by Jason Kasper
And just like that, the search was over.
He received the exfil order from one of the purported DEA agents, a further confirmation that his boarding team served little purpose beyond establishing a foothold on the boat.
“All right,” Steele announced to his team, “get back to the ladder. We’re out of here.”
38
I quietly entered my house through the front door to the sounds of Laila cooking breakfast.
As I entered the kitchen with a hand behind my back, Laila turned to me.
“Hey, David, where were you this morning?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, pulling the bouquet of flowers from behind my back with a flourish. “Just getting these.”
Laila accepted the bouquet with a smile, then leaned forward to smell the blossoms.“They’re beautiful,” she said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I thought you could take them up to Alexandria today.”
“That I could take them?” Her smile faded. “What about us?”
I cleared my throat.
“Well, some work stuff came up. But it won’t take long,” I quickly added. “I’ll be up there before the fireworks, I promise. Late on the third or early on the fourth. Just need to drive up separate, that’s all.”
“We were supposed to leave in an hour. As a family.”
Why she decided to remind me of that, I had no idea. It wasn’t as if I’d forgotten. Why did she always have to make telling lies about my work so damned difficult?
Since her parents had finally sold off the business and retired, they were spending their first July in Alexandria. At their invitation, we were supposed to drive up today, take Langley sightseeing for a few days in DC, and spend the Fourth watching the fireworks from the National Mall.
“I know,” I said, “and I’m really sorry.”
She set the bouquet on the counter.
“If you don’t make it, David, you’re going to break Langley’s heart.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said, wondering how self-assured I sounded in that moment. Even as the words left my mouth, I considered the fact that I had no idea where I’d be by sunset on July Fourth—with the attack the day before, I could be in jail, or dead.
Then she turned to the stove, tending to her scrambled eggs as if I weren’t there at all.
Laila was perplexing.
It wasn’t that I didn’t understand women—there was that too, of course, but it wasn’t the primary issue. First and foremost was the fact that I’d spent years in the mercenary racket, and the women you met in the course of your duties weren’t like Laila. At all. No, those women knew what they were getting with the damaged men they encountered, they understood the violence inherent in the job and the impermanence of any meaningful relationships. It wasn’t a big deal to say you were leaving for “work,” because they knew what that meant, and they didn’t want to know.
By contrast, Laila and what I could only presume were a vast majority of regular wives were the direct opposite. They wanted to know everything, were accountants for every minute of collective family time, and had a long memory for any infractions to their expectations, however unrealistic. It was deeply unsettling.
“But look at the bright side,” I offered. “You, Langley, and your mom have time for a girls’ day before I make it up. And you won’t have to worry about me drinking too much with your dad for another few days.”
“A girls’ day,” Laila echoed, still facing the stove. “That’s exactly what Langley needs. Great idea, David.”
Things were getting difficult now. Laila had seen me coming out of the shower that morning, and her eyes went wide. My body bore the patchwork bruises, scrapes, and cuts of a long mission. I hastily explained that Jordan’s 101st Special Battalion had their own obstacle course, and my cadre had to run it in full kit alongside the students. So, of course, I’d gone along with them.
I wondered how long this arrangement of lies could last. As long as the program continued running, I was going to be returning from a lot more “obstacle courses” with all the telltale signs.
But none of that mattered at present— today was July first, and in two days the US and Indian presidents would be arriving in Charlottesville.
“I’m doing the best I can,” I said to Laila’s backside, feeling like an idiot. “But I’m in charge of a team, and I can’t just leave those guys hanging when work pops up.”
She spun to face me. “Your team isn’t your family, David. Me and Langley are.”
“It’ll get better,” I said in a calm, clear voice. My eyes were level with hers, the composed and rational gaze of the dutiful husband doing what he must to support his family. The breadwinner, the hunter-gatherer sacrificing his personal interests for the sake of the whole.
It was all total bullshit, of course.
The truth was I wanted Laila and Langley as far from Charlottesville as they could fucking get. I didn’t know exactly what would transpire on July third, but those six-hundred-plus rockets in BK’s possession had some alarming statistics, starting with a maximum range of nearly three miles. Then there was the ten-meter blast radius, on top of a fifty-meter radius for lethal fragmentation. I’d be damned if I was going to risk an errant rocket smoking my family while they enjoyed the freedoms that the Western world had to offer.
There was another reason, too—a complication of my own design, though I hadn’t thought that far ahead at the time.
In Syria, I’d demanded a protective detail shadow my family, and Duchess had delivered. Now, the agents rotating vehicles and surveillance points around my house represented not just an obstacle, but an obstacle who reported directly to the one woman who didn’t need to know what was about to transpire. Or, put more properly, what was already transpiring.
I packed the car for Laila, then kissed her and Langley goodbye. After they pulled out of the driveway, I slipped inside the house and watched through the blinds as the surveillance vehicles drifted out of view, pursuing my family to their destination.
