The Art of War: A Novel (16 page)

“You want the whole files or a synopsis or what?”

“Whatever you can get.”

“Give me the numbers,” she said flatly.

Grafton read them off. “Call me if and when,” he said, and read off the number of the secure phone in his office.

“It’ll be a day or two.” Her lack of enthusiasm was palpable.

The admiral ignored it. “Fine,” he said heartily and closed with “slave labor is so rewarding.”

She hung up on him. Jake Grafton smiled again and cradled the instrument.

*   *   *

Chong had the handheld radio transceiver tuned to the Denver Ground Control frequency, 121.85. The wind was still out of the south, and the cloud deck had come down to ten thousand feet. He knew that because he had listened to the Automatic Terminal Information System. Denver was still landing and taking off planes to the south.

But the airport was silent just now, without a single airplane in the air. That was because the president’s plane was about to depart, so all traffic into Denver was holding at various fixes all over Colorado. Planes waiting to take off were still at the gate. No doubt the passengers in the terminals were peeved beyond endurance, calling on their cell phones, worrying about connections and missed business meetings, and queued up at the restaurants, bars and restrooms. All to prevent a suicider from ramming the president’s plane as it took off and climbed to altitude.

Air Force One had called for its clearance twenty minutes ago, probably while the president’s motorcade was en route from the University of Colorado in Boulder, where the president had made a speech to his favorite fans, liberal college students who knew in their hearts he was on the side of history and the angels.

The van was slowly cruising a dirt farm road south of the airport, parallel to and a mile or so north of the east-west highway that ran by Front Range Airport, a general aviation airport, and out across the high plains through various hamlets on its way to Kansas.

Joe and Frank were in the back with the Raven, its battery fully charged, its little EMP bomb wired up with its detonator and ready to pop. The concussion would destroy the Raven, of course, and pieces of it would flutter down into the pastures, there to be found by investigators. The van would also be found, abandoned and burned to ensure there were no fingerprints and DNA samples to be obtained from it. Not that it mattered. The four men would be long out of the country by the time FBI and Secret Service investigators put it all together.

Good luck finding us,
Chong thought. Not that the Americans wouldn’t try. They would move heaven and earth to find the president’s assassins. They would never give up, but the trail would lead them nowhere.

All the precautions had been taken. Every possible lead was a dead end. Months had been spent setting up this operation. He sat there holding the handheld, scanning the roads for security vehicles and thinking about loose mouths. The only possible way for the investigators to find them, Chong believed, was a wagging tongue, a tongue loosened by alcohol or the need to inflate an ego.

He didn’t know the other men’s real names, nor did they know his. They all had separate escape routes, passports that would not be questioned. The plan was as solid as very careful, well-financed professional criminals with adequate time to prepare could make it.

All four of them would be rich, of course. Rich and ready for a life of leisure, women, the good things in life. By God, Chong was ready. He assumed the others were, too.

The radio hissed, and then words came out. “Denver Ground, Air Force One ready to taxi.” So the president was aboard, the plane was buttoned up and the engines were turning.

“Air Force One, taxi Runway One Seven Left. Route at your discretion.” In other words, the airport was empty of taxiing airplanes, so the ground controllers didn’t care which taxiways the pilot chose to get his plane to Runway One Seven Left. Other pilots listening on the frequency must be green with envy.

One Seven Left. The departure route would be behind the van.

Cheech turned the van around in the road, carefully so it wouldn’t go into a ditch, and drove a half mile or so, until Chong told him to stop. They were on a tiny swell in the prairie, and he could see the entire runway with binoculars.

There it was! Taxiing.

He looked east along the highway, then stepped from the van and looked west. The road was empty in both directions. He swept the binoculars around the fields north and south. Some horses, a few cattle. Fences, plowed wheat fields … and little else.

“Let’s get ready.”

Cheech shut down the van and climbed out. Opened the hood.

Frank and Joe piled out. Got the Raven ready to fly.

