Dead or Alive

by Grant Blackwood

  They kept going. They reached the second ramp and stopped to listen but heard nothing. Same with the third and fourth. As they approached the fifth, they heard a voice echo up the ramp. They got up and walked forward and looked down.

  In the distance they could see the yellow speck of a Cushman appear under a halogen light, then move into shadow, then into light again.

  “Three-quarters of the way down,” Jack said.

  “If you’ve got an idea, now’s the time,” Clark said.

  “Depends on how sure you are about that thing’s stability.”

  “Ninety percent.”

  Jack nodded. “Ding, need your help.”

  They climbed into the Cushman, did a Y-turn, and headed back down the tunnel. They returned thirty seconds later. From the rear of the Cushman, Jack and Ding each lifted out an acetylene cylinder. “Torpedo,” Jack said.

  “Are they full?”

  “Mostly empty.”

  “Timing’s going to be a bitch.”

  “I’ll leave that up to you. You’re the boss.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Jack and Chavez carried the cylinders to the ramp’s entrance, laid them flat, then gave them a shove. At once they began to spin, gonging off the walls on their way down. Jack and Chavez ran back to the Cushman and got in. Dominic pulled up to the ramp and stopped.

  Clark waited for a ten-count, then said, “Go.”

  Almost immediately it became apparent that the Cushman’s breaks were inadequate. After fifty yards, the speedometer needle quivered past thirty mph. The overhead lights zipped by. Dominic braked, slowing them slightly, but smoke began gushing from the drums. Two hundred yards below them, the cylinders were spinning and tumbling like a pair of footballs. The Emir’s Cushman was almost at the bottom.

  “Gonna be close,” Chavez said.

  Clark said, “Slow us down, Dom.”

  Dominic tapped the brakes with no result. He stomped on the pedal. Nothing happened. “Keep your hands inside,” he yelled, then veered right. The Cushman’s front quarter panel scraped the tunnel wall, sending up a shower of sparks. They slowed slightly. He eased away from the wall, then back again.

  A hundred yards down the ramp, the cylinders caught up with the Emir’s Cushman. One cylinder took a bad bounce and tumbled past, but the second one crashed into the rear bumper. The Cushman skidded, turning broadside, then tipped onto its side and skidded onto the landing.

  “Get us stopped,” Clark ordered.

  Dominic spun the wheel hard over, putting the whole left side into the wall. The Cushman slowly ground to a stop. They got out and started down the ramp. On the landing, the Emir’s Cushman lay upside down. A few feet away, a body lay sprawled on the concrete. They paused at the entrance to the landing. To their left, the tunnel continued on another fifty feet before turning sharply left. There was no one in the tunnel. Chavez walked over to the body and knelt down. “Not him,” he said.

  They jogged down the tunnel. Around the corner, they found themselves in a thirty-foot-wide alley. Overhead, vaulted girders spanned the ceiling. They could see the circular entrances to the storage drifts, spaced at twenty-foot intervals along each side of the alley.

  “I count twelve per side,” Dominic said.

  “Split up,” Clark ordered. “Me and Jack will take the right, you two the left.”

  Clark and Jack sprinted across the alley to the opposite wall. Jack mouthed, I’ll take the last six. Clark nodded. Jack took off in a sprint, glancing into each drift as he went. On the other side of the alley, Dominic was doing the same.

  Jack dashed past the fifth drift, saw nothing, then continued past the seventh and eighth. He skidded to a stop, backed up, and looked again. He saw a flicker of light two hundred yards down the drift. He could just make out two figures crouched beside what looked like an industrial bait box. Jack looked around. Clark was working his way forward but too far away. Same with Dominic and Chavez.

  “Hell with it.”

  He sprinted into the drift.

  He’d covered half the distance to the figures when one of their heads snapped up. A muzzle flashed orange. Jack kept running. Raised his gun, snapped off two shots. From the alley, Clark yelled, “Over here!”

