Dulles International Airport saw the landing of two private planes. One belonging to U.N.C.L.E. The other belonging to T.H.R.U.S.H.
Opening the door on the U.N.C.L.E. plane, two suave, in any century, agents stepped out and down the portable stairs. Illya Kuryakin first, followed by Napoleon Solo.
"So how are we supposed to locate this guy again?" Napoleon asked with a puzzled expression.
"Easy," replied Illya, as cool and collected as always. "We set our communication pens to a half-turned setting and listen to the static. When the radioactive material that comes with this bomb is within a half-mile, the static starts to click on and off. The closer we get, the faster the clicks."
"Then we just take the guy out," said Napoleon with a hint of playful sarcasm to his tone. "And fly back to New York for some celebratory drinks, before reporting in with Mr. Waverly."
"I suppose that could be one way to wind up a successful mission, Napoleon."
Having said that, Illya, followed closely by Napoleon, took out his expensive pen and, with practiced hand movements so smooth as to go virtually unnoticed, turns it into a slender communications device.
Then Illya, again followed closely by Napoleon, gives the device's clip a half-turn so as to set up static. Then both U.N.C.L.E. agents slipped the transformed communications pen into the breast pocket of their expensively tailored suit coats.
Almost immediately, even as they were walking toward the car, a dark-colored sedan that didn't stand out in the least, that was awaiting their arrival at Dulles, their respective communication pens began to click. Not too rapidly, yet not too slowly.
"Whoever it is," Napoleon said, stating the obvious, "must still be somewhere in or around this airport."
"He would've had to come by private plane, in order to bypass having to go through airport security, just as we do so as to not have our weapons and attachments exposed," openly contemplated Illya Kuryakin, even as he began driving the car in a slow arc through the area adjacent to the landing tarmac. "He also would've had a car waiting for him, so he could drive somewhere in D.C. in order to plant the dirty bomb, before heading back to his private plane in order to leave the area before detonating the explosive and sending deadly radiation out over much of the capitol city."
"Think he's got T.H.R.U.S.H. thugs with him?" asked, seriously for once, Napoleon Solo of his friend and co-agent.
"I would say 'yes'," stoically and certainly responded Illya. "At least two. They would be able to stake out any given region of Washington, D.C., while the person charged with planting and priming the dirty bomb could do so without being stopped by a pair of U.N.C.L.E. agents like us."
The clicking got faster one minute, as the car's arc continued in one half of the airport's exterior, then got slower the next as the car's arc changed.
This meant that the two U.N.C.L.E. agents would get close, only to have the individual with the bomb's car swinging away from the car carrying the agents from New York.
It also meant that Uder Hoffmann, and the two armed thugs wearing T.H.R.U.S.H. jumpsuits with the thrush bird patch on one shoulder, was steadily exiting the airport area in order to head further in, whereupon the explosive-surrounded radioactive material would be secreted.
To await a signal that would detonate the explosive, and send forth Death on the Wind.
Although Uder had no idea he was being tailed, albeit by as much as a half-mile away, by U.N.C.L.E. operatives, he knew he held all the proverbial cards since he knew exactly where he was going to stash the dirty bomb. And since he had two goons with T.H.R.U.S.H. rifles riding shotgun, so to speak.
And this was combined with the fact that Uder, although not a suicidal individual, planned on immediately detonating the dirty bomb, thus killing himself and his two T.H.R.U.S.H. thugs in the process, and setting into action the plan to kill as many people as possible, including the Congress, the Cabinet, and the President of the United States...
Lyndon Baines Johnson.