But there was nothing to be gained by fretting over what America didn’t have.
Grafton looked up a telephone number in his private address book and dialed it on his secure outside line. After the third ring, a female voice answered.
“Sarah Houston.”
“Jake Grafton, Sarah. How’re things?”
“You know, after I read in the papers that you were the new acting director at Langley, I wondered how long it would be before you called me.”
Grafton smiled. Sarah couldn’t see it on the phone, of course, so he let it show. Houston was at the National Security Agency, the intelligence service that used batteries of supercomputers to monitor electronic communications all over the planet. Some of their activities in the United States had been revealed to the press by Edward Snowden, another traitor, a revelation that had caused a political firestorm worldwide and crippled the service. Just how much, no one in the know was saying.
“I thought after Snowden you might be looking for a job,” Grafton said.
“You never know,” she replied coldly. “If they can me, I’m thinking of buying an RV with my severance money and becoming a gypsy.”
“We could always use you over here.”
“Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
“The reason I called, I need some help.”
“Well, duh. I didn’t think you were calling to wish me Happy Birthday or Merry Christmas.”
“Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas. Just in case. I need some help getting access to a couple of FBI files. They are being sticky, and I want a look. Probably nothing to it.”
He paused to give her a chance to say something but got only silence.
Grafton continued, “They’re case files. May I give you the numbers?”
“Damn, Admiral. You’re going to get me sent right back to prison.”
“Not unless you’ve lost your touch.”
She said a word that was illegal to use on the telephone. Grafton had helped the U.S. attorneys prosecute her a few years ago. She pled guilty to thirty-seven felonies and went to prison. Then he had gotten her out, not paroled, but temporarily released, when he needed her hacking and data-mining expertise. She was still temporarily out, unofficially, but with a new name, a new life story, a new driver’s license and a new Social Security number. Still, the prison sentence was always there, hanging over her neck like the sword of Damocles. Grafton knew she resented him for it. Owed him and resented him.
“You want the whole files or a synopsis or what?”
“Whatever you can get.”
“Give me the numbers,” she said flatly.
Grafton read them off. “Call me if and when,” he said, and read off the number of the secure phone in his office.
“It’ll be a day or two.” Her lack of enthusiasm was palpable.
The admiral ignored it. “Fine,” he said heartily and closed with “slave labor is so rewarding.”
She hung up on him. Jake Grafton smiled again and cradled the instrument.
Chong had the handheld radio transceiver tuned to the Denver Ground Control frequency, 121.85. The wind was still out of the south, and the cloud deck had come down to ten thousand feet. He knew that because he had listened to the Automatic Terminal Information System. Denver was still landing and taking off planes to the south.
But the airport was silent just now, without a single airplane in the air. That was because the president’s plane was about to depart, so all traffic into Denver was holding at various fixes all over Colorado. Planes waiting to take off were still at the gate. No doubt the passengers in the terminals were peeved beyond endurance, calling on their cell phones, worrying about connections and missed business meetings, and queued up at the restaurants, bars and restrooms. All to prevent a suicider from ramming the president’s plane as it took off and climbed to altitude.
Air Force One had called for its clearance twenty minutes ago, probably while the president’s motorcade was en route from the University of Colorado in Boulder, where the president had made a speech to his favorite fans, liberal college students who knew in their hearts he was on the side of history and the angels.
The van was slowly cruising a dirt farm road south of the airport, parallel to and a mile or so north of the east-west highway that ran by Front Range Airport, a general aviation airport, and out across the high plains through various hamlets on its way to Kansas.
Joe and Frank were in the back with the Raven, its battery fully charged, its little EMP bomb wired up with its detonator and ready to pop. The concussion would destroy the Raven, of course, and pieces of it would flutter down into the pastures, there to be found by investigators. The van would also be found, abandoned and burned to ensure there were no fingerprints and DNA samples to be obtained from it. Not that it mattered. The four men would be long out of the country by the time FBI and Secret Service investigators put it all together.
Good luck finding us, Chong thought. Not that the Americans wouldn’t try. They would move heaven and earth to find the president’s assassins. They would never give up, but the trail would lead them nowhere.
All the precautions had been taken. Every possible lead was a dead end. Months had been spent setting up this operation. He sat there holding the handheld, scanning the roads for security vehicles and thinking about loose mouths. The only possible way for the investigators to find them, Chong believed, was a wagging tongue, a tongue loosened by alcohol or the need to inflate an ego.
He didn’t know the other men’s real names, nor did they know his. They all had separate escape routes, passports that would not be questioned. The plan was as solid as very careful, well-financed professional criminals with adequate time to prepare could make it.
All four of them would be rich, of course. Rich and ready for a life of leisure, women, the good things in life. By God, Chong was ready. He assumed the others were, too.
The radio hissed, and then words came out. “Denver Ground, Air Force One ready to taxi.” So the president was aboard, the plane was buttoned up and the engines were turning.
“Air Force One, taxi Runway One Seven Left. Route at your discretion.” In other words, the airport was empty of taxiing airplanes, so the ground controllers didn’t care which taxiways the pilot chose to get his plane to Runway One Seven Left. Other pilots listening on the frequency must be green with envy.
One Seven Left. The departure route would be behind the van.
Cheech turned the van around in the road, carefully so it wouldn’t go into a ditch, and drove a half mile or so, until Chong told him to stop. They were on a tiny swell in the prairie, and he could see the entire runway with binoculars.
There it was! Taxiing.
He looked east along the highway, then stepped from the van and looked west. The road was empty in both directions. He swept the binoculars around the fields north and south. Some horses, a few cattle. Fences, plowed wheat fields … and little else.
“Let’s get ready.”
Cheech shut down the van and climbed out. Opened the hood.