The message was unsigned.
Chapter Eleven
Sam surfaced alongside the other divers. This time, he emerged on the west side of the river. The Secretary of Defense was there, waiting for him, her helicopter waiting nearby.
“Well?” she asked.
“No bomb,” Sam said. “The sub’s empty.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled a deep breath. Opening them again, she said, “Nothing there? Not even a pilot?”
Sam nodded. “Nothing except a note.”
“A note?”
“Yeah, it was addressed to me specifically. Its author wrote: so good of you to join us. Now that you’re here, the game can begin…”
Her jaw tightened with displeasure. “Someone’s playing a game with you?’
“It would appear so, ma’am.” Sam grimaced. “But even though the note was addressed to me, the game is being played with everybody — like it or not.”
“Christ. Who knows how many powerful people you and your family have pissed off over the years?” She turned to an aide, and, taking command of the situation said, “I need a handwriting analyst, an underwater forensics team, and a terrorism profiler. This doesn’t sound like the usual sort. Nothing about religion or politics. We’re going to have to bring that sub up, but I don’t have time for it now. What the hell kind of terrorist wants to play a game with you, Reilly? This is going to be an absolute shit storm.”
“I have to agree, ma’am.” It was a sunny day, but someone thoughtfully dropped a blanket over his shoulders anyway. “I don’t have a clue who’s trying to get my attention, but I’m going to find out.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “A little detective work. I think I’ll start with the kid who inherited the map to the bomb.”
The secretary shook her head. “I’ve already had him checked over. He’s a nobody, Sam. You know what he’s been doing since he got his inheritance? Spending it in Manhattan. Let me correct myself in case I gave you the wrong impression. He’s bought an apartment building and appears to be setting it up as some kind of computer-game haven. Sound proof walls, energy drinks, and computer games. There’s no way he could have retrieved the bomb. We have him under surveillance.”
Sam asked, “You’ve checked with air traffic control for any flights during the last week between Maryland and the Great Falls of the Potomac?”
“Of course. We have no records of any helicopters or other craft flying near the crash area in the last three months. Nothing.”
Sam watched the water. The other divers had come up. It was going to be impossible to move the midget sub out of the river until after the lockdown on D.C. ended. There was no way to get a vehicle into the area to pull the sub out, or to haul it away. As always during an emergency, everyone was trying to make an exception of themselves, and every road was packed bumper-to-bumper with cars. It was all the local police — already stretched beyond their limits — could do to keep the onlookers away from the riverbank.
Nothing to see here. Just a sub that might have been carrying a nuclear bomb…
“What are you thinking?” the secretary asked.
“Something is off about all this.”
“Agreed. To what are you specifically referring? Anything? Or just a general sense?”
“Something specific is bothering me.” As he spoke, the off feeling settled in his mind. “That bomb had to weigh, what? Several thousand pounds?”
The secretary shook her head. “My people tell me it would have weighed more in the vicinity of eleven thousand. Why?”
“It seems pretty much impossible to move a bomb weighing more than five and a half tons out of a thickly wooded area on foot. Or was there a road cut into the trees?”
“No, nothing like that. I’ve seen drone footage.”
He grinned. “So how did they do it?”
“We’ve no idea.”
“Maybe the question isn’t how, but when. The bomb isn’t here in the river now. Which means that it could have been moved earlier. Since we know the kid didn’t do it, it doesn’t even depend on him receiving his grandfather’s bequest including the map. Anybody could have found it and moved it.”
“Good point. I’ll have the records search widened.”
Sam looked back and forth between D.C. and the Virginia sides of the river. Traffic backed up as far as the eye could see. “I need a ride to Manhattan. I could call Tom to get me, but I don’t think the Air Force would be too happy. This entire area must be a no-fly-zone.”
“I can get you to the Ronald Reagan Airport. You can take a commercial jet to JFK.”
“It’s a deal. After that I’ll pay the kid a visit and see what I can learn about his grandfather — and whoever else he might have spilled his secrets to.”
“You still think he was involved?” the Secretary of Defense asked.
He shrugged. “He’s the only lead we’ve got.”
Sam boarded the VH-60N Black Hawk with the Secretary of Defense, who needed to return to the Pentagon to update the President and the Commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — who were now bunkered beneath the White House.
Sam took his seat next to her, put his headset and seatbelts on, as the Black Hawk took off. It nosed down and began its south-eastern direction, crossing the Potomac, heading in a direct route to the Pentagon.
Behind them a second VIP helicopter was ferrying the first set of Congressmen and Congresswomen out of the Capitol.
Sam leaned back into his chair and exhaled a deep breath of air. Everything had happened so quickly in the past thirty minutes, it was hard to take it all in. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
They were nearly across the Potomac.
The flash rose from the eastern side of the river — outside of the Capital — racing toward them.
He swore and an instant later, the pilot banked sharply to the left.
The FIM-92 Stinger’s surface-to-air missile raced past them, leaving a trail of fire, locking onto the tail of the second helicopter.
Sam braced. His head snapped round, his eyes following the missile’s deadly trajectory as it struck the tail of the second helicopter.
The tail erupted into a ball of flame and for a second the helicopter hovered, while the pilot tried to maintain control. Unbalanced, and unable to offset the extreme torque by the main rotor, the helicopter made progressively larger and larger circles before entering an uncontrollable spin.
The pilot throttled down and set the craft into autorotation.
Sam watched as the helicopter raced toward the surface of the Potomac, before leveling out gradually an instant before it struck the surface of the river. The main rotor blade kept spinning, slicing the waves, before the helicopter sank, disappearing beneath the murky waters.
Chapter Twelve
Sam felt his gut slide, as the pilot of the Secretary’s Black Hawk increased speed and height. For a heated minute the helicopter raced along the Potomac before coming in to land on the secure helipad on top of the Pentagon.
As the rotor blades came to a dull whine the Secretary of Defense unclipped her harness and leaned toward the pilot. Her voice was loud and confident as she spoke, “Henriks! What do we know?”
The airman looked back at her, over his shoulder. “Not much I’m afraid, ma’am. Someone based on the east side of the Potomac fired a Stinger surface-to-air missile. It narrowly missed us, and took out our tailing helicopter from the 12th Aviation Battalion.”
“Any survivors?”
“Yes. According to reports. Several occupants have surfaced and climbed on board a deployed life raft.”
Her jaw set. “And the shooter or shooters?”