Chapter 13
“Hey, Colonel, how are you doing?” said the voice on the cell phone when Howe answered.
A very recognizable, if inconvenient, voice.
“I’m very busy right now, Fisher.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It was my answer,” said Howe.
“Listen, I need some advice.”
“This is a real bad time, Fisher. I’ve had a tough few days and I’d like to relax.”
“Tell me about it. I just missed getting blown up by a nail bomb in New York City.”
“What do you need advice for?”
“If you had an E-bomb, how would you drop it? Would you rent a plane?”
“How do you know it’s going to be dropped?”
“I don’t. That was what the experts said when we were talking about it. You would use it over a set of transformers or a big switching yard, someplace where you can have a big impact. So I’m figuring airplane.”
“Or a cruise missile,” said Howe. “Or a UAV.”
“What’s a UAV?”
“Fisher, where are you?”
“At the moment I’m standing in a hallway of a prewar apartment in Chelsea, watching some crime scene guys pull nails out of the wall.”
“Can you get to a secure phone?”
“If I have to. Take me an hour and a half, though.”
“Call me back on this line with your sat phone, then I’ll call you.”
Howe killed the cell phone. There was a secure phone at NADT he could use, but of course that meant leaving Alice.
She was in the kitchen, clearing the dishes from dinner.
“I’m going to have to go,” he said.
“Now?”
“In a few minutes, yeah. It’s, um… it’s important.”
“And you can’t talk about it.”
He shook his head.
“Is it related to the other day?” she asked.
“No.” His answer was honest — he didn’t think it was at first — but as he thought about it he decided it might be. It was too late to take it back, but the realization made him feel guilty, as if he’d deliberately lied.
“Very mysterious,” she said, closing the dishwasher. Alice walked to him, sliding her arms around his waist to his back, pulling him down to her lips. “When did you have to leave?”
Chapter 14
Howe’s story about the UAVs gave Fisher a tenuous connection with the Koreans, but the agent had already used up his quota of tenuous connections on the case.
“You have any evidence there were other UAVs?” Fisher asked as they discussed it over the secure connection. Fisher was using Macklin’s office; he pushed back in the seat and gazed up at his reflection in the overhead mirror.
The man looking down at him frowned. Fisher decided mirrors were overrated.
“No evidence at all,” said Howe.
“How about the CIA or somebody. Would they know?”
“The CIA didn’t even know they existed until I saw them,” said Howe. “One of them was just recovered a few days ago. It’s being shipped back for inspection. One of my guys is going to be on the team looking at it. I mean, one of NADT’s guys.”
“Could they have smuggled one of these UAV things out of the country?”
“If they could get an E-bomb out, sure. They’re pretty small. The North Koreans exported all sorts of weapons, Fisher. They used to sell Scud missiles all over the world. We could’ve stopped them, but we didn’t.”
“Mistake, huh?”
“You have any serious questions?”
“If you had one of these E-bombs, you could drop it from a UAV?” asked Fisher.
“You could. Or you could just fly the UAV to a specific point and altitude, then detonate it. There’s a problem, though, from what I’ve heard. The UAV they found has no engine in it.”
“You can’t just slap a motor in the sucker, huh?”
“It’s harder than you think. Has to be pretty small.”
“Who makes small engines?”
“There are a couple of manufacturers. U.S. ”
“Can I get a list?”
“Sure. There’s another problem. You have to control it somehow. Controlling an aircraft over many miles can be pretty tricky. Even something like the Predator—”
“Why do you have to control it?” asked Fisher. “Can’t you just program the course in, if you’re going to blow it up anyway?”
“You could, I think,” he said.
“Who would know?”
“I can find somebody at NADT for you.”
“What’s his number?”
“I’ll have him call you. Won’t be until Monday.”
“Sooner the better.”
“Monday.”
Fisher prodded a cigarette from his pack. He was out of matches and his lighter had no more fluid. He started rifling Macklin’s drawers, but all he found were a few old Playboy s.
Left by the drug dealers, no doubt.
“What about a sarin bomb?” asked Fisher.
“Sarin? The nerve gas?”
“Yeah. Could you put that on a UAV?”
“Sure, but there’d be no point,” Howe told him.
“Why not?”
“Has to be used in a closed area if it’s going to be effective.”
While that wasn’t precisely true, it would be much more effective if that was the case. And besides, the canisters they’d found on Staten Island were rigged for high pressure — the experts thought they would attach to a sophisticated dispersion system — but not shaped into bombs.
“Tell you what, Coloneclass="underline" See if you can hunt down that expert for me before the weekend. If you can, call me. If you can’t, no big de—”
“I can’t,” said Howe before Fisher could finish.
“No big deal unless I call back and say it is a big deal.”
Howe hesitated. Fisher smiled at the face he’d be making. “All right.”
“You’re a good man, Colonel. Even if you don’t smoke,” said Fisher, hanging up.
Chapter 15
Clarissa Moore, the CIA officer heading the special study group, was waiting for Tyler when he and the others got back to South Korea. Tyler shuffled his feet across the macadam toward her Hummer, his legs so tired they felt as if there were lead weights strapped to his thighs.
“Hey,” he said, climbing into the truck.
“Hey yourself,” said Moore. “Good job up there. I heard about the UAV.”
“Saved a couple of lives in that helicopter,” said Somers, sliding in behind him.
Tyler leaned back against the seat, half-listening as Somers told the story. He recognized bits of the account, but it seemed foreign, as if he hadn’t been there but had only heard the story before.
Moore twisted around to look at him. “You okay?”
“I just need a little sleep,” he said.
“That’s it?”
No, thought Tyler. I need to escape. I need… Angel’s wings.
“Yeah, I’m beat tired,” he said, forcing as much enthusiasm into his voice as he could, trying to make it sound as if he were laughing at himself.
Chapter 16
Blitz squeezed his eyes together, trying to get them to focus. He was used to operating on very little rest, but even for him the past few days had been a real drain. He had worked over the entire weekend, with maybe a total of four hours’ sleep; it was now Monday morning and he was due to leave in an hour to fly up to New York City with the President. The latest draft of the President’s UN speech sat on his desk; Blitz hadn’t even had a chance to look at it.