"People always see suspicious stuff," Rubens said. "That could take a long time."
"We have one thing more to go on, Mr. Rubens. Take a look at this."
The two kidnapped women vanished from the big screen, replaced by a grainy and slightly fuzzy photo in gray-green tones. It showed a suburban street scene — rows of trees and neat, brick houses — and with a dark-colored sedan parked to the right. A man leaned on the car, smoking a cigarette and looking away up the sidewalk.
"We have a tap into the British security street-camera system," Gaither explained. "Cameras mounted on lampposts take shots every few seconds and forward them to the local police. Nouzha Ghailiani goes to school in the Woolston district, and we knew what bus stop she used. We dialed into several cameras in the area and came up with this."
"What about it?"
"I don't know about America," Gaither said, "but over here the police are extremely interested in older guys who hang around school bus stops. Nouzha's stop is just out of frame to the left. This photo was taken about fifteen minutes before her bus was due to arrive last Thursday morning."
"I see."
A white rectangle drew itself around the man's head, and the scene expanded until only the head was visible, vast and disturbing, filling the screen.
"We can't tell a lot from this shot," Gaither went on, "but the subject's mustache and skin tone are at least consistent with Middle Eastern profiling data."
"'Profiling' is a bad word over here," Rubens said dryly, "but your point is taken."
"We got a total of thirty-two photographs of this subject," Gaither went on. "Unfortunately, the camera didn't happen to catch Nouzha."
The face vanished, the image shifting back to the street scene. The image changed, tree branches and cars in the background jumping back and forth like a choppy movie viewed frame by frame. The last three frames showed the man throw his cigarette down, grind it underfoot, and begin to walk out of frame to the right. The final image showed the car pulling out away from the curb.
"And one thing more… "
The image cut back to one showing the car parked by the curb. Again a white square drew itself around the license plate mounted on the car's front bumper. The plate was partially obscured by the trunk of a small tree growing out of a planter area in the sidewalk, but as the scene zoomed in close, "E83K," the last four figures in a longer registration number, became visible.
"We have a partial plate number," Gaither continued, "and a make and model on the vehicle. MI5 is running the data through their databases now."
"Good work," Rubens said. "They may not be holding the Ghailiani family at the same address where the car is registered."
"No, but it will give us a start. We're putting together a team now to liaise with the HRT in Southampton."
"Who's running the team?"
"Edward Cartwright. Colonel, SAS."
"Okay. I'm going to send two of my agents to work with him," Rubens said. "We need to stay on top of this. I don't want to lose even thirty seconds because the lines of communication get scrambled or some idiot bureaucrat decides we can't have access."
"Right, Mr. Rubens."
"Let me know the minute you turn up anything else. Rubens out." He cut the connection.
Rubens walked over to Jeff Rockman's workstation. "Patch me through to Charlie Dean and Lia DeFrancesca," he said. "Where are they?"
"Holiday Inn, Southampton, England," Rockman told him.
A moment later, Dean's voice sounded over the speaker. "Dean. I copy."
"And DeFrancesca. What's up?"
"New assignments," Rubens told them. "Lia, you're going to the MI5 branch office in Southampton tonight, and putting yourself at their disposal. Talk with Colonel Edward Cartwright. He knows you're coming. You'll be our liaison with the SAS hostage rescue team they're assembling for an important op. Code name Imperial. Ilya Akulinin will be flying back out to join you tomorrow. He'll be your backup."
"Yes, sir. What's this all about?"
Briefly Rubens filled them in on Ghailiani and the need to find and free his family. "There's just one hitch," Rubens added. "Ghailiani may be dead or captured. We… lost contact with our operator on board the Atlantis Queen in mid-transmission."
"Who was that?" Dean demanded. "Carrousel?"
Rubens hesitated, then said, "Yes. She began transmitting over her secure link with Menwith Hill a little over an hour ago. She told us she'd hooked up with a British MI5 agent, gave us a fair rundown on the terrorists, and said they'd captured Ghailiani, one of the Ship's Security men, who's being forced to help the terrorists. But halfway through the transmission, she was cut off, mid-word. We have to assume that she and the MI5 man are dead.
Ghailiani may be dead as well." Rubens paused, then added, Tm sorry, Charlie. I know you've worked with Carrousel before."
"So Lia's helping MI5." Dean's voice sounded hard, a bit cold. "Where do you want me?"
"You're on your way to Spithead tonight. A COD is being readied to deliver you to the USS Eisenhower. You'll draw CQB gear and weapons on the ship and take charge of Black Cat Bravo when it comes aboard tomorrow morning."
"Are we going to mount an assault, then?" Lia asked.
"Yeah," Dean added. "Did Saunders and the DSF come around?"
"Not yet," Rubens told them. "We're working on that."
"Meaning, Charlie," Lia said, "that they're still trying to pick up the pieces after we walked out on a British general."
"We didn't have a lot of choice," Dean said. He sounded angry. "Damn it, we were told that Saunders had been bypassed, that the Brits were going to accept American help. We go into that meeting, and there's Saunders telling us to keep our collective noses out of the UK's business. He wasn't going to play nice. So we left."
"You did the right thing, Charlie," Rubens told him. "I would have done exactly the same if I'd been there."
"What's Saunders' problem, anyway?"
"It's not him as much as us," Rubens said. "The real problem is that both we and London are getting mixed signals from our own people. The Pentagon wants us to go in whether the British want our help or not. A Broken Arrow alert requires a military response, and the Joint Chiefs informed London that we were prepared to handle the takedown and to safeguard the security of the Pacific Sandpiper's cargo. But the President and the State Department both want to leave this to the British."
"Why?" Lia asked. "The Brits are good, yeah, but shouldn't they be looking for all the help they can get right now?"
"More to the point, shouldn't we be offering it?" Dean added.
"Of course. But the President promised to disengage from Iraq and avoid foreign military interventions. And if someone's going to try to go in shooting and fails… well, both the President and State would rather someone else take the fall. Right now, things in Washington are more than normally surreal."
"Hell, that's saying something," Dean observed.
"So what's the story?" Lia asked. "Are we going in or not?"
"This is classified, of course… but an SAS assault is going down tomorrow night."
"Tomorrow! They're going with Saunders' plan?" Dean asked. "A helo-borne assault?"
"We don't have the details yet," Rubens said, "but I would guess so. With luck, the commandos will get on board, take down the bad guys, and secure both ships.
"But if they don't, and assuming the terrorists don't push a button and blow both ships to bits, I want our people ready to launch a follow-up. Code name Operation Neptune. We need to find Ghailiani's family, the sooner the better, and we need to have a Black Cat team ready to insert off the Eisenhower if the HRT doesn't go down as planned. Understand?"