by D S Kane
Cassie stood ramrod straight, clean and well-rested, staring out the embassy window facing southeast toward the Capitol. The White House was less than five miles away. It was a few seconds before noon and they had failed to collect all the bombs.
They had found another assembled weapon, minus the fissionable material, and nuclear material for two bombs in one of the rooms of the General Lewis Inn but the terrorists had long since vanished with one completely assembled weapon. It seemed probable they realized their time was short and decided to leave with just the one.
The missing bomb sat somewhere in the city of Washington, and Wagner said, “Finding the missing device will be like finding a needle in a haystack.” Everyone still worked at coordinating efforts to find the device, but with little chance of success.
She could see the tip of the Washington Monument rising into the sky. It was still overcast after yesterday’s rain. From her position at a third-floor window, Cassie saw the reflective glare of perspiration on the faces of the guards at the front gate of the embassy.
A bright flash from downtown jerked her gaze. Almost at the same instant, the glass of the window just in front of her face splintered into fragments, all chasing toward her as the window frame vaporized in the howling heat of a nuclear hurricane. Cassie felt the melted glass rip through her body, smelled her body burn to dust as her soul was snuffed out.
Lee gently held Cassie’s head in his lap, stroking her hair. “Wake up, sweetie. That must have been quite a dream. You howled like a cat in heat and moved so violently, I thought you’d knock over the desk. You’ve been asleep for almost an hour.”
Cassie’s legs trembled as she emerged from her dream. She shook her head and slowly got to her feet.
He extended his hand to steady her. “Before you go, there’s something I have to ask you.”
She could see his anguish. “Is this about the bomb?”
“It’s complicated. There are two things. I was shocked by the torture video. It’s not just gruesome. It’s plain wrong. Cassie, how could you?”
“But I didn’t torture them.”
“But you tried to. You had the knife in your hand. You were ready to. What happened to you, to turn you into something so, so…”
“Okay!” She snapped back, out of his arms. “Yes. I almost did those things myself.”
“But that’s not where it ended. You stood there and did nothing while our Mossad helpmates did the deed for you.”
Her head fell and tears poured out. “Stop! I know what I did. What they did. But, Lee, it gave us a chance to keep millions from dying. Doesn’t that count for something?”
He had no answer, but remained inches from her, moving closer. She wanted to push him away now, but he held up one hand. “I’m not done. The reason I’m so troubled about this is, well, you see, knowing what you are capable of… Sheesh, it scares me.” He took a deep breath. “It’s so important because, well, when we worked at the agency, long before we began this journey, I had a major crush on you. You already know that, and you know I think you’re beautiful. And now, after spending so much time with you, I’m deeply in love with you. Just know that.” He hugged her.
She could imagine the look of shock he found on her face.
Lee backed away. “The shower.” He handed her a stack of clothing and a towel. “Up two flights and take the first left past the elevator. Get back as soon as you can. I think there’s something going on in the conference room. When I passed it, people were shouting at each other.” He kissed her lips hard and sent her on her way.
She tottered toward the staircase. Two floors up, Cassie entered the hallway and opened the bathroom door. She locked the door and stripped, placing all her dirty clothing in a small pile.
Cassie didn’t find any shampoo. There must be some, but she was impatient, eager to get back to work. She washed her body and cleaned her hair with the bar of soap she found in the shower. Leaving the shower she found deodorant in the medicine cabinet of the bathroom. It was made to appeal to men but she didn’t care. The clothing Lee found was too big, an Israeli army sergeant’s shirt and pants. Damn. He hadn’t looked in the right place to find something her size. She’d just have to make do. Cassie sighed, dressed and then rolled up the sleeves and pants. Must have been the uniform of a massive brute.
As she dressed, she brooded over his words. He loves me even though I’m a monster. Returning to the office where he waited, she pondered her dream and its meaning. She thought about how her dreams tended to point her in the right direction.
He smiled as she walked toward him, her new clothes bunched up and folded over so she could barely move without tripping over herself. He sniffed her and smiled. “I’m sorry for the scene. But I had to. Anyway, much better. You smell just fine and look cute in clothing too big for you.”
She moved closer. “Are we okay now?” He nodded and she kissed his lips. “Lee, the odds are pretty bad and getting worse for us every minute. Might as well accept it. We’re likely to die.”
“I know. I found out too late that I love you.”
She hugged him and replied, “Yeah.” But she didn’t say she loved him. She thought, if they died, what purpose would it serve to admit she was also smitten? The voice in her head yelled, say it, but she ignored it, unsure. She smiled at him, breaking away from his hug, and looked at her watch. 3:58 a.m. Nine hours left. “Now let’s get the hell back.”
The conference room had an eerie glow, everything a greenish tint with stark fluorescent lighting that cast no shadows. At the front of the room a chalkboard descended from the ceiling. Avram Shimmel stood at the chalkboard near the front, printing and drawing on the board for the assembled men and women. Cassie had never seen him direct an operation before but wasn’t surprised at how charismatic he was.
