“Hellfire One is trashed,” she heard the drone pilot’s voice say. “Missed the opening by ten feet. Reacquiring target. Launch in three, two, one.” O’Malley tensed. “Rifle rifle rifle. Missile away. Time of flight, thirty seconds.” O’Malley waited, holding her breath, for what seemed an eternity, then heard, “Bull’s-eye! Direct hit on target.” O’Malley felt herself gasp. She turned to Dawtry, her eyes shining, and he flashed her a thumbs-up and a huge grin. Then another voice on the radio: “Mother ship here. Good shooting, Lieutenant, but we need deeper penetration in that tunnel.”
O’Malley’s face fell. Then she had a flash of insight: He can’t just hit the tunnel—he has to thread it. But he can’t. Not from where he is. She fumbled for the “Transmit” button on her shoulder. “This is O’Malley,” she said. “Can you hear me?” Dawtry’s head jerked toward her, his eyes wide with alarm. He mimed slashing motions across his throat—the universal signal for “cut!”—but she shook her head.
The frequency fell silent for several seconds. “Stark here,” came a reply. “Go ahead, ma’am.”
“The drone’s too high. The angle’s wrong. He has to shoot from the same altitude as the entrance. On the tunnel’s exact east-west heading. A straight-in shot’s the only way to thread that needle.”
“Understood. Lieutenant, can you bring that bird down to . . . Jake,” she heard Stark shout. “What’s the altitude of that opening, and the compass heading of the tunnel?” The channel went quiet for a few more seconds before the captain resumed. “Lieutenant, we need you at three thousand two hundred feet. Directly abeam that tunnel, on a heading of zero eight seven. We need you looking down its throat.”
“Roger that. Copy altitude three thousand two hundred, heading zero eight seven. It’ll take a few minutes to get that low, Captain.”
“Understood. Don’t break the plane, but boogie down as fast as you can. They know we’re here now, and they’re not sitting on their hands.”
“Seven of the Tomahawks made direct hits,” came an excited transmission. “Satellite imagery confirms targets destroyed!” The marines in the Osprey erupted in a volley of cheers. “Reacquiring remaining targets.”
O’Malley felt a nudge in her ribs. Dawtry pointed toward the windshield and shouted, “Showtime.”
Ahead, the great silver dome of the Gran Telescopio Canarias—the world’s largest optical telescope—glinted in the sun. The Osprey skimmed low over the dome, angling for the Residencia, where the teleconference studio and satellite uplink were housed. Ahead and to the right, the twin exposed mirrors of the MAGIC telescopes—the Eyes of God—stared as they approached. God, if you’re watching, O’Malley thought, this would be a great time to pitch in. She caught a glimpse of the helipad, but the helipad was too far away; their landing zone was the parking lot at the Residencia’s front door.
The Osprey’s rear ramp began opening even before they touched down—slammed down—and the marines were unbuckled and hustling out by the time the aircraft stopped lurching. They scurried down the ramp two by two, dangerous animals disembarking from their armored ark, then fanned out and dropped to one knee, aiming their rifles in a protective, outward-facing circle. The squad’s leader beckoned, and O’Malley and Dawtry jogged awkwardly down the ramp.
Beside them, the second Osprey and its marines were completing the same unloading maneuver in near-perfect synchrony, and the two groups converged to form a flying wedge, O’Malley and Dawtry protected within it, and then charged across the parking lot toward the building’s glass-walled entrance.
Just as they reached the front steps, two pickup trucks careered into the parking lot and screeched to a stop. Their cargo beds were jammed with armed men, and amid a din of shouting, O’Malley heard the rattle of gunfire and the clinking cascade of shattering glass.
The marines at the back of the wedge spun around, closing ranks around O’Malley and Dawtry, firing at the attackers as the group pressed on toward the entrance. As they charged inside—their entry sped by the absence of the shattered glass wall—O’Malley glanced toward the reception desk out of habit, or in an attempt to reclaim some shred of normalcy or familiarity, some memory of the quiet, orderly place that hosted bookish astronomers from around the globe.
