“Hold on, Mom,” he said. “Something is wrong.”
He pulled the SEAL Team Ten hat—one of so many gifts from his father—off his head and handed it to her.
“Jake, what are you doing?”
Commotion erupted ahead. A concessions employee with a food tray dropped at his feet was shouting, but Jake couldn’t make out what the guy was saying. All around him, people began shuffling. A chair at one of the restaurants tipped over. A baby started crying.
The crowd was beginning to sense that something was wrong.
Ahead, the two men briefly caucused and then diverged—one rushing ahead toward Ocean Voyager, and the other turning back toward the tunnel, his eyes on the throng of people behind Jake streaming into the Atrium through the Wall of Fish. Jake locked eyes with the man, and gooseflesh stood up on his neck. For the first time in his life, he saw murder in another man’s eyes, and at that moment, he knew these guys were terrorists.
He grabbed his mom’s hand and pulled her to the right, hoping to give a wide berth to the terrorist. “Stay behind me,” he commanded, and to his surprise, she listened. A bird’s-eye view of the aquarium popped into his mind, and he wondered how he could possibly know the layout of the place. But then he remembered having glanced at the back of the trifold tourist brochure while they were waiting in the ticket line. Somehow he remembered that the gift shop was to his immediate right and there was an emergency exit just beyond the Tropical Diver exhibit at his two o’clock. A woman running with a toddler in her arms smashed painfully into him. The woman screamed, the baby wailed, and he lost his grip on his mom’s hand.
Across the Atrium, he saw two fully kitted-up warriors enter from the Cold Water Quest exhibit, moving in a combat crouch. He blinked and wondered if he was hallucinating—imagining what he wanted to see—because these guys were definitely SEALs. With the exception of actual Team guys like his dad, no one knew SEALs better than Jake. He watched the two operators fan out quietly through the crowd, so quietly that the terrorist they were converging on didn’t hear them coming. In mere seconds, the two SEALs had the first jihadist spread-eagle on the floor at the entrance to Ocean Voyager. The taller SEAL had the terrorist stretched out in front of him, his hands gripping the wrists while the other pointed an assault rifle at the back of the man’s head.
To his left he heard someone shout, “Everyone clear the Atrium!”
Two more operators materialized out of the tunnel as pandemonium erupted in the Atrium. Someone screamed, and then it seemed like everyone screamed. The noise reverberated and echoed in the cavernous hall with a disconcerting effect. People—mostly women with small children—hunched over and darted in all directions. Jake looked back at the operators and registered that they were dressed different from the SEALS, with nonissue cargo pants and black T-shirts under their black combat vests. Then, he realized that one of them was a woman, sighting over an MP5.
The second terrorist saw them and veered left, putting him on a collision course with Jake’s mom. Jake watched—everything happening in slow motion—as the man opened his olive-green barn jacket, revealing a small machine gun in his grip. As the barrel rose, Jake surged forward, anger trumping all fear. A simple thought took shape in his head: this guy was about to shoot women and children. Men like this guy were the reason he didn’t have a dad.
He crossed the distance between them in a second, but it felt like minutes. The man was looking away, mouth open and screaming. Jake saw fire lick out of the machine gun and heard more screams. He twisted his body, driving his left hand out and up, just as his dad had taught him in their backyard Krav Maga lessons. He nailed the terrorist’s wrist, forcing the thundering machine gun barrel toward the ceiling. Jake rotated his hand, repositioning it to grip the man’s wrist. At the same time, he pivoted on the ball of his left foot, stepped through the space between them with his right, and drove his right fist up into the terrorist’s jaw. The terrorist stumbled backward and almost fell, but at the last second regained his balance and wrenched his arm free from Jake’s grip. Jake stumbled forward and tried to tackle him by the waist as he fell, but the shooter stayed upright.
Jake felt a sharp, crushing pain as the terrorist drove the rifle butt down against the crown of his head. He hit the ground and immediately rolled onto his back, his arms up defensively. He blinked hard to clear the white spots from his eyes and felt hot blood running through his hair and onto his neck. As his vision cleared, he saw the man sighting in on his face over the machine gun.
