“It would be pandemonium.”
“And if they got lucky and set off the nuke—”
“Forget about DC—it would be a wasteland.”
“So this suicide diver is being positioned somewhere waiting for the signal that you’ve located it.”
“Keep in mind he might not be the only one. If the bomb’s in deep water, a scuba diver isn’t going to do them a damn bit of good. They’d need a salvage operation with divers, a well-equipped boat, the whole nine yards.”
“I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. It’s obvious we’re dealing with a sophisticated organization.”
“This suicide diver business scares the crap out of me. You sure we shouldn’t get more people involved?”
“I’m concerned we have too many damn people already. DHS, Coast Guard, Pentagon, CIA, FBI. Christ, we’re scrambling now to put a lid on the news about the swimmer. The only chance we have of flushing out these terrorists is to stay on course. The minute we get a horde of Feebies swarming around, or a couple companies of Special Ops people with their helicopters roaring all over the place, the terrorists will go to ground. This is our one chance. Wait, I’ve got a call from Jimmick. Hang on.”
Howie listens as the HOLD tone drones in his ear. He wishes he had his file on the Jersey bomb. A number of times he’s brought up the possibility that nukes lost during the late ’60s could have been armed with a nuclear capsule, but he can’t remember if he’d ever sketched the capsule’s location on the Mk-15. Was that somewhere in his files? Could they have seen it? His memory is hazy. Could that be why the terrorists are using a suicide diver? Do they think they can place the charge near the capsule and activate the nuclear reaction underwater? Have I not only led them to the bomb, but also spelled out precisely how to set it off?
For the first time, the thought runs through Howie’s mind, Maybe Vector Eleven had the right idea all along. Let sleeping dogs lie.
“Howie, you there?” Winn asks when he comes back on the line.
“Yes, Winn. What’s Jimmick got?”
“You sound really jittery.”
“It’s this suicide diver thing. I never in a million years imagined it would be possible to detonate a nuke under water.”
“Don’t go there, Howie. Look, we were able to yank the info on the swimmer from the Counterterrorism Center—at least for the time being. So we have some extra room to maneuver. What about Jimmick’s Coast Guard guy, that Warren character?”
“Too early to tell, but my first inclination is not to trust him.”
“Figured as much. If they didn’t own him already Vector Eleven probably turned him. That Seal group is thick as thieves.”
“That’s why you sent him the bogus set of coordinates. You had doubts from the beginning.”
“Howie, I have doubts about everybody and everything, it’s in the water I drink.”
“So how are we going to handle him?”
“Let me think. I’ll call you in an hour.”
“I thought you were coming down.”
“Changed my mind, I’ve decided to go to The Farm. They have a high-resolution satellite link there. The kind they use to fly Predator drones over the Pakistani mountains searching for bin Laden. It’s like having a hawk eye in the sky.”
Howie wants to ask, If they’re so damn good, why haven’t they caught him yet? “Going to leave me to fend for myself, huh?”
“It’ll be like I’m in the boat with you except I’ll be able to see everything that’s happening in the entire bay. And you’ve got a secure cell phone. It’s our best way to play this. I’ve got to go, talk to you soon.”
Straub hangs up, leaving Howie standing in the middle of the boatyard as he watches a sliver of moon sneak out from behind a bank of clouds, wondering how the hell he ever got himself into this mess.
Mehran waited patiently outside a McDonald’s until a customer left her car unlocked. A harried young mother late to pick up dinner for the kids, in such a hurry she even left the driver’s door ajar. Before the woman was through the line, Mehran had hotwired the Camry and was slinking out of the lot.
It’s dark by the time he pinpoints the boathouse. Hungry, tired, the drive from New Brunswick to the shore took him almost five hours. Through Trenton and Baltimore, skirting around Washington on the Beltway then down the dinky rural routes to his destination. The roads were chockablock with gas-greedy SUVs, riding up and sitting on his tail even though he was doing seventy-five. Mehran was tempted to salute them with his middle finger. But he has a better way to get back at them.