Chong stood beside the van with his binoculars up. He watched Air Force One taxi toward the departure end of One Seven Left. No doubt the tower would clear the pilot for an immediate takeoff and he would roll as soon as he taxied onto the runway.

“Launch it,” Chong said over his shoulder. As Joe threw the Raven into the air, he dialed the tower frequency into his radio, 133.3.

“Under control and climbing,” Frank reported.

“Air Force One, Tower. You are cleared for takeoff at your convenience.”

“Roger that. Cleared to go.”

The big Boeing reached the end of the taxiway, turned broadside to Chong for just a moment and sat there. It was at least four miles away. Parked along the runway were several small security vehicles and a fire truck.

“A thousand feet and climbing,” Frank said. “Tell me when to turn to intercept.” He was climbing the Raven into the wind, southwest.

Now the president’s plane began to move. Onto the runway. Slowly, probably so it wouldn’t jostle anyone still standing and moving around. Chong doubted if the pilot was going to tell the president to sit, fasten his seat belt and turn off his iPhone.

“We got company coming,” Cheech said from his station in front of the van. “From the west.”

Shit!

Chong checked the oncoming vehicle. An airport security pickup with emergency lights on the roof. They were off just now.

Air Force One was rolling. Frank took a look over his shoulder.

“Turn it,” Chong told him, then tossed the binoculars onto the seat.

Joe stepped behind the van, out of sight of the oncoming vehicle, now only a hundred yards away. The engines of the Boeing 747 were just barely audible.

The pickup slowed. It was going to stop. Chong reached into the passenger seat and put his hand on the pistol, a Beretta in 9 mm. Took the safety off.

As the pickup stopped, the jet lifted off. Still coming this way and climbing, although not too steeply. The sound was swelling.

Two guys got out of the truck and approached Cheech, who was busy under the hood with his back to them.

Cheech backed out and looked up at the plane, now almost overhead. The officers, walking toward him, did, too.

As it passed and the noise crested and began to dissipate, one of them shouted, “What are you doing out here?”

Cheech had already reached down behind the radiator and lifted the submachine gun off its restraining hooks. He turned, firing. One three-shot burst for each officer. Both went down as if they’d been sledgehammered.

As Cheech ran toward the security truck to check to see if there was anyone else, Frank shouted, “Five seconds.”

They never heard the small EMP bomb go off. The jet continued on its course for several seconds, the engines at full power, then began a gentle turn to the right. The nose drifted down. The turn steepened and the nose dropped further. Then the giant plane, now about two miles away to the south, went into the ground at about twenty degrees nose-down and thirty degrees right-wing-down. It exploded on impact.

Chong shouted, “Let’s get the fuck outta here,” pulled the antenna from the roof and tossed it into the van.

With all four of them in the van, Cheech started it. On the off chance that the EMP burst would be close by, they had spent a week shielding the electrical system.

The van roared away in a cloud of dust, leaving the two security officers lying in the road. One managed to stagger to his feet. He had been wearing a bulletproof vest. He had several broken ribs and massive contusions, but he was alive and conscious. He staggered to the pickup, got the door open. Reached for the radio on the dash and keyed the mike.

Nothing. The radio was fried.

It didn’t compute. He didn’t understand. He tried it several times, then remembered the two-way radio on his belt. Got it out, ensured it was on, then tried to talk. It too was dead.

Only then did the conflagration of the burning airplane two miles south and the rising column of black smoke sink into his consciousness.

*   *   *

They didn’t say anything on the ride into Denver. The enormity of the crime they had just committed seemed to crush the words from them. Two police cars with lights flashing and sirens howling roared past them going the other way. Then an ambulance. And another. And a fire truck.

Finally, as they were nearing the public parking garage downtown where they had left the cars, Chong said, “Everyone got their tickets and passports?”

All yeses.

