Black Harvest

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The team filled Elizabeth's office. Harker told them about the Pentagon scenario. She briefed them on the approach by Yakov. She still hadn't heard from Vysotsky.

"Now you're all up to speed. Ideas?"

"What about the President," Nick said. "Have you let him know?"

"I don't have anything to give him, no proof. He's waiting to see if I come up with something."

"He doesn't know about the Russian approach?"

"He doesn't need to know."

Lamont rubbed his arm. "Lodge was bad enough. Now it's the Pentagon?"

"We can't be certain of that. But it's likely. Maybe not official."

"Someone setting up a convenient option that just happens to be handy?"

"That's what I think. A war game scenario is only a scenario, a possibility. The Joint Chiefs wouldn't do this. They don't like Russia, but they wouldn't kill millions of people and march in with an undeclared war under the guise of humanitarian relief."

"Millions?" Ronnie said.

"If the crops fail in Russia it will cause famine." Nick tugged on his damaged ear. "They're not equipped to handle something like that. Hell, we aren't equipped for something like that. The Federation would fragment. It would be chaos. Civil war."

"Time for assumptions?" Selena looked around the room. "We've done this before. It worked out pretty well."

She seemed fine. Nick focused on the task.

"Okay. Assumption number one is that Lodge and Dansinger want to unleash a lethal crop virus against Russia soon. The spring crops are just coming up."

"How would they do it?" Lamont asked. "Get it started?"

"Probably airborne. It's the best way. Anything else would take too long."

Elizabeth made a note. Something she could give Vysotsky. If he contacted her.

"What's assumption number two?"

"Number two is someone in the Pentagon is in on this," Nick said. "We have to find out who it is."

"That won't be easy. I had a heck of a time hacking in."

"We could look for personal connections, Steph. Maybe Dansinger is buddies with someone over there. Lodge is, for sure."

Elizabeth made another note. This one wasn't for Vysotsky. She beat a short tattoo with her pen on the desktop. "The big question is how are we going to stop them? Yakov talked about removing Lodge. He meant kill him. We can't do that. We can't let the Russians do it either. If they get worried enough, they'll try."

"How come we always end up in the middle of something like this?" Lamont said.

"Because we're super heroes, Shadow." Nick smiled.

"Yeah? Where's my cape and shield?"

"Not my fault you can't find them. You had them with you, you wouldn't have gotten shot in Khartoum."

Elizabeth waved her pen in the air. "Children. Stay on task, here."

"Maybe we could get them to make a mistake." Selena smoothed a non-existent crease in her skirt.

"Go on."

"They don't know we've figured it out. That we know as much as we do."

"We don't know that, but you're probably right."

"We could let them know."

"Make them come after us?"

"Yes."

"They already did."

"That was because we were after the urn. Maybe we should keep looking for it."

"Forget the urn," Harker said. "It doesn't matter anymore. We'll assume Dansinger has it."

Ronnie said, "We can't go after Lodge, but we can go after Dansinger. Get his attention."

"I'm listening."

"He's got buildings in Texas, right?"

"Lots of them. It's where he develops his products."

"Why don't we see exactly what he's doing down there?"

"Recon," Nick said.

"Yup. Maybe a little sabotage at the same time."

"And leave a trail."

Ronnie nodded. "Something obvious. We want him to know it was us. He'd have to react. He's not going to call the cops."

"He'll probably call Lodge."

"Works for me."

"We do this, we'll stir up a hornet's nest." Harker smiled. She looked like a mischievous elf. "I like it."