The Art of War

CHAPTER EIGHT

The place where they parked the van wasn’t ideal. They were sitting beside a fence on a narrow lane of asphalt, in dry-land farm country fifteen miles north of Denver International Airport. Frank and Joe — not their real names — were assembling the drone in the back of the van. Cheech, a nom de guerre that he had chosen, was outside with the hood up, apparently tinkering. Chong — he picked his name too, after Cheech had his, so none of the men he worked with would know his real name — was the man in charge, and he sat in the passenger seat with a handheld aviation radio.

He glanced again at his watch. They had about an hour to wait, if he had all this timed correctly. Another passenger jet went overhead, about four thousand feet above them, heading for the airport. They came in more or less an endless stream, about two a minute.

He turned the frequency knob on the radio to 125.6, the Automatic Terminal Information Service, and adjusted the volume control. “Denver Airport Information Foxtrot. Temperature one-seven. Dewpoint, three. Check density altitude. Overcast at fifteen thousand, visibility seven miles. Wind two-two-zero at twelve, variable fifteen, gusts to twenty. Landing Runways One Seven Left, One Seven Right, One Six Left, and One Six Right. Altimeter two-niner-niner-eight…”

Chong switched the radio to 119.3, Denver Approach. “Denver Approach, United Four Two Eight, at Anchor at flight level one-nine-zero with information Foxtrot.” Anchor was a published GPS waypoint.

“United Four Two Eight, Ident.”

There was a pause.

“United Four Two Eight, I have you in radar contact. Proceed Kippr”—another waypoint—“and cross at one-one-thousand. You are cleared for the approach ILS One Seven Right.” ILS meant Instrument Landing System, a precision instrument approach, which was routinely used even in good weather.

Now came the read-back, which ensured the pilots of the approaching plane had heard and understood their instructions. “Four Two Eight, direct Kippr and cross at one-one-thousand. ILS One Seven Right.”

Chong turned down the volume and glanced behind him. Frank and Joe had the drone assembled and were testing it in the back of the van.

The bird was an AeroVironment RQ-11 Raven, a hand-launched remote-control drone. This one had been extensively modified and weighed 5.2 pounds, a pound more than the Raven in military service. It carried the usual CCD color video camera and a small, specially constructed bomb. The bomb weighed fourteen ounces and its attaching hardware, detonator and receiver two more ounces.

The Raven had a pusher prop powered by an electric motor. Power for the motor, sensor and controls came from a lithium ion battery. This particular bird was the Digital Data Link version, one of the newer ones. AeroVironment had manufactured and sold to American and allied forces over twenty-four thousand of the things at last count. This Raven had been purchased from a Spanish army major in Barcelona who had no idea who the buyers were or what they intended to use it for. Nor did he care. He was paid ten thousand euros, enough to save his house from foreclosure, and that was enough for him. He reported the Raven and its control box destroyed in a storage shed fire that he set himself. There was no investigation.

Chong consulted the map of the Denver airport on his lap as Denver Approach instructed the next plane to fly the ILS approach to runway One Seven Right. DIA had four parallel runways, 16 Left and Right, and 17 Left and Right, so there was no way to pre-position the Raven until they knew which runway the target plane was assigned.

The Raven had its limitations. The airport approach corridor was four miles wide, and the drone flew slowly. Its cruising and climb speed was about thirty-five miles per hour, a bit faster in a dive. And it would have to climb five thousand feet here, up to ten thousand feet above sea level, where it would be fighting that wind from the southwest, which would probably be stronger at altitude. It might make thirty to thirty-five miles per hour in the climb, which would take a bit over six minutes from launch. Then it would have to be positioned southwest of the interception point so it could make its run-in in a descent, at max speed.

The timing had to be exquisite.

The color camera hung on gimbels under the nose of the craft. The gimbels on this one had been modified so that instead of looking down, the camera could look five degrees above level at max elevation. Still, to see the coming airplane and intercept it, the Raven would have to be higher than the plane. The video from the camera was displayed on a laptop computer, which was interfaced with the drone controller.

“We’re ready,” Frank said.

