The Threat

On the other hand, he couldn’t just look away, wait for somebody else to notice. This had nothing to do with Dan Lenson’s job description or counterdrug’s lines of command. But compared to this, they faded into unimportance.

If there really was an attack impending, he had to stop it.

He took Lynch and Alvarado into the director’s cubicle with him. Making it crowded, but it was a quick way to get them backgrounded. He still wondered if he should be including the Coastie in this. He’d have to keep an eye on his phone calls.

Roald listened with her too-pointed chin propped on a finger, gaze locked on his. Questions darted behind those blue windows. But she didn’t voice them. Till at last he ran down and stood listening to the murmur of a desk officer checking a comm channel to some distant corner of the empire. He eyed Alvarado, wondering why he didn’t look surprised.

The captain’s first question, soft and low-toned: “Why would you think this might be aimed at the Washington area?”

“The cartel second-ranker we turned after the Haiti raid. He didn’t know what it was. Or when. But he said it was aimed at D.C.”

“Right. The spring wind thing.” Roald cut her eyes at the cold rain, actually sleet now, lashing the windows. “But this isn’t spring. Not by a long shot.”

Dan hurried on, realizing this must sound less than convincing. “Actually the specific target doesn’t matter, does it? Something like that, it’s an area weapon. They’d target it against a city. The important thing’s to catch them on the ground, stop them before they take off.”

The Sit Room director swiveled her chair, frowning. “Who else have you shared this with?”

“Just my own people. Bloom. Lynch. Marty Harlowe’s coming in.”

“Your boss? General Sebold?”

“No … not yet.”

“Don’t you think you should?”

“I wanted to run it past you first. A reality check. If we’re jumping out without the ’chute on this.”

Her gaze flicked from her screen to the overhead clocks. “It might make sense, but … only if you accept a lot of hearsay at face value. What makes you think it’s going to happen soon?”

“It’s not all hearsay. The documents we found at the Haiti conference. Then the thefts last week from Laguna Verde.”

“I understood all that. Though the Mexican authorities are still saying nothing was taken. What I asked was, why the big rush?”

“I don’t know … it just occurred to me … the strike’s going to start the day after tomorrow.”

“The strike? What strike?”

Dan nodded to Lynch, who said, “The air cargo baggage handlers’ union is going out day after tomorrow if the airlines don’t sign. And the Wall Street Journal says they won’t. They say this could be a long strike. Meaning air cargo won’t fly.”

Roald shrugged. “So what? They just wait until it can.”

“They can’t just sit on their hands. Every day they keep this stuff in the U.S. is a day more they can be discovered,” Dan told her. “Plus think about this. This material they’ve stolen has what’s called ‘inherent security’—meaning it’s dangerous as hell to be around. Even if they’re just in the same building with it, hiding it, or guarding it, they’ll be getting neutrons through the walls. They might not have figured on that. They might know, at least the higher-ups, but not have bothered to warn the foot soldiers. But once you start getting radiation sickness, you know it. I’ve seen it. It’s not something you ignore. And it happens fast.”

She tried to interrupt but he hurried on. “Okay, dying might not stop them. If there’s the jihadist connection we suspect, from this Blessings organization. Or they might just shoot the first people who go down, if the guards are cartel. But if they all get sick, they’ll be useless, and it’ll be too late. Ed says the last air cargo strike lasted for three months.

“So my call is they’ll do whatever they’re going to do just as soon as they can turn the isotopes around, just as soon as they can get them into whatever dispersal mechanism or packaging they plan to use. And then — they’ll go. They won’t delay a day, not an hour. Because they can’t afford to.”

Roald thought about that. Then swung to her terminal. Her fingers danced. Dan saw she was accessing a Los Alamos National Laboratory site. Then a list of classified papers. Finally, a monograph on medical radiological sources. She scrolled down, speed-reading at an impressive rate.

“‘Uses range from radiation treatment of cancer, to well testing, sterilization of food, seeds, and medical equipment.’ What’s the isotope again?”

He told her what Bloom had told him, from his unnamed source: that it was mostly cesium.

“Cesium-137.” Roald pulled up another screen. “‘Most often employed in the form of cesium chloride … product of uranium fission … millions of times more radioactive than uranium … ‘Chemical treatment is required to extract the cesium,’” she read off.

“That’d be the process at Laguna Verde.”