Cloudburst

Seven QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

The D.C. morning rush was nearly over. Joe Anderson had barely arrived at his Department of Energy office when a phone call sent him scurrying out to a waiting government car. The driver, seemingly annoyed at his taxi driver status, directed Joe to sit in the front seat next to him. No more was said during the short drive to the White House. Joe had been there before, once, to receive a quiet thanks from the president. There was a citation of sorts, but it was all classified. That came with the territory. He wasn’t a war hero, after all.

This was a little odd, however. No warning at all. If there had been he might have dressed for the occasion. Maybe his blue three piece, the one his wife picked out to make sure he matched. “You didn’t marry me for my fashion sense,” he often joked with her. The Park Service guards at the Executive Avenue entrance looked as serious as one could be, and there were more of them. They waved the shiny black Ford through the cement planter barricades.

A few minutes later he entered the comfortable office on the ground floor of the White House. He recognized the two men right away.

“Captain Anderson.” Bud stood and walked around his desk, shaking the visitor’s hand. “I’m Bud DiContino, the president’s national security adviser.”

“Yes, I recognize you from the news.” Joe turned to the DCI.

“Herb Landau, Joe.” He stayed seated in a wing back chair. Joe walked over to greet him.

“Mr. Director.”

“Have a seat, Captain.” Bud touched the back of a chair. “Director Landau filled me in on your background — it’s very impressive. He recommended we contact you.”

Joe fidgeted visibly. “I hope I’m of some help.”

He looked like a cross between a college professor and a drill instructor. Passionless eyes and tight skin topped by silver-gray hair. He was forty-seven. The hair must have been a family trait, Bud thought. It looked too natural to be caused by aging. And the voice: deliberate and measured. Every word carried maximum impact and was spoken slowly.

“I understand you’re cleared for ‘Q’ material.”

Joe shifted in his seat again. “I’m cleared for everything nuclear.”

Bud smiled politely, realizing that he’d hit a nerve. “Captain Anderson, we need your expertise. We have a situation…a bad one. Potentially disastrous. First, let me ask you about Anatoly Vishkov. What’s so special about him?”

Vishkov? “He designs nuclear weapons and offers the plans up for sale to terror groups and nutcakes. His real claim to fame goes back to his days with the SRF. He did a great deal of work on dirty bombs. Those are the old atomic bombs that are primarily fission weapons. He was trying to perfect area-denial weapons, ones that would make an area so hot nothing could enter it. It wasn’t anything new, just a routine R&D program to improve what they already had. Unfortunately for just about everyone but himself he stumbled onto something. Do you want the technical rundown or the abridged version?”

Bud figured a mix would be proper. “How about something up the middle.”

“Okay.” Joe slid forward in his chair. “A pad of paper?” The NSA handed him one. He spent a few seconds drawing as Bud leaned in to see. Landau strained through his bifocals to watch the diagram take shape. “This is roughly what Vishkov came up with.”

“Little Boy,” Bud said. He had seen the thing before, in what book he didn’t remember. It was very similar to the ‘Little Boy’ gun bomb weapon that fell on Hiroshima. Simpler than the implosion-type bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the gun bomb was basically a large gun barrel with a uranium target at one end and a smaller uranium ‘bullet’ at the opposite end. Upon detonation the bullet was fired into the target, compressing the uranium to a supercritical state and causing the nuclear explosion.

“Good call,” Joe said. He was getting a little irritated. So far this didn’t sound like any kind of ‘situation.’ It was sounding like a waste of time. Every so often some government official would want to know something related to his unique line of work. Since he was the senior member of NEST, DOE’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team, the PR and legislative appeasement duties usually fell to him. “He took the fairly easy to construct gun bomb design and made it easier to build, and increased the low-range relative yield twofold. Taking the reduction in size — compared to the Hiroshima weapon — into consideration, we have an extremely dangerous weapon when in the hands of terrorists. That’s his market.”

“How did he accomplish this?” Bud asked.

