Free Critical Mass by Whitley Strieber Page B

observed a clear hallway.
    In the parking lot, Jim had spotted a stakeout car. So he was being advertised internally as a pretty big fish. He wondered what the FBI officers’ arrest warrant said. Above all, where it had originated.
    He had left the motel by a rear exit. Even though following a man on foot in a city by satellite was damn hard, he did not choose to underestimate the skills of his enemy again, and he walked under trees and along the very nicely turned-out local riverfront, keeping hidden from above as much as possible.
    As there was no way for him to tell what was wrong, his professional responsibility was to assume that everything was wrong—which was not farfrom the truth, given that whoever was pulling the strings could control FBI arrest teams.
    Experience had taught him that the only chance of survival under official pressure of any kind was to be very fast indeed, so he had stolen a car he’d found parked in a driveway and driven north on 83 until it hit Interstate 10. Then he’d headed west.
    He was now thrust into a situation that was totally new to him. His information was crucial, but how could he communicate it when he no longer trusted the system? Obviously, orders no longer applied. Not only that, he feared that it was only a question of time before they found him again. His car had been almost the only vehicle on 83, and still virtually alone traveling into the dawn on I-10. Someone like Nabby’s brother, Rashid, would make quick work of locating Jim.
    He had one objective now: stop that bomb. He must take no risks except those that related directly to gaining control over the weapon.
    He’d driven hard, ditched the car in Fort Stockton, and taken a bus to El Paso—from which he’d gone from stop to stop along the Greyhound route westward, finally picking up the trail of the bomb in Roswell, New Mexico, in the form of an increase in the clicking of a Geiger counter he’d bought from a hardware store that stocked mining supplies. From Roswell he’d followed it to Colorado Springs, and here the trail had stopped.
    He decided that the only person he could now safely inform of his activities would be the president of the United States, but the president was far away and unreachable, hidden behind a wall of officials and guards. Jim’s CIA creds—the real ones—might get him as far as the chief of staff, Thomas Logan. Might. But could he get past Logan, a lowly contract employee like him, working outside the chain of command?
    He even wondered about the Office of the President. The Plame affair had led back to Lewis Libby, who was just one tier below Tom Logan’s level. Jim knew little beyond the press reports, but he had to wonder, now, just how high up this thing went.
    A lot of individuals and countries had motive to harm America’s ability to track illicit nuclear materials abroad—arms dealers, smugglers, nations, and groups hoping to acquire nuclear weapons.
    But this—it was way larger than any of that. The conclusion was hard to escape: somebody was trying to suppress interdiction of an actual bomb inthis country, and, incredibly, they could call on the power of the FBI to do their dirty work.
    There seemed to be only one choice open to him—move fast and interdict the weapon himself, then find somebody he could trust with his discovery.
    The bomb had been removed from a bus’s cargo bay here, he was sure, and probably within the last day or so. So, was it still in Colorado Springs? No, they would keep it running toward its target, and now that they knew he was on their trail, they would be doing that as quickly as they could.
    They would want to get the bomb in the air, and maybe that’s what was happening right now . . . or had already happened. They wouldn’t take it near Colorado Springs Muni, too much danger of detection. So they’d fly out of a smaller field. If they were going to hit Denver, he could be seeing a flash on the northern horizon at any second. But there