Sleeper Cell Super Boxset (37 page)

And there it was. The bobbing of the throat, the reddening of the eyes, the locked jaw and slight lip protrusion. Dylan was troubled. The weight of everything he’d been involved in was starting to wear down that pillar of resolve that was his justification for all the terrible atrocities he had committed.

“Oh, yes, Captain.” Perry felt the swell of excitement at the sight of Dylan’s shame. “The blood that has been spilled by your hands has soaked you to the bone. You’re dripping with it.”

Dylan kept his voice calm. “You can’t put that on me, Perry. Whatever sick, twisted games you think you’re playing won’t work. You talk about illusions? Well, you have the biggest one of all. The illusion that everything you come up with in your mind will work.”

“What’s in my mind is about to kill over one million people. Less than five minutes, Dylan. I’d go and speak to your handlers. Who knows? The city I pick might just be where the DEA has your family.” Before Dylan had a chance to respond, Perry disconnected the call. He leaned back in his seat, relishing the fact that Dylan was squirming in his chair, but was immediately interrupted by Ozier bursting through his door.

“We have a problem.”

***

Captain Neal Typhin waited on the edge of the base, tucked under the cover of camouflage and surrounded by his team of Navy SEALs. His eyes were focused on the scout team of terrorists just two hundred yards north of his location. The three-man team worked the area lazily, and Typhin’s finger itched over the trigger. But his orders were to wait until the official green light. He clicked the radio communication link at his neck. “Status check. All teams.”

“Red team. Check.”

“Green team. Check.”

“Yellow team. Check.”

“Blue team. Check.”

Typhin clicked the radio off.
Just give me the go, generals
. A cross dangled from his neck, and he clutched it with his free left hand and closed his eyes.

The pendant had been given to him by his grandfather. Typhin had come from a long line of soldiers. His grandfather had stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day and lived to tell the tale. Typhin had heard those stories at a very young age. There was so much blood that the ocean waves had turned crimson as they washed onto the shore.

Typhin’s father told stories that gave him worse nightmares, though. The jungles of Vietnam, the traps, the heat, the disease, the hell he found right here on earth. While his grandfather had managed to escape with most of his wits, his father had killed himself with a bottle of whiskey. And a shotgun shell under his chin.

It was Typhin’s mother who found him. His father had done it in Typhin’s bedroom. He was only six at the time, and he couldn’t grasp the concept of his father killing himself, what that meant, or why his mother moved the two of them out of the house.

Once Typhin was older and was able to wrap his head around what his father had done, he made a promise to himself that he would never become that weak. Ever. He brought the cross in his hands to his lips and kissed it then tucked it back under his shirt and Kevlar.

“Captain Typhin.” The radio crackled and broke his concentration on the terrorists in the distance. “This is Command.”

“Go ahead, Command.” Typhin kept his voice low.

“You have a green light. All units are clear to engage.”

“Roger that.” Typhin echoed the orders over the radio, and his unit of six men rose from the earth like the undead, sprinting to devour their victims. The mission called for stealth. Typhin had been debriefed on what the repercussions were if they failed, or if they were caught, and he didn’t plan on letting any of these rag fucks even smell him coming.

Every unit stationed around the base knew their assignment, and it was radio silence until the mission was complete. Typhin brought his team to a stop, letting the terrorists cluster next to a charred Humvee. He kept low, his steps soundless, listening to them chatter back and forth as two of his team members followed in the same footsteps.

All three of the terrorists’ backs were to the SEALs, and in one synchronized motion, the Americans brought their arms over the terrorists’ necks and twisted. With one quick snap, the Egyptians collapsed to the ground. Typhin led his men through the rest of the field, on the lookout for any more perimeter guards.

Each SEAL unit had been stationed strategically to take out the scout teams. The closer they all moved to the center of the base, where the entrance to the bunker was located, the thicker the cluster of terrorists became. The strike had to be in one swift motion. One radio call to Perry below, and the nuke would be launched.