“This.” Joe’s finger touched the area of the uranium target. “The major problem with the gun bomb was the large amount of fissile material needed to make it work, and the fact that it had to be highly enriched material: usually uranium 235. That isotope occurs only in quantities of less than one percent of mined natural uranium, so you either have to enrich what you have or process enough to ‘make’ U235. Neither is cheap or easy. What Vishkov did was discover a way to aid the compression of a smaller amount of U235 by placing this uniform explosive band around the center section of the target. When the uranium bullet strikes the target there is usually some deformation of the fissile core as it tries to expand outward, like this.” Joe drew several arrows going out from the target. “This ‘explosive doughnut’ is triggered by the melding of the bullet into the target. The target itself is a section of a cylinder with a portion in the center coned out — that’s the bullet. When the bullet is fired and fills this conical hole, the doughnut around the cylinder blows and further compresses the target. Vishkov used a simpler aspect of the implosion method to increase the density of the target while the bullet pushed into it. He also used laser switches to time the firing. You see, all the firings have to be timed right on the money. The bullet has to impact the target perfectly and the compression of the cylinder must, absolutely must occur nanoseconds before impact.” Joe noticed the NSA go wide-eyed. “Look, basically what Vishkov did was take the best parts of the implosion and gun bombs and combine them, and somehow it’s easier to make than either of them separately.”

It was explained as asked. Bud expected that he should have gotten the full gist of it, but he didn’t. This nuclear netherworld stuff scared him, more so because he knew too little about the mechanics of weapons. His job had been developing aircraft that could get the bombs to their targets. What went in the bomb bays was someone else’s worry.

Anderson felt the silence. “Look, I’ve given this rigmarole twenty or thirty times to generals, secretaries, and anyone else who wanted a little ‘in’ knowledge. It’s my job to do this, but I also have other, more important things to do. I have a shipment of plutonium from France to Japan leaving in less than a week, and I am supposed to coordinate security with the Japanese. It may not seem like much to you, but there will be enough material on that freighter for a hundred bombs, so if you have no more—”

“Captain Anderson,” Bud cut him off, “what we have here is an immediate threat.” He was upset at the disregard Anderson was exhibiting and, for the first time in days, felt the stubbornness of his years surface. “Please watch.”

The recording was already queued up and began to play at the touch of the remote. The men watched a few minutes — Bud and the DCI for the third time in as many hours — as the boxes were loaded on the aircraft. Bud turned off the video player.

“Captain, that happened in Libya, at Benina International Airport. The aircraft is a 747 that was hijacked out of Athens early this morning. Just prior to what you watched, the aft cargo hold was emptied; just after that, the door opened and some probable unfriendlies boarded.” Bud took a folder from his desk top. The photos inside had arrived from Fort Belvoir just minutes before Anderson’s arrival. “Please take a look at these. They’re enhanced.”

Joe took the small stack. Fifteen photos. He looked through them quickly a first time, then more closely a second, discarding all but three of the eight-by-tens onto a side table. Two were good angle views of the boxes which could be useful for scale calculations. The third…

“I know you can’t tell much from these,” Bud said, “but we have to ask the obvious: Could the Libyans have constructed a weapon using Vishkov’s design?”

“If they had the design it might—”

“They do,” Bud interjected.

Joe was quiet for a few seconds. He searched both men’s eyes for the truth, not expecting to get it directly from their words. “How?”

“One set got by us,” Landau answered. “A few years ago in the Netherlands. The IRA bought it at auction for Qaddafi.”

“I don’t… Don’t you guys think I should know this stuff, that my team has a legitimate reason to be informed? For Christ’s sake… We don’t spend every damn day running around looking for friggin’ atom bombs in country. Ninety percent of our job is security—nuclear security.” The furrows on his forehead deepened, coming together just between his eyebrows. He scratched his brow with one finger. “So Qaddafi has a set of Vishkov’s designs. Is it the same design as the one we have?” At least they showed me that one.

“We don’t know,” the DCI answered.

