Fallout (34 page)

Searching the face of every officer who entered the room was difficult. Pakistani women were not to look directly into the faces of men. Only prostitutes did that. Renee tried to be subtle. She had to look, though, to have any hope of identifying Khan.

Several of the men simply took food and left, while others sat at the table and talked. The tables held eight or ten, and were arranged in long rows on the hard cement floor. As Renee walked among the tables with dirty dishes she had taken from pilots who had finished, she tried to overhear conversations but heard nothing of interest. Several were talking about the attack, but most seemed genuinely amazed at how this Riaz Khan could have done it and how it couldn’t possibly have been sanctioned by the government.

The general feel she got from them was outrage. They’d all known that four pilots had been fortunate enough to get spots in this new American TOPGUN school, and they all hoped one day to be able to go to the school themselves. How their fellow pilots could be lucky enough to go to America and then carry out such a brutal attack left them without explanation. They didn’t speak of it to senior officers for fear of being implicated in a larger conspiracy. There were whispers of the ISI or of other secret government agendas about which they were ignorant, but Renee heard nothing indicating that anyone seriously believed that Pakistan—as a country, as a government—was involved.

There was much talk of this Riaz Khan, this mysterious pilot none of them could remember meeting. They’d all heard of him, but none had met him. They found this puzzling, because the Pakistani F-16 community was not that large. There were always one or two pilots they didn’t know, but for someone of his rank, stature, and reputation, that was simply not possible. They were mystified.

She kept her head down as she moved the plates and cups back to the kitchen for washing, and then she waited for lunch. She stood in the corner of the dining area with a broom sweeping up some dirt, and she waited.

At two in the afternoon the pilots began filtering in from the hot, dusty day, into the cool, dimly lit officers’ dining room. This time nearly all the fliers came. Renee’s eyes darted back and forth; she looked for anyone who might resemble Khan.

Several pilots saw her looking at them and took it as a sign of encouragement. They smiled at her and tried to catch her eye a second or third time, but she was able to dismiss them. Finally one officer handed her his plate and asked for her to serve him. She noticed that his fingers were strong and thick, and she glanced at his barrel chest. She handed him the plate, knowing he would have to look at it to take it. She used that moment to look into his face. She detected a faint difference in the skin color between his upper lip and the rest of his face. She also noticed that he had a close-cropped haircut, which, based on tan lines, was very recent. As her eyes returned to their normal downcast angle, she took in the bull-like neck, larger than any man’s she’d seen while in Pakistan. It had to be him.

She walked over to another of the servingwomen after the rush had died down. She pointed to him, a knowing smile on her face that she knew showed in her eyes, a look implying barely contained lust. “Who is that?” she asked. “That is a true man.”

The woman lifted her head, annoyed. “Forget it. You would have no chance with him. He is one of the best pilots in the area and sought by every woman who has seen him.”

“What is his name?”

“Don’t worry about it. He’s trouble.”

“I just want to know his name.”

“Forget it.”

“Is he married?”

“He’s married to every woman he sees. They all think he’s going to marry them, but he never does. He is a wanderer. He is married to his airplane.”

Renee waited for the officers at his table to finish. They knew she would clear their dishes, but they were not quite done. She stood back a ways, but near enough the table to try to hear the conversation while looking uninterested and distracted. The man glanced over his shoulder at her with some annoyance. He continued eating. Another officer sitting across the table from him was asking him several questions, to which he was responding.

“When?”

“As soon as . . .” Their conversation was lost in the surrounding din.

She stepped a little closer.

“Three days? Do you have . . . ready?”

“Yes . . .”

“. . . airplanes?”

“. . . division . . . laser . . .”

“What are you doing?” the head of the cleaning group barked at Renee from behind.

The voice was so close and unexpected that it nearly sent Renee out of her skin. She tried to control her racing heart. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I was waiting for them to finish so I could clear their table . . .” Renee quickly moved away.

She continued to finish her other work nearby. As soon as they got up, she hurried to their table without looking anxious. She cleared their places and carried their dishes to the kitchen.