And, indeed, she saw a familiar figure, Antonio, behind the counter. He was half-hidden, barely visible, but as O’Malley neared, she saw him rise and lift a hand, as if in greeting. But the hand was gripping a pistol, and the pistol swung directly toward her. The muzzle flashed and a fist slammed into her chest, knocking her sideways. As she fell, she saw Dawtry swing the stubby rifle to horizontal. She heard three quick shots, and Antonio crumpled. Then Dawtry was kneeling beside her, his face close to hers. “Megan, Jesus, can you hear me? Are you hurt?”
She was too dazed to reply—too dazed even to know if she was hurt—so he ran his eyes up and down her body quickly, and then again more slowly. “I don’t see any blood,” he said. “Do you feel pain anywhere?”
She blinked, shook her head to clear the fog, and took a quick inventory. “My right side. Middle of my rib cage. Feels like I got kicked by a mule.”
He moved her arm so he could take a better look, then reached down and tugged at something. She grunted in pain. “You got kicked by a slug,” he said, holding up a mushroom-shaped lump of copper and lead. “Thank God for the vest.”
Her eyes widened. “Amen,” she agreed. “Like you said, good to have it if you need it.” She gathered her feet beneath her. “Help me up.”
“You sure you’re ready?”
“Gotta be.” She grabbed his hands, and he hoisted her to her feet. “Ow, shit,” she said. “They don’t tell you about the pain when you sign up for astronomy.” Outside, the gunfire was tailing off—no longer a hail of gunfire but intermittent volleys and individual shots instead. Inside, the Residencia was still and quiet, as if the place were deserted or holding its breath.
The marines’ leader appeared in front of them, scrutinizing O’Malley closely. “You okay?”
“Feeling fine. Feeling lucky. Ready to go.” She pointed. “The teleconference room’s that way. Two doors down. The control booth, with the computers and video uplink, is behind door number three.” He nodded and signaled his men, and they scurried down the hall at a half crouch.
Dawtry laid a restraining hand on O’Malley’s arm. She turned to him and shook her head. “I gotta go, Chip. You coming?”
“Christ,” he said. “Of course.”
They followed the marines, who had taken up positions in the hallway outside the teleconference studio. Through a large window, O’Malley saw the profile of a man wearing a white robe, a white turban, and a white prayer shawl. A full gray beard extended below his collarbones, and for a moment O’Malley thought she was seeing the ghost of Osama bin Laden—an effect, she realized, that was almost certainly intentional. Dawtry tapped her to get her attention, then mouthed, “al-Zawahiri.”
The man was looking into a camera lens and speaking, and a small speaker in the hallway relayed his words. “. . . and so I tell you that you are doomed. Your sins are an abomination, and the wrath of Allah has grown mighty.” Behind him, O’Malley could see part of a backdrop—a projection screen—and with a start, she realized that what was projected on the screen was New York Harbor. “And in his wrath, Allah is sending a great wave of vengeance, a wave that will crash down upon you with all the force of your own wickedness.” As O’Malley watched in horror, a gigantic tsunami reared up and smashed into the city, and the great skyscrapers shattered, some of them—including Freedom Tower—toppling like bowling pins. O’Malley cried out, “No!” and as if her cry were a signal, al-Zawahiri shouted, “Allahu akbar—Allah is great! Death to the West!” and the marines stormed the studio, and gunmen swarmed from the control booth, and the building erupted again in gunfire.
Once more O’Malley was knocked off her feet. This time, after the initial impact, she felt a great weight pressing down upon her, making it impossibl
e to breathe. Is this what dying feels like? she wondered. Her limbs were losing sensation—one arm was wrapped around her head at an odd angle, across her mouth, but when she tried to move it, it did not respond, and when she thrashed her head against it, the arm registered no feeling.
Only then did she notice the dark, coarse hair on the back of the hand. Her mind spun, wildly disoriented, before the realization hit: That’s not my arm. That’s someone else’s arm. The arm of a dead guy on top of me.
