Montoya took the bottle from the man’s outstretched hand and tipped the bottle up as if taking a big swig. The man quickly yanked the bottle away.
“Hey, you said a dink, not the whole wottle. Move along, you son of a daoog or I’ll a…I will refort you!” the man spit, while glaring in the general direction of Montoya who turned and started to stumble away. Just then, the man suddenly lunged forward making a failed attempt at kicking Montoya in the ass as he turned. His sweeping gesture missed Montoya by a good three feet, dumping the drunken fool on his ass. “Whoa, hey you just keepa walking. I’ll refort you, you sona of a whoore. Just got out of town my assss! I’m impoortatant, I’ll show you, if you don’t leave, fammer man!” the man blurted out, still trying to intimidate Montoya from his sprawled position on the ground, more angry at himself for having fallen than at Montoya for being there.
Montoya quickly turned the corner, not wanting to push his luck further with the drunk. Keeping his NV goggles off, he continued around the block. Some security, Montoya thought as he passed in front of the safe house. He noticed the camera on the building across the street from the safe house tucked tightly up under the eaves but saw no one outside watching the safe house. There was a faint glow from what he assumed was a monitor for the camera, and he assumed this meant that he was being recorded as he passed. To be on the safe side, he continued his drunken act and stumbled on.
Montoya noticed that even here, on the front side of the safe house, it was dark. Not a single street light was working and all of the buildings were dark now that the café had closed. What minders there were must have gone to the tourist district with the terrorists. The small light on the second floor balcony of the safe house was the only source of illumination for the entire block.
“Three, Two,” Shields voice boomed over the comlink, startling Montoya who had been lost in thought about the darkness.
“What?” Montoya whispered back.
“So, was it rum or moonshine?” Shields asked.
“What? You saw that? How? We were behind the building,” Montoya questioned.
“I am the eye in the sky, my friend. Watching your back at all times. I am the great equalizer, the hand of God! Now, was it rum or moonshine?” Shield persisted.
“Rum, I think. I didn’t drink any. Who knows what social diseases that guy has?”
“Social diseases? Did he hit on you, Two? You looked pretty chummy there for minute,” Shields teased him.
“Shut up, both of you. This isn’t a cocktail party,” David cut in curtly. “Two, report.”
“Back alley has two party guests, one sleeping soundly due to being drunk and one just soundly drunk. No lights, easy access to target. I’m about to go around for a recon of the safe house if it’s okay with you. There’s no one home and no one on watch, as far I can tell.” Montoya provided the situation report.
“Three, anything he missed?” David asked Shields.
“One, that would be a negative. It’s clear from here,” Shields came back.
“A quick in and out, Two. I’ll head back and play lookout out front. Wait for me to get in place,” David directed Montoya.
“Roger,” Montoya replied.
David slipped from the shadows where he had been hidden since the café by the park had closed a half an hour ago. The walk back to the safe house took ten minutes—twice as long as it should have. David decided it would be best if he meandered down the street as if he were drunk. He hoped by doing so he would avoid drawing attention to himself and would be dismissed as just another drunk. He shuffled past the door to his antagonist’s lair and slipped into the doorway next to the minder’s office where he waited for Montoya to get in place. While he waited, he quickly checked windows and doors for signs of life but found none. Then he called out to Shields asking for a sit rep.
“It’s all quiet, boss. The local security guys turned off their light about ten minutes after you left with our friends. The minder’s post has the glow from a monitor in the window, but there hasn’t been any movement since the two of them followed you to the tourist district. I’d say it is pretty much as good as it’s going to get.”
In the meantime, Montoya had arrived at the back corner of the safe house and was awaiting David’s go ahead.
“Two, One. Are you in place?” David asked Montoya.
“In place, One. Do I have a ‘go’?” Montoya replied.
“Go.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Montoya slowly stepped around the corner of the building and began moving towards the stairway. He stayed in the shadows, hugging the wall as long as possible. But before long, he found himself standing on the edge of the dim halo of light cast by the low voltage light bulb on the safe house’s landing. Knowing he had no other choice, he quickly crossed the last few yards to the stairs and started up. The stairs were an open metal grate style with a loose fitting handrail. He stepped lightly onto the first tread and listened to the creaking of the metal as his weight settled. It echoed off the building next door, which in the stillness he found unnerving, but with all the vacant buildings and no minders, it really wasn’t a problem. He kept to the outside of the steps, hoping to limit the stress on the stairs and thus limit the creaking as he climbed.
Stopping at the landing, he quickly unscrewed the light half a turn causing the connection to be broken, leaving it to appear to have burnt out. Then he stood in the shadows for a moment, listening for any sign that he might have been noticed but heard nothing. He then slipped on his night vision goggles and reached for the doorknob. Slowly, he turned the knob, his ears straining to hear the slightest sound of alarm or any movement inside the apartment, but again, he heard nothing.
