by Larry Bond
“I’ll be damned, Sam, you actually found one,” he said.
“Had to, didn’t I?” Farrell countered. “This whole thing would have been off otherwise.”
Peter nodded. “True.”
“I called eight places before I found one in stock, and even then I had to drive all the way out to Annapolis to get it,” Farrell said with some satisfaction.
“A gun store in Annapolis?” Helen asked.
“A boating store.” Farrell released the catches on the front and opened the case. A Mossberg 590 shotgun nestled inside, securely seated against dark gray foam. The stainless steel barrel had a Day-Glo orange plastic cylinder attached. The case also contained two boxes of special ammunition, three bright orange packages marked “Spectra line, 360-pound test,” two large, line carrying plastic heads designed to float on water, and two arrowshaped heads intended to carry a line longer distances.
“Say hello to the Mossberg line launcher conversion kit,” he said. “I paid extra to have them throw in the shotgun.”
Peter stared down at the Day-Glo orange cylinder. “Black electrical tape,” he said. “We’ve got to wrap that thing in tape.”
Farrell nodded. He plucked a grappling hook out of another bag. “I also picked this up at a sporting goods store.”
“Perfect.”
“There’s just one problem, Pete. Somehow you’ve got to fit this,” Farrell said as he tapped the grappling hook, “onto this.”
He held up one of the narrow, arrowshaped distance heads.
Peter’s boyish grin crept back onto his face. “Not a problem, Sam.”
He rummaged around in the pile of equipment he’d bought. He turned around. “Welcome to Thorn Construction, Incorporated.”
Helen and Farrell both stared at the small welding torch and goggles in his hand.
“Jesus, Pete,” Farrell said finally. “Louisa’s going to be so glad I gave you all our savings. That’ll sure come in handy around the kitchen.”
Helen hid a smile.
“French toast in one point five seconds,” Peter said matter-of-factly.
He put the welding torch down. “Any luck on the nightvision gear?”
“Yeah,” Farrell said, still shaking his head. He pulled two large boxes out of another bag. “I found these in the first sporting goods store I went in. And every store after that. Apparently almost everyone has this model in stock.”
Helen flipped open one of the boxes and lifted out a clumsy-looking assembly that seemed like something out of a Rube Goldberg nightmare.
Two eyepieces were connected to a rectangular case and then fed into a single long lens. There were two straps to hold the whole assembly in place. One strap went around the wearer’s head while the other ran across the wearer’s chin. A heavy battery case in the back offered some counterbalance. Wires connected every component. It would have been comical if she hadn’t known how useful something like this could be. She looked up. “Russian-made?”
Farrell nodded. “They’re second-generation light intensifiers, but they’re not surplus. They’re brand new, with a one-year warranty.”
“How much?” she asked.
“Seven hundred each.” Farrell shrugged. “One of the places had some Western-made imagers. They were nicer, lighter, and clearer, but they were also twenty-five hundred bucks a pop. My Visa card has overdraft protection, but that kind of tag would have given it vapor lock.”
Helen nodded her understanding. Counting the credit card bills that would eventually come due, they’d already spent more than ten thousand dollars of Farrell’s money. Obtaining additional funds would require cashing in some of his investments — and that would take time they didn’t have.
“You want to check them out now?” Peter asked.
“Let’s do it.” She adjusted the straps, slipped the Russian-made nightvision gear over her head, and clicked the battery switch.
Farrell killed the lights.
Helen fumbled for the focus knob, adjusting the intensifiers for a wide field of view. The familiar pale green image was grainier than that produced by the more sophisticated gear she’d trained with, but it was serviceable.
The intensifiers amplified every bit of reflected light in the hotel room — showing detail that would have been shadowed even in normal illumination. She swung toward the window and the gain-control feature cut in. The sunlight showing through a crack in the drapes would have been blinding if it hadn’t been automatically stepped down by the device.
Helen turned her head rapidly first one way and then the other. The Russian-made intensifiers were heavier than the American-designed, third-generation AN PVS-7Bs she’d trained with. She adjusted the field of view, narrowing the angle and providing greater magnification.
At last, satisfied, she slipped them off.
Farrell flipped the lights back on.
Helen stared at the gear piled high on both beds. Their equipment wasn’t as compact or as modern as that supplied to the HRT or the Delta Force — but it should work.
Their real problem wasn’t an equipment shortage — it was the lack of information.
She frowned. Good intelligence was the key to victory. That was how both the HRT and Delta trained. Comprehensive research could eliminate uncertainties. Meticulous planning could compensate for inferior numbers. And exhaustive rehearsal could let a team hit its objective and escape without a scratch.
But what did she and Peter have?
Nothing. No building blueprints. No accurate assessment of the enemy’s strength or security arrangements. Not even any sure way to stop Ibrahim’s plan from unfolding.
Christ, Helen thought, we’re trusting almost entirely to luck.
She fought down the first strands of despair. She had Peter. And Peter had her. And that would have to be good enough.