The road to the boathouse was poorly marked. Before he finally located the turnoff, Mehran drove past it three times. Concerned that he had somehow incorrectly memorized the instructions, he’s relieved when he sees it.
Like everything else in the operation, the boathouse is a marvel of ingenuity. A quarter mile down a rutted driveway, an attached garage alongside neatly conceals the Camry. The keys where they were supposed to be. He pulls the car inside, closes and locks the door.
A quarter moon illuminates the boathouse. A long, narrow wooden building sitting on pilings with a corrugated roof, its front half juts out over the water with a garage door opening out onto the bay. Mehran kneels down, peeking under the edge of the boathouse. He can see the water shimmering around the pilings but he can’t see up into the interior. Very clever. A false floor has been constructed so prying eyes would not be able to see what is stored inside. He pats the surface, it gives easily. Made of black canvas, he figures the floor retracts so the boat can be lowered into the water.
Mehran unlocks the side door and flicks the switch. Fluorescent fixtures on the ceiling sputter. The interior walls are tarpapered to keep light from seeping out. An industrial heater works against the water’s chill. Plywood sheathing laid on the rafters furnishes him with a small loft-like living space. Climbing up, he finds a copy of the Koran next to a sleeping bag, a cell phone alongside. The loft is stocked with provisions and water. A wireless weather station reads out wind direction, speed, temperature and barometer readings. Food, water, communication, the Koran—Mehran knows he can last a week in here.
Marveling at the gleaming black Donzi suspended over the false floor, he climbs down the ladder. A bullet, long, slim and lethal-looking, the craft can ride out the worst weather and outrun anything. Twenty-two feet long, its 500 horses will rocket it up to eighty in seconds.
Climbing up and lowering himself into the cockpit, he looks around the interior. Equipped as planned, everything blacked out, not an inch of chrome anywhere. He turns the key. The indicator lights glow dull red— nothing to attract attention. He checks the backseat, custom racks hold two double tanks, backup regulators stored alongside, his monofin and a second wetsuit for insurance. Next to him on the console is the handheld metal detector—an electronic bloodhound with a nose for ferrous and nonferrous metals. Mehran has used it in the Red Sea to locate objects buried in the murkiest water.
He slides down into the bucket seat, grasping the wheel with his hands as he surveys the array of gauges. He trained for a week on a Donzi in the Persian Gulf, so everything is familiar. Outfitted with a forty-eight-mile radar and GPS, there is even a cradle on the dash for his cell phone. From his perch in the captain’s chair, he looks around the boathouse. A two-foot walkway runs around the perimeter, ten five-gallon gas cans lined up in a neat row against the wall. They haven’t missed a trick.
Sitting at the helm, he mentally runs through the final steps of his mission. Each is etched in his memory as deeply as images of the streets of the village where he grew up.
When he gets the order, he will jump into his wetsuit, flip the switch to roll up the floor, activate the lift lowering the Donzi into the water, turn the key and wait patiently while the engine warms up, the rumbling burble of its exhaust in the water echoing around inside. Pushing the button to raise the door, he will slam the throttle forward and the engines will blast the Donzi out of the opening and
propel him across the bay.
That is the first time anyone will see Mehran Zarif. And if I am lucky, it will also be the last.
Mehran pauses. Am I missing something? He swings his head from side to side, looking around the interior. Then he peers up into the rafters. There it is, he thinks as he looks up at the shiny stainless steel collar, but why only one? How could he have known which model I would be going after? Why would Jamal have equipped me only with an Mk-15 collar?
But there is no question about it. Hung from the front peak of the boathouse not two feet over his head, a single collar gleams in the bright light. Clearly labeled, the collar has been designed to precisely fit the nose of the Mk-15 mod 0.
My good fortune, Mehran decides, gazing up at the collar, smiling as he thinks, this is the nuke I have been dreaming about.
Jimmick bought some domestic tranquility by agreeing to go to the wedding. So his wife doesn’t complain when he leans over and plants a goodbye peck on her cheek at three in the morning.