  The man stepped forward, firing from the hip. Jack hunched over and pressed against the wall, trying to make himself small. He adjusted his aim, laid the sites on the man’s center mass, squeezed off two rounds. The man spun and went down. The other figure ignored his fallen comrade and kept working, his hands moving in the box. He looked up, saw Jack, kept working. Thirty feet away. Jack raised his gun and kept firing until the slide locked open, the magazine now empty. Twenty feet. A head peeked around the box, disappeared again. Jack covered the last ten feet in two strides, then dropped his shoulder and slammed into the box. He heard something pop in his shoulder, felt the pain rush up his neck. The box skidded backward. Jack’s feet went out from under him, and he slammed face-first into the concrete. Blood gushing from his shattered nose, he pushed himself to his knees. His eyesight sparkled. He looked around. The first man’s body lay sprawled against the curved wall, his AK a few feet away. Jack crawled over to it, snagged the sling with his right hand, and dragged it toward him. He got to his feet and stumbled around the box.

  Already on his feet, the Emir was stepping toward the box. He saw Jack and stopped. His eyes flicked to the box, then back to Jack’s face.

  “Don’t!” Jack barked. “You’re done. It’s over.”

  Down the tunnel behind Jack came the pounding of footsteps.

  “No, it’s not,” the Emir said, and knelt down before the box.

  Jack fired.

  89

  LATER, when asked BY Hendley and Granger, Jack Ryan Jr. would remain cagey about whether he’d intended to simply wound the Emir or, in the heat of battle, he’d missed his center-mass target. The truth was, Jack wasn’t sure himself. At the critical moment, the flood of adrenaline in his veins and the pounding of his heart had combined to seemingly both stretch and compress time in his brain. Contradictory thoughts fought for control of his fine motor skills: shoot to kill, stop the Emir; shoot to wound, gain an intel gold mine but risk the man getting a chance to push the button.

  On seeing Jack standing before him in the darkened drift tunnel, the Emir had hesitated only seconds before returning his attention to the bomb-his eyes wide and feverish, fingers working inside the device’s open panel. It took only a split second more for Jack to realize he wasn’t facing a man who cared whether he lived or died-by gunfire or by nuclear detonation, the Emir had come here to finish his holy task.

  Jack’s weapon had bucked in his hand, and the tunnel had flashed with orange, and when the sound faded and the darkness returned, he saw the Emir lying on his back, arms splayed, the flashlight illuminating his face. Jack could see the AK’s 7.62-millimeter bullet had entered the Emir’s right thigh on an angle, traveled upward, and punched out his buttock. Jack took two quick steps forward, weapon raised, ready to fire again, when he heard footsteps pounding up behind him. Then Clark and Chavez and Dominic were there, pulling him away…

  Though they wouldn’t discover the reason until a day later via a Homeland Security intercept, Clark and company had emerged from the main tunnel’s entrance with their now bound-and-gagged quarry not to the sound of helicopter rotors and sirens but rather dead silence. As Clark had suspected, their helicopter’s course north along Highway 95 and their subsequent intrusion of the airspace above the Yucca Mountain hadn’t gone unnoticed on the radar net that blanketed the Nellis Air Force Range and the Nevada Nuclear Test Site. However, the alert that would have normally brought helicopters and security forces from Creech Air Force Base’s 3rd Special Operations Squadron had been short-circuited by the DOE’s test shipment from Callaway Nuclear Power Plant. Somewhere in the inevitable and often unfathomable bureaucratic process, the DOE had neglected to tell the Air Force they’d decided to forgo the helicopter escort for the shipment. As far a
s Creech was concerned, the stolen EC-130 on which Clark’s team rode was air cover for the shipment.

  Whether from fear or a suspicion that his passengers were indeed the good guys, Marty had taken Clark’s “stick around” order to heart and had sat in the idling EC-130 until Clark and the others appeared jogging down the service road. Twenty-five minutes later they were back at Paragon Air, where they discovered Marty had also stayed off the radio.

  “Hope I don’t regret this,” he’d said, as everyone climbed out.

  “You’ll probably never know it, but you did a good thing, my friend,” Clark told him, then wiped down his Glock and laid it on the passenger-side floorboard. “Give us an hour, then call the police. Show them that gun and give them my description.”

  “What?”

  “Just do it. It’ll keep you out of jail.”

  And besides, I’m not exactly what you’d call “findable,” Clark thought but didn’t say.