Then she went to the head of the cleaning group. “Will I be able to work again soon?”

“Who knows? If we need you, we will call you.”

“I would appreciate that. I have enjoyed working here.”

The woman was not impressed. “I would say you have. You have been making eyes at every man who has come in to eat. If you came back, you would have to change your ways. This is not a whorehouse, nor is it the place to find a husband,” she scolded.

“I’m sorry,” Renee said, lowering her eyes. “I just found it all interesting.”

The head of the cleaning crew grunted and turned away. Renee closed her hand around the fork in her apron and slipped it into the slit pocket cut into her dress underneath.

“Vladimir, Vladimir,” Gorgov said in his low voice. He had waited until the middle of the night in Nevada, to get Vlad when he was fatigued and back in his room at Tonopah.

“What?” Vlad replied, his blood racing through his veins. He rested on his side, on his elbow, and reached for the lamp next to his bed.

“It is not possible that you misunderstood me,” Gorgov said, declaring the obvious. “You made me look foolish in front of my good friends who gave us a large sum of money.” Gorgov stopped and let Vlad listen to the line hiss for a few seconds. “But, fortunately for you, they succeeded anyway. Even more fortunately for you, my good friend, is that there may be another chance for you to make a difference. Because we both know that if you don’t . . . things could get very bad, very uncomfortable for you.”

Vlad sat up and put his feet on the floor, trying to think his way out of his deepening hole. “Leave me alone!” he yelled.

“And for those you left behind in Russia,” Gorgov went on. “Your sister, for example, who is now in Smolensk with her two beautiful young children.”

“What do you want from me?” Vlad growled.

“You see,” Gorgov said, “this fight is not only not over, it is just starting. There are many things left to do, and one piece of it . . . remains undone. You may be able to make sure it happens.”

“What is it?”

“Your friend suffers, I think, from the typical American hero complex. I believe it is often associated with another of the actors that Americans worship, a John Wayne. Yes? You have heard this term?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. Your friend must be led to believe he is going to save the world. And you will have the chance—the obligation—to make sure he does not succeed. Do you understand?”

Vlad closed his eyes. His back felt as if it were broken. The ejection had been much harder on his body than he’d expected. The ejection seat rocket motor had fired so fast and so hard to get him out of his dying airplane that it had compressed his spine in his lower back. He had pain radiating down to his heels. His crotch felt bruised and sore from where the harness he was wearing had held him in the parachute. All he wanted to do was sleep. But he’d not done what Gorgov had expected him to do. He’d knew he would be called to account. He wanted to tell himself he didn’t care. That Gorgov couldn’t touch him in America. But he knew that wasn’t true. He took a deep breath. “I understand.”

“Well, yes.” Gorgov laughed. “There is understanding, and there is understanding. I know you understood the words I have said. You are a smart man. You did not become a Sniper Pilot in the Russian Air Force by being stupid or cowardly. I want you to tell me, Vladimir Petkov, whether you understand that when the time is before you, when you have a choice to intervene to assure the success of the goal that will then be obvious to you, whether you will do what I have asked.”

“How will I know?”

“You will know.”

“How?”

Gorgov’s voice lost its friendly tone. “Will you do what I have asked, or will you not? You are free to tell me that you will not. I will understand completely. But then your sister’s husband will be very sad indeed, and your mother will wonder how you could have met such a horrible end.”

“You are scum, Gorgov. You are a disgrace—”

“Your opinion of me does not matter in the least,” Gorgov interrupted. “I want to know whether you will do what you are told!”

Vlad was cornered. “Yes, I will do what you ask.”

“I knew I could count on you. You are a man of your word. Yes?”

Vlad clenched his teeth. “Yes.”