“Where are you going?”
“I have a meeting.”
“Liar,” she says, rolling over and instantly falling back to sleep.
In fifteen minutes, he’s dressed and out of the house. The DHS chopper is picking him up at a secure pad at Dulles so he won’t be noticed flying out of the NAC. The call from the special agent in charge of the Newark office got his attention. The location in Philadelphia was a bomb factory, Agent Rathon told him. No doubt about it.
He had put in a quick call to Straub down at Peary.
“Get your ass up there as fast as you can,” was Winn’s reaction.
It’s a forty-minute flight to Philly. An FBI car is at the helipad to meet him. Large fluffy snowflakes are drifting down through the early morning air. Jimmick wishes he’d remembered his overcoat. Fortunately, the agents had enough sense to bring along a Thermos of coffee. He wasn’t going to take the time to make any at home and once he was on the road he didn’t want to stop. As if there would have been anything open in the middle of the night.
After mutual introductions, Jimmick asks of the agent sitting in the front seat, “Update me on everything.”
He swings around to face Jimmick. “We cross-referenced utility bills and tax rolls, first electricity, then water. Looking for anything that stuck out. Kept running the crosses until we came up with a list of probables then hit the street. We got lucky. It was the fifth place we checked. Water bills were off the charts.”
“Why’s that?”
“You’ll see in a minute.”
It’s a four-story brick building in a rundown commercial area of four and five-story buildings, warehouses, signs of gentrification with a smattering of upscale residential but not an area where you’d stroll around at night. Yellow crime scene tape strung up all over the place. Snow is picking up, dusting the streets in a sheet of white. An agent holds the door for him.
Up a flight of stairs, he finds a group standing in a large, open workroom. Looks to Jimmick like a small manufacturing facility, lathes and drill presses, workbenches, off to the side a tall wooden tank maybe twenty feet in diameter.
Special Agent Rathon is at the center of the four men, giving directions, clearly in command. Rathon had told him to look for a tall guy. At six-six, he’s hard to miss.
Jimmick walks up and shakes his hand. “Rathon, good to meet you. Appreciate you keeping me in the loop on this.” The minute Jimmick saw the post about the swimmer, he put in a call to the special agent on the case, letting him know he was working on a high priority inter-agency assignment reporting to the heads of the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security. Dropping high-profile names had the precise effect Jimmick expected. The minute Rathon discovered the bomb factory, he was on the horn to him.
“My pleasure, Mr. Secretary,” the lanky special agent says.
“So this is the secret location the swimmer was sneaking off to?”
“We’ve lifted two sets of prints, I’d bet one belongs to him. We’re running the matches now.”
“When was he last here?”
“Could have been as recently as this morning. All kinds of stuff was moved out of here in a hurry. Tenants on both sides heard the commotion. We’re checking that out now.”
“Any idea of what they were making?”
“Traces of C-4 in nineteen locations, you can tell they tried to remove it but it’s all over the place.”
“We need to get an expert in here to tell us what this machinery was used for.”
“It’s almost five in the morning, Mr. Secretary.”
“I know what time it is,” Jimmick says, looking directly at Rathon to make sure he gets the message.
“We’ll get to work on it.”
Jimmick’s attention is attracted to six wooden gantries, the crosspieces concave, hollowed out as if they were constructed to hold a cylindrical object. “What do you suppose these were for?” he asks, having already figured out the answer but not wanting to reveal it until he can get a better read on the special agent.
“Some kind of cradle, I’d guess.”
“Curious,” Jimmick says. He’s seen enough photos of nuclear weapon storage depots. Each of these platforms has a different configuration designed to hold a specific model. They can’t be anything else.
Jimmick walks over and slaps the wooden planking of the immense wooden structure off to the side of the room. “And this tank, you think that’s why the water bills were so high?” A hydraulic hoist stands beside the tank. Jimmick imagines the hoist lowering bombs into the water. The picture is becoming clearer. Only one question remains to be answered. What is the connection between the swimmer, the tank and the bombs?