Chong looked at his watch. Watched the second hand sweep. Listened to the radio chatter, waiting …

“United Four Two Eight at Kippr at one-one-thousand inbound.”

“Roger, Four Two Eight. Switch Tower on one-three-three-point-three.”

Eight and a half minutes from the Anchor fix.

Chong lit a cigarette and stared at the road running away in front of the van. Uh-oh. Here came a pickup. He used binoculars. Farm vehicle. Driver, no passengers. Looked like one large round hay bale in the bed of the thing.

As the radio chattered on, he watched the truck approach. It didn’t slacken speed, merely moved over a bit and went cruising by. Hispanic driver. No muffler.

Chong swung the binoculars. No one in sight in the fields to the left or right. There was a mobile home about a mile away to the left, but the yard was empty of people. Two vehicles there. They hadn’t moved in the last hour. He checked the mirror on his door frame. Only the farm truck in sight, going away along the prairie road.

“Denver Approach, Air Force One at Anchor at Flight Level one-nine-zero with information Foxtrot.”

“Roger Air Force One. Squawk Ident … Ident received. Radar Contact. Cross Kippr at one-one-thousand. You are cleared for the ILS Runway One Seven Right approach.”

“This is it,” Chong said to Frank and Joe. “One Seven Right. Launch it.” He reset the timer on his watch and watched the second hand begin to sweep again.

Frank and Joe opened the cargo door and got out. Joe was handed the Raven. Frank played a moment with the control box, which was about the size of a video game controller and was wired to an antenna that was stuck to the roof of the van with a suction cup. The genius of the Raven design was that all the microchips and processors that made the thing a stealth observation platform were housed in the controller, not the drone. The bird was too small for most radars to acquire and nearly silent. It was essentially undetectable at altitude when airborne, an invisible eye in the sky. Today the controller was augmented with a laptop, which was programmed with waypoints and a flight plan.

Joe took five steps away from the van, turned to face the wind. The prop on the Raven spun up. Joe waited until Frank yelled, “Ready,” then he tossed the Raven into the wind. It climbed away quickly and was soon merely a tiny dot against the dirty gray sky. Then it was lost from sight.

The radio continued to chatter. “Frontier One Nine, hold at Anchor at Flight Level two-three-zero as published. Expected approach time four-nine after the hour.”

“Is this that NOTAM closure?”

“Affirm. Advise when in holding…”

Apparently the FBI had gotten Grafton’s memo; I had no trouble carrying my gun through security at the Hoover Building. In fact, after I showed my CIA ID, I was escorted around the metal detector and straight to a conference room on the fifth floor. My escort, a young man of about twenty-four or — five years of age, looked bored. He asked me no questions at all, merely sat and played with his iPhone until a plump woman in her fifties came in carrying several paper files.

She laid them on the desk in front of me.

“I kinda thought all this would be on a computer,” I said.

“We’re trying, but not yet.”

“Okay.”

She sat down across the table from me. With two sets of eyeballs on me, it was going to be difficult to filch anything, if I got the urge.

Well, Zoe Kerry hadn’t been lying. Born in Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of a midlevel retail executive and his schoolteacher wife. Majored in accounting at Ohio State. Passed her CPA exam. Joined the FBI eleven months later. They did an extensive background investigation before ordering her to the FBI school at Quantico: It looked like the usual drivel. Her neighbors and high school teachers liked her. Her brother they liked not so much. He had gotten in trouble several times as a kid, didn’t go to college, had a couple of DUIs. Was unemployed as of the date of the last interview. I wondered what he was doing now.

Her shooting scores at Quantico raised my eyebrows. They were excellent. So were her classroom grades. She sailed through the obstacle course and did well at the cross-country. Graduated in the top quarter of her class. Bully for her.

The second file held Kerry’s record at the FBI, ten years’ worth. Assignments. She did five years in New York, then four in San Francisco. Then back to DC. Evals, lie detector test results (they gave them annually now to everybody, apparently), even expense account claims and amounts allowed. Promotions … I settled in to read her performance evaluations as the gray-haired lady watched me like a hawk. The young stud was playing a computer game on his iPhone.

