Farrell chewed that over and then nodded. “That’d be the way to do it all right. Pinpoint accuracy and no human element.” His eyes narrowed as he looked out across the runway toward the Caraco hangars and the three turboprops parked outside.
“Which do you think is the bomb-carrier here, Pete? Aircraft number one, number two, or number three?”
“Would you assign one pilot to every remotecontrolled plane?” Helen asked suddenly, rummaging through Wolf’s bloodstained briefcase.
Thorn thought about that for a moment and then shook his head.
“Nope.
There’s really no need to. With the kind of gear they could assemble, one guy should be able to run two or three aircraft without even breathing hard. Plus, with the right radio and microwave links, you could orchestrate the whole strike from one secure, central location.”
“So, why do they need five pilots?” she persisted.
Farrell shrugged. “Who knows? Redundancy, maybe.”
Thorn stared at Helen more closely. Her fingers were curled around one of the pages they’d found in Wolf’s belongings.
“What’s wrong?”
“Could they fit two more planes in those hangars over there?” she asked tightly, still looking down at the paper.
“Sure. No sweat.” Thorn put his hand gently on her shoulder.
“What’re you thinking?”
She looked up and passed the piece of paper she’d been clutching to him. All the color had drained out of her face. “Caraco doesn’t have just one nuke. They don’t have just five. I think they’ve got twenty.”
Twenty? Thorn took the printed page from her and studied it again.
There were five separate animal code names listed under the heading for Godfrey Field. He’d looked at them before, but he hadn’t made the connection. They’d all been focused on the identifiable place names first.
Christ. Five airfields with multiple codes under each one.
Twenty code words in all. Twenty targets. Twenty bombs.
It made an ugly sort of sense. They knew Colonel General Serov had sold Ibrahim and his subordinates twenty used Su24 engines — engines they’d used as a cover for the real cargo. They also knew that Caraco’s chief executive had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to set up a secure pipeline to smuggle them into the U.S. So why would Ibrahim settle for reducing five American cities to smoking rubble if he could just as easily obtain the weapons needed to smash twenty?
“Pete?”
Setting his jaw against the knowledge that they were facing an almost unimaginable catastrophe, Thorn passed the page to Farrell.
“She’s right, Sam. No other scenario makes sense.”
Farrell’s shoulders slumped. Suddenly he looked like an old man — weary and worn out by years of stress and strain. “So any ideas on when Ibrahim’s attack is set to go off?”
Thorn surprised himself by saying, “Yes, I think so.”
The answer was there, right in front of his eyes. His subconscious must have been busy assimilating all the data they’d acquired and been fitting it into a coherent pattern. He opened the leather-bound day-timer they’d taken off the body of the late Johann Brandt. “Take a look at this. Notations for every day for the last couple of months.
Airline trips from Europe to here and back. Snap visits to these airfields using a Caraco corporate jet.
Conferences at Chantilly and Middleburg.”
Both Helen and Farrell nodded. They’d paged through the appointment book, too.
“Then we come to June 19. Here’s the first crucial notation: “Primary departs. 1945 hours. Dulles.””
“So who’s this mysterious “Primary’?”
Farrell asked.
“Ibrahim would be my guess. He’s the boss,” Thorn said. “Our friend, the prince, evidently intends to be well out of the United States by tomorrow evening. Or at least that was the plan before we took out Herr Wolf.”
He could see the light dawning in Helen’s horrified eyes. “Go ahead, Peter,” she said.
Thorn flipped to the next page. “Okay. Then we shift to June 20.
“Corporate jet transfers from Dulles to Godfrey Field at 1800 hours,’ “he translated.
“Why do that?” Farrell asked. “Dulles can’t be more than fifteen miles from here. Hell, that’s less than a two-minute hop by jet!”
“Because these people know Dulles will be inaccessible after the twentieth,” Helen said softly. “Either because it’s inside the planned blast radius. or because the runways will be stacked high with rescue flights after a 150-kiloton bomb takes out D.C.”
“Exactly.” Thorn showed them the next page, the one for June 21.
“This is the last notation in the whole book. ‘1300 hours. Depart from Godfrey.” There’s absolutely nothing written after that — not one damned thing.”
He snapped the day-timer shut. “My guess is that’s the evac plane for the people coordinating the attack.”
Thorn’s headache came back with full force, but he pressed on — ignoring the feeling that red-hot pincers were tearing at his skull. “God help us, this bastard Ibrahim plans to detonate twenty nuclear weapons at targets scattered across this entire country. And he’s going to do it sometime within the next fortyeight to seventy-two hours.”
“Highness?”
Prince Ibrahim al Saud turned away from his contemplation of the latest intelligence reports. “Yes? What is it, Hashemi?”
His chief private secretary looked anxious. He offered a printout.
“This just came over one of the news wires, Highness. I thought you would wish to see it immediately.”
Ibrahim took it, rapidly skimming the important details.
Loudoun County, VA — Murder victims discovered in woods near Middleburg.
County sheriff’s department confirms that a Boy Scout troop on a nature walk reported finding two unidentified corpses — both male, both Caucasian — earlier this afternoon. Crime scene teams have now cordoned off the area. Sources speaking on background claim both men were apparently shot to death at point-blank range. Preliminary descriptions follow … Ibrahim nodded to himself, studying the descriptions. He was sure that one of the dead men was Reichardt. The other must be Mcdowell.
Part of the veil of uncertainty Thorn and Gray had cast across his calculations lifted. The two American operatives undoubtedly had whatever documents the German and his aide had been carrying, but that was all. It would not be enough. Before they had died, Reichardt and Mcdowell had done their work well.
The reputations of the American man and woman were hopelessly compromised. It was unlikely their superiors would listen to any of the wild stories they might try to tell.
Beware, a small voice prompted Ibrahim. Beware the sin of pride.
He nodded to himself. It would be best not to take any more chances.
Let Richard Garrett handle this matter of murder. He paid the former Commerce Secretary large sums of money. And Garrett could be fed just enough information to make his protests credible. Let him take the lead in further blackening the names of Thorn and Gray in official Washington.
Ibrahim came out of his reverie to find Hashemi still standing close by, nervously watching him.
“Well? What more do you want?” Ibrahim snapped.
“I have assembled the primary operational staff as you instructed,” Hashemi replied. “They are waiting for you in the conference room, Highness.”
“Very well.” Ibrahim noted the beads of sweat forming on his servant’s forehead. “And what else troubles you?”
“Perhaps I should fly to Riyadh with the rest of the staff as planned, Highness,” Hashemi suggested quickly.
