Brink of Chaos (24 page)

In his office, Jeremy was back on duty. Taking tentative sips of his still-too-hot paper cup of French vanilla coffee, he read the tracking report on Abigail Jordan. The surveillance chain had broken temporarily in the state of Washington. Then it was picked up again when the SIA facial recognition software made a match, verified by the Likely Route Estimator program: she had boarded her private jet in Seattle with a flight destination of Reagan National Airport in D.C.

Jeremy tapped in the search for FAA radar results. The jet was now approaching Columbus, Ohio.

The radar read: “Permission to land received by the tower in Columbus.”

He took another sip. Better now, the coffee was hot but not scalding.

“Permission to land granted.”

Ten minutes later, another posting on the FAA update quadrant of his screen.

“Citation X cleared to land at the Rapid Air commercial delivery hangar.”

On the jet, Abigail put down her legal file and stretched. Cal was awake next to her. He looked out the window at the Ohio landscape. “You know they’ll be waiting for you,” he said, still gazing out the window. There was a resignation in his voice.

“Yes. They won’t give up.” As he turned his face from the window to face her, she added, “And neither will I.”

“Abby and Cal,” the pilot said, adjusting his sunglasses and donning his cap, “we’ll be landing shortly. We’re going into our final descent.”

Abigail knew what that meant. And what she had to do.

At his tracking desk Jeremy touched the screen to view all the camera shots at the Columbus airport. He saw three angles. A small Rapid Air jet was being loaded with boxes. Some members of the ground crew were hovering around the jet, finishing the preflight check.

Jeremy hit the local police alert. A few minutes later the Columbus airport police said they would dispatch two squads to the hangar as soon as they finished the execution of a warrant on a fugitive who had just entered the passenger terminal.

The Citation X was rolling down the runway into view. It taxied up to the hangar and stopped.

“Better hurry,” Jeremy said into his voice monitor. “They’ve landed.”

The airport security officer responded, “Your subjects will not be leaving the airport — at least not on the ground,” the officer replied. “We’ve relayed your request to every road leading from the commercial hangar. Tollgates are all shut now. Your subject can’t get past any of them.”

One of his fellow SIA staffers strolled in and began asking him about the upcoming agency bowling tournament, but Jeremy’s eyes never left the screen. He shot his left hand up in the air. “Can’t talk. Following a Red Notice here.”

“Oooh,” came the cynical response, “excuse me, Mr. Bounty Hunter of cyber space,” and he left.

The camera shots on Jeremy’s monitor showed the door of the Citation X opening. He saw the pilot, in his sunglasses and cap, and his flight case in hand, walking down the steps and darting quickly into the hangar.

“What’s this?” Jeremy shouted. He waited a minute, then decided to hit the speed dial number for the hangar desk clerk. But before he could, the pilot, with his flight case, came striding back out of the hangar and quickly mounted the stairs and entered the Citation X, closing the door behind him.

“What’s the matter,” Jeremy said, questioning the image on the screen, “don’t those expensive private jets have their own bathrooms? This doesn’t look right.”

The two pilots and a navigator of the Rapid Air commercial jet walked out and climbed up the stairs. The pilots could be seen strapping themselves into the cockpit. Jeremy hit the airport tower alert line. “Request a stop on a private passenger jet on the tarmac.”

The Citation X was already taxiing down the runway.

“SIA, you need to give us the FAA stop order number” came the response.

“Forget it,” Jeremy grumbled, “too late. Bathroom break completed. Or whatever …” It was the
whatever
that bothered Jeremy.

“Say again?”

“Never mind. The private jet is already back in the air.” Then Jeremy said to himself, “Okay, now I’m bringing it, Mrs. Jordan. The full force of the SIA’s coming down on you at Reagan National. Last stop. We’ll be waiting.”

Jeremy touched the All Agency Enforcement tab on the screen. Boxes for FBI, SIA, Homeland Security, D.C. Police, Secret Service, and Airport Security appeared. One by one, Jeremy touched every box on the screen. Each time, he typed the Red Notice file number to authenticate his request.

It took only fifteen minutes for each of the agencies to respond. All but the Secret Service and Homeland Security verified that officials were on the way to the private charter flight section of Reagan National Airport. Two FBI agents, two SIA officials, two squad cars full of D.C. police, and an armed airport security officer had been dispatched. The full fire power would arrive at the tarmac within thirty minutes. More than enough time. The Citation X would not land for at least forty-five minutes, maybe longer.

