Lambert had offered to send a Gulfstream to Kunsan so Fisher could fly home in much-deserved comfort, but he declined, opting to fly back with Redding, Bird, and Sandy. They’d been through a lot together and it seemed only right they come home together. Besides, Fisher told himself, he was so exhausted he didn’t need comfort — just a horizontal surface on which to recline.
Also, he needed time to decompress. Time to think about everything and about nothing. When he got back to Fort Meade, there would be days of debriefing as the powers-that-be tried to piece together what had happened in the Gulf and what role Third Echelon had played.
Whether it was simply exhaustion or something more, Fisher didn’t know, but Heng’s death haunted him. The man had sacrificed everything to help the CIA wage its war on Kuan-Yin Zhao when his own government had refused to lift a hand. According to Richards, Heng had never asked for money or recognition or a way out, and in Fisher’s book that was the definition of courage. And what did he get for it? A bullet in the head and slow death aboard a rickety sampan in the middle of the Yalu River. Though Fisher knew better, a part of him wondered if he could have, or should have, done more.
Drifting in a deep sleep, he became aware of a hand shaking his shoulder. He snapped open his eyes and reached for the leg holster he’d taken off hours ago.
“Relax, Sam,” Redding said. “Relax.”
Fisher rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. What time is it?”
“Just after midnight. We’re fifty miles west of Eugene, Orgeon. You slept through our refueling stop.”
“And why am I awake now?”
“Lambert’s on the bat phone.”
Fisher sat down at the console. On the screen, Lambert’s expression was dour. Fisher was immediately awake. “What’s happened?”
“Since you left Kunsan, Grim’s been trying to put together some of the missing pieces. She found something. Go ahead, Grim.”
“Sam, you remember the
“I remember.”
“I tracked down the registration. It belongs to a man named Feng Jintao, a Chinese mobster out of San Francisco. The FBI claims Jintao is one of Zhao’s underbosses.”
“Okay, so he loaned out the
“Here’s the problem: Jintao’s got two other yachts, one in Monterey and one in Los Angeles. Both of them left port about eight hours ago without notifying harbor control. We’ve found the one from Los Angeles; it’s headed back into port. The Navy’s dispatched a destroyer to meet it and a helo is en route with a SEAL team.”
“And the other one?”
“It was found run aground and abandoned near Eureka, California. Take a look at the satellite.”
Fisher’s screen changed to a gray-scale overhead image of a coastline. In the lower right quadrant he could clearly make out what he assumed was Jintao’s yacht resting on the beach, its deck canted to one side.
“Here’s the thermal,” Grimsdottir said.
The image changed, zoomed in. On the yacht’s afterdeck there was a dot of yellow-red.
“Look familiar?” Grimsdottir asked.
“Same signature as the
“Yes, but not nearly as hot. It’s a residual signature. Whatever was aboard, it’s gone now.”
Lambert said, “The FBI has agents from its field offices in Sacramento and San Francisco heading for Eureka, but they won’t get there for a couple hours. The Eureka PD and Humboldt County Sheriff ’s been alerted, but they’re not equipped to—”
“I know,” Fisher said, then to Bird: “You’ve been listening?”
“Sure have. At best speed, we can be there in fifty minutes.”
Lambert said, “Do it. We’ll keep you unpdated en route.”
Twenty minutes later, Lambert was back: “The Eureka PD found a man shot at a place called Spruce Point Rail Adventures. He’s the night security guard there. They run one of those novelty lines — old-style trains that travel up and down the coast… see the giant redwoods, that kind of thing.”
“And they’re missing a train?”
“ ’Fraid so. A locomotive, three cars, and a caboose. Eureka PD’s not sure how long the guard’s been dead, so there’s no telling what kind of head start the train’s got. Grim’s putting an overlay of the track on your map. It runs north to south only and ends at Olema, just north of San Fransisco.”
Zhao’s roundabout method of reaching San Francisco made sense, Fisher decided. After 9/11, dozens of port cities, including San Francisco, had installed a network of radiation detectors. Slipping Jintao’s yacht past them would be impossible.
“Detonate a couple hundred pounds of radioactive waste in San Francisco, and it’ll make Slipstone look like nothing,” Fisher said. “It’d be a wasteland for centuries. Are there controls on the line? Shunts or spurs they can divert it to?”
“Fifty years ago, yes, but not now. It’s a straight run down the coast. We’re retasking a Keyhole to look for her, but we’re talking about a three-hundred-mile stretch of track, most of it running through heavy forest and mountain passes. It’s going to be hard to spot — plus, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill locomotive. According to Grim, it’s been converted to run faster so it can make more round trips. Top speed: sixty miles an hour.”
There was only one way to stop it, Fisher realized. An F-16 or an F-15 could be overhead in minutes with a laser-guided Paveway missile, but the resulting wreck would spread radioactive material for miles. Better than it happening in San Francisco, but still unacceptable as far as he was concerned.
“Then we do it the hard way,” Fisher said. “We fly down the track until we overtake her.”
“And then?”
“And then we improvise.”
60
“We got her, Sam,” Lambert said. “She’s eighty miles south of Eureka between the towns of Cedar Creek and Blue Flats. Satellite image is on your monitor; we’re streaming it real-time.”
The screen showed a stretch of heavily forested moutainous terrain. At first Fisher saw nothing, and then, breaking from a line of trees, a locomotive appeared, followed by three passenger cars and a caboose. A plume of black smoke trailed from the locomotive’s stack. The train rounded a bend in the track and disappeared into forest again.
“Grim, do you have infrared?”
“Yep, here.”
The train reappeared. In the center of the third car, just ahead of the caboose, was a reddish-yellow oval.
“How far away are we, Bird?” Fisher asked.
“Twenty minutes.”
Lambert said, “Humboldt County Sheriff’s has a SWAT team. They’re airborne and a few minutes ahead of you. They’re going to try and put men onto the train’s roof.”
Fifteen minutes later, Bird called, “Got a visual. Descending to five hundred feet.”
Fisher trotted to the cockpit and peered through the windscreen. Ahead and below, the Humboldt SWAT
