Gauntlet (55 page)

A
T THAT MOMENT, on the other side of the globe, Jennifer and Richard were in a far more dangerous race — one that held their lives in the balance. The sun was beginning to set. Chemicals were washing like tidal waves through Richard’s overtaxed body, and were nothing like the euphoric, pain-alleviating endorphins Catherine was currently enjoying. Jennifer was trying to make as much headway as possible, which was difficult, given Richard’s profoundly damaged state. The knowledge of the Emir’s attack against the USA, and the thought that she and Richard might be able to stop it, only served to add more stress to the situation.

A few moments earlier, the dogs had picked up their trail. The barking and howling was getting closer. Richard’s vision was increasingly impaired by dots of light, and he felt as though his heart was going to stop at any moment. He was terribly thirsty, and the pounding in his head would not go away, no matter how many pills he took. He clung steadfastly to the tibia, and rifled through his inner pockets as he ran, looking for more drugs. Jennifer swore at him, pushed him, cajoled him, and half carried him along the strip of pasture that ran parallel to the cliff edge. Occasionally she thought she heard helicopters in the distance, and sometimes almost overhead. The dogs were coming closer, and the helicopters were right on top of them. They were cornered, and they both knew it.

Jennifer put her arm around Richard. They came to a stop on a small knoll about 20 feet from the cliff edge. The sun was setting, and the mottled colors in the distant valley were gorgeous.

“Stunning view, isn’t it,” said Jennifer.

“As good as gets,” Richard replied.

“The dogs, maybe 200 or 300 feet away, I think.”

“Helicopters, down in the valley. I can’t see them, but I know the sound. I know the type,” Richard added. “Sound like Super Stallions to me. The Marines have those.” Despite the drugs coursing through his system, the rational side of his mind was still trying to keep track of what was going on.

“You know,” he continued, “I didn’t know that Pakistan had Super Stallions. Must have just bought some.” He was just starting to ramble. He knew it, but couldn’t stop himself once he’d started.

“A stunning view,” repeated Jennifer, trying to ignore the fact that Richard had drifted once again into a dazed silence. Instinctively she edged closer to him. Despite his presence, she’d never felt more alone, or more frightened. Was this where it would all end? With a drug-addicted burned-out Navy star who was clutching the perceived tibia of a dead friend, 10,000 miles from home? All her training, all her ambition, working so hard to become the number two at a bureau like Islamabad, before she was 30, and it was all coming down to this. Sitting on the edge of some grand canyon, in the lawless Federally Administered Tribal Areas in northwest Pakistan. Suddenly the dogs popped into view. They were maybe 300 feet away, and coming fast. Dobermans? Rottweilers? Didn’t matter much at this point, she realized. She tried to stop thinking at all.

T
HE AMERICAN MILITARY MACHINE had a large array of surveillance technology in place over the Sefid Koh. When it became apparent that Afghan and Pakistani heroin merchants were involved in the missing Semtex case, the number of electronic eyeballs there tripled. The Pentagon knew it was getting warm. If those were the men involved, then the Emir’s lair was almost certainly in the Sefid Koh, south of Jalalabad.

A total of ten Global Hawks were in the air, at the 30,000 to 40,000-foot sector. They had been equipped with surveillance cameras in the visual and infrared spectrums. Each Global Hawk was controlled by a crew of three pilots at Edwards Air Force Base in California. They were connected directly to the War Room in the Pentagon.

In addition to these assets, two Keyhole Satellites had directed their observational equipment toward the area. Flying above it all, in an orbit more than 30,000 miles outside the atmosphere, was ORION-3, with its massive telescoping cameras now pointed directly at the region as well. In total, there were more than ten flying video recorders trained on the Sefid Koh. If so much as a grasshopper moved, someone at the NSA or Pentagon would capture the event. Admiral Jackson noted to himself, walking through the Pentagon, that it took several rooms to display all the images. They’d need to create a new War Room. Then he realized that the Pentagon wouldn’t be large enough for such a central video display room. Maybe it was time they considered doing something new.