“Allahu Akbar!” the man screamed, eyes wide with pure and absolute hatred.
Jake wanted to close his eyes—so he wouldn’t see the muzzle flash—but another part of his brain refused. “Fuck you!”
There was a loud pop and Jake’s body jerked.
But instead of a stream of bullets ripping Jake’s face apart, the terrorist arched his back, his rifle arcing away and spitting at the tile floor. The terrorist’s body twitched violently, still upright, as another pop followed the first. Then another. Blood spilled out of the man’s mouth and over his chin. A big red bubble formed and then burst from between his lips. Finally, he pitched forward and fell, his face smacking the floor with a wet thud, the rifle clattering away.
Jake felt strong hands clutch his arms, and he realized he was being dragged backward into the tunnel. He looked down and saw the black gloves and turned to see who had him, half expecting and half hoping to see his dad. But he didn’t recognize the man. He locked eyes with the woman with auburn hair running beside them.
“You’re not SEALs,” he heard himself say from far away.
Then the world was filled with light.
And heat.
And he disappeared into a soft but comfortable darkness.
CHAPTER 48
Ember TOC
1320 Local / 1220 Omaha / 1020 Seattle
All hell had just broken loose, and Jarvis was in the middle of the firestorm.
The center monitor was streaming drone imagery from Seattle where Bravo Team was circling the smoking hole that had once been a luxury sedan full of terrorists. The Seattle map was gone from the left screen, replaced with split-screen live streams from Dempsey’s and Special Agent Hansen’s body cams in Omaha. Jarvis watched their cameras pan as they walked through the now-deserted Old Market.
Rapid movement on the right monitor usurped his attention. It was streaming Grimes’s body camera feed as she entered the Georgia aquarium. This was it.
“Everyone clear the lobby!” Grimes shouted.
Chaos ensued—screaming, running, and shooting.
“Shooter at your three o’clock,” Jarvis said, but she was already converging.
He watched in awe as a random teenager in the crowd rushed into view and assaulted the terrorist while he was firing into the crowd. There was something familiar about the way the kid moved. The kid delivered a punishing blow and almost succeeded in disarming the shooter, but then the terrorist regained the upper hand. Jarvis watched in horror as the terrorist knocked the teenager out and brought his weapon to bear for the kill.
“Take the shot,” Jarvis barked, and prayed his instincts were right.
Grimes’s muzzle barked, and the jihadi buckled. As she advanced on the fallen terrorist and the kid, he finally got a good view of the shooter.
“He’s wearing a bomb vest,” Jarvis said. “Egress, egress, egress!”
A beat later Grimes was running alongside Adamo, who was dragging the kid to safety.
Suddenly, the monitor flashed white, flickered, and went to static.
Jarvis’s heart skipped a beat.
He’d stood OTC in enough TOCs to know what had just happened—the terrorist’s suicide vest had exploded.
“Charlie Team, report,” he said. “Charlie Team . . . report?”
“Stand by,” came Adamo’s coughing reply.
“Switch to Adamo’s feed,” Jarvis ordered Baldwin.
The right monitor flickered and a new feed appeared.<
br />
“Charlie Two, report.”
Grimes’s voice was strong and clear, but tense. “You were right,” she said. “Suicide vest. Must have been on a kill switch, but I didn’t see anything in his left hand. He blew after we killed him . . . less than thirty seconds. Probably nothing left of him, but if you hold on, I can walk over and take a look.”
“Your camera is Tango Uniform,” Jarvis said. “We’re on Adamo’s feed.”
“Copy,” she said.
“Charlie Three, status report,” Jarvis said.
“Mother, this is Charlie Three,” came Chunk’s voice, loud and clear. “We’re five by and have the other shithead in cuffs and isolated.”
“Was the other shooter wired to blow?” Jarvis asked.
“Hell yeah, that’s why we got him isolated,” said the SEAL.
“And he didn’t have a handheld detonator?”
“No, sir,” came the reply.
“So what’s the trigger?”
“I do not know, sir,” Chunk said. “But I am not walking over there to ask the motherfucker. You wanna know how that shit works, then call EOD.”
“EOD is en route,” Baldwin announced.
