capable of reaching the place where the president would be speaking: essentially a sprawling, natural amphitheater built to offer stunning, tourist-friendly views of the Chenab River, its vast power now harnessed between a million tons of concrete and steel.
What exactly had Devras Sikari meant in his email to Balan?
As he gazed at it, he thought: No wonder Pakistan had lodged such a vigorous protest with the U.N. Irrigation to a great bulk of the nation’s agriculture was now endangered, especially if the season turned any drier than normal. From one side of Pakistan to the other, people could find themselves going hungry, the perfect pretext on which to strike back. Middleton couldn’t help but wonder if that had been the plan from the beginning.
“I have something you need to see, comrade,” Chernayev said, suddenly at Middleton’s side, holding out his BlackBerry. “The man pictured is named Umer, a known associate of both Sikari and Archer who helped them obtain the explosives. General Zang’s intelligence indicates he will be the one to trigger the explosion.”
“It makes no sense.”
“What?”
“Why go through all this trouble to set off explosives inside a dam they can’t effectively destroy?”
Chernayev shrugged. “A show of force, perhaps, of power as a precursor to something much worse.”
“No, this was about assassinating the secretary of state from the beginning. Now it’s the president. That’s what we’re facing.”
“Once my men locate Archer’s men, it’ll be sometime before we’ll have to face him again. And if we’re lucky enough to find the boy himself… ”
Middleton turned about, gazing off toward the huge throng stretching well into the thousands pulsing into the natural amphitheater from which the President of the United States would christen the opening of the dam with unprecedented pomp and circumstance.
“Any luck so far?”‘
Chernayev shrugged again. “It is a very large crowd, comrade. But my men are good and know what to look for.”
“The BlueWatch people?”
“
“What kind of work is that?”
“Up-close termination.”
“Like shooting a radioactive pellet into a defector’s leg?”
Chernayev grinned, winked. “Now, comrade, where did you ever get an idea like that?”
Their eyes moved to the sky simultaneously alert by the distant
The president was arriving.
“I won’t be able to get you much closer than this.”
“That’s OK,” Tesla told the driver. “We’ll manage.”
The driver regarded the hobbled Charley in his rearview mirror and continued, “But there
“As a matter of fact I do,” Tesla lied. And passed him $50.
He beamed. “Then I will do my best to get you there.”
The driver swung right, drove down an isolated stretch of hastily flattened road toward a security fence manned by a trio of Indian special police. They signaled the cab to stop, one coming round to the driver’s side while the other two kept to their posts ahead of the car’s hood.
Tesla turned toward Charley, prepared to offer some reassuring words when a sudden flash of motion snapped her attention back to the front seat. The driver’s hands were suddenly off the wheel, both grasping silenced pistols. Before she could react, he had thrust them out the window and opened fire on the approaching guard and the two standing at the front of the car.
The angle of the shots should have been impossible. Unless it was practiced. No one was around to see their murders.
Tesla gasped. Her first instinct was to protect Charley. Weaponless, there was little more that she could do.
Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw another man slip from the bushes, where, apparently he’d been waiting. Dressed in local clothing, with a long beard, he walked quickly to the driver’s window. He spoke in Hindi to the driver, then turned to the women.
“You are please to come with me. Now.” He said something else but his words vanished as the president’s helicopter, flanked by a pair of gun ships, soared overhead.
Archer’s cell phone beeped to signal an incoming text and he raised it upward, shielding it from the sun, to read Umer’s message:
IN PLACE. ALL IS READY.
Archer clicked the phone’s screen dark again without replying; there was no need to. He watched as the president’s helicopter settled onto the secure, makeshift landing pad that had been constructed to accommodate it for the opening ceremonies. The gun ships hovered protectively overhead, their rotor wash whipping dirt and debris into a swirling cloud.
If the day had been too windy for the chopper to land, he mused, all his plans might have been for naught. Even the fates smiled upon him. He could feel his father’s presence nearby, approving as well, understanding the need for his own death so that a great destiny could be achieved.
Middleton listened to the Indian cabinet minister say after his introductory remarks, “Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure, on this joyous and momentous day, to introduce the President of the United States!”
Middleton wasn’t watching when the president mounted the stage to tumultuous, ground-shaking cheers and applause from the assembled throngs. Instead he stood alongside Chernayev, sifting through the crowd with his eyes searching for Umer or any of Archer’s men, for that matter. The vast sea of humanity gave up nothing. As the president began reading from his prepared remarks on the dam opening, Middleton continued his gradual progress through the crowd, angling toward the jam-packed and roped-off area reserved for the press corps. Cameras flashed and whirred, some no smaller than a palm, recording the president’s every word and gesture.
Middleton tried to place himself in Archer’s shoes. The thermobaric explosives he’d managed to obtain had never been intended to blow up the dam itself-that much was obvious. What wasn’t obvious was what did that leave? The stage and amphitheater platform itself had been dutifully checked for all varieties of explosive to no avail. Which meant… Which meant…
The explosives had never been here in the first place. And that could only mean Archer had concocted a plan to bring them in through other means, after the speeches had begun.
Middleton gazed up at the helicopter gun ships that had taken positions too high in the sky to render them dangerous to the president if they exploded. So what did that leave?
Fifty men, he thought, if I had fifty men how would I utilize them? Layering the thermobaric explosives into suicide bomber vests would have been a possibility, had everyone who entered not been required to pass through portable detectors. So what did that leave?
“Nothing,” Chernayev reported, receiving another report over his nearly undetectable earpiece.
