we get everybody home?'
'There's an Air Force C-17 at Alice Springs, if you can get there. It'll wait for you.'
'Okay, I'll see if we can fly there. Later, John.' Chavez thumbed the END button and turned to his prisoner. 'Okay, pal, you're coming with us. If you try anything stupid, Sergeant Pierce here will shoot you right in the head. Right, Mike?'
'Yes, sir, I sure as hell will,' Pierce responded in a voice from the grave.
Noonan reopened the valve and turned the pump motor back on. Then they went back out into the stadium concourse and walked to the cabstand. They ended up needing two taxis, both of which headed to the airport. There they had to wait an hour and a half for a 737 for the desert airport, a flight of nearly two hours.
Alice Springs is in the very center of the continental island called Australia, near the Macdonnell mountain range. and a strange place indeed to find the highest of high-tech equipment, but here were the huge antenna dishes that downloaded information from America's reconnaissance, electronic intelligence, and military communications satellites. The facility there is operated by the National Security Agency, NSA, whose main site is at Fort Meade. Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington.
The Qantas flight was largely empty, and on arrival, an airport van took them to the USAF terminal, which was surprisingly comfortable, though here the temperature was blisteringly hot, heading down from an afternoon temperature of 120.
'You're Chavez?' the sergeant in the Distinguished Visitors area asked.
'That's right. When's the plane leave?'
'They're waiting for you now, sir. Come this way.' And with that they entered another van, which rolled them right to the front left-side door, where a sergeant in a flight suit gestured them aboard.
'Where we going, Sarge?' Chavez asked on his way past.
'Hickam in Hawaii first, sir, then on to Travis in California.'
'Fair enough. Tell the driver he can leave.'
'Yes, sir.' The crew chief laughed, as he closed the door and walked forward.
It was a mobile cavern, this monster transport aircraft, and there seemed to be no other passengers aboard. Gearing hadn't been handcuffed, somewhat to Ding's disappointment, and he behaved docilely, with Noonan at his side.
'So, you want to talk to us about it, Mr. Gearing?' the FBI agent asked.
'What's in it for me?'
He'd had to ask that question, Noonan supposed, but it was a sign of weakness, Just what the FBI agent had hoped for. The question made the answer easy:
'Your life, if you're lucky.'
CHAPTER 38
It was just too much for Wil Gearing. Nobody had told him what to do in a case like this. It had never occurred to him that security would be broken on the Project. His life was forfeit now-how could that have happened'.' He could cooperate or not. The contents of the canister would be examined anyway, probably at USAMRIID at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and it would require only a few seconds for the medical experts there to see what he'd carried into the Olympic stadium, and there was no explaining that away, was there? His life, his plans for the future, had been taken away from him. and his only choice was to cooperate and hope for the best.
And so, as the C-17A Globemaster III transport climbed to its cruising altitude, he started talking. Noonan held a tape recorder in his hand, and hoped that the engine noise that permeated the cargo area wouldn't wash it all away. It turned out that the hardest part for him was to keep a straight face. He'd heard about extreme environmental groups, the people who thought killing baby seals in Canada was right up there with Treblinka and Auschwitz, and he knew that the Bureau had looked at some for offenses like releasing laboratory animals from medical institutions, or spiking trees with nails so that no lumber company would dare to run trees from those areas through their sawmills, but he'd never heard of those groups doing anything more offensive than that. This, however, was such a crime as to redefine 'monstrous.' And the religious fervor that went along with it was entirely alien to him, and therefore hard to credit. He wanted to believe that the contents of the chlorine canister really was just chlorine, but he knew that it was not. That and the backpack were now sealed in a mil-spec plastic container strapped down in a seat next to Sergeant Mike Pierce.
'He hasn't called yet,' John Brightling observed, checking his watch. The closing ceremonies were under way. The head of the International Olympic Committee was about to give his speech, summoning the Youth of the World to the next set of games. Then the assembled orchestra would play, and the Olympic Flame would be extinguished… just as most of humanity would be extinguished. There was the same sort of sadness to it, but also the same inevitability. There would be no next Olympiad, and the Youth of the World would not be alive to hear the summons?…
'John, he's probably watching this the same as we are. Give him some time,' Bill Henriksen advised.
'You say so.' Brightling put his arm around his wife's shoulders and tried to relax. Even now, the people walking in the stadium were being sprinkled with the nanocapsules bearing Shiva. Bill was right. Nothing could have gone wrong. He could see it in his mind. The streets and highways empty, farms idle, airports shut down. The trees would thrive without lumberjacks to chop them down. The animals would nose about, wondering perhaps where all the noises and the two-legged creatures were. Rats and of her carrion eaters would feast. Dogs and cats would return to their primal instincts and survive or not, as circumstances allowed. Herbivores and predators would be relieved of hunting pressure. Poison traps set out in the wild would continue to kill, but eventually these would run out of their poisons and stop killing game that farmers and others disliked. This year there would be no mass murder of baby harp seals for their lovely white coats. This year the world would be reborn… and even if that required an act of violence, it was worth the price for those who had the brains and aesthetic to appreciate it all. It was like a religion for Brightling and his people. Surely it had all the aspects of a religion. They worshiped the great collective life system called Nature. They were fighting for Her because they knew that She loved and nurtured them back. It was that simple. Nature was to them if not a person, then a huge enveloping idea that made and supported the things they loved. They were hardly the first people to dedicate their lives to an idea, were they?
'How long to Hickam?'
'Another ten hours, the crew chief told me,' Pierce said, checking his watch. 'This is like being back in the Eight-Deuce. All I need's my chute, Tim,' he told Noonan.
'Huh?'
'Eighty-Second Airborne, Fort Bragg, my first outfit. All the way, baby,' Pierce explained for the benefit of this FBI puke. He missed jumping, but that was something special-ops people didn't do. Going in by helicopter was better organized and definitely safer, but it didn't have the rush you got from leaping out of a transport aircraft along with your squadmates. 'What do you think of what this guy was trying to do?' Pierce asked, pointing at Gearing.
'Hard to believe it's real.'
'Yeah, I know,' Pierce agreed. 'I'd like to think nobody's that crazy. It's too big a thought for my brain, man.'
'Yeah,' Noonan replied. 'Mine, too.' He felt the mini tape recorder in his shirt pocket and wondered about the information it contained. Had he taken the confession legally? He'd given the mutt his rights, and Gearing said that he understood them, but any halfway competent attorney would try hard to have it all tossed, claiming that since they were aboard a military aircraft surrounded by armed men, the circumstances had been coercive-and maybe the judge would agree. He might also agree that the arrest had been illegal. But, Noonan thought, all of that was less important than the result. If Gearing had spoken the truth, this arrest might have saved millions of lives… He went forward to the aircraft's radio compartment, got on the secure system, and called New York.
Clark was asleep when his phone rang. He grabbed the receiver and grunted, 'Yeah?'only to find that the security system was still handshaking. Then it announced that the line was secure. 'What is it, Ding?'