Bud gathered the discarded photos and put them in the folder, placing it back on his desk. “You said if they had the design…”

Joe swallowed hard. “Then things would be much simpler for them.”

“Could they build it?” Bud pressed.

“Not likely. Not with their resources.”

“They have access to the technology, don’t they?” Landau inquired.

“Except for the most important part: the fissile material. Or at least the right kind.” Joe was unsure, unsettled by this. The picture. “Weapons-grade material for this kind of device, like I explained before, would need to be either highly enriched uranium — around ninety percent U235—or plutonium 239. The Libyans have no plutonium.”

“None?”

“Absolutely none, Mr. DiContino. Your business may not allow you to make one hundred percent assured statements, but mine does. Plutonium is not found — it’s made. Processed. And damn tightly controlled. The Libyans do not have the capacity to ‘cultivate’ or refine P239.”

“What about uranium?”

Two sets of eyes bored into Joe. “As I said, they have none. Just highly enriched uranium for…” The picture!

“What?” Bud saw doubt.

Anderson looked again at the third photo. It is.

Bud slid his chair closer. It was the enhanced blowup of one of the officers around the plane. Nice of him to look up. “What is it?”

“His name is Ibrahim Sadr. Captain’s rank. He runs the Libyan research reactor at Tajoura. It’s a small ten-megawatt job. The Soviets built it in the late seventies, early eighties. It started up in eighty-one.”

Everyone was wondering the obvious. Bud did so aloud. “Could the reactor fuel be used for the weapon?”

“It’s not likely.”

It wasn’t convincing. “That’s not good enough. We have to know. Where’s the hundred percent assurance?”

Joe had to admit that had been a bad way to characterize the usual certainty with which he could do his job. “No one has ever tested Vishkov’s design. It’s only theoretical, but it should work. He figured that, and so do I. But it still needs highly enriched uranium.”

“You said—”

“—it needs ninety percent or higher concentrations to work.” Joe paused. Could it?

“Your expression worries me,” Bud admitted.

“Me too,” the DCI agreed. “Could the weapon work with a lower percentage?”

“I don’t know.” The face stared up at Joe from the photo. “It shouldn’t. The only way to know without a doubt is to test it, and we can’t do that. I could make a million sets of calculations and there would always be a plus or minus four percent error, up or down, on either end of the performance scale. That four percent could be the range of error Vishkov made allowances for if he calculated for a lower percentage concentration of U235. The fuel for Tajoura is seventy to seventy-five percent enriched uranium. You’d need to implode that concentration to get it to the point of supercriticality, unless Vishkov’s bomb increases the artificial density enough. I wish I knew, but I don’t.”

“Then it is possible, yes?” Bud asked.

Joe hesitated only a second. “Yes.”

For Bud the contemplation was over. He had his answer, and with that answer he reaffirmed decisions he had already made. Dear God. “Captain Anderson, could you defuse such a weapon?”

“If it’s on that plane and you can get me to it, yes. I’ve done it before.”

“We have to assume it is.”

“Joe, if you could ask Sadr any questions, what would they be?” Landau inquired, pointing to the tablet of paper. “Be simple and brief.”

Anderson allowed a hidden smile inside. “You guys have someone everywhere.”

“That’s not your concern,” Bud reminded him.

Joe grunted. There wasn’t much to think about. The questions were simple. He scribbled them on the lined paper, then tore off the sheet and handed it to the DCI.

“You’re leaving from Andrews in an hour,” Bud informed Joe.

“Only the secretary of Energy can activate my team.”

Bud no longer felt like being polite. “We are on the same side, Captain. Now, if you want, I’ll get the secretary on the phone and he can tell you personally. Or, I can go upstairs and get the president to sign the order. In either case you will be going — alone.”

“What?”

Bud was struggling with the security aspect of the situation. “Do you have to have your team? If not absolutely, then it’s solo.”

Joe would rather have a five-person team with him, but why protest? The NSA had obviously seen his file — the classified one — which told him that he had worked alone on his biggest job. “Whatever you say.”

