by Sean McFate
“Red in position,” said the red team leader. Blue, green, and gold followed. From front gate to positions took less than twenty seconds.
“Copy all,” replied Corelli. Go time. He walked up to the steel door and banged with his fist. “Police! Open up!” He nodded, not waiting for a response. The armored truck accelerated, ripping the iron gate off its hinges and dragging it across the parking lot.
The man with the shotgun chambered a shell and moved in, pointing its muzzle at the door lock. He aimed forty-five degrees in and forty-five degrees down, and squeezed the trigger. Bang. The cylinder lock blew inside. The breach man spun around, back-kicked the door open, and stepped out of the way so the stack could enter, Corelli in the lead.
“Go! Go! Go! Go!” he yelled as they entered. The building’s alarm screeched in the background, but they ignored it as they worked the dark building.
The SWAT teams made their way through the warehouse, room by room and area by area. Each team had four individuals and shuffled like a centipede: the leader at the head followed by a man who kept his left hand on the shoulder of the guy in front of him and right hand clutching his weapon. When they entered a room, they fanned out, covering their assigned sectors and corners, until the room was clear. The golden rule of SWAT operations: Never enter a room alone. There is one right way and a hundred wrong ways to clear a room. Wrong means death.
“One clear!”
“Two clear!”
“Three clear!”
“Four clear!”
Corelli both loved and feared these missions most. It was a Russian mafia drug bust. You can always count on the Russians to be armed like the Taliban, think like the KGB, and fight like the devil. A tough foe.
“Stay tight, people!” said Corelli as they moved. Hug the wall, spot the corners, scan your sector. Corelli was known as a hard-ass, but the type of hard-ass you wanted next to you during a firefight. He had a simple philosophy: train, train, and train some more. They did this at Fort Dix, where they had access to a live shoot house. It’s where his Afghanistan experience shown though, and where he earned the respect of the SWAT unit. Now he was its commander.
Where were all the Russians? thought Corelli. They were supposed to be armed, dangerous, and everywhere. The anonymous tip came in last night, and the command center thought it credible enough to wake his ass up at 2 a.m. By 6 a.m., his team was rolling down Seaview Drive.
One more room to clear, he thought as they shuffled down a lightless hall. Beams from their weapon-mounted tactical flashlights danced around the dark corridor, and the shadows were slightly disorienting. Focus, he thought. At the end of the hallway was a wooden door surrounded by unpainted cinderblock. It was locked.
“Shotgun on me,” whispered Corelli.
“Shotgun up,” muttered another SWAT. The back guy moved forward with a Mossberg and took up his position in front of the door. Corelli stood off at an angle, his M4 pointed at the door. Everyone awaited his nod.
Machine-gun fire ripped through the wooden door, and the guy with the shotgun collapsed, dead. The two other SWAT members returned fire, shielded from the bullet storm by their dead teammate. Corelli wasn’t so lucky. He fell backward as if someone had taken a sledge hammer to his chest. He couldn’t breathe.
Roll! Roll! he commanded himself, but his body was not taking orders. The gunfire continued through the door, splinters flying everywhere, and he saw another team member fall. When in doubt, empty the magazine, he thought and willed his M4 up. He switched to full-auto and emptied his magazine through the door and the enemy gunfire withered. He heard Russians shouting on the other side.
“Go! Get him out of here,” Corelli shouted hoarsely. The last standing SWAT member dragged his injured comrade around the corner to safety.
More Russian shouting, and Corelli could hear them chambering fresh clips. It sounded like they were also handling ammo belts. Shit, he thought.
Another SWAT squad was running down the hall to support him, and Corelli furiously waved them back. Too late. A barrage of lead shot through the door and two SWAT members fell, catching it in the vest like him. They’ll be fine, he reassured himself as he locked and loaded another magazine. The wood door disintegrated, having absorbed a few hundred rounds too many.
