The Asset

  When they got to the airport, Kennedy went right to the scanner and pulled the bomb. He didn’t want to take any chances, so he put Love in a cab, and she took the device back to the plane. While he was closing up the scanner panel, Dot, Charlotte’s TSA chief, walked up. She was in her sixties and looked like a Norman Rockwell grandmother, with roller-sculpted hair and a wise face. She smiled at Kennedy and touched his hand in a neighborly way. She was a friend, but he could tell she was miffed.

  “You’re a good man to come visit me like this,” Dot said. “But I sure would have appreciated a call first.”

  “Sorry, Dot. Trying to get all these done before the holiday.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. Seemed like a good fix to me. But, I guess you win some, you lose some.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Kennedy said, anxious to get the hell out of there.

  Her mobile phone rang.

  “Excuse me a minute,” she said and picked up. “This is Dot.”

  While she had her phone call, Kennedy called Love to check on her. She didn’t answer. Dot finished her call and walked back over.

  “Buy you a cup of coffee? You look like you could use it,” she said.

  Kennedy looked at his watch.

  “Actually, Dot, I don’t know if I have time. Got another plane to catch.”

  “Okay, I’ll walk you to your gate,” she said.

  They walked down the concourse, but Dot turned and started walking in the opposite direction of the gates.

  “I hate to have to break it to you, Dot, but we’re going the wrong way.”

  “Come on, I want to show you something. You’re going to love this. It won’t take but a minute.”

  “All right. I guess I can spare at least one minute,” Kennedy said, feeling the pressure to get out of there mounting.

  She punched in her keypad code and opened a door that led to an elevated platform overlooking the apron and airplane ramps. The engine noise was deafening. Dot moved closer to him and smiled. Kennedy felt uncomfortable.

  “Tell you a secret?” she asked.

  “Uh, sure?”

  She leaned in and whispered, “FBI just called me back in the office. Airport is surrounded with federal agents. They’re looking for you.”

  “What—” Kennedy started.

  “Just shut up and listen,” Dot said, still congenially. “There’s only one way out of here. Catawba River’s about a mile past the airport fence. Can you swim?”

  “Dot, what the hell—”

  “I said, can you swim?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Now, before you go, I need to ask you a question. And the way you answer that question is real important. Understood?”

  Kennedy nodded.

  “Why are they after you?”

  She looked at him long and hard. He knew if he didn’t answer truthfully, she would never believe any bullshit. Dot had a lot of talent for the job, and Kennedy had trained her and her people very well. If she didn’t like his answer, he’d never even make it down the platform steps. So he told her the truth, and she could see he wasn’t lying.

  “Is Charlotte Douglas Airport safe?” she asked.

  “It is now,” he said.

  “Good. I thank you for that. Better run along now. And good luck.”

  “Thanks,” he said and took off down the stairs.

  As Kennedy was sprinting across the apron, Love and the pilots were already in FBI custody. When he got near the airport fence, police cars and government SUVs sped after him at about ninety miles per hour and closing fast. By the time he got to the fence and started climbing, they were a hundred yards off his tail and he could hear them on their bullhorn shouting for him to stop. The top of the fence had a short coil of barbed wire. Kennedy threw his coat over it and flipped over the top. He tore up his arm and legs on the wire tines and landed hard on the other side.

  The police got out of their truck and ran after him, guns drawn, still shouting at him to stop. Kennedy ran into some tall bushes for cover and kept running, his lungs burning. The cops opened fire. Bullets zipped through the underbrush and exploded in the dirt around his feet. He zigzagged through the dense growth, branches clawing at his arms and legs, shredding his clothes. When he reached the river, he was so exhausted he could barely stand. He looked back and saw the police truck barreling toward him on a dirt road a mile down to his left. More bullets peppered the undergrowth and skipped across the water. He dove headfirst into the river, which was moving swiftly and cold as ice. More bullets exploded across the surface, so he swam deeper and let the current carry him for as long as he could hold his breath. He was about to black out so he surfaced, gasping for air, and found himself in a wooded area dotted with trailer homes, rotting boathouses, and abandoned cars.