I let the blinds drop, then locked up my house and got in my truck. Backing out of the driveway, I turned onto the street and accelerated toward my destination.
39
Ian’s computer chimed, and he looked over to the screen in time to catch the live footage of David’s truck turning up the gravel driveway and proceeding toward the house.
Rising from his workstation, Ian moved to the front door and unlocked it before David had a chance to knock.
At first sight, his team leader looked frazzled, almost out of breath.
“Hey,” David said, “what do you got?”
Ian nodded toward the back room. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
They walked through the ground floor of the rental house, David taking in the details for the first time. The rental property on the outskirts of town had been secured with a fake ID and paid for in cash. It also provided everything they needed: space to store their gear, bedrooms for team members rotating in and out, and most importantly, a place for Ian to set up his intelligence node.
That node occupied a corner bedroom that they entered now. And while it wasn’t quite as posh as his work center in the ISOFAC, he’d done an admirable job of scraping together the furniture to support three computer screens with all the encrypted connectivity he’d need to do his work without Lady Liberty breathing down his neck.
“Have a seat,” Ian said.
David dropped onto the bed as Ian slipped into his rolling chair, opening a satellite view of Charlottesville on a computer screen.
Before he could begin his brief, David asked, “Where is everyone?”
Ian tried to shield any annoyance from his voice as he replied, “They’re doing exactly what you told them to.”
After all, Ian wasn’t confident that there was any purpose in canvassing Charlottesville by vehicle and on foot anyway. Bari Khan certainly hadn’t done so in planning the attack—he would have been looking at maps and satellite imagery, just lik
e Ian, and it was from that bird's-eye view that the attack plan would emerge.
In fact, Ian was relatively certain he’d already found it.
But David was an irrational, raging bull, so determined to uncover and stop the attack that there was little point in arguing with him. After all, it was his family whose names they’d found in Syria. If the roles were reversed for any other member, the team would be doing the same thing: taking every possible precaution, as much for their teammate’s peace of mind as for any real tactical purpose.
Ian continued, “I’ve identified likely launch sites, and the guys are reconnoitering to confirm or rule them out. Worthy is on the north side of town, Cancer is toward the south, and Reilly—”
A radio handset came to life with Reilly’s voice.
“Angel, this is Doc.”
“Speak of the devil,” David said.
Ian picked up his mic. “Go ahead, Doc.”
“Confirm a high-risk site for the Water Street Parking Garage, four stories tall. He could conceal the cargo on the fourth floor and then transport it to the rooftop parking area for game time. Plenty of elevation to clear adjacent structures, and a two-mile straight-line shot to the target.”
Ian made a mark on his clipboard checklist, then transmitted back, “Copy, proceed to your next priority at Tonsler Park.”
“I’ll try to. It’s just...these UVA girls, man. I don’t know how I’m supposed to stay focused.”
David snatched the mic from Ian. “You’re going to stay focused because I’ll pistol whip you if you don’t. You can get laid on your own time—or don’t, as seems to be your M.O.”
Reilly was unfazed. “I’m just saying, man...like, who invented yoga pants? Had to be a dude. Had to be.”
David tossed the mic on the desk, giving Ian an impatient nod.
“All right, so you’ve got a growing list of potential launch sites?”
Ian said, “Finding potential launch sites isn’t a problem. The problem is finding spots that couldn’t be used to launch the rockets, especially if he splits up the load. And we need to be extremely careful—you can’t swing a dead cat in Charlottesville without hitting four plainclothes Secret Service agents from the advance element. Care to guess the odds of those guys having a sense of humor if they catch us rolling around with a truckful of assault rifles?”
“Then we don’t get caught. You’re the brain, so if you were Bari Khan, where would you set up to launch these rockets?”
Ian shook his head.
“I wouldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t launch the rockets?”
“No,” he said, looking up. “I wouldn’t set up. BK has to suspect that we’ve figured out his target. Those rockets have a 2.79-mile max range—that’s a long way, but not so far from Monticello that the Secret Service couldn’t comb every inch of it long before Marine One touches down at Charlottesville Airport.”
“That’s smart. You think he’s going to hit the president’s helicopter when it lands?”
“I didn’t say that. The air defense assets are going to be more concentrated around the airport than anywhere else, and BK knows that as well as I do. No, he’s going to hit Monticello. It’s the home of a founding father, a national landmark, and takes out the heads of state leading the world’s two biggest democracies, one Christian and one Hindi, all in one shot. BK won’t pass that up.”
David frowned. “But you just said you wouldn’t set up at all.”
“That’s right. To understand how he’s going to do it, you have to understand that he’s using rockets intended for an anti-tank recoilless rifle—that’s basically a bazooka on a tripod. All he needs are the tubes to replicate that, an ignition system, and some trajectory math to put those rockets on target. Accuracy may be hit or miss, but when you’ve got over six hundred pointed at the same spot, you’re going to kill what you’re aiming at.”
“And you think there’s no way the Secret Service would miss that many rocket tubes.”
