The Asset

  The mention of her young son quickly snapped her out of it and she practically jogged out of the terminal.

  “You’re a slick motherfucker,” Love said behind him.

  “How long have you been there?” he asked.

  “Long enough. You know I got your back.”

  SIBERIA

  Day 45

  Trudeau huddled next to a space heater in an abandoned apartment. He was going on almost twenty-four hours of squatting in a block of run-down flats for nickel mine workers. Luckily, the building had central heat because of the families who still lived there, but the empty unit he was able to find had two broken windows, so he’d bought the space heater, along with as much packaged food and water as he could carry, at a local store. He had gotten very lucky and was able to convince his Russian support agent that she would not get disavowed if she came back to save his ass. She had driven him there after the airport cabdrivers refused to take him and he nearly froze to death on the side of the road.

  He was about to lose his mind from sleep deprivation when he finally felt his satellite phone buzz in his pocket. He pulled it out with shaking fingers and checked the screen. Sat connection was restored and the phone was downloading hundreds of text messages from Juarez, asking about his status. The last few were Juarez saying he was coming to Norilsk to retrieve him. He had secured a private plane and was going to pick Trudeau up at Valek Airport, a small airstrip nine kilometers northeast of the city. Aly­kel Airport was too dangerous for the extraction. Trudeau was ecstatic. Based on the time the texts were sent, Juarez would be arriving that night. Trudeau rang him.

  “Are you all right?” Juarez asked.

  Trudeau could hear the drone of airplane engines in the background.

  “Tired and freezing, but fine. What’s the scenario?”

  “Private plane registered as med evac for cancer patients going to Moscow for treatment,” Juarez said. “Strip is a five-mile walk from your location. Better get going.”

  Juarez hung up before Trudeau could complain about the fact that it was arctic cold outside. Coming out of the construction site, he checked the street. Empty as a tomb. He jogged to stay warm, his lungs burning from the shock of the frigid air. He was numb all over by the time he made it to the outskirts of Valek Airport. He walked along the edge of the fence, following the map coordinates sent by Juarez and trying to make out anything that remotely resembled an airport in the driving snow, when a Russian military transport vehicle emerged from the mist, its patrol lights scanning the perimeter. Trudeau had nowhere to hide as the vehicle stopped next to him and two soldiers got out.

  “Passport,” one of them said sternly in Russian, pointing his assault rifle at Trudeau.

  He handed them his cover passport—Norwegian businessman, oil and gas consultant. The soldiers didn’t give a shit if he was Mother Teresa. They took one look at the passport and opened the back door to the military vehicle for him.

  One of them motioned to the car with his rifle barrel.

  Trudeau saw no way out. At least in the truck he would die warm. He got into the backseat and they shut the door, locking it from the outside. Another soldier was on the seat next to him. The soldier who had checked his passport sat in the front passenger seat and turned to address Trudeau, this time in English.

  “Sir, we are detaining you for further questioning with Russian military intelligence.”

  “What in God’s name for?” Trudeau protested.

  The soldier next to him punched him hard in the face, breaking his nose. Then he slammed his rifle barrel into Trudeau’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him. The soldier in the passenger seat offered him a dirty oil rag for his bloody nose.

  “What is the purpose of your visit here?” the soldier asked calmly.

  “I’m a businessman,” Trudeau gasped. “Hired by your government. My visa is in my passport case. I demand to be taken to my embassy.”

  The soldier next to Trudeau backhanded him, splitting his brow. Blood poured into his eye. Then he hit him in the jaw, knocking him unconscious.

  * * *

  When Trudeau came to, his wrists and ankles were zip-tied and he could only see out of one eye. He had no idea how long he’d been out and he could no longer feel the weight of his sat phone in his pocket. He was a dead man. Soon he would be on a Russian military base, taking his last breaths in agonizing pain, not knowing if he’d said anything to compromise Red Carpet.