  The cops were nowhere in sight, but he wasn’t going to wait for them. When the current slowed, he struggled to swim ashore. He hauled himself up on the bank and sat against a tree, trying to catch his breath and control the violent shivering. He felt his pockets. His wallet and phone were gone, but he still had a wad of soaking-wet cash, maybe $300. He looked at his watch. It was nearly 5:00 P.M. The next day was the day before Thanksgiving. In sixteen hours, 9:00 A.M. Eastern Time, Kruz’s device would detonate at the Atlanta airport, which was 250 miles away. He had no team and no resources. And now he was a fugitive.

  Six feet tall. One hundred eighty pounds. Black hair. Blue eyes . . .”

  Kennedy heard the newscast blaring from a TV inside a double-­wide parked in the trees near the river. He moved closer, craning to see the television. His TSA contractor badge photo filled the screen. The news couldn’t have been worse. Love and the pilots were in custody, being treated as enemy combatants by Homeland Security, accused of attempting to bomb the Charlotte airport. Kennedy was being billed as the ringleader, a terrorist taking revenge on the US government because his sister was killed on 9/11.

  If it weren’t so dire, he would have been impressed by the spin. Like the slick best-selling guru he’d embodied for years, Kruz was in control of the narrative. If Kennedy got caught before Atlanta was vaporized, he would be blamed. He was knowledgeable enough to pull it off and his fingerprints were all over everything. The news version of Love was that she was a political agitator who shared Kennedy’s hatred of America, something she had originally learned from her socialist parents.

  The motive, knowledge, physical evidence, eyewitness testimony from a respected member of DHS (Tad Monty), and damning video evidence would be irrefutable in a press-driven kangaroo court. The news even cited the threat memo, saying Homeland could now close their investigation after having heroically countered this heinous act of terror. Kennedy checked his watch. He didn’t have time to think about any of that anymore. He needed to be on the road to Atlanta within the hour.

  He moved through the woods along the river, looking for a drivable vehicle, but most of the cars he saw were either up on blocks or hollowed-out, rusting shells that had been picked over for parts. He saw an aluminum storage garage large enough for an RV or a boat. There was no house attached, so he crept around the perimeter of it and found a garage door on one end with an entry door on the side. The entry door was bolted, but the garage door had not closed all the way, leaving about an eight-inch gap. Kennedy looked through the gap. There was a newish-looking pickup, and a small fishing boat on a trailer.

  Kennedy ran back to one of the abandoned sedans he’d seen in the woods and looked in the trunk. He dug through wet garbage and a sizable rat’s nest and found a rusty tire jack, which he used to jack up the garage door just high enough to crawl inside. The truck was an F-150 in excellent condition with a nearly full tank of gas. He was looking for the keys when it occurred to him he had no idea how he was going to disarm the scanner at Atlanta Hartsfield once he got there. He was a fugitive, with his photo splashed all over the six
o’clock news. TSA would have seen his picture by then, and most of them knew him anyway, along with a lot of airport employees. He was racking his brain when the owner of the garage came storming in with a pistol in his hand.

  “Where the fuck are you, asshole!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  Kennedy lay down on the front seat before the man could see him, and waited. When he walked up to the driver’s-side door, Kennedy kicked it open, smashing it in the man’s face and knocking the gun out of his hand. The man fell to the floor of the garage and Kennedy jumped out, looking for the gun. It was under the boat and Kennedy was trying to grab it when the man kicked him in the ribs and he fell ass over teakettle into a fishing canoe. The man jumped on him, punching and kicking, but Kennedy shifted his weight and rolled the canoe to one side, pitching them both out. The man, who was extremely overweight, was out of breath and sweating profusely from the heat in the garage. As he struggled to get up off the floor, his hands white-knuckling a boat oar he intended to use as a weapon, Kennedy kicked the oar into his face, knocking him out cold. He searched the man’s pockets and found the keys to the truck. He jumped in and was about to drive away, when he saw something on the far wall of the storage garage that gave him an idea about how he could pull off Atlanta.

