“I’ll tell you who to bill. You settle up with them.”

DeBattista was silent. The sky to the west was streaked with orange and purple. The day was almost over. He had planned to go home, order in for dinner, pour a couple of glasses of wine and maybe listen to some relaxing opera music for the rest of the night.

But figure this run was officially for Uncle Sam, he could bitch about the short notice and add a nice, big pile of official bucks to his usual rates.

“Where in Hawaii you going?” he asked.

“Oahu.”

He did some rough mental calculations.

“It’s after six o’clock. The Falcon’s all fueled up. But I’m doing my preflights from scratch. I don’t give a fuck if you like it or not. That’s how it goes with me, dig?”

“Yeah.”

“We leave at ten tonight. I’ll have you there by seven in the morning.”

“OK.”

“That’s nine hours. Nobody else could do it in less than eleven.”

“OK.”

“Don’t be late,” DeBattista said.

He hung up without another word, looking across the room at his luggage bag. He had already stowed it on the plane when Carmody canceled before, and here it was back in the office, and it aggravated him. He really didn’t appreciate being jerked around. But he knew Carmody. He’d heard his tone of voice on the phone, and it sounded like there was some major shit going down. Pissed off or not, he’d probably have flown him for free, not that he would ever let him know.

DeBattista rose to turn off the lights and lock up the trailer. Ten minutes later he was rolling his bag back out to the hangar in the cool early dusk.

Fourteen miles across the Hudson River, Carmody walked toward the entrance to a metal skybridge connecting the Terminal’s main building to its smaller adjunct, where he had arranged to meet Dixon, Long and Kali down on the ground floor. With its tin ceiling and crank windows, the skybridge dated back to when a New York traffic jam meant the milkman’s horse cart had lost an axle and stalled the ice wagon behind it on the cobblestones.

The Fusion Center leading to the skybridge was filled with workstations arranged along spacious aisles. Men and women with FBI, NYPD and Homeland Security ID tags mingled with Net Force personnel at the computers and wall screens. This was where they came to pool their resources when conducting investigations requiring interagency cooperation.

Carmody was surprised to see Jot Musil as he reached the skybridge’s door.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“Looking for you.” Musil stepped over to him. “One of the security people said he’d seen you come up.”

Carmody cocked a thumb back over his shoulder. “There’s an empty office. I had to make a call.”

Musil nodded. Carmody looked at him.