Whirlwind (9 page)

He dispatched a letter to his dead wife in the only way he knew how: he hit the Delete key.

As he powered down his computer, the in-flight phone in his armrest trilled. He picked it up. “Yeah, Sam?” Pressing the handset to his ear, he glanced out the Gulfstream’s window. The twin-engine jet was over West Texas, dreary hill country beloved by the natives but by no one else. He figured the pilot would be beginning his descent soon.

“How did you know it was me?”

Charlie eyed his digital recorder wistfully. No way could he press it against the earpiece to tape Sam’s voice. This was an executive branch V.I.P jet, bug detectors built into the phones; they’d pick up the proximity of any electronic device closer than six inches and oogahl oogah! Sam would hear an alarm in his ear.

“Who the hell else is going to call me aboard a government plane on a top secret mission?”

“Good point.” Sam sounded irritated. Charlie was the happier for it.

“Okay, Sambo, what do you want?” Thirteen luxurious blue leather seats in the Gulfstream, twelve of them unoccupied Charlie swiveled, stretching long legs into the plushly carpeted aisle.

“I thought you should know that I decided to brief Claude on Whirlwind after all.” Sam spoke hesitantly, a man unwillingly admitting that he’d done something he’d said he wouldn’t.

Charlie lifted a glass of lemonade from his walnut burl tray table. It was tart and it was fresh, nothing but the best for passengers on a White House aircraft. “Excellent decision. The Agency isn’t what it used to be, but there still are a few competent people left. Even though he’s a treacherous toad, Claude will put the right resources on the job.” Charlie asked an unspoken question: A couple of hours ago, you deceitful son of a whore, you swore Whirlwind was so sensitive that the director of Central Intelligence had to be kept in the dark. Now you’re having second thoughts. So tell me, Sam, how much trouble are you really in?

“Glad you approve. But the thing is, uh, the thing is Claude wants to rescind your orders.”

Charlie’s eyes narrowed. Now what the hell do I do? Same as usual, I suppose, run a bluff. “Fine by me. I’ll tell the pilot to turn around.”

“No!” Sam barked. “That’s not what I meant. I meant, well, Claude wants you to take the Kolodenkova woman alive.”

I was wondering how long it would take you dimwits to figure that out. “He’s right. She’s been on the loose long enough that she might have made contact with her people. You won’t know whether she’s spilled the beans on your Whirlwind gizmo unless you interrogate her.”

“That’s exactly what Claude said. So what we … what I want is for you to, well, not to…”

“I’ll bring her back alive. That was my plan from the get-go.”

“Oh?” Do I detect a little dismay in your voice, Sam? Has it only just now struck you that I might not carry out your orders to the letter?

Sam dropped his voice, “Claude says we should wait until midday Friday. If you can’t bring her back by then, odds are Whirlwind will be out of her hands and in somebody else’s. So Friday noon. After that… well, you know.”

“A price on her head, open contract, shoot to kill.”

“Whatever. All I’m saying is that come Friday noon you won’t have an exclusive.”

“If I can’t catch a rookie FSB girl in four days, it’s time to put me out of my misery and send my carcass to the glue factory.”

“I have every confidence in that.” Ouch, Charlie thought, I left myself wide open for that one! Sam continued, “Now I’ll let you get back to your “

“Not so fast.” He altered his tone, a throaty rumble of command. “While I’ve got you on the line, there are a couple of questions I want answered.”

Charlie relished the wariness in Sam’s hesitant answer: “Of course. Go ahead.”

“Let me preface this by saying that I genuinely dislike being lied to. From now on, I want nothing but the truth. If I don’t get it, there will be consequences.” Consequences. Nice word. Ambiguous. Scary.

No surprise, Sam reverted to oleaginous type: “Charlie, I’m insulted. Would I lie to you?” Every chance you get. “It’s true that I’ve kept a few facts back.” You have a talent for understatement. “But those are strictly in the national interest.” Strictly in your interest is my bet. “There’s no reason for you to know what’s not germane to the mission.” Every intelligence snafu in American history including goddamned Kahlid Hassan has resulted from some REMF desk jockey not giving front-line guys the information they need. “I’m happy to tell you what I can, but please understand that “

“Hogwash! Damnit, Sam, your people faxed me the plans of the Whirlwind base. All it took me was a protractor and a stopwatch to work out that Kolodenkova and Grisin didn’t have time to paw through your secrets. The fence line is about a fifteen-minute hike from the laboratory. Given the time difference between when the first generator exploded and the second went ka-blooey, they couldn’t have had more than ten minutes and probably only five in that lab. Are you following me, Sam? Do you see the implication?”