“Good. Gather up whatever you need. The driver who brought you will see you to the field.” Bud thought Anderson looked less than pleased. He left immediately, with no goodbye or parting words.

Herb Landau tucked the sheet of paper in his inside pocket. He stood up with a shove of his arms on the chair. The suit felt baggy. It had to be more noticeable.

Bud stood, too, pinching his lips with two fingers. “He’s a little arrogant, Herb. I’m not sure I like him.”

“You don’t have to like him, son. Get used to it. You’ll work with more assholes than a proctologist if you stay in D.C. for a while.”

Bud opened the door for the DCI.

“Besides, he’s damn good at what he does.”

“He must be,” Bud replied, thinking a second later, to himself: He better be.

“Don’t worry,” the ordnance expert assured the Scotland Yard officer. “Putty.”

The inspector assigned to the Domestic Terrorism Desk squeezed the material between his fingers. It felt much like his little girl’s modeling clay after it had sat out for a day or two, but not as flaky. There was a detonator — a mock one — protruding from the block of putty, obviously used to simulate explosives. The ordnance boys had dissected the explosive device, which turned out to be a harmless replica of the one that had all but destroyed a building less than a kilometer from where the fake was found. This was according to a note found with it. Trusting terrorists, the inspector had learned, could be deadly. But this seemed to be different: It was a warning.

“So our friends have a rather clever gadget here, do they?” the inspector commented. He was looking for a more descriptive outline of the explosive-laden vest that lay sliced open on the table. Several of the large pockets were open to view, and certain wires were neatly snipped at the points where they exited the pockets on the front and sides of the canvas garment.

“It seems so, sir. Eight pockets, each containing three pounds of high-explosive plastique. I don’t think we need to doubt that they have the real thing.” He poked the block of putty which approximated the size and weight of each pocket’s contents.

“Any more?”

“Well, the triggering mechanism is quite sophisticated. A deadman’s switch — this thumb switch, here.” He pressed it down, and released it, demonstrating its use. “If the chap holding this lets go—boom. Interrupter switches on each separate block of plastique. If a wire or wires are cut—boom. If the power is lost—boom. The only way to deactivate the thing is this.” The ordnance man pulled a small metallic box from the top left pocket. It had three red rocker switches on top and a rubber coated conduit running from the bottom to the other wire bundles. “We cut this conduit and the ones running from pocket to pocket. It’s green wire to one terminal, then red to another — no consistency. And in addition there are secondary links to the charges. There are these individual wires from the switch box to each charge, and a loop conduit from the box to number one, from there to number two, and so on. No dice cutting or defusing. Only the proper positioning of these switches will safe it.”

“Is it a onetime safe?”

“No. It can be engaged as often as desired. That way the chap doesn’t need to worry about getting his thumb tired.”

The inspector raised his eyebrows. Behind his back his thumbs were grating against each other. “Damn hideous.”

“Right.”

“Our friends in America won’t be pleased to hear this.” And I have to be the bloody one to tell them!

The crew of the huge green-and-black C-141B Starlifter sat in their seats, strapped in and ready to fire up the four turbojets if and when the word came. It hadn’t yet. They were no different from the ‘boys in black’ in that a go meant a chance to prove themselves. Their civilian superiors would deny that their troops harbored any such feelings, afraid that it might paint an unwanted Rambo image. Shortly another crew would come on station to relieve them, and again they would go to their bunks for another few hours of sleep.

A quarter mile away the boys in black enjoyed no such respite. They sat on the wing of a loaned 747 in a massive hangar at the extreme east end of Pope Air Force Base. The aircraft, politely acquired from the airline, was configured identically to the interior of the Clipper Atlantic Maiden. Civilian carriers often lent aircraft to the military for counter-terrorist training. The airline, mindful that it was their aircraft on the ground in Libya, had called first to offer. The Clipper Angelic Pride arrived an hour earlier and was immediately moved into hangar 9. Its crew and several engineers familiar with the 747–400 were ‘quarantined’ with the JSOC liaison team in the adjacent command post.

