift, several hours later and well after a Highway Patrol cruiser from this particular substation had stopped a Freightliner truck that had a missing taillight and was heading east.

For the last dozen or so kilometers, Vladimir Zhukov had kept his hands clasped tightly together as they at last got closer to the Memphis airport. It was amazing, really, to see how this country had changed so much in the thousands of kilometers they had traveled east. From the Pacific Ocean through the Rocky Mountains, across the deserts and plains and now, in this large city, on paved highways and bridges and overpasses. The traffic seemed heavy and he had a longing, for a moment, for the simplicity and purity that he had known in the wild emptiness of the steppes, working for a cause, nearly alone in the small city that he had grown up in. Such emptiness in which to support the Motherland, the Party, and all the greatness it represented.

He glanced over at Imad, who was driving with what looked like a bored expression on his young face and he said, ‘Isn’t the traffic heavy?’

Imad shook his head. ‘This is nothing.’

‘Nothing?’ Vladimir looked again at the streams of traffic, recalling how seeing even two or three trucks a day back in Russia was a noteworthy event.

‘Ah, nothing,’ Imad said confidently. ‘They may be unbelievers, they may be infidels, and millions of them deserve to die, but they know how to build roads and make them work. To drive — you should drive in Damascus, Russki, then you’d know what bad and heavy traffic is… ah, here we go.’

Then it was up ahead. A magical sign that they had been waiting for, all these days on the road.

Adrianna sat back on her heels on the floor, breathing hard. The cooling body of Darren Coover was on the floor next to her, starting to smell as the bladder and sphincter muscles let loose. Well, that was a fine way to start the morning, she thought. But what else could she have done? Short answer: nothing.

All right, she thought, getting up. Time to clean this mess up. She left her office, locked the door behind her. She made a quick reconnoiter of the other offices. Empty. Except for Stacy and a few support staff upstairs, she had the place — at least this level — to herself. She went down the hallway to the small kitchen, snooped around. There. The walk-in freezer. She undid the freezer door and looked in, suddenly shivering. Part of all that expensive planning to ensure that if they were stuck here for a week or so, at least they would have frozen peas and French fries to fall back on. She walked in, saw what she needed, and then went back to her office.

Unlocked the door, walked in. Darren Coover, staring sightlessly up at nothing. Poor American sodomite. Thought he was so very smart, and in a way he was. He was so very smart at sitting in a safe and secure room in a safe and secure city in a safe and secure country, pretending to be a warrior who was defending his nation against evil. Ah, but if evil is standing right in front of you, alive and breathing and ready to strike at you…then you are helpless. Just a helpless little boy.

She went around to her desk, brought out her office chair. Working quickly, she knelt down next to the body and undid his leather belt. She moved the chair closer to Darren’s body, and lifted the corpse by the armpits. She had to grunt with effort as she managed to get the body to sit in the chair. Then, working with the belt, she strapped him in.

Adrianna stopped, breathing hard. She got behind the chair, put her hands against its back and started pushing it out the door. It was hard going at first, but once she got momentum in her favor she was out of her office and into the hallway.

In the hallway, gaining speed, she made it about a couple of yards when the sound of a chime caused her to look behind her.

The elevator door was beginning to open.

They took the airfreight exit and Vladimir felt again a grudging admiration for the skillful way the boy drove the truck. Imad maneuvered the tractor-trailer truck and its cargo with ease as they got closer to the support buildings. There was a constant roar of jets taking off from the airport, up into the blue Memphis sky. Vladimir followed the trails of some of the jets, thinking to himself that Elvis, one of the few Americans he admired, had once looked up at this very same sky.

‘Where now?’ Imad asked.

Vladimir looked back to the sheaf of papers in his lap, part of the package sent to him anonymously in Macao all those months ago. To think of all the work that their unseen employers had done to bring them here…

‘Well?’ the driver demanded.

‘Up to the main gate,’ Vladimir said. ‘Once we get through the main gate, take your second left.’

‘All right.’

The truck slowed as the traffic grew heavier. All of the vehicles ahead of them seemed to be just like their very own: trucks bringing freight and packages to be shipped elsewhere. Something caught in Vladimir’s throat as he saw the busy traffic, the aircraft overhead, the quality of the roads and fencing and everything else. This was one of the smaller cities in this benighted nation, yet it seemed busier than Moscow had ever been. No wonder Russia had lost.

Imad braked and wiped at his brow. ‘You know what I’m going to do, once we get paid off?’

‘No, what?’ Vladimir asked.

‘I’m going to rent a hotel room and sleep for a day and a night. Take a long shower. Eat room-service food, good food, not that diner and McDonald’s shit we put up with these days. And then go hire two whores. Two whores to entertain me, all day and all night… And you?’

‘Almost the same. But a hotel in a small town. With good cable service, so I can watch all the news channels, when… when things begin.’

Imad said, ‘Then maybe I’ll do the whores first. Just in case.’

‘That’s a thought.’

Imad shifted into gear again. The truck moved forward. He said, ‘What kind of security will they have?’

‘We’ll see, won’t we?’

‘Yeah.’

Another jolting shift, and then a gatehouse. An overweight black woman, wearing a dark blue uniform, carrying a clipboard. Imad rolled down the window, passed over a sheet of paper provided by Vladimir. The woman barely glanced at the truck as she matched the shipping number on the dispatch sheet to the daily printout and then passed the paper back up to Imad. She made a quick flicking motion with her wrist, already looking to the truck behind them.

Imad glanced over, grinned as he shifted into gear again and gave the accelerator a jolt.

They were in.

Vladimir said, ‘Looks like security was great.’

‘Are you joking? The security was nothing!’

It was Vladimir’s turn to smile. ‘The security was great. For us. Up ahead, the second left, like I said.’

When the elevator door started to open, Adrianna dug her heels into the carpeting and pushed the chair carrying Darren’s body down the hallway. Don’t look back, she thought, don’t look back. Don’t look back.

Ahead of her was the kitchen, and there was a jolt as the wheels of the chair passed from the hallway’s carpeting to the tile floor.

Don’t look back, don’t look back.

To the right, the door to the walk-in freezer. She opened the freezer door, went back to the chair, the lolling form of Darren. Then the door started to close.

Damn it!

Adrianna propped the door open with one of the dining-table chairs, and then went back to her own chair. Into the chill air of the freezer. There. Some of the boxes of frozen food were piled so that there was a space a few feet wide at the rear. She undid the belt with cold fingers, jolted the chair forward, and the body of the NSA analyst tumbled to the floor with a loud noise.

Not too loud, she thought. Please, God, not too loud.

Another bit of maneuvering, and then she started to pull her chair behind her. Then she thought better of it.

Dining chair back out into the kitchen, freezer door closed. Adrianna walked to the sink just as—

Stacy Ruiz came in, heels clicking on the floor. She wore a tight yellow dress that emphasized her impressive chest and her auburn hair was down around her shoulders. She yawned, looked at Adrianna as she headed to the coffee maker.

‘How’s it going, Adrianna?’ she asked.

Adrianna’s heart was racing so hard she couldn’t believe Stacy couldn’t hear it. Stacy poured herself a mug of coffee, and Adrianna swallowed. ‘It’s going all right.’

‘Good. Jesus, this place is practically empty. Just you and me and a couple of staff in the back rooms upstairs. Sure is quiet.’

‘That it is,’ Adrianna said.

Stacy took a swallow of coffee, looked over at the closed freezer door. ‘Yeah. Quiet as a tomb.’

On the airfreight access road there was a small pylon, painted yellow and black. AIRBOX, it said, in large letters.

