Oh yeah, he thought, remembering. It was what the Air Force secretary had said the day he arrived at Dreamland to review the Flighthawk project.
The day of his accident, when one of the Flighthawks cut too close to his tail.
The Air Force secretary had said it with a smile on his face, laughing, really, shaking his hand before the flight.
Science fiction bullshit, that just happened to be true.
Supermen
14
“Why Moldova?” Danny asked.
“I have no idea if it means anything,” Nuri told him as they debriefed the break-in over the secure sat phone. “He was looking at a lot of sites there. We’ll have a better idea in the morning, when MY-PID finishes churning through all the data. I just thought it was a little unusual. Moldova is not exactly the garden spot of the world. It’s not on the beaten path, that’s for sure.”
“It’s not,” agreed Danny.
“The guy loves porn,” continued Nuri. “And he’s an animal — he started screwing on the couch while I was there. I swear, I was ten feet away. Maybe closer. If they’d seen me, they probably would have asked me to join in.”
Nuri’s mention of Moldova brought back painful memories for Danny. A decade and a half before, Dreamland Whiplash had run an operation in neighboring Romania, helping rout guerrillas who were trying to disrupt a pipeline project. In the process, they’d helped rescue the country from a coup.
But they’d lost a key member of the team and a friend, CIA officer Mark Stoner. Danny could still remember getting the news.
They talked for a while more, about whether Flash should stay with Nuri or come to Kiev, about how many more people they’d need, about when to contact the local authorities.
Danny couldn’t focus on any of it. He kept thinking about Stoner.
He’d lost a lot of friends in the early part of his career, in Bosnia, and then with Dreamland. Later on in the Gulf and Afghanistan. It had been a luxury the last few years, not having to worry about forming friendships that could end all too suddenly.
“I’ll talk to you after we get the info dump,” said Nuri. “Figure out the next move then. In the meantime, I’m going to bed. You good?”
“Good.”
“You OK, Colonel?”
“I’m here,” answered Danny.
“Maybe you ought to get some rest, too,” said Nuri. “You sound a little tired.”
Danny glanced at his watch. It was five in the morning; no way was he getting back to sleep.
“I’m good,” he told Nuri. “Talk to you soon.”
15
Breanna overslept, and by the time she woke, Zen had already left to take Teri to school and then go to work.
Her body felt raw from the fight, as if it had been physical. She took a shower, feeling drained of blood, even trembling a little. Coffee helped get her awake, but it only reinforced the jitteriness. She left for work without checking the news or looking at her version of the morning briefing. Her BlackBerry had a dozen messages, but none were from Zen, so she didn’t bother opening them.
Breanna generally split her days between the Pentagon and Room 4. Today she was scheduled to spend her time at the Pentagon, where, among other things, she was supposed to make sure arrangements for the Tigershark demonstration test flight were set. But she headed to the CIA campus instead, anxious for an in-depth update on the operation.
And considering, in the back of her mind, what to tell Danny about the Wolves.
To her great surprise, she found Reid in the bunker. Not only did he spend the bulk of his time in his office in the main building, he was famously known as a late riser, often grumbling about meetings that began before 10:00 A.M.
“Extra strong this morning,” Breanna told the automated coffee unit. “Very strong.”
“You saw the e-mail?” Reid asked her as the coffee began to brew.
“No. I just had an instinct that something was up.”
Reid was an old-school CIA hand, both figuratively and literally. Sometimes it seemed to Breanna that he had been with the Agency back when it was the OSS.
“MY-PID has arranged all of the data from the mobster’s computer,” said Reid. “There’s one possible lead through a bank account. And some interesting connections. Most of the information on the drives pertains to his business interests. The FBI will be interested. And there’s plenty more for the Italian antimafia commission.”
“Let’s have a look.”
“Here.”
Reid turned to the wall, then told the computer to display the data summary. Several windows of information appeared, long lists of files arranged in treelike fashion. A window on the left showed correspondence between Moreno and other members of his organization, translating them from Italian as well as decrypting them. They indicated that he was having some conflicts with upper level associates, or fellow mob bosses. There was personal animosity and friction as well. Based on what Nuri had observed, that was more than understandable.
The profile the information drew was of a man whose empire was slipping away from him. If they were in America, the authorities might even attempt to pressure him and get him to turn against the rest of the mob. But the Italians didn’t work that way.
“He does seem to be losing his grip,” said Reid. “Which is perhaps another reason he didn’t use his own people for the strike in Berlin. In any event, the matter that concerns us is here, a pair of transactions that switched money from a Naples bank to Egypt, then to Russia.”
“Does that say three million dollars?” asked Breanna.
“They don’t come cheap,” said Reid. “But he can afford it.”
“Have you traced the accounts?”
“They were opened and closed the same day. The Russian bank has a branch in Moldova.”
“Hmmm.”
“I thought you’d find that interesting. I have a list of transactions on the day the money hit the Russian account. We have five different accounts where we think the money went, but the transfers aren’t recorded as transfers. Someone withdrew the money, in theory as cash, then placed it into these accounts. If that happened. Most likely it was only on paper. And we’re guessing at the match-ups, because the amounts don’t match exactly. There’s about ten thousand dollars missing.”
“Pocket money.”
“Maybe. Or just diddling with the numbers to throw off programs designed to look for suspicious transactions.”