Major McAffee stepped from the port number three door onto the wing. He was dressed in full assault gear, colored black, with a low holster on his right hip and a stubby MP5KA4 stockless submachine gun in hand. A black titanium helmet and attached respirator hung from a rubber hook on his web gear. The rest of the team looked much the same, bathed in an unusual orange glow from the reflection of the overhead lights off the pumpkin-colored walls.

The eight men had just finished their first full-dress run- through of the aircraft, an activity designed to give them a look at the interior as they would see it in a real takedown, but having the added undesired effect of drenching them in their own sweat. No matter how light- or vapor-permeable their gear was supposed to be, it was never enough. Their sustained and rapid movement was part of the cause, but the stress was more of it. Even the mock takedown was stressful. It was supposed to be. The team had to psych up for a go, with no thought that they wouldn’t get it.

“That’s the first one,” Blackjack said. “We’ll do at least two more, but first we’ve got some intel.” The men perked up at that. “It looks like at least four bad guys — maybe just that many. They probably have SMGs. We’re told they’re Uzis, and if they have those you can bet they have frags and pistols. Standard stuff. That’s the good news. British Intelligence gave us some stuff through 22 SAS about twenty minutes ago.” He didn’t mention that the information had been forwarded surreptitiously to Delta from their SAS counterparts ahead of the official message. That was probably still in the Pentagon. Not everything had changed. “There was a blast in London earlier today and an inert duplicate of the bomb was left close by.” McAffee explained the specifics of the device, as the British had determined, and contents of the note left with it. “So the head bad guy is wearing this thing. All he has to do is release the switch.”

Antonelli snorted. “Hell of a deadman.”

“Exactly.” Blackjack looked at each man. ‘Tear it apart.”

After a few seconds contemplating his knees Graber spoke up, “If this guy is dedicated he’ll blow it — no doubt in my mind. Especially if he sees us coming through the door. They know we don’t go looking for prisoners.”

“What if we do that?” Lieutenant Quimpo suggested. “I mean, if we take out the other bad guys and just, you know, point at him, maybe he’ll hesitate. If he does we might be able to get him talking long enough to get the hostages off.” Quimpo saw the skeptical looks. “Hey, it’s slim. I know.”

“Nah,” Goldfarb commented. “He’s probably a fanatic. He’ll blow it. We’ve gotta make sure he doesn’t…somehow.”

Graber thought about that. “How?”

McAffee sat down. The men were now in a loose circle, discussing the possibilities.

“DONNER received and acknowledged the order,” DDI Drummond said. He looked out the window past the DCI. He sipped lemonade from a wide ice-filled tumbler. “He got real bold.”

“How so?” Landau asked.

“He sent the Rome station a message…direct.” The ice clinked in the half-empty glass. “Apparently he wasn’t too happy we didn’t listen to him.”

Landau shook his head. “I can understand. What he must think. All in all, though, I’m glad he’s coming out. He’s getting…oh, I don’t know…not careless, but fearless. We’ve gotten more of those ‘scoldings’ lately, just like his previous message.”

Drummond finished off the lemonade. “He’s been a good asset.”

“Better than anyone will ever know,” Landau added, his words accompanied by a crack of thunder nearby. “Damn! When’s this supposed to let up?”

“I think the paper said the day after tomorrow. Think positive: It’s not snow.”

He’s right about that.

“I’ll issue the extraction order at two today. Is that all right by you?” the DDI inquired.

“Of course. We better get Mike in here: It’s his department. Is he around?”

“I think he’s in a conference with S and T. I’ll check.” Drummond spun the DCI’s phone around and dialed Deputy Director, Operations Mike Healy’s office. “Nance, hi. Is Mike in with the brains?” The humor was common and good-natured. “Can you ask him to come up right away. No…the director’s office. Thanks.” He replaced the phone and turned it back to face the DCI.

Herb pointed to the glass. “You want some more?”

“Nope.”

