Fallout

“A warehouse in Halifax.” Fisher gave her the particulars. “They’re loading Stewart onto a ship in Baie Comeau. That’s my next stop. Where’s Bird?”

“Idling on the tarmac at St-Mathieu-de-Beloeil. ETA to evac point Charlie is ten minutes.”

“Radio him for me, tell him to put on his flying hat. I’ll be calling.”

Fisher signed off, then slipped out the fencing room door and padded down the hall to the last door on the east side, the one Grimsdottir suspected contained the only personal computer in the house. The door was unlocked. Inside he found what looked like a private study. The lights were off save a single spotlight in the ceiling that cast a dim pool of light on the hardwood walnut floor. He found the PC — a high-end Alienware — on a rolltop desk in the corner and plugged the OPSAT’s USB into the PC’s port.

“Hooked up,” Fisher told Grimsdottir.

“Roger. Scanning… Nice firewall… nice, but not nice enough. There, I’m in. Downloading now.” Thirty seconds passed, then, “Done, Sam.”

Fisher disconnected the USB. “I’m ex-filtrating.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later he was sliding out the pool’s exit chute and climbing down the rocks into the kayak course. He looked east and could see on the horizon the barest hint of reddish pink under a fringe of leaden clouds. This was false dawn, he knew. The true sunrise was at least four hours away. Red skies at night, sailor’s delight, Fisher thought. Red skies at dawn, sailors take warn. It was an old nautical saying that he’d found to be more often accurate than not. In fact, he could smell the tang of ozone in the air. Rain was coming.

Having already trail-blazed his infiltration route through the forest surrounding Legard’s mansion, he simply followed the course in reverse order, moving more quickly this time and pausing only to avoid the guards and dogs. An hour later he was at the wall. He crouched down and checked the OPSAT to ensure his spot was still dog- friendly, then called up the OPSAT’s communication screen, tapped the airplane icon, then selected from the drop- down menu the commands, CALL TO followed by EVAC POINT C. Five seconds passed, then Fisher heard in his ear, “Roger. En route. ETA ten. Out.”

Fisher scaled the wall and headed for the water.

13

Fisher lay belly down, his face mask awash in the shallows of the river, for four minutes, gauging the current and watching the rain clouds gather over the treetops, then pushed off, stroked a hundred yards into the channel, and stopped. The current immediately took hold of him, dragging him downstream. Three minutes later he was a half mile away from Legard’s estate when he heard the faint thrumming of a plane’s engines, followed a few seconds later by the sight of the flat-bottomed, rounded nose cone of a V-22 Osprey emerging from the fog along the southern shoreline.

The Osprey dropped to twenty feet, swooped over Fisher, then banked, its engine nacelles rotating from horizontal to vertical as it slowed to a hover and then began drifting backward until its tail was directly above Fisher. The tail ramp lowered, and a coiled rope rolled out and dropped into the water beside him. Fisher looped his arm into the thick rubber horse collar and gave a thumbs-up at the ramp, where he knew a high-resolution night- vision camera was focused on him.

The Osprey lifted upward, and the winch began reeling him in.

* * *

Five minutes later, dried off, coffee cup in hand, and changed into a pair of blue coveralls, Fisher sat down in the empty engineer’s seat in the rear of the cockpit and said, “So, how’s everyone’s morning so far?”

The pilot, an easygoing southern boy nicknamed Bird, said, “Peachy, Sam, and you?”

Fisher shrugged. “The usual. Hi, Sandy.”

Sandy, Bird’s copilot, one of the first women to break into the male-dominated special operations community, nodded back at Fisher. “Sam.” Where Bird was a carefree soul, Sandy was the polar opposite: taciturn and all business. Fisher liked Sandy, but he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen her smile. Together, Bird and Sandy formed a balanced pair.

The newest edition to Bird’s crew, the Osprey’s engineer/ navigator/loadmaster, was an Annapolis wunderkind graduate named Franklin. Fisher wasn’t sure if Franklin was his first name or last, but Bird had dubbed him Franco, so Franco it was. He had a quick, easy smile and could do black-belt-level sudoku, in pen, with one half of his brain while calculating glide paths with the other.

Fisher was very much at home aboard the Osprey, which Bird had dubbed Lulu, per his prerogative as the captain, and had spent almost as much time flying aboard it as he had driving his own car. Billed as both a VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) and STOL (short takeoff and landing) craft, the Osprey was not only Third Echelon’s workhorse, used for dicey insertion and extraction missions in “denied areas,” but had over the years been Fisher’s lifesaver many times.

“Morning, Franco,” Fisher said.

“Morning, sir,” Franco said with a nervous smile. Though both Bird and Sandy denied it, Fisher suspected they’d been telling their new crewman tall tales about him — that Fisher ate live ducklings for breakfast and he’d been responsible for the Hindenburg disaster in 1937.

“Bird, how far to Baie Comeau?” Fisher asked.

“Two hundred miles. Should have you there in forty.”

Too long, Fisher thought. If Bruno’s prediction was right, Stewart might have already been loaded aboard whichever of Legard’s ships would be carrying the scientist to Halifax. They’d have to catch the ship at sea.

Fisher grabbed a headset on the bulkhead, settled it on his head, and swiveled the microphone to his mouth. Bird said, “Sit room on button two.” Fisher punched the button and said, “You there, Grim?”

“Here.”

“Any luck?”

“Some. Calvin Stewart’s boss reported him missing two weeks ago. Stewart is a particle physicist at University of Toronto. He’s working on a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy; I’m trying to get the specifics, but the DOE is being cagey.

“As for the ship, the only one in Legard’s fleet that’s filed departure with the Baie Comeau harbormaster is a dry cargo hauler called Gosselin. She left port twenty minutes ago, heading for the Gaspe Passage. She should be passing Pointe-des-Monts right about now.”

Fisher did a quick mental calculation. By the time he was feet-down on the Gosselin’s deck, it would be four a.m., the darkest part of the night, but it would leave him only a couple of hours before the day watch began. He’d have to move quickly.

“You get that, guys?” Fisher asked.

“Roger,” replied Sandy. Franco, sitting across the aisle from Fisher, was already bent over his folding desk, tapping keys on his navigation computer’s keyboard.

Grimsdottir said, “I’m updating your OPSAT with blueprints and specs for the Gosselin now. What I can’t tell you is where they’re keeping Stewart.”

“I have an idea how we can find out,” Fisher replied, then explained his plan. “Once I’m aboard and in place, we’ll use it to shake the tree. Bird, you got any ideas about getting me aboard?”

“I can drop you in the drink ahead of her—”

“Not enough time.”

“Or I can…” Bird trailed off, hesitant.

“What?” Fisher asked.

“Or we can test out a little trick Sandy and I’ve been practicing awhile.”

“And just how much testing have you and Sandy done?”

Sandy replied, “Enough that we’re reasonably confident we won’t kill you.”

“Oh, well, if you’re reasonably confident… Okay, let’s hear it.”