Berkeley County Airport, Outside Charleston, South Carolina (H MINUS 12)
Dieter Krauss took one last look at the clear, star-studded sky and went back inside the hangar. He mopped at his forehead and neck with a handkerchief. Even this close to midnight, the Southern heat and humidity were almost unbearable.
“Everything is in order?” his senior technician asked.
Krauss nodded abruptly. The warning from Chantilly hadn’t caught him completely off guard. He’d posted half his security detail in concealed positions overlooking the fence around their three hangars.
He would be ready if the American agents who had his employer in such a panic tried to infiltrate the field.
He ran his eyes over the two twin-engine turboprops parked wingtip to wingtip inside this hangar. “The weapons are loaded?”
The senior technician nodded. “They are, sir.”
“And the evacuation plane?”
“Standing by, Herr Krauss. We can be airborne five minutes after the last strike aircraft reaches altitude.”
Krauss nodded. The plan called for them to fly straight out into the Atlantic. Once the bombs went off, their aircraft would make an “emergency divert” landing in the Bahamas, refuel, and continue south.
Once they arrived in Mexico, he and his team would receive their final payments and disperse. The units stationed at other fields would be flying to other destinations in either Mexico or Canada. All were confident that no one would track them — not in the almost unimaginable chaos that would follow the simultaneous detonation of twenty nuclear weapons.
“Herr Krauss!”
The German looked toward the door to his office — a small room in the corner of the hangar. One of his subordinates stood in the door frame, waving him over.
“What is it?” he shouted.
“A signal from Chantilly, sir.”
Krauss crossed the hangar in seconds and tore the fax out of his machine.
WARNING ORDER
From: Operations Control
To: All Stations
Message
The Operation proceeds as planned.
Arming codes and target coordinates will
follow as per schedule. Stand by.
Krauss nodded to himself. As a final security measure, Reichardt had decreed that none of the teams readying the strike aircraft would be given the arming codes or their target coordinates until an hour before the first planes took off. Once Chantilly released the data, it would take only minutes for his technicians to input each set into the appropriate aircraft.
He read the message over again. It was straightforward and to the point. Perhaps this Arab who had replaced Reichardt would do after all.
The Operation was in its final hours — and now nothing could stop it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
DEAD RUN
JUNE 21
Outside the Carraco Complex, Chantilly, Virginia (H MINUS 9)
His face and forehead blackened with camouflage grease paint, Colonel Peter Thorn led the way through a thin patch of forest toward the perimeter fence of Caraco’s Chantilly office complex.
They were coming in from the back side — away from the road — cutting through ground left wild as a buffer between the corporation’s Washington-area facility and the buildings belonging to its nearest neighbor — a prominent consumer electronics firm.
Fifty meters or so from the fence, he glanced over his shoulder.
Helen Gray followed silently in his wake. Only her eyes gleamed in a face daubed with the same black camouflage paint.
Like him, she was heavily laden with weapons and a bulging rucksack containing her share of their hurriedly improvised assault equipment.
He started moving again. Crickets chirped nearby and then fell silent — momentarily hushed by the whispering passage of their feet through the grass and underbrush. An owl hooted mournfully somewhere off in the distance.
A few meters from the cleared area surrounding the fence, Thorn stopped at the foot of a towering oak tree and looked up through the tangle of broad, gnarled branches and leaves. Then he turned toward the brightly lit Caraco compound — measuring angles and distances by eye.
He nodded to Helen.
“Delta Two to Delta Three. Delta One beginning ascent.” Her hushed voice ghosted through his headset, reporting their position and status to Farrell. The retired general was hidden among the trees on the other side of the compound — keeping an eye on the main gate.
Thorn flipped up his nightvision gear. This close to the edge of the compound he had enough light — and he needed the depth perception denied by the Russian-made light intensifier’s single lens.
Moving rapidly, he unslung his Winchester shotgun and rucksack, clipped a hacksaw onto his web gear, and then tugged on a pair of close-fitting, heavy leather work gloves. Knee pads and shin protectors completed the outfit. He was set.
“Peter,” Helen whispered in his ear. Thorn turned. “What?”
“If you even think of whistling “I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay,’ this whole mission’s off,” she warned.
He grinned, then swung back, grabbed one of the large, thick branches just above his head, and levered himself up and into the oak. He climbed higher, moving from one limb to another — but always staying close to the trunk and well inside the concealing canopy of leaves.
Thorn stopped about halfway up. Going higher was impractical.
The boughs were clustered closer together barring easy passage.
They were also narrower and less likely to support his weight. He looked down. He was roughly twenty-five feet off the ground. Good enough.
Slowly he edged further out from the tree trunk, gingerly testing each step to make sure the limb he was standing on could take his weight without snapping. To transfer some of the load, he wrapped his left hand tight around a higher branch and pulled himself part way up.
Two steps. Three steps. The bough swayed suddenly, creaking as it sagged toward the ground. Thorn froze. Far enough, he thought — inching backward ever so slightly.
He was facing the Caraco compound — about ten meters from the fence.
Beyond the fence, a cleared strip of close-cropped gross soon gave way to a half-filled parking lot. The square, antenna-topped building they believed contained Ibrahim’s command and control center rose just beyond that — roughly sixty meters in from the fence. Leaves and the slender twigs branching off from other boughs obscured much of his view.
