Targets of Opportunity (43 page)

————

When Byrnes returned to the meeting he wasted no time advancing Sandor’s concerns, giving his agent’s analysis and some of his own thinking.

“The information we received from Ahmad Jaber has been disappointing, to say the least. But he has told us that his man, Seyed Asghari, believed there were two targets. In fact, the attack on Baytown may be more a ploy than a real threat, if you carry this thinking to its logical conclusion.”

“You’re not suggesting we pull back from the Baytown operation,” the man from Homeland Security said.

“Quite the contrary,” Byrnes said. “The more we learn the more we need to make it appear we’re buying their primary target. We need to make it obvious we are shoring up the defenses at Baytown.”

“What about the surveillance you’ve requested?” asked the colonel from the DOD. “With Fort Oscar out and the hurricane coming, it’s going to be difficult to monitor movement in and out of the Gulf.”

“Difficult but not impossible. Everything points to some sort of attack by sea, or at least the transport of weapons by sea. We need to keep the fleet on call.”

An admiral from the Joint Chiefs nodded, then reminded them, “We’re in the middle of a hurricane.”

“Yes,” the Deputy Director of the CIA agreed, “but it’s going to be a hurricane for them too.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

BAYTOWN, TEXAS

S
ANDOR RETURNED TO
Janssen’s office in time to catch the end of a phone discussion between Brendan Banahan and an FBI agent in Houston who was coordinating the efforts of the local staff there. Banahan completed the call, then looked up and said, “We need to talk.”

They excused themselves and huddled up in the hallway where Banahan said, “We may have something.”

“Go.”

“They’ve got the Coast Guard and Navy on alert and they’re stepping up harbor inspections. We also had them do a rundown on local airports. We may have a lead at a small strip up in Bryan, at Coulter Airfield, near Texas A&M.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Private plane came in yesterday morning, dropped off a couple of businessmen, dumped some cargo that was loaded on a truck, then the plane took off and the truck left.”

“What makes it a lead?”

“We’ve been calling every private airstrip in the area, having them double-and triple-check recent activity. Turns out the flight plan for this arrival didn’t match the itinerary the pilot filed.”

Sandor responded with a slow nod.

“They came in unannounced, claimed they were flying in from a field up in Lawrence, Kansas. We checked, there was no record of that plane in Lawrence.”

“And where’s the airplane now?”

“Seems it went on to the private strip outside Dallas, then took off again for Lawrence…”

“And don’t tell me.”

“Never arrived.”

“Okay,” Sandor said. “I’m on my way.”

With Janssen’s cooperation Sandor commandeered one of the Sikorsky helicopters at the refinery and told the pilot to head north to Coulter. He had Banahan stay behind to oversee efforts at the plant and to organize a forensics team to follow him to Bryan, just in case.

It was a short ride on the high-powered chopper and Sandor was set down beside the private terminal at the end of the small airfield. The young woman and two baggage handlers who were on duty the day before had already been contacted and were told to await his arrival.

Sandor did not flash any identification as he entered the small building; he simply walked up to the fair-haired girl behind the counter and introduced himself. “I understand you were here yesterday morning when you had an unscheduled arrival?”

“Yes, sir,” she said uneasily.

Sandor had a look at her name tag. “Take it easy, Karen, I’m not here because you did anything wrong, I’m just doing a routine investigation.”

“Routine?” The girl gave him a nervous smile. “Mister, I gave some information to a man in Houston over the phone less than an hour ago. Twenty minutes later I get a call telling me to round up Brad and Freddie and then stay put. And now you blow in here on a helicopter and you want me to believe this is routine? I don’t know what this is about, but whatever it is, it isn’t routine.”

“You’re right,” Sandor agreed. “This is not routine, but I promise you’re not in any trouble. Just tell me what happened.”

Karen did her best to recall every detail. When she finished with a description of the two passengers, Sandor knew he was in the right place. “Where are the boys?”

“Waiting outside,” she said, then led him out the door and around the side of the building, where she introduced Sandor to the two young men sitting on a couple of boxes.

