“Thanks, Doctor.”
“I was sorry to hear about your captain.”
“Doctor, how could a beam of light or energy kill a man through his eyes?”
The doctor shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, unless it was so powerful it burned through the back of the eyeballs and caused a massive hemorrhage. Or the trauma of the pain could have caused a heart attack.”
“Could a laser do that? A very, very powerful one?”
He hesitated and studied her before shrugging again. “Maybe.”
“How about a particle beam?”
The doctor smiled and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Look, I’m not technically oriented outside of medicine. You’re way over my head with Star Wars stuff like particle beams. Lasers, though? We use them now for cosmetic purposes, to burn off skin one layer at a time, and to cauterize small blood vessels. Could a really powerful laser do extreme eye damage? Absolutely. Could it kill? I don’t know.”
CHAPTER 32
The trip from the private jet facility to the main passenger terminal took only five minutes, but the convoluted entry into the building, up a loading dock and back stairway, took longer. With Hawkins in the lead, Kat and Robert escorted Dallas, Steve, Graham, and Dan to the airport office arranged for them, a modest room with several metal desks and a sweeping view of the boarding ramps and central concourse. Sandwiches were brought in, but for two hours they cooled their heels with periodic visits from Hawkins and strict instructions ringing in their ears to call no one. Repeated requests to get them to a shower facility had gone unfulfilled, and despite their best attempts at grooming and rinsing out clothes on the way from Vietnam, the entire group looked bedraggled.
“We’re having a group bad-hair day,” Dallas had quipped.
At fifteen minutes past four, Rick Hawkins appeared again. “Kat, we’ve got you on an Air Force flight. It leaves in an hour.”
She smiled and thanked him, locking the door from within as he departed. Robert MacCabe, she noted, had a strange look on his face. “What?” Kat asked.
He hesitated. “Nothing.”
She walked over and pulled out a chair for him. Dallas lounged on a couch while Steve searched the airport with a pair of binoculars found on the windowsill. Dan, meanwhile, talked quietly to Graham about the ophthalmologist’s diagnosis.
Kat pulled up a chair for herself and sat facing Robert, her leg brushing his knee for a second, a tiny stimulus that surprised her by resonating through all the fatigue and adrenaline. She discreetly pulled her leg back, worried she’d sent him an unintended message. But Robert seemed oblivious to the encounter.
“Something’s bothering you, Robert,” Kat said. “What is it?”
“Something he said about thirty minutes ago when he brought our Starbucks order in here.”
“Hawkins?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’re the FBI agent, so if it rings true to you…”
She leaned forward with her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes on his. Her hair cascaded around her face. “I’m a psychologist by training, Robert. I’ve been an FBI agent a little under three very fast-moving years. I don’t know everything about FBI-speak, and I’m not a member of the good-old-boy network.”
“‘I was never a Marine.’”
“What?”
“That’s what he said when I asked him when he first trained at Quantico. He chuckled and said he was never a Marine.”
“Well, Quantico is primarily a Marine base.”
Robert nodded vigorously. “I know. But it’s also the location of the only FBI Academy you’ve got, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t get to be an FBI agent without going through training at Quantico. Correct?”
Kat looked at him for several seconds without moving. “That is strange, but he’s FBI, all right. His ID was standard issue. There’s even a… well, I can’t tell you, but there are methods we have of instantly authenticating one of them, and I did.”
Robert raised his hand in a dismissal gesture. “Good. I was hoping that was paranoia talking.”
There was the sound of a key in the door and Hawkins reappeared, sticking his head just inside. “Okay, Agent Bronsky. The Air Force is ginning up a crew to fly all of you in one of their Gulfstreams back to Andrews. We’re making the arrangements now to move you over to Hickam to board the plane.”
Kat stood up, smiling. “That’s great.” She began walking in his direction. “Say, I was trying to place your name a while ago, and I was wondering if you were at the Academy about the time I was.”
Hawkins smiled and raised a finger. “I need to get back down the hall, here. We’ll talk in a few minutes, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, and stood with her arms folded as he closed the door.
Kat turned and looked at Robert as she chewed on her lip. She moved swiftly to one of the desks where a computer screen was displaying a screen saver full of The Far Side characters and tapped on the keyboard. The screen snapped to a standard Windows program and she entered a flurry of keystrokes to call up an E-mail form.
“What’re you doing, Kat?” Robert said as he quietly moved up beside her.
She looked up at him and shook her head. “Just checking.”
She turned her concentration to the keyboard and entered a quick message routed as a “Deliver Immediately — Emergency” communiqué to Jake Rhoades.
JAKE… PLEASE CONFIRM USAF TRANSPORT FOR ALL 6 OF US FROM HONOLULU TO ANDREWS AFB IS OKAY. ALSO, CONFIRM ACTIVE-ASSIGNMENT STATUS OF FBI HNL FIELD AGENTS HAWKINS, WILLIAMS, WALZ, MONCRIEF, ALL OF WHOM ARE HERE WITH US. REPLY ONLY TO MY NATIONWIDE BEEPER W/ ALPHANUMERIC ANSWER. KB
She hit the key to launch the message and waited while the computer dialed itself into a network and flashed confirmation on the screen. She erased the message and dug her beeper out of her handbag to make sure it was on before sitting down with Dallas and Dan.
Within six minutes her beeper began chirping. Kat pulled it out of her handbag again and casually punched the button, causing the message to pop up.
WHERE ARE YOU? SECST.JJ INFORMED ME DEST. WAS HNL, THEN REC’D WORD YOU DIVERTED MIDWAY ISLAND. ARE YOU IN HNL? ALSO, NO SUCH FBI AGENTS ASSIGNED TO HNL OFFICE OR ANYWHERE ON WEST COAST. BE CAREFUL.
Kat suddenly felt the room undulating, as if they were rolling through an earthquake. She glanced at a hanging light fixture, but it was motionless.
“Kat?” Robert said, startled at her response.
She said nothing, but bolted from the chair and walked quickly to where Steve was standing at the window. “I need your binoculars. Quickly!” she said, her voice terse. Wide-eyed, Steve handed the binoculars to her. She raised them to her eyes, adjusting them as she searched back in the direction of the private terminal where the Global Express had been sitting since their arrival.
It was gone. She scanned the airport and found it at the end of Runway 4L.
“Oh shit!”
“What, Kat?” Robert prompted. “WHAT?”
She pulled the glasses away and pointed. “See that jet starting takeoff?”
He nodded.
“That’s Two-Two-Zulu.” She lowered the glasses, her shoulders slumping. “My God, Robert. I’ve lost the weapon, I’ve lost the jet, and I’m sure I’ve lost Pollis, too.” She handed him the beeper and he read the message quickly.
Kat turned into the room, surveying the others. She turned back to the windows and began searching for a way to open one of them.