The Art of War: A Novel (14 page)

As we walked back toward the car, Kerry asked what I thought.

“If Tomazic was murdered,” I said, “it was by a pro. No one saw anyone, there are no traces of anyone’s presence, except that piece of plastic under the boat, and no weapon was used. It would have had to be a swimmer with scuba gear.”

“Yes. And Reinicke?”

“Not enough information. Gas lines occasionally leak, and houses and apartments occasionally blow up when they do. Usually the occupants smell the stuff, though. Wonder why none of the survivors said they smelled gas?”

“Maybe some of the victims smelled it but didn’t have time to get out.”

“If this one was murder, too, the people doing it are very good. If they are the same ones.”

“Lots of ifs,” she said.

“If it was murder, the killer or killers are callous bastards. Seven dead, three badly burned.”

She gave me a hard look. “Yes,” she agreed.

We ate lunch at a McDonald’s. She tried to pump me a little, and I didn’t give her much. I told her how many years I had been with the agency, that I was from California originally and lived in an apartment house in Virginia.

I asked her a few questions, equally innocuous. She opened up a bit. She was from Ohio, went to Ohio State, had been in the FBI for ten years.

“So those shootings…”

“I don’t want to talk about them.”

“I understand.”

Zoe worked on her salad a bit, then said, “Killing someone, even an asshole who is trying to kill you … It’s like playing God.”

I nodded sympathetically. Her delivery had changed, both the tone and the way she delivered her words. I finished my first Quarter Pounder, took a sip of coffee, then unwrapped the second burger while I eyed her. The muscles in the side of her neck were tighter. Her eyes were fixed on me, as if she were trying consciously not to lose eye contact.

“Post-traumatic stress, they said. I thought about quitting the agency, but they talked me into giving it a while. Took me off major crime investigations. Sent me over to your outfit. Said maybe time would help.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know.” Zoe Kerry thought about that for a while. “I don’t know if I can face another dangerous situation. I just don’t know.”

That was the high point of the day. We stopped by the Hoover Building again, visited the lab and looked at the piece of diver’s faceplate, if that was what it was, chatted up the scientists, then rode back to Langley.

As she parked the car I picked up her clutch purse, then handed it to her as she got out. She went somewhere, presumably to the Liaison Office, and I rode elevators and strolled corridors to the director’s suite. Grafton had someone in there. They left after ten minutes, and Jennifer Suslowski admitted me to the stronghold.

“Thought I’d better report in person.”

“Okay. What does the FBI think?”

“God only knows. But I had a little tête-à-tête with Zoe Kerry over lunch. She says she doesn’t know if she can face another dangerous situation.”

“Okay.”

“She was lying. All the tells were there. It was fiction. PTS my ass. That broad could pull the trigger on anybody and wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep over it.”

Jake Grafton ran his hand through his hair.

“And she had a shooter in her purse. I picked it up. Makeup doesn’t weigh that much.”

“She’s a sworn officer. They probably require her to be armed.”

“Yeah. PTS. Light duty.”

He picked up the phone and asked Jennifer to call the assistant director of the FBI, Harry Estep, whom Jake had worked with on several prior occasions.

While we were waiting, he said, “You got a gun at home?”

“Sure.”

“Wear it.”

The phone rang. Grafton got to it. “Sorry to hear about Maxwell, Harry … I know you’re busy as hell … I’m sending a man over tomorrow morning, Tommy Carmellini. He will want to see one of your personnel files.”

A pause.

“Zoe Kerry.”

Another pause.

“I know all that. I want him to read her file. Everything. Supposedly she was in a couple of shootouts. Performance evals, psychologist’s evals, all of it.”

After another pause he said, “Thanks, Harry. See you at the White House tomorrow at ten. You’re coming to that soiree, right?”

He listened a bit more, then said good-bye and hung up.

“Ask for Alice Berg in the director’s office,” Grafton told me. “We’re violating the privacy laws and personnel policies. Don’t take anything or copy anything. Just look.”

“Yes, sir.”

He picked up the phone. “Jennifer, send an e-mail to Alice Berg in the FBI director’s office. Tell her Tommy Carmellini will be armed tomorrow when visiting, and at all other times when he enters the building.”

There was a pause; then he cradled the instrument and looked at me.

“Thanks, Tommy.”

