and that’s impossible. Destroying the antennas would only force Ibrahim to launch his planes on full autopilot. So maybe only eighteen or nineteen weapons hit their targets — instead of the full twenty. That’s not much better.”
“It sure as hell isn’t,” Farrell said. He chewed his lower lip.
“You think you have to go all the way inside?”
Helen answered for him. “I’m afraid so.” She sighed. “There’s got to be a command center or a control center somewhere in that building. If we take that and hold it, we should be able to do something to stop Ibrahim.”
Farrell snorted. “That’s a hell of a lot of ‘ifs,’ ‘somewheres,’ and ‘somethings,’ Helen.” He looked back at Thorn. “What makes you think taking out this son of a bitch’s headquarters is going to matter? Those aircraft and weapons will still be out there — loaded and ready to roll.”
“Timing,” Thorn said quietly. “It all comes down to timing. Whether we go after Ibrahim personally or settle for holding the command center, we have to hit him before he releases the arming codes to his dispersal fields.”
Like their American counterparts, Russian nuclear weapons could not be armed without the proper codes. Ibrahim must have obtained the necessary codes from somebody inside Russia’s Twelfth Main Directorate — the military agency responsible for the manufacture, testing, servicing, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons for the Russian armed forces. But there was no reason for him to turn that information over to his subordinates until almost the very last minute. In fact, there were a great many reasons for him to hold those codes close to his chest as long as possible. Chief among them was the fact that it would prevent any of his people from going off half- cocked — or from absconding with one or more of the enormously valuable weapons. There were a great many dictatorships that would pay millions to get their hands on one usable nuclear bomb.
Farrell nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense.” He glanced at the luminous dial on his watch. “It’s after two A.M. now. You still confident about our estimate for Ibrahim’s attack schedule, Pete?”
“Yes, sir,” Thorn said flatly.
The three of them had hashed that out in more detail on the way back from Godfrey Field. The inside parameter for an attack was the planned transfer of the Caraco executive jet from Dulles to Godfrey—1800 hours on the twentieth. The outside parameter was 1300 hours on the twenty-first — the time the jet was scheduled to depart. That was still a big window, so they’d managed to narrow it down even further.
Ibrahim was unlikely to go for a night attack. Whether his targets were cities or military bases, they were always busier and more crowded in daylight. Since there were always more small private planes in the air after the sun rose, a daylight attack also gave his improvised cruise missiles a far better chance of making it all the way to their targets without being challenged. Given the three-hour time difference across the continental United States, the earliest Ibrahim would strike was somewhere around ten or eleven in the morning — East Coast time — on June 21.
“Which means you want to go in … when?” Farrell asked. Thorn didn’t hesitate. He’d been giving that a lot of thought.
“Around one or two A.M. two days from now — on the twenty-first.”
“That’s cutting it kind of fine, Peter,” Helen warned.
He nodded. “Yeah. But there’s no way we can shave much off that. We need at least a day to find as much gear as we can. And it’ll take us the better part of another day to prep and come up with a workable plan. The way I see it that takes us all the way up to late on the twentieth or very, very early on the twenty-first.”
Farrell arched an eyebrow. “You actually want equipment and time to prep?” He snorted. “Hell, Pete, I was sure you and Helen were going to try to do this armed with a couple of Swiss Army knives, a flashlight, and a baseball bat. You must be getting soft.”
Thorn smiled wryly at his old boss. That was more like the Sam Farrell he knew. “We’re also going to need another rental car. There’s no way we can get all the gear we’ve got to buy in one pass. I’m afraid your credit cards are going to take another beating, Sam.”
“At this point, money’s the least of my problems,” Farrell muttered. “I still don’t see how we’re going to get through that perimeter fence without tripping every alarm they’ve got,” Helen said quietly, staying focused on the matter at hand. “And if they see us coming, we’re screwed.”’ “True. Getting through the fence is our first big problem.”
Thorn lifted the binoculars again. He studied the fence for a moment longer, then shifted his focus — intently studying the tall oak and pine trees that had been left standing outside the compound to preserve something of the area’s once-rural feel. “So maybe we don’t go through the fence …”
Richard Garrett tracked his chosen prey to a table in the White House mess.
He’d used his pass to get by the Secret Service guards at the main entrance. The White House pass, left over from his days in the administration and never revoked, was one of his prized possessions.
His ability to hobnob at will with top executive branch officials had added hundreds of thousands of dollars to his annual income during his days as a lobbyist-for-hire. Now that he represented Caraco’s interests full-time, it generated hundreds of thousands of dollars more in annual bonuses from Prince Ibrahim al Saud.
Garrett took the empty chair across from John Preston, the President’s Chief of Staff. “John, you’ve got a problem. A big problem.”
Caught off guard, Preston nearly choked on a mouthful of soup and hurriedly daubed at his mouth with a napkin. “Jesus, Dick, I’m eating my lunch here! Can’t this wait until later in the day?”
“No, it can’t.”
Preston sighed. “I assume this is about the dead guy out in the woods.
Hans Wolf or something like that?”
“Heinrich Wolf,” Garrett corrected icily. “Who just happens to have been one of the topranking executives of the corporation I represent.”
“Sorry.” Preston set the crumpled cloth napkin to one side. “I suppose you know they’ve identified the other body as a topranking FBI administrator.”
Garrett nodded. Ibrahim had briefed him on that development before asking him to go to the White House. He assumed the Saudi prince had sources inside the FBI or the Loudoun County sheriff’s department.
“Then frankly, Dick, I’m not sure what more I can tell you,” Preston said. He arched an eyebrow. “Fact is, I hear the FBI wants to find out just what on earth your man was doing with Mcdowell — before they both got shot, I mean.”
Garrett nodded. “That’s understandable. And I plan to talk to them.”
He leaned forward. “It’s like this, John. Right after that Bureau fuck-up down in Galveston, I got a pretty strange call from a General Samuel B. Farrell.”
“Farrell?” Preston looked vague. “Don’t know him.”
“Used to head the Joint Special Operations Command,” Garrett explained.
“He retired a year or so ago. Before your time.”
Preston nodded. After a short stint as a Cabinet deputy secretary during the administration’s first term, he’d gone home to Kentucky to tend the family business. He’d only surfaced as the new White House Chief of Staff after several of the other contenders tore each other to ribbons fighting over the job — mostly by leaking damaging revelations about their rivals to the press.
His chief qualification for the post seemed to be that no one had thought enough of him to regard him as a serious contender.
Most Washington observers thought he’d be chewed up, spit out, and sent packing in short order.
Garrett suspected they were wrong. He’d known Preston and his family for a long time. He’d also seen the other man ride out the President’s frequent temper tantrums unfazed. Never underestimate the staying power of a good punching bag, he thought.
“Anyway,” the Caraco lobbyist continued, “this retired general came to us with a really bizarre claim …” He rapidly sketched Farrell’s allegations that Caraco employees were involved in a deadly smuggling ring.
When he was through, Preston commented, “That sounds exactly like the story that got the FBI all hot and bothered down in Galveston.”
“It is the same damned story,” Garrett growled. “That’s why Prince Ibrahim asked Wolf to find out who was spoon feeding the general this crap. Turns out it was a couple of real loony-toon types — a Colonel Thorn and an
