Ferrel shook his head. “I don’t know. She was the only one affected. The only change in variables was that she is female.”
“What?” Gullick said.
“Maybe the wave effect of the engine affects females differently.” “Is it significant?” Gullick asked.
“No, sir.”
“Any foreseeable problems?”
“No, sir.”
Gullick moved on. “Two. This ‘foo fighter.’ Admiral Coakley?”
“I have three ships en route to the location where it went down. One is the USS Pigeon, a submarine rescue ship. It has the capability to send a minisub down to the bottom at that location.”
“ETA and time to recover?” Gullick asked.
“ETA in six hours. Recovery — if they find it and it is intact — inside of twenty-four,” Coakley responded.
“What do you mean if they find it?”
“It’s a small object, General,” Coakley explained. “It disappeared in deep water and we’re not even sure it’s still there.”
“You will find it,” Gullick said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Sir…” Quinn paused.
“What?” Gullick snapped.
“What if this foo fighter wasn’t the only one? The reports we have from World War II indicate multiple sightings. There were three flying with the Enola Gay.” “What if it isn’t the only one?” Gullick repeated.
“The pattern we observed with this one that went down in the Pacific indicated that it was waiting somewhere in the vicinity here and picked up Bouncer Three departing the Area.”
“So?” Gullick said.
“Well, sir, then there might be another one of these foo fighters in the vicinity here and it might interfere when we run the mothership test flight. Obviously, the foo fighters are clued in to our operation here in some manner.” General Gullick considered this. He had spent a lot of time worrying about the test flight. This was a new wrinkle, and he struggled to deal with it. “Do you have any suggestions, Major?”
“I think we ought to check and see if there is another one around. The last one reacted to a bouncer flight. If there is another one about, maybe it would react to another bouncer flight, except this time we would be more prepared.”
Gullick nodded. “All right. We can’t afford to have anything go wrong on the fifteenth. Let’s prepare a mission for tonight. Except have two bouncers ready. One as bait, the other to follow and intercept. We’ll also prepare some kill zones if there’s one of those things about and it takes the bait.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Three,” Gullick said. He looked at Dr. Cruise, then General Brown, who was responsible for overall security.
The right side of Gullick’s face twitched. “The fuck-up this morning.”
“Von Seeckt is gone,” Brown said. “We have his apartment in Las Vegas covered in case he shows up there. We—”
“Von Seeckt is old and a pain in the ass, but one thing the man is not, is stupid,” Gullick said. “If I’d have known you were going to fuck up a simple termination I’d have let nature take its course and listened to his shit for five more months, then let him die. Now we have him on the loose with his big mouth and his knowledge.”
“He can’t have gotten too far,” General Brown said.
“The term that comes to mind,” Gullick said, glaring at Cruise, “is anal retentive. You had to have the death certificate typed up before you actually killed him?”
“Sir, I—”
Gullick silenced the doctor with a wave of his hand.
“What about this”—Gullick looked down at his computer screen—“this Captain Turcotte?”
“He was new, sir.” Brown had a file open. “He just arrived in time for the Nightscape mission last night.” Brown paused. “Since the events this morning, I had the other surviving members of the Nightscape mission debriefed at the MSS via SATCOM. It appears that there was a civilian contact just as Bouncer Three arrived at the objective in Nebraska and the foo fighter interfered. Captain Turcotte was on board Major Prague’s helicopter. Prague’s bird stayed behind to deal with the civilians.”
“There was no report of civilians. No report at all,” Gullick said. “I debriefed Turcotte personally about the mission and he didn’t say anything about that.” He was shocked. “Turcotte lied to me.”
“We don’t know who the civilians were, but there has been no report filed with local authorities about the night’s activities,” Brown said.
“Of course not,” Gullick said. “Turcotte would have told them to keep their mouths shut.” He looked down again at the computer screen. “What’s his background?”
“Infantry. Then Special Forces. We recruited him out of DET-A in Berlin.” Gullick slapped the conference tabletop. “I remember him now. He was involved in that incident in Dusseldorf with the IRA. I never saw him. We did the after-action inquiry by secure conference call, but I recognize the name now. He was there. So why is he lying to us and helping Von Seeckt flee? Is he a plant?” General Brown shook his head. “I don’t know, sir.”
“He might be,” Kennedy said. The others at the table all turned to look at the CIA man.
“Clarify,” Gullick ordered.
“When we did our background on Dr. Duncan, my people picked up some information that she was working with someone inside our organization or was sending someone in to infiltrate us. The NSA had supplied her with a phone cutout to talk to this agent. That cutout was activated forty minutes ago. My people disconnected it.”
“Could you find out who was calling?”
“Not without attracting the NSA’s attention,” Kennedy said. “But whoever was calling on that line, and I do believe it was Turcotte, given all that has happened, didn’t get through.”
“Why wasn’t I informed of all this?” Gullick demanded.
“I thought I could take care of it,” Kennedy said. “I warned Major Prague to be on the lookout and to check any new personnel extra carefully.”
“Obviously that worked damn well!” Gullick exploded. He threw a file folder across the room. “Does anyone in here believe in letting me know what’s going on before we fuck things up any further?”
The men of the inner circle of Majic-12 exchanged worried glances, not quite sure what to make of the question.
Just as swiftly as he had exploded, Gullick calmed down. “I want everything you have on Turcotte.” He checked the computer screen. “And who’s this woman in the rent-a-car?”
“We’ve run the plates the guards copied. The woman renting the car is Kelly Reynolds. She’s a freelance magazine writer.”
“Just great.” Gullick threw up his hands. “That’s all we need.”
“I’m working on getting a photo ID of her and her background.”
“Track them down. Put out a classified alert through CIA channels into the police networks. No one should approach them. We have to get them ourselves. Quickly!”
“We also have a report from Jarvis,” Kennedy continued. “This Reynolds woman interviewed him yesterday evening. Jarvis gave her the usual story, but she was better prepared than most and penetrated his backstop cover. She specifically asked about that reporter that we picked up the other night on White Sides Mountain.”
“I wonder why she helped Turcotte and Von Seeckt,” Quinn said.
Gullick stood. “Find her. Then you’ll know. While you’re at it, find Turcotte and find Von Seeckt and terminate them. Then we won’t have to worry about the whys.”
CHAPTER 14
“Who did you call?” Turcotte asked, as he toweled his hair.
While Von Seeckt had been on the phone, Turcotte had taken a shower and cleaned himself up. Kelly had run out and gone to a Wal-Mart to buy him a loose-fitting pair of pants and a shirt to replace his torn and sooty jumpsuit. He felt more human now. The stitches that Cruise had put in his arm were holding up well.