“Do you have to do it that way?”
“ Elizabeth, ideological differences notwithstanding, he has served his country well. I disagree with him on a lot of things, but he's never lied to me, and he's always tried to give me good advice,” Fowler replied, looking at the plastic-stick microphone. He suddenly wondered if it was working.
“I told you what happened last night.”
“You got your wish. He's on the way out. At this level, you do not throw people out the door. You do it in a civilized and honorable way. Anything else is small-minded and decidedly stupid, politically. I agree with you that he's a dinosaur, but even dinosaurs get a nice spot in the museums.”
“But—”
“That's all. Okay, you had words with his wife last night. I'm sorry about that, but what kind of person penalizes someone for what their wife did?”
“Bob, I have a right to expect your support!”
Fowler didn't like that, but responded reasonably. “And you have it, Elizabeth. Now, this is neither the time nor the place for this sort of discussion.”
Marcus Cabot arrived at Andrews Air Force Base just after lunch for his flight to Korea. The arrangements were more luxurious than they looked. The aircraft was a U.S. Air Force C-141B Starlifter, an aircraft with four engines and an oddly serpentlike fuselage. Loaded into the cargo area, he saw, was essentially a house trailer complete with kitchen, living and bed rooms. It was also heavily insulated — the C-141 is a noisy aircraft, especially aft. He went out the front door to meet the flight crew. The pilot, he saw, was a blond captain of thirty years. There were, in fact, two complete flight crews. The flight would be long, with a fueling stop at Travis Air Force Base in California, followed by three midair “tankings” over the Pacific. It would also be singularly boring, and he would sleep through it as much as possible. He wondered if government service were really worth it, and the knowledge that Ryan would soon be gone — Arnold van Damm had gotten the word to him — didn't improve his outlook. The Director of Central Intelligence strapped himself in and started to read through his briefing documents. An Air Force non-com offered him a glass of wine, which he started on as the aircraft taxied off the ramp.
John Clark and Domingo Chavez boarded their own flight later that afternoon for Mexico City. It was better, the senior man thought, to get settled in and acclimated. Mexico City was yet another high-altitude metropolis whose thin air was made all the worse by air pollution. Their mission gear was carefully packed away, and they expected no trouble with customs clearance. Neither carried a weapon, of course, as this sort of mission did not require it.
The truck pulled off the Interstate exactly thirty-eight hours and forty minutes after leaving the cargo terminal at Norfolk. That was the easy part. It took fifteen minutes and all the driver's skill to back his rig up to the concrete loading dock outside the barn. A warm sun had thawed the ground into a six-inch-deep layer of gooey mud that almost prevented him from completing the maneuver, but on the third try he made it. The driver jumped down and walked back towards the dock.
“How do you open this thing?” Russell asked.
“I'll show you.” The driver paused to scrape the mud off his boots, then worked the latch on the container. “Need help unloading?”
“No, I'll do it myself. There's coffee over in the house.”
“Thank you, sir. I could use a cup.”
“Well, that was easy enough,” Russell said to Qati, as they watched the man go away. Marvin opened the doors and saw a single large box with Sony printed on all four sides, along with arrows to show which side was up, and the image of a champagne glass to tell the illiterate it was delicate. It was also sitting on a wooden pallet. Marvin removed the fasteners that held it in place, then fired up the fork-lift. The task of removing the bomb and putting it inside the barn was completed in another minute. Russell shut the fork-lift down, then draped a tarp over the box. By the time the trucker came back, the cargo box was again closed.
“Well, you got your bonus,” Marvin told him, handing over the cash.
The driver riffled through the bills. Now he got to drive the box back to Norfolk, but first he'd hit the nearest truck-stop for eight hours of sleep. “A pleasure doing business with you, sir. You said you might have another job for me in a month or so?”
“That's right.”
“Here's how you reach me.” The trucker handed over his card.
“Heading right back?”
“After I get some sack time. I just heard on the radio there's snow coming tomorrow night. A big one, they say.”
“That time of year, isn't it?”
“Sure is. You have a good one, sir.”
“Be careful, man,” Russell said, shaking his hand one more time.
“It's a mistake to let him go,” Ghosn observed to the Commander in Arabic.
“I think not. The only face he has really seen is Marvin's, after all.”
“True.”
“Have you checked it?” Qati asked.
There is no damage to the packing box. I will do a more detailed check tomorrow. I would say that we are almost ready."
“Yes.”
“You want the good news or the bad news?” Jack asked.
“Good first,” Cathy said.
“They're asking me to resign my position.”
“What's the bad news?”
“Well, you never really leave. They'll want me to come back occasionally. To consult, stuff like that.”
“Is that what you want?”
“This work does get in your blood, Cathy. Would you like to leave Hopkins and just be a doc with an office and patients and glasses to prescribe?”
“How much?”
“Couple times a year, probably. Special areas I happen to know a lot about. Nothing regular.”
“Okay, that's fair — and, no, I couldn't give up teaching young docs. How soon?”
“Well, I have two things I have to finish up with. Then we have to pick someone for the job…” How about the Foleys, Jack thought. But which one…?
“ Conn, sonar.”
“Conn, aye,” the navigator answered.
“Sir, I got a possible contact bearing two-nine-five, very faint, but it keeps coming back.”
“On the way.” It was a short five steps into the sonar room. “Show me.”
“Right here, sir.” The sonarman pointed to a line on the display. Though it looked fuzzy, it was in fact composed of discrete yellow dots in a specific frequency range, and as the time-scale moved vertically upward, more dots kept appearing, regular only in that they seemed to form a vague and fuzzy line. The only change in the line was a slight drift in direction. “I can't tell you what it is yet.”
“Tell me what it isn't.”
“It ain't no surface contact, and I don't think it's random noise either, sir.” The petty officer traced it all the way to the top of the tube with a grease pencil. “Right about here, I decided it might actually be something.”
“What else you got?”
“Sierra-15 over here is a merchant, heading southeast and way the hell away from us — that's a third-CZ contact we been trackin' since before turn of the last watch, and that's about it, Mr. Pitney. I guess it's too bumpy topside for the fishermen to be out this far.”
Lieutenant Pitney tapped the screen. “Call it Sierra-16, and I'll get a track started. How's the water?”
“Deep channel seems very good today, sir. Surface noise is a little tough, though. This one's tough to hold.”
“Keep an eye on it.”
“Aye aye.” The sonarman turned back to his scope.
Lieutenant Jeff Pitney returned to the control room, lifted the growler phone, and punched the button for the Captain's cabin. “Gator here, Cap'n. We have a possible sonar contact bearing two-nine-five, very faint. Our friend might be back, sir… Yes, sir.” Pitney hung up and hit the 1-MC speaker system. “Man the fire-control tracking party.”