“Don’t mention it, boss.”

He ran out of words right there and sat staring at a paperweight, an A-6 Intruder hold-back bolt. I got out of my chair and closed the door behind me.

I drove over to Roslyn to see how Willie was doing on the surveillance system in the parking garage. Almost done. We took a break for dinner at the pizza joint. I had my phone on the table and studied the feed from the Graftons’ building while we waited for the pizza and sipped beer. “I watched it four hours today,” Willie said. “About a hundred bucks’ worth, before taxes.”

When I had had enough I pocketed the phone. After we finished eating, Willie didn’t reach for his check. I remarked on that.

“Hey, man,” he said, deadpan, “you got a big expense account and a wallet full of fake credit cards. Stick it to Uncle Sam.”

“Yeah.”

“This is pretty good pizza.”

“Health food.”

“I had the all-meat for lunch. I paid for that.”

I paid both our tabs, left him there and headed home.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Tragically, making war may be what humans do best.

—Ralph Peters

The place where they parked the van wasn’t ideal. They were sitting beside a fence on a narrow lane of asphalt, in dry-land farm country fifteen miles north of Denver International Airport. Frank and Joe—not their real names—were assembling the drone in the back of the van. Cheech, a
nom de guerre
that he had chosen, was outside with the hood up, apparently tinkering. Chong—he picked his name too, after Cheech had his, so none of the men he worked with would know his real name—was the man in charge, and he sat in the passenger seat with a handheld aviation radio.

He glanced again at his watch. They had about an hour to wait, if he had all this timed correctly. Another passenger jet went overhead, about four thousand feet above them, heading for the airport. They came in more or less an endless stream, about two a minute.

He turned the frequency knob on the radio to 125.6, the Automatic Terminal Information Service, and adjusted the volume control. “Denver Airport Information Foxtrot. Temperature one-seven. Dewpoint, three. Check density altitude. Overcast at fifteen thousand, visibility seven miles. Wind two-two-zero at twelve, variable fifteen, gusts to twenty. Landing Runways One Seven Left, One Seven Right, One Six Left, and One Six Right. Altimeter two-niner-niner-eight…”

Chong switched the radio to 119.3, Denver Approach. “Denver Approach, United Four Two Eight, at Anchor at flight level one-nine-zero with information Foxtrot.” Anchor was a published GPS waypoint.

“United Four Two Eight, Ident.”

There was a pause.

“United Four Two Eight, I have you in radar contact. Proceed Kippr”—another waypoint—“and cross at one-one-thousand. You are cleared for the approach ILS One Seven Right.” ILS meant Instrument Landing System, a precision instrument approach, which was routinely used even in good weather.

Now came the read-back, which ensured the pilots of the approaching plane had heard and understood their instructions. “Four Two Eight, direct Kippr and cross at one-one-thousand. ILS One Seven Right.”

Chong turned down the volume and glanced behind him. Frank and Joe had the drone assembled and were testing it in the back of the van.

The bird was an AeroVironment RQ-11 Raven, a hand-launched remote-control drone. This one had been extensively modified and weighed 5.2 pounds, a pound more than the Raven in military service. It carried the usual CCD color video camera and a small, specially constructed bomb. The bomb weighed fourteen ounces and its attaching hardware, detonator and receiver two more ounces.

The Raven had a pusher prop powered by an electric motor. Power for the motor, sensor and controls came from a lithium ion battery. This particular bird was the Digital Data Link version, one of the newer ones. AeroVironment had manufactured and sold to American and allied forces over twenty-four thousand of the things at last count. This Raven had been purchased from a Spanish army major in Barcelona who had no idea who the buyers were or what they intended to use it for. Nor did he care. He was paid ten thousand euros, enough to save his house from foreclosure, and that was enough for him. He reported the Raven and its control box destroyed in a storage shed fire that he set himself. There was no investigation.

Chong consulted the map of the Denver airport on his lap as Denver Approach instructed the next plane to fly the ILS approach to runway One Seven Right. DIA had four parallel runways, 16 Left and Right, and 17 Left and Right, so there was no way to pre-position the Raven until they knew which runway the target plane was assigned.