  The dim amber lights of what was probably the nearest base hovered in the distance. He had to get out of that truck. Even if he died trying, it was going to be better than what waited for him at point B. He was getting ready to roll onto his back and start kicking the shit out of the soldier next to him when he heard a loud snapping sound, like the crack of a whip. A high-velocity sniper round zipped through the driver’s-side window and decapitated the man behind the wheel. Blood, brains, and skull fragments exploded all over the dash and windshield. The vehicle spun out of control and smashed into a guardrail, nearly flipping on its side. Trudeau was thrown against the backseat and then to the floor. The soldier in the front passenger seat hit the windshield. His head shattered it and he died instantly.

  The soldier next to Trudeau panicked and tried to open the back door, forgetting it was locked from the outside. He smashed the window with the butt of his rifle, but Juarez was standing there, framed by the jagged glass. Before the soldier could even think about reacting, Juarez shot him in the chest with the sniper rifle. Then Juarez shoved the rifle barrel into the open window, ready to execute any additional soldiers.

  “Juarez! It’s me, Trudeau!”

  Juarez cut Trudeau’s zip ties and dragged the corpses of the soldiers into the ditch. Then he got back in the beat-up transport vehicle and fired up the engine, flipped a U-turn, and headed toward the airport. He looked back at Trudeau, who was covered in blood and shivering.

  “You hit?”

  “No,” he said.

  The Russian military base dispatcher’s voice blasted through the radio speaker.

  “They’re checking our twenty. Keep quiet for a second.”

  Juarez grabbed the radio and spoke perfect Russian to the person on the other end of the radio. By the time he was done, the two of them were laughing about something like old pals. Juarez signed off and drove the truck into the airport entrance, his eyes darting all over, checking for any other military vehicles.

  “Almost there. We’re going to need to hustle. Their base is only about ten minutes from here and I’m sure they’re on their way. You gonna make it?”

  “I can make it,” Trudeau said weakly.

  Juarez looked at his watch. “You didn’t tell those assholes anything, did you?”

  Trudeau shook his head.

  “It’s okay if you did. I just need to know.”

  “No,” he answered through chattering teeth. “They knocked me unconscious before they had a chance to ask me any questions.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Fuck you,” Trudeau replied.

  They pulled up to the airport terminal, which was little more than a small hangar with a fuel depot. Trudeau looked at the airplane Juarez had brought to fly him out of his frozen hell. It was a NASA C-23 Sherpa. With its odd, shark-nosed fuselage, massive roof-mounted wings, and propellers reminiscent of the Spruce Goose, it didn’t necessarily inspire confidence.

  “What the fuck is that, Lindbergh’s lost plane?” Trudeau asked.

  Juarez laughed. “What did you expect, a triple seven with a cocktail lounge? It ain’t pretty, but the Sherpa can fly through anything. NASA uses it for science missions in the Arctic.”

  The Russian military radio dispatcher piped up again, this time sounding less friendly and more insistent. Juarez replied in Russian, sounding apologetic.

  “I told them we stalled on the highway. They’re sending a mec
hanic truck. That’ll buy us some time.”

  Out on the apron, the pilot fired up the engines, blowing smoke and snow up in a huge swirling cloud. They jumped out of the truck and ran to the airplane. Trudeau got in back and Juarez strapped into the copilot seat. The pilot started to taxi.

  “Bogeys!” Trudeau yelled as he saw two military vehicles hauling ass across the runway, lights flashing.

  “Punch it,” Juarez ordered.

  The pilot hit the throttle and shot across the apron, heading for the runway, skidding on random patches of ice. The trucks were behind them, quickly gaining. The pilot turned onto the runway and nearly fishtailed into a snowbank. When he straightened it out, he gunned the engines again. The turboprops roared and the plane sped down the strip, narrowly missing another military vehicle attempting to block the runway. When the plane hit full speed, the military trucks couldn’t keep up. One of them lost control on the ice. The other one was firing shots but the plane was out of range. The plane took off and shook so violently from the gusting crosswinds that the pilot was using all his strength to keep the wings level. Trudeau looked back. More security vehicles were crowding the runway.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,” Juarez said, chuckling. “Welcome to Get the Fuck out of Russia by the Skin of Your Ass Airways. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy your flight.”

