by D. E. Daum
* * * *
Haman picked up Kelly and Dickens at the airport and headed back to the old mission. There wasn’t much to go on. They managed to find Jane’s radiophone in some high grass. Kelly didn’t know where to turn. Dickens knew something the others didn’t. While the others were looking around for some leads, the Colonel got on his satellite phone and made a call. “Hey, Mac, it’s me. Ya pick anything up?”
“Yeah, Colonel, I’ve got a couple of signals. I got yours, too. If you have your Global Positioning Device with you, I’ll give you all the coordinates.”
A few minutes later, Dickens said, “Let’s go. I have a lead.”
* * * *
Jane made her way to the first door, a large empty room. The adjacent room was empty too, and so were the third and fourth. In the following room were four dead bodies. Jane examined them, keeping her Glock aimed at the door. She was worried one might be Evans and was pleased when she didn’t recognize any of them. Jane couldn’t put her finger on it but something seemed odd about the corpses. The next door serviced a restroom as did the next. Still, no Evans. After that she came to a kitchen. The next room was large and had a roll up delivery door, which was open to the outside. Jane noticed there were two large crates with the lids off. From what she could see from the doorway, they resembled the bomb Kelly had picked up. As soon as she stepped in to get a better look, she knew she fucked up. She felt a gun at her head and a voice she recognized warned, “Don’t move.”
* * * *
They got into the Hummer and headed out. “What do you have, Colonel?” asked Kelly.
“I’ve got their coordinates; they’re about thirty-five miles northeast of here as the crow flies.”
“How would you know that?” asked Kelly
“Yeah, how do you know?” repeated Haman.
Dickens smiled, “Simple, but I can’t tell you. It’s classified.”
“What kind of bullshit is that, sir? Excuse my French, but that’s fucked,” protested Kelly.
“When and if we rescue Jane and Evans, Jane can tell you, if she chooses. Now shut up and get going. We’ve got work to do.”
“What if we find them but need more men for an assault?”
“Just drive, Kelly. If we need to make an assault, our chances of getting them out alive would be next to zero. Let’s hope we can sneak them out.”
* * * *
“Jane, Jane, Jane! You are screwing everything up! Why couldn’t you just stay put? My buyers will be here soon, and then I was going to let you go. If you wouldn’t have escaped, we could have both gone back to headquarters, and no one would have been the wiser. Drop your guns and turn around slowly.”
Jane had never felt comfortable with Evans. It was nothing overt, just little things. He always seemed a little capricious, their personalities didn’t mesh, but she never suspected that he was a double agent. “Are you going to drop the guns, or do I have to shoot you in the back?”
She obeyed. “How could you do this, you son of a bitch? Shit! And I was worried about you. How did you get me here, and how did you get the bombs?”
“Simple, I gave you a drugged water canteen,” answered Evans. “After you were knocked out, we took off after the neo-Nazis. You don’t have to worry about them anymore; they’re in a room down the hall.”
“I saw them. Is that what you have in mind for me?”
“I’m afraid so. You leave me no choice.”
“Traitor!”
“Just a little here and there, but I was mostly working for our side. I don’t really like any of them, just their money.”
“Evans, there’s no such thing as being a little traitorous. I suppose you told them about Peabody?”
“I did. I didn’t want to, but I had to gain their trust to earn their money. I warned them about the bomb too. I didn’t tell them what happened. I just suggested that they recheck it,” said Evans.
“How come you didn’t tell them about the raid?”
“I would have, except I have a buyer for the nukes. I needed to get rid of them to be in a position to get at the nukes.”
Who’re your buyers?” probed Jane.
“Tsk, tsk, you know I won’t tell you that.”
“Why? You’re going to kill me, aren’t you? What possible difference could it make?”
Evans gave her a smarmy smile, “True and true. I guess I can grant you a last wish, since you won’t have a last meal. I have two buyers, one for each nuke. Care to guess?”
“First tell me how much you’re getting, Sleazebag.”
“Ten million each. That’s twenty million smackeroos. Not bad for a high school grad, huh?”
“No, it’s great, but we would have given you more,” Jane said with a smug look on her face.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we probably would have given you thirty or more. You never thought about selling them to us, did you?”
“Wait a minute. It’s not too late. We can make a deal. I’d rather we got them, anyway.”
Suddenly, Jane did a short cartwheel move to her left, knocking the gun loose and Evans to the floor. On the way back up, she grabbed a crowbar from the floor, which had been used to remove the crate lids, letting Evans have it, first across the face, then over the head. Jane said to the unconscious traitor, “It is too late. I meant thirty or forty years, not millions.”
Jane didn’t know if she was out of the woods yet. She wondered if Evans had more than two men here. He’d said his buyers were expected shortly. She felt his pulse. He was still alive. She gagged and tied him up, then tied him to a cast-iron pipe that ran along one wall. Jane picked up her guns, added Evans’s to her collection, and took the crowbar as well. “You never know when a crowbar will come in handy.”
