The Rule of Nine

TWENTY-ONE

The old tarmac seemed to have more cracks than solid surface. With weeds sprouting up through the fissures, it looked like the prairie. Some of the taller grass came up to his hips. From a distance, as he drove in off the highway, Thorn could swear that he was looking at a farmer’s fallow field instead of what it was: one of a score of abandoned army airfields left over from World War II. These dotted the island of Puerto Rico like the measles, as they were used to guard the entrance to the Panama Canal. Anyone with a map who wanted to take the time could find them.

Thorn spent the better part of two days surveying four of the old airfields. Two of them had landing strips that looked good on paper but were too short for the plane and its final cargo when he measured them. Some farmer had cut a trench across one of them before he realized that the old oil-soaked tar macadam and the three-foot gravel bed underneath it weren’t exactly the best soil for growing crops.

The third field was long enough, with a good surface. It was well maintained. But there were too many prying eyes. The airstrip was a hangout for the local general aviation crowd. There was a small fleet, maybe a dozen single and twin-engine props. If he landed the big bird there, the amateur pilots would be crawling over it in minutes, asking him what he was doing and if they could watch.

This one, the prairie field, seemed to have everything Thorn needed. The oil surface looked as if it hadn’t been sealed since the fifties. But the runway was long enough, and it would only have to take the heavy load twice, once coming in and once going out.

Thorn paced it off, taking nearly two hours to make sure there were no surprises. There were no buildings, just some footings and a large concrete slab, probably what was left of an old hangar. After a thorough inspection, Thorn decided that, all in all, it was in good shape.

Best of all was the location. It was isolated. The runway lay in a narrow valley between low-lying hills along a rugged stretch of coast about a mile in from the ocean.

If there was a place on the island where a large plane on a single approach might not attract much attention, this was it.

Thorn turned and looked out toward the sea. He planned it all out in his mind. If he dropped down, say, a hundred miles out, and skimmed the waves coming in, he could slip in under the radar from the airport in Mercedita ten miles to the south. The airport presented problems, but it also gave him cover. Anyone seeing the plane come in over the water would assume that he was either on an approach to the airport or was circling around for another shot.

His biggest concern was the AWAC flights manned by the U.S. military. These were large four-engine jets or prop jobs with radar domes on top. They flew regular missions over the Caribbean, mostly for drug interdiction. They were a problem for Thorn because he couldn’t get under their radar. If they picked him up coming in, they would notify drug enforcement. Within minutes Thorn could expect a flyover from an unmanned drone or a helicopter doing followup surveillance. An hour later he’d be up to his hips in DEA agents with their dogs sniffing his crotch.

He turned and looked back at the runway. Somebody would have to knock down the weeds. Otherwise the friction from the wheels or the blast from the engines would start a fire. A man with a harvester could do it in a day, crop it all down close enough that it wouldn’t matter. Thorn could rent a small combine harvester on the island, and one of his men could operate it.

He surveyed the trees at the far end of the field, mostly scrub brush with a small grove of tall palms casting long shadows in the late-afternoon sun. Some steel cable, a couple of come-alongs, and enough camouflage netting and they could fashion their own hangar. Taxi the plane under the trees, drop the netting, and no one would see it.

With the right equipment, supplies, and a little labor, they could kick the plane into shape in two weeks. Thorn would do a title search, find out who owned the land, and lease it from them for six months.

He made a mental list of what they would need. At the top of the list was a wheeled electric starter motor for the engines, unless he could find his dream plane, an airliner that didn’t require one. Most large commercial jets, once the engines were shut down, could not be restarted again without an external power source.

A good-size front-end loader rigged with a tow bar could push the plane around to maneuver it, that is, if they lined it up empty on the runway for takeoff before they fueled it. Some paint, welding equipment, and a load of Jet A fuel, and they were in business. Oh, yes. And one big mother of a bomb.