“You see these things on the top of ten-story buildings,” Rathon says, looking up at the tank. “This is one hell of a lot of water for a small manufacturing space.”
“You’ve done good work, Rathon.”
“Anything else can I do for you, Mr. Secretary?”
“Yes, as soon as you determine what they were making here, I want to know. Same goes for the prints. And the minute your lab extracts anything off the student’s hard drive, call me. I don’t care what time it is.”
Jimmick sets his hand on Rathon’s shoulder and steers him off to the side, turns to him and says sotto voce, “And I need to let you know that it is in the interest of national security that this entire investigation be kept absolutely confidential.” Jimmick scribbles his secure phone number on a card and sticks it in the pocket of Rathon’s topcoat.
“The Hoover Building doesn’t open for business until nine on Monday. And if you say so, Mr. Secretary, I can drag my feet on filing a report for another couple days.”
“Good.”
“Just one question, sir.”
Jimmick stops at the doorway, “Yes, Rathon.”
“I filed the intelligence on the swimmer at the National Counterterrorism Center late this afternoon. But I had someone check and it’s not posted any longer.”
“The CIA director personally removed that notice. You understand he has the authority.”
“Of course, sir.” Rathon looks impressed.
Jimmick smiles as he heads down the stairs. At least Dickson’s name carries weight in some circles.
Heading for the helipad across an accumulating layer of freshly fallen snow, Jimmick decides to go into the office. By the time he’s back in town, it will almost be dawn. Doesn’t everybody go to work at six on Sunday morning?
As soon as he’s in his chopper, Jimmick is on the phone to Straub. His secure line doesn’t answer. Must be busy.
It’s not until they are circling over DC that Straub finally answers. “What did you find out?” Straub presses.
“There’s C-4 all over the place,” Jimmick shouts over the rotor roar. “Good move to send me up there.”
“Why do you say that?”
“They had mockups of atomic and hydrogen bombs sitting around.”
“Mockups?”
&nb
sp; “Bunch of gantries. Dead ringers for the kind Energy and DoD use to store nukes. And there was a large tank with a hoist. I’m guessing they lifted the mockups into the tank for some kind of test.”
“Or practice.”
“You bet. We’re trying to find an engineer to help us figure out what the hell they were making there.”
“I bet the swimmer went to this machine shop in Philly to practice putting C-4 on a nuke in the water. What were they making at that shop for this kid to fasten to a bomb?”
“That’s the sixty-four-dollar question.”
“As soon as you can get me an answer.”
Peering out the window of his chopper, Jimmick is surprised not to see more lights in the darkened city until he realizes they are swooping low over Rock Creek Park. As they bank in for a landing, he’s able to pick out the streetlights of Connecticut Avenue and the steeple of the Washington Cathedral. The lights around the pad suddenly blink on as the helicopter swings down over Ward Circle, the lights brightly illuminating the yellow X on the DHS helipad.
“The FBI is on it. But it’s Sunday. Don’t know how long it will take to find an expert in milling machinery.”
“It better be fast. Howie’s going to be out on the water in a couple hours.”
“I’ll keep pressing them.”
“If I were you, I’d go back there and turn up the heat myself.”
He’s about to say, I’m already back in DC, but thinks better of it.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“One more thing—your boy Commander Warren?”
“What about him?”
“Howie and I suspect Vector Eleven’s turned him.”
“That’s not possible,” Jimmick responds, realizing his reaction sounds hedgy, for he’s well aware that in the helter-skelter of Washington politics any kind of intrigue is possible.
40
Fairhaven, Maryland, Sunday morning
Making their way down to the dock through the half-inch of snow, fog curtains the boatyard, obscuring the bay and anything but the outlines of the nearest buildings. Sharon and Howie can barely see five feet ahead, but they can hear the diesel exhaust bubbling in the water mixed with the sound of the voices of the men scurrying around the boat.
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