Time to make a nice, discreet hole, Thorn thought.
Still balancing himself with his left hand, he carefully unclipped the hacksaw from his web gear. He paused and whispered, “Delta Two, am I clear?”
Helen’s equally quiet reply crackled through the headset.
“Wait one. Two.man patrol coming down the fence now.”
Thorn stood motionless, every sense straining. There. He heard them now — the clink of metal on metal, the muffled sound of boots tromping across grass, a quick mutter in guttural German. From his vantage point he caught one quick glimpse of the guards as they passed by, checking the fence for any signs of tampering.
One side of his mouth quirked upward. Both men in that patrol were carrying what looked an awful lot like H&K MP5 submachine guns slung over their shoulders. They were also wearing body armor. These guys sure as hell weren’t the usual corporate rent-a-cops working for minimum wage and the chance to wear a fancy uniform.
“You’re clear, Delta One,” Helen said. “They’ve turned the corner and are moving away. We should have another fifteen minutes before they make the next circuit.”
Without waiting any further, Thorn started in — sawing rapidly away at the tree limbs that blocked his view of the headquarters building.
Leaves and slender pieces of lranch spun away into the shadows below.
He was taking a calculated risk — betting that none of the debris would drift far enough to land within view of the TV cameras monitoring the fence.
More narrow boughs felt the hacksaw’s sharp-edged bite and spiraled away toward the ground below. When he’d cleared a rough two-by three-foot oval in the foliage, he stopped cutting and clipped the saw back onto his web gear.
Thorn reversed course, climbing down by the same route he’d taken coming up. He crouched on the lowest and largest branch and leaned outward. “I’m set. You ready?”
In answer, she reached up and handed him the Mossberg 590 shotgun they’d converted into a line launcher. He slung it carefully over his shoulder, feeling the points of the grappling hook he’d welded on dig into his back.
Thorn looked back up toward the top of the tree, calculating how long it would take him to get there and get set. He glanced down at Helen, held up three fingers, and saw her repeat the signal.
Her voice came over the radio again, issuing instructions to Sam Farrell. “Delta Three, this is Two. Set your timer for three minutes on my mark.”
Thorn saw the second hand sweep through the number twelve on his faintly luminous watch face.
“Mark.”
“Got it,” Farrell’s laconic voice replied. “Timer set. I’m backing off.”
Climbing back to his chosen perch was a little more difficult this time — mostly because he had to avoid snagging the Mossberg or any of its attachments. Once in the right spot, he settled carefully into position — straddling a thick bough with both legs, his back firmly planted against the oak tree’s trunk.
Thorn pulled the converted shotgun off his shoulder and carefully sighted down the length of the barrel. His eyes narrowed. A tiny droplet of sweat rolled down his forehead. He shook it off impatiently.
He didn’t need anyone else to tell him how crazy this was — in every detail. The Mossberg line launcher kit was designed to fire precisely shaped flotation or distance heads. With the completely unaerodynamic, six-pronged grappling hook attached, its maximum range and the trajectory would both be wildly imprecise — at a time when precision was at an absolute premium.
If he fired just a fraction of an inch too far up or down, or left or right, the grappling hook and the line it carried would slam through the tangle of the surrounding foliage and veer completel
y off course.
If his shot fell short or the grapple failed to bite on target, a couple hundred feet of super-strong line was going to fall right over the perimeter fence — triggering every alarm system in the compound.
And millions of people would die when Ibrahim’s strike aircraft reached their chosen targets unmolested and undetected.
Plus, he couldn’t be absolutely sure just how his improvised attachment would affect the shotgun’s aim. There hadn’t been either the time or opportunity to test the jury-rigged system. Besides, he thought wryly, where the hell would you go to practice firing off a grappling hook and eight hundred feet of tightly wound line?
Noise should also have been a factor. Nobody could build a silencer for a 12-gauge shotgun. But at least they had a way to deal with that.
Thorn’s hands steadied. He and Helen had gone over the plan a dozen or more times. And this was the only way that offered them even the ghost of a chance to get far enough inside Ibrahim’s heavily guarded compound to make a difference. Well, he thought calmly, if you only had one roll of the dice, you rolled the dice and prayed that you didn’t crap out.
The second hand on his watch swept past the number twelve for the third time since Helen’s signal.
Now.
Two hundred meters away, on the other side of the compound, a digital timer blinked from 00:00:01 to 00:00:00. An improvised circuit closed, sending electric current through a short length of tungsten filament.
The filament heated rapidly — glowing white hot. That, in turn, ignited a fireworks squib. Flame hissed through the gunpowder-filled tube and lit the closest fuse of one of the more than two dozen firecrackers daisy-chained together to a piece of cardboard.
The firecrackers began detonating off one after the other — each small explosion echoing loudly through the trees.
Pop-poppop.pop … Thorn pulled the trigger. The Mossberg kicked back in his arms as it fired — propelling the grappling hook straight through the ragged hole he’d hacked in the tree’s leafy canopy and up into the night sky.