‘What next?’ Imad asked.

‘Hangar one, bay four.’

Imad said, ‘All right. Hangar four, bay one.’

‘No, I said hangar—’

‘Russki, you have no sense of humor. None. I heard you right the first time. Hah.’

Vladimir said, ‘Just drive. No jokes.’

Imad laughed again.

An intersection, signs marking the hangar designations. Imad turned at the sign for hangar one. Other trucks followed them. The sun was starting to set and the sky was a deep reddish purple out to the west. The last day, Vladimir thought. The very last day of this hated place. Now a low, wide hangar was in front of them, a long row of truck bays leading off to the right.

Imad whistled a tune as he made a wide U-turn, and then started backing the truck up to bay four. Vladimir looked at the sideview mirror. It was only now that he realized his legs were trembling. So close. They were so very close. Men were now standing at the open roll-up door. With a hiss of the air brakes, Imad brought the truck to a stop. He left the diesel engine idling. Vladimir looked and noticed that the two truck bays flanking bay four were unattended. Security? Probably.

Vladimir said, ‘Stay here. I’ll take care of it.’

‘Sure, whatever,’ Imad replied.

Outside there was the smell of diesel and aviation fuel. Vladimir walked past the trailer as blue jumpsuited workers started working to unhook it from the truck. Up ahead was a set of concrete steps. He went up and two men stood in front of him. One was squat, muscular, wearing blue jeans and an AirBox sweatshirt. The other man was taller, held himself like a military officer. Vladimir recognized the man. The general who owned the company. Vladimir felt like laughing out loud. A proud member of the military forces who thought they had bested the USSR, forces who were about to be brought to their knees…

‘Your papers,’ the general said.

‘Sir,’ Vladimir said.

He passed over the dispatch and identification documents to the older man. He looked at the paperwork and said, ‘How was your trip from Alabama?’

Just for a moment, the question confused Vladimir. Alabama? Why in the world would he think— Of course. The exhaustion of traveling across the country had muddied his mind. Of course this man would think that he had come up from Alabama.

‘It was fine. Just fine.’

‘Good.’

The general looked at the papers some more, said, ‘Identification, please?’

Vladimir reached into his pants pocket, removed a thin leather folder, passed it over. The general opened it up, looked at the photo inside and at Vladimir, passed it over. ‘Very well, Mr Komanski. Ready to open it up?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Vladimir went to the rear of the trailer, to the electronic lock. Opened up the small plastic door, keyed the combination. There was an audible click as the lock released. One of the jumpsuited men came up and looked over at the general. The tall man nodded. The door rattled up and Vladimir felt his chest tighten. Here we go. The great deception continues.

By now floodlights had switched on. Insects were battering themselves to death against the bright clear glass of the lamps. The interior of the truck was illuminated, revealing rows and rows of black plastic cases, all held in a metal framework.

‘Well?’ the general asked.

Vladimir stepped forward, undid the nearest case. Nestled in the gray foam was a green canister, with input and output valves on each end, and a keyed switch on the side, halfway up the cylinder. The canisters carefully prepared in Asia, carefully painted to match the specifications e-mailed to him by his unknown employers. He walked back to the general and his companion, thinking to himself, death, I hold death in my hands. Death for tens of thousands of people.

He passed over the canister to the general, who took it and gave it to his companion. Vladmir said, ‘Simplicity itself, gentlemen. Two canisters per aircraft. One for each of the two air-conditioning exhaust systems. Input and output valves pre-set to the aircraft’s specifications. Here—’

Vladimir popped open the switch. ‘See what I mean by simplicity? This is how it is activated. Pass this switch, left to right. Everything else is automatic. The radio altimeter arms the canister when the aircraft rises above three thousand feet in altitude. When the aircraft goes below three thousand feet, the canister releases its contents into the atmosphere. Aircrew has nothing to do except fly the aircraft.’

The general nodded, while his companion looked on, his expression grave. Vladimir thought, poor people, you have no idea, no idea at all…

‘Very good,’ the general said. ‘I guess… I guess we’re ready to begin, aren’t we?’

‘Yes,’ Vladimir said. ‘I guess you are.’

The general nodded, and did something that almost caused Vladimir to collapse in laughter. The general stuck out his hand, and Vladimir stared at it. Then he extended his own hand and shook the general’s.

‘You… you did good work,’ the general said. ‘You tell your people I said that, all right?’

‘Yes. Yes, I will.’

Vladimir turned on his heel, went down the steps, and then back to the truck. He got up into the cab and Imad said, ‘Everything fine?’

‘Everything is great. ‘

‘Amazing,’ Imad said.

‘The way of the world,’ Vladimir said. ‘If you have the right-colored vehicle, with the serial numbers and license plates, and the right identification, you can do anything in this country. Anything.’

‘All right. What now?’

‘How about you get us the hell out of here, all right?’

Imad said, ‘You got it, Russki.’

Vladimir rubbed at his tired eyes as Imad drove out of the hangar parking area and then retraced their trip, back to the gate. There were two exits at the gate: TRUCKS WITH CARGO and TRUCKS WITH NO CARGO. Imad went to the second exit and they were waved through, without stopping.

‘Made it,’ Imad said. ‘We made it.’

Vladimir kept on rubbing at his eyes. ‘So we did, boy. So we did.’

Monty Zane stretched out on a chair in a waiting area in a small outbuilding at Lakenheath RAF base in Great Britain, feeling troubled. His hours of work trying to contact Darren had failed. The NSA guy hadn’t answered his cellphone, his home phone, his office phone, or his pager. Monty had tried going through the on-duty NSA desk officer, trying somehow to get hold of Darren, and that approach had failed too.

And Adrianna. No Adrianna either. So what in the hell was going on?

He looked up at the digital clock. His flight to Aviano was due to leave in less than a half-hour. He was set to be on it, heading south, for another mission for his beloved land, another job for those like him who were on the shiny and pointy end of the spear.

But what of the Tiger Team? And what of Darren? The guy said he was going to contact him with additional information about Final Winter and all that, but then his own duty pager had gone off and had sent him across the Atlantic. And in a few minutes he was set to continue his journey south. All the while waiting and not knowing what was going on.

A female Air Force NCO came up to him, her nametag reading BOUCHARD. She said, ‘You’re on the Aviano flight, sir?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Time to board, then, sir.’

‘Very well.’

Monty got up, slung his duffel bag over one shoulder, and looked back at the clock and at the flight desk.

He didn’t like a damn thing that was going on.

Adrianna stood in her condo unit in Maryland, looking around it for the very last time. Her luggage was at her feet. She was traveling light: just a few changes of clothes, some books, and yes, just one more thing. She gazed at the mantelpiece where her framed photo of her parents rested, hidden behind that Sears portrait shot of her and her auntie. Poor auntie. Another sacrifice made, when auntie began to ask too many questions about how Adrianna had gotten from Iraq to America, too many questions about what she intended to do once she was out of school. By then, she’d had a grand idea of what was ahead for her, and even at that young age she knew that auntie would never hold up against any background check from the FBI or CIA or NSA or wherever she intended to go to work.

So her auntie had to die. So be it.

Another glance around her condo. In the basement was her bubble and the stolen laptop. She had no use for it now. Archeologists from some future time could have an orgy of investigation, if they ever got here, to dig into the laptop and find the years of work that she had carefully documented and executed, all those years of clandestine work, to conceive Final Winter, to prepare for Final Winter, and now, just days away, to see Final Winter finally, finally happen.

One more thing to pack.

