War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel (40 page)

“What’s the word from Washington?” Jane asked.

Ruth sighed. “The attack here seemed to have caught everyone off guard, including the entire U.S. intelligence community. Everyone is scrambling to catch up.”

Tucker remembered Webster mentioning that one of the objectives of this operation was to distract attention, to turn all eyes toward Trinidad.

Mission accomplished
.

“We have to stop him,” Nora said. “Expose him.”

“That’ll be hard, especially as all we have are the dying words of a traitor,” Ruth said. “While Tangent Aerospace is owned by Horizon Media, the corporation is only one shell of a game involving hundreds of companies and subsidiaries, insulating the man at the top from culpability, leaving him plenty of room for deniability. In fact, Sigma has had its eye on Kellerman for years, but nothing ever sticks.”

“As my mother would say,” Frank said, thickening his Alabama twang, “he’s slicker than pig snot on a doorknob.”

Ruth offered a small smile. “That he is. We know he’s a majority stockholder in Tangent, but Tangent has no fingerprints here in Trinidad.” She nodded to Nora. “But thanks to your and Rex’s help in pinpointing where the drone fleet was launched from in Trinidad, we have another name. Switchplate Engineering. The company—another subsidiary of Horizon—leased the patch of airstrip and land that was used as the base of operations here. It’s now a bombed-out hole in the jungle.”

“To further cover up any evidence,” Tucker said.

“Yet, it’s one more piece to the puzzle,” Ruth added. “Though plainly not enough to go after Kellerman directly. We’ll need more pieces of this corporate puzzle before pursuing him.”

Nora spoke up from her laptop. “If nothing else, I may have uncovered a
noncorporate
piece.” She stared over at Jane and Tucker. “Thanks to Sandy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember the date of the last entry in Alan Turing’s journal, the one that detailed his algorithms that Sandy was shown?”

“What about it?”

“It was dated April 24, 1940. Just two days before a mysterious fire nearly destroyed Bletchley Park, a fire some believed might have covered up a secret attack on the place.”

Tucker squinted at Nora. “You and Sandy thought Turing’s journal might have been stolen at that time. Maybe even made it back to the U.S.”

Nora typed rapidly. “I did some digging into Pruitt Kellerman’s past, to see if I could turn up anything of interest. His father, Trafford Kellerman, killed himself and Pruitt’s mother in a drunk driving accident when Pruitt was four years old. He went to live with his grandparents, Bryson and Gail, in 1969. His grandfather died when Pruitt was twenty-one. His grandmother passed a few years later. Pruitt was their sole heir.”

Frank leaned over her shoulder as she worked. “What of it?”

Nora leaned back. “Look here. I hacked into old military records and found this.”

Tucker joined Frank. On the screen was a faded copy of a U.S. Army form:

WD AGO 55

H
ONORABLE
D
ISCHARGE
FROM
THE
A
RMY
OF
THE
U
NITED
S
TATES
.

N
AME
: K
ELLERMAN
, B
RYSON
G
ALE

D
ATE
OF
A
CTIVE
D
UTY
: 29 S
EPTEMBER
1927

D
ATE
OF
S
EPARATION
: 8 A
UGUST
1940

DOB: 11 N
OVEMBER
1906

Nora scrolled down the form, which listed myriad details pertinent to Pruitt’s grandfather’s discharge. “Bryson Kellerman retired from service at the age of thirty-three, just a couple of months after that mysterious fire at Bletchley Park.”

“You think he somehow obtained Turing’s journal?”

“Maybe. Look at what else I found.” She pulled up a heavily redacted version of Bryson Kellerman’s service record. “He was a colonel with army intelligence, though in what capacity is blotted out. But prior to his discharge, Kellerman had served in almost every theater of the war, including a last assignment in Britain.”

“What are you thinking?” Ruth asked.

