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“They’re the patsies,” I said. “Maravic is going to pin it on them.”
“Remember the van Maravic had?” asked Colton. “I thought it was too old and beat up for a slick operation like theirs. But it’s just the sort of piece of crap four poor kids from New Jersey would use.”
“Calahan, you’re looking for a brown Chevy van,” I said urgently. “It drove from New York to near Columbus, Ohio the day before yesterday. New York plates, GT7 15D” Colton stared at me in wonder and I blushed.
“Alright…” said Calahan gratefully. “Alright, I’m on it. I’ll call you back.”
The pickup turned off the dirt road and bounced across a plowed field. We pulled up alongside a helicopter and piled in. Gina turned to us. “Don’t suppose anyone thought to bring my phone back?”
The team all looked at each other guiltily.
Gina rolled her eyes, grumbled and took off.
57
COLTON
We were barely in the air when JD’s phone rang. “We got a hit on that license plate!” said Calahan. “A traffic camera caught it yesterday morning heading west on I-30 near Arkansas.”
We thanked him, hung up and looked at a map. “So we know the target’s somewhere west of Little Rock,” said JD, “and we know it’s south, or they’d have taken a different route.” He yelled to Gina. “Start flying south!”
“That’s still a bloody big list of places,” said Danny. “Could be L.A., San Diego, Vegas…”
“You’re assuming they’re going to hit a city,” said Gabriel. “For all we know, it could be a town. Any town.”
“What do we know?” I asked desperately. “They’re going to use a nerve agent. It’s a gas, right?”
Tanya nodded. “It’s stored as liquid, under pressure, but it comes out as gas. They’d want a confined space.”
“Okay,” said Gabriel. “So anything outdoors is out. No football stadiums, no parades.”
“Where do a lot of people gather, indoors?” asked JD. “A shopping mall? A basketball court?”
“What about a movie theater?” I asked. “One of those big ones with like ten screens?”
“Oh Jesus,” said Danny, going pale. “A school?”
All of them were good ideas but now we had tens of thousands of possible targets. For nearly three hours, as Gina flew south, we all wracked our brains but we couldn’t figure out any way to narrow it down. I stared into Tanya’s eyes but she looked as helpless as me. Even Gabriel looked stumped.
I wanted to rage and punch something but this wasn’t a problem I could solve with brute force. A lot of people were going to die if I didn’t figure this out. I looked at Tanya. She’d claimed I was smarter than I thought. So think! What am I missing?
I thought back to Steward and Lucas Bainbridge. To Maravic. To the guy we’d met at Butcher’s, the mercenary bar…
“The guy who Maravic hired,” I said suddenly. “He was boasting to his buddy that Maravic had a big screen TV with the full NFL package. Does Maravic strike you as a guy who cares about his guys enough to give them perks?”
Tanya immediately shook her head. “No.”
“So what if there was another reason they were watching NFL games?”
Gabriel shook his head. “We already ruled out a football stadium. It’s outdoors, the gas would just dissipate.”
Danny sat bolt upright in his seat. “There are stadiums with roofs that close. Arlington, in Texas, they have one. Erin was telling me about it before we left because…” His jaw went slack. “Shit. Because that’s the game Kian’s going to…with the President.”
58
TANYA
We all stared at each other in horror.
“It makes sense,” said Gabriel coldly. “They want to make sure. They need to be certain the dollar will absolutely tank. If there’s a massive terrorist attack and it kills the President...and then the algorithm kicks in and amplifies the panic…” He shook his head. “It’ll be like nothing anyone’s ever seen. Worst financial crash in history.” He looked as if he might throw up. “The Bainbridges are going to be trillionaires. And they’re going to kill a whole stadium full of people to do it.”
The chopper banked and turned. “Heading to Arlington,” Gina told us. “We’re about thirty minutes out. When does the game start?”
“Forty minutes,” said Danny, his voice strained. He looked at JD. “Let’s call the Secret Service, They can evacuate the place.”
JD pulled out his phone...but then stopped, looking ill.
“What?” asked Danny. “Call them!”
JD pressed his lips tight together. “What if they don’t believe us?” He looked around at all of us. “We’ve got no evidence. It’s our word against Steward’s. And we just broke into a CIA facility, we’re fugitives.” He glanced over at Colton and me and now I knew why he looked sick. He was realizing how we’d felt, when he didn’t believe us.
“It’s got to be worth a try!” begged Danny. “Just call them!”
“It ain’t that simple,” said JD. “If they don’t believe us, they won’t evacuate the stadium. But they’ll also trace the call, scramble a jet and force us to land. We’ll be sitting in handcuffs when this thing goes down. We won’t be able to help.”
