Day Zero (22 page)

Bowen shrugged. “It wasn’t the Speaker’s fault someone killed the President and VP on the same day.”

“I’m positive it was,” Garcia said. “And look at what he’s doing with the country. Do you think Clark would have put so many thugs in high-level government positions?”

“Washington is full of thugs,” Bowen said. “People like that are drawn to money and power.”

“I can’t argue that,” Garcia said. “But you have to agree that there are more in place now than ever before. The Secretary of Labor has known contacts with organized crime in Chicago. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was twice accused of sexual harassment of female subordinates. The Secretary of State is a moron and the Secretary of Defense is an avowed isolationist who can hardly order pizza without threatening to kick the delivery boy’s ass. Does that sound like the kind of people that should be running a government?”

“Look,” Bowen said, “if the President is leading some secret cabal, it seems impossible that he’d have so many co-conspirators with his same ideology. From what I’ve read, the Taliban, al Qaeda, and even the Baader-Meinhof gang may have been highly organized, but in the end, they couldn’t even agree on what to have for lunch, let alone find enough like-minded guys to run an operation as large and unwieldy as a presidential administration within the United States.”

“That’s the beauty part.” Ronnie brushed a lock of damp hair out of her face. “They wouldn’t have to share the same ideology. Have you ever had a bad boss?”

“Of course.”

“What happened to him?”

“Well,” Bowen said, “it was a she, and the people above her in rank eventually tuned her up.”

“Exactly my point,” Ronnie said.

They floated under a series of metal teapots raining water down on their heads. Elbows hooking the tube, Ronnie wiped her face with both hands and looked at him. “Think about it. What if the man at the very top turned a blind eye to bad behavior? Imagine the worst bully in your office, and then imagine him with all authority of a Nazi SS officer or East German secret policeman. He wouldn’t have to share the President’s ideology—because he has one of his own that is equally rotten. It really doesn’t matter what that ideology is. It still benefits Drake’s plan.”

Bowen sighed. All this talk about ousting a sitting president made him wonder how he’d do in prison.

“And exactly what do you believe that plan to be?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Garcia said. “But it’s not good. Just imagine all the things you could do to bring down the nation if you were the president of the United States.”

“I’m not that much of an imaginer,” Bowen said, though the entire story made more sense than he’d like to admit. “I am going to help you though. Those Internal Defense guys are the kind of people I cannot abide.”

“Thank you.” Ronnie smiled. Her eyes fluttered, half shut as if she was on the verge of drifting off to sleep. “You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”

“Listen,” Bowen said, “I’m sorry for being so flip about those guys putting a camera in your bathroom. That’s pretty twisted. I shouldn’t have made light of it.”

“No big deal.” Garcia gave him another killer smile. “Anyhow, it’s a conscience like that that will keep you from getting recruited by the IDTF.”

She shoved Bowen backwards as they approached a large waterfall that fell in a roaring curtain from a fake stone arch across the Lazy River. Garcia was on her back now, and strong legs propelled her toward the falls. Her feet cleared the surface so he caught delicious glimpses of her painted toes. Just before she disappeared behind the falls, she flipped onto her belly. Her butt arched out of the water as she dove below the surface to vanish under the silver curtain.

Bowen kicked the tube through the falls, just seconds behind her. His mind worked double-time, pondering ways he could prolong this conversation, thinking of when they might meet again.

But when he pushed the yellow tube into the calm water, Ronnie Garcia was gone.

I
DTF agent Roy Gant bounced on his feet behind a scrawny oak, a hundred meters to the west of the water park. He was a heavy guy with a big belly that the tree did little to hide—but he had bigger problems than that now. He’d been assigned to follow the deputy marshal, didn’t know why, didn’t care—especially once he’d had the happy accident of stumbling on this meeting with the girl. Every ID agent within two hundred miles of the Beltway knew what she’d done to Lindale and Maloney. They all wanted to get her in their crosshairs. Gant had literally jumped up and down like a kid on his birthday when he’d realized he had Garcia in his sights. He’d called it in right away so he could bask in the praise of his superiors, giving none of the credit to his partner, a former FBI agent named Miller.

And now the girl had disappeared.

“Tell me you have eyes on,” Gant said into the small mike attached to his iPhone.

“That’s a negative,” Miller said, from his vantage point fifty meters away, nearer the parking lot. “I never did have a clear view. You get all the credit for this one.”

Gant stomped his foot. They should have been closer, but how was he supposed to know he’d need a pair of swimming trunks in order to blend in? Besides, he was not a small man and if he’d stripped down to his shorts, some wise guy might have harpooned him as the great white whale.

“Keep watching the parking lot,” Gant said. “She’ll have to leave the area sometime.”

“What about the deputy?” Miller said. “He’s a hard one to miss with that head full of gray.”

“You’re tryin’ to tell me Veronica Garcia is easy to miss?” Gant snapped.

“No,” Miller said. “I’m telling you that I have a visual on Bowen. If we can’t find the girl, I say we stay with him. She met him once. She’ll meet him again. Looks to me like they may have a little thing for each other.”