They had selected this garage because it didn’t have security surveillance cameras. Cheech went up to the sixth level. Their cars were where they had left them, and no one was around. Cheech wheeled the van into an empty stall.

He shut down the engine and reached for his seat belt release. Chong shot him an inch above the right ear, then turned and put a bullet into the heads of Frank and Joe, one at a time.

Bang, bang, bang, just like that.

He tossed the gun over the seat.

He got out, pulled out his bag that had held the binoculars and from it took a large plastic bottle of charcoal lighter fluid. He squirted some on Cheech and everything in the front seat. Closed the passenger door. Opened the van door and squirted Frank and Joe. Emptied the bottle on everything in sight, then tossed the bottle in.

Patted his pocket, felt his car keys and got out his cigarette lighter. Stepped back a few feet, lit a cigarette and tossed it into the van.

And waited. Nothing.

Just when he thought he was going to have to do it again, the entire interior of the van lit off with a whoof that nearly knocked him down.

Chong walked, not ran, to his parked car, unlocked it with the key and got in. Started it, pulled out of the parking place and drove down the slanting alley away from the van on fire, down level by level, drove toward the exit to the street and the rest of his life, which was stretching out before him like a sunlit, shining road.

CHAPTER
NINE

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

—Dwight D. Eisenhower

The news of the crash of Air Force One brought the United States to a standstill. And within minutes, the rest of the world. People who had lived through the assassination of JFK when they were young were flooded with memories and stunned into silence. First reports indicated the plane had gone in nose first, at a twenty-degree nose-down angle at least, and the resulting explosions and fire with a column of black smoke were soon on television, giving anyone watching little hope.

As it happened, I was in the office with Grafton’s two new executive assistants, Max Hurley and Anastasia Roberts, going over the memos Grafton had scrawled in the margins of every report and intel summary. We saw them all, from confidential to Tippy-Top Secret intel. If ever someone wanted to know what was going on in the Company, all they would have to do was subvert one of the director’s EAs. That thought had zipped through my noodle and was bouncing around in there when the receptionist ran in with the news, “Air Force One has crashed in Denver.”

We locked stuff up as fast as we could and headed for the conference room, which had a television. It was already on. Two of the secretaries were standing there watching it. We joined them. Dead silence as we watched the column of rising black smoke go up into the blue sky and be twisted away by the breeze.

“They must all be dead,” Anastasia murmured. “Including the president.”

“Did you know anyone on that plane?” one of the secretaries asked, a plump woman who liked to bring homemade desserts to work.

“Probably many of them. They won’t announce the names for hours, I suppose, until they get the relatives notified.”

“Oh, how sad!”

I overheard that exchange but didn’t turn to catch Roberts’s reaction. I was concentrating on the announcer and the pictures, as no doubt hundreds of millions of people all over the world, in schools, offices, airports, homes, bars and brokerage firms were also. The video was hard to watch, live television pictures from helicopters and a news crew on the ground. The effect was mesmerizing and horrific. A picture of a smashed airliner always stirs a visceral reaction. Nowadays everybody flies in those things, sooner or later, so seeing one crumpled like tissue paper and on fire gets to your gut. The only good news was that for the people on the plane it was over quickly. The announcer didn’t mention that bright spot, however.

The announcer must have been listening to his producer, however, because he said the nation’s cellular telephone system was paralyzed as everyone, everywhere, tried to call their family and friends to alert them to the disaster.

The spell was broken fifteen minutes later when the first report, soon confirmed, came out that the president was not on the plane.

“Oh, thank God,” three of the women said in unison.

He had stayed behind in Denver for a secret conference with senators and governors from his party to plot political strategy, the announcer said.

The nation and the world breathed a collective sigh of relief. At least the American head of state was still alive. Even though about 150 staffers, aides, Secret Service agents, communications specialists, and a few reporters were aboard and presumed dead.

In the room where I was, we all clapped. It wasn’t that we were political friends of the prez, because I doubt if we all were, but he was the head of state, and it was a huge relief.