Ethan sat exhausted at the dining room table. He slept little the night before, tossing and turning as if electric currents were racing through his body. He couldn’t shut his mind down. Pastor Ibrahim Kalid and his quiet, pleasant wife and their two daughters had all been cordial — overly accommodating, in fact, during his stay in their modest cement-block house.

The pastor’s wife was now serving Ethan another enormous meal, this time a midafternoon snack of tea, falafel, hummus, dates, and olives. Joshua was in the other room with Pastor Ibrahim, praying. Ethan gave the woman a weak smile.

“Eat, please,” she said. “You are a big man; you need much food.”

“Any more, Mrs. Kalid, and you will make me too big.” He patted his stomach, and she smiled and shook her head.

He reached out and picked up a soft date and popped it in his mouth, pulling the sweet fruit away from the seed with his tongue and then plucking the seed out of his mouth with his fingers and putting it on the brightly painted plate in front of him.

“Good dates,” he said.

She smiled. Ethan felt awkward alone in the room with this woman, so he tried to make conversation. “So, have you — and your family — always been Christians?”

“No,” she replied, “we were Muslim, like most here in Nablus.”

“So, you changed?”

“Yes, took Jesus into our hearts.”

“Has that … caused you problems? With your neighbors, I mean?”

She shrugged and said, “A little, yes.”

Ethan was tempted to explore that. He knew enough to understand that these people must be viewed as infidels by others in their town. Now they were harboring Joshua Jordan, a man targeted by Islamic terrorists — in fact, one of their Imams had issued a fatwa against him. He wondered if the Kalid family had ever received death threats for their new faith or had even been the targets of violence because they were now following Jesus.

But Ethan decided not to pursue it. Instead he said, “Mrs. Kalid, you are very brave to have us stay with you. I really appreciate it.”

She said something in return, but he couldn’t decipher it through her thick Arabic accent. His face must have registered a question because she articulated the comment once again, but much more slowly: “I am being the Good Samaritan, like Jesus say.”

“I see.”

Ethan felt a flush of embarrassment, though he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because, looking at this quiet woman now, he was in the presence of an astounding mixture of character traits — simple purity of motives coupled with some incredibly big-time courage. How could he explain that? He didn’t know. But it seemed to amplify his own shortcomings.

The door to the adjoining room opened and Joshua and Pastor Ibrahim walked out. Joshua had his Allfone in one hand and with his other shook hands with the pastor. He then glanced over at Ethan. The look on Joshua’s face seemed to possess an answer to a question that Ethan hadn’t even asked yet.

Josh motioned for Ethan to follow him over to the other side of the room, and lowered his voice. “I just received a message from Joel Harmon,” he said. “IDF command wants to talk to me about finishing our RTS refinement after all.”

“What? Israel was tracking us down. I thought the prime minister wanted you in custody and turned over to the FBI for extradition?”

“He did. But then things changed, and they’re willing to let bygones be bygones if I help them now.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t have all the details. But it seems the threat level has just been raised.”

“What kind of threat?”

“Biological. In the hands of bad guys. That’s all I know. The IDF’s begging for us to help them to achieve full redirection capacity for the RTS defense system. So, I’m guessing that they anticipate a missile strike with some kind of nightmare biological warhead. They must want to make sure they can redirect the missiles to a full spectrum of alternate destinations — away from population centers.”

“That’s good news, then,” Ethan beamed. “We can come out of hiding.”

“Good news and bad news.”

“What’s the bad part?”

“The RTS tests I’ve run here in Israel haven’t done the trick yet, to accomplish the higher level of control over the guidance systems of incoming missiles. That’s what the Israelis want. But I’ve got an idea on how to get that RTS enhancement to happen. I hope …”

“You’ll figure it out,” Ethan said, worried but trying to sound convincing.

“I just hope by the time I figure it out,” Joshua said, “it’s not too late.”

In the early morning hours, around 6:45 a.m., the nurses at Georgetown University Hospital were making their rounds. One of them was attending to attorney Harry Smythe, who was hooked up to a heart monitor. He had not been a happy patient. He kept talking about a case he might have to argue in court for some lady named Abigail Jordan. The nurse assured him he was going nowhere. He would have to remain in the hospital for several more days at least.

