crutches. Have you made contact yet?”
“The targets haven’t shown up. We’ll give it another hour, but they probably won’t take the bait.”
“Sorry I can’t be there.”
“Yeah, thanks for sticking me with Westfield for the duration.”
“Is he there?”
“In the john.”
“I thought you two got along really well.”
Morgan snorted in response. “It’s been a joy.”
“No sparkling conversation?”
“It’s actually not that bad. I’m getting used to him.”
“Wait a minute. Are you sweet on him?”
Morgan felt herself blush. “Don’t be ridiculous. Army grunts aren’t my type.”
“He didn’t seem dimwitted to me, especially for a former pro wrestler.”
The toilet flushed and Grant came out of the bathroom. Morgan looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, he’s not stupid,” she said. “Just annoying.”
Grant nodded happily and took his seat.
“Whoa,” Vince said with a moan.
“You okay?”
“Now all of a sudden I’m tired. Keep me posted. And stay safe.”
“Will do. I’ll see you back in the States.”
She hung up.
“Who was that? Your boyfriend?”
“My partner.”
“How is he?”
“Fine.”
“That the official prognosis?”
Morgan smirked. Annoying.
“So what’s the plan now?” he said.
“We wait here another hour.”
“Then when they still don’t show up?”
“Then we find out what the link to the Baja drug cartel is.”
“It sounds like Andrew Hull won’t be any help.”
Morgan couldn’t argue with that. The arms dealer had been shot by a sniper in front of his office building this morning. It wasn’t until the afternoon when the police were searching his files and found the reference to a truckload of “gravel” going to Alice Springs that they made the connection to the Pine Gap explosion. Colchev must have offed Hull to cover his tracks.
The problem for her was that it worked. Unless their liaison at the Drug Enforcement Agency could find a lead, they were at a dead end.
“You really think Colchev wants to smuggle a Killswitch back into the US?” Grant said.
“That’s the only reason I can come up with for why he would want to seek out a drug gang. They’re the best smugglers out there. It’d be much easier to fly it into Mexico and drive it across the border than land in the US and try to get it through customs.”
“Seems like a lot of effort when the weapon was already in America a couple of days ago.”
“Until it got to Australia, the Killswitch was on an Air Force base the entire time. Trying to steal it there would have been suicidal. And they needed the xenobium from Pine Gap to make it operational.”
“Well, we know they ain’t suicidal,” Grant said. “That’s why they needed the robotic truck. None of his men were fanatical enough to blow themselves up.”
Either that or they were saving themselves for a suicide attack on American soil. But where?
“You’re an expert on explosives and electronics,” Morgan said. “What would be the likeliest target?”
Grant considered that for a moment. She was impressed that he didn’t just blurt out an answer.
“I’ve been wondering about that. Nadia Bedova mentioned Wisconsin Avenue. How many are there in the US?”
Morgan brought up the data on her cell phone. “Ten. Six in Wisconsin, two in Illinois, one in Iowa, and one in DC.”
“I don’t think this guy wants to take out corn farmers, so I’m betting DC is the target.”
“It could also be Chicago. One of the Illinois locations is in a suburb.”
“We know that if Colchev gets a large enough sample of xenobium, it could take out the entire city’s grid. I’d still say Washington, unless Air Force One is visiting Chicago any time soon.”
Morgan nodded. “We’ll check on that. But if a terror attack is his plan, then taking out either Washington or Chicago would meet that goal.”
Grant rubbed his head. “That’s the part about Wisconsin Avenue that I don’t get.”
“Why?”
“Well, we know the Killswitch’s effective range goes up the higher it is when it detonates. So why set it off at ground level? I spoke to Collins before we left Pine Gap just to get a sense for what this thing could do. If Colchev had the same amount of xenobium that was at Pine Gap, he could have flown the Killswitch to 35,000 feet and taken out a huge swath of territory.”
“How huge?”
“In the right location it could take out everything from Washington to New York.”
Morgan went silent for a moment as she realized the enormity of the situation.
Grant put on his night-vision goggles and swept the street.
“Colchev could be selling it on the black market to a terrorist network. Maybe the buy is going to happen somewhere on Wisconsin Avenue in DC.”
She shook her head. “If he were in this for the money, he could have found a hundred easier ways to make it.”
“And why specifically on July twenty-fifth? Why is the date so important to Colchev? Is that when he’s planning to set off a Killswitch or is that when he’s going to acquire another component he needs for his scheme?”
“I don’t know. There’s something we’re missing.”
“Then we need to find out what it is. Let’s hope I’m wrong about his men not showing up.” After two more sweeps, Grant said, “I wonder if we have any kung pao chicken left.”
Without taking the goggles off, he stood and turned, then abruptly halted. He cocked his head up, slowly moving it down as if he were watching something drip from the ceiling.
“What are you doing?” Morgan asked.
“You need to put your goggles on.”
For a second she thought he was joking, but she realized his voice was deadly serious for the first time today.
She whipped the goggles off her lap and fitted them over her eyes. When she saw why Grant had told her to put them on, she whispered, “Damn it.”
She could see red ID dust crosshairs descending, superimposed over the bedroom wall like ghostly apparitions.
Right where the hotel’s elevator shaft was located.
She could have kicked herself for making such a boneheaded oversight.
Morgan’s targets had been watching for Kessler from the hotel the entire time, several stories directly above her. And because the scientist hadn’t shown up, her only links to the Killswitch were about to get away.
THIRTY-THREE
