Streets, northwest. It was home to approximately seventy-five hundred
employees of the FBI’s total work force of twenty-four thousand.
Of the seventy-five hundred, only about one thousand were special
agents; the rest were support and technical personnel. In the
headquarters building one prominent special agent was sitting at a large
conference room table. Other FBI personnel were scattered around the
table dutifully going over stacks of files or screens on their laptops.
Sawyer took a moment to look around the room and stretch his limbs. They
were in the Strategic Information Operations Center, or SIOC. A
restricted access area composed of a block of rooms separated by glass
walls and shielded from all known types of electronic surveillance, the
SIOC was used as the command post for major FBI operations. On one wall
was a line of clocks delineating different time zones. A cluster of
large-screen TVs lined another wall. The SIOC had secure communications
to the White House Situation Room, the CIA and a myriad of federal law
enforcement agencies. With no external windows, and thick carpeting, it
was a very quiet place used to organize mammoth investigations. A small
galley kept the personnel here functioning through exhaustive work
hours. Presently, fresh coffee was brewing. Caffeine and brainstorming
seemed to go hand in hand.
Sawyer looked across the table to where David Long, a longtime member of
the FBI’s Bomb Squad, sat staring at a file. To the left of Long was
Herb Barracks, an agent from the Charlottesville resident agency, the
closest FBI office to the crash site. Next to Barracks was an agent
from the Richmond office, the FBI field office in nearest proximity to
the disaster. Across from them were two agents from the Washington
metropolitan field office at Buzzard Point, which, until the late
eighties, had been simply the Washington field office until the
Alexandria, Virginia, field office had been collapsed into it.
The director of the FBI, Lawrence Malone, had left an hour earlier after
being briefed on the murder of one Robert Sinclair, most recently
employed as an aircraft fueler at Vector Fueling Systems and now an
occupant of a Virginia morgue. Sawyer felt sure that a fingerprint run
through the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS,
would give the late Mr. Sinclair another name. Conspirators in a
scheme as large as Sawyer figured this one was rarely used their real
names in securing employment positions they would later use to down an
airliner.
More than two hundred and fifty agents had been assigned to the bombing
of Flight 3223. They were following up leads, interviewing family
members of the victims and undertaking an excruciatingly detailed
investigation of all persons having the motive and opportunity to
sabotage the Western Airlines jet. Sawyer figured Sinclair had done the
actual dirty work, but he wasn’t taking any chances on overlooking an
accomplice at the airport. While rumors had been floating in the press
for some time, the first major story actually declaring the downing of
the Western flight as being caused by an explosive device would be in
the next morning’s edition of the Washington Post. The public would
demand answers and they would want them soon. That was fine with
Sawyer, only results weren’t always obtained as fast as one would
like–in fact, they almost never were.
The FBI had latched on to the Vector line soon after the NTSB team
members had found that very special piece of evidence in the crater.
After that it was a simple matter to confirm that Sinclair had been the
fueler on Flight 3223. Now Sinclair was dead too. Someone had made
sure he would never have an opportunity to tell them why he sabotaged
the plane.
Long looked at Sawyer. “You were right, Lee. It was a heavily modified
version of one of those new portable heating elements. The latest rage
in cigarette lighters. No flame, just intense heat from a platinum
coil, pretty much invisible.”
“I knew I’d seen it before. Remember that arson case involving the IRS
building last year?” Sawyer said.
“Right. Anyway, this thing is capable of sustaining about fifteen
hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And it wouldn’t be affected by wind or
cold, even if doused by the jet fuel, or anything like that. Five-hour