The Lost Codex (27 page)

“I’ll look into it.”

Knox clicked off and the four of them glanced at one another. Uzi turned back to his laptop and continued working.

Vail sat there, staring ahead, numb. Images of the planes hitting the Twin Towers played in her mind. She had seen it firsthand. Now, thousands of miles away, she had only her imagination as she pictured what was going down. She shut her eyes tight.
Not again. How could it be happening again?

“The dirty bomb wasn’t enough?” DeSantos said.

Vail shook the memories from her thoughts. “Maybe this World Trade Center thing is a contingency plan, in case the dirty bomb attack failed—which it did. The tower’s a prime target, for obvious reasons.”

A minute later, Uzi broke the silence. “Paris.”

“What about Paris?” Fahad said.

“That’s where these assholes are going. Which means that’s where we’re going.”

“What’d you find?” DeSantos asked.

“Instructions issued by someone in command. They’re not named, but they directed all fighters to report to a specific address in Paris after the London operation. I think it’s safe to assume that the two incidents we just witnessed were the London op.”

“Unless we hear otherwise,” DeSantos said, slowing slightly on the motorway to keep his speed at the limit.

“Do you think they’re gonna be able to stop that plane?” Vail asked.

DeSantos glanced at her in the mirror but returned his gaze to the road without answering.

“Got something,” Uzi said, his fingers suddenly stilled. “A reference to two manuscripts, one of which was transferred to the Louvre for safekeeping while awaiting transport.”

“What manuscripts?” Fahad asked.

He gave the document another read before answering. “Doesn’t say. And it doesn’t say where it’s going after it leaves the Louvre.”

“When are they scheduled to leave?” Vail asked.

“That’s not in here, either. I’ve got a couple more files to work on, so maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“I don’t believe in luck,” Vail said.

“You may not believe in it, but you’d better hope we have some. The good kind.”

THE VIDEOCONFERENCING ROOM at Mildenhall turned out to be a small office in an older hangar. They filed in, shut the door and locked it, then got ready to call Knox on an encrypted video line.

“How secure is this?” Uzi asked.

“Military grade,” said the major who ushered them inside. “We installed our own SIP proxy, and with a VPN and a variety of SIP clients, we made our own platform.”

Uzi nodded. “Firewall? Is auto answer OFF?”

“Of course. No one’s gonna tap in.”

“You use AES 256 or AES 512 crypto?”

“Five twelve,” the major said. “And yeah, we’ve got the high speed hardware to handle it.”

Uzi shrugged. “Cool. Let’s do this.”

“You really understood that?” DeSantos asked.

“Didn’t you?” Uzi asked, knowing that DeSantos had no clue what the man had said.

“All I care is that it works. Get Knox on the screen.”

“Thanks, Major,” Uzi said, then waited for him to leave. He clicked “Start secure communication” and moments later Douglas Knox’s face appeared on the large LED flat panel mounted on the wall.

“We found the jet. They’re using some kind of spoof on their transponder but satellites located it. A red-eye out of LAX. Since you were the ones to key us in on this, I’m patching you in.” He gestured to Rodman, who was seated to his right. A wide-angle view filled the screen.

“What are we seeing?” Uzi asked.

“We scrambled F-22s,” Rodman said. “This is the pilot’s forward camera.”

On the left, the nose of a jumbo jet was barely visible. In the distance, the brilliant white lights and red spire of One World Trade Center was outlined against a dark but brightening sky.

Vail’s stomach churned. Her heartrate increased. And she struggled to get air into her lungs.

“We’re attempting to establish contact, but the two men flying the plane are not the pilots.”

The F-22 pulled back and the full fuselage was visible.

“How many aboard?” Uzi asked.

“It’s a 757,” Rodman said, “with 199 passengers and crew.”

So 199 versus—how many are in the building this time of morning? Restaurant workers, maintenance and security personnel, tenants burning the midnight oil to meet deadlines. Five hundred? A thousand?

“Has the president given the order to shoot it down?” DeSantos asked.

“If necessary, yes. The military’s taken over the operation.”

“It’s not about the number of lives,” Vail said. “It’s symbolic. Demoralizing to destroy what we fought so long and hard to rebuild.”