A few minutes passed before the DDO entered, preceded by a polite rap. He was a pudgy man, one who had been behind a desk too long. Years of active service ‘in the field’ tended to keep one fit, not primarily for survival reasons, but because of the unbelievable amount of walking field officers often found themselves doing. But he was a lifer: a career Agency man. It was good to have one of those as a deputy, Herb knew, realizing further that he was damn lucky to have three as his chief deputies. And they were good people, which was more important to him.

“Boss…Drum.” He slapped the seated DDI on the shoulder and took the chair next to him. “Long time, no see.”

“We’re not the ones hiding,” Drummond jokingly accused him.

“What’s up?” Healy settled back, his hands folded on his lap.

“Mike,” Landau began, “we’re going to need a pickup.”

“Where?”

“Can you manage Benghazi? It’s a preset,” the DDI pointed out.

“DONNER?”

“You got it,” Drummond confirmed.

“Well,” Healy exhaled the word, “he’s given us some good stuff. Saved some lives, that’s for sure. When?”

“Probably tomorrow, late. I’m going to notify the Rome station. Logan’s been running him for the last six years.” Administrators come and go, Drummond thought, but spooks always hang on. “DONNER is gathering some final intel before he splits. His transmission of the information will be the signal he’s finished things. You have the location.”

“Yeah. That’s an addendum to the file,” Healy said.

“Vinson’s in the area. With all the ruckus her presence can be expected. Do you know if they’ve got any special ops people on board?”

“Not offhand,” Healy answered, “but I can check. In either case I’d like Logan to go in with the extraction team.”

The DCI looked at the DDI, pouting uncertainty and caution. “If you think it’s the best course, it’s your op.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“All right.” The director felt some sense of relief knowing that DONNER was soon going to come out. “Who’s going to receive the last message? Logan will be on the Vinson I presume.”

“I’ll brief the station chief on the whole thing. I think having him receive and relay it to us will be the best.”

Herb thought of the time. It was 11:45 on the East Coast. He did some quick addition to figure the time in Italy. “Maybe we should move up the warning to the station. I’d hate to have something happen where DONNER would have to leave sooner than we planned, and Logan not be in position.”

“Then let’s notify Rome as soon as we’re done here,” Drummond proposed. The others agreed.

“Good. Anything else?” Landau asked.

The DDI and DDO signaled that there was nothing, and the meeting ended. Everything would now begin. Alone in his office Herb Landau took the DONNER file from his safe. He wanted to read once again about the man who had done so much for a country he knew little about, and would now be called upon to finally turn his back on the land of his birth in one last act of treachery against it.

It was just a fact of life, Francine Aguirre told herself. Her questioning of the desk clerk and motel manager — their twenty-seventh so far — had taken nearly twenty minutes because of the language barrier. L.A. being the melting pot that it was, the agents had to be prepared for communication difficulties. Francine—‘Frankie’—could joust in her native Spanish with the best of them, but Korean was as foreign to her as any language other than English was to her partner, Thom Danbrook. She knew it had to be amusing to any spectator who might have seen the two of them writing the words out and using hand gestures to get their messages across.

“Thank God this is the right time for blue jeans,” Frankie said. She had ‘graduated’ out of business suits three years before and now wore casual street clothes nine days out of ten. Court days were different. She hated them. “Can you chew quieter?” she asked her partner, rubbing her foot through the Reeboks.

Thom swung the car around the comer. There was another motel down the street. “Sorry. I’ll smack softer.”

Talk about vague… So the director wanted answers fast. No, the wording was needed. There was no elaboration. Art found that puzzling. The director was pushing him from three thousand miles away. Someone had to be pushing hard. The boss was a decent guy. His message said more than its wording implied. Something was up.

The seventy agents had so far struck out, even looking for just a sighting of any one of the three men. It was early still, though, Art kept reminding himself.