“That doesn’t change the fact that “

Charlie turned up the heat. “It sure as hell does! The way you told the story, this girl knows something so dangerous that she has to be silenced. But the truth, Sam, the truth is that those two kids weren’t in your skunk works long enough for anything but a little smash and grab. The girl may have her mitts on something secret, but the odds are a hundred to one that she actually knows what it is.”

“I can’t live with those odds.”

“You can’t kill people for those odds.” Am I mad, Sam? You bet your ass I am.

“I’ll make that decision.”

When pigs fly. “You lied, Sam. More than once. Lie number two is the crap you fed me about the base commander having to radio for help.”

“That was completely true. I don’t see what you’re “

“The plans, Sam, the plans of that base. They show the position of every building, every road, every sewer, and every plumbing line. What they don’t show, you liar, is any telephone lines. Not above ground on poles. Not underground in conduit.”

“An omission.”

“Baloney. The reason why there aren’t any phone lines on those plans is that there aren’t any phone lines on that base.”

“Tour implication would be … ?”

Jesus, I hate these stupid games. You know what I’ve deduced. I know that you know. You know that I know that you know. But still, you’ve got to play it out, don’t you? “EM weapons, that would be my implication. Zap your enemy’s aircraft with high-energy electromagnetic radiation, and it toasts their electronics: the controls, the targeting systems, the onboard computers, and even the pilots’ ejection buttons. All that’s left is a flying brick.”

“That’s science fiction.”

“Yeah? Then why did the Pentagon boast in Forbes magazine that our EM-equipped tanks can disable incoming rockets moving at three hundred meters a second? Come on, Sam, it’s the generals’ wet dream Buck Rogers ray guns and Star Trek phasers, only for real. EM may be dangerous as hell and dumb as hell, but science fiction it is not.”

“Just what makes you think Whirlwind has anything to do with energy weapons?”

Charlie sighed. “You told me that the soldiers guarding the lab couldn’t get help for four hours because their radios were down. Anyone with half a brain would have asked: Hey, why didn’t they use the phone? Answer: because electromagnetic radiation fries line loading coils, amplifiers, and repeaters. So don’t accuse me of swiping state secrets, Sam. You’re the one who spilled the beans.”

Sam whispered his favorite obscenity.

Charlie took another swallow of lemonade, emptying the glass. A uniformed steward trotted forward with a pitcher in his hand, offering him a refill. “EM weapons sound slick in theory. In practice they suck. Once you start beaming radiation into the sky it goes everywhere and hits everything. Including friendly aircraft. I believe the navy demonstrated that unhappy fact to everyone’s satisfaction when some hairball started testing microwave death rays on Long Island Sound. And knocked down four passenger jets flying out of JFK in the process.”

“No one can prove that.”

“Wanna bet?” Charlie put his all into those words, every ounce of cunning he possessed. Gratifyingly, it worked. Sam muttered: “Shit happens. Besides, we stopped after the first two jumbos crashed. The others weren’t our fault.”

Charlie glanced at his digital recorder’s time counter, nearly hidden by the stethoscope he’d hastily hooked to the telephone. Plenty of recording room left just in case Sam chanced to make another criminal admission into a low-techno-tech gizmo that kept a recording machine sufficiently far from Uncle Sam’s bug detectors that they never knew it was there.

“Listen up, Charlie.” Gratifyingly, Sam almost sounded angry. “Forget about EM. Forget about everything except the fact I’ve paid you big bucks to do one simple job: get Kolodenkova and get Whirlwind.”

“That’s two jobs.” That ought to piss him off.

Sam murmured, “You know exactly what I mean.”

Charlie grimaced. Sooner or later he’d make the fat-boy bureaucrat lose his ever-so-tightly controlled temper. He’d just have to put his shoulder to the job. “I’m not sure I do. After all, I thought I knew what you meant when you said you wouldn’t hire any freelancers. But then I sent a few e-mails from this very fine aircraft you’ve lent me, and guess what? I hear from my sources that certain unnamed mercenary organizations “

“They’re on standby, Charlie. Ready reserves, backups. As I said, you’ve got until Friday noon. Of course, if you don’t bring home the bacon by then… Well, now you know my fallback position.”