Corelli yanked a flashbang grenade from his tactical vest and tossed it into the room. It was a nonlethal grenade but could kill you by heart attack. Or one can hope, thought Corelli as he threw it. SWAT was not issued fragmentary grenades.
BOOOOM!! The sound was deafening and the gunfire stopped. Corelli staggered to his feet, breathing heavily. Two other SWAT threw flashbangs into the room. BOOOOM!! BOOOOM!! Corelli smiled.
“On me,” he commanded, and the three standing SWAT shooters followed him into the dark room. Close-quarter automatic gunfire perforated the air, and muzzle flashes created a strobe-light firefight. People shouted and some screamed. A minute later, only two men stumbled out.
“Clear,” said Corelli, blood seeping from his vest, and collapsed.
Chapter 21
The sun was rising as Lava and Tye dropped me off at my safe house. Being on Lava’s team again was a personal victory, and an important one, too. When I came back to the U.S., I assumed I would be operating alone. Now Lava had my back, and he was the cavalry.
Or so I hoped. Maybe I was Lava’s pawn? I still needed to be cautious.
“Yow,” I muttered as I removed my body armor and rubbed tender spots. My right flank was bruised purple and throbbed, now that the adrenaline had worn off. Worse, the Mr. Hyde Dust had left me with a pulsing migraine, making me sympathize with Dr. Jekyll. I gulped down three ibuprofens and a liter of water to help the Hyde hangover, but I doubted it would do much good.
“I need rack,” I said as I lay down on my cot and zipped up the sleeping bag. Drained, I stared at the ceiling. Five minutes passed. Then ten. My mind and body were a combination of exhausted and exhilarated, and I knew I would never sleep. Twenty more minutes passed.
“Ah, screw it,” I said, getting up and grabbing civvies. I had to walk it off, despite the risks. Minutes later I was on the street, not a smart move owing to street cameras, but I needed space to puzzle things out. I bundled up in a hooded parka, hat, jeans, and sunglasses to conceal my face. I looked like an everybody.
No one walked these empty streets but me. Still, I pulled up my scarf over my nose, and avoided cameras. My only companion was a long coal train lumbering toward the city power plant. In my younger days, I would have scaled the chain-link fence and hopped a ride.
Winters is alive. The news haunted me, despite the night’s battle and many questions it produced. Winters was all that mattered. How was it possible? True, the guy could talk himself out of a sunburn, but could he talk himself out of a Saudi beheading? I shook my head. Somehow, he had.
I’m not safe, I realized with reflexive dread. If Winters was alive and knew I was here, he would come after me with everything he had. In other words, half of Apollo would try to kill me. I had better chances fighting the Eighty-Second Airborne Division.
In the ride back, Lava told me to stay hidden while he ran the traps. “I’ll quietly ask around Apollo’s headquarters. If they still think you are dead, then you’re safe.”
“If Apollo HQ doesn’t know you are back, then the government surely wouldn’t,” added Tye. “And probably not Winters either.”
Only if I’m lucky, I thought. The next hours would be like waiting for a verdict in a death penalty trial.
Chapter 22
Corelli sat upright in the parked ambulance, wrapped in a wool blanket. His top was stripped down to a black T-shirt, and his left arm hung in a sling with a heavily bandaged shoulder. The bullet went through a seam of his ballistic vest, in between the chest and shoulder Kevlar plates. Thankfully the bullet exited but he would still need surgery, plus months of physical therapy. It might even mean the end of his shooting days, depending on how it healed. Shoulders were tricky. But that wasn’t w
hat bothered him.
Three dead. Five wounded. Fuck, he thought. In all his combat missions and SWAT raids, he never lost a single person. It was a source of pride, and why people volunteered to join his team. Now three KIAs in one day, and five hurt. Six, if he included himself.
“You OK, champ?” asked a street cop. The parking lot was teeming with first responders. Police, fire trucks, ambulances, and unmarked FBI vehicles. There was even a van from a government agency he had never heard of before. Who knew what they’d found in the warehouse? He didn’t care anymore.
“Yeah, fine,” he lied.
