Sea of Fire

'To empty a bullet casing of gunpowder on his tongue and interrogate him with a match,' Herbert said.

'I'm with Paul on that one,' Coffey said.

'I figured.'

'No, Bob. You did the right thing,' Coffey said. 'If you had tortured Hawke, he could have landed and had you arrested.'

Herbert was silent.

'The more important thing now is, do you think Hawke was telling the truth about Darling?' Coffey asked.

'I do,' Herbert told him. 'He had nothing to lose. Hawke needed to keep me hooked until we reached a nonmilitary landing site. The best way to do that was with the truth.'

The phone went silent. Herbert's frustration was almost palpable. The tranquillity of the morning was gone.

'You say I need a witness,' Herbert said. 'Can we stay at the base until the patrol boat arrives?'

'Yes, but if Hawke suspects anything, he can legally request an escort off the base,' Coffey said.

'How would he get one?' Herbert asked.

'You can't deny him a phone call,' Coffey said. 'Muscling a citizen who is not even a prisoner plays poorly in court.'

'Lowell, you're not helping me,' Herbert said.

'I'm trying,' Coffey said. 'I want to stay focused on the case, not on the fact that Hawke knows how to manipulate the Australian legal system. He's probably had countless run-ins with the courts. He knows his way around.'

'Now that you mention it, every damn thing Hawke told me implicated someone else,' Herbert said. 'Jervis Darling, Darling's nephew Marcus, Captain Kannaday. According to Hawke, all he did was run security. Yet he never even confessed to firing a bullet.'

'What about other potential leads or witnesses?' Coffey asked. 'Do you have anyone on the mainland?'

'No one that I can—' Herbert began. He stopped suddenly.

'What is it?' Coffey asked.

'I just thought of something,' Herbert said. 'There is someone who can nail this guy.'

'Who?' Coffey asked.

'Later,' Herbert said.

'Wait, Bob?'

There was no answer.

'Bob, are you coming back to the station?' Coffey asked.

The dial tone returned. So did the external tranquillity of the morning. Inside, however, Lowell Coffey was not happy. He was bothered by the subtleties of his profession. The details were legitimate and necessary, but they could also allow a nuclear terrorist to go free.

Coffey loved the law and admired those who upheld it, in the field and in the courts. He did not think of himself as the barracuda Herbert had alluded to. What he did feel like, however, was a dolphin. Smart and swift.

And powerless.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Cairns, Australia Sunday, 4:59 A.M.

The Bell rose swiftly from the RAAF Airfield Defence Squadron satellite base in Cooktown. It angled toward the southwest. John Hawke had been silent since his confession. His expression was still dour. He did not make eye contact with anyone on board.

Bob Herbert was less genial than he had been before they landed. Jelbart asked him if anything was wrong. Herbert said there was not.

Bob Herbert was lying.

The intelligence chief was sitting in the cabin, waiting. Figuring out exactly how he was going to play this. After Herbert had spoken with Coffey, he called Stephen Viens at Op-Center to ask for specific satellite intelligence. While he waited for Viens to arrange that, FNO Loh received a call from Lieutenant Kumar on her patrol boat. They had reached the scene of the sinking. The yacht was gone, but seven individuals had been pulled from the sea. The yacht crew had provided their names, but there was no way of knowing whether they were telling the truth. Kumar did not know whether Marcus Darling was among them.

Loh told the patrol boat to return to Darwin. The fate of Marcus Darling worried Herbert. It certainly complicated what he was about to do.

The helicopter finished fueling and took off. Flying time to Cairns was fifteen minutes. That was not a lot of time.

This was going to be tight.

After they had been airborne for three minutes, Herbert's phone beeped. He answered quickly. Viens was on the other end.

'I've got what you want,' Viens said. 'Do you have access to your computer monitor?'

'I do,' he said.

'I've got the image, and I'm forwarding it to you, real time,' Viens said. 'I figured you would know what you were looking at better than I would.'

'Good thinking,' Herbert replied. 'Stay on the line. I may need you to relocate.'

'No problem.'

The intelligence chief turned the monitor so he could look at it. If Hawke happened to glance over, he would see nothing. The screen was at an extremely sharp angle.

The satellite image was a fairly tight view of the Darling mansion. The house was at a forty-five-degree angle. In the green night-vision image, Herbert could see that there were lights on upstairs and downstairs. That suggested a good deal of activity in the house.

At five o'clock in the morning.

It only took a kitchen light to make breakfast, and probably not this early. Something was not right.

'Stephen, I want you to go to the Idlewild,' Herbert said. 'Got that?'

'The local airfield?' Viens asked.

'Yes. To the northeast.'

Herbert wanted to use a term with which Hawke was likely to be unfamiliar. He did not want to give the man time to think up a new strategy. The original name for New York's Kennedy Airport seemed a good bet.

'You got it,' Viens said. 'I'll have to walk the satellite over, though. That's not one of the coordinates we have programmed in.'

'Understood,' Herbert told him. 'Just walk as fast as you can, please.'

It had occurred to the intelligence chief that Jervis Darling would expect to hear from either John Hawke or his nephew Marcus after the yacht went down. Absent an all-clear call, Darling might not want to stick around. Embittered former employees might want to talk. Darling would probably want to get out of Australia. Being in another country would add another layer to any legal or political fallout. Herbert could not permit that.

Of course, there was still the question of Marcus Darling. Marcus may have contacted his uncle to say that someone had been snatched from the yacht by helicopter. Perhaps after they were safely aboard the patrol boat. A rescue of Kannaday or even Hawke could be bad news for Jervis Darling.

It took a few seconds for the satellite to begin shifting. The image jerked toward the top right. It changed once every second after that. It was a slow, exasperating process.

How quickly the miraculous has become inadequate, Herbert thought.

Each live picture was a fresh frustration for Herbert. He wanted to see the airport now. He wished the fire tower had a clear view of the field. That would make things