Adrianna reached up to the mantelpiece, to the photo, and perhaps she was nervous, or perhaps her hand was shaking, but instead of holding on to the photo she picked it up clumsily and it fell on the floor, the frame cracking.

Now they were on a rural road, about a half-hour out of Memphis, following another set of directions. Vladimir had a small flashlight, was calling out left or right or straight on to Imad. The truck felt odd without the heavy trailer behind it, like a draft horse suddenly free from its wagon.

‘All right,’ Vladimir said. ‘Take a left at the dirt road, coming up.’

Imad did just that, and the headlights illuminated the narrow dirt lane. Branches whipped at the fenders and windows as they surged ahead. Then the dirt road widened into an empty space in the woods. A dark blue Ford Explorer was parked at the far side. Imad said, ‘Once again, our secret bosses have pulled through.’

‘Yes, they have. Let’s hurry up.’

Imad pulled the truck up to the Ford, left the engine running and the lights on as Vladimir jumped out of the cab. He went over to the SUV, went to the rear tire and felt up against the fender. There. His hand emerged with a key, which he held up so that Imad could see it. Imad honked the horn in response. Vladimir went to the Ford, unlocked the door, climbed in and started up the engine. Their instructions were to wait for a day, possibly two, to ensure that all was in place and that the final payments to their bank accounts were made. He came out as Imad shut off the diesel engine and emerged from the Freightliner, carrying his belongings. Vladimir watched him carefully as he put his belongings into the Explorer. Vladimir followed shortly, carrying his own bags. Imad made to go into the Ford when Vladimir said, ‘The truck. I forgot the paperwork. Could you get it? Please?’

Imad shrugged, went back to the Freightliner. As he did that, Vladimir ducked into the Explorer, looking, looking, looking, and there it was. The small leather case. He opened the case and grabbed what was in it, just as—

Imad was there, a folder of papers in his hand. He looked confused.

‘What… what are you doing?’

‘Showing you that I do know how to kill, boy,’ Vladimir said. And he shot him three times in the chest with his own pistol.

Imad fell back, the paperwork flying from his hand. Vladimir strolled over and, just to make sure, he placed the muzzle of the pistol against the boy’s forehead and pulled the trigger again.

‘And if you didn’t hear me before, fuck you,’ he said.

Vladimir picked up the papers, walked around and picked up the four empty cartridge shells, and then went to the Ford Explorer, ready to leave this place, this state, this country.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Two days after flying back from Memphis, in the laundry room of his small apartment building in Rockaway, Queens, Brian Doyle walked back and forth, listening to the comforting sound of his Highland bagpipes, echoing among the quiet washing machines and dryers. The sound was good in the basement, the drones echoing off the thick plaster walls, the keening sound of the chanter cutting through the steady tone of the drones.

He walked back and forth at a slow pace, going through some of his favorites, starting with the quick marches -’Highland Laddie’ and ‘42nd Black Watch Highlanders Crossing the Rhine’ and ‘Heroes of Vittoria’ — and then a few slowsteps, like ‘Skye Boat Song’ and ‘Blue Bells’ and ‘Sleep Dearie Sleep’ — and as he was getting ready to start another round, there was someone there, standing by the doorway, a grin on his face, slowly clapping his hands’.

Brian let the mouthpiece fall from his mouth, snapped the bagpipes out from underneath his arm. Standing in front of him was his partner, Jimmy Carr.

Jimmy said, ‘Welcome back to the world, partner.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Guess I missed you when you checked in at the house.’

‘Guess you missed me ‘cause I didn’t show up,’ Brian said.

‘Hah. Goofing off?’

‘Time I’ve had these past months, I deserve all the goofing off I can get. And then some.’

Jimmy went over to a low-slung dryer, sat up on it, folded his arms. ‘So how come you’re not back on the job?’

Brian shrugged. ‘Like I said, I needed the time.’

‘Time to heal? Heard you got cut in Cincinnati.’

‘How in hell did you learn that?’

‘I’m a detective. It’s my job to detect, to learn things. Like my partner, who’s been taken away by the Feds, found himself at the wrong end of a knife in Cincinnati. Jesus. Cincinnati. If you’re going to die, that’s a hell of a place to die in.’

‘True.’

‘Next time be more careful, huh?’

‘Sure,’ Brian said. ‘Next time.’

‘Seen your boy yet?’

Brian grinned. ‘Last night. And later today. It’s good to see him…But his mother, though…’

Jimmy laughed at that and said, ‘So why in hell did you come back?’

Brian went over to an idle washer, gently placed his bagpipes down. The bag collapsed a bit, making a sighing noise through the drones, sounding like an old dog trying to relax. Brian said, ‘I guess I got tired. Guess I got fired.’

‘So. What were you working on before you got fired?’

‘Classified.’

‘Boy, am I surprised to hear that. Did you like it?’

‘Nope.’

‘Then how come you’re not back on the job? Hey, remember that car-chopping case we were working on, before you left? The Sanchez brothers?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, it’s been to court and back. Their mother gave them up. Can you believe that? So much for maternal feelings.’

Brian leaned back against the washer, said nothing, Jimmy watched him. Jimmy said, ‘All right. So you don’t want to talk about the job. And you can’t talk about your new job. Classified and all that crap. So what was going on with your Fed job that you can tell me, partner?’

Brian folded his arms. ‘Thing is, on the job, you know that most of the people you meet out on the street, they’ve got an agenda, they’re slinging bullshit, not telling you the truth, hiding stuff from you, all that. That’s part of the job. But the Fed job… it’s something when the people you’re working with, they’re the ones slinging bullshit, they’re the ones you can’t trust. Hell of a thing.’

‘That why you left?’

Brian thought about what he had been doing in Cincinnati, unearthing all those questions about Adrianna, about her past, about the death of her aunt, about the payoffs to her neighbors… A lot of questions to be answered. But when he had been offered the chance to leave, he had jumped at it.

Like a tired and scared rookie, seeing his first body.

Running away.

‘Good question.’

Jimmy said, ‘Years with you, I think I can figure out what’s going on.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I think you’ve got unfinished business back there. I think you wanted to leave but something’s back there, calling you. True enough?’

Brian looked at the cocky face of his partner, thought for a moment, and picked up his bagpipes. ‘Request time. What do you want to hear?’

“‘Amazing Grace”,’ Jimmy said, grinning.

‘Fuck you,’ Brian said.

‘Didn’t know that was a bagpipe tune.’

‘Lots of things you don’t know, for a detective.’ And he started playing ‘Teribus’, trying, just for a moment, to ignore the truth that his detective partner had been slinging his way.

At 11:05 p.m. the night before the scheduled departure of the canister-loaded aircraft, on a catwalk above one of the three maintenance hangars that AirBox leased, Alexander Bocks stood with Randy Tuthill, looking down at the organized chaos below them. Off to the left and right, MD-11 cargo jets with the yellow and black AirBox markings — and, a secret to all in the company save for a few, it was dear Clara, his wife, who had come up with the colors and logos, back when the company was two old 707s, rescued from an Arizona boneyard — and people were hard at work underneath all of them. People. His people! Scaffolding had been set up mid-fuselage, to gain access to the air-conditioning packs, and it had been an amazing process to see. The big jets had been towed in with the small tractor carriers, and machinists and maintenance workers had swarmed around them like the proverbial ants on a sugar cube. And when it was finished, each jet was wheeled out the other side of the hangar, and another jet, parked outside on the tarmac, was wheeled in.

Bocks slapped Randy on the back. ‘I’ve seen the work orders and routing sheets. Your folks are an hour ahead of schedule! An hour! Christ on a crutch, Randy, they’re doing a hell of a job.’

