James Huston - Fallout

“I trust your judgment, Brian. I trust your instincts. If you want me to keep pushing, I will. I’ll be hanging my ass out, but if it’s really important to you…”

“What could you do?”

“I’ll get my person in Islamabad to do some active questioning. She has some sources. She wouldn’t tell me about them, but I know she has some.”

“It’ll get you fired.”

“I’m sick of this shit anyway. Sitting in a cubicle all day trying to patch little pieces of information together about a continent so screwed up I don’t even know where to start.”

“I can’t be responsible for you getting canned.”

“You probably need an assistant intelligence guy at the Fighter Weapons School anyway. Don’t you?”

“I’ll split my salary with you.”

“There it is. I’ll live on scorpions and rattlesnake meat.”

“It tastes like chicken.”

Kevin laughed. “Everything tastes like chicken.”

Brian laughed, too. “Rattlesnake really does taste like chicken.”

“You’re so full of it. How would you know?”

“SERE school, bro. Navy survival and POW training.”

Kevin laughed at the image of his little brother chasing snakes in the desert and eating them. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it for action.” Kevin hung up and looked over his shoulder. No time like the present. The Wicked Witch had gone home for the night, but not until she’d checked on Kevin and all the others who worked for her, to make sure they weren’t playing solitaire on their computers. He went into the conference room and closed the door silently behind him. He was breathing more heavily than he would like. He turned on the lights and went to the secure encrypted phone. He opened up his PalmPilot and looked up the number of the embassy in Islamabad. He dialed the number quickly, glancing at the closed door. The phone began its odd ringing sound, and he waited patiently for someone to pick up the receiver. Finally a voice answered in English, “United States embassy.”

“Administration, please.”

“I’ll connect you.”

Another odd ring commenced, and again Kevin waited. Finally a woman answered. “Renee Williams.”

“Renee, Kevin Hayes.”

“Kevin, how are you?”

“Not so well. Since I called, I’ve been read out by my boss for ‘interfering’ in Asian affairs.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. Who did you tell that I’d called?”

“Just the attaché. I… can’t think of anyone else.”

“Must be somebody. It took all of about three milliseconds for her to hear about it.”

“Maybe she was listening to your phone.”

“Possible. But I don’t think so. That would have meant she thought I was doing something else that might have been interesting. And I’m not. My Africa stuff is boring as shit. Nobody would spend five minutes listening to my telephone calls.”

“So what’s up?”

“I know I’m asking a lot. I asked you to look into that guy’s background, but I didn’t tell you much. The more I think about it, the more I think we have to be very careful with this. I also didn’t say why I was asking.”

“No. You didn’t.”

“Go secure,” he said.

“Got it,” she replied.

They both turned their phones to the encrypted mode that made it impossible for anyone to listen in. All someone who had tapped the line would hear was static.

“It’s my brother. He’s the acting intelligence officer for a fighter weapons school a friend of his started in Nevada.”

“I read about that in the newspaper.”

“Yeah. But did you know that four Pakistani pilots are students there?”

“So that’s it. I knew four pilots had gone to the United States for training, but I didn’t put the two together. I thought it was that other school at Mojave. The test pilot school. It came on our screen once a few years ago. The State Department got bent because they didn’t have the right visas to be there. This is a different school?”

“Yeah. Like TOPGUN. They fly MiGs and teach fighter tactics.”

“Wow. Nice job. So Khan is a student there?”

“Yes. He’s the leader. My brother has hair standing up all over the back of his neck. This guy is really bugging him. Brian can’t put his finger on it, but he thinks something is up. I learned a long time ago to listen to his instincts.”

Renee grew cool. “I learned a long time ago that instincts don’t mean anything.”

“So let’s split the difference and check this guy out a little bit more.”

“Kevin, look, I’d love to help you, but I really don’t have time to run this guy down. We don’t have any evidence of anything suspicious. We can’t be spending intelligence assets chasing down every Pakistani Air Force pilot.”

“I’m not asking you to chase down every pilot,” he said, pushing back against her resistance. She had to do it for him. If Khan was actually up to something, there was no way the ingrown CIA was ever going to get onto it before it happened—whatever “it” was. Kevin’s opinion of his employer was that they were much better at explaining why they didn’t anticipate something than at actually predicting anything effectively. Typical performance for a bureaucracy. But then he realized maybe that was more a reflection of his own lazy attitude toward the work he considered boring and stupid than of the CIA as a whole. He wasn’t privy to much of the work done by the Agency. He also knew if he was to have any hope of staying at the Agency, he needed to distinguish himself—and fast. “I’m just asking you to track down one pilot. Trace him all the way back to where he was born. If he has an ax to grind, if he’s up to something, we need to know it now. We’re not being told by somebody to do this, we’re doing it the old-fashioned way—by getting information before something happens, not afterward.”

“Come on, Kevin. What do you think is going to happen? You don’t have anything.”

“One minute the Undersecretary of Defense is against the school opening. Thinks it’s stupid. The next minute he’s authorizing the school with one stroke of the pen, giving them their license to teach foreign students, then greasing the skids with State for the foreign student visas and making sure the school gets opened with lease terms in place that will make it profitable— all conditional on their taking foreign students in the first class, and in particular students from Pakistan.”

“Now you suspect the Undersecretary of Defense of something? Are you out of your mind?”

He did. But he wasn’t ready to make an accusation. Yet. “Somebody’s benefiting. I don’t know what’s going on. But let’s find out. And no, I don’t know what this guy Khan is up to. But if he has something against the U.S. and is being allowed to fly supersonic jets inside the country, he could do a lot of things. The fact we can’t figure it out beforehand doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to stop it.”

Renee paused. She didn’t owe him any big favors, and if she was discovered chasing some crazy theory of his, it could ruin her career. “I’ll think about it.”

“I’m not going to let you skate on this. I want a commitment from you.”

“You’re not in any position to demand anything from me. This is a wild-goose chase. I don’t have the time or the assets. Who do you think you’re talking to?” she asked harshly.

“I’m sorry. I just need your help.”

“So now you’re begging, all friendly and helpless. Don’t try to manipulate me,” she said. She thought for a moment. “There are a couple of people I can ask. But I’m not going to do much else.”