Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [33]
The FAA rep ignored him. “The point is, as long as there’s a nut out there with some sort of homemade rocket launcher—”
“Three nuts,” someone corrected.
“One nut, three nuts, thirty, it doesn’t make any difference. Those responsible had better be brought to justice before we have a crippled airline industry.”
NTSB’s Peter Mullin silently thought that the FAA spokesman was acting true to form, more concerned with the airline industry’s economic health than what his agency was charged with, keeping the skies safe for the millions of passengers who depended on it.
“The missiles,” the attendee from Justice said. “They were Russian? Chinese? Homemade?”
“Unofficially Russian,” Harris said. “Weapons men from Wright Patterson in Ohio and the Naval Air Warfare Center in California are on their way to work with the Pentagon’s weapons guys.”
The meeting accomplished little, as far as State’s Colonel Barton was concerned. No one seemed to have an inkling of who might have been behind the missile attacks, and judging from the comments made by the people in the room, there wasn’t any breakthrough on the horizon. Still, he reminded himself as he left with the others to return to his office at State, it had been only a day since the three planes fell from the sky, hardly time to build a case against anyone or any group without a voluntary, prideful confession.
The FBI’s Harris and National Security Advisor Cammanati stayed behind. When they were alone in the room, Harris pulled two pieces of paper from a briefcase at his feet and laid them in front of Cammanati. Cammanati picked up the first and read it over half-glasses.
“SA-7 Grail—9M32—Shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile—Entered Soviet service in 1966—Optical sight—IR seeker activated after sighting—Four feet long—20 pounds—Range 45 to 5,600 m—Speed, Mach 1.95—2.5 kg high-explosive fragmentation warhead, 5½ pounds.”
Cammanati laid the paper down and looked at Harris. “There’s no question about this?” he said.
Harris shook his head. “The Pentagon says the missile fragments from the New York site were large and in surprisingly readable shape.”
“What about the others—Boise, San Jose?”
“I got a preliminary report on the Idaho missile just before the meeting. Same batch.”
“Batch?”
“There’s a batch number on them. These guys weren’t too bright. If you’re going to use a gun, file the serial number off before you do. They didn’t bother eradicating the batch numbers.”
“Soviet-made,” Cammanati said to himself, standing and going to the far end of the room. He faced the wall for what seemed to Harris to be minutes, turned in a few seconds, slowly shook his head, and asked flatly, “Who else knows this?”
“Just those who need to. The CIA. They’ll have to be brought into it. The Soviet involvement. Same with State. We’re out of the picture when it involves a foreign power.”
Cammanati cocked his head. His expression said he knew better. The Federal Bureau of Investigation might be limited under its charter to investigating domestic crime, but that seldom stopped it from poking into international cases, to the chagrin of the CIA.
Harris didn’t comment further.
“I’m meeting with the president and some of his cabinet when I leave here,” Cammanati said. “I’ll take your notes with me. The other piece of paper—I didn’t read it.” He went to Harris and picked up the second sheet. On it was a list of names:
Aryan Nation
Christian Identity
CSA
The Freedom Alliance
Americans for Justice
Silent Brotherhood
The Jasper Project
Nazi National Alliance
Rally for America
The Ku Klux Klan
“Suspects?” Cammanati asked, shoving the two sheets into his briefcase.
“Right.”
“All domestic right-wing groups.”
“Mainly. Hate groups, homegrown.”
“You have information that points to one of them?”
“Information? No. But we do have an ongoing investigation that might result in useful info.”
“How soon?”
A shrug from Harris. “Probably not soon enough