“You guys did pretty well. Killed nine Russian mobsters. Wounded three,” said the cop. Corelli eyed the three stretchers across the parking lot with police around them. The wounded were handcuffed to the stretchers. Two were smoking while the third lay unconscious. Corelli fantasized about taking the cop’s 9 mm, walking over, and capping all three. They deserved it.
“Yeah, guess we did,” he lied again.
The FBI had locked down the site for national security reasons but didn’t explain what they were. Only those in critical condition were rushed to the hospital, and the rest were stabilized. They kept the dead in the warehouse, out of sight from the nosy news helicopter that buzzed overhead.
“When can I get out of here?” asked Corelli. The paramedics gave him painkillers and an icepack, but he could feel the ache in his shoulder.
“Dunno. The Bureau sealed the building, and I saw three guys in white hazmat suits enter.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Corelli secretly worried that his team had been exposed to some toxic nerve agent or radiation. One more thing to stress about. Purge it from your mind, he thought. It’s too late now.
Across the parking lot, an FBI agent who spoke Russian was interviewing the prisoners and getting impatient with their responses. One blew smoke in the Fed’s face, and the agent took a thumb and gently pressed a bandage. The Russian screamed. Corelli smiled.
Two Feds exited a side door carrying an oddly shaped metal suitcase and deposited it in the mystery van. Some FBI gathered around the van door, watching whatever was going on, then looked upset. One agent, presumably the guy in charge, stepped away and made a call. At first he was placid, then began gesticulating wildly, and finally put his phone away with a worried expression. Both Corelli and the cop stared. They had never seen anything like it.
“What do you think they found in there?” asked Corelli. His team evacuated him after he was shot and then went back inside, where they remained. No one had back-briefed him since then.
“A whole lot of weapons but no drugs,” said the cop.
“Then why all the hubbub?”
“I don’t know,” said the cop, also puzzled. “I spoke to a buddy who came out of the building. He said something about two empty containers.”
“Empty containers?” said Corelli with a laugh.
“Yeah, can you believe it? All this fuss over empty containers.”
Both men shook their heads as more FBI agents piled into the warehouse.
Chapter 23
Lin sat on a park bench cradling a green tea for warmth. Squirrels danced around her, expecting food, but she shook her head at them. The park across from the World Bank was historically a hotbed for protests against Third World debt. Now it was a small copse of trees among asphalt and cars. It also lacked people, which is why Lin liked it. She was done with people.
Her phone buzzed but she ignored it, focusing on the beautiful clear morning. It was her last moment of freedom. Dmitri was ultimately a bust. Now it was time to return to the FBI and surrender her badge and gun. Staying out longer would only make things worse. They might even charge her with something.
No, she thought, they will definitely charge you with something. Her boss’s appetite for schadenfreude was limitless, the sign of a bitter old man with a dead-end career. Regardless of what he tried, she was done as an FBI agent, a truth she wasn’t ready to admit. The pain, her disappointed father, her failed life—it was easier to ignore it. The birds chirped happily above her, over the din of the city.
The phone buzzed again, ruining her reverie with nature. When my tea is done, I’ll walk to the Hoover Building and turn myself in, she thought, sipping very slowly. Maybe things weren’t so bad. Perhaps they would give her a third chance, she rationalized. After all, they were short agents in a time of national crisis and her intentions were good. Mostly.
Bzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzz.
Holy crap, she thought and reached for her phone. It was Jason.
“Jason, what is it?” she said, annoyed.
“You’ll never believe it,” he said with pride.
“Believe what?”
“Just take a guess.”
“Just tell me. I’m not in the mood,” sighed Lin, watching the birds fly away.
“We found the mystery containers!” he said triumphantly. She could hear him doing a victory dance at his desk and struggled to push the image out of her mind.
“What?!”
“Yeah! Your source was right. We found both containers this morning in a Secaucus warehouse.”
Lin felt dizzy. Seconds ago, she was prepared to turn herself in, and maybe face arrest. Now, everything had flipped. “But . . . but, how?”
