“Ordinarily, I would agree with you. And when I am in church on Sunday, I will light a candle in the memory of all those who perished, then go to confessional to wash myself of the sin of feeling so much joy. But for now, we must drink: Erik Vaughn was among the lost.”
“Vaughn?” Villante said. “I had not heard that. I was listening to the news on the way over and they said they had not released the names of any of the passengers yet. Are you sure?”
“Beyond a doubt,” Rivera said without elaborating. “The only shame of it is that the U.S. has grounded all air travel for the time being, which means I will have to wait to travel to his grave to spit on it.”
Villante did not need Rivera to explain his animosity for Congressman Erik Vaughn. The Autoridad del Canal de Panama had sent its director, Nico Serrano, to the United States to lobby for the three billion dollars needed to get the expansion project going again. It was a pittance to a government whose budget was nearing five trillion. And yet the congressman made it his personal mission to see that no aid was extended. A matter like that could be choked in committee, and Vaughn had squeezed the life out of it.
“With Vaughn out of the way, we’ll get our money,” Rivera continued. “I have already made phone calls to friends in the U.S. capital. The new Ways and Means committee chairman will be a man named Jared Stack. He bears us no animosity that I know of. The urgency of our situation must be impressed on him. You must tell Mr. Serrano to go back to the United States the moment the planes start flying again. My equipment has sat idle for too long.”
“You seem very confident of the outcome.”
“There is no doubt,” Rivera assured him.
Villante tilted his head. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you sabotaged that plane yourself.”
“Now, now,” Rivera said, smiling. “What would give you that idea?”
He raised his glass. “Let us drink: to the death of Erik Vaughn, and the inherent reasonable nature of Jared Stack.”
At the moment they tilted back their glasses, the moray eel darted out of the crevice where it had been hiding, snapped its jaws around an unsuspecting fish, and then retreated back to its den.
CHAPTER 8
FAIRFAX, Virginia
he image of a piece of a laser-incised sheet metal had chased Storm all the way back to Virginia.
Actually, it was two pieces of metal. There was the one he had seen on the ground in Pennsylvania. And there was the one he had seen in mid-flight as he clung to the wing of the airplane. He was, naturally, too busy to notice it at the time. But in his mind’s eye, he could look back and see that the aileron also had a straight line singed into it.
Not for the first time in his life, Derrick Storm was only alive because someone’s aim was just off. In the case of Flight 76, the laser had struck the underside of the cockpit, which had been catastrophic. On Flight 312, it had lopped off the wing. On Flight 494, it was the tail. All were parts that a plane could not fly without. Storm had been nothing more or less than lucky.
The idea of a weapon that powerful — in the hands of someone unafraid to use it to its ultimate and deadly capability — had Storm pushing the Chevy well past the speed limit. If he got a ticket, George Faytok would just have to deal with the points on his license.
He did not share his conclusions with the National Transportation Safety Board about what had happened to Flight 76. He did not feel like wasting the energy or, more importantly, the time. The NTSB would eventually put it together. Or not. A crash investigation like that was an exercise in closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, something that did not interest Storm. As long as flights remained grounded, the laser could not hurt anyone else. That was all that mattered for the moment.
Likewise, he had not yet briefed Jones, albeit for different reasons. With Jones, there was always the question of what he would do with the information he had been provided.
Storm wasn’t sure if he wanted Jones knowing about the laser. Or, at the very least, he wanted the opportunity to think through the ramifications of giving him such knowledge. And Storm was going to the one place where he did his clearest thinking.
It was not, perhaps, the place people might have expected for a world traveler like Storm to find solace. Storm spoke eight languages. He owned a secret retreat in the Seychelles. He had once undergone rituals that signified his lifelong bond to an aboriginal tribe in the Australian outback. An orphanage in Bacău, Romania, bore his name. A man in Tangier, Morocco, considered him a brother and would welcome him to his Moorish castle at a moment’s notice. The chief clerk at the International Court of Justice in The Hague owed him a thousand favors. A remote village above the Arctic Circle in Finland still thought of him as a conquering hero. There were those and dozens of other locations around the world where Derrick Storm could have gone and been welcomed, accepted, and treated like family.
Yet his preference was still a dowdy, split-level ranch in Fairfax County, Virginia. And that was the front door he was pushing through shortly after ten o’clock.
“Hey, Dad, it’s me,” Storm called out.
“In here,” Carl Storm responded from the living room.
Derrick walked in to see his father emerging from his Barcalounger. Carl had a full head of hair that had gone white. His eyebrows remained stubbornly black. His forehead was deeply lined, but it somehow made him look rugged instead of old. People often told Carl Storm he looked like the actor James Brolin. There was no question where Derrick had gotten his good looks.
The room was dark. The only light came from the television. The baseball game — the one the Storm boys were supposed to have attended — had been played under flags lowered to half-staff after Major League Baseball decided it was not going to be cowed by terrorists. The Orioles were putting the finishing touches on a 13–1 drubbing of the Yankees.
“Sorry we weren’t there to see it in person,” Derrick said, nodding at the game.
Carl Storm was on his feet. Derrick’s mother had died when he was a young boy. Carl had never remarried. It had been just the two of them for a long time. Carl had been a single dad with a demanding job at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but he had done everything he could to be twice the parent to his motherless son.
“You think I care about that after what you went through today?” Carl said. “Come here.”
Derrick met him halfway across the room and Carl wrapped his arms around his son. Even if Derrick had noticed a softening in Carl over the past few years, he remained a powerful man. His hugs still packed a wallop.
“Still, I’m going to make it up to you,” Derrick said. “Rain check. Just as soon as I get the chance.”
“Don’t worry about it. I understand. To be honest, I’m a little surprised to see you here. What’s up?”
“You got some time to talk?”
“You know you never even have to ask,” Carl said. “You want a beer?”
“That would be great.”
Carl returned with two Pabst Blue Ribbons — PBR being the only beer that Carl ever stocked. He muted the television and they sat, Carl in the Barcalounger and Derrick on a paisley patterned sofa. As with the rest of the house, the living room hadn’t changed much since the lady of the house had passed. Whether this was a kind of tribute to her — or just a bachelor’s reluctance to even attempt redecoration — was always a bit unclear to Derrick.
As they drained their drinks, Derrick told him about his experience aboard Flight 937, about what he had seen at the crash site and his certainty about what had caused the damage. Carl was retired now but hadn’t lost any of the skills that had made him one of the FBI’s best. He listened thoughtfully through the whole thing and was shaking his head when it was over.