“They’re not gonna destroy anything,” DeSantos said, his right hand fisted.

Uzi leaned forward. “Plane’s over the Hudson River. If they’re going to do it, now’s the—”

Before he could finish, the bright flare of a missile launch filled the screen. A second later, the projectile struck the jet’s body. It erupted in flames, small shrapnel flying toward the camera. The 757 veered left, then right, then the nose pointed toward the sky and the burning fuselage plunged toward the water.

The camera showed a black and deep blue sky, the F-22 continuing on its straight-ahead path, zooming past the World Trade Center to the west.

Vail, Uzi, DeSantos, and Fahad continued to stare at the screen.

Vail felt intense relief—but had to fight back tears. “What did we just do? I mean, there was no choice, but—I mean, two hundred innocent people …”

The screen flickered and Knox was visible once again, a somber expression on his face. “I’ll keep you updated. It’ll probably be several days before we know how they pulled it off. I doubt it’ll be anything extravagant. We all know security on air travel is an illusion.”

None of them spoke.

The normally unflappable FBI director turned away from the webcam, took a deep breath, and composed himself. “Right before you called me about the plane, we got reports of an incident in Westminster. You know anything about that?”

“We were there,” DeSantos said, “warned MI5 of the intel we pulled from a laptop we found in a flat in Greenwich. But there wasn’t enough ti—”

“What do you mean you warned MI5? Not Buck—”

“We utilized Karen’s contact, Clive Reid. We helped minimize the impact of the attack.”

Knox frowned: he still was not pleased but he could not complain. “Some sort of chemical weapon. Sounds like they’re going to be looking at hundreds of casualties. Won’t know for a few hours, but it’s not going to be a good report.”

“They used osmium tetroxide,” Uzi said.

“Osmium tetroxide?” Knox’s jaw dropped as he processed that. “We’d discussed that a number of times over the years but our chemists told us it was not feasible.”

Time to hire new chemists.

“They aerosolized it in the ventilation system,” Uzi said. “That’s why they won’t have an accurate casualty count for a few hours. There’s a latency period.”

Knox clenched his jaw. “Status on your two targets, Yaseen and Aziz?”

“We believe they were living in that flat,” DeSantos said, “but we’ve got a forensic guy looking over latents we lifted. We engaged three tangos as they left the building. Two were killed, two escaped.”

“Are the two dead bodies going to cause a problem?”

Vail turned to DeSantos, who answered. “Just a matter of time. I don’t think it’ll be traced back to me—or us—but it’s impossible to say.”

“I’ll monitor it on my end. What about Yaseen and Aziz?”

DeSantos glanced at Uzi, then said, “Paris.”

“Paris,” Knox repeated. “Something I should know?”

“Another one of the encrypted documents I got off that laptop,” Uzi said. “It directed all their fighters to an address in Paris after the London operation.”

Knox sat back in his chair. “Mr. Fahad, you haven’t said a word. Anything to add?”

He pursed his lips and shook his head. “No sir.”

Vail’s phone vibrated. She rooted it out of her jacket pocket and read the message.
Bingo.

“Something you’d like to share, Agent Vail?”

“Text from Clive Reid. There was a sniper on the roof of a building near MI5’s headquarters. We warned them about that, so they were prepared. The shooter escaped but the Met captured the guy’s face on a camera before the attack—including an accomplice. Man carrying the rifle case is—” she consulted the Samsung—“Samir Mohammed al Razi. Other one is Rahmatullah Nasrullah.”

Knox leaned closer to the camera. “Say again?”

Vail checked her device and repeated the names.

Knox’s right eye narrowed. He swiveled a few degrees in his chair and started working the computer to the left of his desk. He looked up, exposing the deep furrows in his face. “As you all know, President Nunn has made closing Guantanamo Bay a major goal of his administration. Today he’s going to announce a plan to transfer all remaining detainees to the US by overriding a congressional ban that specifically prohibits doing just that.”

“How many are left?” Vail asked.

“Two years ago we released six hundred, leaving 149. Seventy-nine have been approved for transfer but nothing’s happened because there were problems repatriating them. Thirty-seven are going to remain in detention without trial.”