The dead guy moved suddenly, the arm unwinding from across her face; the two-hundred-pound deadweight pressing her down shifted and lightened. The dead guy was Dawtry, but he wasn’t dead. His face swam into her field of view, close and out of focus. Even blurry, he looked worried. “You okay?”
“I might be shot,” she said. “Something walloped me really hard.”
“That was me. Sorry.”
“You hit me?”
“Tackled, more like. I kept yelling, ‘Get down,’ but you kept standing up. Tackling seemed like the best option, under the circumstances.”
She processed this. “And you laid on top of me to protect me?”
“I tried to hide underneath,” he said, “but you were too heavy.”
She smacked him in the chest. “Ow,” she said. “That vest hurts.”
“Serves you right. When will you learn? Use your words, not your fists.”
“Can we get up now?”
“Let me see.” He raised his head and peered around. The shooting had stopped, and an eerie silence had taken its place. “Sergeant? All clear?”
“Yes, sir. All clear.”
“Help me up?” she said again, and again he hauled her to her feet. “So, help me figure out what we were seeing. I mean, obviously, the footage of the wave hitting New York was simulated, but the message—was that a live feed, or were they recording?”
“Good question. Sergeant? Can you ask Captain Stark if they’re monitoring transmissions?”
The sergeant nodded, and they saw him talking into his mic, evidently on a different frequency from the one their headsets were receiving. A moment later he signaled to them. “Nothing. Must’ve been a taping session.”
“Thank God,” said Dawtry. “I’d hate to think that was going out live to the world. Imagine the panic in New York.”
O’Malley nodded. “Awful.” But something was nagging at her. She looked through the window—or, rather, the opening where a window had once been—into the studio. A half dozen bodies were strewn around the room, most of them crumpled on the floor, but two—al-Zawahiri and a guard—sprawled across the conference table in spreading puddles of bright red. Carmine red. Only not. The biting smell of cordite hung heavy in the air, overlaid with the metallic, coppery tang of blood. O’Malley moved slowly past the studio, still unsure what was tugging at the sleeve of her mind. Something in the control room. But what? A body lay across the doorway, the legs in the hall, the torso and arms and what remained of the head spilling into the control room. Averting her eyes, she stepped over the body and into the room.
Another body lay slumped on the control console, one hand still resting atop a computer mouse. A small hole and a large circle of blood marked the center of the dead man’s back. Fighting back nausea, O’Malley leaned over the corpse and stared at the computer screen. What she saw made her blood run cold. “Chip!” she screamed.
Dawtry leaped through the doorway and reached her in a second. She pointed at the screen. “Upload in progress,” the display read. A solid blue bar extended across much of the screen, expanding from left to right. Beneath the bar, fleeting numbers indicated the number of seconds remaining until the upload was complete: “30 seconds remaining”; “20 seconds remaining”; “10 seconds remaining.” “Stop, stop, stop,” she pleaded, frantically jabbing the escape key and control-Q and control-alt-delete. The upload bar grew wider: “5 seconds remaining.” “No no no,” she yelled at the screen. “Don’t you fucking do it!” In desperation she reached behind the console. Her fingers found a cluster of cables, and with a final “No!” she clutched them and yanked with all her strength.
The bar stopped moving. O’Malley held her breath and silently counted: One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi. When she reached five Mississippi, she closed her eyes. Dawtry’s arms encircled her from behind, and when she heard his sharp intake of breath, her eyes flew open. “Upload Paused,” the screen informed them. “Resume and Complete?”
“Over my dead body,” she muttered. She lifted the dead man’s hand off the mouse, moved the cursor to the “No” button, and clicked. “Take that, motherfucker.”
The upload bar flickered, then vanished, replaced by a pair of flashing words: “Upload Aborted.”
O’Malley sagged and would have fallen, but Dawtry held her up.