He looked around his office, forgetting the investigation for a moment. In a way he wanted to be out of there. Back at the Hilton there was activity, decreasing though it was, and thus more to occupy his body. He could do things there. That would occupy his mind. The latter rarely came alone for Art. Lately he had had to keep his body busy to check the endless wandering his mind wanted to do.

But self-discipline was a goal of Art’s, as suggested by his shrink. He straightened up in the chair to focus on the matters at hand. Eddie could handle things at the Hilton. Art was going to review all that was known…from the top.

Dick Logan, the economic liaison officer at the United States embassy in Rome, was packed in under ten minutes. As a habit he kept a bag packed except for his everyday essentials. What he felt would be best described as overwhelming apprehension. He didn’t consider himself a chicken, but on his best day he knew that he was basically a paper-pushing case officer with a standard cover assignment. He had all the training: surveillance, counter surveillance, personal combat (hah!), and all the other skills, whose mastery was supposed to keep him alive.

Behind a desk. The pay was good and the job was interesting. Those were pluses, he told himself. And DONNER. His agent. His man, insofar as one man could control another. As scared as he was about choppering into a hostile country — scenes from Apocalypse Now kept flashing through his mind — he was more excited that he was finally going to meet the agent face-to-face. Only the chief of station years ago had met the man. It would be an honor. DONNER was not the mystical agent of spy novels; he didn’t reveal top government or military secrets, or give any high-technology items over for security. His traitorous deeds were simple, yet hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, mostly Americans, owed their lives to this man.

And all he did was give us pictures. Logan knew it wasn’t as cut and dry as that. There had been a long road, one that DONNER had traveled alone. He wondered what gave a man the strength to live day after day with the knowledge that death at the hands of his countrymen was but a slip of the tongue away. Men, and women, of all nationalities were spies, all with their own reasons. Some were motivated by financial considerations, pure and simple. Others wanted to fight conflicting ideologies and feel the power that came from never being known to those they betrayed. Logan believed that a good number of spies were motivated by a sense of vengeance. He wondered often what motivated DONNER, trying not to classify him in any of the molds. The best he could do was try to keep an open mind, being aware that his agent’s motives might be less than honorable. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know that

Logan plopped the native fedora on his head before leaving the office. He left the key with the desk officer before exiting the embassy. His car was in the courtyard and he would drive himself to the airfield. On the way he planned to think through all the questions he would ask DONNER, sure that some would seem rather strange to him. Maybe not. After all, he was a human being, not just a code name, and Logan couldn’t care less about the debriefing the agent would surely go through in the months to come. The Agency diehards could handle that. Logan wanted to know the man.

There are three distinct sections of the White House. What tourists see, at least partly, is the center section, where official receptions and dinners take place. The private living quarters of the first family are also located there, on a higher floor. The west wing houses the power center of the executive branch, namely, the Oval Office. Offices and working spaces for the president’s advisers are also in this wing, along with the Cabinet room. At the opposite end, just past the president’s private theater, lies the east wing. Here his military advisers maintain offices and a pseudo command post.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff kept a desk there, though he felt more at home in the Pentagon. General Granger found it an inconvenience at times that he was tied so closely with the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address. He was a soldier, and the nation’s top military commander, which complemented and conflicted with each other. In his heart he longed for his turf: the battlefield, or at least where soldiers were. Like most professional soldiers he found the thought of war infuriating. To prevent war was the military’s premiere reason for existence. It was that that gave him purpose in the midst of politicians.

His phone buzzed. “Granger.. Sure, come on over.”

Bud walked through the general’s door a few minutes later. He sat in one of the high-back colonials that Granger had ‘transferred’ from his old Colorado Springs office, but he couldn’t get comfortable and ended up standing behind it.

“I spoke with the president a few minutes ago,” Bud said.

“I recommended that we begin the necessary preparations for any military operation that might come. The aircraft’s been on the ground for nine hours now. Something’s going to happen. Who knows what? It’s best that we’re ready.”

“You’re old Air Force, Bud,” the general reminded him, aware of the unenthusiastic ring of the NSA’s announcement.