Charlie didn’t believe a word of it. “Who? Which outfit are you using this time?”

“That’s irrelevant to your mission.”

“I’d say not.”

“Only if you don’t do your job.”

“Listen to me, Sam “

“No, you listen to me.” His voice was shriller. Charlie wondered how close to the edge he was. He wondered if he could push him closer. “There’s only one… only two things I want out of you. That damned Russian and what she stole. No, let’s make that three things. The third is I don’t want you giving me any more lip.”

If Sam had seen the glint in Charlie’s eyes, he would have flinched. “Sorry, Sam, there’s a little more lip you’re going to have to take.”

“Oh, do I?”

“Are you sitting down, Sammy boy?”

“What’s that crack supposed to mean?”

“I wouldn’t want you falling over and hurting yourself. Well, actually I would, but let that pass.” God, this is fun.

“Cut to the chase, buddy. Say what you have to say and let me get on with my life.”

“You won’t like it.”

“Will you just stop screwing around?”

“Okay. Brace yourself.”

No more shrillness, Sam was positively snarling, “Quit playing games! I’ve got better things to do with my time than “

“I videotaped everything you said in my study this morning, every single word.”

A long silence. Then hushed disbelief. “Impossible. I had my NSA technicians sweep “

“The NSA couldn’t find a nipple on a nudist. Believe me, Sam, I’ve got you live and in living color. Action News. Footage at five. The president’s national security advisor confessing to his role in the Kahlid Hassan affair.”

Silence. Then a single whispered word: “Blackmail!”

“Absolutely not,” Charlie chortled. “It’s just my insurance policy. Before I left home I digitized that tape and put it out on the Internet. It’s safe and secure in a place you’ll never find, an encrypted data vault that no one can crack. So, it gives me great pleasure to inform you that if you even think about double-crossing me, then that video gets sent to every media company in the world. Television, radio, newspapers, magazines, you name it, they get it. And if they do, what do you think will happen to your presidential aspirations? Hmmm?”

Sam knew the answer. Losing his appointment to the vice presidency would be only the first of many, many bad things. Accordingly, he said what Charlie expected he’d say. “I’ll kill you first.”

“Bad idea, Sam. Plenty bad. I’ve got a de adman brake.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“Ask Claude. Even someone so embarrassingly devoid of operational experience as the director of Central Intelligence should know what a dead-man’s brake is.” Click. Smiling widely, Charlie disconnected the call and switched off a tape recorder now chockablock full of Sam saying very naughty things. Navy involvement in the crash of two civilian jetliners, the use of mercenaries on American soil, and, best of all, a death threat against that righteous paragon of godly behavior, Charles McKenzie, Esquire. Blackmail? Sam, you clown, you don’t know the half of it!

He coiled up his stethoscope and dropped it back into the war bag between his legs. Then, heaving a happy sigh, he leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes. Beating Sam to a bloody pulp would be gratifying. Putting him in jail for the rest of his life would be better. But public humiliation…

“Excuse me, sir. Is there anything wrong.” The steward was hovering at Charlie’s shoulder.

“No,” Charlie said. “No. What makes you think there’s something wrong?”

“Well, sir, you were … uh … you sort of were … those sounds you were making…”

“Just laughter, son. I was only laughing.”

Irina chewed her lip. Mitch’s kitchen was a wasteland. The refrigerator contained only a carton of stale milk. As for the cupboards, they were bare but for an almost empty box of Frosted Flakes. A few spoonfuls of cereal lay in its bottom, small insects rustling among the grains. Hungry, but not that hungry, Irina dropped the box in disgust.

Apparently Mitch subsisted on fast food. And that was a problem. She could risk leaving his house for a few minutes, risk driving to the cluster of take-out chains she’d noticed not far from here. But she could not risk someone noticing the black Dodge truck she’d be driving. The woman at the Taco Bell drive-thru window, the clerk behind the counter at Pizza Hut, might recognize it. “Why, howdy, miss. Tall a friend of ol’ Mitch’s? I see he’s lent you his pickup, and that boy don’t do that ‘cept for his very best buddies.”

Make no mistake, they’d know Mitch, and they’d know his truck. The detritus scattered across the kitchen table told her he was a valued customer.