Oath to Defend (22 page)

53

After the two four-man teams were introduced and Vazquez was enthusiastically welcomed as the only ten-goal polo player appearing in America at the time, the match began. Polo players rank each other, based on each player’s importance to his team, and it was easy for the spectators to see why Marco Vazquez was a star. From the moment the umpire rolled the ball down the line between the two teams as they faced off in the center of the field, Vazquez and his light gray pony dominated the action.

He rode aggressively, checking opposing players with abandon and wielding his whippy mallet with deadly accuracy. By the end of the first seven-minute chukker, his team was leading 2-0, and he had scored both goals.

After a change of ponies between the first and second chukker, Vazquez scaled down his aggressiveness in recognition of the skill level of the amateurs he was schooling, but he appeared to be enjoying the match. If he was riding close to the edge of the boarded field after a score, he smiled at his admirers, especially the beautiful women. He also took time to compliment his amateur opponents when they played well, and joked with his new teammates.

By halftime, Vazquez’s team was ahead by five goals, 6-1. He rode his pony to his trailer and dismounted. Spectators immediately stepped over the twelve-inch sideboards and began the traditional divot stomp to replace the turf torn up by the thundering horses.

Drake and Liz walked behind the main group of stompers, who were eager to get across the field and as close to the polo players and their ponies as possible. Some had their programs in hand to get Vazquez’s autograph. He was checking the saddle on his fourth pony as Drake and Liz approached with the other spectators.

Drake kept his eyes on Vazquez in case he decided to slip away to avoid meeting with his fans. Instead of fleeing, however, the polo star finished cinching the saddle, then stepped around his pony to greet the closest stomper.

That step would be his last.

An explosion blasted through the chatter on the field. It was followed by a moment of shocked silence before the cries of the injured and dying began.

At the sound of the blast, Drake had instinctively thrown his arm around Liz’s waist and pulled her to the ground. The explosion had sounded familiar to him, like roadside IEDs he’d heard in Afghanistan. As he looked at the carnage around him, he saw blood flowing from wounds in people directly ahead of him. The blast wave and the shrapnel that had cut through the divot stompers on the polo field seemed to have come from a location somewhere near Vazquez’s trailer.

“Are you hit?” he yelled at Liz, his ears still ringing from the blast.

She shook her head and started to get up, but Drake pulled her back down. He could see she was disoriented, but he also knew terrorists liked to use a second blast to kill anyone surviving the first one.

To his left, he could see Casey searching the perimeter of the polo field for a threat assessment. He didn’t appear to have been hit and cautiously got to his feet, along with Green. A quick look over his shoulder to his secretary, Margo, and her husband, who were also getting up, told Drake they had all survived without suffering any major injuries.

Carefully rising to his feet, Drake looked toward where Marco Vazquez had been standing. The divot stompers nearest his trailer weren’t moving. They were probably dead. The kill zone, vectoring outward from Vazquez’s trailer, appeared to have reached almost half way across the polo field. Drake couldn’t see the polo star, but the pony he’d been readying for the next chukker had been cut down by the blast.

“I’m going to find Vazquez,” he shouted to Liz. “Make sure help is on the way.”

He ran wide of the bodies of the dead and wounded, seeing mangled bodies and missing body parts as he got closer, until he reached Vazquez’s dead pony. It was lying on its side with a massive wound the length of its body. Blood was flowing into a widening pool that darkened the green grass around the animal.

Vazquez was trapped under his pony, lying face down and struggling to breathe.

Drake knelt down. He could see that the young man’s eyes were open.

“Vazquez, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” came the response through clinched teeth.

“I’ll get help. Hold on.”

“Don’t…go,” Vazquez gasped. “Bomb…ranch.”

“What?” Drake leaned closer to hear over the cries and noise around them.

“Bomb…ranch.” He groaned, then pink bubbles slipped through his lips. “Dam…in mountains.”

“Who has a bomb?” Drake shouted.

Vazquez’s eyes fluttered, then fixed in a stare.

When there was no response to his question, Drake reached down. He couldn’t find a pulse.

Standing up again, he looked for Casey and Liz across the field where he left them. Liz was kneeling beside a body near the middle of the field, waving for help from the growing number of surviving volunteers rushing to help. He saw Casey on his cell phone. He was standing in the worst of the destruction. Drake knew he was taking command and directing the responders who were needed so badly.

As he looked over the familiar scene of innocents suffering, Drake felt sickened by the waste. Those who survived would be scarred for life by their memory of this day, and if they lost loved ones or friends, the wounds might never heal. The dead were dead. But some had been so gruesomely cut down that those who mourned them would forever have nightmares after seeing what little remained of them.

Drake ran to Casey and waited for him to finish his call.

“Vazquez is dead,” he said when Casey took the phone from his ear. “He was crushed when his pony fell on him.”

“He must have been right at the blast’s ground zero,” Casey said. “I’m surprised there was anything left of him.”

“His pony shielded him. But he was alive long enough to say there’s a bomb at the ranch and something about a dam in the mountains.”

Casey stared at his friend. “So he was involved in smuggling the thing here. I’ll be damned. You were right.”

