Legacy (23 page)

“Disarm the charge,” she said, not looking directly at the bearded man but at the distant jet as it rounded onto the runway. The man saw her face go slack, and the vitality she had displayed only seconds before had drained away. For the first time he saw through the young woman’s expensive exterior and the ugliness that he saw was shocking. He nodded his head. Her eyes narrowed and she watched as the Event Group Learjet spooled up its engines to full takeoff power.

“You realize that the charge will be discovered when the mechanics check the aircraft?”

Laurel, instead of replying, just tossed the cell phone at the Mechanic, not caring if he caught it or not, and then she turned angrily away and stepped out into the misting air.

“Yes?” he said into the phone.

“Can you undo what you have arranged with that aircraft?” McCabe asked.

The Saudi-born Mechanic reached into his coveralls’ front pocket and brought out a small transmitter. He hit the single red button on its face.

“It is done,” he said into the phone.

“Now listen closely. You are never to engage in any wet work without my explicit confirmation of action. You are never to allow Laurel to … compromise herself again. She, like her father, needs to be protected. Do you understand?”

“Completely.”

“Now, I assume you used a remote device on Compton’s aircraft, yes?”

“This is correct,” the Mechanic said. He watched Laurel as she stared after the streaking Learjet on the runway.

“Do you have the ability to track the device?”

“Up to three thousand miles. I am tied into the Faith—” The man stopped himself before saying the name of his employer. “I am patched through a reliable satellite service.”

“Track-only for now. Gather your equipment and alert your ground personnel. We have duties in Russia and then down south in French Guiana.”

The Mechanic closed the phone without saying anything. He watched as Laurel fixed on him with a look of hatred and failure.

“You will have to fly home commercially, madam,” he said. “Or hire a plane. I have been ordered to another area of opportunity.”

Laurel stood in the light rain and stared at the Mechanic. Her hair was drenched and her beautiful features were obscured by the stringy strands of hair.

“It must be hell for a man like you to lose your faith in yourself,” she said. “So many of your brothers have been martyred and here you are, worse than your onetime enemies. Taking money from the people you once professed to despise, who you would have killed in a minute. You are worse than sad, and you hate me because I am a woman.” She took a step toward the Mechanic. “Well, at least I have the courage of my convictions. You have nothing. I expect McCabe knew what he was doing when he hired you. You just may make that martyrdom yet, but don’t expect your promised virgins in the afterlife. From what I understand they don’t reward cowards.”

The Mechanic watched her smile a lunatic’s grin as she turned to leave. He knew that she was right about him. For a man once feared by the Zionists and the entire Western world, he was a skeleton of his former self. A man who thought his brothers in Afghanistan were weak and without conviction, enough so that they thought him unstable. He was banished from the movement forever and now he found himself in the employ of pigs, the very same people he had sworn to annihilate. Laurel Rawlins’s words about achieving martyrdom echoed in his head and then just as quickly disappeared.

He turned away from the woman and watched the Learjet climb into the sky. Then he looked down at the remote device in his hand. He safed the system and placed it in his pocket to check the GPS later for the final destination of the aircraft. He smiled as he saw the landing gear retract on the expensive Learjet and pointed a finger at the plane. He made a motion as if he were pulling a trigger.

“Another time, my friend. Another time.”

5

BAIKONUR COSMODROME, SPACE LAUNCH FACILITY, KAZAKHSTAN

The jointly managed space facility run by the Russian Federal Space Agency and the Russian Space Forces was located 124 miles from the Aral Sea. Since the heyday of the Soviet space program, Baikonur Cosmodrome had seen occasional fits of activity, but since the Russian president openly declared that his countrymen would make an attempt at the investigation on the lunar surface, the facility had seen activity on a massive scale. Forty thousand workers had flooded into the old buildings in Kazakhstan, making the area near the sea once more a viable force in science and space exploration. A much needed transfusion of rubles and euros was flowing in.

As the world watched in wonder, the unveiling of Russia’s top secret lunar program, Ice Palace, began to take shape, and it came far faster than any Western government could ever have imagined.

The giant first stage of a rocket known as the Angara A7, the most powerful launch system the world had ever seen, was being transported to the assembly building three miles from where the mission would be launched. The great system was strapped down and prone on the tractor system, looking like a scene from
Gulliver’s Travels
as it crawled along at four miles per hour toward the waiting hands of its engineers. The seven RD-91 rocket motors were partially covered, but most of the bell funnel system was open for satellites the world over to see. Not since the massive engines of the Saturn V blasted America to the Moon had there been anything like the RD-91s.

The hydrogen-based rocket fuel was capable of creating almost double the thrust of anything Russian science had developed since the horrifying failures of its N series of rockets in the sixties and seventies. The new design was a source of pride for a Russian lunar program that was now twenty years ahead of schedule.

*   *   *

The man watched from two hundred yards away. His eyes studied the Russian air force security personnel who traveled beside the Angara A7 first stage. The security force was a hundred strong and each of the green-clad soldiers carried an automatic weapon. As the man watched, he could see massive gaps in the security line. The force of guards was just not enough to cover the giant launch platform as it moved out toward the assembly building on the huge caterpillar.

The man was dressed in an expensive Western suit. He pulled the equally expensive coat tightly around him as he turned to the shorter man at his side.

“Your martyrdom is assured. Your family will take with them through life the knowledge that your actions will benefit Allah and his glory. You are the man who will strike the first blow against the infidels and their mission to cast God into the shadows. Is your team prepared?”

