He started to say something else but saw that she had her cellular telephone out and had punched an autodial button.
“Sergeant Schneider, sir,” she said a moment later. “I just picked up Mr. Castillo at the airport and we’re headed for the Roundhouse. I sent one of the Highway cars out to the arsenal. Mr. Castillo brought some kind of special radio—and a guy to set it up and work it—with him. The antenna has to go someplace where it can be aimed at a satellite. The porch roof of Building 110 will work. Is that okay with you?”
“Whatever he wants, Schneider,” Chief Inspector Dutch Kramer could be heard, faintly but clearly. “You want me to call out there and set it up?”
“That would probably be a good idea, sir.”
“Okay, done. I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.”
A security guard waved them through the airport gate.
Betty reached to the dashboard and turned on the flashing lights under the grille and the siren, stepped heavily on the accelerator, then turned her head.
“You were saying, Mr. Lopez?”
“Call me Fernando, please,” he replied. “I was wondering why your brother wants to break the Gringo’s legs.”
“Jesus Christ!” Castillo exclaimed.
There was another momentary meeting of Betty’s and Charley’s eyes and she shook her head.
Charley said to Dick: “What I’m wondering is what you found out from the undercover cop. Can we get to that, please, Dick?”
“Charley, not only because I also wonder what you’ve done to annoy Betty’s brother, I think you’d better wait and get it straight from the undercover cop. It’s pretty weird.”
“Give me what you think I can understand,” Charley ordered.
“Okay. None of this is confirmed. But I think there’s a good chance the guys who stole the airplane have been here in Philadelphia, as mullahs, visiting from Somalia.”
“You mean the guys who actually stole the airplane or the guys behind the idea?”
“Maybe both. According to Britton . . .”
“Britton is the undercover cop?” Castillo interrupted.
“Right. When these characters showed up at Britton’s mosque, he reported it. Chief Inspector Kramer took it to the FBI. The names these two guys gave at the mosque didn’t mean anything to the FBI, so Kramer got photos of them at the mosque. The FBI got a match and said they were legitimate, they were pilots for Air Yemen and in this country for flight training . . . some place in Oklahoma.”
“Probably my alma mater,” Castillo said.
“What?”
“On my graduation leave—remember, Fernando?—for reasons that now seem pretty foolish, I went to Spartan—the Spartan School of Aeronautics; it’s been around forever— and got my Airline Transport rating. They train pilots from all over the world; from small airlines that don’t have their own facilities. It’s in Tulsa.”
“Okay,” Miller said. “That fits. And according to Britton, it’s all over the AAL community that the Liberty Bell’s going to be taken out.”
“AAL, Dick?” Fernando asked.
“Cop shorthand for ‘African American Lunatics,’ ” Miller said. “And defined as African American—and some white guys, believe it or not—quote, Muslims, end quote, who are not part of the bona fide Islamic community and who happen to be black.”
“I don’t think I understand,” Fernando confessed.
“I know I don’t,” Miller said. “That’s why I want Charley to hear all this from Britton. I don’t want to say something, imply something, that may no
t be the case.”
“But we have the names—and photographs, you said—of these people?” Castillo asked.
“Photos, probably,” Betty Schneider said. “We tend to hang on to photos. I didn’t think to ask. But we don’t have names.”