  Twenty minutes after leaving Paragon Air, they were back at the Emir’s house, where they pulled into the garage and closed the door behind them. Chavez and Jack went inside to collect Tariq, while Pasternak and Dominic pulled the Emir from the rear of the vehicle and laid him out on the garage floor, where Pasternak knelt down and gave him a once-over.

  “He live?” Clark asked.

  Pasternak peeled back the hasty field bandage they’d applied before leaving Yucca, palpated the flesh around the puckered entrance wound, then slid his hands under the Emir’s buttock.

  “Through and through,” Pasternak proclaimed. “No arteries, no bones, I don’t think. Blood’s clotting. What kind of round?”

  “Jacketed seven-six-two.”

  “Good. No fragments. Barring infection, he’ll make it.”

  Clark nodded. “Dom, you’re with me.”

  The two of them returned inside to give the house a walk-through. Though they’d all worn gloves the entire time they’d been there, sooner or later the FBI would descend on the house, and the FBI was damned good at finding trace evidence where none should exist.

  Satisfied, Clark nodded for Dom to return to the vehicle, then dialed The Campus. Within seconds he had Hendley, Rounds, and Granger on conference call. Clark brought them up to speed, then said, “We’ve got two choices, anonymously dump them on the steps of the Hoover Building or finish this ourselves. Either way, the less time we stay here, the better.”

  There was silence on the line. This was Hendley’s call.

  “Stand by,” the director of The Campus said. He was back two minutes later. “Get back to the Gulfstream. The pilot knows where you’re going.”

  Forty minutes later, they arrived at the North Las Vegas Airport and pulled onto the tarmac beside the plane, where they were met by the copilot, who ushered them aboard. Once airborne, Clark again called Hendley, who’d already begun the complicated and delicate process of informing the U.S. government that the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository had been penetrated by now-deceased URC terrorists, and that while the suitcase nuke they’d left behind had been rendered safe, it might be wise to secure the device as soon as possible.

  “How can you be sure this ain’t going to blow back on us?” Clark now asked.

  “I can’t, but we don’t have much choice in the matter.”

  “True.”

  “How’s our patient?”

  “Doc cleaned out the holes, stitched ’em shut, and put him on antibiotics. He’s stable but in one hell of a lot of pain. Jack’s given him a permanent limp, probably.”

  “Least of his worries now,” Hendley observed. “Is he talking?”

  “Not a word. Where’re we going?”

  “Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport. You’ll be met.”

  “And then where?” Clark pressed. They had in their possession the world’s most wanted terrorist; the sooner they found a bolt-hole where they could regroup and plan their next move, the better.

  “Someplace quiet. Someplace Dr. Pasternak can work.”

  At this, Clark smiled.

  Four short hours after they departed Las Vegas, they touched down on CHO’s single runway and taxied up to the executive terminal. True to his word, Hendley had a pair of Chevy Suburbans waiting; in formation, they approached the Gulfstream’s retractable stairs, did simultaneous three-point turns, and backed up to the bottom step. From the passenger door of the first Suburban, Hendley leaned out and signaled to Clark and Jack, who climbed into the backseat, while Caruso and Chavez, trailed by Pasternak, escorted their charges to the trailing Suburban. Within minutes they were off the airport grounds and heading north on Highway 29.

  Hendley brought them up to speed. From what little Gavin Biery was able to glean from the flood of coded electronic traffic, Creech Air Force Base’s 3rd Special Operations Squadron had arrived at Yucca within forty minutes of Hendley’s call. Two hours after that, in a sure sign the Department of Energy, Homeland Security, and the FBI had descended en masse upon Yucca Mountain, the electronic traffic dried up.

  “Are they onto the Emir’s house?” Jack asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Won’t take them long to find Paragon Air.” This from Clark. “So spill it, Gerry. Where’re we going?”

  “I’ve got a few acres of horse land and a country house outside Middleburg.”

  “What’s a few?”

  “Thirty. Should give us some breathing room.” Hendley checked his watch. “Dr. Pasternak’s equipment should be there by now.”