Kingston and his crew of blobologists at the NSA were in a war room of their own. While they focused their efforts on the three satellite returns, a smaller series of displays along one wall of their workroom showed the feeds from the Global Hawks.

The video feeds were also relayed to TTIC. Turbee and George had devised a way to display the feeds from the Global Hawks and satellites on the 101’s, when they weren’t being used for other data. They had also programmed the Atlas Screen to alternate between a detailed map of the Sefid Koh and the American Southwest, seeing as how those were the spheres of operation toward which the Semtex/terrorist threat was gravitating.

Of course, there were many other issues and events drifting through TTIC that day. Dan’s authority and capability as a leader had been compromised, and it was becoming obvious that if he wasn’t fired, the majority of his staff would leave. The nuclear issue had completely fizzled, and there was increasing anger that only a handful of people — Lance, Turbee, and at times Khasha — had been assigned to tracing the missing Semtex. Rhodes, Rahlson, and George had mutinied and were working on the Semtex problem when they could, despite Dan’s insistence that they concentrate on other things. The search for the Emir continued unabated, and information was pouring into the TTIC boardroom with respect to that. The search for Richard Lawrence and Jennifer Coe was also well under way, as Jennifer’s aborted call suggested that they knew the ultimate target of the looming terrorist attack.

Thirty minutes earlier, there had been a lucky break. It had been picked up first by Kingston and his staff at the NSA as they were monitoring the ORION-3 feed.

“Cranston, can you increase the magnification in the southwest quadrant? What is that?” Kingston asked.

“Looks to be two people moving along a ridge. No big deal. We see that a lot in there.”

“Good,” said Kingston. “Let’s zoom back out.” The magnification decreased by ten. “Hold it there, guys. I want to watch this for a while. This is Grand Central Station for the Afghan/Pakistani drug lords. We’re looking for drug smugglers. Maybe, just maybe, those are the guys we’re looking for.”

Kingston bided his time, and kept the live feed on his 42-inch plasma. He was slowly unwrapping a ham and cheese sandwich that his wife had prepared for him more than 24 hours earlier. He smiled to himself. She was long suffering, and he was lucky to have her.

More movement. It would have gone undetected by anyone lacking Kingston’s training and experience. One or two flashing pixels, at most. But there it was again. Just a flicker. “Cranston, zoom back in on the southwest quadrant. Just a factor of four, please.”

Cranston was happy to oblige. “Hey, you guys, look at this. What do you think is going on here?” Kingston asked his team.

“A search?” volunteered one.

“A chase, maybe?”

“How about a search and chase,” replied Kingston. “Look at these figures over here. People on foot? No... zoom in, Cranston. Aren’t those dogs?”

Cranston increased the magnification to the maximum possible. “You’re right, chief,” he said as the small workgroup clustered around the plasma screen.

“Zoom out a bit, fourfold, maybe,” ordered Kingston. The map zoomed back outward. The dogs became a small moving collection of dots. “Now look here. I would say that over here we have the handlers of those dogs. Behind them, more personnel. There seems to be a separate group over here. And there seems to be some vehicular activity in the area as well.”

He watched the screen for a few seconds, getting the big picture. “Zoom out a bit more. There. Do you know what we have here, gentlemen?”

There were no takers. Everyone waited breathlessly. “It’s a chase. These two people here are on the run. And it would appear that a good 100 people are after them, with dogs and off-road vehicles.” He sat back, seeking a different angle of the screen.

“Lawrence and Coe were tracking the source of the Emir’s messages,” he continued, after a moment. “They were going to see how Al Jazeera got those videos. They’ve disappeared. And here, we have two people being chased by dogs, men, Jeeps, and Lord knows what else. I think we’ve found them. This has got to go to the top right now.” He picked up his telephone to call the office of the Deputy Director of the NSA, was put through almost immediately to the Pentagon, and found himself speaking to Admiral Leonard Jackson.