The Raven had its limitations. The airport approach corridor was four miles wide, and the drone flew slowly. Its cruising and climb speed was about thirty-five miles per hour, a bit faster in a dive. And it would have to climb five thousand feet here, up to ten thousand feet above sea level, where it would be fighting that wind from the southwest, which would probably be stronger at altitude. It might make thirty to thirty-five miles per hour in the climb, which would take a bit over six minutes from launch. Then it would have to be positioned southwest of the interception point so it could make its run-in in a descent, at max speed.

The timing had to be exquisite.

The color camera hung on gimbels under the nose of the craft. The gimbels on this one had been modified so that instead of looking down, the camera could look five degrees above level at max elevation. Still, to see the coming airplane and intercept it, the Raven would have to be higher than the plane. The video from the camera was displayed on a laptop computer, which was interfaced with the drone controller.

“We’re ready,” Frank said.

Chong looked at his watch. Watched the second hand sweep. Listened to the radio chatter, waiting …

“United Four Two Eight at Kippr at one-one-thousand inbound.”

“Roger, Four Two Eight. Switch Tower on one-three-three-point-three.”

Eight and a half minutes from the Anchor fix.

Chong lit a cigarette and stared at the road running away in front of the van. Uh-oh. Here came a pickup. He used binoculars. Farm vehicle. Driver, no passengers. Looked like one large round hay bale in the bed of the thing.

As the radio chattered on, he watched the truck approach. It didn’t slacken speed, merely moved over a bit and went cruising by. Hispanic driver. No muffler.

Chong swung the binoculars. No one in sight in the fields to the left or right. There was a mobile home about a mile away to the left, but the yard was empty of people. Two vehicles there. They hadn’t moved in the last hour. He checked the mirror on his door frame. Only the farm truck in sight, going away along the prairie road.

“Denver Approach, Air Force One at Anchor at Flight Level one-nine-zero with information Foxtrot.”

“Roger Air Force One. Squawk Ident … Ident received. Radar Contact. Cross Kippr at one-one-thousand. You are cleared for the ILS Runway One Seven Right approach.”

“This is it,” Chong said to Frank and Joe. “One Seven Right. Launch it.” He reset the timer on his watch and watched the second hand begin to sweep again.

Frank and Joe opened the cargo door and got out. Joe was handed the Raven. Frank played a moment with the control box, which was about the size of a video game controller and was wired to an antenna that was stuck to the roof of the van with a suction cup. The genius of the Raven design was that all the microchips and processors that made the thing a stealth observation platform were housed in the controller, not the drone. The bird was too small for most radars to acquire and nearly silent. It was essentially undetectable at altitude when airborne, an invisible eye in the sky. Today the controller was augmented with a laptop, which was programmed with waypoints and a flight plan.

Joe took five steps away from the van, turned to face the wind. The prop on the Raven spun up. Joe waited until Frank yelled, “Ready,” then he tossed the Raven into the wind. It climbed away quickly and was soon merely a tiny dot against the dirty gray sky. Then it was lost from sight.

The radio continued to chatter. “Frontier One Nine, hold at Anchor at Flight Level two-three-zero as published. Expected approach time four-nine after the hour.”

“Is this that NOTAM closure?”

“Affirm. Advise when in holding…”

*   *   *

Apparently the FBI had gotten Grafton’s memo; I had no trouble carrying my gun through security at the Hoover Building. In fact, after I showed my CIA ID, I was escorted around the metal detector and straight to a conference room on the fifth floor. My escort, a young man of about twenty-four or -five years of age, looked bored. He asked me no questions at all, merely sat and played with his iPhone until a plump woman in her fifties came in carrying several paper files.

She laid them on the desk in front of me.

“I kinda thought all this would be on a computer,” I said.

“We’re trying, but not yet.”

“Okay.”

She sat down across the table from me. With two sets of eyeballs on me, it was going to be difficult to filch anything, if I got the urge.

Well, Zoe Kerry hadn’t been lying. Born in Columbus, Ohio, the daughter of a midlevel retail executive and his schoolteacher wife. Majored in accounting at Ohio State. Passed her CPA exam. Joined the FBI eleven months later. They did an extensive background investigation before ordering her to the FBI school at Quantico: It looked like the usual drivel. Her neighbors and high school teachers liked her. Her brother they liked not so much. He had gotten in trouble several times as a kid, didn’t go to college, had a couple of DUIs. Was unemployed as of the date of the last interview. I wondered what he was doing now.