“Too dangerous to release but not enough evidence to try them,” Uzi said.

“Correct.” Knox reached to his right and glanced at a document. “As of right now, twenty-three are going to be prosecuted by a military commission. Five of them orchestrated the September 11 attack. But the big fight is over closing the place down. Of the men already released, seventy-four have gone back to battle as enemy combatants against us.”

“I thought it was sixty-one,” Uzi said.

DeSantos shook his head. “Classified Pentagon report prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency. OPSIG was briefed on it two or three years ago. It was never released publicly. Seventy-four.”

“Let me guess,” Vail said. “Samir Mohammed al Razi and Rahmatullah Nasrullah are two of the men we released.”

Knox’s lips tightened. “Nasrullah escaped during transfer to the US. The first and only transfer attempted.”

“And now the president wants to try moving dozens,” DeSantos said.

“What about al Razi?” Vail asked.

“He was among the first wave we set free.”

“There’s government efficiency for you. Capturing them once wasn’t good enough. We have to bring them in twice.”

“No,” Knox said, his face stern. “This is not an arrest situation. This is a capture and/or kill scenario. Emphasis on the latter. I’m sending you photos of both men. As far as I’m concerned, we gave the assholes a chance at a new life by releasing them. They chose to take up the fight again and blow innocent people up. They give you any kind of violent resistance, they get the death penalty.”

And since these guys have no problem dying for the cause, they’re not likely to put their hands over their heads and get down on their knees.

“What do we know about al Razi and Nasrullah?” Vail asked.

“Nasrullah was a fighter who was rounded up in an operation that netted us two al Qaeda leaders. He wasn’t directly implicated so they didn’t have enough to hold him and when they were looking for the least risky to release, he was added to the list. Al Razi’s a different story. He’s a US-trained sniper we used to fight the mujahideen in Afghanistan twenty years ago.”

“That explains why he was the one to take out the MI5 agents as they evacuated the building,” Uzi said.

DeSantos chuckled. “He could be the one who took the shots at you outside the municipal building in New York.”

Uzi tipped his chin back. “Then I need to return the favor.”

Knox faced the camera straight on. “Well, Agent Uziel, I suggest you and your team put yourselves in a position to get that chance. I want these sons of bitches. All of them.”

43

T
wo hours later, they boarded the C-17. Uzi, Fahad, and DeSantos had used the time to plan, check facts, review maps, and connect with colleagues in the States to confirm intel.

Vail touched base with Robby. He was asleep but she decided to wake him since she did not know when she would have access to a secure connection. Their conversation was a bit one-sided, since there was not much she was permitted to tell him.

“We’re making progress. That’s all I can say.”

“After all that’s happened—not to mention what you asked me to look into—I’ve got a sense of what you’re working on. And I just want you to know that I’m proud of you.” He stared at the screen a moment. “I love you. Be careful, okay?”

Vail blew him a kiss. “Always.”

They boarded the Globemaster via the ramp, along with the crew chief—but this time the tank and other cargo that had been secured to the middle of the fuselage was gone. The interior looked a good deal larger—though much darker, since all the lights were off except for a few strategically placed green fluorescents.

The engines roared loudly as the plane began moving down the runway. Fahad was busy with a piece of equipment on the far side across from them.

“Same deal?” Vail yelled above the din as she flipped the seat down, sank into the canvas, and sorted out her restraint.

“Same deal,” DeSantos said as he sat to her left. “Except we’re going to do things a bit differently.”

“How so?” She found the clasp, but in the dim illumination she had difficulty locating the female junction to snap it home. “Can we turn some lights on?”

“White lights are a no-no at night.”

“To prevent us from being seen?”

“To preserve our night vision,” Uzi said as he tossed a duffle in her lap. “Refresh my memory. Have you ever jumped out of a plane?”

“I went skydiving once. Before—” Vail stopped herself and studied the thick roll straddling her thighs. “I went once.”

“Good,” Uzi said. “Then this will be second nature to you.”

She squinted, not quite hearing him clearly. “What will be second nature?” she shouted.

“What we’re about to do.”

