Kill Decision (17 page)

What followed was a frenzy of wordless activity as the team pulled the cases inside and started popping latches. Hoov put batteries in a disposable cell phone. After a moment he tapped in a number and spoke quickly as he peered through the narrow opening in the hangar doors. “We just got in. What’s overhead?”

McKinney watched the others pulling electronic gear out of the cases. One of the devices looked like a standard metal detection wand—like something you’d search for land mines with. Other gear included what looked like an oscilloscope. They were installing batteries and powering up without saying a word to each other. Moments later Ripper had donned a headset and was waving the boom of the device along the sides of the nearest van.

McKinney met Foxy’s gaze.

He nodded toward Ripper and Tin Man—who were doing a similar sweep on the second van. “Nonlinear junction detector. Finds uninvited guests.”

“You really think they could have tracked us all this way?”

“Standard procedure, Professor. We always watch our backs.” Foxy pointed straight up. “We need to sanitize the airspace before we move to base.”

Hoov walked up, still clutching the phone. “There’s a Predator orbiting forty-three clicks southeast of here. NORAD says it’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but Troll’s not sure. There’s also a DEA flight out of Wichita fifty clicks to the east, but it could be scanning frequencies.”

“Spy sats?”

“Nothing overhead for another nineteen minutes.”

Ripper pulled off her headset and moved away from the vans. “Vans are clean.”

Foxy nodded and tapped McKinney on the shoulder. “You’re with me, Professor.”

She followed Foxy toward the first van as Tin Man tossed him the keys. “Meet you back at the office. Take the long way home.”

“Wilco. Keep your eyes peeled.”

Foxy got in the van and McKinney uncertainly climbed in on the passenger side. The vehicle smelled brand-new. Foxy stowed the kora and his canvas satchel behind his seat and started the van. “Buckle up, Professor, this isn’t Africa.”

“Oh.” She buckled her seat belt.

Nearby, Tin Man opened the rear hangar doors on the far side of the space. He ducked his head out the opening, then gave a thumbs-up sign.

Foxy drove through the doors out into the deserted parking lot and toward the front entrance to the small airport.

McKinney had been under the impression that American airports had more security than this, but apparently private jet terminals did things differently. There was only an unmanned parking gate between them and the tarmac. It made her wonder about the security she endured in major airports.

Foxy drove them past an obvious highway entrance ramp marked
Rt. 169/Downtown Kansas City
, and instead drove through a narrow tunnel beneath the highway, to emerge on the other side amid gritty, deserted industrial streets.

McKinney had never been to Kansas City before. She scanned the dark horizon, searching for the inevitable downtown of lofty bank towers, but all she could see were security lights on warehouses and factories along with the occasional billboard—the generic Americanness she remembered. The van’s dashboard clock read 1:23
A.M.
There was almost no traffic on the surface roads. The light industrial businesses, retail outlets, warehouses, and junkyards to either side were fenced and graffiti tagged, but it looked more orderly than any East African city.

Foxy repeatedly checked the rear- and side-view mirrors and glanced down every side road and alley they passed. His oddly calm paranoia was freaking her out. McKinney hadn’t slept a wink on either the flight from Africa or the flight from Germany. She felt half-crazed from exhaustion and stress, and Foxy’s behavior wasn’t helping. All she could think about was how her father would deal with the news of her disappearance. Let’s face it—her death. That’s what any sane person would think if someone disappeared in an explosion. And what about Adwele? How would he cope with the death of yet another significant adult in his life? First his father, and now McKinney . . .

She suddenly noticed Foxy staring at her. “You okay, Professor?”

“Somebody blew up my world.” She shrugged. “I’m doing great, Foxy. Just super.”

He nodded. “You want my advice?”

“No offense, but I really don’t.”

“Well, I’ll give it to you anyway. You just won the world’s worst lottery, that’s all. It’s nothing you did—so don’t focus on things beyond your control. Focus only on what you can control. That’s served me well over the years.”

McKinney considered his words. Actually it was pretty decent advice. She studied Foxy. “Thanks for saving my life. Back in Africa, I mean.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“You actually know how to play that kora?”

