“Could be a ship in that direction,” Linda said, “though I don’t see any on the scope.”
“The target isn’t a ship,” Eric said. “Look at the map.”
Eric zoomed out and extended a dotted line along the BrahMos’s current heading. It was heading directly for Diego Garcia.
“Hali, get in touch with Diego Garcia any way you can and tell them that a cruise missile loaded with a toxic nerve agent is coming their way.”
Hali shook his head. “I still can’t contact anyone there, but I’ll keeping trying.”
“Ten seconds to impact,” Murph said.
The distance between the two dots was closing at an agonizingly slow pace.
Murph starting counting down.
“Five . . . four . . . three . . .”
Then he stopped. The dot representing the anti-aircraft missile winked out.
“What happened?” Max asked.
Murph slapped the panel in frustration and turned to him. “Ran of out fuel just before it caught up with the target. Now there’s no way for us to shoot it down.”
“How long until it hits Diego Garcia?”
“Nine minutes,” Eric said.
“Potential casualties?”
“If that missile is loaded with even half the Novichok that was reported stolen, we’re looking at a catastrophe.”
“Hali, get me Juan.”
After a moment, Hali said, “The Chairman’s on speaker.”
“Juan,” Max said, “Rasul just launched a BrahMos supersonic cruise missile from the Triton Star. We fired an Aster but couldn’t shoot the BrahMos down. You’re going to have to track him down and get him to send the missile’s abort code.”
“Easier said than done. We’re still looking for him.”
Max looked at the timer Eric had put up on the screen showing the missile’s time to impact.
“Not to put any pressure on you, but if you don’t find Rasul in the next eight minutes and thirty seconds, every person on Diego Garcia is going to die.”
* * *
—
Juan moved quickly down the accessway to the next corner, with Eddie close behind covering their rear in case Rasul circled back around them. He stopped at the crossing passageway and peered around the corner, but Rasul wasn’t in sight. Finding him in the maze of corridors in the next eight minutes was going to be a crapshoot.
“Max,” Juan said into his earpiece mic, “if we can’t catch Rasul, I might have a backup plan. Have Hali call Langston Overholt and get him to link up with Barbara Goodman at the 50th Space Wing in Colorado Springs. Tell him it’s about Operation Theseus.”
“You and your Plan Cs,” Max said. Juan could practically hear him rolling his eyes at Juan’s tendency to improvise last-minute schemes. “It’s the middle of the night back in the U.S. We’ll just wake them up.”
“How are we going to find Rasul in a five-hundred-foot-long ship in less than eight minutes?” Eddie asked Juan.
“He’s wearing an NBC suit,” Juan replied, “so that means he’s planning to set off his own Novichok release.”
Eddie nodded. “He wants to get rid of witnesses.”