“Thanks for coming over here, guys.”

The taller boy, named Brad, said, “No problem. Made it sound kinda important.”

“Might be,” Sandor said. “You guys go to A&M?”

“Aggies through and through,” the other boy, Freddie, told him.

“Excellent. Well, I’ve just got a few questions. Maybe Freddie can go back inside with Karen. I want to hear from each of you separately, okay?”

The three young people already had the sense they were not in the position to argue with anything this man had to say, so Freddie followed Karen, making themselves scarce as Sandor got to work interviewing Brad. When he was done he repeated the process, then sat all three of them down in the terminal. “You’ve been great giving me the facts. Now I want some opinions.”

“Like what?” Karen asked.

“Anything peculiar you noticed about these people, what they did, how they acted?”

Brad spoke up immediately. “Shit yeah,” he said. “We told you about the truck, right? Thing was freakin’ huge. I mean, they had these boxes, could’ve fit in the back of a pickup, but they had this gigunda sixteen-wheeler. What was all that about?”

“Yeah,” Freddie agreed.

“And the boxes, they weren’t all that big, but man they were heavy.”

“I’ll say,” Freddie chimed in.

“We’re only here part-time and this ain’t exactly Dallas–Fort Worth, but we’ve lifted our share o’ crates, and these babies were heavy for their size.”

Sandor nodded. “No one here checks contents, no scanners or anything?”

“Not for incoming domestic flights,” Karen said.

“And not much outgoing,” Brad admitted with a nervous laugh. “Hell, these private flights, you could toss anything aboard, who the hell is gonna know?”

Sandor shook his head. Even in the face of a worldwide epidemic of terror, the naïveté of the American people survives. As does its basic trust in others. “You said they were bringing in some sort of meteorological equipment. They were going to track Hurricane Charlene?”

“Something like that. You say you want opinions, I can tell you they didn’t look like no weathermen to me,” Brad said.

“Me neither,” Freddie agreed.

Sandor turned back to the girl. “And their itinerary listed this as a domestic flight.”

“That’s right,” Karen agreed. “From Lawrence, like I said.”

“But you have no tracking facilities,” Sandor said, thinking aloud, “and you don’t check with the port of embarkation when an unscheduled flight arrives.”

“No, sir.”

“So, regardless of who would have been working here yesterday, there was no way to know that plane was coming in or where it was coming from. It could have flown in from anywhere.”

Karen nodded.

Then Brad said, “But those guys in the truck, whoever they were, they sure as hell knew they were comin’.”

“I’ll say,” Freddie agreed.

Sandor asked them to give him one more description of the tractor-trailer, to consider any detail they might have left out.

“I’m pretty sure it said something about ‘refrigeration’ on the back,” Brad remembered.

“Company name?”

“Not that I can recall. But they had the guys on the truck load the crates themselves, and they didn’t open the back hatch, like you might expect, they opened some kinda side compartment. And then the two guys from the plane, they got inside through a different door on the side. Weird, you know?”

“Weird how?”

“Well, I mean trucks don’t usually have all these extra compartments, if you catch my drift. Trailers usually have flat panel sides and a rear hatch. I dunno, thought it might help.”

Sandor said that it did. “Karen, you never got close to the cargo, that right?”

The girl nodded.

“Okay.” Sandor stood. “There’s a team of specialists coming here in just a few minutes.” He glanced at his stainless steel Rolex, then told them, “They actually should have been here already.” Looking back at the two young men, he said, “I want you to stick around, go through some tests.”

“Tests?”

“Just a precaution.”

Brad and Freddie shared an uneasy look.

“Probably nothing,” Sandor assured them, then headed outside. He pulled out his cell, phoned Banahan, and said, “I’ve spoken with the three kids who were here, I’ll fill you in later. When your gang from Houston shows up, be sure they sweep the area and check out the two boys.”

“For what?” Banahan asked, feeling as if he’d just entered the middle of a conversation.