The shootouts were six months apart in San Fran. She had been assigned to the antiespionage task force there. There were references to file numbers. A fellow agent, male, was killed in the first one, and she dropped the villain, a suspected Chinese agent. In the second one, a civilian bystander was killed, and Kerry killed the gunman, also a suspected Chinese spy, a mole at Apple Computer. Given temp leave after each shooting, she was cleared to return to duty by the psychologist after the first shootout, but after the second she was sent to Washington for further evaluation. No mention of what that psychologist found or recommended. Presumably Zoe Kerry came to us from there.

I reached for a notepad in front of me and jotted down the file numbers of her shooting scrapes. Then I tore off the top sheet and passed the slip of paper to the watching hawk.

“I’d like to see these files, please.”

“Are you done with those in front of you?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She picked them up and left the room.

The game player yawned. I looked at my watch. I had been reading this stuff for an hour and a half. I wondered how long it would take for Zoe Kerry to read all the crap in my files at the CIA, which were, I assumed, digitized now.

Ten minutes passed. My escort was still on his iPhone. I reached for the notepad and tore off the top sheet. Wrote down Kerry’s address and Social Security number and birthday on the bottom, below the place that held the impressions of the file numbers. Folded the sheet and put it in my pocket.

Another ten minutes passed. It was getting along toward eleven o’clock. The door opened and a Type A individual in a natty dark gray suit and power tie strode into the room. My escort snapped to attention.

He walked over to me and stuck his hand out. “Tommy Carmellini? I’m George Washington Lansdown, special agent in charge of records.”

I rose to my feet. I was about three inches taller than Lansdown, and I saw a fleeting expression of irritation cross his features. He was accustomed to being the biggest stud in the room. We pumped hands. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I’m afraid the files you asked to see are ongoing investigations,” Lansdown stated, not a bit apologetic as he looked up into my shifty spook eyes. “Department regulations do not allow us to share those files with other agencies. Not only are they sensitive, they contain investigative notes that may or may not be true that could impact innocent individuals. And, of course, unauthorized disclosure might adversely impact successful prosecution of the guilty.”

I refrained from commenting that I wasn’t going to mention a word of anything in their hush-hush files except to my boss, the acting director, but refrained. A comment like that would merely bounce off Lansdown. Obviously, it was going to take more horsepower than I had to induce the FBI to share.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Lansdown. I’ll pass your comment along to my boss, the acting director, Admiral Grafton.”

Lansdown wasn’t going to waste another minute on me. “Escort him out of the building,” he said to my guard, then nodded once in my general direction and strode out.

I followed my handler like a good dog.

Chong found it impossible to stay in the van. He got out and looked in the side door at Frank and Joe huddled over the screen of the laptop studying the readouts. Chong looked at the picture on the video screen, a transmission from the color video camera in the Raven, held the radio close to his ear and waited. The drone was now level at ten thousand feet on the altimeter, flying upwind at a stately fifteen knots groundspeed.

Air Force One called Kippr and was told to transfer to the tower frequency.

Chong dialed it into the radio and was in time to hear the tower roger the call of the Air Force One pilot.

Chong told Joe, “He just crossed Kippr at two hundred ten knots. Kippr is five minutes from us. He’ll be abeam us at nine thousand six hundred feet, ready to dirty up.”

“Three more minutes, I think. Then I turn the bird to intercept.”

They had practiced this interception a dozen times using a fighter plane that flew a similar track, at the same height and airspeed. The last four interceptions were good, but there were a lot of variables, not the least of which was wind, which would change the drone’s velocity and require a heading correction of some magnitude.

They didn’t have to fly the Raven into the big Boeing, merely get it within three hundred feet. Then its integrated controls would trigger the explosive charge the Raven carried, generating a large pulse of electromagnetic energy that should be enough to overcome the light shielding in the plane’s computers and control system, burning them out. At that point the 747 would become uncontrollable. The electromagnetic pulse would fry iPhones, computers, pacemakers, the air data computer, the fly-by-wire, the engine controls, all of it. The plane would crash. Presumably all the crew and passengers would be killed. Including the president of the United States.

