“Aren’t you worried about your staff invading this place and stealing all the food?”
“Not in this weather,” said Halsey with a hearty laugh. “Besides, that would be mutiny. I’d have ’em strung up on the yardarms.”
Grimes was seated in a chair watching the process. He hailed Hayes with a casual salute, then eyed the captain. “You don’t have a yardarm on this tub, sir. I’d suggest blasting ’em out of a few CM tubes.”
The captain laughed again. “And, I guess, with a cruise missile up their ass as well?”
Without waiting for an answer, he pointed at Grimes.
“I like this war dog of yours, Tony. The man is mean. Plain mean.”
“That right?” said Hayes as he went to the desk and peered into the wok. “Dangerous, I’d say, but never mean. When do we eat?”
“You’re right on time, sir,” said the chef. “Grab a bowl and help yourself to the rice.”
Gradually formalities were put aside. The group acted as if they were at a Thai restaurant, military behaviour taking a back seat to plain old cronyism. But no one had forgotten why they were here. They ate heartily, then finished the meal with fortune cookies and a bottle of sake that Chi had scared up from somewhere. Strangely, the mere act of reading the fortunes brought a sombre mood to the room. The SEAL smashed the cookie in his fist and picked up the slip of paper. “You will die a slow and painful death.”
He laughed as everyone in the room said, “What? ”
“Just my little joke.”
The fortune-cookie ritual ended and the mood deepened as everyone thought about the situation.
Grimes looked around. “It couldn’t have been that bad a joke. Lighten up, fer Chrissake!”
Halsey poured himself another cup of tea and looked at Hayes. “There’s coffee, too, Tony.”
“That’d be great, Brad.” He offered Halsey one of his Cuban Especials.
The captain lit it greedily.
Grimes refused the cigar with his patented sloppy salute. “Got my own, thanks. So, General, what’s the word from Santiago?”
“Well, Gibbs thinks he might have seen the man Suarez.”
“Heard that,” retorted Grimes. “What’s new?”
“Nothing from our MP. And nothing from Frei’s boys. In a word…”
“Nada,” said the SEAL.
Halsey commented that he really didn’t know Gibbs and, as far as he could tell, no one else did either. But Hayes saw where the captain’s suspicions were going and shook his head. “The man is a loner, but he lost his wife, kids — all the family — in a boating accident. The poor guy lost everything. Shit, even the family dog went down with the ship.”
“Christ,” said Halsey. “I didn’t know that.”
“We checked him out while he was flat in a hospital bed. And I’ve spent some time with him. He’s clean as a…”
“… hero,” said Grimes.
The captain thought for a moment, considering Henry’s plight. “I think I’d be a loner too, if that had happened to me.” He shook his head. “That being the case, I’m not so jealous of his vacation in Santiago. I’d say he more than deserves it.” He changed the subject.
“Tell me about the nukes. How many bombs do you think the terrorists planted?”
“Their manifesto alluded to at least two, but we think there might be three,” said Hayes. “I doubt they could get enough fissionable plutonium for more.”
“Golly, what a relief that is, General,” Grimes remarked.
Hayes ignored the man’s sarcasm and forged on with his impromptu assessment.
“We got a trace on at least two more. But apparently the terrorists knew we could detect the stuff from orbit, so they did a zigzag path across the ice shelf leaving small nuclear tracers everywhere. Not enough to be a biohazard, you understand, but enough to provide the same trace as a shielded nuke buried five hundred feet beneath.”
“Smart,” said Grimes, belting down another small cup of tea.
The general stared for a moment at the SEAL without expression. “This has been a real headache for NASA. The DOD satellites that check for nukes don’t fly polar orbits. We had to redirect one, and it’s taking time. We’re just now starting to plot the targets, and NASA is readying a launch accordingly.”
“Why bother if you already have one?” asked Halsey.
“Because the one that’s up there isn’t sensitive enough to tell the real thing from the decoys.”
“Is it possible to do that?” said Grimes, finally getting interested in the discussion.
“Sure it is, Kai. It just takes a dedicated system. And the one they’re sending up will have a high-definition radar mapper attached to it. We should be able to correlate the positions of the bombs with the radioactive traces and separate out the decoys.”
“Interesting,” commented Halsey.
“How about another sake?” said Grimes. “A salute to the boys at NASA for sorting that one out.”
“So that’s what you’ve been drinking,” said Hayes with a laugh. “Sure you haven’t had enough, Kai?”
“You thought I was drinking tea?” said Grimes.
Halsey went to the intercom and asked his first mate in the conning tower for a weather report. Grimes and Hayes knew the party was over.
Before the storm had hit the coast, Enrique had taken Henry and Sarah to a military area outside Santiago so they could try out their weapons. After some discussion Henry admitted he hadn’t fired a handgun in years; the last time had been when his father-in-law had shown off his war trophy from World War II, a Beretta he’d taken from an Italian officer.
In the limousine driving back to the hotel, Henry’s mood became strangely ominous. As he and Sarah had stood side-by-side and shot at bottles, he had felt like he was back in the embrace of the military. They’d used up nearly a whole box of 9mm ammunition before they’d quit, and Sarah was clearly a better shot than he was. He wondered if it was her superiority with the pistol that had him in such a dark mood. But, looking at the sky over Santiago, he realized that the culprit was the weather. Still, he knew that everything had changed since he’d seen that man in the street.
He put an arm around Sarah. “How’re you doing?”
“Kinda down,” she said. “I think we’re in for a storm.”
When they got to the hotel it was raining. In spite of this, a sizeable group of bellhops rushed to open the door of the limo and stood in the downpour holding the door while Enrique handed Henry a package. “To clean the weapon, Sir Henry,” he said. “And some extra clips of ammunition.”
Sarah took the package and stuffed it into her bag, next to the laptop. Reminded of her computer, Henry waited until they’d got to their room and then asked her to bring up the picture of Suarez she’d filed on its hard drive.
When she had it on-screen, she slid the computer over to him, walked to the window and looked out at the rain. “Let’s eat at the hotel tonight.”
He stared at the face on the screen. It was a corporate portrait. Suarez had been groomed for the photo and, no doubt, the image had been retouched. Henry tried to connect the face to the person he’d seen on the ice and glimpsed on the street. Finally he just hung his head in frustration and let out a massive sigh.
Sarah glanced back at him. “Is that the guy you saw?”
“I’d have to look into his eyes. That’s the only way I can make him.”
“But could it be him?” She sat down next to Henry.
He didn’t answer, simply stared at the screen, shaking his head.
Sarah unwrapped the brown paper package Enrique had given them. She found a gun-cleaning kit and instructions for disassembling and cleaning the guns.