"You ready to stop fucking around?" asked Dewey.

9.

DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (DIA).

JOINT BASE ANACOSTIA-BOLLING.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Will Parizeau sat in front of a pair of brightly lit plasma screens arrayed in a slight concave atop a long steel desk. Parizeau's bespectacled eyes darted back and forth between the two screens. A look of concern adorned his youthful, ruddy face as his eyes raced between the screens. Then came a look of fear. His mouth opened slightly. His eyes bulged.

"Sweet Jesus," he said aloud.

On the left screen was a grid displaying four satellite images. On the right was a wall of numbers plotted against a spreadsheet.

Parizeau was a senior-level analyst within the Defense Intelligence Agency's Directorate for Science and Technology. Employing radar intelligence, acoustic intelligence, nuclear intelligence, and chemical and biological intelligence, the DIA detected and tracked fixed or dynamic target sources, such as nuclear weapons. If the National Security Agency was about scouring e-mails, phone calls, Internet traffic, and other signals intelligence, looking for bad people who might do harm to the United States, DIA was about scouring the earth for the objects those bad people might use in those efforts.

Parizeau's desk sat in a cavernous, windowless, dimly lit room two floors belowground, in a respectable if unspectacular-looking brick building. It was one of several old, well-maintained buildings, built in the 1920s, on a 905-acre military base in southwest Washington, D.C., called Fort Bolling. Parizeau was one of more than a hundred analysts, all surrounded by visual media, and all of it related to nuclear weapons deemed vulnerable to theft or purchase by terrorists.

Parizeau's job was to keep track of all suspected nuclear weapons inside the former Soviet republic and now sovereign nation Ukraine. DIA believed that four nuclear devices still were hidden in Ukraine, their existence denied by both the Ukrainian and Russian governments, and yet their telltale chemical signatures were like beacons to the highly purposed satellites that hovered in geostationary orbit looking down.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons were at risk all over the newly independent breakaway republics. Due to geography, these small countries now owned nuclear weapons. Impoverished regional governments, often run by peasants and farmers, suddenly possessed a variety of valuable objects; nuclear weapons were at the top of the list. Indeed, they were the list.

Several years of negotiations between Russia and the West ensured that all Soviet nuclear weapons were accounted for and in safe storage. So concerned with the chaotic approach of the Russian government to its nuclear arsenal, America decided that it would be prudent to "invest" more than $300 billion in an effort to help Russia secure its own nukes. But even with the massive bribe, a few weapons went missing.

Behind the complex negotiations between the United States and Russia to safeguard the rogue bombs, there lurked a more alarming set of negotiations between Russia and its former republics. On the one hand, Russia wanted the United States to think they had the power to bring all of the weapons back into the fold. On the other hand, Russia had a smorgasbord of newly created republics, independent of Russia, that wanted a cut of the U.S. bribe. In the end, America bought-for Russia-its own weapons back from the republics. It was inevitable that some bad characters, in places like the Ukraine, would keep a few for themselves.

Ukraine had officially handed over all nineteen hundred of its nuclear weapons in 1994, giving them to the Russian Federation in exchange for its sovereignty and a variety of economic concessions, forgiveness of debts, and cash. A discrepancy of four out of the nineteen hundred had never been fully explained by either the Ukrainian government or Russia. It had taken technology and nearly two years to pinpoint the telltale tritium emissions and locate the four rogue weapons. Ever since then, it was Parizeau's full-time job to monitor the supposedly nonexistent Ukrainian-domiciled nukes.

Parizeau relied on an advanced communications satellite operated by the U.S. Air Force, one of five that hovered in geostationary orbit above the earth. Parizeau spent his time tracking a variety of telltale chemical and biological symptoms, including plutonium depletion, keeping an eye on the nuclear devices.

It was a scan fewer than twenty-four hours old that Parizeau now stared at, transfixed. What the numbers showed was that one of the nuclear bombs in the Ukraine had been moved. In fact, it had disappeared.

Parizeau picked up his phone.

"Get me Mark Raditz over at the Pentagon."

Mark Raditz, the deputy secretary of defense, sat behind his desk on the second floor of the Pentagon. His phone buzzed.

"Mark," said Raditz's assistant, Beth. "Will Parizeau is on one."

"Who?"

"Will Parizeau. Ukraine desk at DIA."

