“Nor can we rule out Sword personnel,” Megan said.
Nimec looked at her. “That’s right,” he said. “We can’t.”
Gordian glanced from one to the other. “Impressions?”
“The invasion force was well organized and armed to the teeth,” Nimec said. “It had land and air elements that performed with exceptional tactical coordination and were equipped with a French integrated weapon/helmet-mounted targeting package that gave them the equivalent of our country’s Land Warrior system — ordnance that’s technically still in field trials. The airborne teams that we think took out the robots made their insertion using high-altitude-high-opening para techniques. Again, we’re looking at skills, experience, and equipment generally associated with elite commando units. They made the terrorists who hit us in Russia a couple years back look like toy soldiers.”
“I assume none of the men we captured gave up information about who sent them?”
“There hardly would have been a chance if they’d wanted to,” Megan said. “Brazilian federal police scooped them out of our hands within an hour after we notified them of the strike.”
“Which is pretty much what I expected. Have we made official inquiries of the gendarmes since then?”
“Several, but they haven’t exactly been eager to respond. Nobody we’ve contacted even seems sure where the prisoners are being detained.”
“And I’d be willing to bet they’re never seen or heard from again.” Nimec rubbed his thumb over his fingers. “Whoever could launch an operation of the kind we saw the other night has got to have plenty of grease. The hinky bastards that pass for lawmen down there would be just the ones to soak it up. Mark my words, Gord, we’ll get zero disclosure from them.”
“We have our own intelligence resources. The ground units would have needed to stage from positions somewhere relatively close to the plant.”
“The key word being ‘relatively,’ ” Nimec said. “There are hundreds of miles of wilderness in the Mato Grasso. Territory where you could hide a fair-sized encampment if you have the know-how. As those people clearly would.”
Gordian rubbed the back of his neck.
“They’ve got concealment and cover, we’ve got the Hawkeye,” he said. “Let’s put our new bird through its paces and see who wins the Kewpie.”
“What I was just about to suggest,” Nimec said. “I’ll order the satellite jogged into position soon as I get to Brazil.”
Gordian shook his head. “You can do that from a ground station right here in the states, Pete.”
“Sure, but my point is that with Rollie’s situation uncertain, we need somebody in charge down there—”
“I agree,” Gordian said. “However, right now I’d prefer to have you in Florida as our liaison and advisor to the Orion investigation.”
Nimec looked at him. “I thought you’d wrangled it so that Annie Caulfield was chosen to head the probe.”
“I did. And I have complete confidence in her leadership.”
“Yet you still want me to keep an eye on things?”
“To keep me abreast of developments,” Gordian said. “Furthermore, there are some people at NASA who may be in a snit about Annie’s accession, so to speak, and I’d like to have someone in place to backstop her should she run into difficulties.”
“Right off the top of my head, I’m able to name at least a dozen people in our organization who can do the job as well as I can,” Nimec said.
“Only if we disregard your experience in identifying the characteristics of sabotage,” Gordian said. “I hope it doesn’t become essential, but we have to be ready just in case. Which is my third reason for wanting you at the Cape.”
Nimec sat there for a moment of dead silence. Gordian’s fixed expression told him it wouldn’t do any good to contest his decision, that things would have to go his way whether Nimec liked it or not. Besides, he could present no logical argument; everything Gordian had said made perfect sense.
In spite of the logic and sense, though, all Nimec could think was that he was finally getting his due for Malaysia. That Gordian was expressing his concern about a replay of the cowboys-and-Indians scenario that had grown out of Nimec’s tolerance of Max Blackburn’s unauthorized investigation into Monolith Technologies a year ago. He could still remember Gordian’s words when he’d found out about it. At that point it had been evident that Blackburn was in trouble. No one had yet guessed how serious it would turn out to be, but Max had disappeared, and Nimec had finally had to ask his employer’s permission to go looking for him.
Yes, he could remember Gord’s exact words.
“It’s beyond me how you could have been part of something this reckless, Pete. Completely beyond me… the two of you launched a caper that could have sunk us in quicksand. And very likely has… ”
Nimec breathed. Maybe it hadn’t sunk them, but Max was dead, and he owned a share of the blame. Maybe, too, he deserved to be making reparations.
“Who you plan on sending to Mato Grasso?” he asked.
Another dead moment.
Megan shifted in her chair.
“Gord’s asked me to go,” she said.
Nimec looked at her.
“I apologize.” She averted her eyes for the briefest instant. “I probably should have told you sooner.”
He was quiet.
“Pete, one more thing,” Gordian said, breaking into the silence at what he thought was an opportune moment. “Have you heard from Tom Ricci? We can’t afford to get hung up as far as the Sword position.”
“He left a message on my voice mail this morning. I plan to return the call as soon as I get back to my office.”
“No indication yet about how he’s leaning?”
Nimec shook his head.
“He’d want to talk to me directly.”
Gordian nodded. “I can see that.”
Megan smoothed her skirt over her legs.
“Must be a guy thing,” she half-muttered.
Gordian looked at her, raising his eyebrows.
“You haven’t spoken to my wife lately, have you?”
“No,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
Gordian looked at her another moment.
“Never mind,” he said, and scratched behind his ear. “It’s nothing important.”
TWELVE
Annie Caulfield had been thrust into the role of NASA spokeswoman often enough to have grown philosophical about it. See it as a burden and it would become one, and when it became one it would start to show on camera, and when it started showing on camera you’d be perceived as touchy and evasive, i.e., having something to hide, and the press corps would pound you without mercy. See it as a sort of friendly jousting match with reporters and interviewers, get too cute, and you would come off as one of the gang, an egotistical, overly glib insider who was enjoying the limelight, cozying up to your questioners for personal advancement — perhaps in anticipation of joining their ranks as a pundit, or expert consultant as it was formally called — and had very likely gotten into cahoots with them to put one over on the average citizen. See it as a means of serving the public’s legitimate right to know while doing your best to shape a positive perception of the agency, be honest about the facts you disclosed and equally aboveboard explaining instances when you couldn’t make certain information available, and you’d be solidly on Annie’s preferred course. Yes, it was always part performance and part ritual… but a performance could be either sincere or insincere, a ritual of light or shadow, and she tried her earnest best to stay on the side of the angels.