“We need to get to the ranch before the road is blocked by emergency responders and ambulances. Have Larry see if he can learn anything from Vazquez’s trailer. I’ll tell Liz what we’re doing and meet you at my car.”

Liz was still helping a young woman lying on her back with a partially severed right arm. She was being examined by a volunteer who must have had medical training, judging by the way he was working to stop her bleeding. The woman’s eyes were fixed and looking up at the sky, as if she were trying to ignore looking at what the doctor was doing for her. She’d be lucky, Drake knew, if losing her arm was the worst that happened to her. He’d seen soldiers die in shock with that look on their faces.

“Liz,” he said, kneeling down beside her, “I’m leaving with Mike. Vazquez’s dead, but he told me there’s a bomb at the ranch and something about a dam in the mountains. We may have found it.”

Liz pounded the turf. “Yes! I’ll call and get the place surrounded.”

“Hold on,” Drake said. “I said we
may
have found it. Let me check with Ricardo and Billy. They’re out there. Maybe they’ve seen something. We can’t send in the cavalry on a wild goose chase. I’m meeting Mike at my car. I’ll call Ricardo from there. You find Paul and Margo and tell them to help Larry.”

As he sprinted to his car he heard the approaching sound of sirens in the distance.

54

Saleem was watching the chaos from the safety of his black Escalade, which was parked near the west end of the polo field. He had arrived early so he would have a clear view of Vazquez’s trailer when the time came. Then, when the polo match was half over, and the silly divot stompers were marching around stomping divots (as if the horses really cared if there were divots), he waited until Vazquez was standing beside his horse trailer. He had placed the C4 charge in an outside storage compartment under the recessed D rings where Vazquez tied his polo ponies. The charge had been shaped to maximize its shock wave in the area where Vazquez was likely to be standing and to carry on from there, shooting out enough shrapnel to kill as many people as possible.

All Saleem had to do was wait for the right moment to enter the three-digit code on his cell phone.
Good riddance, pampered playboy
.

His only regret was that no one would ever know that his group had carried out this attack. It was not yet time to announce that Hezbollah was poised and ready to strike. That time would come, however, when there were bigger issues involved, when the leaders decided to show the America just how vulnerable it was. This was a joint operation with Barak and the Brotherhood, he told himself, so let them take the credit, and the blowback if their plan with the nuclear device was carried out. He knew how America had reacted after 9/11. Let Egypt be the next Afghanistan and Barak the next bin Laden. He would like to stick around for awhile.

When he saw the attorney run to his car in the parking lot, he decided it was time to report to Barak. He could hear the sound of sirens in the distance, so he closed his car window.

“It’s done,” he reported.

“Describe the scene for me,” Barak said.

“Vazquez is dead. He should have been vaporized, but he moved around his horse at the last moment, so he was trapped under it. There are lots of dead and wounded and people are running around trying to help the survivors. I can hear the sirens coming. I expect the first responders will arrive any minute.”

“Are you sure Vazquez is dead?”

“That attorney I followed rushed over to him. I watched the whole thing. He left Vazquez when he couldn’t find a pulse.” Saleem waited for Barak to say something.

“What is the attorney doing now?” Barak finally asked.

“He just ran to his car. He’s standing beside it using his phone.”

After another pause, Barak gave Saleem his final instructions. “Call your man at the ranch and make sure the team has left. Go meet him as we planned. Abandon the Escalade before you leave for Reno. You have done well, Saleem. This diversion will keep everyone looking north while we strike to the south.”

“Thank you, Barak. Allah willing, we will work together again. When are you leaving?”

“
Inshallah
, my young friend,
Inshallah
.
I will leave as soon as I hear the device has been delivered.”

Before Saleem left the polo ranch and just before the first of the EMT fire engines pulled in, he made a call to report when Barak would be leaving.

55

While Drake was waiting beside his Porsche for Casey, he called Gonzalez.

“Yes, sir,” the former sergeant answered.

“Ricardo, Vazquez has been killed. Before he died, he said there was a bomb at the ranch. Have you seen anything that would support that?”

“We haven’t seen anything that looks like a bomb. Or the nuclear device you’ve been looking for. The only activity here has been those four Muslims taking off on their Harleys twenty minutes ago.”

“Could they have the bomb?”

“Only if it would fit in the trailer one of the Harleys was pulling.”

“Vazquez also said something about a dam in the mountains. You’re familiar with demolition work. Could they have a demolition device in that trailer that would take out a dam?”

“If they had a Special Atomic Demolition Munition, a SADM,” Gonzalez said, “like the ones the army developed in the 1960s, it might fit in that trailer. The army used to train troops to parachute into Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe to take out power plants, bridges, and dams. But there’s no way these guys could get their hands on a SADM.”

“It doesn’t have to be one of ours,” Drake said. “Something set off our nuclear detection system in San Diego, and I’ll bet that’s what they have in that trailer. How long ago did you say the bikers left?”

“They left at eleven-thirty. Twenty minutes ago.”

“That’s exactly when the bomb here exploded,” Drake said. “Which direction were they headed in?”

“They turned south when they left the ranch.”