Chong used his binoculars to sweep the fields and roads. No one around. No traffic on the road since the farm truck went by. He pointed his binoculars to the north and searched the sky. The seconds ticked by.

“There it is,” he told Frank.

“Turning to intercept.”

Chong focused his binoculars on the oncoming plane. It should have its flaps out, be slowing to gear speed. He just couldn’t tell from this angle, which was almost head-on, but looking up.

“Got him on the camera … Damn, we have a tailwind. Drone is making ninety over the ground.”

“Don’t lead him too much.”

“Denver Tower, Air Force One with you, approaching Japex. We have the glideslope.”

“You are cleared to land, Air Force One.”

“The bird is going too fast. It’s too high and won’t come down.”

“Try to detonate it right over him.”

Frank was good, really good, but …

“Drop the gear,” Chong whispered at the Air Force One pilot.

If the plane would slow, Frank could get the drone down.

“Shit, the wind changed. It’s driving the Raven to the east. Too fast.”

Chong glanced at the video presentation on the laptop. The drone had missed the big Boeing to the right. Frank was turning back toward it, steeply, and the camera picture blacked out. The turn was too steep.

Chong heard the Boeing and looked up. The president’s plane was passing overhead.

“We missed it,” Joe said, the disgust evident in his voice.

“Recover the drone and let’s get the hell outta here.”

“Sorry,” Frank said.

“We’ll try again when he takes off. He’s only going to be here four hours.”

I found Zoe Kerry in the CIA cafeteria eating a salad. I dropped into the seat beside her. I had two hot dogs with chili, mustard and onions on my plate. “Hey,” I said.

“Where you been, Carmellini?”

“Doing serious hot important things.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. This is the CIA, after all. How goes the investigation?”

“The piece of plastic they found under Tomazic’s boat was from a diver’s scuba mask faceplate. They even have the brand name.”

“How long was it in the water?”

“Less than twenty-four hours.”

“So it begins to look like murder?”

“Yes.”

Boy, this would stir them up. In addition to the director of the FBI, the director of the CIA was also murdered. I could visualize the headline.

I ate my hot dogs. The chili they used in the cafeteria was actually pretty good. And real beef hot dogs. God only knows what part of the steer the meat came from, but parts is parts.

Kerry was still messing with her salad when I finished off the dogs and took a long, slow sip of coffee. Not as good as McDonald’s, but acceptable. The upside to not being a gourmet is that you are easily pleased.

“How about friend Reinicke?”

“The fire investigators don’t have much to go on. They are sure the epicenter of the explosion was in Reinicke’s apartment. Natural gas. Hell of a fire. Not much left. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day. If there is anything to find.”

“You up for dinner tonight?”

“No.”

“Is that no never, or no tonight?”

“Never is a long, long time. Let’s just say, not tonight.”

I gave her my most charming let’s-get-laid-soon smile, picked up my tray and headed off for more serious hot important things. She actually gave me a small smile in return. It must be that old Carmellini charm that worked so well for dear old Dad, and Granddad … and Great-Granddad …

I got in to see Grafton about three that afternoon. He was on his computer. I waited, and when he finished he swiveled his chair to me. “Anything?”

I told him about the morning visit. About the special agent in charge of records, George Washington Lansdown. Tossed the piece of notepaper on his desk. He picked it up, held it under the light so he could see the faint indentations of the file numbers.

“Is this worth following up on?” he asked.

He wanted an opinion. So I gave him one. “They don’t want to share it, so presumably it is interesting reading. Her computerized files that the dragon lady said didn’t exist might be, too.”

“Kerry lied about PTS.”

“And she is sitting on Tomazic’s murder, which may be coincidence or cause and effect. She says that piece of plastic in the water came from a scuba diver’s faceplate. If there was a diver in the water when Tomazic drowned, it was murder.”

“I heard about that.” Grafton sighed and rubbed a hand over his hair, smoothing it down or scratching his dome. I don’t think he even knew he did it when he was thinking.

“I’ll see what I can do about this,” he said, nodding at the notepaper. “Thanks, Tommy. Stick with her.”

“Yes, sir.”

