by Eric Dabbs
"So the two white guys are Pennington and Winslow," Wilson said. "Seems like a reasonable deduction."
"Likely," Wes replied. "The other man is Zjing Lee, the man listed as the recipient of the twenty-five million from Coraco's bank statements. But there's no way to determine the identity of the other man in the video. Half his face is cut off."
"Agreed," Alex replied. "Pennington and Winslow are the same two men I saw in Coraco's restaurant. One of the other men is the guy in the speedboat that chased me the other day at sea."
"With Pennington and Winslow’s faces on video and their names on audio, we should be able to get a positive I.D., one hundred percent proof as to who they really are," Wes added.
Wilson patted Alex on the arm. "We'll send you and this thumb-drive to London. You need to have a talk with MI5, the British Security Service, the counter espionage arm of their government.”
"We can arrange a flight tonight." Wes seemed more than thrilled.
"Hold up a minute," Alex said. "I need to see what Coraco's hiding in his warehouse. Whatever it is, he has it protected by armed guards and thumbprint scanners. It must be something serious. How about this? First, I check out his warehouse tonight, and then you can book a flight for me in the morning?"
"That'll do, I suppose," Wes replied with a wary eye. "We'll update Washington. And in the meantime, you can determine how you're going to infiltrate Coraco's warehouse. I'm sure he's beefed up security since your last visit."
"By the way, who's the Spanish guy in the video clip...the one who chased me the other day to the harbor?"
"He's Alfred Coraco's chief of security. We managed to get some snapshots of him and wired them to Washington. We discovered that he was the same man under surveillance by the National Security Agency. He was seen a while back with a North Korean spy named, you guessed it, Mr. Zjing Lee, the Asian from the video. Lee was thought to have stolen weapons secrets from one of our engineers years ago. Secrets that got North Korea's nuclear weapons program off and running and to the point that it is today. Of course, both Lee and the chief of security, a man by the name of Carlos Juan Diego, got away before we could catch them."
"But we're onto them now," Alex said with a gleam in his eyes.
"Yeah," Wilson replied, "I think we are."
26
HOURS AFTER NIGHTFALL
The UH-1N Huey helicopter hovered five thousand feet over Coraco's warehouse facility. Marine Captain Eric Walsh piloted the bird. His co-pilot: First Lieutenant Joe Hernandez. Crew Chief: Master Sergeant Perry Stack, and his gunner was a young Corporal by the name of Brad Reardon. Walsh's crew made no jokes or cracked no smiles, their faces as hard as granite. The group of Marines hailed from the U.S.S. Bataan, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship in the middle of a tour of the Mediterranean coast. Their orders were to drop Alex—known to them only as a top secret American agent—over the site which now lay under the Huey. His identity and mission were classified, as was the department for which he was employed.
Alex felt the weight of the Master Sergeant’s gaze as Stack studied him with a careful eye.
Black paint covered Alex’s face. His dark hair and black fatigues were sure to mask his silhouette in the night sky.
Everyone onboard wore sound reduction headphones to block out the roar of the rotors, and each headset had a mic to make communication possible.
Stack’s voice buzzed with anticipation, like he was the one about to jump from the chopper. "It looks like you're outnumbered close to twenty to one. I hope you know what you're getting into?"
Alex didn't reply, but only stared back with determination.
Stack nodded as if to say—okay, it's all you, buddy—and then pointed to the flat screen monitor attached to the back of one of the front seats.
Before Stack continued, Alex spoke up, "The odds are not in my favor, but at least I have the element of surprise."
They turned their attention to the screen.
A long range zoom, infrared camera—mounted under the belly of the chopper—provided the visual on the monitor. The body heat of Coraco's guards showed up in varying shades of yellow, orange, and red as they patrolled their assigned areas. Alex made the right decision, opting for an aerial entrance for tonight's infiltration of Coraco's lair. The billionaire had taken extra security measures, more than tripling his guard count from five men two nights ago, to somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty tonight.