Jane reached for the knob of the door when the door flung open violently, knocking her down, flinging the gun and crowbar out of her hand. She scrambled to get one of the other weapons out of her waistband when a surge of relief spread over her. It was Haman with Kelly and Dickens right behind. Jane was so relieved that for the first time in her life, she started to sob uncontrollably. Kelly
picked her up to carry her out of the building. Kelly noticed that Evans was unconscious and trussed up. Haman went over to him and started to remove the gag, but Kelly caught Haman’s eye and stopped him with a shake of his head.
He reassured Jane, “Don’t worry, that snake can’t hurt you now.”
The colonel was deeply saddened and troubled by Evans’ duplicity. Evans was one of his core agents, one that had been with him for years. He perked up when Haman pointed out that Evans was alive and could be a fountain of information.
Outside, after Jane started to calm down and release Kelly, she said, “He was going to kill me.”
Kelly laughed and said, “It certainly looks like he made a poor choice of victims.” Jane started to laugh, but it was an anxious laugh.
Finally, she forced herself to stop. “We’ve got to get out of here. The buyers are supposed to be here any minute. No, wait. We can’t leave the nukes here. How many men did you bring?”
Kelly just shook his head and said, “Just us. We didn’t have time to locate help.”
“You came in this Hummer? We can’t get the bombs out in this.”
Colonel Dickens spoke up, “I’ve got an idea.”
Thirty minutes later, they were on the road. Evans hadn’t come to yet, but he was still breathing. He was in the back seat of the vehicle with Jane and Haman. Dickens drove and Kelly had shotgun. “Don’t you think we should have waited to see what happened?” asked Kelly.
The Colonel just shook his head and kept driving. After ten minutes, as if Kelly’s question just soaked in, he said, “There was a hundred percent chance that we would have been outgunned. We have to locate the mad bombers in Las Vegas. By the time we get back there, we’ll be down to three days. We don’t care about the nukes. We have plenty. We simply don’t want anyone else to have them.”
* * *
*
Two and a half hours after the Americans hurried from the compound where they’d held Jane prisoner and were in flight to Las Vegas, a convoy of three vehicles entered the compound. They found no one there. They searched the compound thoroughly and found two Argentineans locked up, one dead and one very large one, alive. They also found not one but two crates, each containing what they came for – a nuclear bomb. The native was unable to shed any light on what had transpired. His macho pride wouldn’t allow him to mention the tough little American lady who had locked him up.
They were indeed fortunate. They came with the intention to buy one nuke for ten million American dollars and instead they would not need to make the planned wire transfer at all and there was a another nuke, there for the taking. There was one slight problem. There were six men in their group and they thought they could muscle the crates into the bed of the larger truck. They underestimated the size and weight of their cargo. They slid both crates out to the truck and forced the first bomb into the truck bed. Once they did this, they realized that there still wasn’t enough room for the second device, which meant they had to use the second, smaller pickup truck. This was problematic as the crate was too large for the smaller pickup bed.
The leader was livid because of the poor planning on the part of his superiors. He was going to have to get a bigger truck to get the second crate. He took one of the men with him and left the other four to guard the valuable cargo after shooting the remaining Argentinean. He figured he would be back in ninety minutes.
Thirty minutes after the leader left to obtain another truck, another convoy of four vehicles, each containing two men, showed up. The original four knew it was too soon for their leader to return. They took up defensive positions and started firing upon the convoy. The combatants for both sides were poor marksmen. One of the second group was killed by friendly fire. They did, however, have an RPG with them, but only two grenades. They managed to take out one of the four enemy combatants as well as the SUV that had accompanied the first convoy.
It was an Argentinean standoff, with no one able to take the offensive until the first group’s leader came back. Having learned from his mistake, he brought back a medium-sized enclosed delivery truck with a lift. He was not going to be able to load the cargo with bullets flying. He decided to utilize his superior size to take out the enemy vehicles. He crashed into the first vehicle, a half-ton pickup truck, knocking it on its side, but as he was backing away, he was shot in the head—obviously, a lucky shot. His passenger jumped out and ran for their last remaining vehicle, the pickup truck that had been too small for the second crate. As he jumped in, the remaining three defenders abandoned their positions, making flying leaps into the bed of the fast departing truck.
Now Group Two was lord and master of the second nuke and had a free truck to load it up and haul it away. Things couldn’t have worked out any better had the Colonel written the script.
Book VI
Three Days to Nuclear Holocaust
Chapter 1
Las Vegas, Nevada
As they arrived, Dickens had the pilots make a circuit of the Strip, to get a feel of the town. As Kelly looked out at the hotels, something seemed to bother him, as if there was a clue there for the taking, but he couldn’t formulate it in his head. Maybe it would come to him while they were driving around.