“I called it in last night, using the anonymous tip line on the internet. Said there was a huge drug and weapons shipment. I knew what key words would set off police alarm bells. It worked. They sent a SWAT team in this morning and found both mystery containers, sitting right there in the middle of the warehouse. It was glorious!”
Wow, Dmitri told the truth. She didn’t see that coming.
“And there’s more.”
“More?”
“Yeah. Way more. The containers were empty, but they did a radiological sweep. One tested positive for traces of uranium.”
“A nuclear bomb?”
“Even better: nuclear terrorism!” he said, genuinely gleeful. “The WMD Directorate is standing up a task force, and I’ve just been assigned to it. I’m graduating from dynamite to fissile material. It’s like a promotion!”
“You must be so proud.”
“This can launch my career,” he said seriously, unaware of her sarcasm.
“What else did they find?”
“Not much. We’re still trying to figure out who sent them, what was in them, and where the contents are now. All the essentials. Look, don’t tell anyone because it’s all hush-hush.” He paused. “Uh-oh. The boss is on the prowl. Gotta run!” The phone went dead.
Lin sat astonished. This was a stay of career execution. She was still in play. Of all the disturbing things in the conversation, the worst was nuclear terrorism. What the hell is going on? The Russian mob didn’t smuggle nukes because the Kremlin would never entrust them with WMD. Nor would the bratva work for radical Islamic terrorists; it wasn’t their business model.
Yet what explained the trace uranium they found? It probably wasn’t medical equipment. Also, the FBI must have found something linking it to the bridge or else Jason would not have used the term “nuclear terrorism.”
She gulped the last of her green tea and stood up. Across the street was Washington’s most empty tourist attraction: the World Bank gift shop, full of economic textbooks and cheap cuff links. Lin paused in the window, staring at the world map. Where would the mob obtain a nuke? Not from the Russian military. Not from anywhere.
“Impossible,” she said softly. As a kid, she went through a Sherlock Holmes phase, reading every story. It was a reason she became an FBI agent. There was one line that always stuck with her: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
If the mob has a nuclear weapon, it must have come from Moscow with orders. Lin reached into her purse and found her phone.
“Jason here,” answered the voice.
“You know ‘nuclear terrorism’ is a dud, right, Ja
son? If terrorists had a nuke, they would have used it in the bridge attack, and we’d already be incinerated.”
“Jen, I’m super busy. Can we discuss later?”
Lin ignored him. “Nukes are way out of the terrorists’ league. Think about it, Jason: Where would they source a nuclear weapon? The world was petrified of loose nukes after 9/11, but it turned out to be a boogeyman. Why would Iran, Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, or anyone else trust a nuke to a terrorist group? If they wanted to detonate a WMD in the United States, they would use their own people.”
Jason sighed and spoke. “Or-r-r-r, the terrorists are keeping the nuke in reserve to instill maximum fear, using it when the nation is most vulnerable. It could be in a van in Times Square or buried in the pits of the Daytona 500. It could be a nuclear car bomb near Arlington Cemetery, waiting to detonate at the vice president’s funeral. Think of it. All the cabinet secretaries, generals, foreign dignitaries . . . everyone will be there, and the world will be watching. It’ll create waves of panic globally and fill the terrorist ranks with new recruits. A terrorist army.”
Lin didn’t like what she heard, not because it was wrong but because it could be true.
Chapter 24
Jackson sat back in his chair, foot braced against the edge of his desk, and unconsciously twirled the phone cord in his hand.
“Um-hum . . . OK . . . That’s disturbing,” he said, then listened. A young woman knocked gently on the door and stuck her head in. He held up a finger, telling her to wait a minute, but she shook her head and pointed to her wrist, indicating he was late.
“OK, I’ll pass that along to the president . . . Yes, I understand the urgency,” he said into the phone. The young intern glared at him, reminding him of his mother. He reflexively spun his chair around so he couldn’t see her.