"There are two guards at the dock," Master Sergeant Stack said, "two on each end of the building and two more on the backside. And if that's not enough, there are another seven to ten men covering the front." The sentries assigned to the front side of the facility moved in and out of an open garage door.
"I hope there aren't any on the roof," Alex replied. A smirk creased the corners of his lips as he eyed Corporal Reardon who was manning a fifty caliber machine gun in case some of Coraco's men caught a whiff of their presence.
Reardon nodded. "Ooh-rah."
Stack tapped the screen. "Don't pay him any attention, he's just itchin' to squeeze off a few rounds. So...it looks like those ventilation windows you were talking about are closed, locked if I had to guess. You can tell by the fact there's no heat signature being emitted." On the flight over from the U.S.S. Bataan, Alex had given Stack a short briefing on how he entered the building the first time. "One more thing. You've marked your escape route to the dock. I take it you're planning on doing some swimming?"
"I have a boat, and a getaway car stashed about half a mile away."
"That'll work, but you better prepare for heavy resistance."
"I expect it."
Stack narrowed his eyes. "Anything else I need to cover?"
"Negative, Sergeant. I've got this."
"You guys ready back there?" Captain Walsh hollered over his shoulder.
"As I'll ever be," Alex said.
"I'll maneuver over to the north. It'll give you the proper angle for your descent. Good luck."
Alex shot the captain an okay hand signal, removed his set of headphones, and stepped over to the side door as the chopper moved into position. He clutched the roof of the Huey, a Glock 21 pistol in a holster on his side and his Ka-Bar knife in a sheath. The sound of the rotors blasted his ears, drowning out further communication with the crew of the helicopter.
He lowered a pair of night vision goggles over his head.
The top of the warehouse eased into view, outlined in green and shades of black. He had to get this right. The guards below were armed with AK-47's. A miscalculation could cost him his life. He rapped on the roof of the helicopter, gave Stack a nod, and then leaped into the night, plunging into the darkness.
Alex's skin tingled as his body accelerated toward the ground. With his limbs spread eagle, he blazed through the night air, his hair flared back from the sheer power of the wind in his face. After a ten count, he released the chute on schedule. The canopy caught air with a jerk, his momentum slowing to a free floating descent. At three thousand feet, he judged himself right on target for the landing.
He controlled the navigation handles, raising and lowering his hands to adjust course. The parachute and cords were black in color. The only thing Coraco's men might notice, if anything, would be a few twinkling stars disappearing and reappearing as the canopy passed overhead.
Steady and tight, Alex dropped, the facility rushing up to meet him, slanting for a parallel run across the rooftop.
He hoped for a quiet landing. The last thing he needed was for guards to start slinging lead over the roof at him. He braced for impact. A moment later, his right foot hit first, followed by his left, resulting in two light thumps. Good so far. His boots skimmed over the metal surface, each successive footfall producing moderate raps as he skated to a halt. In a hurry, he unhooked the cords, gathered up the chute, and laid it in a pile.
The air conditioner units hummed. With any luck, the sound may have been enough to mask his landing.
Or so he hoped.
> 27
Alex waited in silence, glued to the roof of Coraco's warehouse facility. When he didn’t hear any shouts from the guards, he moved to a position about halfway down from the top and fifty feet from the end of the building. He brought along some extra tools for his entrance. Inside a pants pocket, he pulled out a socket set and a small battery powered screwdriver.
After removing three screws, he put the tools away. Now time for step two. If his calculations were correct, beneath the metal sheets were nothing more than rafters and insulation.
With a pair of snips from another pocket, and the air conditioning unit providing sound control, Alex trimmed two long parallel strips, about three feet in length in the metal. He bent back the section of roofing to reveal what he’d expected—metal rafters and a thick layer of insulation. With his knife, he sliced the insulation. After poking the gash with the blade, it was as he suspected, open to the storage area below, above the secret chamber of Coraco's warehouse. He took care as he slipped through the opening, pulling the metal back into place above him as best he could, and then dropped to the plywood decking below.
