Hard Target (4 page)

Uzi and his team split up to begin their respective tasks. While en route to the site, Shepard had called Uzi to inform him that two dozen additional agents had been dispatched off-site to work the crash’s behind-the-scenes logistics: interviewing the executive transport division’s mechanics, pulling maintenance records, amassing weather reports for the region, and visiting with Air Traffic Control in an effort to reconstruct the helicopter’s flight path during its last fateful moments.

Uzi looked for investigators wearing NTSB coveralls and eventually located Clarice Canfield. She was a take-charge woman, five-foot-one in thick-soled boots and a short, military-style hairdo. They made introductions and canned the small talk.

“So what can you tell me about the aircraft?” Uzi asked.

“Which one, the VH-3 or the Super Stallion?”

“Let’s start with the H-3.”

“Walk with me,” she said. “I’ve got to find what’s left of the cockpit.” She started moving, faster than Uzi had thought possible with such short legs. Uzi flicked on a small flashlight and followed close behind like a puppy.

“I can tell you anything you want to know about it,” she said.

“I flew H-3s in the military, so I know about its older cousin. But I need to know everything you can tell me about this particular model, the executive fleet.”

Canfield shrugged. “It’s your basic Sikorsky masterpiece, souped up for VIPs. This model started transporting the executive staff with the Kennedy administration. Just about my favorite chopper. Thing’s a bulldog. Energy-absorbing landing gear to increase crash survivability, self-sealing puncture-resistant fuel tanks. Even the seats are shielded. This thing can take twenty-three-millimeter shells and live to tell about it. But inside the cabin, it’s luxury all the way. Even has a galley and restroom.” She paused long enough to turn around to glance at Uzi. “I feel like a used car salesman.”

Someone passing by caught Uzi’s shoulder and spun him half around. He took a couple large steps to catch up to Canfield, who had continued walking. “Carries a dozen people?” he asked.

Canfield stopped abruptly, then knelt beside a pile of foam-covered twisted metal. “These have a crew of three, sixteen passengers. Top speed, a hundred-seventy knots. Range, four-hundred forty-five miles.” She shined her flashlight on the wreckage, shook her head, then stood up.

“And the Super Stallion?”

“Also built by Sikorsky. CH-53. Three GE turbine engines, air-to-air refueling, max speed about the same as the H-3. It’s the military’s workhorse. Whatever you need it to do, it can do. Special ops, military transport, search and rescue, you name it. Coolest thing is it can carry sixteen tons of supplies, cargo, vehicles, artillery, and troops.”

Uzi’s eyebrows rose. “Sixteen tons?”

“Think of it as the most powerful helicopter we’ve got—on steroids.”

“So the Stallion’s a stud. How does something like that end up looking like... chopped meat?”

“Don’t know enough yet to say.”

“Come on, don’t hold out on me. You must have some idea. You can’t tell me you haven’t already started formulating an opinion.”

Canfield tilted her head, leaned closer to something on the ground, then straightened back up. “Can’t draw any conclusions till we have all the evidence collected. You know the drill.”

Uzi lifted his flashlight and lit his face from below. “Based on what you’re telling me, both these choppers were designed to withstand attack. The Stallion’s built like a fortress, the closest thing we’ve got to a flying tank. Seems to me nothing could take it down unless someone was aiming a Sammy at it. Am I right?”

She shrugged a shoulder, then looked away to avoid eye contact.

Uzi stepped to within a foot from her. “Could it have been a Sammy?” Not surprisingly, she did not answer. Uzi knew this was a sore subject. “Sammys,” or SAMs, were shoulder-launched surface-to-air infrared heat-seeking missiles that traveled 1,500 miles per hour— but stood only five feet tall and weighed a stingy thirty-five pounds. Known terrorist groups had gotten hold of at least three hundred of them several years ago. Then there were the Chinese and Russian versions, which could’ve fallen into who-knew-whose hands, and the Iraqi SAMs unaccounted for after the US invasion.

“Clarice.” Uzi waited until he had eye contact. “Could it have been a Sammy?”

“Not likely. You’d need several missiles striking the choppers at the same time. These birds are equipped with state-of-the-art anti-missile technology.”

“Such as what?”

“Fast-blinking strobe lights, like the ones in nightclubs and discos. Infrared jamming. The strobes confuse the SAM’s eye and throw the missile off course.”

“We used to use a low-tech version: throw a hot flare out of the aircraft.”