Big Jack talked to the President directly. “It’s like this, sir. We think we’ve spotted Richard Lawrence and Jennifer Coe. They’re on the run somewhere in the Frontier Lands of western Pakistan. They probably have critical information about the Emir and those damned messages of his. They’re being pursued, as we speak, and may well die in the next ten minutes. We need the State Department to talk to the ambassadors for both Afghanistan and Pakistan. We need permission to scramble the choppers we have sitting at the Islamabad Airport. We need to do this now or there will be no point.”

Big Jack was lucky with the timing. Agreement was reached speedily, and the Marine helicopters were dispatched.

T
HE SOUNDS of the Super Stallions came closer, rising up from the valley floor. The dogs were 200 feet away. Then 100. They burst through the brush at the edge of the clearing. Four bloodhounds — no, six — charging at them at high speed. Richard heard the sound of the helicopters increasing rapidly, coming up from somewhere below the cliff edge. He closed his eyes and saw his parents again. He saw his two children, as infants, growing up, before everything went to hell. He saw the carrier crash — the dangerous crosswinds, the pitching sea, and the heaving deck of the
Super Sara.
The beautifully executed approach bedeviled by stormy seas. He almost had it. In conditions like that you went more on instinct than on what the HUD was telling you. He almost had it. A titch more left aileron, a touch of right elevator, a tiny bit of rudder, more thrust, no, less, no...

At the critical moment, the deck had drifted out of focus, just by a hair, just for an instant, but in those most dangerous of conditions, that had been enough. He overshot by a foot and landed long. The tail hook didn’t grab, and he crashed into a parked Tomcat. Richard, along with a good $20 million worth of fighter jets, had hit the black and roiling waters of the Indian Ocean. He was able to free himself from the cockpit as his Tomcat sunk below the surface. He felt the cold fingers of death surround his throat as he struggled for breath in the huge ocean swells. He was rescued, but then came the endless interviews, investigations, and hearings. The loss of flight privileges, the embarrassment, the anxiety, depression, and fatigue. He’d gone through a peer review, in which he was found wanting. The shame, psychological and physical anguish, and escalating drug use had come hard upon the heels of that decision. Soon after, there had been the divorce, the anger and rejection of his children, the bankruptcy, and ultimately the loss of all hope. Then there was a second marriage, a second divorce, and utter desolation. It was all too much.

“Fuck ’em all, Jen,” he said suddenly. “I’m done. I want the last 15 seconds of my life to be pleasurable. I’m done.” Holding tightly to his piece of bone, Richard took a few faltering steps toward the cliff edge, and jumped. He fell flat on his face.

“Fucked up my own suicide attempt,” he mumbled, curling into a fetal position in the dirt as the dogs closed in.

At that point the helicopters appeared, rising up from the valley floor before them. Jennifer turned to them, her hands raised in surrender. Then she saw the markings on the choppers. Americans. The Marines. They weren’t being captured, they were being rescued. She could scarcely believe the good luck, and stood mute for a moment. Then her training took over, and she broke into action, waving her arms, and pointing to the dogs rapidly closing in on them.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, we’ve got ’em,” said the Master Sergeant over the loudspeaker. He pointed to one of his men, who sprayed an ark of bullets from the mounted M240G machine gun, bolted to the helicopter floor, into the dogs. One was killed instantly, and the rest, either wounded or terrorized, turned tail and ran yelping back toward their masters. The M240G kept the pursuers at bay as the lead Super Stallion came to rest beside Richard’s limp body.

“It’s the Hoover Dam!” yelled Jennifer, struggling to be heard over the roar of the helicopters. “The Hoover Dam! The terrorists are going to destroy the Hoover Dam! That’s the sixth message!”

The officer was on the radio immediately, hooked by satellite to the Embassy at Islamabad. “Terrorists are going to blow the Hoover Dam,” he said, once he had a connection. “Let the Pentagon know.”

