by Steven James
I didn’t move.
A cursor was flashing on an expansive high-def screen mounted on the wall to her left, and a message: Ready to transmit. Awaiting signal verification.
Beside a keyboard on the desk in front of Donnie, a retinal scanner was futilely surveying empty air.
The signal hasn’t been sent. The missile hasn’t been fired.
“She killed my wife,” Donnie screamed. “She killed my daughter!”
“Why Jerusalem?” I asked Cassandra.
“I said set down your gun!”
“You killed Tatiana as well.” Alexei’s voice was cool. Unflinching.
“I’ve killed lots of people.” Cassandra’s eyes flicked toward the screen. “Set down your gun, Bowers, or Donnie dies. And I’ll blow the whole base if I need to.”
I didn’t have many cards. I threw one on the table. “We know about Terry. He wants to talk to you, to call it off.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Who’s Terry?” Becker Hahn muttered. “What’s going on? Who’s Cassandra?”
“The CIA is willing to negotiate,” I told her, making this up as I went, trying to buy time. “You don’t want to kill those people in Israel. It’s never been about that for you, for either of you. It’s the challenge. I know that. The money.”
Alexei edged forward. Honestly, he might have a better chance of taking out Cassandra than I did, and for a fraction of a second I was tempted to let him loose on her.
“Terry’s in Egypt.” I gestured toward one of the computers. “His interrogators have him online right now. They’re—”
“Quiet! Put the gun down or we all die. You have five seconds.”
I hated the thought that came next—
“Four . . .” she said.
—but it did come, and I had to balance it with the severity of the situation. If this is really about a missile launch, you need to stop—
“Three . . .”
—her even if she detonates those explosives, even if the base goes down, you can save hundreds of thousands of lives if you—
“Two—”
—shoot through Donnie. You have to shoot through the hostage; you have to end this! Hating what I was doing, but with no alternative, I took aim.
But apparently I wasn’t the only one balancing those fatal thoughts, because before I could fire, Donnie spun to the side and went for the remote control detonator. Without hesitating, Cassandra sent a round through his jaw, and the lower half of his face exploded in a red, grisly spray.
I fired at her, but Alexei had leapt forward, and I pegged him in the left shoulder. “Get down!” He stood his ground. I leaned farther, heard another shot from Cassandra’s gun, and saw a look of shock cross her face.
She brushed a hand against a wound in her abdomen, then quickly grabbed Donnie’s head in both hands. He might’ve still been alive; I couldn’t tell. I aimed at her neck just above her body armor, then squeezed the trigger and hit my mark. Her body lurched backward and buckled to the ground.
“No one move!” I hollered to Alexei, Becker, and Ted. They all remained where they were. Alexei finally looked at his shoulder, at the blood spreading across his shirt.
“Put the Tasers down,” I ordered Becker and Ted.
They dropped them, kicked them across the floor.
Secure the TATP detonator.
Confirm that Cassandra is dead.
It seemed impossible that she’d survived, but I wasn’t ready to take any chances.
Donnie’s body was slumped forward, his head on the desk, his eyes wide open, staring into eternity. From his nose down, his face was gone. Blood spewed from the cavity that used to be his mouth, covered the keyboard, drenched his shirt.
Sickened, I moved toward Cassandra.
It was hard to decipher exactly what had happened, but it appeared that in his last few seconds of life he’d wrested the detonator from her, then twisted the gun, angling it up beneath her body armor before it went off. Whatever the exact chain of events, in his dying moments he’d saved us from the explosion and managed to take revenge on Cassandra for what she’d done to his wife and daughter.
On the wall monitor, the cursor was still blinking; still waiting.
It looked like we’d stopped it. The signal hadn’t been sent.
As I crossed the room I could see Cassandra’s legs, but her face and torso were still hidden by Donnie’s body, which was slouched on the chair. I passed Alexei and he said softly, “I wanted to do that.” His eyes were on Cassandra.
“Step back, Alexei, and drop the bone gun.”
The door to the house banged open. “Patrick!” Tessa yelled. “Is that you? We’re in here!”
“It’s me,” Sean shouted.
“Amber overdosed!”
“What?” He was pounding up the stairs. “No!”
“Hurry!”
“Valkyrie’s dead,” Alexei muttered. His bone gun was now on the floor two meters away from him.
Keeping an eye on him, I knelt beside Cassandra.
“She wasn’t Valkyrie,” Ted Rusk mumbled.
“What?”
“Quiet,” I said. It didn’t take long at all to determine that Cassandra was not going to be causing us any more trouble.
“What do you mean she’s not Valkyrie?”
“Everyone quiet.” I didn’t need to check Donnie’s pulse. He was gone. I pushed myself to my feet.
Rusk pointed at Becker Hahn. “He made me tell ’em she was Valkyrie. He told me that—”
Becker whispered something under his breath.
Is he Valkyrie?
“What did you say?” I demanded.
“I said, ‘Dialogue when possible, action when necessary.’” He lowered his hands toward the table.
“Hands up!” I yelled.
