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the
accident?”
    “Nope.”
    “I thought you said they
were cooperating?”
    “They are but there’s
nothing to see. The cameras were all dead at that intersection.”
    Leroux’s eyebrows popped.
“You’re kidding me!”
    “Nope.”
    “There’s no way that’s a
coincidence.”
    “Agreed,” said Leroux’s
boss, National Clandestine Service Chief Leif Morrison, as he entered the room.
He held up a memory stick. “But we’ve got this.” He handed it to Leroux as he
reached the center of the room.
    “What’s this?”
    “We had a U2
photographing the North Korean border area.”
    Leroux smiled, handing it
to Child. “Anything worth seeing?”
    Morrison shook his head.
“Don’t know yet. Every agency in the country just received the footage. The
President has ordered no jurisdictional bullshit on this one. All hands on
deck.”
    “Good.” Leroux motioned
toward the memory stick Child was loading. “If they’re photographing North
Korea, what are they expecting us to find?”
    “The recon guys like to
keep back from the border just in case the North Koreans decide to get camera
shy, so with Seoul so close to the border, DoD thinks there’s an outside chance
something’s on it.”
    Leroux’s head bobbed. The
Lockheed U2’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System cameras were capable of
photographing a massive chunk of territory with enough detail to read a license
plate’s renewal sticker. If the timing was right, there just might be something
to find.
    “Got it,” said Child, the
center of the large array of displays curving around the front of the room rapidly
beginning to flash through high-altitude photographs.
    “Synch the timecodes with
when we know the accident happened.”
    Child’s fingers flew.
“Got it.”
    “Now synch up the GPS
coordinates for the crash site.”
    More fingers and seconds
later they were staring at an aerial shot of the city. A grid appeared,
latitude and longitude displayed, the city streets quickly outlined as the
computer and its expert operator synched up the detailed maps with the
photograph. The entire overlay flashed green.
    “Here we go,” murmured
Child, zooming in on a segment near the lower edge of the image. “This is it.
Timecode matches.”
    Leroux stepped toward the
screen. “Okay, let’s follow the shots, see if anything shows up.”
    “Wait a minute.” Morrison
pointed at a vehicle stopped on the side of the road. “That’s the fuel truck,
isn’t it?”
    Leroux stepped closer.
“It’s a fuel truck. Hard to say if it’s the fuel truck.” He
snapped his fingers. “Split screen with the accident scene.”
    Sonya Tong, a young
analyst with a desperate, inappropriate, and futile crush on her boss,
complied, the display switching to show the unmolested fuel truck and the
smoldering aftermath. “That has to be it.”
    Leroux agreed. “Exact
same location. Back up the shots. I want to see how long this truck was there.”
    Child complied, geo-locked
images appearing, the truck stationary until about five minutes before when it
disappeared from the image.
    Morrison glanced at
Child. “Move forward, slowly, let’s see if we can spot a driver.”
    The images flipped
forward, the truck suddenly appearing then pulling over to the side. Child
motioned at the screen. “Does he have his hazards on?”
    Leroux watched, trying to
catch a change in the dozens of lights on the vehicle then pointed, nodding.
“Yes, yes he does.”
    The driver’s door opened
and a man stepped out, something pressed to his ear. “Cellphone?” suggested
Morrison.
    “Looks like it.”
    The next image showed an
extended arm, the next no cellphone. “It didn’t work?” Several more frames
flashed by and the hood of the truck was opened, the driver leaning in.
“Breakdown?”
    Leroux pursed his lips.
“It would appear so, but right there, right then, minutes before the bus was
coming through, at the same time the cameras were shut down?” He shook his
head. “I