O
NCE THIS INFORMATION WAS OUT, it didn’t take long for it to be passed down the line. Islamabad called someone at the Pentagon, who called the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Langley, and the White House. From there the message went through offices like a row of stacked dominoes. It bounced down the chain of command of each arm of the military with lighting speed. The Intelligence Community knew almost immediately, as the message was beamed along at the speed of light, by fiber optic cable, laser, satellite, and telephone, by email, voicemail, and Blackberry and Treo message, from one department to the next. Within five minutes of Jennifer telling the Master Sergeant, most of the military higher-ups knew. The contingent of troops already patrolling the Hoover Dam was profoundly reinforced. Additional armaments, men, and material were moved from nearby Nellis, and the various bases in California. The President met with his National Security Advisor. The Southwestern states were brought under martial law within ten minutes of Jennifer’s announcement.

It was immediately apparent to Turbee that he had missed the obvious. This was how 4.5 tons of Semtex could destroy a city. They would blow up the Hoover Dam, not Las Vegas. With the dam gone, Las Vegas would be deprived of power and water. Without power to run the air conditioners, and without water, Las Vegas would return to the desert that it was. The city would die slowly. The buildings would remain, but they would be uninhabitable.

I
S HE OUT OF HIS FUCKING MIND?” shouted the President, addressing his National Security Advisor. “We have battalions of troops, helicopters, Marines, Army Reserve, boats, and fighter jets swarming all over the Hoover. How in the hell can he blow it up? And why haven’t we figured it out yet?”

All those assembled in the Situation Room were likewise perplexed. Within 20 minutes of Jennifer Coe’s news that the Hoover Dam was the target of the terrorist strike, the sixth message had hit the airwaves. All of the American networks were interrupting regular programming to run commentary on the Emir’s threat. Within hours? The Hoover Dam? After Message Five, the Hoover had become heavily fortified. After Jennifer’s warning, it had a greater level of protection assigned to it than the White House itself.

The Secretary of Defense was likewise perplexed. Perhaps a missile strike on the dam? The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs nixed that. It would have to be a huge missile, and there was no Intel of any sort about that. And in any event, the hit would need to be very precise, which meant highly sophisticated missile guidance systems, and there had been no indication of such a possibility. Perhaps it had been inserted into the dam itself, someone suggested. After all, with all of its complex diversion tunnels, intake and outtake works, and the powerhouse, the Hoover was a monstrous structure, much larger than it appeared to be in photographs.

“No way,” said Admiral Jackson, who was linked to the meeting by fiber optic line from the Pentagon. “We’ve had hundreds of people combing through every inch of that structure, and nothing has shown up.”

“Make them search again,” growled the President.

Admiral Jackson nodded in agreement, not saying that, with the fifth message, the search crews within the dam structure had doubled in number, and had now doubled again. “We will, sir, but there is no evidence of any Semtex in, on, or under that dam.”

“We’re missing something,” said the President. “God dammit, we’re missing something. The Emir must believe that he is actually going to do this. This bastard wants to boot the US in the balls, and become the next living legend for doing it. How the hell can we stop him?”

“What do you want us to do?” asked the Secretary of Defense. They were all looking at the President intently, waiting for their orders. They were ready to do anything to stop the tragedy, but they needed guidance. Ultimately, the burden rested with the President.

“Go to maximum mobilization, gentlemen. Martial law in the Southwest. Everything we can mobilize in that region should be mobilized. And, regrettably,” he added to his Chief of Staff, “regrettably, get the head of FEMA on the line. This is starting to look very, very ugly.”

T
HE PANDEMONIUM that always reigned in Las Vegas, which had multiplied since the fifth and then sixth messages, intensified with the President’s orders. What had been a bad situation became even worse. The outbound lanes of the freeways were clogged with traffic, and the Nevada Department of Transportation decided to flip all six lanes of the 15 and 95 freeways to outbound. The city’s emergency planners called such a reversal of traffic a “contra flow.” The military guys called it a clusterfuck. Not all exits and onramps were monitored and patrolled, and there were invariably those individuals, drunk, doped, or just plain inattentive, for whom a routine drive to work was mindless and automatic, who failed to notice the change in traffic flow. The resulting accidents just added to the chaos. Ambulances and fire trucks began using the shoulders and even grass medians, trying to get through to those who needed their help. Trucks scattered into the desert surrounding the freeway, taking advantage of four-wheel drive to avoid the congestion.

