The Threat (11 page)

They waited: Dan, Quintero, the pilots, the men and women around them at consoles. But no answer came.

“Settle back in…,” the pilot was saying over his cockpit-to-cockpit, to his wingman.

“Light in the cockpit. Flashlight, looks like. Guy's waving at us.”

At the same moment another speaker between Dan's and the admiral's chairs hissed to life. “Clear View, this is Hawk Two. That's not the right tail number.”

“Say again?”

“What's he mean by that?” Quintero snapped. “What's he reading? Have him read back what he's seeing.”

The tracker pilot read off six digits, using military phonetic code. Dan jotted HK 4016 on his palm with his ballpoint. On the command center floor an analyst called out, “He's right. That's not Nuñez's tail. I can go into the database here … stand by.”

“What, he's altered his tail number?” Dan asked Quintero. “Repainted it?”

“The Viper has a spotlight on the port side of the nose,” someone put in. “He can illuminate.”

“Not necessary,” Quintero said. “Who else is it going to be, flying dark out of Bucaramanga?”

“Negative radio contact,” said the flight leader. “All right, blinking our lights, waggling our wings. As soon as he confirms, will commence a slow level turn to … Holy shit!”

The controller's voice: “Say again?”

“Oh my holy shit. He just
fireballed
! Fuck, fuck, that hurts! Did you see that?… Clear View, this is Hawk flight leader, our A-toy just fireballed.”

Every head in the command center snapped around. The controller said, “Flight leader, say again your last.”

“He's going down now … there's a tail surface coming off. He's on fire. Bright orange, fuel-type flame. I'm turning to port to follow him down. Stay clear of me … still falling.”

Quintero was on the circuit now, voice taut. “Flight leader, Clear View actual. Did you shoot him down?”

“Negative. Arming switches were off here. Confirm—off. Frank, confirm you didn't fire.”

The wingman attested to it in a voice as shocked and puzzled as his flight leader's. Dan rubbed his mouth, shaken. If neither fighter had fired, who had? The only other aircraft on the plot was seventy miles away. Could a vortex from the fighters have jarred a fuel line loose? Struck a spark, where a spark could not be afforded?

“We need more details here,” the command duty officer was telling the flight leader. Who was breathing hard, apparently in a tight turn.

“Frank, stay clear of me to the west.… You getting anything here?”

“Negative, flames too bright, blanked my display.”

“I'm following him down. Clear View, take a fix on my posit … that will be crash datum. Doesn't look like there'll be any survivors. There's the wing … a fuel tank or something. It's just a fireball. There … impact. I have no idea what happened to this guy. It wasn't anything we did. Flames on the water … We did this
right,
goddamn it. That's all I can see now. Flames on the water.”

The words hung in the cold air. Beside him Admiral Quintero was, Dan thought, as pale as he must be himself. Of course Don Juan Nuñez was a bad guy. If anyone deserved death, it was the chief of the Cali cartel. But still the voices leaping across space had conveyed the horror of watching men fall, burning.

“Everybody with wings, in the conference room,” Quintero said, swinging down from his seat.

He was halfway across the JOCC when one of the analysts beckoned. The admiral bent. They conferred in tones too low to overhear.

Quintero put out a hand to steady himself. He stared at the printout the man held out.

Dan stepped up. “What is it?”

“This could be bad,” Quintero muttered.

Tail number HK 4016 was a twin-engine Lear 55 owned by a company called Central Charter de Colombia, SA. It was roughly the same size and type, with the same engine location and control surface conformation, as the jet Nuñez flew. Another watchstander handed them photos of both aircraft, still damp from the printer. Dan looked from one to the other. At night they'd be indistinguishable. But he didn't understand. What was this other aircraft doing en route to Miami, without clearance, without IFF, without radio, without lights?

*   *   *

In the conference room, the two pilots who happened to be on duty at the command center, one Customs, the other Air Guard, were telling Quintero it was impossible for the F-16s to have knocked such an aircraft down with only a close pass, when the same analyst who'd come up with the tail-number list knocked. He closed the door behind him.

