The Hammer of God (14 page)

“Good, then the bastards don't even know they are under attack. This might just work,” Pickering said.

∞§∞

As if that comment was heard a third of the way around the world, an explosion rocked the building and blinded most of the heat-sensitive night scopes.

“What the hell was that?” the squad commander yelled into his helmet-mounted tactical radio mike.

“Jonesy tripped a booby trap wire, but he felt it. There was a delay and he was able to get to cover. No one hurt.”

“All units, go, go, go!”

Their presence no longer a secret, the men were turned loose to enter, interdict, and neutralize the enemy with all due haste. They moved with lightning speed. Three-shot bursts from their MP-5s crumpled startled terrorists who didn't have the benefit of night vision goggles. Each trooper had memorized the face of the two high value targets believed to be in this complex – the ambassador and Jamal. One they wanted to save, the other they wanted to boil in oil, but were under orders to retrieve for his intelligence value.

The great unknown here was the number of bad guys in the center of the building. The metal roof and pipes made it impossible for the infrared to get an accurate reading. They could be facing one hundred armed men or two night janitors wielding mops. The fighting became intense as they neared the center of the complex. It turned out that some of the terrorists were in fact equipped with night vision goggles. Two squad members were being pinned down in a hallway from a night-vision-capable gun at the far end of the hall. One motioned to the other and, on the count of three, they flipped up their night vision sets and threw a flare into the hall. As soon as it lit off, they were up and firing, guided by the same intense light that was blinding the goggled terrorists. It only gave them a one-second advantage, but when you are the best of the best of the United States military and qualified to brag about it every month, one second can be the enemy's life expectancy – which it proved to be.

Two operators were equipped with infrared scopes/vision assist. That meant they could literally see through walls. They saw the outlines of two armed men lying in wait behind an overturned desk. Seeing no one else, like a hostage, they simply chucked a grenade into the room. The blast flattened the desk against the wall along with the two men. Overall, the resistance was sporadic with no real counteroffensive. By neutralizing their lookouts, the captors weren't expecting a raid and they certainly weren't alerted before the choppers hit.

A flash-bang grenade went off down the hall and three troops ran to it. They were into the room before the sound stopped echoing off the walls. Tied to a chair, his ears bleeding and rolling his head side to side to ward off the pain, was the ambassador. Jamal and two others were writhing on the floor in the immediate aftershock of the blast. Two troops put themselves in front of the ambassador, shielding him with their bodies, their guns trained outward. Another operator put a round each into the heads of the other two men in the room. Jamal was wire-tied and brought to his feet.

The troopers started to assemble in the room. Fifteen of them surrounded the ambassador and Jamal and started leading them out of the building. Two operators were down. Luckily, Kevlar vests protected their vitals, but both suffered leg wounds.

Not taking chances, the 15 stopped at an obvious ambush point before the exit of the building, lobbing five grenades into the area as they all took cover. Grunts and moans accompanied the explosions. Two scouts went ahead to clear the way. A few shots rang out, all U.S. weapons, as the scouts made sure no one was playing possum.

Foxtrot Alpha
circled and secured the area as half the team boarded
Foxtrot Bravo
. Then
Alpha
landed as
Bravo
kept guard. That's when the Datsun approached the LZ. Instinctively, the men boarding the copter trained their guns on the vehicle.

“They're friendlies!” the squad commander shouted. “Hold your fire!”

Everybody laughed when Ross and Bridgestone came out of the car.

“Shit, Ross, we almost blew your fucking heads off!” an operator yelled.

“Bullshit. You couldn't hit the broad side of a bull stopped to fuck a cow.”

“What's that?” the squad commander asked as Bridgestone and Ross carried the wrapped body from the back seat towards the copter.

“Salinda. I didn't want to dispatch her in case we still needed info.”

“What are we supposed to do with her now?”

“Could make Jamal more talkative if he sees she's at risk.”

“Okay. Get her on board and let's get the hell out of Dodge.”

They clamored aboard the craft as it lifted off.