Uh, no. Not me.
“It was a long time ago. I was scared out of my mind.”

DeSantos adjusted his belt as the plane continued down the runway. “Did you do it tandem? Attached to someone?”

“It wasn’t solo, I can tell you that much.” She moved her knees to flatten her feet on the floor and shifted the weight of the duffle kit bag on her lap. “This wouldn’t happen to be what I think it is, is it?”

“If you’re thinking parachute, then yes.”

“You guys,” she said with a grin.

Uzi cocked his head at an angle. “We’re not joking.”

She studied DeSantos’s face, then Uzi’s, and realized they were serious.
Keep calm. Don’t let them see you lose your bladder
.

“You rappelled out of a helicopter,” DeSantos said. “Back in Vegas. You were awesome. If you did that, you can do this.”

“Do you remember anything about the time you jumped?” Uzi asked.

“I was a teenager. I went with a friend and her father for her birthday.”

“I mean about the jump.”

I couldn’t stop shaking. I almost peed in my pants. There’s that.

“We’re not looking to scare you. There’s just no other viable way out of England.”

“I’m not scared.”
I’m going to scream.
“So how will this work?” she asked, attempting to keep her voice steady, using the need to talk loudly as a means to force the words from her throat.

“You sure?” DeSantos said. “You look a bit, well, clammy.”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s simple,” Uzi said as the plane lifted off the runway. “The C-17 will drop us at relatively high altitude near the French border. We’ll land in an area far enough away from a population center. We’ve got someone there who’ll pick us up in his car and dispose of the parachutes.”

“Simple,” Vail said.

Uzi pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah. Simple.”

“Are you out of your minds? I jumped out of a plane once, twenty-five years ago. I haven’t strapped a parachute on my back since then. And you want me to jump out of the back of this beast and land in another country—illegally, I might add—without getting caught?”

“It sounds a lot worse when you say it.” Uzi raised a hand, silencing her before she could object. “But here’s the thing: you’ll be attached to one of us the whole time. We’ll deploy the ripcord.”

“That’s putting my life in your hands.”

Uzi nodded slowly. “Pretty much. So all those bad things you said about me over the years? Now would be a good time to apolog—”

“How fast will we be falling?”

Uzi waved a hand. “Not very fast.”

“About 120 miles per hour,” DeSantos said.

Vail gave Uzi a look. “Yeah, not very fast at all.”

He shrugged. “It’ll only be a couple of minutes. Once the wind starts whipping past your face, blowing back your hair, you’re really gonna enjoy it. It’s a huge rush. It won’t really feel like you’re falling. More like someone turned on a big fan and stuck it in front of your face.”

“Looking down at the landscape at night,” DeSantos said, “it’s pretty cool. We won’t see a city, but the night lights are something you’ll always remember.”

Something tells me that’s not the only thing I’ll always remember.

“Can’t we just drive across the border?”

“Karen,” DeSantos said. “Be real.” He must have seen her angry look because he said, “Okay, fine. It’s a reasonable question. Answer is no, we can’t. We’re illegal, and even though we have fake passports we’re taking a risk the authorities have been alerted to three men and a woman matching our descriptions who were seen near a terrorist attack in the heart of London that killed hundreds of people.”

Uzi shifted his torso to face Vail. “The US doesn’t have an airbase in France. Can’t drive across. Can’t take Eurail because there’s a major passport check. Can’t take a commercial flight because we’re sure to be flagged.”

“We
can
fly into Germany,” DeSantos said. “The Stuttgart Army Airfield in Filderstadt. Then we try to cross over into France. But even with the Schengen agreement, if we use our forged EU passports, there’s a border check. It’s usually pretty quick, depending on how busy the border is at the moment. But it’s a risk.”

Uzi checked his watch. “One of us gets snagged, we’re all toast.”

“So,” DeSantos said, “we fly over the top and drop in unnoticed.”

“
Hopefully
drop in unnoticed,” Fahad added from across the plane.

