Final Winter

He got up from the desk, reached down, whispered, ‘Ah, fuck it,’ and sent an e-mail to a Homeland Security Office contact, complete with attached photo.

Thurgood left, went to the locker room, got into his civvies. Just as he was heading out the locker-room door to the station’s parking lot, it seemed as though every phone in the building started to ring.

~ * ~

Adrianna came onto the floor of the maintenance hangar at AirBox. It was nearly one a.m. Past the entrance into the hangar there were three offices off to the left. The door to the first one was closed, and over the noise of the machinery and ventilation equipment she could hear people shouting. She couldn’t make out the words, but she sure could make out the emotions. Somebody was extremely upset.

The door suddenly opened. She stepped back. The General stepped out, his face flushed. Adrianna could make out a tumble of bodies behind him, gathered in one corner of the office, and then the door was shut.

‘Miss Scott,’ he said.

‘General,’ she said. She gestured at the closed door. ‘Is there a problem?’

‘Nothing you should worry about.’

Something fell over in the office. ‘Really?’ she asked.

‘Let’s just say a few machinists are having a frank and open discussion with my chief financial officer. What can I do for you?’

Adrianna said, ‘Just one last status check.’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘From what I know, we’re not going to make the schedule.’

Oh, God, no, she thought. Her feet seemed to merge with the cement floor.

Then the General smiled.

‘We’re ahead of schedule. First flight due to take off at two a.m., followed by thirty-nine others, at sixty-second intervals. Sound good to you?’

‘Sounds… sounds great, General.’

‘Good. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to follow up on a few things.’

She shook the General’s hand, idly thought of how long he would live when this was all over, and then she said, ‘The same here. I’ll be back east by the morning, monitoring your aircraft, monitoring the efforts to capture the terrorist teams before they strike. Thank you again for what you’ve done, General. You’ve done a great service to your nation.’

The General went back to the closed door. ‘Service not done yet, Miss Scott. Have a good night.’

‘You, too, sir.’

And when Adrianna left, she felt as light as a feather.

~ * ~

At the Northwest Homeland Security office, Jason Janwick looked over his people, looked down again at the printout on the conference-room desk. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Just to make sure we got this straight, the Yemeni boy who’s been on our watch list has been found dead outside Memphis. Three to the ten circle, one in the forehead. Think somebody was pissed at him?’

Some smiles from his crew. Janwick said, ‘What does this tell us?’

His new girl from Customs looked around, as if to see if anybody else was going to step up to the plate. Tanya Mead said, ‘Silence.’

‘Go on.’

‘Somebody wanted the boy silent. Somebody wanted to make sure he didn’t talk about what he was doing there, what he was up to, that sort of thing.’

‘Suspects?’

Another voice from the other side of the table. ‘His companion. The Russian.’

‘Simple. But probably true.’

Janwick drew a hand through his thin hair. Another late night in a series of late nights. What had to be done to protect this country.

‘Any word on the trailer that was supposed to have been attached to that Freightliner?’

‘No, sir,’ came the answer.

‘Lots of things we still don’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t know for certain why the Yemeni got whacked, though we do have our suspicions. Don’t know where the Russian is. Don’t know where the cargo went. Those are the unknowns.’

Those quiet, curious faces, looking at him for guidance. He took a breath. ‘But this is what we do know. We know that the Yemeni — with links to al-Qaeda — crossed into this country illegally nearly a week ago. We know the Yemeni crossed the border in the company of a Russian scientist with biowarfare experience, whose past history includes working with unsavory types in Southwest Asia. We know they crossed the border with a trailer filled with something that they didn’t want examined by Customs. We know the trailer is now missing. Conclusions?’

‘Biowarfare attack,’ came a voice from the other end of the table.

‘Sure,’ Janwick said. ‘But where? Memphis? What does Memphis have besides Graceland?’

‘Cargo,’ came another voice. ‘Lots and lots of cargo. Every major air freight company in the nation has its hub there. DHL, FedEx, AirBox…you name it.’

Then there was a buzz of voices, as scenarios were presented, argued, debated. One voice — Logan, an ex-Marine recon who had lost an arm in Baghdad some years back -said, ‘Sounds like an attack on the airport, chief. Remember how DC was in such a cluster-fuck back in ‘01 when they thought a couple of post office centers and the Senate mail room was contaminated? What do you think would happen if all of the airfreight in the nation got contaminated somehow? Christ, the stock market would crash in a heartbeat.’