The radio crackled in her ear. “Now at three thousand three hundred and level,” came the disembodied voice of the drone pilot. “Heading zero eight seven degrees. Distance to target, two miles. Laser is locked, weapon is active. Firing in three, two, one. Rifle rifle rifle—missile away. Flight time, seven seconds.” Again O’Malley counted, and again she held her breath. At seven Mississippi she turned to Dawtry, searching his eyes for more information—or more hope—than she possessed. But his gaze mirrored her own uncertainty and fear.
“Contact lost,” the pilot reported. “Repeat, contact lost. I guess that one was a dud.”
“Shoot again,” said Captain Stark.
“Roger, Captain, but I have to circle around and reposition. I’m getting a terrain warning.”
“Shit,” Dawtry muttered.
O’Malley wiggled free and hit her transmit button again. “It’s O’Malley,” she said urgently.
“Stark here. Go ahead, Doctor.”
“Check the seismometers.”
“Say again?”
“Check the seismometers. See if they’re showing an event just now.”
They heard background noise, then a whoop from the captain. “Bingo,” he said. “Five seconds after we lost contact, something rang that island like a bell. Coordinates put it at the site of the latest ripple shot. That Hellfire made it all the way in—it took out the nuke! That’s good shooting, Lieutenant. Damn good shooting.”
Dawtry grabbed O’Malley by the shoulders, his eyes wide. “We did it, Megan! By God, we did it!” He leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. All around them, marines cheered and whistled, perhaps because the mission had succeeded, perhaps because of the show Dawtry and O’Malley were putting on.
She pulled away, flushing from the attention or from the kiss—or from both. The sergeant gave them a nod, then stepped close. “Ma’am? Sir? There’s something in the other room you might want to see.”
O’Malley shot Dawtry a puzzled look; he responded with an equally puzzled shrug.
They followed him into the studio, picking their way around the fallen bodies and pools of blood. The sergeant nodded at the corpse of al-Zawahiri.
Dawtry leaned over the body and gave a low whistle. He straightened and shook his head. “I’ll be damned.”
“What?” O’Malley looked from Dawtry to the corpse and back again.
“Take a close look.” He stepped aside to give her better access.
Overcoming repugnance and nausea, O’Malley forced herself to move closer, to look closer. When she saw it, she gasped. “The beard’s a fake,” she said.
“Five bucks says the prayer bump on his forehead’s bogus, too,” Dawtry said. “A wad of Silly Putty and some makeup.”
“But why?”
Dawtry shrugged. “Wild-ass guess? A smoke screen for Putin. Let the jihadists take the credit and the blame, without putting al-Zawahiri—the real one—in harm’s way.”
Suddenly the radio clicked and crackled again. “Dr. O’Malley?” Stark’s voice no longer sounded jubilant. His voice sounded urgent and grim.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Bad news. We’ve just picked up some r
adio intercepts. Best our analysts can tell, there’s a plan B. A second device on the island.”
“What? Where?”
“That’s what we’re hoping you can tell us. A hundred years ago, that water tunnel was being dug from both ends, east and west, right?”
“That’s right, Captain. The plan was to meet in the middle.”
“Could they have put a second device on the other side of the island? The other leg of the tunnel?
O’Malley struggled to conjure up the faded map she had seen on the wall in the Cosmological Society. She felt panic trying to take over her brain—trying to shut down her brain—and she fought it. “No,” she said finally. “That leg of the tunnel doesn’t come close to the fault line. And they weren’t blasting on that side.”
“Then where?” demanded Stark. “Where else could it be?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” she said. “Seems like they’d’ve put everything they had in that tunnel. A surface blast wouldn’t shake hard enough to trigger the fault. The explosion needs to be deep underground. That’s why the tunnel—” She broke off with a gasp. “Oh my God.”
“What is it?”
“I’m so stupid,” she said. “The water tunnel’s near the center of the fault zone. But there’s another tunnel near the north end of the fault zone. Ready-made—no drilling required. It’s perfect.”
Wave of Terror Page 27