"Put him through."

Raditz flipped on a tan plastic device that looked like a large radio. It was an air filtration machine. He opened the top drawer of his desk and removed a pack of Camel Lights. He stuffed a cigarette between his lips, then lit it. He sat down on his large red leather desk chair, leaned back, and put his cowboy boots up on the desk.

"What is it, Will?" asked Raditz, crossing his legs, yawning slightly. "How's the Ukraine these days?"

"We have a rover," said Parizeau.

Raditz was still for a brief instant, then lurched up and leaned over the phone console on his desk.

"Come again?" Raditz said.

"There's a nuclear bomb missing. This is one of four devices we believe Ukraine still possesses."

"Where and when were the last hard readings made?"

"As of four days ago, the two bombs we believe to be housed at a warehouse south of Kiev were both present and accounted for. Plutonium depletion levels have dropped by fifty percent as of two this morning. One of the bombs is gone, sir."

Raditz took a last puff on his cigarette. He lifted his left foot and stubbed the cigarette out on the bottom of his boot.

"Will, I'm about to walk into Harry Black's office across the hall from mine," said Raditz, referring to the secretary of defense. "In turn, Secretary Black will call the president of the United States. Are you one hundred percent goddam motherfucking absolutely sure your math is correct?"

"Yes, I am."

Raditz took a deep breath.

"Stay on the line," he said. "I want to patch in interagency."

Raditz hit another button on the phone.

"Get me Josh Brubaker over at the White House," Raditz told his assistant. "Then get Torey Krug at EUCOM. I also need Hector Calibrisi, Piper Redgrave, and Arden Mason. Better get Sarah Greene at 4th Space Operations Squadron too. Hurry."

"Is everything okay, Mark?" Beth asked, fear in her voice.

Raditz paused and stared at the phone.

"No. Everything is not okay."

Within eight minutes, a dedicated, highly secure communications link had been established among the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Langley, the National Security Agency, Joint Special Operations Command Eurasia Directorate, 4th Space Operations Squadron, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House.

Raditz and Parizeau were joined by Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Greene at Schriever Air Force Base. Greene was in charge of all Milstar satellites, commanding the hardware group from a highly secure facility located inside a mountain a few miles outside Colorado Springs. They were joined by General Torey Krug, commander of the United States European Command, one of nine Unified Combatant Commands of the U.S. military. Piper Redgrave, the director of the National Security Agency, hopped on a moment later. The head of the Department of Homeland Security, Arden Mason, called in from the border of Mexico. Last on was Calibrisi, who was joined by Bill Polk, who ran National Clandestine Services for the CIA.

A variety of other senior-level staffers from the different agencies were on as well. Finally, Josh Brubaker, White House national security advisor, came on the line from the West Wing.

"Hi, everyone," said Brubaker. "What do we got, Mark?"

"Ukraine," answered Raditz. "We have a nuclear device that's on the move. Will, give everyone the details."

"Milstar night scans picked up material geographic displacement," said Parizeau, "signifying the movement of a nuclear device. This is an RDS-4, one of the so-called Tatyana bombs, made in 1953, approximately thirty kilotons. It's an old bomb, relatively small and light, originally designed to drop from a plane and take out a submarine. It would, if detonated, destroy a big area. Most of Manhattan. All of Boston. This is not a tactical weapon; we're talking about the real deal here."

"How long ago did the scans degrade?" asked Brubaker.

"The last hard reading from Milstar was three days ago," said Parizeau. "It could've been moved at any point during that time."

"Is this one of the devices controlled by former Ukrainian military?" asked Calibrisi.

"That's right. General Vladimir Bokolov."

"Piper, get Bruckheimer on that immediately," said Calibrisi, referring to Jim Bruckheimer, who ran the NSA's Signals Intelligence Directorate. "We need to find Bokolov."

"I'm on it," said Redgrave.

"Will, how long to break down the bomb and harvest the physics package?" asked Polk.

"Why is that relevant?" asked Brubaker.

"It'll determine how they're moving it," said Polk. "If they can pit it in a few hours, the bomb will be light enough to stick in a pickup truck. If that's the case, then trying to find it is a waste of time."

"It would take at least forty-eight hours to execute a clean removal of the physics package," said Parizeau.

"So what does that mean?" asked Brubaker.

