“Then there’s Gora Krybl,” said Ferg.
“I been to Grznyj, Ordzon, Chrebet — I been everywhere, Jack. I been everywhere,” sang Conners.
“Sounds like a song,” said Ferg.
“It is.” He sang a few verses with the names of American cities in Texas. “Old hobo song.”
“Not Irish?”
“Came out of New Zealand or Australia or someplace,” Conners said. “Changed around a lot. Geoff Mack wrote it, or at least a version of it, that a lot of people did.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Your loss,” said Conners.
“Why do you like those old songs?”
“Why do you?” said Conners. “Remind you of being a kid?”
“The childhood I never had.”
“Don’t get philosophical on me, Ferg.”
“I’m not philosophical.”
Bullshit, thought Conners, but he didn’t say anything.
“You think I’m philosophical?” asked Ferg.
“That and reckless,” said Conners.
“Reckless?”
“I’d call it a death wish.”
“That why I hang around with you, huh?” The CIA officer rolled down his window halfway. The blast of cold air stung his eyes, reminding him he was awake.
“You’re not an SF type,” said Conners. “Not a soldier.”
“Not enough discipline, huh?” said Ferg.
“Got that right. You don’t like following orders. And you take too many risks.”
“Got to.”
“You were lucky, Ferg, damn lucky.”
“Which time?”
Conners laughed.
“You’re telling me no SF soldier is reckless?” said Ferguson.
“Not the ones who are alive.”
“Bah.”
Conners didn’t bother arguing.
“Rankin’s not reckless?” suggested Ferg.
“Rankin? No.”
“Bull.”
“Taking risks and being reckless aren’t the same thing, Ferg.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Rankin’s a professional.”
“You Army guys like to stick together.”
“You don’t like him, that’s all. Not that I blame you — he hates your guts.”
“That doesn’t make him
7
When Thomas matched Corrigan’s scribble with the name on the map — Verko — he felt as if the ceiling had lit up with spotlights. Verko was connected with several UFO sightings during the 1950s and ‘60s, all reported by villagers in the nearby mountains. The sightings had proven false; at the time Verko was a secret Russian base devoted to a squadron of spy planes.
It looked fairly isolated, a good place to arrange a pickup — but only if he could be sure the Russians weren’t using it anymore.
Or the guerrillas. Thomas threw himself into researching it, gathering every slither of information he could. He began with the generic, pulling up SpyNet and working from there. The base had been officially closed in 1992, though it hadn’t seen much activity for at least ten years prior to that. Thomas jabbed at the keyboard, calling up a set of satellite photos. He culled through a file, then went over to a collection made by a commercial satellite over the past several years without finding any that showed activity on the runway. He did find shadows undoubtedly related to activity there, though there was no new construction.
A scan of NSA intercepts turned up several hits that contained Verko, but most had not been decrypted. The one that had contained something seemed pure gibberish.
He continued to work, guessing logically and illogically. He lost track of time. He didn’t eat. He didn’t emerge from his room. At some point he decided he needed a break. Thomas got up and gathered all of the papers that he’d arranged on the floor in a big pile next to his desk, then dropped to the floor and did a hundred push-ups. When that didn’t rev him, he tried a hundred more. A third set left him so tired he fell asleep on the floor.
How long he slept there, he couldn’t say. He finally woke up because someone was pounding on his door.
“Yes?” he asked, opening it.
Debra Wu stood in the hallway, eying him suspiciously. She was wearing a different skirt, though this one seemed just as short as the other.
“Thomas, the security log says you’ve been here all night,” she said.
“Might be.”
Verko wasn’t a Russian base, he realized — it was a guerrilla stronghold.
“Corrigan wants to see you. Does he know you were here?” she added.
“I don’t know.”
“You want some coffee?”
“Why not?” He got up, orienting himself among his papers. “Tell Corrigan I’ll be down in a while. I have to put some things together. I need to make a few queries.”
“Okey-dokey,” said Debra, retreating.
“Don’t forget the coffee.”
Even though Debra warned him that “the loony slept under his desk,” Corrigan wasn’t quite prepared for the analyst’s disheveled appearance when he entered the secure chamber about an hour later. His hair stuck out in every direction; his shirt was half-out of his pants, and he seemed to have dust and lint pasted all over his body.
“I figured it out,” said Thomas.
“What?”
“They’re putting the bomb together at this place called Verko. It’s in the mountains, and it used to be an airbase.”
“Verko — that was one of the pickup possibilities,” said Corrigan.
“Verko’s the place you’re looking for,” said Thomas. “Allah’s Fist bought ammonia nitrate and had it tracked into a village a few miles away nine months ago. We have two sat photos showing those trucks on the road to the facility.”
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
“At Verko?”
“No, but that has to be where they’re going. And one of the companies that was associated with Bin Saqr rented a house in the village. Medical waste — they’ve been grabbing all the cesium they can get. Maybe other
