Adrianna said, ‘Forty. We determined that with forty of your aircraft, we can successfully complete the immunization of about seventy-five percent of the urban population. The intelligence information we have indicates a half-dozen of our largest cities are targeted, as well as Washington DC.’
‘What the hell happens to the other twenty-five percent?’ Randy asked. ‘They get written off?’
Bocks was beginning to admire the woman, for she had a sure touch with answering the tough questions. He had served with similar women in the Air Force, especially with those women who ran maintenance squadrons and who had ready answers and a poor appreciation of bullshit.
Adrianna said, ‘The anthrax attacks will take place in our major cities. It doesn’t make sense for an attack to take place in rural areas, so those areas won’t be treated with the immunization program. We also realize that we have a limited number of aircraft. A number will be tasked to one city. Five, for example, for the New York City metropolitan area alone.’
By now, Randy was scribbling on the back of one of the sheets of paper with a pen. Bocks waited patiently, knowing that the answer Randy was about to give was going to be the right one. It might not be an answer that the group was looking for, but it was going to be the only answer that counted.
Randy dropped his pen. ‘When do you want to fly?’
‘As soon as possible,’ she said. ‘We believe the attack will take place in just under three weeks, on May 29.’
‘We can do forty aircraft in four days, if we’re lucky, if the FAA isn’t up our ass, and if you get the canisters to us. When can you get them here?’
‘Day after tomorrow.’
‘You sure?’ Bocks asked.
Adrianna’s voice was full of confidence. ‘Guaranteed, gentlemen.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
For a while, the silence in the Wyoming desert was interrupted by the low hum of machinery as Vladimir and Imad worked to change what they had been driving. All exposed areas that weren’t part of the main body of the truck and the trailer — tires, mirrors, windshield, mudflaps, front bumper — had been covered by heavy-gauge brown paper and secured by equally heavy tape. It had been long, hot work, and both men had stripped off their shirts. When the paper had been secured and double-checked against guidelines from one of the black plastic cases that they had picked up in Idaho, they had continued their work. Portable spray-painting machinery and folding aluminum scaffolding had helped them to turn a bright yellow trailer with Seamarsk markings into something olive drab and military-looking.
Now Vladimir stood back, eyeing the truck and the trailer, matching it up with sample photos and schematics helpfully provided by their unseen bosses. Imad came up to him, clear plastic goggles pushed up over his head, respirator hanging around his neck. His chest was dark brown and scrawny, with a thick mat of black hair. Behind him was the scaffolding surrounding the truck, and the chugging air compressor that powered the spray gun, the compressor in turn powered by cables leading to the truck’s battery.
‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘Are we done with this darkie work?’
‘Soon,’ Vladimir said. ‘Very soon. We let this coat dry and then we can put on the new license plates and serial numbers, and other identifying marks. Another two hours, then we’ll be done.’
‘Good, because I’m about—’
There came the sound of an engine, overpowering the noise of the compressor. Vladimir turned and so did Imad. Vladimir said something in his own language — ‘Fuck your mother’ would have been the best English translation he could have come up with — and Imad said something in his own language as well.
Coming down the dirt road was a dark brown Jeep Wrangler with oversized tires, bounding its way towards them.
‘Don’t say anything, don’t do anything,’ Vladimir said. ‘If we’re lucky, they will pass us by. There must be something in here they want. They don’t want us.’
But God and luck were not with them. The Jeep Wrangler skidded to a halt about a dozen meters away. Hanging from the rear of the Jeep was a collection of sacks and ropes, and two young men and two young women got out, talking and laughing. They wore T-shirts and sunglasses and expensive-looking sport clothes and sport footwear. They talked among themselves for a moment, and then the two men started towards Vladimir and Imad, shaking their heads.
‘Not good,’ Imad said.
‘You are correct,’ Vladimir said. ‘Not good.’
In his rental GMC Pontiac — and why in God’s name were so many rental cars white? Was it a global rental- car rule somewhere? — Brian Doyle sat on a side street in the Mt Auburn neighborhood of Cincinnati, going over his notes for the day. The Princess had supposedly given him the day off, and he had taken the day off, but being the enterprising sort he had taken a commuter shuttle from Memphis to Cincinnati to see what he could find.
And so far, in the few hours he had been here, he had found a lot of nothing.
He scratched at the back of his head.
This part of Cincinnati was a large hill that years and years ago had been the home of the city’s best and brightest, including President William Howard Taft. But the years hadn’t played nice with Mt Auburn, and it had fallen into the urban cycle of poverty and decay. Now it appeared that it was coming back, as gentrification worked its magical market ways. The changeover in home ownership and such had no doubt led to Brian’s problems, for Adrianna Scott’s presence here was as thin as a piece of paper soaked in the rain. There had been almost nothing, nothing at all, save for two things. One came from a visit to her high school, known here as the Hughes Magnet School. The place had been a seemingly well-managed chaos of students and teachers and administrative staff, and a half-hour there had produced paper records that matched what had been in his file, save for one thing that he had been looking for. Adrianna had told him that she had come here after her parents had died, and neither the high school nor the earlier report had any record of her transfer. It was as if she had arrived out of nowhere and had slipped right into the classes without any problem.
And she had done well, scoring high honors in almost everything. But her previous life, before her parents had died in that car accident… gone.
And the other lead, slim as it was, had led to this address. Adrianna’s apartment, which she had shared with her aunt — one Elyse Annanova — had been flipped so many times with new tenants that no one had any memories of an older woman and her young niece who had lived there. The few neighbors home this day that he approached also gave him blank stares. Him being a white man in a suit in this neighborhood, asking nosy questions, probably didn’t help either, though a local grocery store had helped just a bit. The older man there, wearing a spotless white apron and welhshined black shoes, had said, ‘No, sir, I don’t remember anything about that woman and her aunt. But I have somebody who might know something. That’d be Mamma Garrity. She lives over on Prospect Street now, but she used to live here, and I don’t like to speak ill of the elderly, but my God, that woman can talk a hole through a tin pot, and if that woman and her aunt lived here, she’d know, by God.’
So by way of thanking the helpful grocer, Brian had bought a couple of six-packs of Coors that he didn’t want. Now he was on Prospect Street — a bit of punnish humor from the Big Guy Upstairs? — and he got out of his rental car and walked up to the small house, ready to ring the doorbell and keep on digging.
And why was that? he thought. Because it was his job, or because he was pissed at the cold treatment he had gotten this morning from Adrianna?
Who knew? Brian rang the bell.
The two young American men came over to Vladimir and Imad, gave them quick nods. Then one of them took off his sunglasses and said something. Vladimir couldn’t understand what he said, the boy talked so fast, and so he replied, ‘Excuse me?’
‘I said, man, what the fuck is up here?’ the youngster said. He had a goatee and there were earrings in both ears. His companion kept his glasses on and nodded, arms folded. There were tattoos on both forearms. His
