Page 32 of Radar (Iniquus Certified Cerberus Tactical K9 #2)

Xander

Sunday

Fairbanks, Alaska

He pulled into the airport lot and handed over the keys to the rental. Then he walked Radar to the woods because the poor guy hadn’t had a chance to potty yet.

Xander, with his bags at his feet, leaned against a trunk with a racing mind.

Elyssa was a Kalinsky great-niece.

He simply couldn’t believe it.

The look in her eyes, when he’d carried her through the snow to the car, told him her heart had been racing. He knew she must have been fighting for consciousness.

And yet there was trust in her eyes.

The phone rang, Xander dropped his gaze, only to feel disappointed that it wasn’t Elyssa.

“Hiro, is Elyssa on her plane?” Xander blurted.

“It’s delayed. I’ll get to that in a second. She’s checked in. She’s made her way through security. We saw her on CCV. She seemed okay,” Hiro said. “And, hello.”

“I need to get to D.C. We need to talk to her. Something isn’t right with this picture and her role. I need to be on her plane.”

“I figured. But that one’s overbooked,” Hiro said with something in his mouth, muffling his words. “I’ve got you on the next one out. Sending you the ticket.”

Xander’s phone pinged, and he checked the time of departure, confirming he had two seats, one for him and one for Radar. “Got it. Thank you.”

“We couldn’t get you the bulkhead, but I’m told the emergency aisle is next best. We assured the airlines that Radar was qualified to sit in those seats. They wanted to push back, but it was handled.”

“I appreciate it, man. Radar does, too. Trying to get a dog body on a middle seat for that long haul would make everyone miserable. Do you have anything else for me?” Xander asked.

“We know why Orest is heading to San Francisco,” Hiro said.

“He has a second leg. That’s why,” Xander said. “I’d lay money that he’s hightailing it to Singapore.”

“Bingo.”

“What about two scientists who vanished and the attempt on Elyssa?” Xander asked.

“Finley and his joint task force are interfacing with Fairbanks FBI about the disappearances. We’ll have a clearer picture once we know what the FBI finds in the woods.”

“What’s Adele doing? Is the Mossad coming up with anything helpful?” Xander asked.

“Does anyone ever know what Adele is up to? Actually, in this case, I do know,” Hiro said.

“She’s on her way to Singapore. She wants to find out how the family is getting over to Davidson Realm.

And if The Family booked a boat for everyone, was there a date and time for departure?

Adele thinks that once the Zorics are moved, it’s say a twelve-to-twenty-four-hour time frame to take a last look at the sky and smell the sea before they descend into the chimney, and everyone else on God’s green Earth descends into a hellscape of the End Times. ”

“Great imagery. Thanks for that.”

“Adele told me Israeli intelligence working groups are stretched thin,” Hiro said. “The regional dangers of today supersede the impending doom of tomorrow. She’s the only one who is continuing on the Zoric case.”

“I think our working group and the connections we had in place are the only ones who think the Zorics are a significant danger,” Xander said.

“I’ve been told that my thinking is myopic because we’ve been working on this so long,” Hiro’s tone was a shrug. “My superiors, who were not my beloved AWG superiors, are telling me that I’m seeing the Zoric threat as bigger than it is.”

“Do you believe that?” Xander asked.

“Do you?”

“I would have quit the hunt when AWG disbanded if I weren’t terrified by what was coming.” Xander reached up to tug the fur flaps on his hat down to cover his ears. “Ugly to admit, but there it is.”

“I’m sitting here with a box of donuts in front of me, trying to smother my anxiety in carbs.

I’m telling you, my hair is falling out as we speak.

If we survive, I’m going to be fat and bald, but I’ll also be a happy man.

Okay, so back to Adele. We have a team in Singapore that will add Orest to their watch list if she’s delayed getting there. ”

“Adele’s in the air?”

“Yeah, even flying out of D.C., she should still beat Orest to Singapore,” Hiro said.

“Right now, Orest is at the Fairbanks airport with you. No idea why he headed out of Lumberjack around zero-four-hundred. And heads up, the pathologists believe that York got a hefty dose of palytoxin, but there’s no way to prove it, which is the genius of using palytoxins.

You don’t want Orest to target you. We can’t lose anyone else.

Our team is small enough already. We’ve verified Orest checked in for the trip to San Francisco, and he’s through security. Boarding was called.”

“Go back. How’s York doing?” Xander asked.

“Coming along. York told me that if he lived through open heart surgery to die in Armageddon, he’s going to kill me.”

