“Yeah, roger that. We’ll take it out of your pay, cowboy. You got one.”
“I got one,” said the wingman, not really believing it. Typically, Klein was focused on what he had done
“I’ve had enough of this shit. Let’s go tank and go home,” said Jenkins.
5
He knew it didn’t fit, though Thomas couldn’t quite decide why. The distance from Chechnya to Manila to LA was perfect, and yet, it just didn’t fit.
He picked up a report a DI analyst had prepared a year before on possible terrorism targets in Los Angeles and the impact a 747 loaded with high explosives would have. It was horrible, of course, truly horrendous — but it didn’t fit.
LA had been assumed to be the target because of the photographs found on Kiro when he was apprehended.
But Kiro wasn’t connected with this operation at all; they’d proven that in Iran.
Thomas sat back from his computer, rubbing his eyes. It reminded him of the UFO sightings off Brazil in 1968 — two totally different sightings believed to be connected, and only upon further analysis proven to be separate incidents altogether.
Manila was right, but not LA, he decided. But the Philippines wouldn’t be the target if they were buying fuel there. And now that he looked again at the receipts, he saw that the amount of fuel purchased was extremely small — not nearly enough to fill a jumbo jet.
Still searching for clues, he retrieved his folded world map from the floor, spreading it over his desk, then using a pencil to estimate radiuses the plane could fly to. Looking for UFOs, he decided, was a heck of a lot easier than this.
6
The coldness came clandestinely, sneaking up on Ferguson like a warrior infiltrating a frontier settlement. By the time he noticed it his hands were frozen; he had trouble moving not just his fingers but his wrists. Conners huddled in the front corner of the craft, shivering and passing in and out of consciousness. Ferguson dressed his wounds as best he could; the sergeant wasn’t bleeding anymore, though he’d obviously lost a good deal of blood. Not only were his clothes soaked, but Ferguson’s were as well.
When the plane finally stopped jerking up and down and back and forth, Ferguson returned to his search of the interior, sliding the flashlight’s beam around the interior. He saw what he thought had to be the door to the flight deck at the front of the space, a full level above his head. The ladder that would have been on the bulkhead in a standard cargo version of the plane had been removed, but the metal cladding of the explosives and radioactive cargo formed a ledge on either side. He started to climb up the space by pushing against the narrow walls directly below the door — they formed a kind of artificial chimney — but the space was a little too wide and shallow to make ascending easy, and as the aircraft hit turbulence, Ferguson lost his balance and dropped a few feet to the floor.
Looking for an easier climb, he found a section of the metalwork nearby that had pieces welded on like a ladder; he went up and found an irregular, roughly eight-inch ledge about nine feet off the floor on the left side of the hold. He worked his way toward the front of the plane, alternately using the flashlight and rubbing his cold knuckles across the surface, trying to decipher the indentations. The terrorists had packed roughly five feet of explosives and material on each side of the hold, arranging them in a patchwork pattern to maximize the plane’s destructive power; they were not very concerned with rounding off edges or filling gaps, and Ferguson cut his fingers several times as he worked around. Finally, he reached the doorway.
Ferguson steadied himself, then reached to his belt and took his pistol out. His plan was simple — he’d yank open the door, swing with it, and get onto the flight deck, where he’d shoot out the pilot and the rest of the crew. He didn’t bother thinking beyond that; it was superfluous.
But as he reached for the handle, the plane jerked upward. For a second Ferguson felt weightless, suspended against gravity. Then the floor of the plane seemed to reach up and snatch him down, and besides feeling cold he felt the incredible shock of pain hit him in the back of his head.
The thump of Ferguson’s body slamming to the floor a few yards away shook Conners awake. He stared as the flashlight spun wildly toward the rear of the plane, its beacon illuminating the metal grids lining the interior. The lids of his eyes felt like ice-cold daggers poking at his eyeballs. Conners started to get up but felt a heavy hand press against him; he crawled instead, making his way toward the light. When he finally got it, he pushed back to find Ferguson, who was lying on his back, arms and legs straight out.
“Jesus, Ferg, let’s go now,” Conners told him.
It was hard to tell if the CIA officer was even breathing. Conners put his ear to his chest, trying to listen.
The plane dipped forward, and Conners tumbled over his comrade. He tried to push himself off, and the plane jerked hard to the right. His stomach suddenly felt queasy — he leaned over and began to throw up.
7
Corrine listened as Gray explained the abilities of the reconnaissance satellites, veering from the overly simplistic to the overly technical and back again. The bottom line itself was simple — it could take days to actually find the wreckage of the downed 747.
Assuming they had gotten it.
“Let’s assume we didn’t get it,” Corrine told Gray. “Where can it go?”
“Well, 747 range would be something over seven thousand miles,” said Major Gray. “Maybe even a bit more, depending on the version, how it was loaded, flight conditions.”
“We’ll have to search every airport or field that a 747 could land on within that range,” said Corrine.
“That has to be well over a thousand. I doubt it’s still in the air. The Navy would have found it by now,” said the expert. “They have the Gulf completely covered, and they’re in the Indian Ocean. Nothing without a civil registration — no plane is going to get past them. I’m sure we got it,” added Gray.
“Just in case,” said Corrine. “I’d like to talk to the
“Your call,” he said.
“It is,” she agreed, clicking into the com circuit to get an update from Van Buren.
8
Based on her preliminary readings, Van Buren’s radiation expert, Captain Renya Peterson, declared the hangar area in the mountain completely off-limits until the robot probes could survey it. Tests at the mouth of the cave showed there were weak- and midlevel gamma generators and traces of alpha material inside; while the levels