Randy folded his big hands, leaned against the catwalk railing. ‘Treat your people right, and give them an impossible job to do, and nine times out of ten they’ll pull through for you, General.’

‘Damn glad to hear it.’ Bocks checked his watch. ‘At this rate, we’ll have the right amount of aircraft ready for the mission, and we’ll be ready by the time for first flight. Two a.m. If nothing screws up.’

Randy didn’t reply, so Bocks repeated himself. ‘Like I said, if nothing screws up.’

His friend and machinist said, ‘Sorry to tell you, General. Looks like a screw-up is approaching.’

Bocks turned and saw his CFO, Frank Woolsey, coming towards them, face red with anger, one hand tightly clenched around a business-sized manila envelope.

Bocks said, ‘Hold onto your balls, Randy. This isn’t going to be pretty.’

‘Holding my balls don’t sound too pretty, either, but I’ll do what I have to do.’

In her hotel room at 11:10 p.m., Adrianna Scott put the picture of her family — still hidden behind the poorly repaired frame — on the small round table in her hotel room. She had spent just a few minutes looking at papa and mama, remembering. Her favorite collection of books was lined up next to the quiet television, on a low shelf next to a sliding glass door that led out to a waist-high balcony. For the past three days, while she hadn’t been over at AirBox checking on the progress of the canister installation, she’d spent most of her free time on the balcony, looking over Memphis, seeing the aircraft take off and land at the airport. Watching the daily waltz of aircraft movements, feeling excited at the stage she had set for the wonderful event that was going to take place in just a few hours.

Now she looked at herself in the room’s mirror. Presentable. That was all. Just presentable. She could not believe how tired she was. Ever since coming back to Memphis, after the death of Darren and the shunting aside of Victor, Monty and Brian — and truth be told, how often had she thought of that strong man’s tender touch these past few nights? — she had hardly slept at all. The only reason she was coherent was because of a CIA-issued drug cocktail that allowed her to rev on for a few days at peak performance despite the exhaustion she was now experiencing.

But it was close. Oh so close. Just one more session with the AirBox boys and in just a few hours the jets would be taking off to bomb the heartland of this country, the very first time it had been bombed since a few futile efforts by the Japanese more than a half-century ago. And she purposely didn’t count 9/11 and the few spastic attempts that had followed. She and the Japanese of the 1940s had one thing in common: an overwhelming desire to see the death and destruction of America.

Adrianna grabbed a light jacket, looked again in the mirror. The CIA cocktail was still working, but Jesus, there would be a price to pay once this was over. Two days of bed rest, if not more, while the body recovered… And then something struck her. One decision she had yet to make.

For where should she go after the aircraft took off? The continental United States was not going to be a particularly fun place to be within the next twenty-four hours, and she had no desire to be stuck here while Mexico and Canada — panicked about what was happening to their north and their south respectively — closed the borders. So where to go in the next few hours? Mexico or Canada? Canada had better government, better amenities, but in Mexico you could get things done quickly, especially certain illegal things, by the judicious passing of folding money to the right people.

Still, she would decide shortly. And she knew it would only be a temporary arrangement in any case, for she had no doubt that in a couple of weeks the entire North American landmass, from Acapulco to the Beaufort sea, wouldn’t be a particularly fun place to be either. France, perhaps. Provence. Nice weather, great food, and even if the politics were self-centered and corrupt, well, at least France had never murdered her family.

She looked at her bag on the bed, ready to be packed when she got back from a meeting at the airport. Her very last meeting, ever.

Adrianna went out of her hotel room, shutting the light off behind her.

At his condo unit at 11:30 at night, Victor Palmer was playing music from the late 1930s, swing band stuff — he couldn’t have identified who was playing what, for all he cared for were the sounds, not the composers or the bands — as he went through his Doc Savage collection, leafing through the brittle pages of the pulp magazines, trying to imagine himself alive and well during those magnificent times. Oh, he knew that the times weren’t that special — the Great Depression was roaring along and the black clouds of fascism and communism were looming fast over the horizon — but there was just such an innocence highlighted in these pages. The diplomas by mail. The truss supports. The pamphlets that promised ‘secrets of the ages’.

And, of course, the stories, the grand, brawling, pulse-pounding, improbable and wonderful stories of Doc Savage and his great adventures. Victor found himself sighing with pleasure as he turned the pages, saw the rough illustrations, and breathed in the unique scent of the old pulp paper. To have been alive back then, to have been innocent of the Bronze Warrior’s exploits and to have seen them fresh, month after month.

Ah, it had been pure delight. A few days ago the Princess had given him a week off, and he was enjoying every single minute, and during all those hours the phone jack had stayed unplugged, and the batteries had remained removed from his pager and government-issued cellphone.

Victor Palmer was currently living in 1935, and he had no plan to leave it anytime soon.

Alexander Bocks felt himself draw up to his full height as his CFO roared up to him. Woolsey started speaking before the ambient noise died down so the first thing Bocks could hear was ‘…fuck you doing?!?’

Bocks leaned into Woolsey, saying, ‘Say again, Frank?’

‘I said, what the fuck are you doing?’

Bocks said, ‘Working. And what are you doing, besides gumming up the works?’

‘The works?!? You think I’m gumming up the works? Besides what you did the other day with the labor contract… what the hell is going on now? I’ve checked the maintenance schedule. You had six aircraft scheduled all week for maintenance. Six! So how come you’ve had thirty-plus airplanes in there in the past three days? The overtime budget alone has been blown for the quarter. Already! And what the hell is so vital that you had to have thirty planes cycled through in three days?’

‘Something important,’ Bocks said.

‘And what’s that?’

‘Important. That’s all I’m going to say.’

‘Fine,’ Frank said. ‘And this is all I’m going to say. I’m out of here and on the phone to a majority of the board of directors, and in a half-hour, you’re out and the locks are put on everything. AirBox isn’t going to be yours in an hour, and everything’s grounded. Got it? Everything’s grounded. I’ve got a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders and the board, because you’ve lost it. Lost it big time.’

Frank spun around and stamped away so hard over the catwalk that the floor grille rattled. Bocks looked over at Randy, who was looking right back at him. Randy came over and said, ‘Can he do it?’

‘Yeah. He can. Hate to say it.’

Randy said, ‘In less than two hours, you’ve got to start dispatching aircraft. You got any suggestions?’

‘No. Do you?’

Randy said, ‘Yeah. Let me and a couple of guys take care of him. Until the flights are gone.’

‘There’ll be hell to pay.’

Randy said, ‘In a few days, we’re going to be attacked by anthrax. And the only way to save this nation is to get those planes down on the floor out the door. Right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then we’ll do it,’ Randy said.

‘You sure?’

‘I’ve flown this long with you, General. I’ll see it through. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a CFO to catch.’

Bocks watched his former Chief Master Sergeant stroll purposefully off the catwalk, and then he shifted his gaze down to the hangar floor. His people. All of them. Working to defend what was right.

He checked his watch. Time was still slipping away.

It was near midnight when Brian Doyle looked out the window of the descending American Airlines aircraft over Memphis. His stomach felt sour and there was a sour taste in his mouth too. It had taken a while to get here, but he hoped it would be worth it. From New York to BWI and now to Memphis. He had spent a couple of hours at the Tiger Team installation in Maryland that was staffed only by a couple of support people, picking up a few things and trying to get to talk to the other team members. But Monty was gone and neither Darren nor Victor answered their phones or pagers. And the Princess was here, in Memphis.

