The Patriot Attack (16 page)

She stuck the blade of the shovel in and jumped on the back of it, barely catching herself when she was suddenly thrown backward. It took a moment to figure out what had happened, but the fact that the blade was still in the dirt and the handle was still in her hand was a good clue.

“Damn it!” she said, throwing the broken handle aside.

“You can use mine,” the young analyst said hopefully.

“No, we need to get this done and get the hell out of here. There’s another shovel in the car. I’m going to run down and get it. Keep digging.”

“I’m getting really tired, Randi. Maybe—”

“Would you rather go back to the clearing and then have to climb up again?”

He looked down the steep slope. “No, but—”

“Then shut up and dig. You’re the one who buried the damn thing.”

Randi set off at a hard jog, leaping rocks and fallen logs as she retraced their steps toward the cars. She kept an eye on the shadows and the Beretta in her hand but at the pace she was going, there was no way to make out much detail. Sometimes fast was better than cautious.

Randi was about a quarter of the way down the hill when an unmistakable sound reached her. She bounced off a tree and turned just in time to see a pillar of flame rising from the top of the knoll. Burning debris, including charred pieces of Eric Fujiyama, arced across the blue sky.

She took a few steps uphill but then turned and started running toward Smith again. Whoever had planted that bomb would know they were there, and he wasn’t in any condition to defend himself alone.

Tokyo
Japan

T
akahashi followed Akio Himura through the heavy doors that led to the most secure part of the building. Officially Japan didn’t have any significant intelligence capability, and the existence of this facility—ostensibly a division of the government’s accounting office—was one of Japan’s most closely guarded secrets.

The walls were lined with two-way mirrors, and Takahashi knew they were being watched from all sides by Himura’s elite security. At the first sign of a breach, the multiple automatic doors they’d come through would lock down, trapping them and anyone else trying to gain access.

The encrypted text message had come during their pointless meeting with the prime minister but Takahashi had been unable to act on it, instead sitting obediently through another twenty excruciating minutes. With no helicopter available, he and Himura had been forced to go by car, spending almost another hour in Tokyo’s heavy afternoon traffic.

They stopped in front of a white door with a visible carbon fiber weave and Himura raised his arms above his head. Takahashi did the same, submitting to the highly advanced body scan that would search not only for weapons but also for digital storage devices, cameras, and even pens—anything that could be used to record what transpired inside.

A green light flashed and the door slid open.

“Report,” Himura said as they entered the inner sanctum of his intelligence apparatus. It was surprisingly unremarkable. No larger than twenty meters square with stark white walls and three stainless steel desks containing only computer terminals. Behind those terminals were men who seemed far too young to be working at this level of responsibility. The technical expertise necessary, though, eluded earlier generations.

“Two unknown people contacted Eric Fujiyama at the file site,” the man closest to them said without looking up from his screen. Takahashi bristled a bit at his brusque demeanor but then reminded himself that the intelligence business was very different from the military. These were not people who snapped to attention when a superior entered the room.

“Do we have any idea who they are?” Himura asked, walking up behind the man.

“We’ve accessed an American satellite, but the angle isn’t optimal. A blonde woman and a man with dark hair. The man stayed at the car while the woman went to the knoll with Fujiyama. She seemed to break her shovel and started down again while Fujiyama kept digging. She was halfway back to the clearing when the mine went off.”

“Was she injured?” Himura asked.

“Not as near as I can tell.”

“Russell and Smith,” Takahashi said quietly. Himura nodded.

They’d been tracking Fujiyama for years and in fact had been subtly involved in discrediting him sufficiently for the CIA to fire him. After he was let go, though, he’d continued working on his theories and buried a cleverly designed safe with what they assumed was physical evidence supporting his ideas.

When Takahashi had discovered the existence of this buried treasure, he’d ordered it dug it up and replaced it with an explosive. The theory was that Fujiyama and anyone interested in what he’d compiled would be vaporized before they could do any damage. Obviously, that hadn’t worked as planned. Leaving Fujiyama alive had proved to be a poor decision.

“Where are they now?” Himura said.

“Driving on Interstate Five in the American state of Oregon.”

“Destination?”

“Our assumption is the airport. Russell has been known to steal vehicles from long-term parking and based on the make and model of the car, we know it’s not a rental.”