At 6:45 a.m., Jeremy was looking at his monitor, which was full of video images of the hangar and part of the D.C. Reagan Airport tarmac. The director was standing next to him, and behind him were several SIA staffers who had heard about the upcoming arrival.

Jeremy saw that the area around the hangar where the charter flights and private jets would dock was surrounded by armed federal agents and local police. On his audio hookup, Jeremy could hear the Citation X radio the tower for permission to land. It was quickly granted. The jet was descending. The FBI had taken the lead in coordinating the task force on the ground and would soon give the go ahead to approach the jet. “Hold positions,” the senior FBI agent said over the radio.

The Citation X slowed as it approached the tarmac apron in front of the hangar. Then it halted.

“Perfect position,” the FBI agent said to his team members. “Wait till we verify the engines are off.”

The engines of the Citation X were cut, and the roar began to wind down to a whine and then a quiet whirring. The FBI agent counted down slowly from ten. When he got to one, he shouted into the radio, “
Now
, go, go, go!”

Several officers, with guns drawn in point-and-aim position, sprinted forward to surround the cabin of the jet. Over a bullhorn a voice advised the occupants to exit the plane with their hands raised high. Moments later the door opened. The pilot, still wearing his sunglasses, appeared with hands up and slowly descended the steps.

Next came Cal with his hands up as well. When they were on the tarmac, the officers grabbed them and cuffed them. All eyes were on the open door of the jet.

“Abigail Jordan,” the voice on the bullhorn announced, “exit the airplane immediately with your hands up or we will come in after you.”

In the SIA headquarters, watching the arrest scene play out on the monitor in Jeremy’s office, the director was muttering, “Doesn’t this lady know the jig’s up?”

There was movement in the cabin near the open door. Someone was preparing to exit. A woman’s hand appeared through the door and grabbed the handrail.

“Hands up!” the bullhorn boomed. Then the person exited the plane in full sight of the law enforcement team on the ground with their weapons drawn.

“What?” was the first word that came out of the SIA director’s mouth. And then several profanities quickly followed.

Descending the stairs was a blonde middle-aged woman dressed in a pilot’s uniform with a pair of sunglasses perched carefully just above her hairline so as to not muss her elegant coiffeur. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she raised her hands but with a maintained gait and look of relaxed confidence, the kind of expression belonging to someone who had grown accustomed to high-stress intrigue.

As the FBI special agent in charge holstered his weapon and approached the woman, he ordered his fellow agent and two D.C. cops to enter the plane and search for Abigail. They scrambled up the stairs.
The agent, now directly in front of the woman, squinted in the early morning sun, shielding his eyes with his hand. “Victoria?” he stammered. “Victoria McHenry? What in the world are you doing here?”

She smiled and replied, “Hi, Fred. Yes, it’s me.”

“You aren’t,” he began and stepped closer, “still in the Agency …”

She shook her head. “No. Pack and I’ve been out of the clandestine services division for a number of years now.”

“Then what in the world are you doing here? In a pilot’s uniform?”

“Can’t a girl play dress-up once in a while?”

From the top of the stairs, the other FBI agent shouted down, “Fred, there’s no one else in the plane.”

Fred straightened up into a posture of official business. “Sorry, Victoria, but if you’re a civilian, then I’m afraid you’ve just walked into a world of legal troubles.”

“And what would those be?” she asked nonchalantly.

He bulleted back his reply without taking a breath. “Assisting a citizen who has refused to submit to federal BIDTag identification procedures as required by federal law.”

Cal spoke up. “That’s where you’re wrong …”

The FBI agent whirled around toward Cal. “And who are you?”

“Cal Jordan. You need to know, agent, that in the rush toward passage in Congress, the federal act making it a crime to refuse to get tagged contained one technical mistake. It was drafted in such a way as to prevent someone — like Victoria McHenry, or me for that matter, or even the pilot of our Citation X — from being prosecuted for aiding and abetting or even being a party to conspiracy to aid someone who has refused to get tagged. In other words, the only person you could prosecute would be someone who actually refused to get BIDTagged. And I presume you think that person is Abigail Jordan, my mother. Am I correct?”

The FBI agent strode up to Cal. “Are you a lawyer?”

“No, but I’ll be a law student in a couple of weeks.”

The FBI agent narrowed his eyes as his face faded into a scarlet color.

“Wanna bet?”