So Memphis was where Brian went.

The ground seemed to rise to meet the plane, and there was just the quickest thud-thud as the aircraft landed. He made his way through the departing passengers, carrying a soft black duffel bag, remembering the last time he’d seen Adrianna, the time he’d spent in Cincinnati, and the touch and taste of her flesh…

He was angry at himself. Letting the little man overrule the big man.

Typical male.

Outside the terminal, Brian got a taxi, gave the cabbie the address, and sat back, the duffel bag across his lap.

At 12:05 a.m., Deputy Sheriff Kyle Thurgood of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department hesitated for a moment, sitting in front of a computer terminal at a substation where he worked. Before him on the screen was a digital photo of a dead man, found late yesterday afternoon in a turnoff from a country road about six miles from where he was sitting. The young guy — Arab, Jew, Mediterranean, Mexican, who the hell could tell — was a homicide victim, and even with Thurgood’s minimal experience on the job that had been an easy call. Three to the chest and one to the forehead sure in hell hadn’t been a suicide. Thurgood hadn’t been the lead investigator on the case — he hadn’t even been part of the investigating squad. He had been working perimeter security, just making sure that the media and the curious didn’t trample in, destroying whatever traces of evidence might have been there. Of course, with a goddamn Freightliner parked there it sure didn’t seem like it would take too long to figure out why this guy had been taken to that place and murdered.

But… there was one more thing. Before being relieved, Thurgood had snagged a photo of the dead guy with a small Olympus digital camera, something…well, ‘souvenir’ wasn’t the right word, but he wanted to have some sort of memento from his very first homicide. And coming back to the station he had had another thought. The department two months ago had gotten a directive from Homeland Security, about some new security initiative or something. Called the Physical Characteristic Comparison Program — or Characteristic Physical Program for Comparison, who the hell could remember — it requested that all law-enforcement agencies submit digital headshots of certain ‘individuals of interest’ so that they could be compared with whatever files the Feds had on hand. There were a whole lot of definitions that made up an individual of interest, and one that Thurgood remembered was an open homicide of an individual with no accompanying identification or notable physical characteristics.

So. A dark-skinned guy with no ID, next to a vehicle whose license plates didn’t match and had no paperwork or registration… that seemed to fit the profile pretty well. But when Thurgood had suggested to his shift commander that it should be followed up, the shift commander had looked at him and said, ‘Son, our boss is up for re-election this fall, and you want to give his ACLU opponents ammunition like this? Screw that shit… we got enough to do.’

Which was true. Yet… Thurgood felt funny about what was back up there. Theft? Hijacking? What in hell had happened up there in that turnaround? He knew what he should do. Close the file and go home. Forget it. Not his case. Not his problem.

He got up from the desk, reached down, whispered, ‘Ah, fuck it,’ and sent an e-mail to a Homeland Security Office contact, complete with attached photo.

Thurgood left, went to the locker room, got into his civvies. Just as he was heading out the locker-room door to the station’s parking lot, it seemed as though every phone in the building started to ring.

Adrianna came onto the floor of the maintenance hangar at AirBox. It was nearly one a.m. Past the entrance into the hangar there were three offices off to the left. The door to the first one was closed, and over the noise of the machinery and ventilation equipment she could hear people shouting. She couldn’t make out the words, but she sure could make out the emotions. Somebody was extremely upset.

The door suddenly opened. She stepped back. The General stepped out, his face flushed. Adrianna could make out a tumble of bodies behind him, gathered in one corner of the office, and then the door was shut.

‘Miss Scott,’ he said.

‘General,’ she said. She gestured at the closed door. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Nothing you should worry about.’

Something fell over in the office. ‘Really?’ she asked.

‘Let’s just say a few machinists are having a frank and open discussion with my chief financial officer. What can I do for you?’

Adrianna said, ‘Just one last status check.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘From what I know, we’re not going to make the schedule.’

Oh, God, no, she thought. Her feet seemed to merge with the cement floor.

Then the General smiled.

‘We’re ahead of schedule. First flight due to take off at two a.m., followed by thirty-nine others, at sixty-second intervals. Sound good to you?’

‘Sounds… sounds great, General.’

‘Good. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to follow up on a few things.’

She shook the General’s hand, idly thought of how long he would live when this was all over, and then she said, ‘The same here. I’ll be back east by the morning, monitoring your aircraft, monitoring the efforts to capture the terrorist teams before they strike. Thank you again for what you’ve done, General. You’ve done a great service to your nation.’

The General went back to the closed door. ‘Service not done yet, Miss Scott. Have a good night.’

‘You, too, sir.’

And when Adrianna left, she felt as light as a feather.

At the Northwest Homeland Security office, Jason Janwick looked over his people, looked down again at the printout on the conference-room desk. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just to make sure we got this straight, the Yemeni boy who’s been on our watch list has been found dead outside Memphis. Three to the ten circle, one in the forehead. Think somebody was pissed at him?’

Some smiles from his crew. Janwick said, ‘What does this tell us?’

His new girl from Customs looked around, as if to see if anybody else was going to step up to the plate. Tanya Mead said, ‘Silence.’

‘Go on.’

‘Somebody wanted the boy silent. Somebody wanted to make sure he didn’t talk about what he was doing there, what he was up to, that sort of thing.’

‘Suspects?’

Another voice from the other side of the table. ‘His companion. The Russian.’

‘Simple. But probably true.’

Janwick drew a hand through his thin hair. Another late night in a series of late nights. What had to be done to protect this country.

‘Any word on the trailer that was supposed to have been attached to that Freightliner?’

‘No, sir,’ came the answer.

‘Lots of things we still don’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t know for certain why the Yemeni got whacked, though we do have our suspicions. Don’t know where the Russian is. Don’t know where the cargo went. Those are the unknowns.’

Those quiet, curious faces, looking at him for guidance. He took a breath. ‘But this is what we do know. We know that the Yemeni — with links to al-Qaeda — crossed into this country illegally nearly a week ago. We know the Yemeni crossed the border in the company of a Russian scientist with biowarfare experience, whose past history includes working with unsavory types in Southwest Asia. We know they crossed the border with a trailer filled with something that they didn’t want examined by Customs. We know the trailer is now missing. Conclusions?’

‘Biowarfare attack,’ came a voice from the other end of the table.

‘Sure,’ Janwick said. ‘But where? Memphis? What does Memphis have besides Graceland?’

‘Cargo,’ came another voice. ‘Lots and lots of cargo. Every major air freight company in the nation has its hub there. DHL, FedEx, AirBox…you name it.’

Then there was a buzz of voices, as scenarios were presented, argued, debated. One voice — Logan, an ex-Marine recon who had lost an arm in Baghdad some years back -said, ‘Sounds like an attack on the airport, chief. Remember how DC was in such a cluster-fuck back in ‘01 when they thought a couple of post office centers and the Senate mail room was contaminated? What do you think would happen if all of the airfreight in the nation got contaminated somehow? Christ, the stock market would crash in a heartbeat.’

More discussion and Janwick raised his hand. ‘All right. Our place isn’t to find all the answers. Just the right one. And the right answer is that the evidence is showing that something is going to hit the airport in Memphis. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. My recommendation is a priority contact to Memphis Airport. Ground and seal, until that missing tractor-trailer unit or the Russian is located. BOLO for the Russian dispatched a hundred-mile radius from Memphis. Any questions?’

No questions.

‘Good. Let’s start making the calls.’

Jason Janwick looked at the clock. It was 10:10 p.m. -1:10 in the morning in Memphis.

