He knew that Joselyn Cole and the two men with her had been tracking him since before he’d left Puerto Rico. His employer had kept him informed through the elaborate telephone code system. How the employer found out about the trio Thorn didn’t know. Nor did he care. In ten more minutes it wouldn’t matter. By then it would all be over.
He opened the snap locks on the attache case and checked his watch. He lifted the lid and punched the power button on the laptop inside. Thorn scooted a little sideways to make sure that the computer’s antenna would have a clear line of sight to the copper dome over the reading room in the Library of Congress across the street. He watched as the screen lit up and the program booted. The computer battery had plenty of life. The only one he had to worry about was the small NiCad battery on the little brown bat.
Thorn held his breath and hit the keys. A few seconds later the camera on the back of the bat came to life. He breathed easy and glanced around a little to make sure no one was watching. He pulled the lid on the attache case closed just a bit to gain shade on the screen and to conceal it from prying eyes. Gently Thorn put his finger on the track pad and the camera lens began to move as the gimbal rotated on the back of the bat.
To Thorn, who had been at war for thirty years, the new micro-technology was nothing short of stunning. During the First Gulf War, doing what he was doing now would have required a device known as a “mule.” It was a cumbersome black blunderbuss, a sawed-off shotgun on electronic steroids. It had a shoulder stock so you could steady the laser beam on the target. And when the words “light ’em up” were used, it didn’t mean “smoke ’em if you got ’em.” It was the order to paint the target with the mule, a laser designator, to aim it and turn on the switch so that the receiver on the incoming ordnance could home in on the laser beam and strike within an inch of its center.
To anyone standing near a target that was painted, the laser was invisible. The target designator, unlike a laser pointer in a classroom, did not emit a continuous beam. Instead it sent out laser light in a series of coded pulses. These signals were designed to bounce off the target and into the sky. There the pulse would be detected by the seeker on the laser-guided ordnance. The incoming bunker buster would steer itself toward the center of the reflected signal, and unless the people inside had access to laser-detection equipment, the only thing they would hear would be the ear-splitting detonation from the blast that killed them.
Because the device emitted no heat signature and only a tiny radar profile, the gravity-directed bomb would be largely immune to antimissile defense systems, including other missiles and Phalanx, a high-speed radar-directed Gatling gun designed to destroy incoming missiles in flight.
To Thorn, size was everything.
Laser designators came in a number of sizes, generally ranging from a black box that resembled your grandfather’s eight-millimeter movie camera mounted on a tripod to a sleeker model that looked like a squared-off set of large binoculars. But the little brown bat could never carry that big a payload.
The key for Thorn was miniaturization. The answer had come from a small firm in Delaware. The company had lost out on a bid with the army to design a miniaturized laser designator. They already had two prototypes, laser- targeting diodes not much bigger than a watch battery. In fact, it was a large watch battery mounted on the back of the bat that provided the power for the camera and the optically linked laser. Thorn had already turned on the camera just for a few seconds in order to train it on the section of roof across the street from the Library of Congress. The beam, when it was turned on, would pulse off the roof of the Supreme Court Building, the area directly over the courtroom. The small watch battery would last only about ten minutes, but for Thorn’s purposes that would be long enough.
The reason Thorn’s small point-and-shoot camera did not set off the metal detector the day he scoped out the target from inside, the gullible Jimmie Snyder in tow, was that it wasn’t a camera at all. It was a laser range finder capable of measuring minute distances with amazing precision. It was made of carbon fiber and plastic.
What Thorn needed to know was the exact distance between floors, from floor to ceiling at each level, as well as the distance from the front edge of the gabled roof to the bench in the courtroom. What bothered him most was the area of the gymnasium with its basketball court. What they jokingly referred to as “the highest court in the land.” Thorn had to be sure that the bunker-busting munitions would “breach the monastery” and penetrate to the correct depth, where it would detonate on cue, directly over the angled bench.
The bunker buster was designed to penetrate up to one hundred feet of earth and twenty feet of steel- reinforced concrete before detonating. To receive his final payment, he had to be certain that the fuel-vapor charge would level the building and leave not a single survivor among the nine justices sitting at the bench.
The rapid consumption of oxygen resulting from the firing of the mixed-fuel mist in a confined area would produce a near vacuum followed by shock waves that would collapse the entire structure where the blast occurred.
Those caught inside a hardened structure by such a blast, if not incinerated or suffocated by the depletion of oxygen sucked from their lungs, would likely die of massive concussive injuries to internal organs resulting from the heat-driven pressure wave.
FIFTY
The opening day of the Supreme Court’s new session, the first Monday in October, is always high ceremony. The chief justice first welcomes any visiting judges and lawyers from abroad. He then swears in lawyers applying to become members of the Supreme Court bar. All of this takes time before the court begins to hear the argument in the first case of the day.
I can see from a block away as we run through the East Plaza behind the Capitol that a crowd has already assembled out in front of the Supreme Court Building, in the distance across the street.
I glance at my watch. The court would already be seated at the bench. This must be the overflow, members of the public who have been turned away because the courtroom is full.
There is a line of television cameras up on the west plaza, facing the building’s white stairs and portico. Reporters are staged in front of them using the stark white glare of the temple’s gleaming marble as a backdrop.
“Thorn could be anywhere,” says Joselyn. “We’ll never find him.”
“I don’t think so. He’s going to have to be close by somewhere.”
“Why?”
“The model plane,” I tell her.
“Stop,” she says. Joselyn is out of breath.
“He was practicing against that shed out in the field for a reason. That little toy has something to do with his plan. If that’s the case, he won’t be able to get beyond the range of the radio controls.”
“You don’t understand,” Joselyn says. “The military can fly their drones from anywhere in the world.”
“Yes, but they have satellites. Thorn’s not the U.S. military,” I tell her. “He wouldn’t have access to satellites. He’s going to have to stay within the line of sight to maintain radio control. If his little bird gets behind a building, he’s going to lose it. That means he has to stay somewhere close to the target.”
“But he could be in a building or a car,” she says. “We may not be able to see him. Let’s call 911.”
“And tell them what?” I say.
“That there’s a bomb in the Supreme Court Building.” She looks at me and arches an eyebrow. “The worst that can happen is that they arrest us. But at least they’ll have to clear the building.”
We are directly in front of the east steps behind the Capitol. I look at her. “Do it,” I tell her.
“I can’t. I don’t have a phone. I left my purse back in the room.”
I grab my cell phone off the clip on my belt and flip it to her. “You stay here. I’m going to keep looking for Thorn.” I turn and start running toward the Supreme Court Building three hundred yards away.
“How do I stay in touch with you if you don’t have a phone?” she says.
I turn, palms up, shrug my shoulders, and shake my head as I skip away and start to run again.
“Potomac air control. This is VNG 118. That’s affirmative, he’s got all three engines burning hot and fast. No sign of any engine trouble.” The F-16 flying behind the FedEx flight had a clear view of all three engines and could see that they were throwing heat.