Shimmel pointed to the top of the board. “Let’s review status. First, we recovered a second bomb, minus the fissionable material, in a van labeled identically to the first just north of Memphis, Tennessee. We found the jack on the left rear wheel, their spare tire on the van, and the original tire in the back of the van with a hole in it, so apparently the hostiles tried to change a tire without understanding the English manual very well. Must have taken them at least four hours to do it because their ETA to Lewisburg would have been about 3 p.m. at their current rate of speed. NEST ended them before they could discover anything.”
Cassie turned to the window and saw the courtyard below, empty in the darkness but otherwise as she’d dreamed it.
Shimmel pointed to the next line on the chalkboard. “NEST and the FBI reached the inn’s parking lot in Lewisburg and found evidence of several more of the Houmaz gang recently there. The FBI men believe they left in a hurry and told the police to contact us ASAP. This was over an hour ago. In a van at the inn’s parking lot, we recovered two nuclear warheads but no bombs. So there is one completed nuclear weapon missing now, and we don’t know where it is.”
She recognized her dream in this reality. Oh, shit. We’re all going to die.
Shimmel looked away from the map and directed his gaze to Ben-Levy. “We don’t know if they left the inn with the weapon they’d just assembled or had to drive somewhere to perform final assembly. We don’t know how many of them are traveling with the weapon. Washington CSI is looking for fingerprints, DNA, or any other intel they can find in the room where they holed up, but it isn’t likely they’ll find anything soon enough to help. We can and should assume the single bomb remaining in play is probably in the city or on its way. Homeland Security has roadblocks on every road leading to the city. It is likely they’ll change vehicles to reduce their chance of detection. All we can do is to wait for CSI or the police manning the roadblocks to call us.”
She considered her dream. “Suppose the remaining bomb had been assembled and they were delivering it to its detonation point before FBI and NEST reached the inn?”
“What are you suggesting?” Wagner asked her.
She paced as she spo
ke. “I think we need to think like terrorists. Think like the Houmaz brothers. They planned this event and probably took painstaking care to ensure at least one of their devices would detonate before we could find it. I believe it’s possible they had just finished assembling the connection between one of the bombs and its fissionable material, and had just loaded it into a vehicle when they heard the NEST team arriving. If so, then it’s very likely they were working on the second remaining bomb when they panicked and departed. I believe the completed bomb is already in the city, armed and timing down to noon, protected by Houmaz’s men.”
Shimmel’s lips compressed tight in thought. “In order for an atomic bomb to reach its maximum destructive effect, it must be exploded from at least 1,000 feet above the surface. This would indicate a hundred-story building, and there isn’t one in the capital. Either they are placing it in a smaller building or they’ll be using aircraft. We alerted all the airfields and no one has reported suspicious activity. There are many tall buildings in the city, and only government buildings have security. Far too many tall buildings without security for us to search. And they’ll still inflict significant damage at any altitude higher than one hundred feet.”
Cassie looked southeast, her thoughts focused on her nightmare. “The Houmaz brothers seemed to have a real sense of irony, or at least they did until I killed them. When I was scouring Pesi’s hard drive for evidence I found plans for a few of their operations. They chose the locale or the targets in a few of their ops as if there was a message within the op. For example, two years ago they exploded a suicide bomber in a filled movie theatre where the film was an anti-war movie. With this in mind, my best guess would be they’re going to use a monument or shrine to explode their bomb, even if it falls under the thousand feet necessary to inflict max damage. I’m thinking specifically about the Washington Monument, about five miles southeast of here. It’s over five hundred feet tall.”
Wagner looked as if he’d been roused from sleep. He rubbed his eyes and looked around the room. “Well, it makes sense. I’ll have the local police force take care of it.” Before anyone else could reply, he’d left the room while punching in a number on his cell phone.
Two hours later, an embassy clerk came running into the conference room, breathless, as if he’d run quite a distance. Looking directly at Assistant Minister Ben-Levy, the clerk spoke in English. “Sir, the local police found the terrorists. They’re at the top of the Washington Monument. Two of the three police who found them are dead and the third is badly wounded, but she was able to make the call to us from her cell phone. She said there isn’t any good way to approach them.”
Yigdal Ben-Levy rose from the table and gave the clerk his thanks. Then he faced the people seated around the table. His rage was evident as he pointed at Wagner, who had just reentered the room. “You are an incompetent fool. Pandering to a stupid President. Neither you nor any in your administration have an idea what you are doing. We’ve heard the reports. Do you think we’re also idiots?” As she listened to Ben-Levy, Cassie cringed at the indictments he hurled, his angry voice and the glare in his eyes. “We have a solution, Mr. Wagner, but it requires deploying a weapon we developed in Israel and choose not to share with the world. If you want, we can end this now. Or you can do your bumbling best and get us all killed. What will it be?”
Wagner stopped fidgeting and sat back in his chair, thinking hard about too many things. He thought about the Posse Comitatus Act and its implications. The law that recently had replaced it was even more severe. That law was often cited as the constraint on the domestic use of military services. It prohibited the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps from participating in homeland security, counterterrorism, civil disturbances, and similar domestic duties. If the mercenaries succeeded, would the new law apply to this foreign army? What if Ben-Levy wanted to use the Israeli military’s embassy guards? But then he realized, if this outside force of mercenaries failed, death for millions would be the penalty.