Air conditioner ductwork was sprawled out in different directions, connecting into the vents for each room. From his first visit, Alex remembered the return vent in the ceiling of the hallway...the same hall leading to the secure door with the thumbprint scanner. The shaft to that particular vent was located twenty feet from the end of the storage area. Hand rails lined the top edge of this section of the building, to protect someone from falling to the concrete floor below. From this vantage point, he couldn't see much of the first floor. That meant the guards couldn't see him either. Only the top of a work truck and a large fishing boat were visible. If the Russian workers had already left at the same time they did two nights ago, then the section below him should be shut down and secured.
Alex pulled the metal snips from his pocket and made quick work of the aluminum air duct. With the vent shaft severed and shoved away, he squatted, staring at the air filter and the vent beneath it. He jabbed the tip of his knife into the filter and removed it, and then used the blade to poke at the tiny latches holding the cover in place. It swung down, and Alex dropped through the opening to the floor below.
In the dark hallway, it was just as he suspected. All the workers had left for the evening. He closed the vent cover and snapped the latches back into place with his knife. Ahead, lay the door at the end of the corridor.
The next step was to put Wes’s creation to the test.
He inserted his thumb into the duplicate of Coraco's print. The synthetic material fit snugly.
His heart pounded in his chest as his thumb neared the scanner. Decked out in black combat fatigues and with the intensity of the moment, he began to feel the heat of what he was about to do. Sweat trickled down his nose as he pressed the print onto the crimson colored glass. A red light beamed from left to right. Seconds passed with no sign that it worked. He wondered if he’d tripped a silent alarm as beads of perspiration engulfed his forehead. The tiny droplets inched toward his eyebrows, the thought of an alarm blaring in his mind.
Then the door unbolted with a rasping sound of metal on metal.
Alex wrapped his fingers around the handle, opened the door, and entered. Now, he would finally see Alfred Coraco’s deepest, darkest secret. And his assumption proved right. It was a laboratory divided into two sections, the first, a wide open area. Several long work tables lined the center of the room. Beakers and test tubes were scattered atop them, some empty, others filled with a variety of chemicals. Suits with helmets and face shields hung on the far wall. He knew the equipment protected lab workers from radiation. If they were making a nuclear bomb, the unshielded emissions could kill in a short period of time, and at the least, cause cancer in the near or distant future. The Russians knew what they were doing.
On the floor, lab boots were setting next to the suits. And on a nearby table set several pairs of thick gloves.
Behind a granite wall, the second section disturbed him the most. A single door permitted access, and it too required a thumbprint to enter. Affixed to the wall, a small white box with an LCD screen flashed the red digital letters, RADIATION LEVELS LOW - MINIMAL RISK. Alex slipped on the fake print that Wes had made and pressed it to the scanner to the right of the door. Once again, a red beam rolled across his thumb. This time it didn't take near as long to work. The door unbolted and he stepped inside a safe room with a shower.
The granite wall was a foot thick, effective in shielding radiation. Additionally, a layer of lead lined the interior walls.
He passed through another door. Another set of work tables. And in the back, a chain-link gate cut the room in half. Pad locked.
Alex rushed over and placed his fingers on the gate. As before, he saw more work tables, but the one in the middle drew his attention. On that particular table rested a large cylinder object made of stainless steel.
He cut his way through the chain-links with the metal snips and ducked through the gap.