“You made the right call, Charlie Three,” Jarvis said. “Keep him isolated. EOD has been called and is en route to your location.”
Meanwhile, Adamo had walked back through the Wall of Fish into the Atrium. “That tunnel saved our asses,” Adamo said as he made a slow arc, showing Jarvis the aftermath. A few dozen bodies lay strewn among the rubble that had once been the food court seating area. Most of the fallen were moving, but several were not. He saw lots of small bodies—children. There was a little boy’s empty tennis shoe—Spider-Man lighting up red and blue—at the edge of the debris.
“Charlie Team, injury report,” Jarvis said.
“Charlie Three and Four, no injuries,” Chunk called in.
“Charlie One and Two are okay,” Adamo answered. “Just scratches. And the teenage boy is okay.”
“Sir, you need to warn Dempsey,” Grimes said, her voice tense. “There is definitely some variety of kill switch in play. This guy blew up after he was dead. Kill shots at the other targets need to be planned accordingly.”
“Check,” Jarvis said, not telling her that it was already too late for that.
He looked at the monitor with Omaha feeds. On the right side of the split screen, he saw that Dempsey was approaching the body of Rafiq al-Mahajer where it lay supine on the ground. Dempsey’s body cam was focused over his Sig 556 rifle directly on al-Mahajer. The top and right side of his forehead had been blown off.
“Alpha One, hold,” Jarvis barked.
Dempsey stopped immediately. “Copy. Is there a problem? A problem in Atlanta?”
Jarvis hesitated a moment. Dempsey would ask that question only if he’d been checking in on Kate. They both knew that Kate and Jacob were somewhere in downtown Atlanta, but neither of them knew their fate. That question would be answered soon enough, but right now Jarvis needed his operator focused.
“Atlanta is contained,” Jarvis said, “but we had a tango go boom after a kill shot. These guys must be using a novel type of detonator. Not a conventional handheld dead man’s switch, but something new. Is al-Mahajer wearing gloves?”
Dempsey inched forward, then stopped. “Negative.”
“Evacuate the area and get to a safe distance.”
Dempsey’s body cam video stream panned left and right, showing Jarvis the scene in the Old Market.
“We have a fair number of wounded here, sir,” Dempsey said. “The target is down, but we have people down around the stage and others sheltering in place at the restaurant. If he blows, then we’re gonna have collaterals.” Dempsey paused, but Jarvis knew what he would say. “I’m gonna move in and see if I can disarm the vest. Wang, you there?”
“Wait,” said Wang, his voice uncharacteristically grave. “I’m headed to you.”
“Stay put, Wang. I got this,” Dempsey said. His video stream showed the HRT operators converging on the area. “I need everyone out of here, right now,” Dempsey ordered. “I’m going to try to disarm this sonuvabitch.”
CHAPTER 49
Old Town Market
Omaha, Nebraska
Dempsey kept his rifle up and pointed at the body of al-Mahajer, despite the truth staring him in the face.
“Boss, this guy is fucking dead,” Dempsey said into his mike. The information seemed redundant since Jarvis could see for himself that more than half of al-Mahajer’s forehead was missing. He could also see the wet stain that always formed around a corpse when all of the body’s sphincters gave up at once, even if he couldn’t smell the stench of death like Dempsey could.
“Check his wrist,” Jarvis said evenly. “EOD in Atlanta just reported they caught their crow trying to tear off a wristband while his hands were flex-cuffed together behind his back.”
“Roger that,” Dempsey said, slinging his rifle as he knelt beside the corpse of the terrorist who had eluded him for more than a decade. He had no time to relish the moment. He pulled his 5.11 Tactical TAC glove off his left hand with his teeth and pressed two fingers into the groove beside the trachea on the terrorist’s blood- and brain-spattered neck.
Holy shit.
“Sir, you won’t believe this, but I have a pulse on my tango,” he said, hearing the surprise in his own voice. “How is that possible?”
“Highly improbable, but medically feasible,” came Baldwin’s voice in his ear. “You see how your bullet took out his frontal and temporal lobes, and—yes, it looks like his occipital lobe is partially missing as well, you see?”
