hangars. The 30-foot-high tunnel was built so that large test materials and vehicles could be brought into the facility without interrupting track testing.
They emerged from the tunnel to see three massive buildings with multiple garage doors in each of them. Cutter had studied the layout of the TEC carefully using Gordian’s own web site. These were the vehicle testing labs, with indoor crash test sleds, environmental chambers, and inverted drop facilities, whatever those were. Next to it was the outdoor impact sled, wet and dry skid pads, and a 100-acre dirt track and obstacle course for off-road testing.
In the distance, Cutter could just make out a red car racing around the oval at over 100 mph. Outside the last vehicle test building, workers were talking next to the biggest dump truck he’d ever seen. On the side of the truck was the word, “Liebherr.”
Cutter kept driving along the service road until 500 feet later he approached a row of five hangars that each looked large enough to hold a 747. He parked at the third just as an eighteen-wheeler pulled past him, followed by a flat-bed truck equipped with a crane. The flat-bed was loaded down with a mangled aircraft engine. They must have been shipments from the crash site. These guys were working fast, which was to Cutter’s advantage. The media uproar about Hayden’s death had been bigger than anything since Princess Diana’s. Rex Hayden not only was a huge star, but he had cleverly parlayed his celebrity into business deals that had pushed his net worth close to a billion dollars. That had made him a formidable enemy of the Holy Hydronastic Church. Cutter relished the thought of the actor dissolving in agony.
The trucks drove around the corner and out of sight.
Dozens of official-looking cars were parked in a line next to the building, meaning that Cutter and Simkins would be just two more worker bees and would go unnoticed amidst the hubbub.
They got out and headed toward a door guarded by two men in police uniforms. The shirts were emblazoned with the logo of the Maricopa County sheriff’s department. Each of the them had an AR-15 automatic weapon at his side.
The only aspect of the mission that Cutter didn’t like was that they’d had to leave their own weapons behind. If anyone spotted NTSB investigators carrying pistols, inconvenient questions would be raised. And in this heat, heavy coats would have been out of place. The light jackets they wore would have bulged from any kind of gun. Therefore, he and Simkins were unarmed.
He didn’t expect the need for weapons. The mission was to find the suitcase and smuggle it out before it could be identified as the source of the bioweapon used on Hayden’s plane. His plan was to use his authority as a temporary NTSB investigator on loan from the Justice Department specifically for this case to remove the luggage from the site for further analysis.
He sized up the deputies, who looked bored with the guard duty. If he did end up needing weapons, he knew exactly where to get them.
Cutter and Simkins flashed their IDs again, and the deputies let them pass. Cutter took off his sunglasses and let his eyes adjust to the dark interior.
The massive doors at the opposite end of the hangar were just closing, having already let the two trucks through. The semis idled at the far end as they awaited instructions about where to unload.
At least 75 people clustered at various points around the vast space. A pre-fabricated frame the size of an airplane fuselage was being assembled in the center of the hangar. Several pieces of the 737 wreckage were already hanging from it. The other pieces were carefully laid on the floor next to it, waiting for inspection.
The contents of the plane — seats, luggage, clothing, furniture — were all neatly placed in rows along the opposite wall. Cutter had accessed the G-Tag system through the NTSB’s computer system, courtesy of the two NTSB investigators that were now lying dead in a Phoenix motel room. After a search of the G-Tag inventory, he’d found a digital photo of the steel-lined suitcase containing the device. It was still intact and on a truck bound for the TEC, scheduled to be delivered this morning. It would be found in this area.
“You take the opposite end,” Cutter said to Simkins, “and work your way towards me. Try not to talk to anyone. If you spot the suitcase, don’t touch it. Come find me, and then we’ll look for an opportunity to remove it.”
“What if it’s not here?” Simkins asked.
“Then we wait for the next truck.” He silently congratulated himself. This was going to be much easier than combing the desert looking for a single piece of luggage. Let the feds do the hard work, and he would simply take it off their hands here.
Cutter turned when he heard the beep of the semi backing up. At the end of the row of plane contents a hundred feet away, a black man in a tight-fitting T-shirt that was stretched over a muscular torso held up his hand. The truck stopped, and the man, who was clearly the leader, instructed two others to open the rear doors. A group of workers got in a line and began to gingerly hand out the pieces in bucket-brigade fashion, while the leader yelled instructions to them.
The suitcase might have been in that shipment, but the truck’s contents weren’t what Cutter was paying attention to. Instead, he peered at the black man more intently. The voice. It was unmistakable. Of course, he had heard it on TV, when he was a wrestler, but that wasn’t the reason Cutter tuned out all the other noises coming from the building and focused on him.
The man turned around, and Cutter felt the old hatred flow through him. He had served with the man in the Rangers. Grant Westfield — electrical engineer, ex-pro wrestler The Burn, and former Special Forces soldier — was the reason Cutter no longer served the military with distinction, why he was reduced to what he was now.
Cutter turned away to avoid being noticed. There was no way Westfield would be expecting to see him here, but with him in charge of this operation, the new development would significantly alter Cutter’s plans.
All of sudden, his mission wasn’t going to be as easy as he had thought it would be.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Locke watched the gray Seattle skyline as he padded through his fifth mile on the treadmill. He had set up the exercise room so that he could either catch up on his reading or simply enjoy the view while he worked out. The clouds had rolled back over Puget Sound during the night, foreshadowing the storm to come, but the Cascades were still visible. If there weren’t the threat that someone was still trying to kill him, he would have gone out for a jog to Discovery Park.
His internal clock had woken him up by seven AM, so he had already finished some paperwork and lifted weights before starting his run. Much of his field work was rigorous, so staying in shape was important to his job. Plus it gave him a respite to think. He’d had a dream about Dilara Kenner, and although he couldn’t remember it clearly, he knew it wasn’t entirely wholesome. That kiss on the cheek hadn’t been much, but he could tell there was a spark that passed between them.
“Nice view,” said a sleepy voice from behind him.
Locke didn’t startle easily, but he wasn’t used to having someone in his house. His head whipped around, and he saw Dilara leaning in the doorway. He struggled to keep his eyes from bugging out at the sight of her still dressed in his T-shirt. It clung to her in all the right places and ended mid-thigh, revealing toned legs. He let his eyes linger for a moment and then turned back to the window. He didn’t sense that she was making a double entendre on purpose, so he suppressed a smile.
“It certainly is.” He tapped on the treadmill’s control panel, and it ground to a halt. He used the towel hanging on the bar to wipe his forehead, and he suddenly realized that his tank top and shorts were soaked.
“Coffee?” Dilara said.
“On the counter. Breakfast?”
“I’m not a breakfast person. I’m also usually up a lot earlier than this. All the time zone changes must have caught up with me.”
“I already ate. You have your coffee while I shower. When you’re ready, we’ll head to the airport. Oh, and I had someone from my office stop by that store you liked to get you a few things. They’re by the front door in a new bag for you.”
Dilara retrieved the bag and said, “That was very thoughtful of you.”