Adding to the commotion were the low-flying squadrons of F-117’s and other jets coming from nearby Nellis Air Force Base. Military helicopters of every description were hovering in and about the strip. McCarron International Airport was jammed with passengers, all outgoing. Despite the usual American practice of grounding planes in times of crisis, the President had ordered that every form of transportation be utilized during the evacuation. The results were mixed. As the planes were filled and then packed almost to bursting, the airport stewards were forced to turn would-be passengers away more and more often, resulting in riots and violence. Airport rage, freeway rage, hotel rage, and bus rage were the order of the day. Tempers flared and moods were desperate.

The few vehicles entering Vegas were routinely stopped and searched. Crank calls multiplied, and overworked law enforcement agencies were stretched to the limit, some units working without any breaks, in heat that reached 110 degrees in the daytime. Search crews patrolled the sewers, the streets, the stores, and the casinos. Parked vehicles were towed. Towed vehicles were searched. There were many strokes and cardiac events, and the Lake Mead HMC, Sunrise, and other major medical centers began to feel the strain. For the first time in the city’s history, the slot machines were silent, and the card tables empty. The first stages of a terrorist attack were already underway. Terror ruled the city.

During the chaos of the evacuation, almost no one in Las Vegas had actually seen the airing of the sixth message. But they knew about it, and everyone had seen the fifth message. Public theories ran rampant as the stream of humanity leaving the city about how it would be destroyed. What would it be? A nuclear strike? An airliner plummeting into a casino? Buildings blown up? The Hoover destroyed? Anthrax or bubonic plague? Were they already infected? Were they already the walking dead? The public speculation was endless and, at the end of the day, pointless.

T
HE EMIR was well aware of these events, as he had an extensive network of informants. While he could not, for obvious security reasons, upload information in his tunnel computers, he could download. DVD’s of western newscasts were brought to him as they happened. He chuckled to himself. A twenty-minute videotaping, split into six equal parts, had brought an entire American city to her knees. Power. He had it. Maybe he should send out a DVD advising the world that he would take out New York as well, and then stand back and watch the fun. Of course, the whole world would go crazy, but only if he had credibility, if he had the power to deliver. That was why the messages were so vital. To advertise in advance that he was going to take out a city, and then in fact do it, and much more, would give him god-like status. In his visions, Mohammed had told him this — that he, the Emir, would be seated beside Mohammed in Paradise. He, the Emir, was the new Mohammed, the new sword of Islam, the next Saladin. This had been foretold, and it would come to pass.

I
DON’T GET IT, George,” said Turbee.

“What, little buddy?” asked George, staring avidly at his computer screens, in the workstation next to Turbee.

“We’ve got more than four tons of high explosives loose, in the hands of terrorists, in the American heartland,” Turbee responded. “The Emir has said that he’s going to take out the Hoover Dam, presumably using the Semtex. But it won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“There’s not enough of the stuff. Not enough punch,” said Turbee slowly, still trying to do the math.

“Come on, Turb. There are more than four tons of it. Look what a few ounces of it did on the Lockerbie 747 disaster. This stuff is powerful.”

“Yes, but I don’t think it’s powerful enough,” Turbee responded. “The Hoover is an absolutely massive structure. That Semtex will cause substantial damage, but I don’t see how it could possibly cause a catastrophic failure. Maybe some dams, but not the Hoover. And the Lockerbie thing, that was just placing the explosive in exactly the right spot. An ounce could do it if it were to take out the computers controlling the plane. But not this dam.”

“Are you sure, Turb?” asked George.