Foxy gave her a disbelieving look and laughed. “Of course I play it. I can play most instruments I put my mind to. I will say, though, these twenty-one-string instruments are tricky. You ever hear of Foday Musa Suso?”

“Maybe. African?”

“Originally Gambian; moved to Chicago decades ago. I’ve been trying some of his songs. I haven’t had much practice lately because my last kora got blown up. Along with some people I knew.”

McKinney felt the normalcy drain out of the conversation. She could suddenly see in his face the hardened mien of an elite soldier. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

In a few moments his seriousness passed, and he cast a grin her way. “This trip gave me the chance to grab a new one.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed a person in your line of work would be a musician.”

“With music you can speak to anyone.”

She leaned back in her seat. “Then music is a tool.”

He frowned briefly at her. “That’s not the right word. Look, what we do isn’t what you think. Human intelligence, what we call HUMINT, mostly involves making connections with people—not hurting them. You never know what opportunities come from making friends. And music is a great way to make friends in strange places. Take the Arab heavy metal scene, for example. . . .”

“There’s an Arab heavy metal scene?”

He nodded and smiled wistfully. “Oh, hell, yes. That’s my music. The soul of disaffection. You won’t find any more sincerity than in heavy metal music in a repressive society. When we get a chance, I’ll play some for you.” He patted the T-shirt he was wearing. “This is a Saudi Arabian band named Eltoba, but I’m a big fan of Arsames—Iranian death metal—and, uh, Mordab is good too. Oh, there’s a kick-ass Bahraini Arabic death black metal band named Narjahanam. I saw them in an underground rave in Manama last year. Damned near got arrested. Their name means ‘the fire of hell,’ and, man, you can feel the youthful rage from these guys—not the sanitized, feigned shit coming from suburban kids trying to cash in. I mean fuck-it-all
rage
with a purpose.”

McKinney found herself grinning uneasily. “You should be the Middle East correspondent for
Rolling Stone
.”

“That would be problematic, but . . . oh, there’s Acrassicauda, Iraq’s sole heavy metal band—which is a start. But, hey, my personal favorite at the moment is an Afghan folk metal band—”

“Afghanistan has
folk metal
? You’re pulling my leg now.”

“Seriously, you can bridge any gap with music. It’s an Afghan folk metal band named Al Qaynah; a mind-blowing combination of traditional central Asian instruments—like the rubab, the tanbur—with a driving heavy metal foundation. Like all good art it challenges people. Takes them outside their comfort zone.”

“Should I even ask what brought you to these places?”

He shrugged. “I’ll tell you this much: I saw the Arab Spring coming. You could hear it in the younger generation’s music. You could see it in their eyes; in how they used technology to express themselves artistically, creatively. State Department? The CIA? NSA? For all their satellites and garden party spies, they somehow missed a huge wave of popular outrage with the status quo. No, to understand a people, you need to wade into their culture. It’s culture that tells their tale. And music is culture.”

McKinney realized there was a lot more going on with Foxy than had first appeared.

“For instance, most people don’t realize that British punk rock stemmed from a youthful backlash against survivors’ guilt from the Holocaust.”

“Oh, my God!” McKinney gave him an annoyed look. “Would you please just drive. Where are we going, anyway?”

“It isn’t far.”

“Why did we split up?”

Foxy nodded. “We always take separate vehicles and different routes back to base. The others will get in well after us.”

“Who could possibly notice us among all the other people in this city?”

“You might be surprised what anomalies can be detected against background noise. That’s why we have vans like this drive from the airport several times a day even if there’s no one to collect.” He took stock of her reaction. “I can tell nobody’s tried to kill you before, Professor. It tends to change one’s view on what constitutes reasonable precautions.”

“Well, it looks like I don’t have much choice in the matter.”

“I hope you don’t feel any more like a prisoner than the rest of us. We’re all stuck on this operation until it’s finished—that includes the other civilian experts. No holiday with the family for us either. I’d like to start thinking of you as another member of the team, if that’s okay.”

“Other civilian experts? So you’ve pressed other people into service?”

“None are in your unique situation, but you’ll meet the other folks; subject matter experts, most of them with top-secret clearances.”