Finally, he heard the click of the knob and gently shoved the door open. He hesitated for another moment, but there were no signs of movement and no telltale sounds. Deciding to play it safe, Montoya slipped on his NV goggles and pulled his silenced Glock from his waistband. Then he entered the darkened apartment and surveyed the room before him.
These guys are pigs! he thought to himself. He was standing in the kitchen and there were dozens of food containers scattered about. They were in every corner and covered every counter. As Montoya moved forward towards what he assumed was the dining room, dozens of roaches scattered across the floor, and for a moment he cringed as he thought about how the terrorists slept here. When he reached the dining room, Montoya was stunned.
In contrast to the pigsty in the kitchen, there were no food containers, but there were dozens of heavy duty cardboard boxes stacked neatly against the outside walls. The dining table was strewn with wires, tape, knifes, pliers, and several cell phones in various stages of disassembly. Montoya took a moment to remind himself that silence was imperative as the safe house was more than likely bugged, after a small gasp escaped his lips.
Keeping back from the windows, he slowly slinked around the room, counting boxes. There were thirty-two. He made a mental note of the contents—C-4, Semtex, and DMX plastic explosive. Each box contained twenty to forty kilos of explosives. In addition to the boxes, at least a dozen assembled bombs were stacked on the table. Each bomb appeared to be made with at least ten kilos of explosives each and was wired with a cell phone as the detonator. There were more than enough explosives here to level the entire neighborhood for several blocks in every direction if they weren’t careful.
Montoya then moved into the living room where he encountered more trash littered about the room and more boxes lining the outside walls that he assumed contained more explosives. He estimated there was maybe another twenty boxes here. Taking a closer look at the trash, he realized that mixed in with the trash were some printed papers. Giving the papers a quick once over, he found a small map of Chicago and a couple of pages in Arabic with the word Chicago in dozens of places. He scooped up the papers and map stuffing them into his pants pocket, thinking they might be important. He then moved off towards the bedrooms, leaving the rest of the mess just as he had found
it.
The short hallway led to two bedrooms opposite each other at the end of the hall. The bedrooms seemed out of place compared to the rest of the apartment, because they were neat as a pin. There was no trash scattered about and no food containers, the beds were made and the nightstands had neat stacks of paper on them. At the end of each bed was a large black duffle bag sitting on a luggage rack.
In the room on the left, Montoya stepped over to the nightstand and rifled quickly through a pile of papers that was sitting on top of it. The papers were all in Arabic, but Montoya had learned to read enough while stationed in the Gulf to get a general idea of what the papers pertained to. Most seemed to be letters from home or to home, but a few appeared to be instructions on how to build the bombs, while others talked about what you might look for when choosing structural failure points on bridges. He set them down and looked in the trash bin next to the table. There he found a large number of papers dealing with GPS coordinates and an oil refinery, so he gathered those papers and tucked them into his pocket along with the papers from the other room. After checking over the papers and picking out a few to take back, he placed the rest back where he found them before checking the nightstand drawers.
His heart skipped a beat when he opened the second drawer. There before him was a black loose-leaf binder not unlike the kind kids used in school—and similar to the kind he had used during his tour of duty with the SEALs in Iraq.
Under the controlled illumination from Montoya’s pen light, his worst fears were confirmed. It was indeed a playbook, exactly like the ones he had used while in the military. It contained detailed instructions about bridges in the Chicago area and an oil refinery just outside Gary, Indiana. Flipping to the back of the book, he found a list of names and addresses for twenty men whom he assumed were the assault team and were probably already in place in the States.
Tucking the notebook under his arm, he slid the drawer closed and moved on to the duffle bags. He gave them a quick search but found nothing but clothes. He then made the same search of the second bedroom, finding the same type of notebook lying on one of the beds, which he left there hoping to delay the discovery of the missing binder he had already collected. He then moved back through the kitchen and out the door. He was creeping back down the stairs when Shields spoke over the comlink.
“Two, you’ll have company in about three minutes. Time to go.”
“Thanks, buddy, but I’m out and moving already. I’ve managed to get a few presents for the kiddies. See you back at the flat,” Montoya whispered.
“It’s not time to return, guys. We still don’t have enough intelligence to be able to do our job,” David interjected.
“One, Two. You’ll want to see this ASAP. I think our friends are planning a return trip with a very big bang!” Montoya enlightened David. “I’ll do my best to translate, but it’ll take me a little time to do so. If I head back now, I can get started.”
“Okay,” David replied. Montoya obviously had found something of importance.
“Two, this is Mother Hen. What do you have? I need to update the captain.” It was Hanchell breaking in.
“I’ve got plans and lots of noise makers. It seems—” David cut Montoya off and addressed Hanchell.
“I’ll let you know when I know. Mother Hen, stay off our com unless called!”
“One, our friends are stumbling your way. I count only three. Should be easy to spot, they can barely stand up. No sign of the fourth one,” Shields interjected before Hanchell could respond, alerting David to the new situation report.
“Roger, Three,” David acknowledged.