Typhin and his men set up the machine guns, quietly loading the ammo into the automatic canisters and applying the suppressors to the muzzles. They set up four of them, all controlled by one computer, with heat-sensor targeting and enough bullets to take out anyone in their path.

All the units had been instructed to set them up, and with the combined rifles of each man there, they’d take down the rest of the terrorists in one assault. Typhin posted up at the mangled corner of a tank, the armor shredded and crumbly to the touch.

At least eighty terrorists patrolled the area outside the bunker, all of them armed, all of them close to a radio, and all of them looking for an excuse to use both. Typhin checked his watch, the seconds ticking by toward the moment of their strike. And then, with less than thirty seconds before the other teams were in place, Typhin felt his heart sink as he watched a tall, gangly, bearded Egyptian start screaming to his men, sending the base into a panic.

The base came alive with gunfire, the machine guns pumping round after round of lead that connected those bullets with heads, legs, arms, and torsos. Typhin brought the scope of his own rifle to one of the terrorists sprinting toward the bunker and felt the recoil of the shot as he added another kill to his file.

“We need to move to the bunker!” It was Typhin’s team in charge of the infiltration, and with the shitstorm circling them, they didn’t have a lot of time. With protocol already broken, he radioed the other SEAL units. “Cut machine gun fire. My team is moving in for the bunker infiltration.”

“Copy that.”

Typhin sprinted over the corpses on the ground, shooting anyone who was still alive and in his path. He and his team skidded to a stop just before the bunker and started unloading their gear. The blast door itself was easy enough to override, as they had the intel and knowledge on how to break in. The hard part was getting down there before Perry realized what was happening.

Once the lock was broken on the door, a signal would be sent down to the bunker. They couldn’t stop the signal from being triggered, but they could slow it down. Typhin’s lieutenant set the process into motion. “It’s all set, Captain.”

“All right, let’s move!” Typhin charged into the bunker’s elevator, the gunfire around the base still thundering like a terrible storm. All six of Typhin’s men made it inside, and the elevator descended. “Check your weapons. Make sure you’re fully loaded, and have your NVDs ready. Power will be out once we make it down.”

Typhin squeezed the pistol grip on his rifle, the leather of his gloves creaking with each pull. He closed his eyes, trying to control his heart rate.
Almost there.

The elevator suddenly jolted to a stop, causing Typhin and his men to waver. “Lieutenant, what the hell was that?”

The computer screen that the lieutenant had used scrambled then went black. “The elevator lost power, and I don’t have a connection into the network anymore.” He worked the keyboard, trying to get something back up, but it was for naught.

“Keep your heads together, sailors. Lieutenant, we need eyes on this now. What are our communications?”

“I can’t get through to Command. We’re too far below the surface now.”

With no contact and no way to reach the bunker, there wasn’t any way to stop Perry from launching a nuke, and he found himself praying that whatever city was hit wasn’t his. “Keep working on it, Lieutenant. Find a way around the problem.”

***

Perry watched the SEAL team in the elevator squirm on the security feed. Despite their attempt at slowing the alarm signal, it still managed to get to the bunker before the SEAL team could. Perry had to admit it was a clever play and a dangerous one. Ozier and the other officials eyed the elevator, licking their lips at the promise of such a close kill.

“Ozier,” Perry called out to the terrorist leader. “We’ll let them fidget a while longer before you and your men decide to have your way with them.” Perry pressed his finger to his lips, which then curled into a smile. “But I’m wondering if you would be more interested in prolonging their deaths. Make them feel the burn, so to speak?”

Ozier reciprocated Perry’s smile then barked orders to his men in Arabic. Perry fired up his laptop and reached out to Dylan, who answered immediately. “Captain, I’m disappointed in you.” Perry lowered his eyebrows, shaking his head. “I would have hoped you wouldn’t have seemed so eager to answer. At least wait till the second or third ring. It makes you look desperate.”

“We need more time, Perry.”

“We all need more time, Captain. I need more time on this earth to finish what I’ve started. And you need more time to be with your family. Time is the one constant in life that is endless, but sadly it does not wait for you or me.”