The small man looked up at his benefactor. He knew the man as Azim Quaida, the former leader of the Islamic terrorist front Egyptian Islamic Jihad. In Western intelligence circles he was also known as the Mechanic.

“My men are ready. Allah be praised.”

“You may proceed with your mission. The attempt to belittle God shall end in this godless country.
La illahah illalah,
” he said with unbridled pride. There is no God but Allah.

The smaller man pulled his long coat around his thin frame. Tears streaked down his cheeks.

“Allah Akbar,”
he said proudly.

The larger man placed his hand on his shoulder. “You will be in heaven this day, and you will proudly say you struck the first blow against the humiliation of Allah.”

The smaller man turned away and gestured to the ten men who comprised his small unit. Several of them carried sound equipment and cameras. They would approach the slowly moving Angara A7, as many had in the past three hours, just a group of journalists using the new rights afforded to the Russian press.

They broke away into four different teams and separated into groups of two that would approach the crawler from both the near and far side. No chance would be taken that the experimental first stage could survive the attack. Two teams hurriedly crossed the massive fifteen-gauge tracks of the crawler and set themselves to filming on the far side. The other two knelt and started filming from the near side, taking care to zoom in on the proud Russian air force security element. The young men smiled, thinking that their pictures were being streamed live into the living rooms of friends, relatives, and lovers.

On the small knoll overlooking the scene, the Mechanic shook his head. He had once been as those below, but that was before the traitorous acts of men in a position of power, men who had sold out Jihad for safety in lands other than their own. Money was his driving force now. He felt a pang of guilt and shame at what he was doing to his loyal men. He turned away toward the small car that would carry him to the main gates of Baikonur. He knew the young men would carry out the task assigned to them. As he stepped into the backseat of the car he pulled out his cell phone and hit a speed-dial button.

“I suspect you are watching the glory of Russian science on your television?”

“I most assuredly am, as is the Reverend.”

The Mechanic pulled up the sleeve of his coat and looked at his watch.

“Well, my friend, say good-bye to the tranquil, patriotic scene on your television.”

McCabe didn’t comment, he just hung up.

The Mechanic rolled down the window and, instead of disconnecting, pushed several buttons. The built-in scrambler started shuffling phone numbers to the forefront of its computerized memory—numbers that would lead Russian intelligence to a place that would surprise no one, the Islamic terrorist Jihad against the West. McCabe had provided the phone, but the Mechanic hesitated for a brief moment, wondering if he was doing the right thing. He shook his head at the way he doubted the plan. He looked at the cell phone and saw that the power was on and its signal intact. The authorities should have no trouble in recovering the small phone. The bearded man smiled and tossed the cell phone through the open window and then tapped the seat in front of him, just before the car sped away.

*   *   *

The first hint of trouble caught the young security force off guard. The group of newspeople on the far side of the crawler gently placed their equipment on the ground, smiling as they did so. The forty-five-man security unit was taken totally by surprise as the men rushed the crawler and its heavy cargo, the Angara A7 booster rocket.

A lieutenant colonel reacted first, bringing out his holstered handgun just before the younger air force personnel around him jumped into action. He fired six quick shots in succession as the first four-man team rushed the crawler. Two men fell and a third was hit in the right knee. The man staggered and went down, but not before he pulled the striker on the forty pounds of C-4 that had been meticulously strapped to his torso. The explosion rocked the security detail, sending most to the ground with bleeding eardrums. The large detonation on the far side alerted security. The Angara rocked on its railway car, straining the straps that held it in place. It quickly settled, but not before the second team had made shocking progress toward the railcar.

The last man threw himself underneath the car, but not before the security force fired thirty rounds into the bodies of his fellow team members. One of the men rolled over onto his back and screamed, “God is great!” He was struggling to pull the small wire that would send an electrical charge into his package of C-4. Just as he finally located the thin wooden handle attached to the silverish wire, the large steel wheels of the train car ran over both his legs. The young boy screamed and tried to pull himself from the path of the giant crawler, but only managed to tear his legs away from his body. He skewered onto the tracks just as the next set of wheels ran down the center of his head and torso. The C-4 remained undetonated.

The second and last team didn’t seem as lucky at first. Security personnel downed all four of them almost as soon as they could aim their weapons. It looked as though the maddened attempt on the Angara A7 booster system had failed, but then the first of the wounded, the man closest to the crawler, looked to the sky and pulled the thin wire. The explosion rocked the ground and sent the railroad track twisting in all directions. The motion rocked the Angara A7. Its restraining straps broke free just as the fireball struck the polished white paint.

The security men, the gathered reporters, and the administrators of the Moon project were thrown back by the first attempt at stopping the lunar mission. However, more destruction was on its way. The second team, though down, detonated another eighty pounds of C-4 with their dying breaths, creating a blinding force of heated energy. This time the A7 booster didn’t stand a chance. The force of the blast struck it just as it ripped free from its restraints. The impact tore the booster rocket from the car and pushed it onto the far-side security element. The aluminum and copper housing of the A7 rolled over, crushing a hundred men and women.

Finally the paint on the booster caught fire as the electrically powered crawler exploded in a burst of flame and sparks, blasting into a frightening future.

EVENT GROUP COMPLEX, NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA.

Jack was fuming. Mendenhall, along with a bandaged Ryan and Carl, understood Jack’s frustration when the Event Group ground crew discovered the small bomb that had been placed on the nose wheel of the Learjet twenty hours after it had landed. The device was sitting on Jack’s desk and one member of the security team, Marine Corps Corporal Albert Espinoza, was in the process of dissecting its simple technology.