  HARTSFIELD–JACKSON ATLANTA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  Day 63—The day before Thanksgiving

  We’re all going to die.

  It’s 8:00 A.M. and this is the one thought screaming over and over in Kennedy’s head as he attempts to estimate the seemingly infinite number of holiday travelers standing between him and his destiny: the TSA checkpoint. He forces the fog to lift temporarily from his mind so he can assess the situation. If his observations are even marginally correct, at the rate the line is moving, it will take seventy-two minutes for him to get to the front.

  He has to get there in forty-five.

  It will take at least ten minutes to pull the nuke from the scanning machine, leaving a gaunt five-minute cushion before it’s set to detonate at 9:00 A.M. Zero room for error.

  Kennedy has reached a new, almost hallucinatory, level of exhaustion. After jacking the pickup truck in Charlotte, he drove all the way to Atlanta, using as many back roads as possible to avoid state troopers. Whenever he saw a police car behind him, he pulled off to a side road and went miles out of his way to get back on track. By the time he got to the airport, it was 7:00 A.M. and the place was already jam-packed.

  He’s wearing a filthy raincoat and baseball cap he took from the pickup’s owner to cover his even filthier fugitive-on-the-run clothes.

  He shakes off the withering fatigue and checks his watch.

  Forty minutes.

  The line has slowed to accommodate a train of Rascal-driving heifers crippled by Doritos and Mountain Dew. The snake of travel amateurs, engorged with humanity, seems to have ground to a halt. He needs a next move. As he contemplates it, obsessively scanning his surroundings, his blood runs cold. Noah Kruz is standing fifty heads behind him. He’s disguised flawlessly in an Atlanta Police Department uniform.

  “Fuck,” Kennedy says out loud.

  Weary parents schlepping kids, strollers, and hand luggage scowl at him. Kennedy’s heart beats faster and sweat soaks his clothing. They’re all going to die, he thinks, remembering the yacht. In an instant, they will be nothing but gray dust settling on an iron-black crater, a new American monument to the beginning of the end.

  Kennedy checks his six again. Kruz is working his way through the crowd with his hand on his sidearm, coming for him. Kennedy’s mind is racing.

  He knows time is running out. He has to arrest me and get us to a minimum safe distance before detonation. I have to move. Now.

  He unbuttons the filthy raincoat and moves out of line, walking quickly toward the TSA checkpoint. While he walks, he allows his coat to fall open. That’s when he hears the first scream, which rises quickly to full-panic pitch and incites many more, spreading like wildfire. Those who aren’t cowering in fear are pointing and shouting at him, trying to get the attention of the authorities.

  Kennedy throws off the overcoat, exposing the vest underneath.

  Throngs of people gawk in disbelief. Realizing he only has seconds to make it to the TSA checkpoint before he gets a bullet in the head, he breaks into a full sprint. This action ignites blind chaos in the crowd. Kennedy looks back. Kruz cuts through the stumbling masses like a blade and draws the inky blur of a semiautomatic pistol from his holster. He stops, assumes the measured stance of a marksman, and takes aim.

  “Put your fucking guns away!” Kennedy bellows for all to hear. “This vest is wired with enough dynamite to kill everyone in a one-hundred-yard radius!”

  He holds up his hand, clutching a metal apparatus slithering with wires.

  “This is a dead man’s switch! You kill me, we all die!”

  The police keep their guns trained on him, shaking with fear and uncertainty, speaking furiously into their radios. Passengers freeze in their tracks, crying, whimpering, and shielding their tearful children. Kennedy sees Kruz coming and points at him.

  “Somebody wants to be a hero! Stand down!”

  Kruz opens fire. Bullets hum and spit past Kennedy’s head and ricochet off the walls. The screams are deafening. Kennedy takes cover behind one of the metal bag conveyors. More bullets ricochet and shatter a glass restaurant wall in the concourse. Cops charge after Kruz, yelling for him to stop, but he opens fire on them too, wounding several and sending others diving for cover. People stampede helter-skelter, blinded by terror. Kennedy looks at his watch again.