DeSantos gave Fahad a disapproving look. “This’ll be a routine, overt flight over France like the Air Force does several times a month, following the flight plan they’ve filed. They won’t suspect anything. The plane will be on radar—no problem with that—and once we jump, radar won’t pick us up. Visually, no one’s gonna see us till we’re a hundred feet, or less, off the ground.” He turned to Vail. “I’ve worked lots of drop zones when guys are coming in at night. I knew they’re in the air and under canopy, but I couldn’t see them until they were close to touching down. We’ve got a high moon so we won’t silhouette ourselves to anyone who may be looking our way.”

Vail shook her head. “What other things do I need to know about a mission like this? Now would be a good time to tell me.”

“You’re right,” Uzi said. “It would. But missions like this, we’ve got no idea what the terrorists are up to or when they’re going to strike—or how. So we’ve gotta be flexible and be ready for anything, improvise on the fly. Think outside the box.”

Vail smiled wanly. “Boxes can be claustrophobic. I avoid them at all costs.”

AT THE APPOINTED TIME, Fahad signaled Uzi and DeSantos that it was time to prepare for the jump. They rose from their seats and donned their parachutes.

“We’re going to make this easy on you,” Uzi said, motioning Vail up. “We’re flying low enough that we won’t need oxygen. It’ll be a tandem freefall jump from a little under 13,000 feet. You’ll be rigged up to Hector. You just hook up to him and fall with us. He’ll do all the work and deploy the chute.” He examined her face and said, “Are you with me?”

Vail shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Everything up until you said, ‘free fall’ and ‘13,000 feet.’”

Uzi studied her eyes, no doubt trying to determine if she was attempting to be funny or if she was genuinely scared. He must have settled on the former because he did not repeat it.

DeSantos clipped a cleat to her harness, then helped her strap it securely around her thighs and torso. “I remember this contraption. Didn’t like it then.” DeSantos tightened the straps around her upper thighs. “And I don’t like it now. That’s a little snug, Hector.”

“Sorry.” He gave her leg a squeeze. “Good muscle tone. You been working out?”

“Kick boxing.” She winked. “Remember that. Next time you try to cop a feel.”

“Noted.” He tugged on the thick ballistic nylon to test it, then nodded approval. “Ready?”

The crew chief walked over to a panel on the side of the plane, pressed a button and pulled a switch. As the ramp began to lower, a rush of freezing cold air slapped Vail in the face.

Fahad came up alongside them and twisted his wrist to get a look at his watch. “We’ll be over the DZ in thirty seconds.”

“Roger that.” DeSantos turned his attention to a device attached to his chest.

“What’s that?” Vail asked.

“GPS. I’m punching in the landing zone grid. Once we’re out under the chute this baby’ll fly us there, making course corrections as needed—left turn, right turn, and so on. At this altitude, it’s all about the GPS.”

“There we go,” Fahad shouted and gestured out the opening.

Vail watched as the landscape below came into view.

“That’s the English Channel down there.” He was pointing at the body of water that fed into the Atlantic Ocean.

I’d like to channel something else … Superman, maybe?

DeSantos checked their attachment. “You and I are going to dive off the ramp. Once we’re in free fall, hold your arms out at your sides to help us fly and keep stable, okay?”

“Can you stop saying, ‘free fall’?”

“That’s what it’s called. We could’ve done a static line jump, where the parachute’s static line is attached to the anchor line cable that’s hooked up inside the C-17. As you fall out, the parachute deploys automatically. Problem is a static line typically has to be low altitude, hundreds of feet. Much bigger chance of us being seen.” He examined her face. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Just remind me to stop getting into airplanes with you guys. It always ends up with me doing stupid shit like this.” She looked out at the lights below and felt her heart rate increase, her breathing get shallow.
Stop it, Karen. You can do this. Nothing to it—Hector’s gonna do all the work.

He tapped her arm and they moved to the now-gaping opening in the plane’s rear, stepping close to the edge. The movement of the plane against the darkening landscape and dense cloud cover was disorienting, and Vail stuck her hand out to steady herself.

DeSantos leaned over, studying the landscape. He motioned to Uzi, holding his index finger and thumb close together. Uzi responded with a thumbs-up.

A green light appeared above them and DeSantos looked at it, then clasped Vail’s fingers in his hand.

He waited a beat then nodded to her and they dove forward, into the icy darkness of French airspace.