Luke squinted at the dark brown stain on the concrete in front of the hangar, a dried pool of blood left from one of the guards. He noticed the bullet marks on the hangar door behind the stain, where the jeep had been. Shame washed over him. He’d never even met those guards. Too busy. He’d never even inspected the security in the early-morning hours, as they changed shifts at 0600. Too busy. He hadn’t even given a second’s thought to the security of having Russian missiles on the base, let alone fighters that could do a lot of damage if united with those missiles. It had never occurred to him. Too busy grading his private runway for his biplane fantasy. He hadn’t done his first job first.

Yellow crime-scene tape was draped from one stanchion to another in front of the hangar, around several of the airplanes, and across the doors to the hangar. There were bullet holes in airplanes and in the walls. The FBI had been through the hangar with a fine-tooth comb. They’d searched every computer, every file, every desk, and every residence within twenty-four hours of the attack. According to Katherine, they hadn’t found anything, at least nothing they were talking to her about.

Katherine stood next to him, her hands in the pockets of her maternity jumper. “How could they live here for three weeks when they hated us that much?”

“So no one would suspect them.”

“I’m really sorry, Luke,” she said with deep sadness.

“Like you had anything to do with it.”

“I’m just sorry it happened. We had a great thing going.”

Her use of the past tense sliced through him like a hot knife. He was about to respond when they heard a car. They turned to look and saw two white sedans pulling up. Helen Li got out of one and walked to them. She looked at the scene, then down at the brown stain Luke had been staring at. She’d already seen it. She nodded and looked at Luke and Katherine. “Morning,” she said. “Somewhere we can talk?”

“Hi,” Luke replied. “Sure. In the ready room, topside.” They all followed him as he headed up the stairs. All the decor, all the aviation paraphernalia seemed somehow excessive and superficial under the circumstances. Vlad, Stamp, Crumb, and Brian were sitting aimlessly in the ready room. They appeared beaten. Vlad looked away from Luke as they came into the room.

Helen went to the front of the room. She was glad they were all there. She wanted them all to hear her. The other three special agents stood at the back of the room. “Let’s go over this again,” she said. “Everything Riaz Khan did while he was here.”

“We’ve done this.”

“And we’re going to keep doing it.”

“He started out aggressively and went down from there,” Crumb said. “He was an asshole, which, if he was going to do what he’s now done, you wouldn’t expect. You’d expect him to try to be nice, at least not to rock the boat. He got here and started being an asshole right away.”

“What else?”

“He got us to help him plan his whole strike,” Crumb replied.

Helen raised her eyebrows. “How?”

“He came in here insisting that we teach him more about air-to-ground. Dropping bombs. That’s not really what we’re here for. We’re here to teach air-to-air combat. Shooting down other airplanes. He wouldn’t hear it. He insisted that we do more air-to-ground. So we tried to accommodate him. We even showed him how we do strike planning.”

“What planning? What did you help him plan?” Helen asked with intense interest. “Was it the strike on San Onofre?”

Luke hadn’t even considered the possibility that not only had he and his crew allowed the Pakistanis to prepare right under their noses, but that they had planned the strike for them. Such a thought was intolerable. “I don’t think so. It was in the wrong direction—”

“How do you know?”

“Because we were talking about flying east, or southeast, at sunrise, and the problem of the sun in your face—”

“Go on.”

“And the distance was wrong,” Luke replied, remembering the planning session as if it were yesterday. “And the attack we were planning was a very low-level attack, against a defended target, in enemy territory, like something into India. They flew against San Onofre at midaltitude, as if they were going against an unsuspecting target—which they were—trying to look like routine commercial traffic.”

Helen retreated into a thought she wasn’t sharing. A thick silence enveloped the room, full of pregnant implications and fear. She looked up suddenly. “Draw the route you helped plan,” she said to Luke.

Luke stood, picked up a black marker, and took off its cap. He turned toward the board to start drawing, then turned back to Helen, who had sat down expectantly in the first row of the ready-room chairs. “What exactly is the point of this?”

“I’m interested.”

“All the airplanes crashed. All the pilots but one were killed.”

“But Khan himself wasn’t killed. The other pilots were expendable.”

Luke and the others immediately grasped what she was implying. “You do still think he has something else in mind?”