The Threat

“I’d like to talk to CTG 4.3 … belay that … where’s the frigate now? The one that confirmed the track, took the handoff from the radar in Texas?”

The operator said Gallery was off station, headed east.

“They still in satcom contact? I need a level-three voice channel.”

The operator hesitated, glancing toward the closed door of the conference room. But finally nodded.

Dan took the handset. Keyed, and waited. When a note signaled they were linked, he said, “USS Gallery, this is the director of drug interdiction from the president’s staff. Present in the Carib Ops Center. Request to speak to Gallery Actual.”

When the commanding officer came on Dan explained who he was again, once more without using his name or rank. “This is in reference to ATOI 3, track 930, detected approximately 2200 last night when you were on station off La Guajira. I want you to replay your raw video data on that contact.”

“Roger, understand you want to revisit the acquisition. And do what?”

The problem was he wasn’t really sure. Just that he was remembering a conversation with a Treasury agent. “I can’t tell you exactly what to look for, but I need you to reconstruct the air plot,” Dan told him. “Not just track acquisition. Before that. And have your shit-sharpest air intercept controller eyeball it very closely.”

Gallery didn’t ask why. Just said he’d have his ops specialist chief look at it too. Dan signed off. It most likely wouldn’t pan out, but he had to try.

Quintero, back from the call to the combatant commander. Sweat glittered on his forehead. Dan told him, “My boss wants the cameras on the fighters checked. To make absolutely sure they didn’t fire. And the film or whatever they use as a recording medium sequestered as evidence.”

Quintero told the command duty officer to make it happen. “What else do we need to do?”

Dan reflected on the irony of an admiral publicly asking a commander for advice. But he was the Suit from Washington now. Here to help? More likely to get himself tacked up on a cross between Quintero and the pilots. “What else?” Quintero said again.

“Well, I had one idea,” he began, when the console operator waved, holding up the red handset. He told the admiral he’d be right back.

“This is Gallery Actual. Captain Starer here. We went over the plot again for the initial acquisition. Ran it through the point it went off the screen. Over.”

“Anything out of the ordinary? Over.”

“No. Nothing.” Dan’s heart dropped. Then the voice added, “Something funny before that, though. We didn’t have one aircraft come on the screen at 2210. We had two.”

“Can you put this on speaker?” Dan muttered to the chief. He crooked a finger to Quintero and Bloom to come over and listen.

The frigate’s skipper explained that by running the tape slowly and tweaking the display, they were able to make out not one but two aircraft approaching the coast. At the same speed and nearly the same altitude, but on converging courses. Just before meeting, one had vanished from the screen.

“Which one?” Dan asked him.

“Can’t tell. Blip meld; too close to distinguish.”

“But one just … disappeared?”

“Right. Two contacts, then there’s only one.”

Dan tapped the handset against his shoulder. His brain felt like a generator with too much power demanded of it. Two contacts — then one. The frigate, and no doubt the more distant AWACs and over-the-horizon radars too, had continued to track the plane that continued north. “What happened to the other one? Over.”

The distant voice sounded puzzled. “Like I said, from one sweep to the next we go from two contacts to one, proceeding to seaward. We passed it off to the E-2. Oh, and it goes dark — the target’s radar and IFF snap off.”

“They snap off after the two contacts merged? Or whatever they did?”

“Correct. That was what we were supposed to look for — right? A nonsquawker. IFF off.”

A possibility took shape. Still murky, but it might explain at least part of what had happened. “How long after the first aircraft drops off the screen does the second one go black?”

The CO said to wait. A moment later he was back. He said no more than a minute.

Dan signed off, and found Quintero and Bloom both frowning at him. “What’ve you got?” the admiral said.

“Gallery’s skipper says there were originally two aircraft,” Dan told them.

“What?” said Bloom. Quintero just blinked.

“One must have been Nuñez’s. The other, Tejeiro’s. Converging courses. Nearly the same altitude. Same speed.”

He tried to think through what was still only a suspicion while he illustrated it with his hands, aviator-fashion. “Call them N and T. Let’s say … N takes off from Nuñez’s airstrip in Bucaramanga. Heads north. T takes off from Bogotá. It heads north too. But since they’re both headed for the same way point, their courses gradually converge.”

“Okay,” said Quintero.