“Dammit, Perry, you’ve made your point. Stop this madness. Now!”

Perry rotated the camera on the laptop to show the full view of the SEALs in the elevator and made sure Dylan had a good look. “Do you remember what I told you about burning flesh when you gave me the key to all of this?”

The color drained away from Dylan’s cheeks, leaving them a pale shade of fleshy grey-white. “Perry, don’t do this.”

“How long did that smell linger in your nose? The first time is always the hardest, but it gets easier the more you experience it. Practice makes perfect, so they say.”

Dylan turned away from the laptop. “Stop the mission! Call them back!”

“Oh, I’m afraid it’s too late for them, Dylan.” The SEALs in the elevator scrambled, searching for a way out. Perry typed a few quick keystrokes, and the elevator restarted its descent. “I have to admit it was a bold move. Only U.S. officials could think they could kill an elephant with a swarm of ants.”

The elevator came to a stop, and the SEALs inside all aimed their weapons at the door, trying to coordinate for their attack. But what the SEALs had no way of seeing or knowing was that Ozier and his men had opened the air shaft of the elevator so they had a full view of the sailors. Nor did the SEALs know about the incendiary grenades clutched in Ozier’s hands.

“I hope you have the stomach to watch, Dylan. It’s the least you could do, since it was you who failed to deliver on my requests.” Perry picked up his radio, hiding his smile behind the device. “Do it.”

“Perry, no!” But Dylan’s screams were quickly drowned out by those of the SEALs. The dark screen lit up as the bombs ignited, flames spreading through the elevator. Orange, yellow, red, devouring everything inside. Some of the SEALs shot themselves, no longer able to withstand the heat and fire that consumed them, while the rest were too blinded with pain to be able to end it themselves.

The fires burned until the cloth and bodies had charred to black, leaving nothing but smoke and death in their wake. Perry watched Dylan’s reaction. To the man’s credit, he never looked away. Perhaps it was his way of punishing himself.

The clock on the wall finally beeped to zero, signaling the end of the two hours that Perry had given the government to withdraw the troops. “Captain, it looks as though our time is up. So have the officials come through with my request?”

Dylan’s eyes were red and wet. His face and body were frozen. “No.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell you what.” Perry pulled out the Taipan, the device still hooked up to Perry’s computer and in control of every nuclear missile on the base. “Since you’ve been such a good sport about all this, I’ll let you pick the city. That way you’ll know that your family is safe, at least for another two hours.”

“Fuck you.”

Defiance
. The final emotion in a hopeless situation. When everything else was beyond your control, you could still denounce any affiliation to your fate. “Even though you join us, you do not come willingly, even until the end. Commendable, Captain. You’re stronger than your ex-wife let on.”

A map of the United States was laid out on the table next to Perry, and he looked it over, tracing his fingers over the east coast then across the Midwest, until they finally rested on the California Coast. “I suppose San Francisco is as good a place to start as any.”

Dylan remained motionless as Perry entered the coordinates. Even through the hundreds of feet of earth and concrete, when the missile launched, Perry could feel the vibrations through the bunker. He closed his eyes, smiling, as he knew the people of San Francisco would soon feel the life-altering vibrations of the nuclear blast that would kill more than one million American citizens.

Chapter 8

Any evacuation protocols were useless. In less than sixty seconds, the entire city of San Francisco was leveled. Moringer struggled to keep his food down as news channels started broadcasting the story, and Homeland’s dirty laundry was now national news.

Moringer and the other directors did their best to dismiss a conspiracy, saying it was an isolated incident, but it didn’t take long for eyewitness reports just south of the North Dakota base from which the missile was launched to say that it had come from an American military base.

“When I saw the smoke, I figured it was some test. I knew about the Air Force base out there. But when I heard about what happened in San Francisco, I knew it wasn’t any drill.”

News broadcasts were full of townspeople, on air, giving their testimony of what they had seen. In the end, Moringer and the rest of the directors had no choice but to offer the media something in exchange for cooperation in helping restore order to the rest of the country.