“I think he somehow obtained Turing’s journal, maybe stole it even. Either way, he likely thought it was important enough to keep secret. Maybe he hoped to use Turing’s work to make a profit. You have to remember that postwar America was an industrial powerhouse, the leader of scientific innovation, a legacy left in the wake of the birth of the atomic bomb. Everyone was looking for the next big innovation. During the war, Bryson must have had the foresight to recognize the potential locked in Turing’s papers and spirited them away for himself.”

“So what did Bryson end up doing after the war?” Tucker asked.

Nora shrugged. “He sold insurance.” Upon Tucker’s frown, she continued. “Though Bryson likely had an inkling of the importance of what he had stolen, no one in the world at the time could turn Turing’s algorithms into real-world applications. But I could easily see a proud grandfather sharing the trophies of his war years with his grandson and showing him those stolen pages.”

Tucker rubbed his chin. “Pruitt must have remembered those papers and waited for the world to catch up with Turing’s genius, then sought a way to put them to use.”

“But what is Kellerman’s ultimate goal?” Jane asked.

“Power,” Tucker answered. “If you look at the trajectory of Horizon Media, it’s less about accumulating wealth and more about gathering power, of controlling events.”

Jane nodded. “We’re at the cusp of a new way of waging war, of abandoning the atomic age of Pruitt’s grandfather and entering the era of the digital battlefield. These are wars being funded by corporations and fought by private defense contractors, where profit margins are as important as winning.”

Tucker sighed. “And Kellerman is determined to be the master of this new world.”

Frank looked sick. “If Trinidad was some sort of proof-of-concept trial, that is one scary world. From the data that Rex was able to pull before we hightailed it out of the Hyatt, Nora and I estimate this attack was carried out with only a handful of drones.”

“But what’s he planning next?” Jane asked.

Ruth checked her watch. “I have a video conference scheduled with Director Crowe in a few minutes. He has Sigma digging into that very question. Hopefully he’ll have something for us.”

Tucker stared toward the open balcony door, to the pall of smoke sitting on the horizon to the north.

He had better hurry
.

1:18
P
.
M
.

Tucker found himself back on the balcony after a brief lunch. Kane had returned to his chaise longue, luxuriating in the warm sunshine. Jane joined them, stepping to the rail beside Tucker. She slipped an arm around his waist, but he stiffened.

She felt it and removed her arm. “Tuck . . .”

They hadn’t had a real chance to discuss the matter concerning Webster. “You should have told me,” he muttered.

“I tried—”

“Not hard enough.”

“I know that now. But Karl helped keep me alive, protected my son. He risked his own daughter to do so.” She gripped the rail with both hands, her knuckles going white. “Karl and I spent a lot of time working together, perhaps too much time, enough for Karl to grow fond of me, even of Nate. But our relationship didn’t pass beyond that of mutual colleagues.”

Perhaps from your perspective . . .

Jane shook her head. “At the very least, I owed Karl my silence. I thought the less you knew about that arrangement the safer it would be for Nathan, even for Karl’s family.”

“But at what cost?” He pictured Takashi’s head exploding from a sniper round, saw Sandy’s bloated face floating out of the dark trunk of her car. “If I had known beforehand . . .”

Jane turned to him, her eyes hardening. “What would you have done differently? I had no further communication with Karl after I left. I had no idea what was happening at Redstone. I knew only that Sandy was at risk and the pattern of deaths following the purge of Project 623 seemed to be happening again. I had no way of knowing how deeply Karl was still involved.”

Angry, Tucker refused to accept her explanation. “Yet you sent me and Kane in blind.”

Jane was silent for a while, then sighed. “Maybe it was stupid and shortsighted to do that, but Nathan is my entire life. I’m not going to apologize for doing everything in my power to protect him.” She gave a small shake of her head. “I could have stayed in hiding and done nothing, but I risked reaching out to you. At the time, it was the best compromise I could come up with.”

