War of Eagles

FIFTY-FOUR

Intelligence work and patience have a long history together. Whether it was breaking codes in World War II or reconnaissance against the Persians by the warriors of Sparta before the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., this was not work that could be rushed.

Bob Herbert weathered patience impatiently. That was both a strength and a curse. He looked for fresh leads while he waited for old searches to bring results. He had a problem, though, when those new leads took him nowhere. When every road he studied was a dead end. When there was simply not enough information to go off road, or enough lift to hoist him aloft so he could study a bigger picture.

It was then that Herbert felt trapped. And when he felt trapped, Bob Herbert kept hurling himself at the problem until his head hurt, until his heart raced, until he wanted to scream. Until he sat in his chair and wept from frustration and blamed his wheelchair and, by extension, the fact that the U.S. embassy had been bombed in Beirut and he was there at all. But most of all he blamed himself for choosing this life instead of opening a tavern in Mississippi and playing guitar on open-mike night and never worrying about anything that happened beyond the confines of the small Southern town where the air was muggy and close, and you were safe because absolutely no one came there who did not belong there.

Herbert had always imagined he would go back to Philadelphia, Mississippi, when he retired. He wished he could go now, but to do so meant to acknowledge defeat. Under those conditions his retirement would be a trap and not a release.

The intelligence chief sat behind his desk at Op-Center. He did not want to go home and be useless. It was better to stay here with the night crew and at least have the potential to do something. But that still did not make him feel like the hub of a wheel around which activity turned. He was helpless and he was desperate, and not just to prevent a possible explosion in Xichang. Motion defined him. Without it, he had no idea who or what he was.

It was worse because Rodgers and Hood were not there. They were always pitching ideas. Even if Rodgers was knocking them foul, he was still swinging the bat. It was action.

There had been virtually none of that since Viens had come to his office the day before. Herbert had asked for more information about the blips on the Pacific Rim. Unfortunately, when the photo recon officer compared current satellite images to past photographs, nothing stood out. The process was called ODA: overlay dissonance analysis. It was similar to what astronomers did when they compared celestial photographs from different nights. If something were out of place in the heavens — such as an asteroid approaching the earth — ODA let them know it. The process was a little more complex with intelligence work. Past military maneuvers were compared to current maneuvers, along with the responses of surrounding nations. Computers sounded an alarm if there were anything out of the ordinary. So far, the Pacific Rim activity had not caused anything like that. The NRO had picked up the explosion on the Zhuhai airstrip, and that obviously had a place in the overall picture. But no one knew how or why or when. Certainly no one knew whether it was somehow related to the launch.

However many times Herbert reviewed the existing data about troop movements or the explosions in Charleston, Durban, and Taipei, he could not extrapolate what might happen with the rocket. He did not see how they related.

And then Paul Hood called.

“Bob, I’m glad you’re there,” Hood said urgently. “I assume Mike has a way of staying in touch with his people?”

“By text alert,” Herbert said. “They are all wearing—”

“I don’t need to know that,” Hood interrupted. “The uplinks here are messing with the cell phones. Can you get him a message?”

“Yes,” Herbert replied. Because it was text rather than more sophisticated audio, the watches worked on a lower frequency that would not be affected by satellite communications.

“Tell him that Tam Li had a crew working on booster security.”

“The fox watching the chickens?”

“Possibly. The team said they were returning to their posts,” Hood went on. “If they do, great. If they try to leave the complex, we’ll know why. Mike has got to stop them, make them talk.”

“I’ll tell him,” Herbert said. “Do you have a description of the men?”

“No. I didn’t meet with them.”

“Do they speak English?”

“Doubtful,” Hood said. “Mike can have them draw a diagram. In blood, if they have to.”

“Got it,” Herbert replied.

Hood clicked off, and Herbert swung over to his computer monitor. The thin, flat screen was attached to a boom on the left armrest of his wheelchair. Herbert accessed Rodgers’s text address and quickly drafted a message. He then reduced it to as few words as possible.

Tam Li detail had access to boosters. May flee before ignition. Stop them and assess.

As Herbert typed, ideas began to form. A direction had been indicated. Tam Li blowing up the rocket — his own rocket, effectively — to solidify opposition to Chou Shin was a reason, but not strong enough. Besides, with the intelligence director dead, there would be no reason to continue that operation. However, there was a more compelling notion: it could be blamed on Taiwan as a counterstrike to the attack on their city. And who better to reply to such an attack than Tam Li, who was sitting across the strait with an army?

The scenario quickly acquired weight and detail. All it had taken was a phone call from someone with whom he had enjoyed an often hostile but very symbiotic relationship.

That was all.

But that was a lot.