In one compartment of his mind, Dar was wondering whether the Director of Central Intelligence would have made the same decision had he not been flashed the news of Petra’s identity. That was the kind of question he must never ask; it was prying at the teeth of a gift horse. Randolph had given him the option of continuing to ramrod this thing, and Dar had chosen to stay. Though Dar had always felt the highest respect for Abraham Randolph, never before had he felt like hugging the man.
Dar put the phone down, sighed, and shook hands with the wiry little scholar, Bill Sheppard. “You’ve met Unruh,” he said, trying to maintain a pose of briskness when he felt like bursting into tears.
Sheppard, looking a bit rumpled in shirtsleeves with his tie askew, was trying not to stare. “You’re handling this directly? Under the circumstances I’m, ah, sure it can’t be easy for you.” Of course Sheppard would know about Petra already. It had been foolish to hope otherwise.
“I’m just following policy on this, Bill, not making it.” He realized how edgy that had sounded, when he needed all the diplomacy at his command. He forced a smile and indicated the coffee bar with its pile of doughnuts nearby. “You and I get to chew over the tactics, and you can start by chewing on a glazed old-fashioned if you like. Oh, and an APB you may want to edit. We’ve just finished it,” he said, handing over the printout. Some version of that allpoints bulletin would soon be issuing from laser printers in several states. That APB would have been out already were it not for the need to coordinate everything this way, face-to-face, with a sister agency. All this complication was buying time for the other side.
Dar noted that Bill Sheppard continued to eye him quietly as the NSA deputy strayed toward the doughnuts and coffee, studying Dar over the top of the APB. Certainly it wasn’t going to be easy, but perhaps easier than going back to his office in Langley and ramming his head against the wall. The hardest part might be having to tell Phil and Andrea to be ready for the worst. He would say that in any case, but there were ways to imply good reason to hope, and ways to deny much hope. It occurred to him suddenly that he had no real choice on that call; whatever the decision here in Blue Hangar, he would have to shore up Andrea’s courage until the last shred of his own hope was gone. Until, in fact, he had seen Petra’s body, so near an exact copy of her mother’s…
Moments later, the door from the offices flew open as Medina entered with Ben Ullmer in tow.
“…unless you have to. Listen to me, Medina: we don’t give a shit about the fuckin’ airchine. It’s a gift; bust it up, but not so much that you lose your hide for it. Oh hi, Bill, with you in a minute.” Medina carried a leather one-suiter over one shoulder and a bulky sport equipment bag at his side, saying nothing, nodding frequently as he swivel-hipped his flamenco dancer’s rump between folding chairs and into the hangar proper, merely using the place as a shortcut toward the runway with Ullmer hurrying after. Ullmer continued until they were out of earshot: “Recheck the pressure in those scuba tanks. If we had a KH-12 available, I could get us a steady satellite link but that’s out….”
Dar met Sheppard’s gaze, and both men smiled sadly. “Ben wants to go himself,” Dar said.
“Wouldn’t that be a picture? High blood pressure, corns the size of manhole covers, and a Georgia accent thick as candlewax. But that’s not why he’s so anxious,” Sheppard replied slowly, making a scientific experiment of dunking his doughnut. “Ben loves his people. He wants to empty his entire brain into Medina’s, give his man the benefit of every scintilla of knowledge he’s accumulated in over sixty years.”
“But he can’t.”
“Of course he can’t. But he can’t stop himself from rattling on, thinking out loud, hoping some drop of that”he was chuckling now“that tsunami of words will help Medina. Whereas you and I know better.”
Dar tried to make it light. “Refresh me.”
Sheppard took a sopping bite, shrugged, and wiped his chin. “Nothing can help Medina but what he’s already internalized over the years, plus whatever his adrenal medulla can pump out for him in the very millisecond he needs it.” Sheppard’s owlish gaze was mild, his stand unassailable. Almost.
“Plus luck,” said Dar Weston in a choked voice, turning away so that the NSA deputy would not see the sudden upwelling of tears. He might have tried to prepare Petra for such barbarous possibilities as this, urged martial arts training, everything it took to make his daughter more than the equal of a kidnapper. Because he had not done any such thing, he had nothing left to hope for except her luck. If Sheppard tries to lecture me on the statistical foolishness of luck I will throttle him with my bare hands.
“Oh yes, that’s a given,” said Sheppard around another soggy mouthful. “Problem is, it’s given randomly on all sides.”
A distant surge of white noise, accompanied by keening whistles, suggested something very much more potent than a Learjet taxiing into the distance. Ben Ullmer hurried in with that sore-footed stride moments later, scratching his bald pate and muttering.
Sheppard: “How is Medina taking it, Ben?”
Ullmer: “The dumb shit, he’s just happy to be in a Phantom Two. He’ll be in Dago in less’n three hours, meeting those Company mercenaries for the last leg. I expect that’s when he’ll start taking it all seriously.” His sigh would have been appropriate for a wayward son. “I wonder where the hellbug is now,” he added.
“It has to be down,” said Sheppard, “unless the pilot expects to glide it to Moscow.” Scanning the big wall map, he went on, “He’s got to have fuel dumps along the way, and some help. It just won’t play any other way unless the man is crazy.”
“The hellbug will soar,” Ullmer replied, “especially without much of a fuel load.” He pulled up a folding chair, reached for a doughnut, thought better of it. Seated at a worktable with Dar and Sheppard, he studied the deletions Sheppard had made in the APB while Terry Unruh, lost in his own thoughts, paced behind them.
“Looks good, I guess I was saying too much,” Ullmer said, dropping the page with the neat lines Sheppard had drawn through a few phrases. “Except one place. You cut out the caution against destroying the hellbug.”
Dar took a deep breath, but held his silence. “You can build another one, Ben. The Sovs will be monitoring radio traffic and chances are overwhelming they’ll realize the airplane can become visually low-observable on demand. That’s okay, so long as they don’t find out how. We’re giving them a chameleon paint job as it is. But the real pixel skin must not be seen by the other side, not even a piece of it,” said Sheppard.
“I’m thinking about the girl,” Ullmer said, “and you know it. She’s not a ringer or a copilot. She’s a goddamn hostage. Must be twenty people who know that already. You want the Feebs holding that over you?”
Very softly, pulling at his tie and with a glance toward Dar that might have contained guilt, Sheppard said, “That decision is over my head, Ben. Like Dar, I’m not making policy, I’m just implementing it.”
Ullmer licked his lips and nodded, glancing to Dar, then to Sheppard. “Say we find the hellbug well inside the continental U.S., where we can try to force it down. What does policy say about that?”