He'd contacted Medellín air traffic control. They said HK 4016 was under contract to Ecopetrol, the Colombian state-owned oil company. Then he'd called the duty desk at the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, who had managed to contact Ecopetrol.

“All right, tell us,” Quintero said.

They were still trying to confirm, the analyst said. But it looked like the aircraft that had just disintegrated had indeed been on its way to Florida. But not to Miami, and not to a drug conference. The embassy trade rep, routed out of bed, said it was probably en route to a meeting with the Tampa Export Association on behalf of the Corporación Invertir en Colombia, the Colombian National Investment Promotion Agency.

“Who was aboard?” Quintero asked after a reluctant moment. Dan saw that the analyst no more wanted to tell them than they wanted to hear.

The traffic controllers and the night desk at the embassy weren't entirely sure yet, he said. They were still checking. But early word was that the primary passenger had been the eldest son of the new president of Colombia.

8

The phones began ringing, and mounted to a discordant crescendo.

Quintero ordered a cutter dispatched to the crash site. Even at flank speed, it wouldn't arrive till midmorning, but it was the closest rescue asset between Miami and Nassau. Then he sat like a brooding gargoyle, watching the wall display as if he could by sheer will make onrushing time rewind. He took a call from Atlantic Command in Norfolk. The handset clattered when Quintero put it back in its cradle. It rang again instantly. “You take it,” he said to the duty officer. “If it's JCS, I'll talk. Otherwise I'll get back to them.”

Bloom said, “This is a disaster. A fucking disaster. Who's going to tell the Colombians?”

“I'd say that'd be the White House,” Quintero said. “Right, Dan?”

Dan tried to think. “Well … it really should be State, since the initial notification will come through the embassy. I'll let my boss know, though, so Mrs. Clayton can tell the president. He'll want to make a consolatory call.”

Right after he fires me, Dan thought. He didn't think he was to blame. But you didn't have to be responsible to be guillotined. Only junior enough.

“It's the CINC, on the conference room speaker,” the deputy interrupted. “The public affairs officer's in there already. He's getting together a release, to get our version on the street first.”

Quintero closed his eyes. When he opened them again he looked resigned. He nodded to Dan. Then went into the room and closed the door.

Unwillingly, but knowing he had to, Dan placed the call to Sebold's home number. The director came awake instantly. No doubt over the years he'd been roused many times with bad news. He asked how they could be sure the fighters hadn't fired. Whether their gun cameras were being checked. What Quintero and Dan were doing to get help to the crash site. He closed with the unadorned remark that there'd be repercussions. What they'd be, he didn't say.

When he hung up Dan kept the handset against his ear to get a moment to think. He broke out sweating as the reality of what had happened penetrated another layer, like molten metal thawing its way through successive deposits of ice. By some unimaginable chance, they'd managed to kill the son and heir of the first leader who'd shown the inclination to rein in terror in the largest exporter of cocaine in the world.

By
chance
 … but even as he thought it, he knew that had to be wrong. This was no coincidence.
That
night, of all nights.
That
aircraft, out of all the hundreds in the sky. No. It was too horribly perfect.

Some malevolent intelligence, some malign
strategy
must lie beneath.

His fists were clenched. His jaw hurt. He felt as if he ought to, no, he
had
to do something. He was only here as an observer, true. So a press release could mention White House participation. But he wasn't used to being surrounded by panic, confusion, and
not doing anything
. Command meant you gave orders, took action. Any action! That was Navy doctrine. Any action was better than none. Even the wrong move could confuse the enemy, blow his timetable, screw up his plan. Sitting on your hands, waiting for the situation to clarify itself—that was the freeway to defeat.

When he looked up everyone in the center was looking at him.

Of course they were. Wasn't he the guy from the White House?

He slid down, past two people holding up phones in his direction, and bent over the comm console. Glanced at a tote board with frequencies and call signs.