“So they had a choice.”

“Not after they were briefed.”

He was driving down a cracked concrete boulevard now with a grass median peppered with patches of dirty snow. They passed a gravel quarry. The area was starting to get seedier. A truck stop stood at the far side, and a large riverfront casino was visible farther on, its brilliant signage threatening to induce seizures in any nocturnal creatures wandering about.

McKinney noticed a low, wooded hillside rising to the left. It surprised her, since she’d always thought of the Midwest as flat. There were obviously some hills here. She took note of the license plates on a passing car: Missouri. That’s right. Kansas City wasn’t in Kansas—it was in Missouri. Or at least part of it was. They didn’t appear to be deceiving her about where they were. She spotted another truck: Kansas plates.

The
click-click
of the van’s blinker sounded, and the van slowed. They crossed left over some railroad tracks and seemingly straight toward a grassy hillside. Oddly, even a spur from the railroad line curved along with them as the road led toward a white stone cliff face that cut into the hill.

McKinney looked up at an illuminated sign that read SubTropolis. It was bolted above the concrete-framed entrance of a tunnel. Flags of the world were on display on angled poles above the entrance. The opening was at least twenty feet high and fifty feet across. A roadway large enough to accommodate two semitrucks side by side led into the hillside. In fact, McKinney could also see farther down along the well-lit cliff face where the railroad tracks led into the underground as well. Whole trains could apparently enter the hill.

Foxy opened his passenger window and swiped a magnetic card at a reader, and the roll-up metal security gate started to rise.

“What is this place?”

“The office. Got a roof of solid limestone a hundred feet thick. Three times stronger than concrete. No drone missile can hit us down here. Odin doesn’t like to take chances.”

Foxy pulled through the gate and immediately the massive tunnel opened up into a brightly lit grid of solid rock pillars and interior buildings. There were signs bolted to the rock walls pointing the direction and bay numbers for various manufacturing businesses, warehouses, and shipping companies. The roadway curved downward slightly, and then straightened into a main thoroughfare, punctuated by yellowish metal-halide lights. The place was a vast subterranean business park.

McKinney had never heard of such a thing. Every hundred feet or so there was a massive, chiseled column of solid stone, twenty feet square, but otherwise the place just seemed to stretch on endlessly in three directions beneath the hillside—bright lights trailing to a vanishing point. “My God, this place is huge.”

Foxy nodded. “Six miles of road. Fifty-five million square feet of space. Only ten of that’s been improved for use, and only half of that’s occupied.”

McKinney craned her neck to check out the endless rows of pillars. “How on earth . . . ?”

“They’ve been mining limestone here since the forties. Somebody had the bright idea that, since this rock formation has been here for about two hundred and eighty million years, it would be a stable environment for archival storage, data centers, things like that. No worries about tornadoes either. Hell, there are all sorts of businesses down here. Packaging companies, light fixture companies. They can roll semitrucks and rail-cars right inside too. It’s got major advantages for this operation. For one, it’s impossible to observe what we’re doing from the air or satellites, and there are several entrances—lots of comings and goings at all hours. And we’re centrally located—a short flight to most of the country.”

Foxy cut the van left down a side tunnel, and they were soon cruising down another cavern road that led to a vanishing point. “We operate under unofficial cover—oil and gas exploration firms, microwave communications companies. Things like that. Gives us what’s called ‘status for cover’—meaning a reason to be someplace. Allows us to move around in the countryside with heavy equipment without drawing attention. Here we are. . . .”

Foxy slowed the van, and then turned right down another side passage. Here the floor opened out into an endless grid of stone columns—but the lights ended. They now headed off into utter blackness. Their headlights seemed to be swallowed by the vast dark.

McKinney found herself leaning forward in her seat. “I’ll bet there are some interesting fossils in here.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. All I know is that it’s a good place for an isolation facility. We’ve got a quarter million square feet far away from all the other tenants. That way we don’t get visitors, and no one notices us. We’re way the hell out in the darkness, and nobody’s going to wander on over to borrow a cup of sugar. Look . . .” He pointed at the stone floor stretching out beneath the headlights.