“Well, do you remember when all of this started, there was a betting pool in Vegas about how large the crater would be when the original 660 tons was detonated in the middle of the Libyan Sahara? I don’t normally bet, but I did in that case.”

“Yes, Turb, as I recall you came in second. Some housewife beat you by quite a bit.”

“That’s beside the point,” Turbee responded. “The blast was way bigger than anyone expected, because of the way they stacked the Semtex and put in the fuses. And don’t even get me started on the fact that they were 4.5 tons short. What I’m saying is that losing that bet pissed me off. I wanted to know why I’d lost, so I started doing some research about Semtex and what it could do. Read everything I could find about the damage it can cause. I think I’ve become a pretty good authority on the depths and diameters of craters created by bomb blasts. And there is absolutely no way that 4.5 tons of Semtex can take out that dam. No way.”

“Care to explain?”

“Well, George, for starters that dam is ridiculously over-engineered. It’s unbelievably massive, because when it was built it was a project to kick start things during the Great Depression. At its base it’s more than 600 feet thick. That’s 600 feet of solid concrete and steel.”

“Yes. And?”

“According to the site dedicated to the dam, it has a unique design feature. It’s built out of gigantic concrete and steel blocks.”

“How do you mean, Turb?” This came from Rahlson. He’d been following the conversation from the next workstation over, and decided to get involved.

“The dam was built in blocks or vertical columns, varying in size from about 60 feet square at the upstream face of the dam to about 25 feet square at the downstream face. Adjacent columns were locked together by a system of vertical keys on the radial joints and horizontal keys on the circumferential joints.”

“Go on,” urged Rahlson.

“Sure. So the Hoover dam is constructed with interconnected concrete blocks. Then cement grout was forced into the spaces created between the blocks. The contraction of the cooled concrete between the blocks formed a very strong monolithic structure.”

“How would it compare to other large dams built around the world?” asked George.

“I’m not an expert, but I’ve been checking on the Internet. Many dams have central cores that are filled with earth or stone. The Hoover doesn’t. It’s solid reinforced concrete through and through. Four and a half tons of Semtex might put a hole 20 feet deep and 50 or 60 feet across, but that’s it.”

“You’re saying that the stolen Semtex cannot in and of itself cause the catastrophic failure of the Hoover?” Rahlson asked slowly.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Unless the Semtex were somehow taken inside the dam, through one of its internal piping structures, and even then, it’s doubtful,” Turbee added. “There is no way that Semtex can do what the Emir says.”

“The Emir’s people can’t take anything inside Black and Boulder Canyons,” said Rahlson, referring to the two canyons that separated the dam from Lake Mead. “There are dozens of patrol boats and submarines in the water there. The canyons, and the dam intake towers, are protected like Fort Knox. He cannot take that volume of Semtex into the inner workings of the dam.”

Rahlson called Dan over, and explained the essence of the conversation to him.

“You’re saying, kid, that there’s not enough Semtex blow the dam?” Dan asked.

“Yes, sir, I’m saying that.”

“Well there you go, it’s just as I said. It must be a nuclear attack after all,” said Dan smugly.

“I don’t think so, Dan,” responded Turbee. “There has been zero real Intel about that. It was all a ruse.”

“Then what the hell are we missing?” Dan shouted.

“I don’t know, sir, I just don’t know.” Turbee looked at the close-up of the Hoover that George had displayed on the Atlas Screen. “Pull it back a bit, George,” he said. “I want an overview. I want to look at it from a distance for awhile. We’re missing something.” He got up on top of his workstation, stood up, crossed his arms in front of him, and gazed, as if in a trance, at the Hoover Dam and the areas surrounding it.

It had been a miniature submarine that brought the Semtex to the wharf in Stewart, BC. The Hoover Dam was now the Emir’s target. Again, the presence of water. Mulling these things over, his mind returned to the first message that Goldberg had delivered. The attack would be “by water,” Goldberg had said. The Karachi Star Line was involved, somehow. Drug smugglers were involved, and their preferred method of transporting drugs was by water. There had to be something else. What was he missing?