“Same principle. You mind?” She pushed away Uzi’s flashlight, which had strayed toward her eyes. “They’re also equipped with lasers so bright that they’d confuse the missile’s guidance system. Kind of like blinding someone by pointing your flashlight in their eyes.” She forced a smile, then crouched beside a small section of the chopper’s metal skin. “Then there’s IR-attenuating paint that dims the helicopter body’s infrared signature.”

She ran her own light over the fragment, which was nearly free of foam. “They also spread crucial helicopter components around the vehicle, and install backup copies. That way, the chopper’s not as likely to be destroyed by a single missile.”

Uzi nodded. He had forgotten about that. “What about the shell of the helicopter? What’s it made of?”

“Aluminum alloy. But parts of it have been ballistically hardened. Tough, lightweight armor is placed around the body.” Canfield shut off her light and replaced the fragment from where she had taken it.

Uzi stood there a moment, lost in thought. Finally, he said, “But bombs, strategically placed, could take these choppers down. Right?”

She forced her gaze back to his. Her eyes lingered there a long second, then she turned and walked away.

UZI SPENT THE NEXT NINETY MINUTES covering the crash site and talking with investigators. He kept asking questions designed to prod them into reaching preliminary conclusions as to causation. Though he would not hold any of them accountable for such early impressions, he wanted to get a jump on where to focus his investigation.

No matter who Uzi spoke to, no matter which agency they were with, he kept getting the same opinion: this did not look like mechanical or structural failure.

Either Clarice Canfield was wrong, and a shoulder-mounted missile had been successfully fired at the chopper, or a fuel tank exploded—or a bomb was detonated from inside the craft. Any of these possibilities, even a few years ago, would have raised eyebrows, even led some to chuckle. But after TWA-800’s supposed gas tank catastrophe, and after discovering stolen SAMs and detailed al-Qaeda manuals in Afghanistan as well as bin Laden’s own operational notes— not to mention security breaches at countless military bases— all three scenarios now made his list of possible explanations.

He approached DeSantos, who was crouching beside the NTSB Powerplants specialist, John Maguire. DeSantos had a bright white LED flashlight trained on a large piece of metal that Maguire was handling with rubber gloves.

“Boychick. Look what we’ve got here.”

Uzi knelt beside DeSantos. “A hunk of aluminum. So what?”

“It’s what this hunk of aluminum tells us that’s got my interest.” DeSantos elbowed Maguire. “Tell him.”

“It’s only preliminary, Hector. I don’t know how accurate it is. I could be way off—”

“Tell him. Uzi’s cool, you won’t catch any heat if you’re wrong.”

Maguire hesitated, then sighed deeply. “First of all, best I can tell, there’s nothing here from the tail rotor. If this bird fell from the sky, as I would expect it to, all the pieces would be in a well-defined area. They’re not. That would lead me to believe that the tail rotor might be part of the debris that was picked up on radar a few miles back.” He looked at Uzi, as if willing him to draw a conclusion.

Before Uzi could speak, Maguire nodded at the piece of metal in his hands. “This is from the transmission housing.” He motioned to DeSantos to shine his flashlight on the fragment. “See this?” he asked, pointing with an index finger. “Right here.”

Uzi leaned closer, his warm breath fogging the chilled air. “What am I supposed to be seeing that I’m not?”

“The sharp, jagged edges.”

“Okay, yeah,” Uzi said. “And that means what?”

“When we look for mechanical fatigue, and therefore structural failure, we expect to see chafing of the metal. If we look closely, we can see cracks where the metal gave way. It breaks, and the bird falls from the sky. But there’s no chafing, no overt signs of cracking here. No signs of fatigue whatsoever. In fact, all these parts look damn well brand new.”

“So you’re saying it’s not structural failure.”

“That’s a conclusion I’m not willing to commit to just yet. What I’m saying is that I don’t see any signs of the parts being defective or worn. But there is evidence that something pushed against the transmission housing. Something very powerful and very sudden,” Maguire said.

“‘Something’ as in...what?” Uzi asked.

DeSantos said, “Man, you’re thick. A freaking bomb, that’s what.”

“But there’s something that disturbs me,” Maguire said.

Uzi frowned. “If it ‘disturbs’ you, I’m willing to bet it’s really going to upset me.”