CHAPTER THIRTY

At the AirBox dispatch center at the Memphis Airport, Carrie Floyd looked up from her early-morning paperwork to see her co-pilot approach. ‘Looks like we’re going to the Great Northeast today, lady.’

‘Really? Where?’

‘Boston, Massachusetts. It’s not London, but it’ll do.’

‘Sure will,’ she said with a smile. ‘If we’ve got time, I’ll buy you lunch at the waterfront. Fresh Maine lobster.’

He looked around the room, as if to see if they were being watched. They weren’t.

‘Is this a regular lunch, or I-plan-to-say-yes-to-your-offer lunch?’

She smiled, went back to her paperwork. ‘You’ll see when we get there.’

‘Fine, Carrie. Looking forward to it.’

She checked the time. It was 1:25 a.m. Just over a half-hour to takeoff.

Adrianna unlocked the door of her hotel room, stepped inside, and froze.

Brian Doyle was sitting in a chair, arms folded across his chest.

‘Hey,’ he said

‘Hey yourself,’ she said. ‘How did you get in?’

‘Through the door.’

‘Don’t be funny, Brian.’

‘Wasn’t,’ he said. ‘It’s amazing what you can do with an NYPD detective’s shield, a Federal ID, and a convincing story.’

‘What kind of story?’

‘That you were my fiancée. And that I wanted to surprise you.’

Adrianna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘That’s a hell of a story.’

‘Sure is,’ he said, his face expressionless. ‘And speaking of stories, Adrianna, why don’t you tell me yours?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Talk to me about Cincinnati. Why your school records are missing. Why your neighbors were paid off to help spread a cover story about you. And how your aunt was murdered.’

The phone call from the Homeland Security Office in Washington State to have the Memphis Airport shut down and to prevent any entry from outside traffic was routed to a communications office at the main Homeland Security Office in Washington DC. Due to the nature and classification of the phone call, it had to be approved by the overnight communications supervisor before being sent along to Memphis. The overnight communications supervisor had been on the job for three days. Uncertain of her authority for shutting down the Memphis Airport, she started making phone calls to numbers on her contact sheet, each phone call taking approximately five minutes.

Brian could tell that he had scored by the way Adrianna’s eyes seemed to flinch. But she was good, the way she recovered so quickly. ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘I mean this,’ he said. And I’m probably violating a half-dozen regulations by telling you this, but it has to be said. One of my roles within the Tiger Team was being a rat, Adrianna. Someone who investigates the squad. A duty assigned to me by the Director. “Who will guard the guardians?” was his motto for me, and my job was to look at the background of the members. I checked out Victor and I checked out Darren, and except for a few odds and ends they were clean. But not you, Adrianna. There are questions. Questions that bugged me so much I came back tonight to figure it out. Like Mamma Garrity. Your neighbor. Who claims she was paid a hundred dollars a month by you, to pass on a cover story to those doing background checks when you applied to the CIA. Care to explain that story, Adrianna?’

Adrianna’s expression seemed shaky. She rubbed at her eyes with both hands and said, ‘I’m sorry…this is coming at me so fast… I… I have to go to the bathroom, Brian. Honest. Please wait for me. I’ll… I’ll tell you everything when I get out.’

And she turned her back to him, and went into the room’s bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Brian stood up, waited.

Once the permissions had been granted and accepted, the phone call from the Homeland Security Office in Virginia went out to the night-shift manager at the Memphis Airport. At the time the phone call was made, the night-shift manager was off on the flight line, overseeing an accident investigation that had begun an hour earlier when a United Airlines flight had clipped the top of a catering truck. He had left strict instructions with his administrative staff that he was not to be disturbed, ‘even if the goddamn governor calls’.

The administrative aide who took the phone call wasn’t sure if an urgent message from Homeland Security was as important as the governor’s office, but he didn’t want to face the wrath of the manager twice in one shift.

So the call was written up and placed on the manager’s desk.

More minutes slipped away.

Adrianna looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her stomach felt as if it was filled with liquid cement. Her legs were shaking. She checked her watch. Not much time, but Brian… he could not be allowed to ask her any more questions, could not be allowed to have any chance to make any phone calls or do anything.

She ran the faucet, splashed some cold water on her face, and then flushed the toilet.

Then she went to the door.

Carrie Floyd was now in the cockpit, doing a pre-flight check. So far, so good. Weather was wonderful, CAVU -ceiling and visibility unlimited — and she looked forward to a quick trip to Boston. Sean was at her side, saying, ‘We’re 107 today…AirBox 107. Got it?’

‘Gotten.’

A touch from his hand to hers. She didn’t look up. ‘Later, tiger. Later.’

‘Sure, chief, whatever you say.’

‘Good.’

Brian waited for Adrianna, stood up and looked around the room. Some of her favorite books seemed to be there. He tilted his head, checked out the titles. Art History of the Medieval World. Romanesque Architecture of the Twelfth Century. Gothic Cathedrals in Medieval France. So on and so forth. Her very first love. He ran his fingers across the spines of the books, remembered looking at them back at her condo. Yet… there seemed to be something off. Something was missing.

What was it?

He looked at the framed photo of Adrianna and her aunt. A cute photo, the two of them wearing matching outfits. He picked up the frame, looked closer at the photo. Nice. But the death of her aunt…

Something was pressing against his finger.

He tilted the photo, saw something poking out between the thick frame and the matte on the back. The edge of a piece of paper. He tugged at it with his fingernail, heard the bathroom door start to open.

Adrianna went through the open bathroom door, saw Brian looking at the photo frame. She strode to her overnight bag where it lay on the floor.

The piece of paper was photo paper. It slid out and now Brian held it in his hand. There was movement as Adrianna came out of the bathroom. He didn’t look at her. He looked at the photo. It showed a woman and a young girl, sitting in a formal pose on a couch, with a man behind them. The girl… a much younger Adrianna Scott. Standing behind the couch was a man, and the man was wearing a uniform, a uniform…

Brian recognized the uniform, recognized the flag patch on the shoulder.

Iraq.

The man was an Iraqi officer of some sort.

Adrianna was sitting in front of him.

Her father?

Supposedly dead in a car accident with her mother.

A young Adrianna, sitting with her Iraqi parents…

Her dead Iraqi parents.

And then it came to him.

The missing book.

The Army That Never Was.

About General George S. Patton and his hoax against the Germans.

A wartime hoax.

War.

Adrianna Scott, working for the CIA, head of Tiger Team Seven, head of the Final Winter project, was from Iraq.

Her dead parents.

Holy shit.

He looked back and Adrianna was standing near the bed, holding a pistol in a two-handed grip, looking right at him.

Adrianna said, ‘I’m sorry it came to this.’

Brian moved away from the table, was now by the open door leading outside to the balcony.

She moved forward. He backed away, letting the photo of her and her parents drop to the floor. He said, ‘Adrianna, look, this can be handled, I’m not sure what—’

Adrianna moved even closer. Brian was now on the balcony.

In all his years on the job, Brian had been in some tight places before. As a uniformed officer, he had been in a radio patrol car that had been broadsided by a drunk driver at two a.m. on East 87th Street. As an undercover narcotics officer, he had wrestled with a couple of drunk Columbia University students at a subway stop on 125th Street. And as a detective second class, he had fallen down a flight of stairs in a tenement building after a fight broke out over some guy who he and his partner were trying to serve a warrant on. Not to mention the little scuffle the other day in Cincinnati.

But he had never been in a position like this, the wet-pants option, facing down somebody holding a piece on him. Never.