After Carmellini closed the door behind him, Jake Grafton looked again at the file number indentations. He held the paper up to the light and jotted down the numbers on his own notepad. Then he picked up the phone and called the FBI assistant director, Harry Estep. After ten minutes and two executive assistants, he got through to the man himself.

“Harry, Jake Grafton. My man Carmellini came over there this morning and read Zoe Kerry’s files. No problem there … Thanks. Anyway, he wanted to see the two files she got in shootouts over before she came here … Uh-huh … Case files.”

“You know we can’t show you those, Jake.”

“Oh, bullshit, Harry. Like I’m gonna call a reporter. I’ve got this woman waltzing around Langley and I’m up to my ass in Chinese spies and she was involved in a couple of their messes. I’m curious.”

“Sorry, Jake. Department of Justice regulations.”

“I hate to put our professional relationship on that basis, Harry, but you’re pushing me.”

“I have my orders.”

“Have a nice day,” Jake Grafton said, and hung up.

Chinese espionage seemed to be cropping up with distressing regularity, he thought. A coincidence, or cause and effect? The CNO, Cart McKiernan, was worried about the Chinese, and Jake had the greatest respect for him. Just that morning at a department head meeting he had asked for a synopsis of everything the agency knew about Chinese cyber-espionage and naval force readiness. Once again, he was appalled at the reliance of the U.S. intelligence services, including this one, on satellite reconnaissance and electronic intelligence. Only spies on the ground could tell you what the other side was thinking, and unfortunately the United States had far too few of them. In part that was because the U.S. intelligence services had both traitors and moles, who had in the past betrayed human assets with fatal results.

But there was nothing to be gained by fretting over what America didn’t have.

Grafton looked up a telephone number in his private address book and dialed it on his secure outside line. After the third ring, a female voice answered.

“Sarah Houston.”

“Jake Grafton, Sarah. How’re things?”

“You know, after I read in the papers that you were the new acting director at Langley, I wondered how long it would be before you called me.”

Grafton smiled. Sarah couldn’t see it on the phone, of course, so he let it show. Houston was at the National Security Agency, the intelligence service that used batteries of supercomputers to monitor electronic communications all over the planet. Some of their activities in the United States had been revealed to the press by Edward Snowden, another traitor, a revelation that had caused a political firestorm worldwide and crippled the service. Just how much, no one in the know was saying.

“I thought after Snowden you might be looking for a job,” Grafton said.

“You never know,” she replied coldly. “If they can me, I’m thinking of buying an RV with my severance money and becoming a gypsy.”

“We could always use you over here.”

“Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

“The reason I called, I need some help.”

“Well, duh. I didn’t think you were calling to wish me Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas.”

“Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas. Just in case. I need some help getting access to a couple of FBI files. They are being sticky, and I want a look. Probably nothing to it.”

He paused to give her a chance to say something but got only silence.

Grafton continued, “They’re case files. May I give you the numbers?”

“Damn, Admiral. You’re going to get me sent right back to prison.”

“Not unless you’ve lost your touch.”

She said a word that was illegal to use on the telephone. Grafton had helped the U.S. attorneys prosecute her a few years ago. She pled guilty to thirty-seven felonies and went to prison. Then he had gotten her out, not paroled, but temporarily released, when he needed her hacking and data-mining expertise. She was still temporarily out, unofficially, but with a new name, a new life story, a new driver’s license and a new Social Security number. Still, the prison sentence was always there, hanging over her neck like the sword of Damocles. Grafton knew she resented him for it. Owed him and resented him.

“You want the whole files or a synopsis or what?”

“Whatever you can get.”

“Give me the numbers,” she said flatly.

Grafton read them off. “Call me if and when,” he said, and read off the number of the secure phone in his office.

“It’ll be a day or two.” Her lack of enthusiasm was palpable.

The admiral ignored it. “Fine,” he said heartily and closed with “slave labor is so rewarding.”

She hung up on him. Jake Grafton smiled again and cradled the instrument.

Chong had the handheld radio transceiver tuned to the Denver Ground Control frequency, 121.85. The wind was still out of the south, and the cloud deck had come down to ten thousand feet. He knew that because he had listened to the Automatic Terminal Information System. Denver was still landing and taking off planes to the south.

