Blackout

CHAPTER 30

“Kat? Wake up. It’s Robert,” a voice said somewhere just beyond the fog surrounding her head.

“What?” Kat opened her eyes, blinking at the brightness of the sun glinting off the Pacific Ocean some 42,000 feet below. She tried to reconcile the ringing sound with Robert MacCabe’s presence in the cockpit.

“Your phone’s ringing, Kat,” he said, inches from her right ear.

She had dozed off in the right seat, for how long she wasn’t sure. She sat up with a start, her eyes going to the distance-remaining numbers on the face of the flight computer.

Calm down! she told herself. We’re still three hundred miles out.

Pollis was still in position in the left seat, watching her passively.

Kat turned to Robert. “Have you been here all along? Has somebody…”

He nodded. “Someone’s watched this guy every second, Kat.”

She unfolded the antenna on the portable phone and punched the button. “Hello?”

“Agent Bronsky?” a male voice asked.

“Right here. Who’s this?”

“This is your contact at CIA headquarters at Langley, calling on behalf of your superior, who wants to avoid direct contact for the reason you worried about earlier.”

Kat felt a chill ripple through her that Jake felt a breach of security at the Bureau was a possibility. Jordan James had been skeptical about a leak, but had agreed nearly nine hours ago to find a safe back-channel to Jake Rhoades’s ear. Obviously Uncle Jordan had done what he promised, as usual.

“Okay, I understand. Is he satisfied that this channel is not compromised?’

“He is, but he thinks a plumber is needed at his home location.”

“I’m… very sorry to hear that,” Kat said. “What do you have for me?”

“On arrival at Honolulu, taxi directly to the corporate fixed-base operation. The Bureau’s team will meet you there.”

“They have a replacement pilot for us?”

“No. You and the others are to be transferred under assumed names to a commercial flight to D.C. Arrangements have been made to get the item you found aboard that aircraft to the appropriate location on a special Air Force flight.”

“Why can’t we just go on the same flight? Why go commercial?” Kat asked, sitting up and rubbing her left eye.

“That, ah, type of aircraft can’t carry passengers.”

Kat nodded to herself, envisioning the very thing she’d suggested, an SR-71, capable of streaking from Honolulu to Washington in approximately two hours, or anywhere else in the continental U.S. with the same lightning speed.

The underwire in Kat’s bra had been progressively digging in to one of her ribs for the past several minutes, and it was getting close to intolerable, but there was no way she could discreetly adjust it with Robert MacCabe standing so close beside her. “Look,” she said, rolling her shoulders in a wheel-like motion to try to relieve the pressure, “I’m really concerned about the commercial idea. My entire group is a target, especially myself and one other. I do not want another commercial flight placed at risk of attack because of our presence.”

“That’s all been handled, Agent Bronsky,” the CIA contact said. “Your presence on the appropriate flight will be known only to us.”

“It still worries me. Please relay… to my superior… that I’d like him to think that over.”

“I will, but do not, repeat, do not attempt to call him directly. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir. That’s clear enough. Is the home leak caused by an electronic problem, or a human problem?”

“I can’t say, Agent. I don’t have that information.”

“Give me a number for you in case I need it.”

He passed a phone number routed through the main Langley switchboard, but cautioned her to use it in an emergency only. She recognized the exchange.

Kat shifted the phone, looking back and smiling briefly at MacCabe. “Also, confirm that an ophthalmologist will meet us on arrival?”

“That’s correct.”

“And has anyone arranged our entry into Hawaiian airspace?” she asked.

“I was coming to that. Your transponder code is four, six, six, five. Your call sign is Sage-sixteen. Call Honolulu Center two hundred miles out.” He passed the correct frequency and ended the conversation, leaving Kat agitated. She folded the antenna and checked the mileage remaining. Two hundred eighty miles.

Kat looked over at Pollis. “Got a pencil?”

He nodded.

“Then write this down.” She passed the same information to him on transponder code and frequency.

“Where’s Dallas?” Kat asked.

Robert disappeared, returning a bit later with Dallas to trade places with Kat.

Kat and Robert moved into the cabin, out of earshot of Bill Pollis.

“So,” Robert began, “not that I was listening, but I missed some of that.”

Kat filled in the blanks in the conversation. “Apparently I was right, Robert. There was a leak in D.C. That’s how they knew we were headed to Guam.”

“But we’re okay now?”

She nodded and sighed. “I think so. That was a CIA contact relaying for Jake, my boss. This operation should be secure.”

“But they’re putting us on another commercial flight. Why?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t like it,” she said. “They’re not thinking it through.”

“Kat, we’re targets. At least, I’m a target, and after that spooky phone call last night to the sky phone, I’d say putting any one of us on a commercial flight is a dangerous idea. I am not comfortable with that idea.”

She could see his agitation increasing and raised her hand to stop him. “Neither am I, Robert. But we’ll work on it when we get in. I just want to get that weapon on the way to wherever, and get Pollis placed in high-security custody.” She inclined her head toward the cockpit. “Mr. Innocent up there is sticking to his act, which is helpful. As long as he tries to convince us he’s a good guy, he’ll behave. He’s hoping we’ll eventually think he’s the victim.”

Robert looked out an adjacent window. “How much longer?”

“About thirty minutes, I think, before we should start descending.”

Robert stood with one hand on a bulkhead for balance, very close to Kat, and looked at her quizzically.