He tried to catch his breath. ‘Adrianna…’

She took another step toward him. ‘You know those movies where the criminal spends fifteen minutes explaining to a cop why he or she is doing what they’re doing? This isn’t one of those movies. But I’ll tell you this: my name is Aliyah Fulenz, I am an Iraqi Christian woman, and in a few short hours I will destroy your nation.’

Brian had opened his mouth to say something when there were flashes of light, something struck his chest twice with the force of a telephone pole swinging at him, and there was darkness and then nothing.

Adrianna was surprised at how easy it was. Two shots to his chest and Brian fell back, fell back, and then struck the railing, and—

Was gone. Just like that. Over the edge of the balcony -Brian was gone.

She lowered the pistol. Looked at the floor, picked up the spent shells, tossed her family photo into her bag, threw in the books, and then left the room.

She thought she heard sirens. She didn’t care.

It was set in stone. Nothing could stop her tonight.

Nothing.

Carrie Floyd got a taste of the MD-11’s power as she advanced the throttles slightly to taxi across the ramp, heading to the departure runway. In his co-pilot’s seat, Sean said, ‘Nice weather later today in Boston. Perfect for lunch. And other things.’

‘And other things?’

‘Like a yes,’ Sean said. ‘You do know how to say yes, don’t you?’

Carrie smiled. ‘Reminds me of a story I heard once.’

‘What’s that?’

‘About President Calvin Coolidge. Old Silent Cal. Supposedly, at some state dinner or function, a society woman was sitting next to him. She said to him, “Mister President, I made a bet with a friend that I can get you to say more than three words.” And you know what Cal said in reply?’

‘No, I don’t.’

“‘You lose.’”

Sean laughed, and Carrie said, ‘Takeoff checklist, please.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

Something loud was screaming in his ears.

Something was poking him in his arms and shoulders.

Something… God, he hurt…

He opened his eyes.

Faces were looking down at him. There were lights, motion, more sound.

The faces… their lips were moving.

He opened his mouth. Grunted.

Blinked his eyes.

Focus. It was coming into focus.

One of the faces came closer and he heard ‘…luckiest man I’ve ever seen, by far…’

Brian Doyle closed his eyes, opened them again.

The screaming noise… a siren.

He was in the rear of an ambulance.

He looked again. An EMT and a police officer were there, sitting on each side of him.

‘What?’ was all he could say.

The Memphis cop — a young, tough-looking black man -said, ‘Sir, could you tell us who shot you? Who was it?’

Brian closed his eyes again. The pain was now taking root in different parts of his body. His chest. His back. His shoulders.

‘How?’

The EMT seemed to be checking Brian’s pulse. ‘You mean, how did you survive? First, you had a vest on, so those two rounds cracked a rib or two but didn’t penetrate. Second, you fell three stories onto a cafe awning. I’m sure you’ve got some hellacious bruises on your back. Nice trick, pal. Remind me to stick with you next time you buy a lottery ticket.’

The cop came back to him, more insistent. ‘Who shot you, sir? How did it happen?’

Adrianna. Iraqi father. Final Winter.

‘Airport.’

‘What?’ the cop asked.

‘Airport. You’ve got to get me to the airport… you’ve got to tell AirBox… no flights… there can’t be any flights tonight…’

Brian saw the cop look over at the EMT, who looked back and shrugged.

They don’t understand, Brian thought. They’re not listening… they’re not… Jesus, his back hurt…

‘Airport!’ he said above the siren noise. ‘We’ve got to get to the airport! AirBox… it has to be grounded!’

The EMT took a wet cloth, wiped down Brian’s forehead. ‘Mister, you’re ten minutes outbound from the ER, and that’s the only place we’re going tonight.’

The siren noise seemed to drill right into Brian’s head.

Adrianna pulled her rental car over to the side, just a few minutes after leaving the Hyatt. Her chest hurt from her labored breathing, but she felt she was calming down. It was happening. Even at this moment. It was happening.

She just had two things to do before the night was perfect. The first she had planned to do when she had gotten back to the hotel room, but Brian’s unexpected presence had taken care of that. But now seemed like a good time.

She opened her purse, dialed a certain number on her cellphone, and pressed the send button. The phone rang once and that was that. Good.

Adrianna put the phone back in her purse, eased her car out into the traffic. She looked at the dashboard clock.

It was 1:47 a.m. Thirteen minutes until the first AirBox aircraft took off.

Twelve miles away from Adrianna Scott’s rental GMC, a Ford Explorer on Interstate 40, heading northeast, suddenly exploded, sending flaming chunks of debris across three lanes of traffic. A tractor-trailer truck jackknifed in an attempt to dodge the debris, cutting off the final lane.

It would take the Tennessee State Police over an hour to remove the body of the driver from the Explorer, a body that was burned beyond recognition.

Next to her Sean said, ‘Tower, AirBox one-oh-seven, will be ready for takeoff at the end.’

In her headphones, Carrie heard the airport’s tower controller say, ‘AirBox one-oh-seven, hold short runway three six center.’

‘Airbox one-oh-seven, hold short three six center, roger,’ Sean replied.

As always, the jet felt sluggish as it maneuvered toward the runway. Carrie flicked her gaze to the well-lit runway, to the final approach path. No one was landing. The night’s clear weather made the lights of the airport and the surrounding area shimmer brilliantly. It was one of the few nice things about flying at night, the constellation of lights on the ground. She looked forward to the flight and going to Boston, and well… Sean was going to get his answer in Boston and she was sure he would be happy.

She started humming a tune, something garnered from an album collection hawked late at night on the cable channels, and then stopped herself. She didn’t want to tip her hand.

The tune, of course, was ‘North to Alaska’.

Instead, she just smiled as her jet approached the hold area.

Brian opened his eyes again. The pain had settled down some. His mouth was dry and he looked at his arms. An IV was running into the right arm, beside which the EMT was stationed. The cop was on his left side, still looking expectantly at him. Brian raised his arm, motioned with a finger. ‘Here,’ he whispered. ‘Come here and I’ll tell you who… who shot me…’

The cop leaned in and Brian raised himself up and the cop said, ‘Sir, who did this to you? Can you tell me—’

Brian let his hand snap down to the cop’s holster, grabbed his pistol, and pulled it away, and—

The EMT flinched and the cop struggled but Brian was quick, Brian was driven, and in a second he had muzzle end of the pistol jammed up against the cop’s lower jaw. Brian said, ‘Take it easy, now.’

The cop said, his voice strained, ‘There’s no round in the chamber. And the safety is on.’

‘Maybe so,’ Brian said. ‘But maybe I’ve got the safety off, and maybe you’re lying about having no round in the chamber. You don’t want to have your jaw blown off, do you? Ready to gamble that, officer?’

The EMT said, ‘What… what do you want?’

‘Stop this ambulance. Now. I’m getting off.’

The EMT said, ‘Sir, you’re injured, you’re not thinking right, you’re—’

Brian said, ‘This ambulance doesn’t stop the next ten seconds, I’m splattering this cop’s brains all over the ceiling. Understood?’

It seemed like the EMT got it. Edging past them so he didn’t seem to get too close to Brian and the cop, he moved to a small sliding glass partition between the ambulance bed and the driver and pounded on the window. ‘Emergency, Carol — you’ve got to pull over. Now!’

Some murmured words from up front, and the EMT said, ‘No fucking around! Stop the goddamn bus!’

