Day of Wrath

It’s more than fifty miles to the nearest road or railhead. The Russians are going to have to ferry everything in by air. Tents. Food and water. Floodlights. Generators. Everything.”

Thorn glanced back at the large cargo crates piled high across the Mi-26’s rear clamshell doors. Besides the eight Americans and their assigned Russian interpreter, this heavy-lift helicopter held nearly twenty tons of equipment and supplies. He fought down the urge to tell the other man he had an excellent grasp of the obvious. Their situation was awkward enough without crossing swords so early.

Anyway, he understood why the NTSB’s chief investigator was so clearly off balance. When an aircraft went down in the U.S Nielsen and his six-man “go-team” were in complete command from the moment they touched down at the crash site.

Here they were only consultants — and unwanted consultants at that.

Russia’s Federal Aviation Authority was touchy about its prerogatives.

Moscow had only agreed to accept an NTSB observer team because American nuclear experts were among those killed in the An-32 crash. The Americans could ask questions, provide technical assistance, and offer opinions. Final authority, though, would remain firmly in Russian hands.

The Russian argument was simple: It was their aircraft. Flying in their airspace. And it had crashed in their sovereign territory.

All of which put Nielsen in a grade-A bind. Thorn had seen his type before. Like any investigator worth his salt, he was a control freak.

When the cause of any given accident could lie in something as small as a pinhead-sized piece of twisted metal, somebody-one man had to be in charge. And Nielsen was used to being in charge.

Thorn grinned wryly to himself. Perceptive diagnosis, Colonel, he thought. But where exactly does that leave you?

The honest answer was — even further removed from the real action than the NTSB investigator.

If mechanical failure or pilot error had brought down the inspection team’s An-32 transport, Nielsen, his team, and their Russian counterparts would all have roles to play. If terrorism or sabotage were involved, the Russian Ministry of the Interior, the MVD, and the FBI would take over the investigation. In contrast, as a liaison officer from the U.S.“s On-Site Inspection Agency, Thorn had precisely zero real authority. He was an observer — a consultant to consultants.

And that was not a position he found comfortable.

Counting the time he’d spent as a West Point cadet, Thorn had been in the U.S. Army for twenty-two years. He’d commanded troops for most of those years — first an airborne infantry platoon, then a company, then elite Delta Force commandos, and finally a full Delta Force squadron.

He’d viewed his various staff postings as necessary evils — as the hoops the Army made you jump through before you got to do the fun stuff like leading soldiers in the field.

But now he was stuck riding a desk inside the O.S.I.A’s Dulles Airport headquarters. So stuck that he’d never get another chance to command an Army combat unit. Officially, he was there to add his counterterrorist expertise to the O.S.I.A staff. Terrorists with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons were one of Washington’s biggest nightmares. Unofficially, he knew the powers-that be viewed his assignment to the inspection agency as a way to keep him quiet until they could edge him out of the Army altogether.

After all, Thorn thought grimly, you couldn’t tell the President of the United States to go to hell without paying the piper.

Irritated with himself for dwelling unprofitably on the past, he pushed away his regrets. He’d known what he was doing, and he’d known the price he was likely to pay for disobeying a White House order. What mattered now was the job at hand.

Even if Nielsen and the others couldn’t see what he was doing aboard this helicopter, Thorn was determined to make himself useful. If an accident had downed the An-32, he could at least help out with the grunt work-searching for wreckage, bodies, and personal effects. If they turned up evidence that sabotage had brought down the Russian plane, he would move hell and high water to help the FBI and the MVD find the bastards who were responsible. He owed John Avery and the others on the O.S.I.A inspection team that much.

The Mi-26 banked suddenly, spiraling tightly to the right and losing altitude in the turn.

Thorn looked down. They were orbiting a patch of forest that at first looked no different than any other for hundreds of miles around. Even this far from any industrial city, dead pine trees stood out among the survivors — stark brown, branching skeletons against a dark green backdrop.

“There it is!” Nielsen said urgently.