Maguire placed the metal fragment where he’d found it. “Whoever did this used a sophisticated device to take down the vice president’s bird. As for the Stallion...” Maguire shrugged a shoulder. “Had to be something very powerful. And gaining access to these choppers is damn-near impossible.”

“The fact that they were able to do it is definitely alarming,” Uzi said. He studied Maguire’s face a moment. “But...that’s not what disturbs you.”

“No,” Maguire said. “If you’ve got a bomb, and you’ve gained access to the chopper, I could think of several more effective places to put it. Places that would’ve made it immediately drop out of the sky. Like the Stallion did. But if radar and the flight path check out, they flew Marine Two for almost five minutes after the first Mayday call.”

“Let’s go back to the Stallion for a minute. They took it down real fast. No fooling around there. What’s its Achilles’ heel?”

“Without a doubt, the Jesus Nut.”

Uzi smiled out of the right portion of his face. “Excuse me? What the hell’s a Jesus Nut?”

“I’m not being sacrilegious. It’s the ‘nut’ that holds everything together at the top of the main rotor. Screw around with it, put a bomb on it, the bird’s toast. Drops out of the sky.”

“Which is what happened.”

Maguire bobbed his head. “That’s what we think happened, based on radar. We’ll know more once I hear from the team assigned to that crash site. They’re searching right now with infrared, but there’s miles to cover. That said, if you want my opinion on the most effective way of bringing that chopper down in the middle of the Virginia countryside, that’d be it.”

They were silent for a few seconds before Uzi spoke. “So whoever did this wanted the Stallion down quickly, but they wanted Marine Two to stay up awhile longer. Why?”

“There’s no terror in a quick death,” DeSantos offered. “Whoever did this not only wanted Rusch dead, he wanted him and his family to suffer the terror of his helicopter going down.”

“So this might’ve been personal,” Uzi said. His gaze met DeSantos’s. “Looks like this is going to be my job for the next year or so.”

“It would appear so.”

A DUST SWIRL ROSE FROM the ground a hundred yards to the north. Uzi, who had left DeSantos and Maguire moments ago, could tell a helicopter had landed, and seconds later the backlit silhouettes of a clot of men began moving toward the debris field. One of them had Marshall Shepard’s shifting gait. Another appeared to be FBI Director Douglas Knox—followed by an unusually large security detail—and another gentleman Uzi could not immediately identify in the murky darkness.

The men stepped into the bright klieg light aura that hovered above the crash site. Knox, wearing a dark suit and matching overcoat that contrasted with his thick head of gray hair, looked out at the firefighters hauling their equipment back to their rigs and the army of investigators combing the debris.

At this proximity, Uzi recognized the other official with Knox as Director of Central Intelligence Earl Tasset, which explained the large contingent of bodyguards: in addition to Knox’s security detail, Tasset’s Security Protection Officers were also along for the ride.

Tasset said a few words to Knox, shook his head in disapproval at the scene before them, then approached Uzi and Shepard. Tasset had pointed, petite features, John Lennon glasses, and above-the-collar wavy, salt-and-pepper hair with a tightly cropped goatee. Uzi always thought the guy looked more like a progressive college professor than a top spy master.

“Mr. Directors,” Shepard said, “this is Special Agent Aaron Uziel, head of WFO’s JTTF.” Both men, each intimately aware of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, nodded.

Uzi shook Knox’s gloved hand, then Tasset’s. “An honor to meet both of you,” Uzi said.

Knox’s eyes roamed the area beyond Uzi’s right shoulder. “Report.”

“Everything’s very preliminary at this point, sir, but my impression is that this was not an accidental downing. No overt signs of mechanical or structural failure. Not to mention they were both real tough birds.”

“Anything point to a bomb?”

“There’s some...suggestion that an explosive device was placed beside the transmission housing of the veep’s chopper. But this is all very preliminary.”

“Son of a bitch.” Knox clenched his jaw. “Find these people, Shepard. Whatever resources you need, whatever it takes, I don’t care.” He turned to Uzi. “You’ve got nine days to get me an answer.”

Uzi’s eyebrows rose. “Nine days?”

“Yes sir,” Shepard said quickly. “We’ll have that information for you, not a problem.”

“I want to be kept aware of everything you learn,” Tasset said to Shepard. “The idea is to work together here, pool our intel.”

Knox’s scowl deepened. “I’m sure he’s well aware of ‘the idea,’ Earl.” Knox threw a cautious look at Uzi, then moved off to tour the wreckage. Tasset and his people followed.