“Can we control it?” Takahashi asked.

“No. It’s probably more than thirty years old.”

“Have they contacted anyone?” Himura said.

“Doubtful. They haven’t stopped and Fujiyama typically insists that people he meets with carry no electronics.”

“Do we have human assets in the area? Anyone who could intercept them?” Takahashi said.

“None.”

Takahashi took his intelligence director’s arm and pulled him back toward the wall. “There’s no way to know what Fujiyama told them before he died. We have to assume he gave them something—a thread to pull on.”

Himura nodded. “If we’re going to act, we need to act now. Before they can talk to their superiors. If we lose them again…” His voice faded.

“How?”

“We can’t use their car, but we can use others. I must caution you, though, General. The risk of exposure is incredibly high. In fact, it’s almost certain.”

Takahashi looked across the room at the screen being used to monitor Smith and Russell’s vehicle. Himura was right. It was impossibly dangerous. But doing nothing was equally dangerous. If they’d gone to Fujiyama, it seemed likely that they’d discovered the nanotech and suspected Japan of having a hand in its development.

“Do it,” Takahashi ordered.

Himura gave a short bow and walked up behind the young man at the terminal. “Are there other vehicles available?”

“Yes. But we’re going to lose the satellite image and the traffic around them is fairly light at this point. Their ETA to the airport is ten minutes. That’s plenty of time for us to tie into the security cameras. We’ll have good coverage and a higher density of modern vehicles.”

Himura put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Russell and Smith are not to enter the terminal. Is that understood?”

Portland International Airport
Portland, Oregon
USA

R
andi Russell eased the Gremlin into long-term parking, keeping a close eye on the rearview mirror. The sun was still up in a cloudless sky, creating a distracting glare on the sea of cars in front of the terminal. Her well-trained eye couldn’t spot anyone following, but she wasn’t sure that meant much anymore.

“Wait a minute,” Smith said, staring down at the notes he’d scrawled on a crumpled napkin from the glove box. “Was it Wedo?”

“Which one?”

He let out an exasperated breath. “Maki was the rocket fuel guy he told us about. His first name was something like Akido. This is the materials engineer. Genjiro Wedo?”

She shook her head. “Not Wedo. It ended in an
a
. Maybe Weda?”

“Yes!” he said, scribbling the name down. “That’s it. Genjiro Weda. Now all we need to do it figure out a way to get this to Star.”

She eased up to the parking kiosk and took a ticket before driving through the gate. “We’ll have our cell phones back in a few minutes, but even with Covert-One’s encryption protocols, I’m not sure we should use them. Fujiyama’s paranoia is rubbing off on me.”

“I don’t think it’s technically paranoia if someone just blew the top off the mountain you were standing on and killed your informant.”

“You make a valid point,” she said, stopping in front of a space with a red cone emblazoned with the words “No Parking.” She hopped out of the car and gave the cone a firm downward shove, collapsing it into a disk about the size of a Frisbee. When she got back in and pulled forward, Smith was already wiping down the interior to eradicate any fingerprints.

Randi retrieved a small backpack from the floor behind the seats and dug through its contents until she was able to release a hidden panel at the bottom. She handed Smith a wallet filled with well-worn IDs and credit cards, taking another for herself. “I assume you agree we should split up and buy return tickets under different names?”

“Hell yes,” he replied, replacing the wallet in his pocket with the new one. “I’m having a hard time believing where this is leading, but for now we assume the worst.”

“That the Japanese have spent the last thirty years quietly building a bunch of futuristic weapons that are now aimed directly at us?”

“When you put it that way, it sounds kind of bad, doesn’t it?” Smith said with a weak smile.

Randi mumbled something under her breath and stepped out into the bright sunlight, turning slowly as she took in everything around her. There were a few widely scattered people pulling suitcases to and from the terminal, but no one closer than fifty yards. Beyond that, there was a couple in a BMW paying at the kiosk and a woman in a Prius driving slowly up their aisle looking for a space.

“I say we skip the airport transportation and walk,” she said, slipping the backpack on. “We’ll get our phones out of storage and head back on different airlines.”

“Sounds about right,” Smith said, getting out and slamming the door. “The Gremlin’s not getting a detail and a full tank, huh?”

“First time ever,” Randi said. “I must be slipping.”