But the airport was silent just now, without a single airplane in the air. That was because the president’s plane was about to depart, so all traffic into Denver was holding at various fixes all over Colorado. Planes waiting to take off were still at the gate. No doubt the passengers in the terminals were peeved beyond endurance, calling on their cell phones, worrying about connections and missed business meetings, and queued up at the restaurants, bars and restrooms. All to prevent a suicider from ramming the president’s plane as it took off and climbed to altitude.

Air Force One had called for its clearance twenty minutes ago, probably while the president’s motorcade was en route from the University of Colorado in Boulder, where the president had made a speech to his favorite fans, liberal college students who knew in their hearts he was on the side of history and the angels.

The van was slowly cruising a dirt farm road south of the airport, parallel to and a mile or so north of the east-west highway that ran by Front Range Airport, a general aviation airport, and out across the high plains through various hamlets on its way to Kansas.

Joe and Frank were in the back with the Raven, its battery fully charged, its little EMP bomb wired up with its detonator and ready to pop. The concussion would destroy the Raven, of course, and pieces of it would flutter down into the pastures, there to be found by investigators. The van would also be found, abandoned and burned to ensure there were no fingerprints and DNA samples to be obtained from it. Not that it mattered. The four men would be long out of the country by the time FBI and Secret Service investigators put it all together.

Good luck finding us, Chong thought. Not that the Americans wouldn’t try. They would move heaven and earth to find the president’s assassins. They would never give up, but the trail would lead them nowhere.

All the precautions had been taken. Every possible lead was a dead end. Months had been spent setting up this operation. He sat there holding the handheld, scanning the roads for security vehicles and thinking about loose mouths. The only possible way for the investigators to find them, Chong believed, was a wagging tongue, a tongue loosened by alcohol or the need to inflate an ego.

He didn’t know the other men’s real names, nor did they know his. They all had separate escape routes, passports that would not be questioned. The plan was as solid as very careful, well-financed professional criminals with adequate time to prepare could make it.

All four of them would be rich, of course. Rich and ready for a life of leisure, women, the good things in life. By God, Chong was ready. He assumed the others were, too.

The radio hissed, and then words came out. “Denver Ground, Air Force One ready to taxi.” So the president was aboard, the plane was buttoned up and the engines were turning.

“Air Force One, taxi Runway One Seven Left. Route at your discretion.” In other words, the airport was empty of taxiing airplanes, so the ground controllers didn’t care which taxiways the pilot chose to get his plane to Runway One Seven Left. Other pilots listening on the frequency must be green with envy.

One Seven Left. The departure route would be behind the van.

Cheech turned the van around in the road, carefully so it wouldn’t go into a ditch, and drove a half mile or so, until Chong told him to stop. They were on a tiny swell in the prairie, and he could see the entire runway with binoculars.

There it was! Taxiing.

He looked east along the highway, then stepped from the van and looked west. The road was empty in both directions. He swept the binoculars around the fields north and south. Some horses, a few cattle. Fences, plowed wheat fields … and little else.

“Let’s get ready.”

Cheech shut down the van and climbed out. Opened the hood.

Frank and Joe piled out. Got the Raven ready to fly.

Chong stood beside the van with his binoculars up. He watched Air Force One taxi toward the departure end of One Seven Left. No doubt the tower would clear the pilot for an immediate takeoff and he would roll as soon as he taxied onto the runway.

“Launch it,” Chong said over his shoulder. As Joe threw the Raven into the air, he dialed the tower frequency into his radio, 133.3.

“Under control and climbing,” Frank reported.

“Air Force One, Tower. You are cleared for takeoff at your convenience.”

“Roger that. Cleared to go.”

The big Boeing reached the end of the taxiway, turned broadside to Chong for just a moment and sat there. It was at least four miles away. Parked along the runway were several small security vehicles and a fire truck.

“A thousand feet and climbing,” Frank said. “Tell me when to turn to intercept.” He was climbing the Raven into the wind, southwest.