Gant leaned against the rough bark of the tree, steadying his arms as he played the binoculars back and forth among the crowd. He searched frantically for any sign of the curvaceous Latina. His heart rose for a moment when he saw a girl in a dark swimsuit and large white hat—until she scooped up a little kid and took him to the wading pool.

“I am so screwed,” Gant muttered to himself. She couldn’t have just vanished—but that is exactly what she had done. Backup teams were speeding in his direction at that very moment, ready to make him a hero when they swept in and arrested Garcia. “Forget the deputy,” he said to his partner. “Keep looking for the girl. She has to be here. She’s the priority.”

“Roger that,” Miller said, the shrug evident in his tone. He’d received none of the credit, so he wasn’t about to share any of the blame. “Just sayin’, the deputy is walking to his car right now.”

“Is he by himself?”

“Affirmative.”

“Then forget him,” Gant said, fighting back the rising panic. “Keep looking for her.”

“You want me to slam a car door on your leg?” Miller said. “It worked to get Lindale out of hot water when he lost her.”

Gant chewed on the inside of his cheek as he kept up his search with the binoculars—and seriously considered Miller’s offer.

 

A
faulty gear indicator on the Alaska Airlines plane carrying Tang Dalu and his team from Las Vegas to Anchorage kept them on the ground in Seattle an hour longer than planned. His entire team was sweating by the time they made it to the North Terminal. They reached security with less than fifteen minutes until boarding, which, Tang supposed, helped their cause. The Anchorage TSA officers, though watchful as ever, showed a modicum of compassion and hurried them along so they would not miss their flight.

The last-minute change in plans had set everyone on edge, but their rushed demeanor had masked their nervousness. Ma Zhen, the most pious among then, attributed the delay to the will of Allah. Tang wondered why this same Allah that would reach down with his merciful finger to break a tiny gear light had not chosen to save his daughter. The others might be doing this as part of some personal jihad. Tang had other reasons.

Anchorage International’s North Terminal was minuscule compared to the Las Vegas airport, with only eight gates—and the massive Airbus A380 took up two of them. All two stories of her loomed outside the windows like a great white whale with her nose to the glass. At once bloated and sleek, the “super jumbo” was the largest plane in the sky. The Global CEO’s wife was French, giving him the impetus to stray from their usual fleet of American-made Boeing 747s, making this Airbus an even richer target in the eyes of the man from Pakistan. Bringing it down would not only destroy the company that had gambled on something European, but enrage American nationalism.

Tang had read the statistics on the airplane while he’d waited for their connection in Vegas. Seven stories tall at the tail, the Airbus was three quarters of a football field in length and had an interior almost seven meters wide. Most airports placed an eighty-meter wingspan limit in order for a plane to use their runways. The A380 made it under that with just inches to spare. Promotional literature said the wings were so large that seventy passenger cars could be parked on each one. Each of the four Rolls-Royce turbofan engines weighed more than six tons, providing a combined total of over a quarter million pounds of thrust.

Tang had never read the Christian Bible, but he knew enough of the stories to recognize this airplane as a potential Goliath that would, despite its enormous size, be brought down by something extremely small.

With the plane’s capacity at nearly 600 people, the boarding area was packed with passengers and carry-on baggage. Lin found one of the only empty seats along the windows looking out at the runway and fell into it, shutting her eyes. Her boarding pass slipped out of her jacket pocket and fluttered to the carpet. Tang moved to pick it up, but a small girl with dark hair and a broad smile rushed forward, beating him to it.

“
Ni chi fan le ma
?” The little girl asked, handing the ticket back to Lin. It literally meant
have you eaten?
, but was colloquial for
hello
.

Lin opened her eyes. She took the boarding pass and shoved it back in her pocket. Even Tang was dumbfounded by the child’s grasp of Chinese.

“
Wo chi le
.” Lin nodded.
I have eaten
.

“
Ni okay ma
?” The little girl said. “
Nide lianse weishenme bu gaoxing
?”
Are you okay? You seem sad
—literally,
Why is your face color not excited
?

Lin sat up straighter in the chair. Tang was horrified when he saw a smile perk the corners of his wife’s lips.

“You are a cute little thing,” Lin said in heavily accented English. “How did you learn to speak Mandarin so well?”

“My school,” the little girl said, beaming at having been understood. “We can start in kindergarten.”

Ma Zhen began to glare over the top of his glasses. A dark man with a thick beard stood behind the girl, close enough that he was obviously her father—or some kind of protector. The man smiled at the little girl’s skill but his eyes challenged everyone around him. Tang had been a police officer himself for eleven years. Either this man was a policeman or something very close to it. He tried to shrug off the worry. It would not matter. A policeman could do nothing to stop them once they were in the air. Tang touched his wife on the shoulder. “Come,” he said. “We should prepare to board.”

Lin ignored him. She smiled openly now—something he hadn’t seen her do in a very long time.

The little girl put a hand to her chest, introducing herself. “
Wo jiao
Mattie,” she said.