As soon as they were on board they unwrapped the sheet revealing Salinda, Jamal saw her. He was shocked, but his situational awareness clicked in. He looked to his right and saw the open door of the chopper. He bolted up, jumped on Salinda, and grabbed her in his wire-tied hands, rolling with her out of the open door. Their bodies fell more than 200 feet and broke on a rocky ledge below.

“Ah, shit!” a disgusted Ross said as he tossed the severed pinky out of the same door.

∞§∞

“They got him.”

A small smattering of applause broke out around the Sitch Room following the Captain's announcement.

“Casualties?” the President said quieting the room.

“Two leg wounds, non-life threatening.”

“Thank God. Enemy killed?”

“Sir, give us some time to debrief first,” the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs said. “It will all be in a report in the morning.”

“Thank you all. Good work. Hank, I think those men earned some shiny hardware tonight.”

“Roger that, sir.”

∞§∞

After-action jitters were a phenomenon that most battle-hardened commanders had seen. The adrenaline rush of combat and intense mental alertness often had residual effects once the nervous system calmed down. So Jonesy vomiting into his helmet was to be expected. He took some ribbing for it, but not from three of the men who were also looking a little green around the gills. Within two minutes, four troopers upchucked their guts into their Kevlars and were lying on the floor of the chopper.

Realizing that something else had to be going on here, the commander keyed his tactical radio. “Oasis this is
Foxtrot Alpha
, inbound. Possible chemical or bio contamination. Men nauseous and vomiting. Request bio-hazard and antibiotics.”

The Squad commander then checked all of his men on the copter. He heard
Foxtrot Bravo
report three men vomiting on it. He broke out the antibiotics and ordered all of his men to dose themselves. Retracing their movements, he tried to figure out what these men had been exposed to.

∞§∞

Hiccock's phone rang. “William, get on SCIAD now!” the voice on the other end said.

Hiccock scanned his eye and opened the network from his desktop. The voice on the phone was Quan Li, a research scientist out of Cal Tech on assignment in Diego Garcia. He was stationed at a listening station for Pave Paw West, a launch detection satellite in geo-synchronous orbit over the Indian Ocean. He was an Element member of SCIAD because he had led the way on critical mass research in heavy water reactors and held the highest clearance.

To: n
From: #E: Li
Re: Huge spike in Egyptian desert.
17:32 GMT Sensor readings of > 10.5 and < 14.2 rads/meter recorded from source at 34 lat 134 long….

That's all Hiccock had to read. He printed the document, picked up the phone, and pressed “POTUS.” But the President of the United States was not behind his desk. The switchboard picked up.

“Yes, Doctor Hiccock.”

“Chief of Staff, please.”

“Hold on.”

“Reynolds.”

“Ray, it's Bill. I got something hot here and I need to inform the president.”

“Come down.”

Bill was out the door grabbing the printout on the way. He ran to the elevator and agents surrounded him.

“I need to get to the boss and Ray immediately.”

Two agents went onto the elevator with him and spoke to the agent on station near the President. Receiving an affirmative, they stepped out of the way when the elevator opened in the basement.

“We are at the end of a top secret mission here, Bill. Where's the fire?” Reynolds asked.

“Sir, in the desert of Egypt about 135 miles west of Cairo.”

“General, Ray, I am clearing Hiccock for this operation,” the President said. “Ray, brief him.”

When Ray finished filling in Bill, Bill got to tell him what he knew.

The President was shocked, “Are you sure?”

“Li is not a reckless man. And I think, in short order, other sources will start chiming in. Meanwhile, General, can you verify that these coordinates are the same as your target?” Hiccock handed the printout to the Chairman.

“What do we do?” the President asked.

“Turn the copters around.” Hiccock said. “You have to get someone in there to control the situation.”

“But they are not prepared for this!” the General protested.

“Sir, with all due respect, those men have already been exposed. They are the only ones who can get there now and report back.”

“You're saying they are already dead,” the General said.

“Some, not all, may be badly irradiated. But they might even be able to stop this thing from getting out of hand.”

“Do it!” the President said.

“Captain, order Foxtrots Alpha and Bravo back to target alpha!” the Chairman ordered.