Bud brought a hand back over his head, momentarily flattening the gray locks. “That does not exclude me from being damn worried about escalating this.”

“We can handle them — conventionally,” Granger pointed out calmly. Letting emotion into his words was not an option.

“I have no doubt about that. It doesn’t mean it’s the best option.” Bud finally sat. “My misgivings aside, can you have a report ready by…say, seven.”

Granger took his pen in hand. The light from the desk lamp shone off his smooth forehead. “The objectives?”

“Ending the Libyan terrorist threat.”

“Uh-huh. Minimum collateral damage,” the general assumed, correctly.

Bud nodded. His eyes added the emphasis. “And there’s something else. I didn’t discuss this with the president, but any order to carry it out would come from him. I do want the necessary personnel and equipment in place, ready to go.”

Granger’s expression asked the next question.

Bud went on. “If there is a nuclear weapon on that 747, we can’t allow it… I mean, there’s no way that—”

“I know,” Granger interrupted. “I know.”

Somehow it was easier not to verbalize what he was thinking. “It has to be certain. There can’t be a mess.” Bud let the words sink in for a moment. “Get it moving.”

After the NSA was gone Granger called his chief of operations at the Pentagon. The National Military Command Center — the War Room — was now operative. A planning group of senior officers and their deputies would begin work on the contingency plans, sets of which would be modified to fit the situation.

With that done he asked the Pentagon operator to connect him with the commanding officer of the Louisiana Air National Guard. Granger knew the Air Force—‘things with wings are my life,’ he would say — and where certain special abilities could be obtained. The Louisiana ANG had some F-106s left, and if the worst-case scenario happened, at least one would be needed.

Even military pilots had to defer to the mighty power of thunderstorms. This front of them had delayed Joe’s departure from Andrews by thirty minutes and kept the twin- engine executive jet, in which he was the only passenger, circling west of the air base for over an hour. Finally the clearance to land came, without the announcing lighted signs that Joe was accustomed to. The pilot had simply poked his head back, instructing Joe to buckle up. He cinched the belt snug. On his lap was a small, hard case with all the instruments he would need…hopefully. Joe held it tight. Inside were sensitive measuring devices so miniature that the fact that they were even built was amazing. There was an easy $2 million worth of gear in the case, something that worried Joe not at all. It could be replaced: The people who might die if the instruments failed could not.

A screech and a thud beneath signaled the landing. When the small jet stopped, Joe emerged to a windy tarmac. The afternoon sun illuminated the cloud bottoms above as they sped across the sky from the south. The ground was wet and slick beneath his feet on this part of the tarmac, and looking around he saw that it must have rained recently. From the look of the clouds more was on the way.

A car approached the jet, whose engines still whined. It stopped a few yards from the left wingtip. In the near distance bright perimeter lights outlined a low row of buildings and several large ones. Joe noticed several soldiers bathed in the light.

“Captain Anderson.” The soldier saluted instinctively.

“Mr. Anderson,” Joe corrected the soldier. He was a corporal. “Save your salutes for non civilians. I assume you’re taking me somewhere.”

“Yes, Mr. Anderson.” Asshole.

Joe walked around the car to the passenger door as the jet throttled its engine slightly, pushing it forward and kicking up a spray from the wet ground. The drive was short, only a few hundred yards at best, ending outside a hangar opposite the one he could see from the aircraft.

“Wait here,” the corporal said curtly. He jumped out and double-timed to a building connected to the hangar, obviously an afterthought addition.

Something struck Joe as strange. A corporal? This is an Air Force base. What’s Army doing here? The unmistakable sound of boots — more than one pair — came toward the car. A figure stood in front of the car, aglow in the headlights. The driver opened the passenger door for Mr. Anderson.

“Anderson,” the voice drawled. Joe could almost smell the cow pies. “I am Colonel William Cadler. Nichols tells me you can be quite an ass.” Joe eyed the corporal, who stared back without a flinch. “Well so can I. Understood? Good. Get your gear inside…now that we’re done with the introductions.”