CHAPTER 100

Cerniga had played every card he had, but the fact remained that he was a field agent in the FBI’s Atlanta office and had little sway in matters of international counterterrorism regardless of his personal reputation. Things were tense enough between the FBI and CIA these days without him stirring the hornet’s nest, he was told, particularly if he was going to throw around accusations of incompetence or worse. In truth, he would have given the matter up after the first phone call, but Deborah Miller had a knack for the persuasive, and—he had to admit—she was often right.

So he made more calls, checked the security of the lines, and told anyone who would listen at headquarters about his fears. He called the CIA and the Air Force as well, but couldn’t get past the sense that he was being dodged. When he could get anyone to actually talk about the March thirteenth attack, they took one look at the security clearance issues and shut him down. It was Deborah who pushed the angle that would crack the door open an inch, scribbling in pencil on the back of a museum flyer:

“Tell them it’s going to happen again,” she said. “Same location.”

What had been an inconvenient investigation into past embarrassments was now something quite different.

“Here’s what we know,” he said, after finally hanging up.

“The Predator drone has to be launched by a ground crew relatively close to the strike area.”

“How close?”

“Not sure,” he said. “A few hundred miles, probably. If the attack on the village where your friend’s brother was killed was indeed deliberate, whoever did it did not have the authority to actually schedule the launch. Their mission had to be piggybacked onto a legitimate flight that was already scheduled. Since the aircraft that stayed on course never fired a shot, the legitimate flight was probably strictly reconnaissance, though the aircraft would have been armed in case a target presented itself while it was up.”

“So for it to happen again,” said Deborah, “there would need to be another scheduled mission in the vicinity of the beach.”

“Right,” said Cerniga. “And here’s the weird thing. It makes sense that the CIA would give any credible threat a serious listen, but their tone changed completely as soon as I suggested it might happen again and soon. They took the coordinates and they moved out of that ‘thanks-for-your-interest’ mode.”

“You think another drone flight is scheduled in the Sulu Archipelago?”

“For all I know,” said Cerniga, “they are already in the air.”