“We need to get in line.” Tang mustered a tight smile of his own. It felt like he was squinting at the sun.

“It is so nice to meet you, Mattie,” his wife cooed. She grudgingly got to her feet, and then turned back to the child. “My name is Lin. Maybe I will see you on the plane.”

The dark man with the beard called the little girl to him, praising her Mandarin. He acted as though he spoke the language himself, which made sense considering his daughter was so fluent. Tang made a mental note to remember that when speaking around him.

Ma Zhen came up to stand beside them when they got to the other side of the room. Arms folded, he looked sternly at Lin, then back at Tang, frowning. He’d been close enough to hear the exchange.

“It would be best if you avoided conversations with other passengers,” he whispered so they could both hear. “It will only complicate matters at this stage of the affair.”

“The child spoke to her,” Tang said through clenched teeth. He was put out with Lin, but furious that this boy would doubt their commitment. “Everything will be fine.” But when he looked at Lin, the remnants of a smile on the corners of her mouth told everyone he was a liar.

 

 

Ma Zhen stalked away and flopped down next to Gao, sulking like an angry teenager. When he wasn’t making bombs, he rarely did anything but sulk. Fate had dealt him that sort of life. Tang supposed such a look was to be expected from a man who had resolved to kill himself—even for a greater good.

Any evidence of Lin’s smile vanished by the time the gate agent called for them to board. Tang calmed some as they walked down the Jetway, considering what lay ahead.

British Airways, Lufthansa, Emirates, and several other airlines had Airbus A380s in their fleets, but Global was the first American carrier brave enough to snub venerable US-made Boeing. Most of these passengers had never flown on this type of aircraft and they stood in nothing short of awe when they first boarded, clogging the aisles when Tang and his wife finally made it down the Jetway. It took time to find their seats and get their carry-on luggage situated. Tang inched ahead slowly, memorizing the surroundings in case he needed them later. Years as a policeman had taught him nothing ever went as planned.

The interior was double the size of any plane he’d ever seen. Highly polished walls of marbled teak rose up on bulkheads at either side of the boarding door to form a wide and welcoming foyer. Three well-groomed flight attendants, wearing Global Airline’s red pencil skirts and white blouses, stood under an ornate glass light fixture that hung down like a palace chandelier. Rather than the musty smells of old carpet and recirculated sweat common to commercial aircraft, the pleasant odor of fresh espresso wafted up from a plush galley. Leather stools ran along a rolled leather bar just inside the entrance. It looked more like a fancy nightclub than something found on a commercial airliner.

Tang could picture the diagrams he’d seen on the Internet and knew the exact location of their seats. Still, it wasn’t good to appear too self-assured, so he showed his ticket to an overly helpful bald man wearing a red vest. The man directed him to his left, forward and through the luxurious first-class cabin and up a flight of teak stairs located across from the cockpit door, which for the moment was open, revealing a crew of at least three as they prepped the plane for takeoff. Tang knew the crew could be completely self-contained once in the air, with their own rest quarters and lavatory facilities. He sighed to himself. It wouldn’t matter. Hiding behind a reinforced door would do little to keep their precious airplane in the sky.

Once at the top of the stairs, Tang worked his way back, through the forward business-class seats, past another galley with yet another coffee bar, this one only slightly smaller and no less elegant than the one in first class. A Global flight attendant with brunette hair piled on top of her head like an urn approached as he helped Lin get situated next to the window. She was wearing a barista’s apron and offered freshly ground espressos and scones before takeoff.

Tang thanked her and stuffed their camera bags into the cubbies under each footrest so they’d be able to access them without having to drag everything out of an overhead bin when the time came. Each seat sank down inside its surrounding plastic walls when it reclined to meet its footrest, forming a plush bed and a good semblance of privacy. Lin’s seat was located one row back from the forward emergency exit door, closest to the wall. On the flight from Las Vegas to LA, she’d planned to wedge the bomb between her armrest and the skin of the airplane. Business class on the A380 provided a small storage bin along the outer wall, next to her armrest, much like a lazarette on a boat—a perfect place for the device.

The flight attendant brought two cups of espresso for them before their flight. Lin waved hers away, but Tang accepted his in order to appear compliant.

“That little girl was amazing, don’t you think?” Lin said, once the attendant had moved on with her tray.

Tang gave a thoughtful nod. His stomach began to knot again. Now? After a nearly two years, Lin had chosen this moment to display some hint of emotion—all because a filthy
guizi
child had picked up her boarding pass? His hand shook when he tried to sip the espresso. He took a deep breath, screwing his face into a calm smile.

“She spoke passable Chinese,” he said. “In any case, her father looks dangerous. We will have to be careful of him.”

Lin ignored the last, thinking only of the child. “She was so . . . I cannot even say it . . . so alive.” She turned away, the refection of another smile clearly visible in the aircraft window.

She didn’t say the words, but Tang knew what she was thinking. The child named Mattie made her think of their daughter—happy thoughts of better times that threatened to ruin everything.