tonight, hosted by the Reverend Don T. Spates . . .
Crawley read the letter once. He read it again. A faint chill crawled up his spine. So this was Spates’s source, a nutcase pastor out there in Navajoland. The note at the bottom indicated the crazy pastor had sent the letter just a few hours ago. From the list of hits it seemed to have been posted at a fair number of Web sites.
How many? There was a way to find out. He Googled the first sentence of the letter, enclosing it in quotation marks to retrieve only Web sites that had posted the exact text. A split second later the list of hits came up. The standard notation at the top indicated how many:Results 1–10 of about 56,500 for “Many of you watched the show
For a long time Crawley sat in the silent Georgetown study. Could it be true that the letter had already been posted to over fifty thousand Web sites? Unthinkable. He breathed in and out, steadying himself. If his role behind Spates’s attack on the Isabella project should become known, he’d fall harder than his old pal Jack Abramoff. The problem was, when he got down to it, he really didn’t know much about Spates and his evangelical orbit. Crawley felt like a man who’d casually thrown a rock into a dark place and now could hear dozens of buzzing rattlesnakes. He rose again, walked to the window. Outside, Georgetown slept. The street was empty. The world was at peace.
As he stood, he heard his computer chime, indicating he had received an e-mail. He walked back to check it out. A little window popped up to give him the subject heading:
He opened it up, began reading, and was shocked to find it was the exact same letter he had just read. Did someone know about his contact with Spates? Was this some kind of veiled threat? Had
As he read the letter again in disbelief, trying to guess the probability of his getting that particular e-mail at that particular moment, his mail program chimed again and another e-mail appeared. It had the same subject heading — almost.
Booker Crawley grasped the arms of his chair and rose unsteadily. As he made his way across the study, the computer chimed again, and again, as more e-mails hit it. He staggered into the bathroom at the far end of his study. Gripping the edge of the sink with one hand and holding his tie back with the other, he vomited.
52
BERN WOLF HUNKERED DOWN IN THE bay of the chopper, chewing nervously on a cud of gum and watching eleven heavily armed men dressed in black climb on board and settle silently into their seats. The only insignia on their uniforms was a small FBI shield on the breast. Wolf felt uncomfortable in his camouflage gear, flac jacket and helmet. He tried without success to adjust his gangly limbs into something reminiscent of comfort, shifted irritably, and crossed his arms. His ponytail stuck out from under the helmet and he didn’t have to see himself in a mirror to know it looked ridiculous. His head was sweating and his ears rang from the first leg of the flight.
Once the men had buckled in, the helicopter took off, rising into the night sky, turned, and accelerated. A gibbous moon had risen, bathing the desert landscape below in a silvery sheen.
Wolf chewed and chewed. What the hell was going on? He’d been roused out of his house without explanation, dragged out to the Los Alamos airstrip, hustled into a chopper. Nobody would tell him a bloody thing. It was like the beginning of a bad film.
Through the window he could see the distant peaks of the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. The helicopter cleared the foothills, and Wolf glimpsed a faint ribbon of reflected starlight below: the San Juan River.
They followed the approximate course of the river, past patches of lights marking the towns of Bloomfield and Farmington, then on into the empty darkness. As the craft dipped south again, Wolf saw the dark hump of Navajo Mountain in the distance, and that was when he guessed their destination: the Isabella project.
He masticated his ball of gum, pondering. He’d heard rumors—everyone in the high-energy physics community had—about problems with Isabella. He’d been as shocked as anyone about the suicide of his former colleague, Peter Volkonsky. Not that he’d ever liked the Russian, but he had always respected the man for his programming skills. He wondered what was going on that required a black-clad goon squad to fix.
Fifteen minutes later the black outline of Red Mesa loomed dimly ahead. A bright patch of lights at its edge signaled the location of Isabella. The chopper swung down, raced along the mesa top, and slowed at an airfield illuminated by two long rows of blue lights, then turned and settled down on a helipad.
The rotors powered down and one of the team shifted out of his seat and opened the cargo door. Wolf’s handler placed a hand on his shoulder and gestured for him to wait. The door slid open and the FBI team jumped out, one at a time, crouching and running in the rotor wash, like they were securing the landing zone.
Five minutes passed. Then the handler gestured him out. Wolf slung his pack over his shoulder and took his sweet time—he wasn’t going to hustle and break his leg. He climbed down with excessive care and scuttled beyond the backwash. The handler touched his elbow lightly and pointed toward a Quonset hut. They walked over, and the handler opened the door for him. The hut smelled of fresh lumber and glue and was almost empty, except for a desk and a row of cheap chairs.
“Have a seat, Dr. Wolf.”
Wolf dumped his backpack onto a chair near the desk and slumped down in the one next to it. He could hardly imagine a less comfortable seat, especially at this hour, so far from the pillow and bed where he belonged. He was still squirming when one of the men came in. The man extended his hand. “Special Agent in Charge Doerfler.”
Wolf shook it halfheartedly, without getting up.
Doerfler sat down on the edge of the desk and tried to appear friendly and relaxed. It didn’t succeed: the man was as wound up as the Energizer Bunny. “I bet you’re wondering why you’re here, Dr. Wolf.”
“How did you guess?” He distrusted people like Doerfler, with their whitewall haircuts, southern accents, and smooth-talking language. He had dealt with too many of them during the design phase of Isabella.
Doerfler glanced at his watch. “We don’t have much time, so I’ll be brief. They tell me you’re familiar with Isabella, Dr. Wolf.”
“I should hope so,” he said irritably. “I was assistant director of the design team.”
“Have you been here before?”
“No. My work was all on paper.”
Doerfler leaned over on his elbow, his face serious. “Something’s happened out here. We don’t exactly know what. The scientific team has sealed itself inside the mountain and turned off all external communications. They’ve shut down the main computer and they’re running Isabella at full power using backup computer systems.”
Wolf licked his lips. This was too far out to believe.
“We have no idea what’s going on. It may be a hostage situation, it may be a mutiny, it may be an accident or some kind of unanticipated equipment or power failure.”
“So what’s my role?”
“I’ll get to that in a moment. The men you flew in with are members of an FBI Hostage Rescue Team. It’s like an elite SWAT team. That doesn’t necessarily mean there are hostages, but we have to plan for that contingency.”
“Are you talking about
“Perhaps. The HRT is going to enter the facility, perform hostage rescue if necessary, neutralize undesirables, isolate the scientists, and escort them from the premises.”
“Neutralize undesirables—you mean shoot people?”
“If necessary.”
“You’re shitting me.”
Doerfler frowned. “No, sir, I am not.”
“You woke me up to join a commando raid? I’m sorry, Mr. Doerfler, but you’ve got the wrong Bern Wolf.”
“You needn’t be concerned in the slightest, Dr. Wolf. I’ve assigned you a handler. Agent Miller. Totally reliable. He’ll be at your side, guiding you every step of the way. Once the facility is secure, he’ll take you in and