But as he raised his hands, he grabbed a computer monitor and heaved it toward me. I fired, missed him, but sent a spray of electronics exploding from the screen. I had to turn my shoulder to take the blow from the monitor, and it hit my arm hard, throwing me off balance, knocking the gun from my hand. The Glock spun toward Cassandra’s body, landed just beside her leg.
Alexei went for his bone gun.
Then.
Becker was vaulting over the desk toward Donnie. I rushed toward him, but he managed to grab Donnie’s head and direct his eyes at the retinal scanner. No! It hasn’t been long enough! The eye is still perfused! It’ll still— I was almost to Becker, but Alexei beat me to him, planted the tip of the bone gun against the base of his skull.
“No!” I shouted.
Alexei engaged the device.
The sound of Becker’s skull cracking was sickening, horrifying. His arms went limp and he dropped Donnie’s head, which thumped off the desk, sending his body sagging to the floor. Alexei was lowering Becker beside him: “Easy, now. I don’t want you to die yet.”
I needed to stop Alexei, but my eyes jumped to the wall monitor.
Two words flashed: Transmission complete.
The ELF signal had been sent.
93
The USS Louisiana received the extremely low frequency signal, the algorithm Terry Manoji had designed synapsed through the system, the sub’s third aft missile hatch opened, and a Trident strategic ballistic missile shot into the water on its way toward the city of Jerusalem.
I grabbed my gun, pushed Alexei out of the way, and bent beside Becker. He lay helpless on the floor, his hands twitching faintly by his sides. I wondered how long he’d survive with his skull shattered.
“How do we stop it?”
“What?” The word was strangled with pain. “Stop what?”
“The missile!”
“No, we disarmed—”
“You just sent a message to fire a nuclear missile!”
“It wasn’t supposed to . . .” His lips trembled, his eyes went large. “We were disarming . . .”
He didn’t know?
He’s anti-nuke. Of course—
&
nbsp; Movement at the doorway. Lien-hua.
She rushed in carrying the AR-15, flanked by Daniels, the Master-at-Arms I’d freed earlier.
Thank God she’s okay!
“Cover Alexei,” I told her. I pointed to the screen where a CGI missile was moving through a simulated sky, and asked Daniels, “How do we stop that missile?” From the graphics display I could tell the missile had been fired from a sub somewhere in the Gulf of Oman.
His face was ghost-white. “You can’t.”
“Can’t it be disarmed in flight?”
“No.”
“Intercepted? Could we fire another missile at it, shoot it out of the sky?”
He shook his head gravely. “Fallout.”
“Redirected?” I pressed him. “New coordinates?”
“Not a Cold War nuke.”
I smacked the desk.
Earlier, I’d had Margaret put the planes into play as a last resort, but now—
I slid into the empty chair next to Donnie’s body, typed at the keyboard to put an online call through to her. As I did, I asked Chekov, who was standing stationary near the end of Lien-hua’s assault rifle, “The Beriev A-60. Range, you told me five hundred kilometers. And it can shoot down a submarine-launched ballistic missile?”
“Yes, but with an SLBM it would only work in the boost stage.” He spoke quickly, aware of the seriousness of the situation. “If you fracture the missile’s outer casing after it begins final descent, the nuclear device contained in the missile will detonate.”
A second-by-second countdown on the screen told me the missile’s ETA was in ten minutes twenty-nine seconds.
Come on, Margaret, where are you!
I indicated to the screen and asked Daniels, “How long until final descent?”
“Six minutes. Maybe less.”
It won’t take Israel long to identify the speed and trajectory of the missile. They’ll assume Iran fired it. They’ll respond—
Margaret answered, but I cut her off, “You have to get Israel to hold off a kinetic response. It’s the only way to save Jerusalem. They cannot fire, Margaret, you have to—”
“Patrick—”
“The missile was launched! Are the Beriev A-60s in the air?”
“Yes—”
“No retaliatory response. None! And get Nielson on the line. He has to tell Iran’s Supreme Leader, not the presid—”
The signal went dead. All the computers went offline.
“What?” I shouted. “What happened?”
“The comm link on the first level.” Rusk’s words were flushed with shock. “Someone must have gotten up there, disabled it. You said a missile was fired? We were supposed to take ’em offline!”
We have until the final descent. You need to move.
You can still stop this!
I leapt to my feet, said to Daniels, “Is the elevator on the top level working?”
“I don’t—”
“No!” Rusk interrupted, desperate now. “I disabled it!”
I started for the door. “Rusk, Lien-hua, you’re with me.” Lien-hua passed the rifle to Daniels, and I pointed to Alexei. “Shoot him if he tries to get away. Shoot him if he tries to approach either of the men on the floor. Shoot anyone who goes near that detonator switch.”
As I left the room I heard Alexei accuse Becker, “You killed Tatiana.”
Becker responded, just loud enough for me to hear, “I’m not Valkyrie.”
“Then who—”
But by then I was out of earshot, hurrying with Lien-hua and Rusk toward the stairs.
94
Amber opened her eyes, sputtered, shivered, gasped for breath.
Thank God! Tessa nearly said the words aloud.
Sean lifted Amber, hurried to the bedroom. “Grab some towels,” he called to Tessa, “and we need to find some dry clothes so we can get her to the hospital.”