  Ten minutes.

  Having swept the police out of his way, Kruz comes at Kennedy unhindered. The SWAT team advances on them, automatic weapons shouldered. Kennedy runs right at a cop, who tries to shrink back into the crowd but ends up falling at Kennedy’s feet.

  “Don’t kill me!” the cop screeches.

  “Give me your fucking gun!”

  The cop hands him his Beretta and Kennedy opens up on Kruz. He hits him in the thigh and Kruz falls under the stampeding passengers. Kennedy beelines for the body scanner and pulls the tools he took from the man’s garage out of his pocket. He needs both hands, so he rips the “dead man’s switch” from his hand and drops it on the ground, revealing that it’s just a metal lure box wrapped in thick, multicolored big-game fishing line that looks like wires. The “explosives vest”—thirty marine distress flares strapped to his body with duct tape—is loosening from the sweat on his shirt.

  He looks at his watch.

  Two minutes.

  Kennedy is shaking as he pops off the maintenance panel and locates the device. He finds the bomb casing and has to remove the mounting screws with a manual screwdriver, which feels like it takes an eternity. The last screw falls out and he’s about to pull the connector wires and power cable when Kruz tackles him from behind. They roll across the ground, kicking and punching. Kruz grabs him by the collar and shoves his gun under Kennedy’s chin.

  “Sometimes we need a two-thousand-pound oak to fall on our head for us to see the forest for the trees,” Kruz says.

  “And sometimes the forest needs to burn.”

  Kennedy rips one of the signal flares from the duct tape on his chest, pulls the safety cap, and ignites the flare in Kruz’s face. The bright red flame, burning at over 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, incinerates his face and engulfs his head and shoulders in flames. While he writhes on the floor, the high-pitched sound of the bomb’s pulse detonator starts to cycle up.

  Thirty seconds.

  Kennedy sprints back to the scanning machine. The detonator pitch is reaching an earsplitting level. SWAT officers are racing to intercept him. One of them stands in his way and Kennedy flattens him with a forearm shiver. The momentum of the hit carries Kennedy into the scanner. With seconds to spare, he wraps his hands around the bomb and yanks it with all hi
s strength, tearing out the connector wires and power cables. He falls to the floor, hugging the bomb close to his chest like a small child.

  He closes his eyes and smiles as the high-pitched whine of the detonator quickly cycles down and goes quiet again. When he opens them, he’s surrounded by SWAT officers pointing assault rifles at him.

  “Back the fuck up!” Wes Bowman yells behind them. “That’s a ten-­kiloton nuke he’s holding and I’m pretty sure you don’t want your trigger finger to slip!”

  SWAT parts like the Red Sea, revealing Wes holding his CIA badge. He’s flanked by two men wearing full-nuclear hazmat space suits. A federal bomb squad containment vehicle is pulling up behind them. The bomb squad astronauts gently take the device from Kennedy. Wes helps him up off the floor and slaps handcuffs on him.

  “Department of Justice has instructed me to take this man into custody!”

  Wes’s men load Kennedy into an airport golf cart, and they drive him away.

  “Well, what the hell are you all looking at?” Bowman yells at the cops and SWAT. “Get these people out of here! What part of ten-kiloton nuke did you not understand? Oh, and you might want to bag up that smoldering corpse! It’s Thanksgiving for chrissakes!”

  EPILOGUE

  ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY—THREE MONTHS LATER

  Kennedy and Love are sitting in silence next to a new headstone. The sun breaks through the cloud cover and the freshly cut white marble shines, brilliant and ethereal. Love is playing guitar and humming softly.

  “I miss her,” Kennedy says.

  “Yeah. Me too. Just once, I’d like to hear her smart-aleck, wisecracking mouth again, you know? One more time.”

  “Even if she was annoying me,” Kennedy says.

  “And she would too,” Love says. “But you could never get that mad at her.”