Order to Kill

CHAPTER 23

SOUTHWESTERN VIRGINIA

U.S.A.

THE dull ring of a knock on the steel door echoed off the walls. Rapp sat up on his cot, looking through the semidarkness at the rusting pipes and crumbling ceiling. During the height of the Cold War, this is where the ICBM missile crews bunked. Now the room was little more than a relic of a largely forgotten conflict.

The only illumination was coming from a single battery-powered light on the floor. There was no functioning power in the room, and the lack of electric heat gave it the feel of a meat locker. Despite that, Maslick was snoring loudly in the top bunk, the fog of his breath rising rhythmically into the still air. For now, his role in this was over. He’d focus on recovery until he was needed again.

The knock came again, this time followed by the sound of the door scraping open.

“Mitch?” Craig Bailer’s voice. But more subdued than normal. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah,” Rapp said, sliding off the edge of his bunk. “What time is it?”

“Four in the morning,” Bailer said, motioning Rapp down a corridor fashioned from a concrete pipe twenty feet in diameter.

“Have you found anything?”

“After we made sure it was safe, we gave the forensics guys priority. They wanted prints, DNA, fibers, and God knows what else before my people contaminated it any more than it already has been. When they were done, we started with X-rays, MRI, and metallurgy.”

It was hard not to notice that Bailer was avoiding his question. “And?”

“Well, it’s definitely safe,” he said in an enigmatic tone. “We’re most of the way through the teardown-getting pictures and working on a virtual 3-D model.”

They came out of the pipe and arrived at a set of titanium blast doors that were part of the fifty million dollars in modifications the CIA had made. He pressed his palm against a pad set into the wall and the doors slid open to reveal a world of bright fluorescent light, stainless steel, and glass. No fewer than twenty people were milling around what had once been one of Pakistan’s most advanced nuclear weapons. Now it was nothing more than endless rows of individual parts laid out on a stark white floor.

“I hope you know how to put that thing back together,” Rapp said as the doors slid closed behind them.

“No worries. I took pictures with my cell phone.”

Rapp had always found watching Bailer in his element to be a bit surreal. Despite looking like a truck driver, it was abundantly clear that he was the smartest guy in the room. Gray-haired men in lab coats approached him with clipboards to sign, deferential nods were aimed in his direction, and numerous people vied for his attention to get approvals, ask questions, and have their work checked over. Rapp didn’t bother to pay attention to any of it. Computer screens full of complex diagrams and math equations were well outside his operating theater. Which was exactly the reason they went to such lengths to keep Bailer happy.

“What aren’t you telling me, Craig? The thing’s not going to blow up, right?”

“Definitely not.”

Bailer motioned him onto a platform that ran across the back wall. The people working on the computer terminals there suddenly found reasons they needed to be somewhere else, increasing Rapp’s apprehension. They knew who he was and didn’t want to be around when he got the news.

“How bad is it?” Rapp said as Bailer brought up a false-color image of the nuke on a monitor.

“Pretty bad, Mitch. We stitched this together out of the scans we made. “Metal shows blue, plastics and carbon fiber are black. Radioactivity comes up red.”

“What do you mean? There is no red.”

“Exactly.”

Rapp considered what he was seeing for a moment. Was it possible that Umar Shirani was smarter that they gave him credit for? That he was circulating decoys along with live nukes to keep the endless list of Pakistani terrorist groups off-balance?

“So this is a fake?”

“No. This is a working bomb. But the canister that should contain its nuclear fuel is empty.”

“Empty,” Rapp repeated quietly. “So the Pakistani army removed the fissile material before they moved them? They’re shipping it separately?”

Bailer’s face transformed into something that was between a frown and a wince. “That was my initial thought, too. But it doesn’t add up.”

“Explain.”

“The empty canister is a really good fake, but it isn’t made from the same steel as the other parts.”

“So? It makes sense that they wouldn’t have been manufactured at the same time as the device. That useless prick Shirani could have had them produced later as an additional security precaution.”

“Two problems with that theory. One, my gut says that the canister wasn’t made in Pakistan.”

“And two?”

“That’s the bigger problem: how the original canister was removed. Whoever did it knew what they were doing and had the right tools, but I can tell you they were in a hurry. There are some pretty deep gouges, a disconnected wire, and a cracked switch.”

Rapp thought about the warehouse where the terrorists had pulled the nuke from the truck and opened the crate. “What are we talking about, Craig? How much time?”

“With a little training, you could change out the original canister with a fake in as little as four minutes.”

“How big and heavy is it?”

“Call it a fifty-pound hatbox.”

“Shit,” Rapp said.

“My thought exactly.”

Rapp turned and walked a few paces, staring out over the activity below as he dialed his phone.

“Hello,” Irene Kennedy said. By the sound of her voice, she hadn’t been asleep.

“We have a problem.”

“Yes?”

“The canister holding the fissile material has been replaced with a fake.”

“So the Pakistani army decoupled it?”

“Craig says no. My guess is that the people in that warehouse got out with it. We were watching for them to move the entire unit and we didn’t have the manpower to track them all.”

There was a long silence over the phone. “It doesn’t make sense to me, Mitch. I can understand them taking it but replacing it with a decoy? Why would they go through the trouble? And how would they have built it? Was it a convincing fake?”

“Yeah, but Craig’s betting that it wasn’t made in Pakistan.”

“That’s even less believable, then. I’d be skeptical if this was al Qaeda or ISIS. But al Badr is-”

“The minor leagues,” Rapp said, finishing her thought.

“Exactly. The fact that they were even going after a nuke was surprising. Now you’re telling me they figured out how to not only remove the fissile material container but manufacture a convincing replacement? That strains credulity to the breaking point.”

“Al Badr or not, someone’s got the critical piece for building a nuke, and I’m guessing it’s not one of our friends.”

“Agreed. Have Craig reassemble the weapon so we can get it back to Pakistan. The situation’s heating up and we can’t afford to keep it any longer.”

“Shirani’s going to blame us,” Rapp pointed out. “He’ll say we took the fuel and use the accusation to pump up the religious fanatics. It could be enough for him to take over.”

“No question. But I’m not sure what we can do about it at this point. We need to focus on making sure no more fissile material is removed from the Pakistani arsenal.”

“Mas and I can jump a plane back to Pakistan, but this makes our job a hell of a lot harder. We’ve been looking for people moving against entire nukes. They’re big, heavy, and visible. If all they need is a wrench and a few minutes alone, we’ve got an entirely different game. Now it’s just a matter of slipping some low-level army officer a few grand or sneaking into the back of a train or truck while it’s on the move.”

She didn’t respond.

“Irene?”

“I need you to come to Maryland before you leave, Mitch.”

He tensed. “Why?”

“The surgeons in Afghanistan missed some perforations in Scott’s small intestine. Our people have repaired them but Scott has a serious infection.”

“Bottom line?”

“They’re doing everything they can, Mitch-”

“Bottom line, Irene!” Rapp said, the volume of his voice rising. Some of the scientists working below turned and shot him a nervous glance.

“They think he’ll be gone before sunrise.”

Rapp disconnected the call and turned back to Craig Bailer.

“Everything okay, Mitch?”

“You’re done. Get that thing put back together.”

“Can I shave a little off that canister? No more than a few thousandths of an inch. With some time to analyze it, I might be able to tell you where it came from.”

“As long as you can do it in the next few hours.”

“Not a problem.”

“Craig, I need a favor.”

“Sure. What?”

“My plane’s gone and I need to get to Bethesda. Fast.”

Bailer nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. I think I can help you out.”