Alan Sabel’s jet roared through the sky, carrying Pia and her crew to an uncertain future in China. From the corner of her eye, she saw her father pour a glass of water in the galley and carry it to her. He placed it on the table and waited in the aisle. She never looked up from her tablet.
He sat across from her. “I thought I raised a girl who said—”
“Thanks for the water.”
“You found Wu Fang’s address. What else do you need?”
“Lots of things.”
“Any way I can help?”
Pia glanced up. “Sorry, Dad. I couldn’t explain it.”
She nosed into her tablet again, zooming and turning the screen.
“Try me. Sometimes talking it out—”
“They’re boxed in,” she said. She leaned back, her eyes still on the tablet. “No way out and an unknown situation on the ground. Jacob estimated Mokin has forty men left, but it could be a hundred for all we know.”
“You’re not worried about the odds.”
She pushed the tablet away and gazed out the window. Somewhere in the predawn dark, fifty thousand feet below, the Pacific Ocean sloshed from Asia to America.
She sighed. “The satellite images, they’re crap. Manhattan is clear and crisp, but rural China is a haze.”
Alan leaned over the table and pulled the tablet closer to him. He checked out the map and zoomed in.
“No matter how you zoom in,” she said, “the smallest identifiable object on the ground is so fuzzy you can’t tell if it’s a car or a stadium.”
Alan nodded and pushed the tablet back to her. “What happened to that old friend of yours? The one you had over for dinner a couple times.”
Pia shrugged. “Who?”
“That pretty Latina girl, used to be a soccer rival in high school. I think she was the captain at Bethesda or Rockville?”
“Bianca Dominguez? She’s one of Jacob’s girlfriends.” Pia leaned forward, her eyes intent on the tablet again. “Dad, thanks, but I need to concentrate.”
“Didn’t she work at the NSA?”
Pia looked up again and nodded. A slow smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “You got rich by being smart.”
Pia checked the time difference—morning in DC—and dialed Bianca’s number. Her old friend was thrilled to help out and promised hi-res files would reach her soon.
Five minutes later, instead of the files from Bianca, Pia received a terse call from the NSA’s director. In the next minute she received a bitter call from Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, which was followed by a nasty call from the Deputy Secretary of Defense. She sent the next incoming call straight to voicemail and drummed her fingernails on the table.
“That went bad quickly,” Alan said.
“Bianca’s going to jail.” She kept drumming her fingernails. “We’ve known the feds are keeping tabs on us, but that escalated a lot faster than I expected.”
“To escalate that quickly means someone is monitoring that patch of China. And that level of attention comes from the Oval Office.”
Pia thought through her options. Once she made up her mind about what to do next, she picked up her phone and started to dial.
Alan pulled it from her hands. “A pragmatic approach is always best. Think before you make that call. You’ll only get one shot at it.”
He placed the phone down between them.
Pia stared at it while she drummed her fingernails on the table some more. She picked it up, put it down, and picked it up again. After a long, hard look at her father, she dialed.
“Madam President, thank you for taking my call.”
“You’ve interrupted my morning schedule, Ms. Sabel. Make it quick.”
“We’ve had our differences, but I have an opportunity for you to do something good. My agents have tracked the people responsible for the mass graves on Borneo to rural China and—”
“Allow me to jump for joy. Now go through proper channels for whatever you need and never call me again.”
Pia glanced at her father, who listened on a muted line. He shrugged.
Pia said, “We believe they’re connected to someone in the Chinese—”
“You’re way out of line here, Pia. Relations with China are strained. It’s not like Russia or Italy or Argentina. China owns enough of our national debt to send our credit into a tailspin if they chose. I’m not going to risk an international incident to capture some band of outlaws just so you can get a good press release out of it.”
“This is not about Sabel Security. This is about biological disaster and justice for the dead.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about Kaya, the little girl you left behind. I hope you feel guilty. Nonetheless, upsetting the delicate relationship between two superpowers so you can finally sleep at night is not going to happen.”
“My people are in position to stop another mass killing,” Pia said. “We don’t know where they’re planning to strike, but I have people positioned outside their base of operations. I can shut them down and the Chinese will never know we were there.”
“You’re asking me to assist an attack on the second biggest economy in the world? You obviously don’t know anything about sovereignty, young lady. The US cannot enter a country illegally and kill people at will because of evidence you claim to have against—”
“For God’s sake, get on the right side of history for once.” Pia pounded her fist on the table. Her father flinched. “You have the opportunity to save thousands of lives, possibly hundreds of thousands.”
Alan Sabel turned white and waved his hands back and forth over the table, begging his daughter to stop.
“The world is bigger than Pia Sabel’s problems, you little shit. Get over yourself.”
“I have Bill McCarty’s deathbed confession.”
President Hunter said nothing for a long time, then took a deep breath. “We’ve been over that operation. Anything he said about Snare Drum is sealed.”
“I’m not talking about Snare Drum. I’m talking about the murder of my parents. He made a video hours before committing suicide. He named the person who gave him the order to kill American citizens on American soil.”
President Hunter gasped loud enough for Pia to hear. Alan Sabel buried his head in his hands.
“I don’t have time for any more of your cheap theatrics, and I will never give into extortion. Do you understand me?” The President took a deep breath. “Now. What do you want?”
“Release Bianca Dominguez and drop the charges against her. Then authorize the release of the satellite maps she tried to send me.”
“Fine, but the little bitch won’t get her job back.”
Pia clicked off, placed the phone on the table in front of her father.
“You shouldn’t bluff the leader of the free world,” he said.
“It’s not a bluff.”
“The FBI confiscated all of McCarty’s things, including all his blackmail material.”
Pia placed her hands flat on the table and stared at her father.
“Anything they missed,” he continued, “we need to turn over to them.”
“Hours before Jacob tracked him down,” Pia said, “McCarty made a video addressed to me. He knew he would die. He felt bad about his involvement in the murders and wanted to get it off his chest.”
“But the FBI had a warrant to retrieve—”
“Everything illegally obtained by McCarty. This video was legal. It was addressed to me. It’s mine.” Pia watched him, her gray-green eyes drilling for truth. “Dad, is there anything you want to tell me about the day my parents died?”
“You and I have been over that a thousand times with the best therapists in the country.”
She stared at him.
He leaned back and tugged at his cufflinks. “No, Pia, there’s nothing I want to tell you about that day.”
She nodded, her lips drawn tight, her eyes narrowed.
Small beads of sweat formed on his upper lip. “Why? What did McCarty say?”