No one would know or care they’d violated the law. If they succeeded, he’d have some time to figure it all out later.
Wagner’s wristwatch glowed 4:26 a.m. He picked up his cell phone once again.
Gilbert Greenfield sat outside the Oval Office waiting for his old college friend to see him. He didn’t have an appointment to see the President but had told the secretary this was urgent. He’d rushed to the White House immediately after receiving Wagner’s phone message on his cell phone.
Greenfield felt mixed emotions over Sashakovich’s survival. Having her take out the terrorists was a good thing. But it might also make the United States look less powerful for not having done it themselves. He looked up at the ceiling, wondering if she knew about the funds transfer network and would ruin his career as well as the President’s.
He waited only fifteen minutes before the door opened and the President’s secretary motioned for him to enter. The President, a squirrel-faced man with gray curly hair, motioned Greenfield to a chair opposite his desk. “Hello, Gil. I can only spare you a minute or two. I’ll be in conference with the Israeli Prime Minister for most of the rest of today and the press is waiting for updates as they occur. What’s on your mind?”
Greenfield swallowed hard. “Mr. President, we have a very serious problem, one threatening DC and the entire US government.” The President’s smile vanished and he sat back, wearing a blank expression. Greenfield continued. “Remember the funds transfer network we set up earlier this year to move money to the Middle East for support of our friends?”
“Yes. I remember. You told me I shouldn’t get involved with it, to preserve my ‘deniability.’ What’s wrong, Gil?”
“One of the consultants we tried to obtain for some of the work turns out to be the woman who worked for me at the agency and had her cover blown. She declined the assignment so we never vetted her and didn’t know it was her. And—”
“Get to the point, Gil. I have to get to that meeting or the press will wonder why I’m delaying. The Prime Minister is already waiting for me.”
Greenfield gulped. “She was responsible for torturing the Houmaz brothers to death and she hacked the West Wing. She knows everything. Worse, the Houmaz brothers used the money we sent them to place a nuclear bomb somewhere in Washington and we haven’t found it. And since she knows everything, she’s told us if anyone in government, especially you, the Vice President, or the Cabinet leaves Washington before the bomb explodes, she has a computer program primed to deliver evidence to reporters proving we funded terrorism.”
The President looked as if he’d been slapped in the face. His jaw just hung open. “Shit. How did this get so out of control? Can’t you just use sodium pentothal or one of the other truth drugs to find out how to disarm her computer trap?”
Greenfield shook his head. “No, sir. Two years ago, we developed a drug causing our agents to suffer fatal coronaries if someone administers a truth drug to them. All our NOCs have been “vaccinated.” We told them it was flu vaccine. It was because we wanted to keep Congress from knowing all our operatives are NOCs officially working for government contractors.”
“But won’t that end the problem?”
“Sir, she must sign into some program somewhere at fixed intervals to keep the system from delivering the intel. If she doesn’t, all the information is automatically sent to the press and television networks.”
The President sat back in his desk chair. “Damn. What does she want?”
“Just that you not leave Washington unless you first evacuate the entire city, and you, the Vice President, and the Cabinet must be last to leave.”
“Our entire line of succession could die. Not just me and the VP. She could behead our entire government. That’s outrageous! That’s blackmail.”
Greenfield raised his hands and waved at the air in a dismissive gesture. “Yes. Yes, it is. But this is what she demands. What she wants is to permit the Israelis to try to find and disarm the bomb. She believes they ha
ve a much better chance.”
Greenfield knew what the President was thinking. One path led to possible death. The other would bring about certain impeachment. What would the President’s legacy be if he died in a holocaust of his own making and what would it be if he fled before the city was destroyed?
The President rose from his chair and grabbed Greenfield’s shoulder. “Okay, Gil. I’ll move the Vice President, the Cabinet, and myself to the bombproof shelter underneath the White House after today’s meetings. I’ll be sick tomorrow and cancel all my appointments. Make sure they find a way to locate and disarm the bomb.”
Gilbert Greenfield left the Oval Office wondering if today was the last day of his life.
Chapter Forty-Two
September 14, 9:29 a.m.
Washington Monument, Washington DC
Even this early, the area around the Washington Monument was thick with tourists. The hot, sunny morning was the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Barricades kept the few early-rising tourists from entering the Monument. The DC police turned them back. But there were few active so early. The few that wandered past the police found signs all around the building at the base of the monument: “Monument Being Cleaned. Closed Until 2 p.m. Today. Sorry For The Inconvenience.” The tourists went on their way. There was so much to see at other nearby tourist attractions.
Over forty men and women, each in the prime of life, approached the monument from different directions using extreme caution.
Each was dressed in casual clothing treated with a newly developed and vastly improved liquid armor, or shear thickening fluid. STF had been developed by the US Army in 2003 and could stop a .38 caliber bullet but this new version, modified at Ness Ziona, could stop anything up to a .50 caliber shell.