Sure enough, as Montoya turned the corner at the rear of the building, the three Arabs came down the block. They were talking very loudly and every now and then, they would shout something in drunken Arabic about Allah and his goodness. David couldn’t quite make it out—they were drunk enough to be almost completely incoherent. They stopped and stood staring at the minder’s den for a moment and then suddenly, they began hurtling insults at the building. Their father wore their mother shoes? What? David thought. He was amazed these guys managed to walk home under their own steam.
Then abruptly, they flipped the cameras the bird and stumbled off to their apartment. They struggled to climb the stairs in a drunken tango of one or two steps forward and then one or two steps back, but after several faltering attempts, they made the landing and stumbled through the door. David noticed they didn’t turn on any lights once inside, and he assumed that they went directly to bed.
Shortly after the drunken display by the Arabs, the minders returned. They made their way slowly up the block, clearly in a drunken stupor of their own, with each man carrying a half full bottle of dark liquid. As they approached, they would stop and whisper back and forth, then burst out laughing loudly at their private joke before continuing towards their post. A few steps before reaching the doorway where David was hidden, they stopped and mumbled between themselves. It was extremely difficult to hear what they were saying, but David could just make it out when the taller one spoke.
“Those sand lovers will be surprised tomorrow. Half the shipment has been confiscated by the military. They feel it is worth far more than they are paying us for it. So for double the payment they’ll get the whole order…and not be before,” the taller of the two men snickered as his friend looked at him, confused. Seeing his friend was looking at him strangely, mostly because he was too drunk to comprehend, the taller one repeated himself. “Honest, I heard the Commandant say that, just like that…And not be before.” Both men then burst out in a loud chortle and then walked past, without noticing David.
The minders stopped at their doorway just as the Arabs had done, and together they turned towards the safe house. They too began hurtling verbal insults at the building and then, after a couple of minutes, made a grand sweeping gesture of flipping the safe house the bird. They then stumbled into their post, after making a final comment about Arabs not having mothers but born from camels or something like that. A moment after they went inside, David noticed the monitor light winked out. They too had called it a night.
“Three, One. Any sign of our fourth friend?” David asked Shields.
“Streets are clear,” was the short reply.
“Okay, hold the fort. Let me know if our other friend shows. I’m going to check out our presents,” David stated.
“Holding the fort, boss. I got your six,” Shield chirped back.
“Hold on, Captain, I’ll leave the mic open so you can hear,” David blurted out as he stepped through the door of the hotel room after having climbed back in through Montoya’s room. He had heard Captain Conners contact Montoya just as he had slipped through the window.
“What have you got?” David asked as he entered and crossed the room, sitting down next to Montoya and glaring at him.
Montoya shifted slightly in his chair and cleared his throat before speaking, knowing David wasn’t happy about the captain’s interference. “Well, I found a mission guide for an upcoming attack on Chicago. It’s just like the mission guides we used to study with the SEALs. It gives complete details. You know, the what, where, when and how of the whole mission. I’m surprised that they have something like this, but then I was surprised with 9/11, Houston and San Antonio, too.
“The safe house is a bomb factory. There is at least five thousand pounds of different plastic explosives. It looks like there are two work stations at the dining table and several dozen bombs already completed and packed for shipment,” Montoya concluded.
“Where’d you find this?” David asked, pulling the mission guide over in front of him.
“I found that in a nightstand drawer and there was a second one lying on another bed. I also found these papers just lying in the trash.” Montoya shoved a wad of paper towards David who then spread them out and looked them over.
“Two, did the notebook give us a clear date of the attack?” It was Captain Conners breaking in.
“Yeah
, Captain. The fourth of July,” Montoya answered.
“How many men are they planning on using?” Captain Connors then inquired.
“Well, from what I can tell, I’d say about twenty. Reading Arabic isn’t my strong suit,” Montoya mentioned, modestly.
“Tell me where the explosives are?” David asked.
“They’re up front in the dining room, stacked around the room on the outside walls, three or four boxes high. They are also stacked two high around the entire outside edge of the living room. There are about a dozen assembled bombs sitting on the dining room table, and I counted twenty boxes all ready to go that had been repacked and relabeled. Plus, there are another thirty or so boxes to be wired up. I’d say there are about fifty boxes of explosives all together,” Montoya informed David and Captain Conners.
“Okay, Captain. How do we get this stuff to you, ASAP?” David asked.
“We’re just getting into the outer harbor. We’ll fake a little more engine trouble to try and give you a little more time. Let me think for a few minutes about what will be the best way and I’ll get back to you, okay?” Captain Conners clearly hadn’t thought they’d find intelligence of this magnitude.
“Do you think you could wire the plastic to blow?” David asked Montoya.
“Make our own bomb? Sure, I can use one of their cell phones as a detonator to set it all off. It’ll take out the whole block though. Oh, hell, what am I saying? It’ll take out several blocks in all directions,” Montoya answered with a nervous grin, knowing where David was going with that line of thinking.
Reprisal!- The Eagle Rises Page 24