“They say the crates they unloaded were small but extremely heavy, and I’m guessing whatever was inside could have been lined with lead. The trailer also had a couple of different compartments, wouldn’t be surprised if those were lined too. I want the boys and their luggage tractor tested for exposure to radioactive materials.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY

ISLA DE LA JUVENTUD, CUBA

A
DINA’S YACHT ROCKED
gently on the quiet sea, moored just off this small island situated to the southwest of Cuba. A large freighter flying a Liberian flag under the name
Morning Star
was now anchored some fifteen hundred yards away.

Its only cargo was two North Korean–built mini-submarines.

The shipyard outside Maracaibo Bay in Venezuela had retrofitted this old double-bottomed freighter, working in the lowest cargo hold, number four, isolating it from all other belowdeck areas. A moon pool and cranes were inserted so the submersibles could be loaded aboard, ready to slide out into the sea along newly installed launching rails. A single hatch was cut into the outer skin of the hull, rigged to open outward on hydraulic levers. The mechanisms and hinges were set inside the vessel while the outside joints were fixed with watertight seals, making them virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the weathered steel. The large metal access flap could be operated while the freighter was moving at speeds up to four knots, allowing the vessel to stay on course so as not to arouse any unnecessary suspicion by slowing to a stop on the open water.

Once the hatch was lifted the subs could be released along their steel rails. They would immediately throttle up to ensure that they would break free of the quick water running beneath the freighter’s large hull. The hatch would then be closed, the amount of water taken in being negligible for an empty freighter, since the small hold had been sealed off from the other areas and pumps installed to flush the seawater out once the two craft were deployed.

The subs would then follow their northerly course into the Gulf of Mexico to Galveston Bay and toward the waters due south of Bay-town near Barbours Cut.

As to the payload the submersibles would carry, Francisco and Luis had already made their delivery to an abandoned airstrip just south of Guane on the Cuban mainland. They had stopped there before proceeding on to the Coulter Airfield in Bryan, Texas, carrying the deadly cargo they had brought from Kazakhstan.

In Cuba, the two packages were offloaded while the plane was being refueled. Then they promptly took off again. The parcels were whisked by truck to the south shore, where a speedboat brought them out to the freighter, all with the sort of military precision and timing Adina favored. That efficiency, coupled with the bribery of a local Cuban official, ensured that the transfer was neither intercepted by nor reported to the local shore patrol.

Now that all these pieces were in place, Adina knew he must not linger. The Cuban authorities would eventually become curious about a freighter sitting idly off the coast. Or an unreported flight into and out of Guane. The less attention they drew the better, even from a regime that might look favorably upon their plans. He picked up his radio, for the third time in an hour, to request a progress report.

“We are almost done,” he was told again.

“Almost,” he muttered in response and clicked off.

The plan was simple. Once the two submersibles were properly fitted, the freighter would begin moving slowly to the south, then circle back around the western tip of Cuba on a northwesterly course heading through the Yucatan Channel and into the Gulf. As Hurricane Charlene tracked a parallel path, the freighter would turn back, sixty miles or so short of its apparent destination, as if deterred by the weather. As it made its turn the two Autonomous Underwater Vehicles would be released below the waterline and sent on their way.

Once the two AUVs were launched, the ship would be as conspicuous as possible in making its movement back south, hopefully drawing attention away from any surface traces of the two small guided vessels that would then be motoring their way along their programmed routes. The AUVs would eventually pass through the cut between Galveston and Port Bolivar, into Galveston Bay, and ultimately be detonated just as they reached the Baytown refinery.

This, Adina believed, was the genius of his plan, or so he had described it to his associates. There were defenses in place all around and above the Baytown plant, protecting it from attacks that might come from the air, by land, or across the water. What had not been calculated was the damage that could be wrought by a subterranean explosion of the magnitude nuclear charges would cause. This would have the effect of an artificial tsunami that would not only devastate the refinery, but once the chain reaction began it would destroy all of the surrounding area. The destruction, following the Gulf oil spill, would be overwhelming, and the bonus would be the residue of radioactive fallout.