James Huston - Fallout

“We have to figure how he got here, how he got bombs, and who picked him up in the ocean. Way I see it, it’s Pakistan until they can convince us it isn’t. I just heard that Congress is convening in special session today to determine whether to declare war against Pakistan.”

“Seriously?” Cindy asked. “Seriously? War?”

“Very seriously. This attack was by members of their military. It was a brilliantly executed military attack, with an escape planned to include a submarine. That means some country was involved. If not Pakistan, who the hell would be prearranged to pick up Pakistani Air Force pilots and help them escape from an attack on the United States?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Exactly.”

“And the fact you claim no responsibility for an act of war by your military is interesting, but it doesn’t get you out of the box. We clearly have enough to declare war against them. And frankly, I don’t know which way Congress will want to go with this.”

Katherine sat across from Luke. Between them was a set of thin metal bars. Her face showed much of the stress she felt, but she was trying to be calm and supportive. She could tell that Luke was at the end of his rope. She replied softly, “It is radioactive.”

His one oasis of good news, that they hadn’t hit the nuclear plant, was quickly eroding. “The plants were completely intact!”

“I don’t know,” Katherine said, also amazed. “Apparently it was radioactive waste. It was stored on site.”

“Waste?” Luke asked, mystified. “Waste? What waste?”

“I don’t know. All I know is the experts are totally hysterical. They’re saying all kinds of things. On my way here from the airport, I heard that the big issue they’re trying to decide now is whether to evacuate Los Angeles.”

“Los Angeles? Are you kidding me?”

“No. The cloud is being pushed northwest by the Santa Ana winds. The President has declared an emergency. The Governor has declared an emergency. They’re comparing this to Chernobyl. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is running around in circles, the Navy is searching for an invisible submarine, and the Air Force is looking for anybody in the air who’s unauthorized. But the lead story on CNN isn’t the attack, it’s the fact that the government stopped funding antiterrorism efforts at nuclear plants about three years ago. Too expensive. Everybody screamed how stupid it was at the time. You know how good the press is at ‘I told you so.’ ”

Luke was disgusted. “They didn’t find the sub?”

“The Navy isn’t saying much, but based on what I’ve heard, I think the nearest U.S. submarine was about two hundred miles away from where the F-16 went in. They sent out helicopters and P-3s, but nobody has found anything that I’ve heard about.”

“They’re long gone. It was a diesel. They’re too quiet. If they got even a couple hours’ head start, there’ll be no catching them.” Luke cradled his head in his hands. “I’m really sorry about this, Katherine. You think this was their plan all along?”

“Sure looks like it. Down to the last detail. I’ll bet the original plan was to go to TOPGUN. We just walked into it.”

Luke was speechless. He didn’t know what to do next. “Are we getting hammered in the news?”

“They finally know about the school, the four Pakistani students, the whole thing, but they’re not quite sure what to make of us. There’s a lot of amazement that a school was allowed to operate in Nevada with Russian fighters and that Pakistanis were allowed to come and operate supersonic fighters in the U.S. Oh, and Pakistan claims to know nothing about the attack. They claim to be equally outraged—”

“Right.”

“I’m just telling you what they’ve been saying. They know the pilots, but say they had no prior history of terrorist or radical activity. They think they might have affiliated with some other group, like the Taliban from Afghanistan, or the Iranians—a lot of possibilities. But nobody knows.”

“Can you see the cloud?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “It must be ten miles across now and really high, maybe fifty thousand feet. You can see it from here.”

Luke leaned back in his wooden chair and closed his eyes. He was unable to clear his head of the shame and anger. He looked at Katherine. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong. You did everything you could to to stop him.”

“I didn’t listen to Brian as much as I should have. He had the scent of these guys. I didn’t listen. I looked right by. ‘But their security clearances were guaranteed by the United States government. The Undersecretary will look out for—‘ “

“Yeah, except the Undersecretary disappeared. I heard it on the news.”

“Disappeared?”

“Yeah. Vanished. No trace of him.”

“We’re dead.”

“Well, we’ll see where all this leads. My first job is to get you out of here. I’ll have to hire a lawyer.”

“Tell the other guys at the squadron to keep flying. Finish the class.”

Katherine braced herself for getting up out of her chair. “They can’t.”

“Why not?”

She’d hoped not to have to tell him. “The FBI padlocked the gate. The school’s been shut down.”

“Kevin,” Brian said breathlessly, sick from the developments of the last twenty-four hours and blaming himself, “you’ve got to help—”

“Where the hell are you?”

“The Mizpah Hotel in Tonopah.”

“Brian, I can’t even talk to you! Everybody involved in that school is a leper!”

“You’ve got to help,” Brian repeated, trying not to sound desperate.

“People a lot bigger than me are looking hard, Brian. You can be sure of that. People are looking under every rock. FBI, everybody. Trust me. This is way out of my hands. I can’t do anything.”

“Yes you can. Call Renee.”

Kevin was furious. “Don’t ever mention her name again! Ever.”

“You’ve got to get back to her. Find out what she knows!”

“Do you really think that with four Pakistani pilots attacking the United States we’re not going to be exercising our intelligence assets in Pakistan? How friggin’ stupid do you think we are?”

“And the Undersecretary. Find out who his contact was.”

“We already know!”

“What? Who? I haven’t heard anything on the news.”

“We don’t typically do news releases here.”

“So who was the contact?”

“Guy in the Pakistani embassy. His name was Yushaf.”

“Is somebody having a chat with him?”

“Seems he anticipated there might be a reaction to his pilots bombing our nuclear power plant. He was on an airplane when the attack was still under way.”

“He left before it was in the news?” Brian said, thinking.

“What?”

“He must have been in on it. How else could he have known to get on an airplane?”

“I’m not sure,” Kevin replied.

“That shows it was Pakistan’s plan all along. They pulled their guy from Washington before the shit hit the fan!”

Kevin pondered the implications. “Maybe. Maybe he’s just like this pilot. Maybe they’re all working against their country’s interests. Plus, Yushaf didn’t go back to Pakistan. He vanished.”

“Meaning what? He was working for somebody else?”

“We don’t know.”

“Where’d they get the bombs? Those have to have come from Pakistan.”

“They did. An armory near Islamabad was broken into a couple of months ago. That’s probably when they took the bombs.”

“You’ve got to work this, Kevin. There’s a radioactive cloud hovering off Southern California, the school has been shut down, and Luke is in jail. Can’t you do anything?”