As a SEAL, Alex had been trained in the basics of weapons of mass destruction. He wasn't part of an actual WMD team, but he knew enough to at least make a positive identification. At the table, he opened a small compartment door located in the center of the probable bomb. The design looked familiar. There was a digital timer and a locator card to keep track of the weapon. To the right of the timer was another compartment. He used the screwdriver with the correct bit and zipped out the screws. Opening the lid revealed a cylinder about six to eight inches in diameter. He handled the object like a piece of fine china, removing it only three-quarters of the way. The nuclear material was well shielded within the canister. If it hadn’t been, the radiation sensors in the lab would have been going haywire. With the Russians involved, and their expertise, he assumed the yield potential might top out at around twenty kilotons, enough to wipe out a major U.S. city. Or any major city in the world for that matter.
Distracted by the discovery, in mid-thought, an alarm blasted down around him. The klaxon blared in his ears and shook him to his core, the cylinder slipping from his fingers and clanking into the metal shaft amidst the flashing glow of red emergency lights.
28
By the time Alex made it to the lab's exit door, the alarm had been silenced. Curious as to what triggered the siren, he entered the long corridor and found the vent cover he’d entered through open and hanging down. Somehow they discovered his point of entry, but why hadn't they come in after him? When the alarm first sounded, he assumed he'd made a mistake. Maybe they'd found out how he got in and then set off the security system? But that didn't explain why Coraco's guards hadn't burst into the lab to corral him.
He neared the end of the hall and cracked open the door. In between the boats and work trucks, a large number of guards darted about in confusion, all circling the middle of the cavernous space. A cluster of them gathered around the man named Carlos Diego. He’d captured someone. Even worse, the siren had awakened Coraco. Alex watched as the tycoon questioned the prisoner. He squinted, trying to focus on who they’d caught.
The prisoner was a woman.
Samantha!
He wanted to help her, but he was far outnumbered. If he rushed them it might get them both killed. No. He'd have to wait until they locked her up somewhere and then come back for her. If they locked her up. Hopefully, that's all that would happen to her.
Coraco back handed Samantha. "Take her away."
The guards zip-tied her hands behind her back and led her from the warehouse. Alex tensed up, his muscles drawing tight and the veins in his neck filling with adrenaline, but he restrained himself. All he could do was watch her stumble in the grasp of the two guards as they hauled her away.
"Prepare the merchandise for immediate transport," Coraco said to Diego. "There are too many spies sneaking around my facility. We leave tonight."
"But our plans are to leave tomorrow. Why the sudden change? I have everything under control."
; "Carlos, do I need to remind you what happened to the last person who crossed me?"
Diego shook his head.
"I want you to carry out my orders. See to it that the bomb is ready to transport in one hour. Call the airfield and have them fuel up the plane."
"What about the airfield security?"
"Let me worry about that. I'm sure their staff will accept a bribe...don't you think?"
"Possibly."
"One more thing. Give Hakem a ring down at the guest house. Tell him about our change in plans so he can prepare his things for the trip."
"I'll get my stuff ready too."
"Carlos, don't take this the wrong way, but I need you to stay here and keep an eye over my facility."
“But...”
“My decision is final.”
“Fine.” Carlos accepted his orders and paced away with a look of disgust on his face.
So, Coraco in fact did have a connection with Hakem Raziz. And the two of them had a getaway in mind and Diego was getting left behind.
In the hallway, Alex found a ladder in a utility closet and used it to climb up through the return vent, back up to the storage area. Then he crept along the grated catwalk to the other side of the warehouse. He dropped to the floor behind one of Coraco's work trucks, a white Ford F-150. Once again, with no keys, he stabbed his knife into the steering column and twisted the ignition wires until the truck sputtered to life. Just like he did with the jeep in Afghanistan.
The tires screeched as the truck shot backwards in reverse, nearly running over several guards in the process. The sentries dove out of the way.
Alex swung the wheel hard left and mashed the brakes. With the dock ahead in the distance, he yanked the gear shift into drive and floored the gas pedal. The F-150 roared forward, but one man sprinted toward the truck at the proper angle. Alex caught a glimpse of his face. It was Carlos Diego, Alfred Coraco's chief of security, the man who’d captured Samantha.