“They'll need refueling to get back, sir,” the Captain said.

“Dispatch refueling ships and get me the Sultan Air Base commander on the double!” the Chairman ordered.

The President turned to Hiccock, “I hope you are wrong, Bill.”

“I hope you are right, Sir.”

“Do what?” the squad commander yelled back over the interphone to the pilot who had received his orders and was already turning back. “Don't they know that we have sick men here? And besides, that LZ is going to be crawling by now. What are we supposed to do if we engage bad guys?”

Here's what never happens – some field grade commander in the thick of it gets a secure call from the Commander-in-Chief. So both squad chiefs were shocked to hear over their tac radios, “Gentlemen this is the President. I am joined here by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. What I am about to ask you to do is not easy for me. That's why I had to have you hear it directly from me. During your raid, a large amount of radiation was released from the facility you stormed. This was significant and unprecedented. My staff tells me that many of you may already show symptoms of radiation poisoning. Here's the tough part: we don't know what could cause this. But trust me; there are no comforting answers to the question. You are the only force within hours of the target. You have to ascertain what the source of the radiation is, then secure the area until reinforcements arrive. I know what I am asking you men to do. All I can tell you is that America, and possibly the entire planet, is depending on you. I know you will not fail us. God speed, men.”

∞§∞

The President nodded to the Captain and the communications officer killed the circuit. He remained still, looking at the phone he'd hung up. Finally he spoke.

“Ten minutes ago I was putting them all up for a medal. Now I am sending them to their deaths. Where do we find men like this?”

“Sir, you did the only thing you could do given these extraordinary circumstances,” The CJCS said.

“Oh God, I just sent Greely back in as well!” Mitchell shook off the human emotion and went back to being the Commander in Chief. “Okay, I want maximum effort here. Everything we have that can help these guys deal with whatever this nuclear thing could be should be moving 10 seconds ago! Ray, get whoever we need here right now. Bill, take a seat; you started this.”

“Yes, sir.”

∞§∞

“Rules of engagement are, F-E,” the commander said as the MH-60 Black Hawk hurled through the night retracing its earlier route, only this time with all deliberate speed and not concerned about alerting the enemy. The big, stinking, glowing hole in the desert floor had already done that. Although there was no actual rule of engagement designated, Frank/Eddie, the commander's troops knew that “Fuck Everybody” meant the mission at all costs, no other concerns or distractions. He went over to the three equipment lockers lashed to the sides of the cabin. Each had a large letter on its top: N, B, and C. The C was where he had gotten the antibiotic syringes. Now he opened the N. Of the three, he always expected to someday use the Chemical or, even worse, the Biological one. But somehow, the Nuclear locker was just not a concept he could comfortably grasp. Not that that mattered one bit. He and his men had extensive training and their procedures for each were exemplary. Any of them would be an equally effective fighting unit in either an N, B, or C combat environment.

First, he distributed radiation pills and ordered everyone to take a dose and a half. Somebody once described taking a pill for radiation is like taking an aspirin for a head-on car crash. He then pulled out five nuke suits, tape, re-breathers, and a Geiger counter. He left the radiation dosimeter monitor badges in the trunk because he probably had enough residual on him to taint them already. He ordered the guys in the best shape, including Bridgestone and Ross who, because they weren't in the refinery, were among the ones not vomiting – to suit up. The others aided the men and sealed their suits with tape at the sleeves, cuffs, and helmet collar. Each man was also draped with ammo belts and machine guns fitted into their gloved hands.

“Okay boys, this is certainly no fucking drill. We stumbled on something back there and it's hot. You men in the suits will go in, locate, identify, and handle the merchandise. The rest of us will cover and support. Okay, I want a by-the-numbers radio check.

“1, Check, 3, Check, 7, Check….”

∞§∞

“Sir, in going over the tapes of the rescue, one plausible scenario is that the explosion may have been, or have acted like, a radiological device,” Hiccock said.

“So it could have been a dirty bomb?” the President asked.