  90

  AFTER THE nearly constant adrenaline rush Clark and his team had experienced since touching down in Las Vegas twenty-four hours earlier, what followed immediately upon arriving at Hendley’s country house was anticlimactic. To his obvious disappointment, Pasternak announced that it would be another day, perhaps two, before his patient would be stable enough to undergo interrogation. That left everyone with plenty of time to waste and nothing to do but play cards and watch cable news. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a whiff of what had occurred at Yucca Mountain, but there was wall-to-wall coverage of what the networks had universally dubbed “The Heartland Attacks.” The Claymore mine blast at the Waterloo, Iowa, church had claimed thirty-two dead and fifty wounded; the mortar attack at the Springfield, Missouri, statue unveiling, twenty-two dead, fourteen wounded; the grenade incident at the Brady, Nebraska, swim meet, only six dead and four wounded, thanks to a quick-thinking, off-duty volunteer police officer who shot the perpetrator dead after he’d rolled only three grenades beneath the bleachers. The Waterloo and Brady perpetrators, both of whom had been tracked to their respective homes within hours of the events, had taken their own lives. Added to the other attacks, the casualties were climbing into triple digits.

  Under the guiding hand of the FBI and Homeland Security, the near-miss chlorine attack aboard the Losan in Newport News had been attributed to a galley fire.

  By four p.m. of their first day at Hendley’s country house, as the plastic-pretty female and lantern-jawed male anchors that dominated afternoon cable news collectively announced that President Edward Kealty would be addressing the American people at eight p.m. eastern, Clark got up and wandered off to find Pasternak. He found the doctor in Hendley’s woodworking shop, a fully appointed pole barn behind the house. The maple-topped bench had been converted into a makeshift medical suite, complete with halogen work lights, a Drager ventilator, and an EKG machine/resuscitator by Marquette, including manual external defibrillator paddles to convert an irregularly beating heart to normal sinus rhythm. Both machines were brand-new, fresh from their manufacturer’s shipping cartons, which now lay stacked a few feet away. Everything was ready and present, save the guest of honor, who was ensconced in one of the guest bedrooms under a rotating watch manned by Chavez, Jack, and Dominic.

  “All set?” Clark asked.

  Pasternak pressed a series of buttons on the EKG and got a series of apparently satisfying beeps in reply. He powered down the unit and looked at Clark. “Yeah.”

  “
Got second thoughts?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You ain’t exactly a poker player, Doc.”

  Pasternak smiled at this. “Never was good at it. Guess it’s the whole Hippocratic oath-kind of a hard thing to shake. I’ve had over ten years to mull it over, though. After Nine-Eleven, I couldn’t figure out if it was just about revenge or about something bigger-the greater good and all that.”

  “What’d you decide?”

  “It’s both, but more of the latter. If we get something from this guy that helps save some lives, then I’ll figure out a way to deal with what I’ve done-what I’m going to do. Or God willing, when the time comes.”

  Clark considered this, then nodded. “Doc, to lesser or larger degrees, we’re all in that boat. All you can do is decide what you think is right, go with that, and let the rest come as it may.”

  The anticipation had everyone up at dawn the next day. Dominic, the best cook of the group, made a bowl of oatmeal and wheat toast for their guest, who, now fully awake and clearly in pain, stubbornly declined the meal.

  At seven, Dr. Pasternak came to examine him. It took only a few minutes. Pasternak looked to Hendley, who stood in the doorway, the rest of the group behind him.

  “No fever, no signs of infection. He’s good to go.”

  Hendley nodded. “Let’s move him.”

  The Emir neither struggled nor helped as Chavez and Dominic carried him out the back door and through the pole barn’s side entrance. It wasn’t until he saw the halogen-lighted workbench and makeshift leather restraints bolted to its surface that his face changed. Jack saw the fleeting expression but couldn’t quite put his finger on its nature: fear or relief? Fear of what was coming, or relief because he suspected martyrdom was at hand?

  As practiced the night before, Chavez and Dominic laid the Emir on the workbench. His right arm was cinched into the leather restraint, while the right, the one on the same side as the equipment, was stretched across a folded towel and similarly secured. Finally, both legs were locked down. Chavez and Dominic stepped back from the bench.