the parking lot.
Most were small — single-engine two-, four-, and six-seaters.
“Yep. They’re all airports,” Farrell said. “From Berkeley, South Carolina, to Nampa, Idaho, to Page, Oklahoma, all the way to Shafter-Minter out in California. It took some work to narrow my search down to exactly what linked those names, but that’s it — that’s the common denominator.”
“And they’re all this size?” Thorn asked, eyeing a line of hangars beyond the airpark — three pairs paralleling the road.
The path between the two nearest buildings, one a two story FAA office, the other a small flight school, was the quickest way out onto the runway. No metal detectors. No boarding areas. No jetways. No security.
“On the nose, Pete,” Farrell said. “All five are pint-size municipal or regional airports — but all of them are reasonably close to larger urban centers: Los Angeles, Charleston, Boise, Oklahoma City, and D.C.”
“My God,” Helen said. She turned toward them. “There were five Su-24 engines in that last shipment from Kandalaksha.”
Thorn saw it at almost the same moment. He felt cold despite the sticky heat rolling in through the car’s open windows. “Then Caraco has five nukes.”
“Five airfields. Five bombs. Five cities,” Farrell concluded grimly.
A bleak expression settled on his face, and, for the first time Thorn could remember, his former commander looked close to his real age.
“But why use aircraft?” Helen asked, clearly desperate to poke holes in their story. “Why not just put a bomb in a truck, drive it into the center of town, and hit the switch? That would be simpler and cheaper.”
Thorn thought he knew why Wolf and his employer, Ibrahim al Saud, would want their nuclear weapons aloft. “They must be going for airbursts,” he guessed — feeling even colder still. “Set a nuke off a few thousand feet up and you maximize its blast and heat. And casualties.”
The silence stretched for more than a minute.
At last Thorn shook his head, and immediately wished that he hadn’t.
Smaller aches exploded into sharp-edged, stabbing pain.
Ignore it, he told himself harshly, you haven’t got time for weakness.
The pain receded to a more manageable level.
He opened the Ciera’s right rear door. “Okay, let’s see if we’re right. I say we take a closer look at those hangars.”
First Farrell and then Helen nodded slowly. Like him, they preferred action to inaction — especially in the face of what might be coming.
The two closest hangars were large and modern. Red signs on the sides indicated they were owned by Raytheon. The next two hangars in line were olden-much older. Constructed of corrugated iron and covered with flaking paint, they hardly looked large enough to hold even a single-engine plane.
The third pair of hangars were as big as those belonging to Raytheon.
But they were so far away across the field that it was hard to see much detail. Neither of the silver-gray structures had a corporate logo boldly emblazoned to identify their owners.
Three sizable twin-engine aircraft, executive passenger planes, were parked on the tarmac in front of the hangars. Several men were visible — either working on the aircraft or lounging in the shade created by their wings. Despite the sweltering afternoon, the big sliding doors on both hangars were shut.
“That’s what we’re looking for,” Farrell said. “Has to be.” Thorn nodded. The other man’s snap assessment made sense.
The two distant hangars were completely surrounded by a fence, with a guard shack by the gate. None of the other facilities at Godfrey had any security around them at all.
But they weren’t going to be able to get any closer — at least not from here. The field was quiet, sleeping in the hazy June sunshine, and they were the only people in sight. There was no easy way to walk across the open space separating them from the hangars without being conspicuous.
Helen came to the same conclusion at the same moment. “No point in spooking them now.” She pointed to a gravel-covered cutoff that ran past the twin hangars. “Let’s see what’s visible from that road.”
The speed limit on the cutoff was forty-five miles per hour, but Farrell cruised by as slowly as he dared. A driveway led to the gate and guard shack, and a small white sign on the fence next to the gate read “Caraco Washington Region Air Maintenance. No Trespassing.”
“I bet,” Thorn muttered, after a quick glance at the guard shack and fence. The shack’s windows were dark — tinted heavily enough to hide anyone inside from prying eyes. But coiled razor wire topped the chainlink fence and there were video cameras sited to sweep the entire perimeter.
A turnoff just past the airport led them back to the parking lot. This time they stayed in the car while mulling over what they’d observed.
Helen broke the renewed silence first. “Are you sure those planes out there are big enough to carry a nuclear bomb?”
Thorn nodded, remembering the O.S.I.A briefing he’d received before flying out to take part in the crash investigation. Christ, that seemed like a lifetime ago. “Kandalaksha’s special weapons magazine stored TN1000s, and those things weigh in at about two thousand pounds.”
He looked toward the parked twin-engine turboprops shimmering in the heat. “Any of those aircraft could haul a TN1000 to altitude without even straining.”
“And we know Caraco has the pilots,” Farrell pointed out.
“There’re at least four coming from those sites in other states, plus at least one from this field.”
Thorn thought about that. “Jesus, Sam. You think they could find five competent pilots who’d be willing to commit suicide like that? Anybody can drive a truck bomb, but how many wackos can pilot a plane?”
“The Japanese didn’t have much trouble rounding up a few thousand kamikazes,” Farrell pointed out.
“But that was during a global war and from a total ‘death before dishonor’ warrior culture,” Thorn said. “I don’t see that here.
Ibrahim’s a Saudi, but that bastard Wolf was German. And everybody we’ve tangled with outside of Pechenga has been German, or at least European.”
“Maybe they’re planning on setting the autopilot, bundling on a chute, and hopping out before the blast,” Helen suggested.
“Doesn’t seem likely. If that was me, I’d want to bail out a long, long way from the detonation point.” Thorn combed his mind for data.
He wasn’t a pilot, but he’d had friends who were, and his Delta Force training covered a host of different technologies.
“Even on autopilot, you’re gonna get some drift and even a quarter mile would really throw your attack off.”
“Not these days,” Farrell cut in. He looked somber. “Link GPS into your autopilot, and you could put a bomb within a few meters of where you want it.”
“Yeah,” Thorn said slowly, running through the logic. Farrell was right. With signals from the GPS satellites as a navigation aid, none of the planes would wander off course. And GPS receivers were now widely available to the general public. He stiffened as the full implications of the available technology became clear. “Christ, you don’t even need a pilot! Plug a computer into the autopilot, program in the required waypoints and altitude changes, and you’ve got an aircraft that can take off on its own — and then make its way straight to the target.”
Helen’s eyes opened wide. “You’re talking about a poor man’s cruise missile, Peter.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Farrell considered that. “Jury-rigged cruise missiles? Maybe.”
Then he shook his head. “Still a lot of things that could go wrong with that. You get some unexpectedly hairy weather, an engine problem, or maybe an air traffic control call that goes unanswered and you’re going to start losing planes. And neither Ibrahim nor Wolf struck me as careless. If they are setting up to pop off five nukes somewhere in the U.S they’ll want some assurance that all five will detonate — on target.”
“But they can work around that,” Thorn said softly. “Install a communications link and maybe even TV camera in every plane. That way a pilot sitting safe on the ground can run the thing by remote control if need be. Hell, he could even answer air traffic control challenges.”