"It means they're going to get it to water as quickly as possible," said Polk. "The alternative is going inland in a semitruck that will be Geigered at the border. They're not going to risk doing that."

Raditz moved to the wall, where a large plasma screen lay dark.

"Will, can you live-wire what you're looking at? Put it on IAB thirty-three. Put it on everyone's screen."

A moment later, a strikingly colorful three-dimensional horizontal map of Ukraine splashed onto Raditz's plasma screen, along with the screens of everyone on the call.

"That's Kiev," said Parizeau, narrating, focusing in on a line of lights.

Near the top of the screen, just above a red digital line representing the atmosphere, was a flashing red, white, and blue object, which represented the U.S. Milstar satellite.

"Are we watching this in real time?" asked Polk.

"Yes," said Parizeau.

"Spotlight the routes on every road to the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov," said Polk.

Suddenly, a spiderweb of yellow lines branched southeast from Kiev. These were the roads leading to the coast. There were at least a dozen different roads heading to the water.

"Will, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're able to focus in on these devices because of radioactive emissions, right?" asked Raditz.

"Plutonium, uranium, or tritium."

"Can you look at a moving truck and get an accurate enough reading to detect it?" asked Raditz.

"It would take a decent amount of luck, to be honest," said Parizeau.

"What's a decent amount?"

"One in a thousand. The movement of the truck dissipates the strength of the radioactive emissions. We readjust to try and compensate by looking for a lower reading, but we don't know how fast or slow the driver is going. So we're probably going to be wrong."

"Not to mention any sort of cloaking measures they might employ to hide the imprint," added Calibrisi.

"If their only option is getting it out of the country by water, let's send everything to the coast," said Raditz. "I want every satellite we have close to the theater focused on finding that nuke. Repurpose any assets we have in the sky over Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova. Immediately. Blanket the ports, especially Sevastopol and Odessa."

"Should we inform Russia?" asked Brubaker.

Silence took over the call. It was a tricky question.

On the one hand, the Russian Federation might be able to help stop the people who had the bomb. Russia would have a deeper knowledge of the players in the area to draw on.

On the other hand, a deep mistrust inhabited the upper echelons of America's military and intelligence infrastructure. After all, Russia had spent decades denying the existence of the four nuclear devices inside Ukraine. In addition, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, was a former top-level assassin within the KGB. Deep down, beyond all the diplomatic words, all the summits and state dinners, the United States and Russia hated each other. For many in Russia, the loss of the Cold War stung every bit as much today as it did then, perhaps more so.

Calibrisi spoke first.

"No way do we tell Moscow," the CIA chief said. "That's a recipe for wasting a lot of time and energy that could be used to find this bomb. We ask for help, they deny the existence of it, we're forced to try and prove our case that there are still nukes inside Ukraine, and all of a sudden we will have burned three days trying to win a debate instead of hunting this thing down."

"I disagree," said Mason, secretary of homeland security. "We should tap into their knowledge base immediately. This is not just America's problem. It's everyone's problem."

"General Krug," said Brubaker, "any thoughts?"

"We're way behind here," said Krug. "If this bomb went missing four days ago, it's through the Bosphorus Strait by now and probably most of the way across the Mediterranean. I wouldn't bother with Russia, Ukraine, or anything other than the nine-mile stretch of ocean between Gibraltar and Tangier. If they make it past Gibraltar, they will enjoy open ocean all the way to the U.S. East Coast. There are simply too many boats and too much ocean."

"What do you look for?" asked Raditz.

"We should assume they're sophisticated enough to know they're being watched and spectragraphed," said Krug. "They'll need a vessel that blends in and also is able to make a transatlantic crossing. My guess is they're on some sort of deep-sea fishing trawler, a few hundred feet long. There are literally hundreds of thousands of them floating around. I think we need to get UAVs over the Strait of Gibraltar immediately, along with whatever warships we have at Naval Station Rota in Spain. SEAL Team 6 has some men at Rota as well, and I'd position them in fastboats."

"How long to get everything in range?" asked Raditz.

"A few hours."

"Get them moving."

"I suggest we run this out of Langley," added Krug.

"Why Langley?" asked Brubaker.

Krug cleared his throat.

"Because the truth is, if they make it past Spain, it becomes an intelligence operation," he said. "Bill, you might as well start involving yourselves now."