“Yes. Or an explosion near some fissionable material. In either case, it spread a plume. This is what Quan Li and later NORAD picked up as a spike.”

“Could there be any good news… as a plausible scenario, that is?”

“The bad news is, sir, that
would
also be the good news. Unless the refinery was really a hospital with an overactive nuclear medicine lab which somehow exploded.”

“What are you thinking it could be, Bill?”

“Well sir, I don't think it was a deliberate nuclear placement, because there are no targets of any value whatsoever 150 or so miles from Cairo. So it must have been a storage facility as well as a safe house to hold the ambassador. Whether what was exposed was an actual bomb or stockpile for future weapons, like dirty bombs, or possibly even an atom-bomb-making lab, we'll find out if the Foxtrots get through. And just to rule it out, I checked over my SCIAD net. Geologically, there would be no natural source of radiation in that part of the world.”

“So it's all in the hands of the Foxtrots now.”

“Yes sir, it is.”

∞§∞

“
Foxtrot Bravo
will hold off and set up perimeter from the west since that's the only road in. After we jump,
Alpha
will set up a CAP. Hopefully none of this is on Al Jazeera yet so the numbers of yahoos coming at us should be manageable. Right now, under FE, anything that moves is dead. We have one goal, one mission: find out whatever the nuclear material is, secure it, and, if we can, evacuate it to Desert Tango 1. That's a secure site being set up right now to handle whatever we find. If what we find is leaking, we contain it. If it's moveable, we move it. If it's ticking, we evacuate.”

The commander looked around at the faces illuminated by the red lights of the cabin. “So far, before it turned into this cluster fuck, this mission was textbook hostage recovery. Each one of you performed and served in the best traditions of the cavalry. Brinks, that leg good enough for you to handle the mini gun?”

“It's a scratch, sir. I got your back,” said the man with a huge bloody bandage running from his knee to his calf.

“Got three bogeys on the road heading towards target alpha,” the co-pilot reported.

“Cleared, hot,” the pilot said back over the interphone. The gunship shuttered as the mini gun, connected to the co-pilot's central nervous system, burped as it fired several bursts.

“Instant junk yard,” was the battle damage assessment from the gunner on the door.

“Got five infrared targets on foot coming in from the east two miles off.”

“Not worth detouring for. We'll handle them once we switch to Combat Air Patrol.”

∞§∞

“Let the Egyptian ambassador in on this, Charles,” the President said. “There is a nightmare happening in his country and he should know it.”

“Sir, should we tie in Cairo?”

“Let that be the ambassador's call. Either way, I'll speak to the Egyptian president as soon as possible.”

“Ray, shouldn't we let the Russians and the Chinese know,” Bill whispered to the Chief of Staff. “If something goes wrong, we need them on the cool side of the equation.”

“No whispering in here,” the President said. “I need all the opinions I can get.”

“Sir, Hiccock was just bringing it up, and I think I agree…”

∞§∞

“Thirty seconds,” the pilot announced. The lights were off in the cabin now. The guys in the N-suits were in the middle between the men ready to jump and secure the LZ. The Longbow flared and hovered at two feet. The men stepped off and in an instant set up a defensive perimeter to cover the guys in the plastic suits as they exited. Then, as one, they retraced their original steps back into the building, peeling off one or two of their number as guards as the main body advanced. The chopper was up and doing CAP while
Foxtrot Bravo
unloaded the same way. Then it went off to cover the only road into the compound.

Kicking dead bodies, and being ready to fire if you hear a grunt, is a lifesaving practice at a time like this. This place was so hot that the Geiger counters had to be put on the highest scale in order to get a reading that was mid-scale and not pinned on overload. To determine which direction the source was in, a mid-scale was needed so that when the unit was swept in a circle, the direction straightest towards the radiation would give the highest reading. It was called a hyper-cardioid search pattern. These instruments were now pointing the suits toward the spot where Jonesy tripped the booby trap. A quick inspection showed it was something similar to a Claymore mine, probably taped to the now-blown-away doorway. On the other side of that door, the needles pinned and the Geigers were overloaded even at the highest setting, a .5 RAD scale or about 10,000 times stronger than a chest x-ray. When the trooper flipped up his night vision and turned on his flashlight illuminating the room, a muffled “Holy Mother of God!” came through his plastic facemask.

