“Damn,” said McEwen. “He knew everything that was going on.”
Her conversation with the security guard sitting at the far end of the bar was more fruitful. McEwen started by asking about the man’s mother, who’d been in poor health the last time they met. She was doing considerably better, thank you, said the man.
The conversation went on from there, the words flying by so quickly that even MY-PID couldn’t keep up.
There was too much of an age difference between them for the relationship to be sexual, Hera was sure. And yet it certainly seemed intimate—McEwen gave him a light kiss on the cheek before taking out some bills to pay the bartender so they could go.
“We’re going to need the car,” she told Hera. “Where we want to go is not far from here, but I’d prefer we weren’t seen.”
Hera drove as McEwen led her around the perimeter of the large airport, driving down empty access roads in the industrial park at the side of the airport. Finally they reached what looked like a dead end.
“Go down this alley to the right, then take a left,” said McEwen. “And turn off your lights.”
“It’s too narrow.”
“You can fit. You want me to drive?”
Hera declined. McEwen drove like a little old lady—who’d just inhaled a half pound of crack cocaine.
Even in the small Fiat they’d rented, she had trouble cutting the turn, but once in the alley there was plenty of clearance along the sides—as long as they kept the mirrors folded against the car.
“We want to check the fifth hangar,” said McEwen as they turned onto a wider street. “But park at the second. We’ll walk from there.”
The hangars were metal buildings dating from the seventies, too small now for anything but private planes. They were being used mostly to store parts and featured rusted padlocks and peeling paint. Hera followed McEwen out around the side of Hangar Two to a narrow back path, approaching Hangar Five from the rear.
“There’s a security camera on the hangar across the way,” McEwen explained. “This one is wide open, but it would be better if we weren’t seen, I think.”
“How do we get in?”
“You can’t pick a lock?”
“I can pick locks.”
Rusted barrels of refuse crowded along the back of the building. Hera had to squeeze over a pair of them and then push them away to get to the back door.
It was so old the lock had rusted in place. She couldn’t get her pick to move the tumblers.
“We’ll go to Plan B,” said McEwen.
McEwen disappeared around the corner. Before Hera could follow, she heard glass breaking.
“What was that?” asked Hera.
“Plan B,” said McEwen, standing in front of the broken window. “Why don’t you go first? It’s a little hard to climb in my dress.”
Hera’s small LED flashlight was just powerful enough to light up the entire interior, but then there wasn’t much to illuminate. A collection of rusted steel garbage cans and drums stood next to the wall near the front. Discarded cardboard boxes were stacked in a semineat pile near the back. Two roofs’ worth of shingles sat on pallets at the exact center of the building.
And that was it.
“Pretty empty,” said Hera, shining the light around.
McEwen leaned in the window. “Give me a hand,” she said.
Hera was surprised at how firm the petite woman’s muscles were. She was light, not much more than a hundred pounds, if that.
“All right then,” said McEwen, straightening her clothes. “Let’s see what we have.”
She walked over to the cardboard boxes, bending and turning a few of them over.
“Toilet paper, handouts for passengers,” she announced, straightening. “Interesting.”
Hera rolled her eyes.
“Let’s see what they’re throwing out,” said McEwen, walking over to the garbage.
Two-by-fours and assorted sticks in the first can. Roofing material in the second.
AK–47s and grenades in the third.
“Bingo,” said McEwen.
The hangar had been rented by a company named Vleta Servici Ltd. MY-PID quickly determined that Vleta was associated with a company named Duga TEF, which had a small number of dealings in Russia. It found two bank accounts associated with Duga, then began tracking transfers that had been made into and out of the accounts. Within a half hour it had profiled a spidery network in Ukraine and Russia.
By then Hera and McEwen had removed the rifles and grenades from the premises, and planted several video bugs around the interior of the hangar. They’d also cleaned up the glass, removing the shards and the shattered pane. Someone looking at it would realize it had been broken, of course, but it was only one pane and might be overlooked, especially by someone coming in from the front.
“You think they were planning a hijacking?” asked Hera as she prepared to back the car precariously down the alley.
“I think it’s more in the way of a backup plan,” said McEwen. “A cache of weapons in case something goes bad. A group coming into the airport could grab them; someone wanting to leave could take them, and maybe use the boxes as cover to get them aboard an airplane. It’s a contingency.”
“Why just a contingency?”
“Think about it. You do mostly covert action, right? If you were planning something, you’d have your best gear with you.”
“Sure.”
“You might pre-position it, but you’d take critical care of it. No one could just barge in and grab it, or come upon it accidentally. The Wolves are as professional as you are. These weapons were ridiculously easy to get to—they could get in just by breaking a window, like we did.”
“True,” said Hera. “But—”
“They may have been a backup,” said McEwen carefully. “Not their main cache but something they could grab quickly in an emergency.”
She paused, thinking
“Or they may be a blind,” she added. “A misdirection. Either way, we’re not done. Not by a long shot.”
56
Over the Atlantic Ocean, approaching Europe
The C–20B was an Air Force spec Boeing 737. While not nearly as luxurious as the standard corporate configuration of the plane, it was a VIP jet, with a number of features that anyone who ever had to fly in the belly of a C–5A or C–130 would have killed for.
Case in point: Breanna’s seat. It moved back, so it was essentially an inclined bed, about as comfortable as you could get in an airplane cabin without actually having a bed.
Breanna, however, found it uncomfortable. And even when she finally decided she’d be best off taking a nap before landing, had an almost impossible time dozing off. Finally she fell off into a fitful sleep, images flitting through her mind, ideas and arguments.
“W hy didn’t you save me?”
The voice came from across the river. She jumped from the bed—she was still in the tent.
“Why didn’t you save me?” asked Mark Stoner.
She reached over to get Zen, but he was gone.
“Breanna—I saved you.”
“Mark? Are you out there?”