Once down, Evans was turned over to MPs from Nellis AFB. Then the foursome headed from McCarran Airport to the Strip. Kelly looked at his watch and noticed that it was almost midnight. Although he’d dozed on the flight back, he hadn’t had a full night sleep for days.
Hayden Crenshaw and his men had taken an entire floor in the nearby MGM Grand Hotel. Arriving on the fourth floor, Dickens knocked on the door to Room 411. A large black man, six-three and two-fifty, answered the door, recognized Dickens, and nodded for him to enter. Three other men stood over a table that had a couple of maps on it. The room contained two separate bedrooms, a living area with a four-chair table, a wet bar, a large sofa, desk, and two occasional chairs, all done in a “Vegas Style” gold, green, and walnut motif.
The three men all dressed in a conservative business suits at the table stood up. Hayden, an ordinary-looking individual in his forties of five-ten, a hundred seventy pounds, with slightly receding chestnut hair, and a thin mustache just beneath his aquiline nose, greeted Dickens and Saleem and paused as if waiting for an introduction.
“Hayden, this is Jane DeJong, aka Starbird and you’ve met Saleem, but this is his bodyguard, Haman.”
Hayden’s alert light blue eyes studied Jane. “Ah, the famous Starbird. Your beauty precedes your legend.” As he was shaking her hand, Hayden gave them the names of his associates who in turn shook their hands. The large one—though small next to Haman—who answered the door was Rubin Fawler. The other two were Bill Heggler and Nick Santani.
Everybody sat down, and Hayden recapped what they had done since they arrived. “Since we arrived about forty-five hours ago in the late evening we weren’t able to contact any of the locals right away. In addition to the four of us, we brought sixteen other operatives, not counting the specialists. We have a good field office set up across the hall. We also brought your resident computer guru Jimmy along with another named Sally. Just in case, we brought your Middle East experts Bingham and Denalli, and a cadre of nuclear experts.”
“We have determined that Hamadi’s cell is rather small, perhaps ten or eleven men. We’ve identified most of them and obtained their photos. They’re all from the Long Beach/San Pedro area, so they’re unlikely to be familiar with Las Vegas. They’re all Middle Eastern types, except for an Anglo convert named Denny Weatherly, now known as Rhasheed Amati and a young Nigerian named Colin Rhamati. Pass these pictures around, will you Rubin? Any questions so far?”
Jane spoke up, “Have we located any of the members of Hamadi’s cell?”
“I’m afraid not. Their mullah said they all went to a Muslim gathering in Michigan, but I’m betting they’re all here.”
“Yes, me too,” Kelly said. “I’m sure none of the little bastards will want to miss a chance to participate in the mass extermination of infidels.”
Dickens chimed in, “I’ve got a question, Hay. When are we going to start evacuating Vegas?”
Hayden answered, “No plans for that yet, Dick. I’ve asked the NSA about that, and he said, only as a case of last resort. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“You know it isn’t. It takes time to evacuate a city this size. We can’t wait until the eleventh hour.”
“Yeah, I know. I brought that up, but the NSA pointed out that it would undercut our ‘Number One Arab asset,’ and he’s right. Evacuating the city signifies prior knowledge.”
“We could get around that,” Kelly protested, not wanting to be the reason the evacuation had not started. “We could say intelligence sources indicate a grave threat to Las Vegas. We could even set the Nazis up as the source.”
“Yes, we could and would do all that,” replied Hayden, “but it would be so much cleaner if we can locate the bomb. We’ve notified and sworn to secrecy all the key parties in the state, county, and city. We have a large contingent of Metro Police Department Officers working to locate our terrorists, not to mention the local FBI office. The deadline for announcing the evacuation of Las Vegas is forty-eight hours before detonation. The plan is just to announce a possible terrorist attack, without mentioning the nature of the event. That gives us a little flexibility so we can continue our pursuit.”
Colonel Dickens said, “That only leaves twenty-four hours before evacuation.”
Chapter 2
The MGM Grand
Kelly, Jane, Colonel Dickens, and Haman each took one of the rooms on the floor. Kelly and Haman then took a cab to the Bellagio to pick up Mariam, who had stayed there during Kelly's absence.
On the way back to the MGM, Kelly tried to fill Mariam in on what had transpired in Argentina. Mariam was aghast that Evans had turned out to be
a rogue agent, selling out his country for money. When they arrived in their new room, Kelly started to explain what they had discussed in their earlier meeting in Room 411, when Mariam put a finger to his mouth to silence him. “You are talking too much. Remember we made an agreement that we were going to make love in every hotel on the Strip, so you need to get busy. Then I will tell you where I think the terrorists plan to leave the bomb.”