“I'd like to talk to CTG 4.3 … belay that … where's the frigate now? The one that confirmed the track, took the handoff from the radar in Texas?”

The operator said
Gallery
was off station, headed east.

“They still in satcom contact? I need a level-three voice channel.”

The operator hesitated, glancing toward the closed door of the conference room. But finally nodded.

Dan took the handset. Keyed, and waited. When a note signaled they were linked, he said, “USS
Gallery,
this is the director of drug interdiction from the president's staff. Present in the Carib Ops Center. Request to speak to
Gallery
Actual.”

When the commanding officer came on Dan explained who he was again, once more without using his name or rank. “This is in reference to ATOI 3, track 930, detected approximately 2200 last night when you were on station off La Guajira. I want you to replay your raw video data on that contact.”

“Roger, understand you want to revisit the acquisition. And do what?”

The problem was he wasn't really sure. Just that he was remembering a conversation with a Treasury agent. “I can't tell you exactly what to look for, but I need you to reconstruct the air plot,” Dan told him. “Not just track acquisition. Before that. And have your shit-sharpest air intercept controller eyeball it very closely.”

Gallery
didn't ask why. Just said he'd have his ops specialist chief look at it too. Dan signed off. It most likely wouldn't pan out, but he had to try.

Quintero, back from the call to the combatant commander. Sweat glittered on his forehead. Dan told him, “My boss wants the cameras on the fighters checked. To make absolutely sure they didn't fire. And the film or whatever they use as a recording medium sequestered as evidence.”

Quintero told the command duty officer to make it happen. “What else do we need to do?”

Dan reflected on the irony of an admiral publicly asking a commander for advice. But he was the Suit from Washington now. Here to help? More likely to get himself tacked up on a cross between Quintero and the pilots. “What else?” Quintero said again.

“Well, I had one idea,” he began, when the console operator waved, holding up the red handset. He told the admiral he'd be right back.

“This is
Gallery
Actual. Captain Starer here. We went over the plot again for the initial acquisition. Ran it through the point it went off the screen. Over.”

“Anything out of the ordinary? Over.”

“No. Nothing.” Dan's heart dropped. Then the voice added, “Something funny before that, though. We didn't have one aircraft come on the screen at 2210. We had two.”

“Can you put this on speaker?” Dan muttered to the chief. He crooked a finger to Quintero and Bloom to come over and listen.

The frigate's skipper explained that by running the tape slowly and tweaking the display, they were able to make out not one but two aircraft approaching the coast. At the same speed and nearly the same altitude, but on converging courses. Just before meeting, one had vanished from the screen.

“Which one?” Dan asked him.

“Can't tell. Blip meld; too close to distinguish.”

“But one just … disappeared?”

“Right. Two contacts, then there's only one.”

Dan tapped the handset against his shoulder. His brain felt like a generator with too much power demanded of it. Two contacts—then one. The frigate, and no doubt the more distant AWACs and over-the-horizon radars too, had continued to track the plane that continued north. “What happened to the other one? Over.”

The distant voice sounded puzzled. “Like I said, from one sweep to the next we go from two contacts to one, proceeding to seaward. We passed it off to the E-2. Oh, and it goes dark—the target's radar and IFF snap off.”

“They snap off
after
the two contacts merged? Or whatever they did?”

“Correct. That was what we were supposed to look for—right? A nonsquawker. IFF off.”

A possibility took shape. Still murky, but it might explain at least part of what had happened. “How long after the first aircraft drops off the screen does the second one go black?”

The CO said to wait. A moment later he was back. He said no more than a minute.

Dan signed off, and found Quintero and Bloom both frowning at him. “What've you got?” the admiral said.

“
Gallery
's skipper says there were originally two aircraft,” Dan told them.

“What?” said Bloom. Quintero just blinked.

“One must have been Nuñez's. The other, Tejeiro's. Converging courses. Nearly the same altitude. Same speed.”