One of the operators was video capable and his signal was microwaved to the chopper. Then the chopper up-linked it to a defense satellite, which sent it to the Defense Intelligence Agency. They patched in the ops room at the White House as well as the guys in the Pentagon.

As the single light source on top of the camera illuminated the room, the lead trooper narrated, “Sir, we got a shitload of what looks like suitcase nukes. Eight, nine – they're all over. The blast has definitely breached one or two. I can't believe some idiot raghead placed a Claymore on the wall behind these suckers.”

In the chopper, the commander, upon hearing that two nukes were breached, took out his knife and slashed the thick canvas straps that secured the N case to the lightening holes in the frame of the chopper. He dumped the contents on the floor and told the pilot to go back in. Then he keyed his mic to the guys in the refinery. “Sergeant, send two guys out to the LZ and have them bring the N locker to you.”

Back in the room, the count was concluded. Twenty-three suitcase nukes, two damaged by blast. When the N trunk arrived, the first damaged bomb was gingerly laid into the case. The N case had minimal nuclear shielding to protect the instruments and monitor within from ambient or slightly elevated radiation. That same shielding would temporarily contain the brunt of the radiation until help arrived. They were about to lower the second damaged case into the locker alongside the first when the one of them had a thought.

“Sir, lets get the other N case in here. These two bad boys may interact if we keep them in a tight shielded case.”

“Good thinking, Marks. You may have just saved this godforsaken patch of desert for future generations.”

The two helicopters traded positions and the second ship's N case found its way into what the men were now calling the “nursery.” Once
Foxtrot Alpha
was up and back in CAP, the pilot decided to deal with the human targets now a half-mile off to the east. He pointed the 9 tons of death and destruction at the five unwise men traveling in the dessert. Then he had a moment of conscience. “I am going to do a magnetometer pass first.”

“Jack, we are under FE engagement!” the co-pilot said.

“I know; but what if those are just some camel jockeys down there?”

“And what if they put a shoulder-fired up our exhaust?”

“These guys are walking, not running. I don't want to kill some poor bastard just for taking a walk.”

“Okay. How about, we lay down a line of red lead in the sand and see if they change their direction. I'll stay locked on them and if they so much as hiccup, I'll cream ‘em.” The co-pilot lined up the life forms on his reticule.

“Mini-gun, kick up some sand and let them know we want them to turn around.”

“Roger” preceded the shuttering as the chain gun let go.

Through his infrared display, the pilot saw the people run in the other direction. “Okay, good. Let's get our guys out of here.”

“Had that gone the other way and they tagged us, you could have been brought up on charges posthumously,” the co-pilot said.

“Don't dwell on it,” the pilot advised.

∞§∞

“Captain, have that soldier pan back right again, to that table,” Hiccock requested as the Captain relayed the request.

“What is that? Tell him to go in closer.”

“Looks like my wife's vanity,” the Captain blurted out.

“Captain, warn the men. Those jars could contain a lethal dose of a viral flu strain.”

Hiccock didn't know it but his voice was now patched directly to the headset of the troopers in the nursery.

“Negative on that. We opened a few. All they contained were these things.” The camera walked in to get a close-up of the thing in the soldier's hand. The focus was momentarily soft, then the operator adjusted and the device came into critical focus.

“What do you make of that?” Reynolds asked.

“Sir, I think that's a Thyristor,” Hiccock said.

“In a cold cream jar?”

“I've seen terrorists use these jars before. But for bio-agents.”

“So what does a Thyristor do and why do they need them?”

“Those old suitcase nukes either aren't armed or the arming mech is past its freshness date. Those Thyristors are the main triggering units to start the fission process.”

Then Hiccock had a chilling thought. “Trooper, is there a box that the cold cream came in anywhere in the room?”

The camera jiggled and swept over the floor and up again until it landed on a cardboard box. “Princess Briana – 24 Count.”