Tucker saw her hands tremble on the rail, knowing she was seeing the blood on them from her decision. He recognized that familiar tremor, having experienced it all too often himself. He remembered the term one of his counselors had used to refine his diagnosis of PTSD:
moral injury
. It occurred when someone’s understanding of right and wrong was deeply violated. Jane clearly struggled with that now.

He wanted to reach an arm around her, pull her close, but instead he turned away and headed inside. He tapped his thigh to get Kane to follow, leaving Jane alone with her demons. He had no choice.

I have too many demons of my own
.

2:02
P
.
M
.

Tucker stared at the laptop screen, which showed a dark-haired man seated behind a desk with a wall-mounted monitor over his shoulder. The screen ran with silent footage from the attack on Port of Spain. The man tucked a single snowy lock, a stark contrast to his black hair, behind one ear, as if securing a white feather. Blue eyes shone from a tanned face, seeming to stare straight at Tucker.

The director of Sigma, Painter Crowe, straightened in his chair. “Kellerman’s financial network has proven to be a tough nut to crack. Even for Sigma. Though we’ve made some progress, we could use your help.”

Ruth Harper had called them all into the room for this video powwow with Director Crowe. Tucker rankled at being summoned in this manner. While he personally liked Painter Crowe, he wasn’t fond of the system to which the man belonged—namely the government. Plus, Tucker girded himself against any possibility that this operation might be stripped from him.

As he had told Ruth a few moments ago,
if the director tries to jerk the rug out from under me, he’s in for a fight
. And Tucker meant it. Too much blood had been spilled for him to willingly walk away now.

“We face several obstacles,” Painter continued. “The foremost being Pruitt Kellerman himself. He’s a titan, and not only in the business world. His influence and power are far reaching, even within our own government. Kellerman’s not someone to be taken lightly. We’re going to need as much proof as possible to go after him directly.”

“Not to mention stopping what he’s planning next,” Tucker added.

Painter’s gaze flicked to Ruth, who was seated at the bedroom desk. Tucker read both the director’s expression and Ruth’s body language.

“You know something,” he accused them.

Painter nodded. “It’s something you could’ve figured out given enough time and resources. But you gave us all the pieces to put it together.”

“Like what?” Jane asked.

Ruth answered. “Like that list of Soviet equipment you saw destroyed at White Sands.”

Tucker pictured the armored Russian tank. Earlier he had told Ruth how he believed the hardware at White Sands had been specifically chosen, a way of testing the drone’s capabilities against military targets.

“All that old Soviet equipment,” Painter explained, “is still in use in a handful of Eastern Bloc countries. We think Kellerman’s next attack is aimed at one of those nations.”

“But which one?” Tucker asked.

“We have a suspicion,” Painter said. “It was only a matter of pinning down which country Kellerman might have the most interest in . . . a country with the most financial ties to his vast conglomerate.”

“And let me guess,” Tucker said. “Considering Trinidad was a test run, the second target is likely another country under political tension, a powder keg waiting to be exploited.”

“Exactly,” Painter acknowledged. “We pursued that very angle and discovered another company in which Kellerman holds a major stockholder position, namely Skaxis Mining.”

Tucker shook his head. “Never heard of them.”

“The company oversees the mining of rare-earth minerals. Scarce elements like scandium used in aerospace framework, lanthanum for hydrogen storage, gadolinium for nuclear reactor shielding. And on and on.”

“In other words, everything you’d need as a supply line for drone development.”

Painter nodded. “It’s also a multibillion-dollar industry and growing.”

“Where’s Skaxis based out of?” Jane asked.

Painter smiled grimly. “A former Soviet Bloc country.”

“Serbia,” Ruth explained.

Frank let out a low whistle. “Talk about political tension.”

Tucker agreed. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia into a scatter of independent countries, the area had been a hotbed of insurrection, wars, assassinations, skirmishes, even ethnic cleansing going back decades. And while that corner of Europe had quieted of late, it remained an uneasy peace.