James Huston - Fallout

“I just can’t tell you anything else. I’m sorry.”

Lane put away his file. He looked at Helen, who nodded. He hurried out of the room, clearly to try other sources of information to track down the submarine.

Helen brushed the hair away from her face. “What about these Pakistani pilots?”

Luke sighed. “I know their names. I know they were approved and cleared by the DOD, and their entry visas were authorized by State. I know they were flying California Air National Guard F-16s and that they were flying F-16Cs back in Pakistan. I know the leader—”

“Riaz Khan.”

“I never trusted him. But never so much that I could tell him to leave.”

“You didn’t do any background investigation on them before accepting them to your school?”

Luke tried not to yell. “I’ve told you! They were authorized by Undersecretary of Defense Merewether. He said he’d take care of all clearances and ensure that their backgrounds were properly investigated. I relied on him to do it.”

“Did he ever put that in writing to you?”

“They sent us the clearances. You can look at those.”

“I already have. They’re not standard.”

“That’s my problem?”

Helen looked at him. She backed away from the chair and turned toward the small window, which was dirty on the inside, under the chain screen covering where it was impossible to clean. “We need a picture of this Khan.”

“There aren’t any.”

“No class photos? No welcome-aboard photos? Nothing?”

“Nothing. He avoided photos. He forbade his pilots from being photographed.”

“Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

“Yeah, a lot. But what are you going to do?”

“What’s your opinion on why this happened?”

That was the question Luke had been pondering since he got back on the ground. “It was why they came. The whole reason they were here. But just because he was mad at the U.S.? I guess that could be the whole reason, but my bet is there’s more to it. And frankly, I don’t know what else there could be.”

She glanced at the other two FBI agents, who watched silently. “And for whom do you think he was working?”

He hesitated, studying her face, wondering if he was missing something. “Well… Pakistan,” he said slowly. “Right? I mean, he was a Pakistani pilot. How could he be working for somebody else?”

“I don’t assume anything.” Li was thinking about other things. She looked into the distance.

Luke remained silent.

“Did you see any preparation on their part? Anything they did that pointed to this?”

“They asked us to help them plan a strike, but we do strike planning all the time. Nothing really unusual about that. They were focused on air-to-ground stuff, but again, for F-16s that’s not so unusual. That’s their primary role.”

Helen prepared to leave. “I’m having them release you.”

“What?” Katherine said, taken completely by surprise.

“The agents who arrested you were overzealous. The irresistible urge to arrest someone for something bad that has happened. It allows you to feel better about yourself.” She slipped her purse over her shoulder. “I suggest you go back to Tonopah and think of whatever you can that will help us catch him. Anything at all. Ask all your instructors.” She handed him a business card. “If you think of anything, call me. We must work fast. It’s my belief that he’s not finished.”

Luke glanced at Katherine, confused. “What do you mean?”

“He intended to hurt us. But I agree with you. I don’t think that was his final objective. I think that was one step in a larger plan.”

“What makes you say that?”

“My friends from the Agency believe that very strongly. They’re trying to figure out what his end game is, as they call it.”

“What could it be?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” she said over her shoulder as she walked out. Then she stopped. “I’ve told them to reopen your base. We’ve seen what we need to see there.”

Renee had collected a lot of intelligence throughout the country of Pakistan for over three years. Thanks to having grown up with a mother who was half Pakistani she had the ability to appear as a very ordinary Pakistani woman, which made intelligence collection almost easy. But she’d never been on a Pakistani Air Force base. They took security very seriously. If she were caught, she would be charged with espionage. At this point she didn’t care. She was in a country that had chosen to target her homeland for a brutal attack, killing many workers in the nuclear power plant itself and whoever else they might be able to kill, depending on winds and whatever else might affect the spread of the poison they’d unleashed. It was a malicious, horrifying attack. She was prepared to take extraordinary risks to get intelligence on who had done it.

She shuffled into the back entrance of the officers’ mess with the other women who wore burkhas. Renee wore hers in the traditional way, with her face completely covered. Her contact lenses bothered her, as they always did. She didn’t wear them frequently enough to become accustomed to them, only to change her eye color.

The women worked quietly in the morning darkness, some washing the few dishes that had been left over from the night before. Others prepared the breakfast Air Force pilots would eat before their early flights, mostly breads and coffee with an occasional fried vegetable or tomato.

As the sun lifted over the horizon, Renee stood behind the serving trays. Her eyes expertly examined every officer who came through. The number of men who came to breakfast was much smaller than she’d expected. Not more than fifty. She would glance at each officer when he first came in, then look away. She would take quick glimpses from different angles. Although it was extremely difficult to identify someone she’d never seen, she was confident she would recognize Khan if he was here. It was the neck. Everyone mentioned the neck. She had the descriptions the FBI had taken from every person in the school in Nevada and the sketch that everyone in Nevada had agreed was a nearly perfect representation of him.

Searching the face of every officer who entered the room was difficult. Pakistani women were not to look directly into the faces of men. Only prostitutes did that. Renee tried to be subtle. She had to look, though, to have any hope of identifying Khan.

Several of the men simply took food and left, while others sat at the table and talked. The tables held eight or ten, and were arranged in long rows on the hard cement floor. As Renee walked among the tables with dirty dishes she had taken from pilots who had finished, she tried to overhear conversations but heard nothing of interest. Several were talking about the attack, but most seemed genuinely amazed at how this Riaz Khan could have done it and how it couldn’t possibly have been sanctioned by the government.

The general feel she got from them was outrage. They’d all known that four pilots had been fortunate enough to get spots in this new American TOPGUN school, and they all hoped one day to be able to go to the school themselves. How their fellow pilots could be lucky enough to go to America and then carry out such a brutal attack left them without explanation. They didn’t speak of it to senior officers for fear of being implicated in a larger conspiracy. There were whispers of the ISI or of other secret government agendas about which they were ignorant, but Renee heard nothing indicating that anyone seriously believed that Pakistan—as a country, as a government—was involved.

There was much talk of this Riaz Khan, this mysterious pilot none of them could remember meeting. They’d all heard of him, but none had met him. They found this puzzling, because the Pakistani F-16 community was not that large. There were always one or two pilots they didn’t know, but for someone of his rank, stature, and reputation, that was simply not possible. They were mystified.