She started across the road toward the terminal and the moment she did, a high-pitched engine whine started to their right. Smith watched her spin, pulling a Beretta from beneath her jacket and bringing it level with the windshield of the Prius suddenly bearing down on them.

Randi had a gift for that kind of reaction. There was no time lag at all between her mind perceiving danger and her body dealing with that danger in the most efficient—and final—way possible. It was undoubtedly why she was still alive, but sometimes the speed of her instinct caused her to miss details.

Smith darted into the road, ignoring the pain in his back as he launched himself at her. He knew that her mind had transformed the human outline in the driver’s seat into nothing more than a target and that she was thinking only about how to hit that target in the most effective way possible. What he saw, though, was a terrified woman jerking desperately on an unresponsive steering wheel.

It was over in less than two seconds. He hit Randi broadside and they both toppled toward the row of cars parked behind her. Smith got clipped by the Prius’s front quarter panel, but the metal was so thin that it did little more than send him sprawling awkwardly onto the pavement.

Randi managed not to fall, instead slamming into the back of a Nissan Pathfinder just as the Prius jumped a sidewalk and rolled onto its top. She recovered quickly, turning a full 360 with her pistol held out in front of her, searching for a secondary attack. Around them, pedestrians were dropping their luggage and running in every direction, undoubtedly thinking this was the beginning of some kind of terrorist attack or mass shooting.

“What the hell, Jon!” Randi said, finally daring to glance down at him as he struggled to get back to his feet. “You could have—”

The empty Nissan she was standing behind suddenly started up and Smith saw the reverse lights flash on. This time her reactions were dulled by confusion and she was a split second too slow. The engine gunned and she went down, disappearing beneath the vehicle.

“Randi!” Smith shouted as the Nissan slammed into a Volkswagen in the next row. He bolted toward her, hearing the Pathfinder shift into drive for another try.

She was dazed and bleeding badly from one arm, but her thin frame combined with the Nissan’s enhanced ground clearance had kept her from being killed. He grabbed her by the front of her jacket, not bothering to look back at the vehicle bearing down on them from behind.

Thank God she was light. He threw her across the hood of a low-slung Mazda and leaped after her just as the Nissan collided with its rear bumper. They both tumbled over the side and landed in the narrow gap between the Mazda and the minivan next to it.

Randi had managed to shake off the impact and aim over the hood, putting two rounds neatly into the windshield of the Nissan. Predictably, both were dead center on the driver’s-seat headrest. Unfortunately, it was empty.

Smith grabbed her by the collar and yanked her back, pointing at the terminal building. “We’ve got to get out of here! Now!”

She took point and he realized he was coughing up blood again as he fought to keep up. Randi started to cut right in front of a brand-new Mercedes and he warned her off.

“No! Go left!”

She hesitated but then did as she was told, breaking into a sprint when the Mercedes started up and turned hard toward her. She barely managed to get in front of the old pickup Smith had been trying to direct her toward when the Mercedes rammed it. He dodged around the car and leaped into the truck’s bed, throwing himself over the top of the cab and coming down next to her.

“Stay behind me!”

Smith crouched, running what must have seemed like a random pattern as he went for intermittent cover between older vehicles. She shadowed him with her pistol still at the ready but unsure what to shoot at.

“Go!” he shouted when they reached the road that ran directly in front of the terminal. It was clogged with cars and hotel shuttles, most stopped because of the panicked people fleeing in every direction.

A cab suddenly accelerated toward them, but it was too low-slung to chase them up onto the sidewalk. Instead it slammed into the curb and ripped off a good chunk of its front end in a shower of sparks. Smith went for the doors, fighting against the people flowing out of them.

Inside the terminal, armed guards had their weapons out but, like everyone else, had no idea what the threat was or where it was coming from. Most people were going for the doors out of instinct but others were running deeper into the building, spreading the hysteria.

Randi let the gun slide from her hand and took off her jacket, keeping her head down as they passed the security cameras that so were ubiquitous in modern airports. Smith stripped off his coat too, letting it fall to the floor amid the travelers darting around them. He threw an arm around Randi and pulled her close, partially in an effort not to get separated but mostly to try to camouflage her blood-soaked sleeve.

With nowhere to go, they stayed in the densest part of the crowd, mimicking their movements and trying to blend in. With a little luck, whoever was watching would lose them in the chaos.