The ‘goddamn bus’ slowed down and halted. Brian sat up, gritting his teeth at the pain in his back, keeping his stare fixed on the cop, who had murderous hate in his eyes — and who could blame him? The EMT — showing some initiative — scrambled to the rear of the ambulance and opened the rear door. Brian tugged at his right arm, pulling the IV free. Blood spurted down his arm. He kept on moving, the cop moving with him. It was awkward, it was tough, but soon he was out on the pavement. The cop was standing there too and Brian nudged him and said, ‘Back in the bus, pal. You get back in the bus and close the door and drive away.’

The cop stood still.

Brian said, ‘Move away, or I start shooting civilians. Move away, and I run like hell, and nobody gets hurt.’

The cop said, ‘You’re a stupid fuck.’

‘Probably. Move.’

The cop took a step back and Brian stepped away, still wincing from the pain. The cop went back into the ambulance, and Brian slammed the door shut and slapped his hand twice against it. The ambulance, lights still flashing, moved out.

Brian took in his surroundings. Apartment buildings, office buildings, small stores — he could waste precious seconds looking for a phone and the police would come down like a hammer on this area once the cop in the ambulance got on the horn. He put the cop’s pistol in his coat pocket, and walked quickly down one block, then another, not running — running men always attract attention — and by God, luck must have been with him, for he caught a taxi and in a matter of moments was heading to the Memphis International Airport.

It was 1:51 a.m.

Carrie Floyd felt the subtle vibration of the MD-11 engines in the control yoke as they waited for takeoff at the end of the runway. Sean was there, just waiting, and she decided that she would tease him, all the way northeast, once they took off.

He was patient. And would have to be, to put up with her and her daughter.

Sean made a point of clearing his throat.

Carrie kept on ignoring him, though it was hard to do with a smile on her face.

In the rear of the taxi, Brian Doyle tried to work through the pain in his back, the pain in his chest, keeping his gaze straight on what was ahead of him, and what was ahead of him wasn’t good. For some reason the traffic was backing up to the airport exits. He leaned forward and said to the cabbie, ‘Why is it taking so goddamn long? What’s the holdup?’

‘Man, who the fuck knows?’ the cabbie said, the lilt in his Jamaican voice pronounced. ‘Maybe an accident. Maybe a drill. I dunno.’

Brian waited, hands folded, staring ahead, looking at the line of red taillights stretching in front of them. He said, ‘You own a cellphone?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can I use it? It’s an emergency.’

‘No, man, I’m ‘fraid you can’t use it.’

‘Why?’

‘Cuz I don’t have it here. It’s back at my place.’

Brian said, ‘I thought you said you had a cellphone.’

The cabbie said, ‘You didn’t ask me if I had one, you just asked me if I owned one. Right?’

They still weren’t moving. Screw this.

Brian opened the cab door, stepped out, and started running towards the fences on the other side of the highway. If the cabbie was screaming at him, Brian didn’t hear it over the noise of the jets.

AirBox 107 sat at the end of the runway, its engines idling, the white lights of the runway stretching out ahead. Carrie kept switching her gaze from the displays to the runway. Sean waited next to her, then said, ‘Something’s up.’

‘Why?’

‘We’ve never waited this long before, that’s why.’

Carrie said, ‘Be patient, will you?’

Sean said, ‘Some would say I’ve been too patient already.’ She thought of what to say, when the tower controller’s voice came over their headsets.

‘AirBox one-oh-seven, tower.’

‘One-oh-seven, go ahead,’ Sean replied.

‘Stand by.’

‘One-oh-seven.’

Carrie looked at Sean and he said, ‘Look over there. By the freight hangars. Lots of lights.’

She did just that. He was right. A number of red and blue flashing lights.

‘You’re right,’ she said.

‘You should learn to listen to me more often.’

Carrie waited and said, ‘Some people would say I already listen too much.’

‘Which people?’

Carrie said nothing, waited.

Then the tower came back on.

‘Airbox one-oh-seven.’

Adrianna Scott had scouted out this place months ago, and now she waited with anticipation, a pair of 7X50 binoculars in her hands. She was in a small park on a hillside, about a mile away from the airport. Among the picnic tables and swing sets, all empty, she waited. She looked around her, saw how empty the place was, and felt a wonderful sense of satisfaction. This place would never be used again by the people of this country and soon grass and saplings and trees would once more cover this cleared area.

She lifted up the binoculars, focused them on the runway. She could make out long lines of yellow and black AirBox jets, heading out for departure.

‘Soon, papa, soon, mama,’ she whispered.

Brian bent over, vomited, and then stood up, wiping spit from his chin. Before him was an access road, bordered by a chain-link fence that butted up against the runway. What the hell to do now? There was nothing before him except the fence. No phones, no guard shacks, nothing.

Damn!

He looked up and down the length of the fence. Noted the lampposts. Noted the power lines. And the cameras, of course, the—

Security cameras.

Only chance. The only real chance.

Brian took out the pistol he had lifted from the Memphis cop, started running the length of the fence, shooting the pistol into the air, raising as much hell as he could. If the airport security team was on the job, if these cameras were manned, they would see a crazy man with a gun at the end of this runway, apparently shooting at the soon-to-depart aircraft.

It was the only thing he could do.

Sean said, AirBox one-oh-seven, go ahead.’

‘Tower, AirBox one-oh-seven, cleared for takeoff, runway three six center’

‘AirBox one-oh-seven, cleared for takeoff runway three six center, we thank you.’

Carrie held onto the throttles tight, started pushing them forward. She felt the engine thrust push her back into the seat as the runway lights started accelerating past them. Sean started calling out the speed and then V-1, the speed at which take off was imminent: ‘Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. Vee-one, rotate.’

Carrie pulled the control yoke back. ‘Vee-two,’ Sean said as she felt the jet break free from the ground, Sean now indicating that they were at their climbing speed in case they lost an engine. They were airborne.

She said quickly, ‘Positive rate, gear up,’ and Sean moved a wheel-shaped lever with his left hand. There was a clunking sensation as the nose wheel came home.

‘Gear up,’ Sean said.

As the speed increased, Carrie called out, ‘Flaps five.’

The flaps moved to their position, and then she said, ‘Flaps up.’

‘Flaps up,’ Sean said. ‘We’ve got a clean aircraft.’

The tower controller’s voice came over the radio. ‘AirBox one-oh-seven, change to departure.’

Sean said, ‘AirBox one-oh-seven’ as he changed the radio’s frequency. Then a different voice announced itself: ‘AirBox one-oh-seven.’

‘Departure, AirBox one-oh-seven, passing feet for five thousand,’ Sean said.

‘AirBox one-oh-seven, climb to one zero thousand, heading zero two zero, proceed to CENTRALIA when able, and proceed via your flight plan.’

Carrie loved this, loved the feeling of going up into the air, everything under control, everything nominal, clear night sky and nothing ahead but hours of blissful flying, heading to CENTRALIA, their first departure point — or fix — on their way to Boston.

‘What do you say, Sean? Let’s have a good flight.’

‘You got it, Carrie.’

Brian looked up as one AirBox aircraft, and then another, and another, took off over him, deafening him with the noise of their engines. The pistol was out of bullets. He dropped the useless piece of metal on the ground.

He twisted his head to follow the aircrafts’ flight, knowing that each of them was carrying something horrible, something deadly, and that he had failed to prevent them from taking off.

He clenched his fists, screamed up in frustration at the departing aircraft.

Adrianna lowered the binoculars, smiling widely with happiness. One after another, her gifts to America had taken off to spread across this wide and darkened land. She felt her heart swell with joy, thinking of what was in every one of those aircraft, thinking of what was going to be sprayed out over all those cities in just a matter of hours.

She went back to her car, binoculars in hand, ready to leave this soon-to-be-dead nation.