Now the president’s plane began to move. Onto the runway. Slowly, probably so it wouldn’t jostle anyone still standing and moving around. Chong doubted if the pilot was going to tell the president to sit, fasten his seat belt and turn off his iPhone.

“We got company coming,” Cheech said from his station in front of the van. “From the west.”

Shit!

Chong checked the oncoming vehicle. An airport security pickup with emergency lights on the roof. They were off just now.

Air Force One was rolling. Frank took a look over his shoulder.

“Turn it,” Chong told him, then tossed the binoculars onto the seat.

Joe stepped behind the van, out of sight of the oncoming vehicle, now only a hundred yards away. The engines of the Boeing 747 were just barely audible.

The pickup slowed. It was going to stop. Chong reached into the passenger seat and put his hand on the pistol, a Beretta in 9 mm. Took the safety off.

As the pickup stopped, the jet lifted off. Still coming this way and climbing, although not too steeply. The sound was swelling.

Two guys got out of the truck and approached Cheech, who was busy under the hood with his back to them.

Cheech backed out and looked up at the plane, now almost overhead. The officers, walking toward him, did, too.

As it passed and the noise crested and began to dissipate, one of them shouted, “What are you doing out here?”

Cheech had already reached down behind the radiator and lifted the submachine gun off its restraining hooks. He turned, firing. One three-shot burst for each officer. Both went down as if they’d been sledgehammered.

As Cheech ran toward the security truck to check to see if there was anyone else, Frank shouted, “Five seconds.”

They never heard the small EMP bomb go off. The jet continued on its course for several seconds, the engines at full power, then began a gentle turn to the right. The nose drifted down. The turn steepened and the nose dropped further. Then the giant plane, now about two miles away to the south, went into the ground at about twenty degrees nose-down and thirty degrees right-wing-down. It exploded on impact.

Chong shouted, “Let’s get the fuck outta here,” pulled the antenna from the roof and tossed it into the van.

With all four of them in the van, Cheech started it. On the off chance that the EMP burst would be close by, they had spent a week shielding the electrical system.

The van roared away in a cloud of dust, leaving the two security officers lying in the road. One managed to stagger to his feet. He had been wearing a bulletproof vest. He had several broken ribs and massive contusions, but he was alive and conscious. He staggered to the pickup, got the door open. Reached for the radio on the dash and keyed the mike.

Nothing. The radio was fried.

It didn’t compute. He didn’t understand. He tried it several times, then remembered the two-way radio on his belt. Got it out, ensured it was on, then tried to talk. It too was dead.

Only then did the conflagration of the burning airplane two miles south and the rising column of black smoke sink into his consciousness.

They didn’t say anything on the ride into Denver. The enormity of the crime they had just committed seemed to crush the words from them. Two police cars with lights flashing and sirens howling roared past them going the other way. Then an ambulance. And another. And a fire truck.

Finally, as they were nearing the public parking garage downtown where they had left the cars, Chong said, “Everyone got their tickets and passports?”

All yeses.

They had selected this garage because it didn’t have security surveillance cameras. Cheech went up to the sixth level. Their cars were where they had left them, and no one was around. Cheech wheeled the van into an empty stall.

He shut down the engine and reached for his seat belt release. Chong shot him an inch above the right ear, then turned and put a bullet into the heads of Frank and Joe, one at a time.

Bang, bang, bang, just like that.

He tossed the gun over the seat.

He got out, pulled out his bag that had held the binoculars and from it took a large plastic bottle of charcoal lighter fluid. He squirted some on Cheech and everything in the front seat. Closed the passenger door. Opened the van door and squirted Frank and Joe. Emptied the bottle on everything in sight, then tossed the bottle in.

Patted his pocket, felt his car keys and got out his cigarette lighter. Stepped back a few feet, lit a cigarette and tossed it into the van.

And waited. Nothing.

Just when he thought he was going to have to do it again, the entire interior of the van lit off with a whoof that nearly knocked him down.

Chong walked, not ran, to his parked car, unlocked it with the key and got in. Started it, pulled out of the parking place and drove down the slanting alley away from the van on fire, down level by level, drove toward the exit to the street and the rest of his life, which was stretching out before him like a sunlit, shining road.