Lambert said, “As luck would have it, I’ve already had this discussion with the President. The FBI’s taking the lead on the case, but we’ve been cleared to conduct our own parallel investigation — separate from the FBI.”
Fisher understood the order. While he loathed politics in general and did his best to stay out of it, he knew what was driving the President’s caution: the war in Iraq. Someone had just launched an attack on the U.S. that could have killed thousands of people and rendered a section of the Virginia shoreline radioactive for decades, perhaps centuries. So far, the only suspect was a lone man of Middle Eastern descent aboard the Trego. If America was headed toward another war in the Middle East, the President didn’t want another intelligence fiasco. America had just started rebuilding the credibility it had lost over Iraq. It would be Third Echelon’s job to make doubly sure all t’s were crossed and i’s were dotted.
“Restrictions?” Fisher asked.
“None,” Lambert replied. “We do it our way; gloves off.”
“The only way to fly.”
“Amen. Now, go get some sleep. Tomorrow night, you’re breaking into a U.S. naval base.”
Fisher lived outside Germantown, Maryland, about thirty minutes northwest of Washington, in a small farmhouse surrounded by two acres of red maple and pine. He’d tried living a normal bachelor life: a townhouse, socializing with neighbors, sitting around the pool… But he’d quickly admitted what he already knew in the back of his mind: He wasn’t much of a people person. Not that he disliked people per se, but he had a limited tolerance for most of them.
It was a hazard that came with the job. Dealing with the worst of men in the worst of situations tended to change you. Living in the condo, Fisher had found himself mentally dissecting both his neighbors and his surroundings: threat or no threat; likely ambush sites; clear lines of fire… Living on the razor’s edge, while often exciting, was also all-consuming. You didn’t survive long in special operations without fully immersing yourself in that world. Not having a home where he could let down his guard and decompress had gotten very old, very quickly.
At the farmhouse, his closest neighbor was half a mile away. He could sit on his porch at night and hear nothing but the hum of the cicadas and the croaking of frogs. Surprisingly, he’d found the land itself therapeutic. He’d bought the property at a deep discount from an owner who’d allowed it to fall into disrepair, so he spent much of his time working at taming the landscaping or restoring the farmhouse, which needed new everything, from windows to shingles to plumbing. Fisher took comfort in the work — in the ordinariness of it all. Even the briefest of layovers at the farmhouse between missions helped recharge his batteries.
By the time he got home it was near dawn. He threw in a load of laundry, took a shower, checked his e-mail, and stretched out on the couch. He found the remote and turned on the TV. The channel was set to CNN.
“… what few initial eyewitness reports we’ve come across talk of dozens of people collapsing where they were standing or slumping over at the dining table… ”
Fisher sat bolt upright. He turned up the volume.
“The spokesperson for the governor’s office issued a statement stating that investigators were en route to the small town of Slipstone and that the governor himself would be holding a press conference later this morning. Meanwhile, speculation abounds as to what may be behind the sudden and mysterious deaths in the remote town of Slipstone, New Mexico.”
Fisher felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. His cell phone started ringing.
He was back at Situation Room forty minutes later. Lambert stood at the conference table watching an MSNBC report. Grimsdottir and Redding were seated at workstations on either side of him. In the background Fisher heard the static hiss of radio punctuated by a female voice:
“Slipstone Nine-one-one, please hold… Slipstone Nine-one-one, please hold… Slipstone Nine-one-one, please hold… ”
Lambert looked over his shoulder at Fisher. “Two hundred emergency calls and counting. As far as we can decipher, there are hundreds dead. They’re laying in the streets, in homes, dead at their steering wheels… ”
“Good God,” Fisher murmured.
Grimsdottir called, “I’ve got it, Colonel.”
“Put it up.”
The main monitor resolved into a thermal satellite image of what Fisher assumed was Slipstone.
“Give me the overlay, Anna.”
Grimsdottir tapped the keyboard and the image changed to a maze of yellow and orange lines punctuated by circular blooms of red. To Fisher the colors looked eerily familiar. Already guessing the answer, he asked, “What are we seeing, Colonel?”
“Slipstone’s water system.”
“There’re only a few ways that many people can die that quickly: waterborne or airborne.”
His eyes still fixed on the monitor, Lambert nodded grimly. “How long, Anna?”
“Almost there, Colonel.” A few moments later: “Confirmed: it’s the same signature as the Trego.”
Fisher felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He turned away from the screen and took a deep breath. The Trego had just been the opening salvo. This was the real event.
Someone had just poisoned an entire American town.
6
Fisher angled downward until his depth gauge read thirty feet, then leveled off and checked his OPSAT. He was on track, almost dead center in the middle of the Elizabeth River. A quarter mile to go. His rebreather unit hissed softly in his ears. As it always did, the sound reminded Fisher of a mellower version of Darth Vader.
Displayed across his facemask was a HUD, or Heads-Up Display. Like the display projected onto the windscreen of a modern jet fighter, the faint green overlay on his face mask told him virtually everything he needed to know about his environment, including a map of the river and the shipyard, his current position, the river’s depth and temperature, and distance and bearing to his next waypoint, which showed as a yellow arrow near the upper edge of his mask that changed position and length according to his position. Follow the yellow brick arrow.
Deciding best how to penetrate the shipyard’s Southgate Annex, one of the most secure yards on the Eastern Seaboard, had been the easiest part of his mission. Given the high level of base security, an approach by land was a nonstarter, which had left only one other option: water. This suited Fisher’s preference. His SEAL days had taught him to trust the water. Water was safety; water was camouflage; water was anonymity.
Norfolk Naval Shipyard is one of the busiest in the country, servicing on any given day as much as fifteen percent of the U.S. Navy’s fleet. With seven thousand employees, five hundred acres, and sixty-nine production buildings, the shipyard was an impressive site — more so since it was located eight miles south of the Norfolk Naval Station proper, in the southern branch of the relatively quiet Elizabeth River.
An hour earlier Fisher had parked his car in a wooded parking lot overlooking the eastern bank of the river, and waited until a teenage couple in a steamed-up Ford Escort finished their business and drove off. He’d then retrieved his duffel and walked a few hundred yards through the woods to the shoreline, where he changed into his wet suit, rebreather harness, mask, and fins, then slipped into the water.
Now Fisher craned his head back, checking the surface for boats. It was two A.M. He’d seen virtually no traffic, save for the occasional civilian motor cruiser returning home late after a day of fishing in the Chesapeake. He finned upward and broke the surface, careful to allow only the upper half of his mask to show. To his right, upriver, he could see car headlights crossing the Jordan Bridge, which linked the western and eastern shores.