  DETROIT METROPOLITAN AIRPORT

  Day 46

  Juarez got Trudeau out of Norilsk,” Alia told Kennedy over the phone as he, Love, and Best sprinted through Detroit Airport, trying to make a flight to LaGuardia.

  “Guy’s a superhero,” Kennedy said in awe.

  “Yeah, sometimes I think there are no limits to what that man is capable of.”

  “We could use him. Treads on our tires are getting pretty thin,” Kennedy added.

  “That was the other reason I called. You all may be retiring early.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Trudeau pulled some critical intel in Norilsk and DoD might take over.”

  “What’s the intel?” Kennedy was hoping Alia would level with him so he could stop pretending he didn’t know about the nukes.

  “It’s classified for now. I’ll brief you as soon as I get clearance. Suffice it to say we know a lot more about what Lentz is planning and it’s worse than we thought.”

  Kennedy’s heart sank. Trudeau may have been right to keep him in the loop. For the first time, Kennedy began to see how easily Alia could distance herself, closing the curtain on him in the name of national security.

  “What kind of shipment are we talking about?” he asked again.

  “I can’t share that with you right now, but I’ll brief you when you get to Boston. Where are you now?”

  “Detroit. O’Hare, Midway, and Minneapolis are done. Running to catch a flight to New York so we can handle LGA and Newark tomorrow, then on to Boston.”

  Kennedy and company arrived at the gate and barely made it onto the Jetway before they closed the door.

  “Should we keep going according to plan?” he asked.

  “Yes. Maintain status quo unless I tell you different.”

  “Sir, you need to switch your phone to airplane mode now,” the flight attendant snapped at him, “or we can’t taxi.”

  “Gotta go. Call you from New York.”

  Kennedy shut off his phone.

  “What did the boss lady have to say?” Love asked.

  “Not much, just wanted ideas for the office Christmas party.”

  “Secret Santas and everything?”

  “Yep.”

  “Cool,” Love said, unexpectedly laying her head against his shoulder and closing her eyes.

  While Love and Best slept, Kennedy ordered three cups of coffee and went over Nuri’s analysis of the data Rico’s devices had gathered, cross-­referenced with the data feeds from Kennedy’s airport bugs. Specifically, he was looking for the list of IP addresses inside the airports that were communicating with Lentz using his proprietary messaging app. Most of them could be grouped with the name server Nuri had assigned to the TSA offices. But there were a few that were housed on different servers at the airport, and most of them were mobile IPs. So, whoever they were, they weren’t desk jockeys—they were workers who mostly used phones or tablets to communicate on the job.

  Restaurant and shop workers fell into that category, but that didn’t seem like an advantageous spot to embed an operative. They were watched constantly and had no direct access to anything critical like aircraft or the tower. Kennedy cross-checked the HR records Nuri had pulled from all twenty-five target airports. With their aircraft access, baggage handlers were good candidates. But they’d been under constant video surveillance after CNN had aired hidden-camera footage of handlers pilfering checked luggage all over the country and racking up $2.5 million in stolen goods.

  If he were Lentz, he would embed people in an area with high enough levels of security clearance to actually do some damage, but also with more trust and autonomy so they could almost hide their sabotage in plain sight. Outside of the pilots and flight crews themselves, there was one group that fit this description: aircraft maintenance.

  Suitcase nukes . . . Avionics communications systems . . . Maintenance engineers had nearly as much access to airplanes as pilots, probably more. If Lentz could infiltrate this group, his operatives could conceal the nukes from view in the equipment stores and actually “install” them in the airplanes. And someone with that kind of expertise would know exactly how to conceal a device weighing from 60 to 100 pounds within the complicated systems of a 250,000-pound Boeing 737.

