“This is him,” Bill said. “November-six-six-seven-seven-Lima is a Boeing 717. It’s owned by TransAmerica freight. Operating under Part 91, so lots less scrutiny than if they were, say, an air carrier under Part 121. They departed out of Fayetteville and are now coming up on intersection Moats, a waypoint on victor airway one-three-six, twenty-one miles  southwest of Raleigh. Still in the climb, cleared to flight level two-nine-zero.”

“Twenty-nine thousand feet,” the pilot clarifed. “I take it you’ve got the flight plan?”

“Yeah,” Bill said. “They’re on an IFR flight plan from Fayetteville to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Fayetteville via vectors to victor one-three-six to join victor one-five-five to Richmond to intersect victor one-five-seven to the  ENO VOR, then radar vectors direct Harrisburg.”

“What’s the target?” Jed asked.

“The flight path takes them right by DC,” Terry said, scribbling the last of the flight plan onto his pad.

“I didn’t think you could fly directly over DC,” Eli said, scooting in beside Jed.

“Well, that’s true at low altitude. And this doesn’t take them directly over DC. They’ll pass a good fifty to sixty miles east of the city itself. But DC is the logical target. Also, they could veer off course.”

“They won’t need to,” Nisha said. “It’s a line-of-sight energy weapon, but at twenty-nine thousand feet, it’s a buffet of targets inside a sixty-mile radius.”

“Wait a minute,” Bill said, his voice changing now. “What kind of weapon? I thought you were hunting for a plane. No one said anything about a weapon. What kind of energy weapon are we talking about?”

“I’ll explain in a minute,” she said, “but based on these parameters, the target could be anywhere. They’ll pass within line of sight of a myriad of military bases including Navy Base Norfolk, Naval Air Station Oceana, Pope Air Force base, Fort Belvoir, Pax River . . . the list goes on and on.”

“It’s DC,” Ben said and held up his tablet computer screen to show them. “The president, the vice president, and both the minority and majority leaders are all going to be together in the Rose Garden with a bunch of other senators, to make an announcement about a bipartisan proposal on trade.”

“What? When?”

“Less than an hour.”

Jed looked over at Terry the pilot. “Get us on an intercept course and check in with the fighters.”

“On it,” Terry said, hustling to the cockpit.

“We need to alert Secret Service,” Bill said.

“I agree,” Ben said. “But no announcements about a delay or cancellation. Not yet, at least.”

“Won’t all the VIPs and press in the Rose Garden become the targets?” Wanda asked.

“We’ll stop the threat before then,” Ben said and proceeded to read the non-Shepherds in the airplane in on the nature and capabilities of the Dark Ones’ energy weapon.

“The whole thing is insane,” Wanda mumbled when Ben had finished. “That someone would design such a thing . . .”