“Follow them, Ricardo. We’ll use Mike’s helicopter and see if we can get ahead of them.”

Drake waved at Casey, who was jogging toward him. “Double time, partner!” he shouted. “We need to leave!”

With Casey still fastening his seat belt, Drake explained his plan as he drove as fast as he could between the rows of parked cars in the field that served as the parking lot. “Ricardo says Vazquez’s Muslim groomers left the ranch on their Harleys twenty minutes ago, right when that bomb exploded. One of the Harleys was pulling a trailer big enough to conceal a nuclear demolition munition.”

He glanced back at the chaos on the polo field. “This was all a diversion, Mike. If Liz can find out what dam they might be targeting, we can use your Relentless and head them off.”

“They’re going to have quite a head start,” Casey replied. “We’re thirty minutes north of the airport at Sunriver.”

“Then call Paul,” Drake said. “See if he can get someone in the sheriff’s department to escort us to Sunriver. Following a set of flashing lights will cut the time in half. I’ll call Liz and have her try to locate the dam they’re headed for.”

While Casey was calling Benning, Drake put his iPhone in its black leather mount on the dash. As soon as Casey hung up, he put them on speaker and called Liz.

“Liz,” he said as soon as she picked up, “Ricardo says Vazquez’s so-called groomers left the ranch on their Harleys twenty minutes ago. At the same time as the bomb went off. One of the Harleys was pulling a trailer big enough to conceal a demolition nuke, the kind our army developed in the 1960s. The Russians have the same kind of munition. Can you get someone in your shop to locate the dam they’re most likely targeting?”

“Which way were they headed?” she asked.

“Ricardo said they turned south. He and Billy will try and catch up with them, but they’ll be way behind.”

“If the dam is in the mountains that will narrow it down. But why are they going after a dam? I expected them to hit a populated area, not something in the mountains.”

The answer came to them both at the same time.

“Oh, my God,” Liz said first. “They’re going to blow a dam and flood everything below it.”

“Can that happen if they just blow one dam?” Drake asked.

“If they cause the right dam to fail, yes, it certainly can. The wall of water would hit the dam below it and cause that dam to fail, and the next one, and so on. We’ve done inundation studies that identify the areas that are most vulnerable. That may help us narrow things down.”

“Call me as soon as you have the dam located,” Drake said. “We’re racing to Sunriver. We’ll head them off in Mike’s helicopter.”

“And then what? Will you be able to stop them?”

Before Drake could reply, Casey spoke up. “Liz, this is Mike. I have some weapons on board, we’ll do our best.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

Drake drove south on Highway 97 flashing his headlights to clear the road, but most of the drivers didn’t pull off the road like they would for the flashing lights of a police car or ambulance. As they approached the outskirts of Bend, they were averaging only twenty miles an hour above the posted speed limit.

“Look up ahead,” Casey said.

Two patrol cars were pulled off the side of the road. When Drake’s Porsche came into view, the first of the two laid down two long black streaks of burnt rubber as it pulled out. The second car also pulled out and fell in behind them.

In less than ten seconds, the three-car convoy was traveling ninety miles an hour. When they were clear of highway traffic, their speed was closer to a hundred and ten miles an hour.

“Damn, these boys are good,” Casey said.

“They are,” Drake said as they passed two sixteen-wheelers that had pulled as far as they could onto the shoulder to let them by. “Paul came through. Let’s hope Liz does, too. We have to find the dam.”

When they left the city’s southern limits, their speed increased to nearly a hundred and thirty miles an hour. Despite the circumstances, Drake had a smile on his face. Speed was his secret addiction. His buddy seemed to be enjoying the ride as well.

“Next year,” Drake casually remarked, “I’m thinking about entering the Silver State Classic Challenge. You interested in riding shotgun?”

“Is that the race in Nevada where they close ninety miles of the highway and let you drive as fast as you can?”

“That’s the one.”

“Sign me up. I might even bring the 1970 Hemi ’Cuda I’m restoring. Probably have to enter it in a faster class than you enter, though.”

Before Drake could respond to the challenge that had just been laid down, his cell phone buzzed.

“Adam,” Liz began, “we think the dam is eighty-five miles southwest of Bend in the Cascades. Inundation maps from the Army Corps of Engineers predict that if the highest dam fails, two other dams below it will also fail. There will be a wall of water rushing down that will be a hundred feet high by the time it reaches the valley floor. It’ll be like a tsunami. Worst-case scenario is that a hundred thousand people will die in the flood.”

“We’re almost to Sunriver,” Drake replied. “As soon as we’re airborne, we’ll need the GPS coordinates for the dam. Is the dam defended in any way?”

“There are two employees there. There’s a security fence, but that won’t keep anyone out who’s prepared to get through it. Those guys and their dam are sitting ducks.”

“If we don’t get there in time,” Casey asked, “how much warning will the people down river have?”

“The first city will have an hour, maybe four hours for the cities on the valley floor. It’s not enough time to evacuate those cities. This will be a catastrophe!”

“We’ll just have to get there in time, Drake said. “Warn the guys at the dam we’re coming and have someone ready to collect that nuke. That’s one bomb I don’t want to have anything to do with.”