James Huston - Fallout

Yellow crime-scene tape was draped from one stanchion to another in front of the hangar, around several of the airplanes, and across the doors to the hangar. There were bullet holes in airplanes and in the walls. The FBI had been through the hangar with a fine-tooth comb. They’d searched every computer, every file, every desk, and every residence within twenty-four hours of the attack. According to Katherine, they hadn’t found anything, at least nothing they were talking to her about.

Katherine stood next to him, her hands in the pockets of her maternity jumper. “How could they live here for three weeks when they hated us that much?”

“So no one would suspect them.”

“I’m really sorry, Luke,” she said with deep sadness.

“Like you had anything to do with it.”

“I’m just sorry it happened. We had a great thing going.”

Her use of the past tense sliced through him like a hot knife. He was about to respond when they heard a car. They turned to look and saw two white sedans pulling up. Helen Li got out of one and walked to them. She looked at the scene, then down at the brown stain Luke had been staring at. She’d already seen it. She nodded and looked at Luke and Katherine. “Morning,” she said. “Somewhere we can talk?”

“Hi,” Luke replied. “Sure. In the ready room, topside.” They all followed him as he headed up the stairs. All the decor, all the aviation paraphernalia seemed somehow excessive and superficial under the circumstances. Vlad, Stamp, Crumb, and Brian were sitting aimlessly in the ready room. They appeared beaten. Vlad looked away from Luke as they came into the room.

Helen went to the front of the room. She was glad they were all there. She wanted them all to hear her. The other three special agents stood at the back of the room. “Let’s go over this again,” she said. “Everything Riaz Khan did while he was here.”

“We’ve done this.”

“And we’re going to keep doing it.”

“He started out aggressively and went down from there,” Crumb said. “He was an asshole, which, if he was going to do what he’s now done, you wouldn’t expect. You’d expect him to try to be nice, at least not to rock the boat. He got here and started being an asshole right away.”

“What else?”

“He got us to help him plan his whole strike,” Crumb replied.

Helen raised her eyebrows. “How?”

“He came in here insisting that we teach him more about air-to-ground. Dropping bombs. That’s not really what we’re here for. We’re here to teach air-to-air combat. Shooting down other airplanes. He wouldn’t hear it. He insisted that we do more air-to-ground. So we tried to accommodate him. We even showed him how we do strike planning.”

“What planning? What did you help him plan?” Helen asked with intense interest. “Was it the strike on San Onofre?”

Luke hadn’t even considered the possibility that not only had he and his crew allowed the Pakistanis to prepare right under their noses, but that they had planned the strike for them. Such a thought was intolerable. “I don’t think so. It was in the wrong direction—”

“How do you know?”

“Because we were talking about flying east, or southeast, at sunrise, and the problem of the sun in your face—”

“Go on.”

“And the distance was wrong,” Luke replied, remembering the planning session as if it were yesterday. “And the attack we were planning was a very low-level attack, against a defended target, in enemy territory, like something into India. They flew against San Onofre at midaltitude, as if they were going against an unsuspecting target—which they were—trying to look like routine commercial traffic.”

Helen retreated into a thought she wasn’t sharing. A thick silence enveloped the room, full of pregnant implications and fear. She looked up suddenly. “Draw the route you helped plan,” she said to Luke.

Luke stood, picked up a black marker, and took off its cap. He turned toward the board to start drawing, then turned back to Helen, who had sat down expectantly in the first row of the ready-room chairs. “What exactly is the point of this?”

“I’m interested.”

“All the airplanes crashed. All the pilots but one were killed.”

“But Khan himself wasn’t killed. The other pilots were expendable.”

Luke and the others immediately grasped what she was implying. “You do still think he has something else in mind?”

“Yes, we do.”

“You know where he is,” Luke said, reading her face.

Helen looked at the other FBI agents. “Maybe.”

Crumb asked, “What the hell else could he have in mind? He’s done more damage than any one person has ever done!”

“We’re beginning to believe that San Onofre was part of a much larger plan.”

Crumb asked, “Against the United States?”

“We don’t know. But against somebody.” Helen was fighting with herself about asking them the next question. “What if someone has heard him planning a mission for three days from now that includes carrying laser-guided bombs?”

“What? Where did you get that? You do know where he is!”

“We think so.”

“Where?” Crumb asked, sitting forward.

“Air Force base just outside Karachi.”

“Why don’t you get him?”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning anything. Kidnap him. Kill him. Whatever you can do,” Crumb asked. “Hell, I’ll go kill him if you’ll get me onto the base and make me look like a Pakistani for about five damn minutes.”

“He’s not there as Riaz Khan. He’s there as another Major, which is who he probably is.”

“A new identity?”

Helen pondered how much to divulge. “He has resumed his original identity. We think.”

“The whole Riaz Khan thing was fake?”

“Probably.”

“Then how can the Pakistanis say they didn’t know anything about it?”

“The false papers go back several years. Unless they looked into it deeply, they would have no particular way of knowing.”

“But all by—”

“The point is, he is a Major in the Air Force, and is apparently about to do something in the next seventy-two hours with laser-guided bombs. We’re not quite sure what.”

“In Pakistan?” Vlad asked, listening intently.

“We’re not sure.” Helen looked at the chart of the world on the wall next to the board. “Would it be possible to attack an aircraft carrier with laser-guided bombs?”

“Whose?” Luke asked.

“Ours.”

“One of our carriers?” Luke was horrified.

“Yes. Headed toward Pakistan. They were scheduled to conduct a friendly port visit, but now almost certainly won’t—”

“You can hit a carrier with a laser-guided bomb,” Luke said, “but they’d have to be out of their minds to try. They’d never get close enough. If we even suspected they were coming, they wouldn’t have a prayer—”

“Wait a minute,” Vlad said suddenly, jumping up from his chair. He crossed to the back of the room and started looking through a stack of aeronautical charts until he found one of Pakistan. “Where did you say he is right now?” He was practically panting.

“We’re not sure.”

“You said you think you have found him. Where is this person?” Vlad said with a demanding tone.

“At an Air Force base. Near Karachi.”

Vlad unfolded the chart of Pakistan and began searching for Karachi and the surrounding airfields. He brought it to the front of the room and hung it from the special clips over the board.

“What are you thinking?” Luke asked.

“This man is working with big agenda. He did not want to die here because the full mission is not accomplished. Otherwise he would have turned and fought Luke. I have no doubt. It must have killed him to run away. He is going to do something else.”