“Right,” Ian agreed. “No way he’s going to risk concentrating those rockets and a launch assembly in a fixed location that could be observed from the air.”
“Well, on with it, then. What’s the answer?”
“He’s going to shoot them from a truck.”
“Ah.” David nodded. “Modify the trailer for an eighteen-wheeler with the launch tubes facing out and a removable sidewall?”
“Yeah, something like that.” Ian moved his finger to the computer screen and traced the line of a road. “You’ve got Interstate 64 running east to west here. The Secret Service isn’t going to shut it down for the entire duration of the visit, and they’re certainly not going to be able to screen every car that passes through. Based on road curvature, that gives BK a 7.27-mile stretch to fire the rockets from and still hit Monticello. If he’s firing from the center of that stretch, they’ll only need to fly half a mile or so—that’s less than twenty percent of their max range, and based on how precise his planning was, I’d guess he’ll have no issue putting three-quarters of his payload on target. Maybe more.”
David visibly relaxed. “Ian, you’re a genius. How do we stop it?”
“If I’m right about this,” he replied, “we don’t. It’s going to take the Secret Service.”
40
Through his binoculars, Gary Conrad scanned the water for any sign of the buoy.
He’d powered down the boat almost completely, proceeding with minimum forward throttle as he searched the Atlantic surface for anything out of place.
Beyond the cabin window, he saw his men scattered across the deck below, already exhausted from the day’s work aboard the Amelia and still with a long way to go before they could shack up for the night. Some twelve years ago, Gary had been one of those poor bastards down on the deck, sweating and hauling up all the dead and dying contents of his nets. It was filthy, tiring work, the smell of fish permeating everything from your clothes down to your very skin.
After eight years of working his Irish ass off, though, Gary had become a first mate, and within another two years he’d saved enough to buy his own boat, naming her after his wife at the time.
Now he was captain, responsible for everything from outfitting the ship and hiring the crew to plotting the course and selling the catch. Having started from nothing, he provided a good life for his family, with young fishermen competing for his attention in the hopes they could join his crew.
But he still couldn’t see the damn buoy.
Occasionally they were visible as plain orange and white buoys bobbing in the waves. But the really good ones were concealed as something else entirely—a piece of trash, a small rescue float that appeared to have fallen off a passing ship.
And when he finally located it, he realized this one was the best he’d seen yet.
It was a simple piece of driftwood, measuring perhaps three feet in length. There was no outward indication that it contained a location transmitter system, which had been broadcasting to the Amelia on a designated frequency.
He maneuvered the boat so its side roller and power winch were positioned over the buoy, watching his men scramble across the deck in their orange bib pants, preparing to hook the line and begin the retrieval process.
Normally the cargo was recovered at the beginning of a fishing trip—usually around the first quarter of the moon cycle, when the tuna and swordfish were out. They’d throw the recovered items far forward in the hold, and pack it with ice and then fish—no Coast Guard inspection ever unpacked twenty tons of ice to look at everything.
Once the ship returned to shore, it was easy enough to get the cargo where it needed to go. The fish house trucks were fully refrigerated, chock full of fish and ice, and went all over the country. The best sushi-grade tuna came from the East Coast, after all, and the trucks made their way to every state in the continental US.
The late notification of this load presented a pain in the ass to his crew—they’d already unpacked tons of ice and fish to clea
r room far forward in the hold, where the inspectors never searched—and once the cargo was safely stashed away, they’d have to repack it all.
But his crew’s objections had faded to nothing when he told them what they’d be getting paid for this load.
They’d not only be well compensated for the inconvenience, but virtually problem-free for the rest of their lives. This haul alone was the mortgage, the new car, the kid’s college fund, the alimony, and plenty to spare.
It wasn’t until he caught his first glimpse of the cargo that Gary became uneasy.
He’d been expecting to see the usual haul—marine bags filled with shrink-wrapped packages. All the coke you cared to snort, he imagined, though he never looked inside. The people responsible for these transfers liked to install anti-tamper measures, and if one of those was found broken, it was his ass on the line to explain it. At worst he’d be killed and at best denied any further gravy, which was just as bad.
Having seen his father wither away to nothing after a forty-year fishing career that accomplished little more than advancing his family a half-rung above the poverty line, Gary had no intention of following in those footsteps. When he’d earned enough experience to join the word-of-mouth referral network to get “extra work,” Gary leapt at the chance.
But the huge objects being pulled out of the water weren’t marine bags—they were blue marlin.
The cargo must have been packed in the belly, against the fish’s spine. He’d seen that kind of thing before with swordfish, but never marlin, and certainly not for a load of this size. How long had those people been catching and refrigerating marlin?
Then there was the obvious problem of sharks destroying the load.
Whoever had made the drop circumvented this the same way he’d seen with swordfish—by sealing the animals in huge plastic bags, trapping the smell of dead fish as they floated beneath the buoy, weighted by the contents of whatever illicit cargo they harbored.
But they’d taken an additional precaution as well, one Gary had never seen.