Tokaido and Delahunt chuckled at the scholarly computer expert’s subdued shudder.
“Hunt, work with me on trying to back-trace the origin of the trucks,” Delahunt said. “It’ll be something new for your brain to work on to clear the cobwebs.”
“Unfortunately, Able Team didn’t leave much in terms of trace evidence on the vehicles,” Wethers lamented, looking at Delahunt’s notes. “And what Carl and the lads didn’t wreak, the marauders themselves contributed. VIN plates removed, and no accumulation of personal items that could betray origin. Even the odometers were taken out.”
“Thorough,” Delahunt agreed. She took a deep breath, returning to her workstation. “With the odometers, and a rough estimate of the distances traveled, we could have at least narrowed down the trucks to wherever they were stolen or purchased.”
“How about the electronics?” Wethers inquired. “Surely the IR illuminators should have betrayed a point of origin.”
“Chinese military equipment, top of the line for special forces,” Delahunt said. “It doesn’t show up on any catalogs, but we’ve had enough dealings with the Security Affairs Division to know what their gear looks like.”
Wethers observed the screen, looking at the night-vision equipment that had been photographed by Schwarz. Images of the complete unit, then dissected, were displayed. Chinese knockoff transistors were in the design. “It’s pretty damning. Red China is the only concurrent power to the United States to have a burgeoning aerospace industry devoted to orbital craft.”
“We’ve also got an international mix of operatives among those bodies not burned or mutilated beyond the point of recognition,” Delahunt mused. “China does have the kind of budget to…”
Wethers glanced over to her as her train of thought trailed off. Her green eyes flickered and Wethers knew she’d hit a hunch.
“Akira, put the bank search on hold,” Delahunt noted. “Take a look at brokers who make large dollar to yuan conversions.”
Tokaido nodded slowly. “Why didn’t I think of that in the first place?”
“That’s why we’re a team, Akira,” Wethers admonished. “Still, what would the PRC benefit by this? This kind of activity could result in trouble for them once an astute investigator figured this out.”
“You think that this is circumstantial evidence left to implicate Beijing?” Delahunt asked.
“It’s a possibility. Or, it could be a double-blind. The U.S. wouldn’t believe China to be so arrogant as to leave these traces, and thus waste energy confirming such a setup,” Wethers explained.
“One step at a time,” Delahunt said. “We find the evidence, and then see where it points. As setup or as genuine.”
“Fair enough,” Wethers stated. He went to work, going over transistor lots and equipment manufacture manifests. Though it looked as if he were in a trance, mentally slowed to a stop, his brain raced at the speed of light.
In the back of his brilliant mind, the eldest member of the Stony Man cybernetics crew wondered if the speed of light was still too slow to prevent Armageddon.
Midway Island, U.S. Naval Cleanup and Reclamation Center
P HOENIX F ORCE HAD BEEN returning from an operation in India when they received the alert to go on stand-by due to another crisis. David McCarter waited in the hangar at what was a covertly operating Naval Air Station, stubbing out a Player’s cigarette. The U.S. Navy had been publicly ordered to clean up the contamination of the Midway Station National Wildlife Refuse, but there were still low-profile facilities available for the United States Special Operations Command to use as forward staging areas. Phoenix Force was taking advantage of the top-secret station to recuperate from the first half of a long flight when they’d received a stand-by alert.
“Thank you, David,” Rafael Encizo said, waving the fumes away from his face.
McCarter winked and pulled another from its pack, lighting up. “Anytime, mate.”
Encizo rolled his eyes. “This is Hawaii. Fresh air, crystal-blue water, verdant green…”
“Yeah. But I’m workin’ as fast as I can to fix that,” McCarter joked.
“Give me strength,” Encizo groaned. He walked out onto the tarmac. The breeze blowing spared him from suffering McCarter’s secondhand smoke. “Think we’ll have time to head home, or will we have to resupply here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” McCarter answered. “But I’m betting that it’ll be a little while until we’re back at the Farm. Hope you didn’t have any hot dates waiting.”
Encizo shrugged. “You know me, David. A girl in every port.”
McCarter didn’t know whether that was an exaggeration or not, but he didn’t particularly care. The Cuban had his relationships that had survived the social-life-strangling strains of covert operations, as McCarter had his own.
“We’ve got an update,” T. J. Hawkins announced. The youngest member of Phoenix Force had been manning their satellite uplink-equipped laptop, waiting for news.
McCarter crushed the half-smoked cigarette and joined Encizo beside Hawkins, Calvin James and Gary Manning to observe the electronic briefing from where they’d been occupying themselves.
“Currently, all we have is circumstantial evidence,” Barbara Price announced on screen. “But put together, it’s pretty damning. We’ve got several million dollars missing from People’s Republic of China banks. The money disappeared from facilities that were converting dollars to yuan and vice versa.”
“Added to the SAD-style night vision, it does look damning,” James, a former San Francisco police officer, agreed. “But circumstantial evidence doesn’t hold up. We need something stronger.”
“Try this image we’ve got from an NRO satellite,” Price added. An image appeared on the screen, a photograph of a launch facility. The image enlarged and focused on a corner of the launch campus. “It was observing a facility referred to in the records as the Phoenix Graveyard.”
“Glad I’m not superstitious,” McCarter muttered.
“Looks familiar,” Gary Manning said, cutting off his friend’s gloomy proclamation. “The same kind of terrorist combat training facilities that litter Asia from Syria to Pakistan.”
“Too disorganized to be conventional army barracks, and this tank,” Encizo mentioned. “I recognize that kind of water tank. There’s one at Cape Canaveral.”
“A zero-gravity, space-suit training tank,” James agreed. “The water duplicates the relative lack of gravity, as well as operating in a self-contained atmosphere, preparing people for extra-vehicular activity.”
“And it’s not for astronauts, because this is a second tank in addition to one for the Chinese astronauts,” Manning said. “The Chinese don’t normally send people into orbit, and when they do, it’s on the QT. Mostly, their facilities are rented out to launch satellites, but they do have their own space program, complete with a knockoff of the shuttle that’s a little better than the Russians’.”
“So they’re training terrorists for zero-gravity combat in a space suit?” McCarter asked. “That narrows down the targets considerably.”
“The International Space Station,” Hawkins concluded. “Isn’t there supposed to be a shuttle launch and rendezvous?”
“It’ll be going up in three days,” Price answered. “Take a look at this setup here…”
The photograph increased in detail, and it was a maze of tires. Utilizing computer wizardry,