“Sounds like he’s rallying,’ Xander said. “Did he give you the codes?”

“Not surrounded by the nurses, he didn’t, and then he was out again.

Crossing our fingers that York is conscious long enough that we can clear the room isn’t a great strategy, but it’s what we’ve got,” Hiro said.

“Listen, Orest boarded. Once he takes off from Fairbanks he has a seven-hour flight. It’s a tight connection between landing in San Fran and taking off again.

He doesn’t have time to leave the airport for any side adventures, especially with that being an international flight. ”

Xander scanned the parking lot, watching as a car pulled up and a woman exited, reaching into the back seat for her baby. “You checked to make sure Orest didn’t materialize another carry-on case?”

“We did,” Hiro said. “He checked a suitcase. He had nothing more in his hands.”

“He made it through security from D.C. to Newark with whatever was in the case. He was screened.”

“We’re aware. And interestingly, everything in that Newark carry-on must have been carefully chosen for its reaction to the acid because the entirety turned to a glob, then hardened into a rock.”

“I wonder which researcher figured that out for him.” Xander could feel his face turning red with windburn. He hated this kind of cold.

“Orest has a graduates degree in chemistry. He probably thought of it as a fun project to put that together.”

“All right, that’s out of my hands. I’m not tracking Orest,” Xander said. “Tell me about Elyssa, what’s going on there?”

“She’s flying back to D.C. with a layover in Chicago.”

Xander looked at his ticket information. It was a straight shot to D.C. “Do I get in first?”

“She beats you by like an hour and a half. With the flight mess out of Canada, it's possible that her layover will be longer than that. You don’t have to deal with any of that. Once you’re on, you take a nap and wake up on the East Coast, and you lose three hours, so your body clock should be good and misfiring from all the time zone hopping you’ve been doing. ”

“Hiro, I need to get to D.C. first.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?”

“Delay her plane,” Xander said.

“Delay the plane?” Hiro slurped his drink. “Okay, I’ll bite. How do we do that, hotshot?”

“I don’t know, call in a bomb threat?”

“I’d lose my job. You want me to make a bomb threat to an American airline? Are you out of your mind?”

“It could be less than that. It could be a call reporting that you suspect the pilot is impaired. They’d have to do something about that. Figure out another pilot to stick in his seat.”

“We can’t crap up someone’s career,” Hiro said.

“Would it really mess up someone’s career?

I mean, how? He takes the breathalyzer and a blood test, and if it comes back positive, we did a service to the passengers.

If it comes out negative, and he looks confused that anyone accused him of drug use, then off he flies.

The blood test doesn’t take that long. It might give me enough time to get East Coast first.”

“Keep talking your nonsense,” Hiro said. “I’m looking into something other than blowing up the pilot’s career.”

“It’s possibly a woman’s life we’re talking about.

Look, we watch and see if the pilot has an issue.

If they do, we send the airline’s president a little note saying, ‘Hey, the world was about to catch on fire, and we thought this was an easy remedy, our bad.’” It felt good to make up some plot line that might happen in one of the thrillers he liked to read, where a maverick hero might just get on the phone and pull crap like that and not suffer any consequences.

“You’re making that joke because you’re scared for Elyssa. I get that. Listen, about your first idea, the bomb threats, have you read the news?” Hiro asked.

“Something recent? I haven’t opened a paper since I got to Lumberjack.”

“There were bomb threats at Vancouver and Ottawa airports last night that are impacting some northern flights in the United States,” Hiro said.

“The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have the dogs in there searching every square inch. And since Elyssa is flying out of Alaska, I was looking up to see the impact on her flight. That plane was delayed in Vancouver. She may be in Fairbanks for a while. You might just get your wish and beat her to D.C.”

Xander didn’t respond.

Following Xander’s long pause, Hiro asked, “What was that thought?”

“Bomb threat.” Xander let that information trickle through his gray matter. “Far-fetched but ringing true.”

“Keep going.”

“Remember when you told me about Orest’s flight time?

” Xander watched Radar trotting around in a circle, trying to find the perfect spot to take a dump.

“Why would he take a car at zero four twenty for a late morning flight to California? In my mind, he was up to something in Fairbanks. But what if it wasn’t Fairbanks that was Orest’s push out the door? ”

“He had those plans in place the day before,” Hiro said. “He mentioned it on his phone call.”

“Do you have that readout on the whole conversation from the FBI?” Xander asked.

“No, I’ll let you know when I do.”