“I don’t know what the hell any of that means, Professor.” Dempsey pulled gently on the left arm of the near-corpse, which had ended up behind the terrorist and beneath him. Using a booted foot, he raised al-Mahajer’s torso up, fully expecting to be blown to bits in the process.
“Do you see how the target was de-cerebrated?”
“No,” Dempsey said. He looked down at al-Mahajer’s left wrist and spied a narrow black watch with a black LED strip—only it wasn’t a watch. It was one of those fitness trackers with a built-in heart-rate monitor everyone was wearing these days. He shifted his gaze back at al-Mahajer’s gory mess of a head. “Just give me the eighth-grade explanation, Baldwin.”
“Your bullet destroyed the target’s front brain, but the brainstem is still preserved. The brainstem controls all of the automatic, involuntary actions—like breathing and heart rate. Al-Mahajer is technically brain dead, but he is not, well, dead-dead.”
Dempsey studied the fitness band on the terrorist’s wrist. The narrow LED display had numbers on it, and beside it was a picture of a heart, which was flashing on and off, presumably in time to al-Mahajer’s still-beating heart. The digital readout was flashing “55.”
Suddenly, it hit him. This was his final test. Al-Mahajer’s final deception. The same devious stratagem yet again.
He draws you in, gets you to let down your guard, and BOOM!
You lose.
“How long, Baldwin?” Dempsey asked.
“Until what?”
“Until he’s dead-dead.”
There was a pause. “Maybe seconds, maybe minutes. I’m not a physician, John. I would imagine it depends on blood loss?”
“I think the suicide vest is linked to a heart-rate monitor,” Dempsey said. “I think it must be programmed to detonate if the heart rate goes to zero, or maybe below a certain rate? If his heart stops before we can clear the wounded, we’re fucked.”
“How bad is the bleeding, John?”
“He’s missing half his head, what do you think?” Dempsey said. The dark puddle of blood around the dying terrorist’s head was still growing even now.
“Then stop the bleeding!” Baldwin said, with more urgency and emotion than he’d ever heard from the man.
Dempsey pulled his blowout kit from his left cargo pocket and tore it open with his teeth. He grabbed the dressi
ng from the plastic bag and balled it up and then pressed it deep into the pulsating mass of gore at the top of the terrorist’s head. The dressing soaked instantly.
“I need a medic here,” he said.
“Coming up,” came the call from one of Hansen’s men.
“And I need Wang.”
“Right here, JD,” came a voice in his headset but also beside him. He looked up and met Wang’s gaze.
“I told you to stay back,” he said. “I could have relayed details over comms.”
“This will be quicker,” Wang said and knelt beside him, pulling his right knee back to avoid the expanding pool. “We don’t have much time.”
The medics were coming, and in the meantime Dempsey held pressure on the brain cavity. The terrorist’s one remaining eye stared off to the left, the pupil filling the entire iris. Dempsey figured this was what brain dead meant.
“Can I look at the vest?” Wang said.
Dempsey glanced at him. “Do you really want to mess with the explosive vest?”
Wang bit the inside of his cheek, but nodded. “There are no wires to the vest from the activity monitor, so if you’re right, it has to be communicating wirelessly to something on the vest. These devices usually have an app you can put on a tablet or a smartphone.”
“Go ahead and look, if it will help you,” Dempsey said. Then, he looked at Hansen, who was standing at the foot of the stairs leading up to the stage. “Get everyone back,” he said. “And then you and your guys get back, too. Have the medics slide their gear up to me and then haul ass out of here.”
Hansen nodded and turned to the loitering civilians, cell phones raised and recording. “We need everyone back. Right now. Everyone back.”
Wang pulled al-Mahajer’s barn jacket open and revealed what looked like a standard-issue black tactical combat vest. Except it had long vertical rows that bulged out, no doubt filled with shrapnel, four gray bricks of explosives—two to a side—and in the middle was a maze of wires, a control unit with LED lights and an alphanumeric display with a German word he assumed said “armed.” The control unit was connected with a USB cable to a smartphone held to the vest with duct tape. On the screen was the same flashing “55” for the heart rate.
War Shadows (Tier One Thrillers Book 2) Page 33