“What?” she said gently.

“I was just thinking how much both of us have been through in the past, what, twenty-four hours?”

“More than that,” she said.

“Not much more. Seems like a year ago that we were standing and talking in Hong Kong about that Cuban crash and my deceased friend Walter Carnegie.”

She shook her head. “Well, it’s about over, Robert. One way or another, we’ll get our survivors back there debriefed and returned home, then you and I will need to sit down somewhere and go over every nuance of what you have, what you think it means, and where you think the Bureau can find what we need to find out. I… assume I can depend on your cooperation, and that you’ll hold off publishing for a few days?”

He looked at her with a hurt expression. “I came to you for help, remember?”

She smiled and patted his arm. “Just… call it protocol. I don’t like to make glib assumptions.”

“Don’t you think that thing we found is going to answer a lot of questions?”

“I hope so, but it’s still worrying the heck out of me. If that is a target illuminator, or — what’s the word they used? — designator, there’s got to be a boat or a plane or something from which to fire the missile it’s supposed to guide.”

“Why is that bothering you?” Robert asked. “Because of the coordination required to get a missile into position in Hong Kong?”

She nodded. “Robert, how long had you had that return Meridian reservation?”

He thought for a few seconds. “I’d changed my reservation. Originally, I was on a return flight the next day.”

“I thought I remembered that. So, if we assume they were after you, they had to change everything to intercept the new flight.”

“But what if they weren’t after me?”

Kat nibbled her lip in thought before shaking her head. “No. Too coincidental. They’ve done too much to try to find you personally, as far as I can tell.”

“Okay,” Robert began, “but I guess I’m still not tracking what’s concerning you about that target designator laser, if that’s what it is.”

“How heavy would you say that thing is?” she asked.

“Maybe thirty-five pounds. Pretty hefty.”

“Five feet long? And thirty inches around, including the two tank-like things?”

“Yeah. It almost looks like one of those water rifles for kids, with two water tanks on top of the barrel, plus the electronics that are obviously part of it.”

“That’s a lot for a simple infrared laser, don’t you think? I mean, laser pens used in lectures can fit in your pocket. What if it’s something more, Robert? What if there’s no missile, just that thing?”

“That thing?” He looked back in the cabin as she continued.

“Other than a phosphorous explosion, how could you flash-blind a human in a cockpit in flight? What kind of technology?”

Robert shook his head with his right hand out palm-up. “I don’t know… maybe some sort of particle accelerator? You know, like they were trying to develop for the Reagan Star Wars missile defense system. Fires a powerful stream of subatomic particles at an incoming missile.”

“I’m thinking of something even more simple,” Kat said. “Why use an expensive missile in a difficult-to-achieve flight path? Why not just use a powerful shoulder-mounted laser gun and do the job directly?”

Robert inhaled sharply and glanced toward the back of the cabin. “Of course. Why didn’t we think of that earlier?”

“Because we’ve been busy, and because Washington’s talking missiles.”

Robert MacCabe was nodding energetically. “This could easily be what brought SeaAir down, too.”

“If so, there’s a radar record of another airplane nearby. Could be this one.”

“That would open up an entirely new method of terror attacks, Kat!”

“And what if it’s made in America?” she continued. “What if someone’s stolen one of our military projects and started using it on us? I mean, I have no clue what they want, whoever ‘they’ are. Is this a strike against the Great Satan, as the criminal government in Iran calls us? Is this some sort of privateer group with the grandiose scheme of a James Bond villain trying to blackmail the world?”

“In other words,” Robert said, “are we going to get a note after the next six accidents demanding a billion dollars if we want the crashes to stop?”

“Something like that. But my God, Robert, if this is an American laser now being used to destroy human eyesight…”

“Did you get a chance to question Pollis?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Several hours ago, while you were asleep.”

“Did you get anything useful?”

Kat shrugged. “If he’s lying and playacting, then anything he told me was for the purpose of throwing us off the right trail. If he’s telling the truth, then he amounts to no more than an involved observer. He says the leader, Schoen, spoke with a heavy accent, and he suspected the man was CIA instead of FBI, as he claimed. He said they simply didn’t tell him what they were up to. He claims he didn’t know your flight had crashed, and that he had no idea they were shooting anything out the window.”

“Remember the old conundrum, that if everything I say is a lie, then I’m lying when I say that I never tell the truth, which means that sometimes what I say is true?”

“I’m too weary to figure that one out, Robert.”

“It fits him. We can’t trust a word he says.”

“I know it.”

With Kat back in the right seat, Dallas returned to the rear section of the elegant cabin, where Steve and Dan were sitting with Graham. She plopped down on the leather sofa next to Graham and reached for his hand. He responded slowly, trying to smile as he fixed her with a haunted look of utter despair.

“I, ah… want to ask how you’re doing, Doc, but… I know the answer,” she said softly. “It just… takes time, you know?”

His eyes dropped again to the floor.

Steve Delaney had moved to sit beside her. “Dallas? How much longer?”

“Not long. Then we change planes in Honolulu.”

“I want to call my mother. D’you think Kat will let me?”

Dallas shook her head. “Stevie, we’re still number one on somebody’s people-we’d-most-like-to-kill list.”

“Just a quick call from a pay phone. Collect, even.”

“Not without Kat’s approval, Steve. You gotta trust her.”

She saw him nod, and knew full well he was going to try it anyway.