With the calculator running in his brain like the tape from an adding machine, Thorn already knew that the costs were going to climb faster and higher than the plane could fly. It was little wonder that no one had ever tried this before. Thorn hoped his employer’s pockets were deep enough, because the good old days of hijacking somebody else’s plane and flying it into a building were over.

Thorn headed for his car knowing that he’d done a good day’s work. Halfway there, the new BlackBerry on his belt began to vibrate. The new phone was becoming a pain in the ass. He had purchased it along with a data service plan under a two-year contract using a phony name, a bad billing address, and a stolen credit card. All he wanted to do was see how the thing worked.

It vibrated again. He knew it wasn’t a phone call. Those rang. It was either an e-mail or something from the World Wide Web. Probably another ad from the phone company. It was reaching the point that Thorn wasn’t sure if he would even wait until the end of the thirty-day billing cycle to drop the thing in a Dumpster. He couldn’t sleep at night because it kept vibrating all over the nightstand next to him. And if he turned off the vibrator, it would beep instead. How to turn that off, he wasn’t sure. The phone required an advanced degree in computer engineering before you could operate it. It was no joke that they’d offered him a two-day course over a weekend, and Thorn had just laughed. That was before he started losing sleep.

It vibrated again. He ripped the thing from the holster and tried to work the tiny roller ball with his big thumb. Thorn was spitting four-letter expletives, looking at the screen as he tried not to trip over the weeds.

It was an e-mail from Soyev. He was on his way back from North Korea, holding over in Hong Kong: “Big brother in the bag.” What it meant was that the Russian had closed the deal on a replacement for the mammoth blockbuster they’d lost in Thailand. This one would ship by sea and not from North Korea, where the Americans would be watching. Other arrangements were being made.

There was a postscript: “You will be interested in the attached.”

He almost put the phone away, figuring he would read it later. Then curiosity got the better of him. He stopped in the field for a moment and worked the trackball to call up the attachment.

It was a news article, something from the Washington Post. The moment he saw her name, he knew it was trouble. Thorn had been watching Joselyn Cole from the sidelines for years, ever since he’d tangled with her in Seattle.

She had very nearly run him into a hole in East Africa, exhorting the feds to hunt him down. Not that they needed much encouragement. Now she was causing problems again. Cole was a busybody. She was testifying before a Senate committee. But it was her words quoted in the story that sent a chill up Thorn’s spine, the reason the Russian had sent it to him.

The hellfire missile you use today to kill a carload of accused terrorists on a dusty road in Afghanistan may, in time, find its way into the hands of their children. What do we do then when this same relentless, unerring weapon is aimed at the West Wing or Ten Downing Street?

She was talking about precision-guided weapons. It made the hair on the back of Thorn’s neck stand up.

These systems, originally designed and sold on the notion of avoiding collateral damage, have now become the weapon of choice for acts of very precise mass assassination. Think about that. We reap what we sow. A laser-guided missile can kill with more lethality and certainty than a bullet fired by a sniper. Why? Because it can reach its target in an enclosed vehicle or a building where the victim suffers from the illusion of security.

He should have killed her in Seattle, thought Thorn.

Make no mistake about it. Soon there will be no place left for leaders of any stripe to hide.

It was intended to get their attention, and it did. Standing in the empty field, rolling the little trackball, Thorn devoured the rest of the story. She took a few shots from the right, members who asked if she was equating Al Qaeda to leaders of recognized political states.

She told them they were missing the point.

For the most part the committee got the message. They wanted to know what they could do to ensure that this wouldn’t happen, that someone wouldn’t get their hands on these weapons and target their sorry asses.

Without even realizing it, Cole was directing the spotlight just where Thorn didn’t need it, and at the worst possible time.

Of course, the bitch had a long list of recommendations, all of them designed to tighten the screws on the tools of Thorn’s trade. To make it more difficult to get the weapons he needed. Not that she would ever be able to shut down the market. But she could surely make it expensive.

If she continued to whip this horse, he would have to find a way to shut her up. It would be just Thorn’s luck if she stumbled into his party and somehow unraveled it all before he could move.