  With a pit forming in his stomach, Kennedy remembered the avionics equipment Lambert had found in Malaysia—a communications device that could be used to control an airplane’s autopilot from the ground. If Lentz were also able to install his modified version of that device into cockpits, he could override pilot control and turn a fleet of commercial jets into a fleet of long-range nuclear missiles.

  LOGAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  Day 48

  When they were finished with LaGuardia and Newark, Kennedy, Best, and Love did their final install in Boston. Kennedy was well respected at Logan Airport, and it was one of the few places where he felt like they always listened and put his advice into action. Two of the airplanes in the 9/11 attack had come from Boston, so they were all motivated to make sure that never happened again.

  Mary Cahill was the TSA chief there. With her spiky red hair and bedazzled Chico’s blazers, she was a foulmouthed drill sergeant who ran a tight ship and didn’t take any crap from DHS. But she was sweet on Kennedy and always put on a fresh coat of face paint when he came to visit. Because of his rapport with her, there was no need to run the fake Red Team scam to get her to allow the upgrade. She agreed without batting an eye and even fetched his team lattes to sip while they worked.

  Alia had told Kennedy, Love, and Best to wait for her in a safe house she had arranged after they finished at Logan. Kennedy sent Love and Best off to the safe house but stuck around and bought Mary dinner because she threatened to beat him senseless with her pocketbook if he didn’t. They hit the Legal Sea Foods in Terminal C for a couple of hours and Mary unleashed her usual tirade about how DHS was making her life miserable, how they wouldn’t know a real threat if it bit them in the ass, and so forth.

  As they enjoyed dessert, which for Mary was a third glass of bourbon, it occurred to Kennedy that he might as well look into his embedded maintenance operative theory while he was there. He had mentioned it to Alia right after he landed at LaGuardia but hadn’t heard anything back from her yet. Why not be proactive and check to see if any of the mobile IP addresses Nuri found to be communicating with Lentz’s Cuban servers via his messaging app were tied to the maintenance department servers? If he had that, he might be able to track down one of those users. Which meant he had
to sweet-talk Mary into giving him access to the maintenance hangars.

  “What’s your beef with the wrench monkeys?” she asked.

  “No beef. Just thinking that might be a good place to look for weak links in the security chain.”

  “Missing links more like”—she laughed—“but that’s airport services and I got no jurisdiction with those zookeepers.”

  “Yeah, but you could open a few doors for me. To tell you the truth, I don’t really want them to see me coming. Turn on the kitchen lights and the roaches tend to scatter, you know?”

  “All right, you sneaky bastard. I’m game. But what’s in it for me? Dinner out in the real world? Maybe Charles Street?”

  She swirled her cocktail glass in front of his face.

  “Bourbon that wasn’t distilled on a Honduran chicken farm? Hot motel sex, provided the sheets are clean?”

  “Most of the above.”

  “Deal. I can do without the clean sheets.”

  After Kennedy paid the tab, Mary gave him one of her contractor badges and her Jetway door code and sent him on his way. It was dark when Kennedy walked outside and down the stairs to the ramps. The last of the night’s departures were taxiing out, and baggage handlers were dwindling to skeleton crews. Kennedy ducked into a shadowy spot under a jet bridge and dialed Nuri on his sat phone.

  “Booty call?” Nuri said groggily on the phone.

  “Hey, I need your help with something.”

  “Doesn’t everyone? What’s up?”

  “Remember the IP we found at Logan Airport that had been in regular communication with Lentz’s Cuban IPs?”

  “You over there?”

  “Yeah, figured we could check it out, maybe get a bead on someone.”

  “You might make a decent spook yet. I’m pushing an app to your sat phone called Q. It’s an IP sniper, like the ones the feds use, only better, because it doesn’t have any of those pesky court-ordered privacy protocols.”

  “Goddamned free countries. What the hell’s the world coming to?”