Tessa gathered the towels, but she didn’t know how long Amber would remain conscious, not after that serious an overdose.
She had her phone with her, but no doctor had come on the line yet. After helping dry Amber and pulling on some dry clothes herself, Tessa went online and typed in the name of the drug, then searched for treatment strategies, and saw that the drive to the hospital would be cutting it dangerously close.
“Sean, we need to empty her stomach!”
Bypassing the clothes, Sean had decided to wrap Amber in thick, warm blankets for the drive. He was yanking them from the closet shelf. “What do you suggest?”
A finger down her throat? That doesn’t always work; it’s hard to do on someone else. Amber’s a pharmacist. Surely she’ll have some—
Tessa said to Amber, “Do you have any syrup of ipecac?”
“No.” Her voice was weak.
“Hydrogen peroxide?”
A nod. “Medicine cabinet.”
But when Tessa checked, she found the bottle nearly empty.
No!
All right, one last option.
Maybe, maybe, it’s worth a try—
Tessa left for the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Sean called.
“My friend Anisette had bulimia. She used dish soap.”
Second level.
I was pushing forward as fast as I could on my injured ankle.
The entry bay stairwell wasn’t far.
Toting sidearms, the ELF crew had secured this floor. However, someone had managed to disrupt that comm line, so it looked like at least one Eco-Tech member was still loose on the level above us.
As we rushed past the rec room, I told Lien-hua, “It’s good to see you, by the way. What about that guy you were fighting down there?”
“He won’t be bothering us.”
I corralled two of the warfare information officers to join us.
“What are we doing, Pat?” Lien-hua asked.
“I need to talk to Margaret. The Iranians have planes, Russian-made Beriev A-60s. They’re in the air and they can shoot down that missile if only we can convince them to do it.”
“But it’s heading for Jerusalem,” she said. “Why would Iran stop a nuclear missile that’s on its way to Israel?”
“I’m working on that.” Then I asked the officers with us, “Is there any other means of communicating with someone outside of this base?”
“No,” one of the men answered. “Both the sat comm and landlines are down. RF has been jammed all night.”
“You’d need to get to the surface,” Rusk stammered, “but I told you, the elevator’s been disabled!”
“I’m not going to use the elevator.”
95
We emerged from the stairwell.
Stepped into the base’s entry bay.
Even from here I could see that the comm line had indeed been yanked down, snapping somewhere in the middle. I hurried to the shaft, flicked out my Maglite, shone it up toward the maintenance building.
The light didn’t reach the top.
No handholds.
No footholds.
I’d have to stem the whole way up, climb it like I would a crack or a chimney. I tossed off my jacket, asked the naval officers, “Is this shaft open on top?”
Lien-hua and the crewmen had their sidearms out and were scanning the area. “No,” one of them said. “There’s a cement cover that slides over the hole.”
Great.
The schematics had said this shaft was twenty-seven meters long.
Just less than ninety feet.
Lien-hua guessed my plan. “Pat, no.”
“It’s all right. I’ll be all right.” She and the others were still watching for Eco-Tech members. I cranked my boot laces as tight as they’d go and told the officer, “You need to get that cover moved by the time I get up there.”
“I’m not sure we can get—”
“Find a way.” I pointed to Rusk. “This guy disabled the elevator, maybe he can help.”
“Pat, if you slip—” Lien-hua began.
�
�I won’t slip.”
Speed climb this. Don’t think. Just climb. You need to get up there and call Margaret.
I could do this: one foot and one hand on opposite walls, pressing out, using oppositional force, then working my way up one move at a time. I told Lien-hua, “I’ve done this in Yosemite.”
“With climbing shoes. With ropes. With anchors!”
The track on which the concrete platform had ridden down was on one side of the shaft, but because of the shaft’s width I wouldn’t be able to use that wall to climb. However, I could use it to get off the ground. Grabbing one of the bars, I hoisted myself up and scissored out my legs and arms to span the width of the shaft.
If you slip, if you run out of strength, if they don’t get the cover off the top, you’ll fall, and if you fall—
I pushed those thoughts aside. “There’s someone here, in one of these tunnels, Lien-hua. Cover these guys so they can get the hydraulics working again.”
“Pat, swear to me you won’t fall.”
You can do this. Don’t stand up too much. Outward pressure. Get solid, then move.
I locked my feet in place, rested my weight for a moment. “I’m gonna marry you someday, Lien-hua. There’s no way I’m going to fall and miss out on that.”
It wasn’t exactly a proposal. I could clear that up later.
All right. Go.
Holding the Maglite in my mouth to keep my hands free, I began to ascend the shaft.
The dish soap had worked.
Sean was carrying Amber down the stairs so they could drive her to the hospital.
To help the doctors know what else was in Amber’s system, Tessa grabbed the empty pill bottle as well as the depression meds, then hit the stairs.
“Get the door,” Sean called.
She flung it open and they stepped into the whipping fury of the storm.
96
I wasn’t even halfway up the shaft yet and my arms were already spent.
The width wasn’t right for my arm span, and each time I positioned my hands, it took tremendous energy to hold myself in place while I made another move.