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Authors: David M. Salkin

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BOOK: The Team
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Chapter 41

Airborne

 

Mackey had driven like a lunatic to the airstrip while screaming into his radio to the control tower.

“I need a Prowler on the runway immediately!” he was screaming at the tower controller. “Get me the fucking General or whoever you need to authorize it
now
!”

The major on the phone didn’t know Mackey from a hole in the wall, but he also knew the base was under attack. He patched Mackey through to the flight coordinator, a Lieutenant Colonel Forrest, who had just received a call from General Houston, the base commander. By the time the lieutenant colonel agreed to supply the Prowler, Mackey was already at the runway where the four crewmen from the Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 3, the “Moon Dogs” were scrambling to their jet.

“Who’s the copilot?” screamed Mackey.

“Me,” answered a captain.

“Not today! I’m going up with these guys and I can fly.”

“No fucking way. Who the hell are you?”

“I’m CIA, authorized by the President of the United States—you got any problems, you take it up with him. You the pilot?” he screamed at one of the men. That man looked at another captain who said he was.

“Let’s go! We need to be wheels up now! I’ll explain in the air! We’ve got to stop another attack!” He was still holding his assault rifle.

“Look, I’m not a regular copilot!” screamed the first captain. “I’m an electronics counter measures officer! I’m responsible for defending this aircraft.”

“This aircraft doesn’t need defending, and this is a short hop. We have a simple mission and we’re out of here. We need to move
now
!” He pointed the rifle at the captain.

The crew didn’t like it, but they also knew they weren’t witnessing a normal day. They ran towards the waiting jet and began climbing the ladder to the cockpit. The pilot dropped into his seat and called the flight commander in the tower.

“Sir, I’ve got some lunatic telling me he’s authorized to fly with me and direct this aircraft! What am I supposed to do?”

“Go! The base is under attack, and I’ve got authorization from the Joint Chiefs. That guy with you is a spook, but he’s a pilot. Do whatever he says, that’s right from the top. You’re cleared for takeoff!”

The flight team strapped in and began closing the cockpit while the flight crew on the ground watched the whole bizarre scene in amazement.

“Head to the soccer stadium!” Mackey screamed at the pilot.

“You’re not in a flight suit. If I go full speed, you’re going to pass out.”

“I’ll be fine, you’re under one G. Haul ass, Captain!”

The pilot had been cleared for takeoff. He radioed the tower and asked for a heading for the soccer stadium. As soon as the crew was ready and the ground crew gave a quick salute, the pilot threw the plane to take off speed and they roared down the runway. Mackey could feel his eyeballs trying to go through the back of his head and grimaced as the jet headed up at top speed. They banked and flew at over five hundred miles an hour towards the stadium.

“What’s the deal?” asked the pilot.

As soon as Mackey’s head cleared, he said, “Terrorists may be planning to hit the stadium like they did here. If they’re using remote detonators, you need to jam the stadium.”

“Roger that. You copy, Two and Three?”

The Electronics Counter Measures Officers in the rear, ECMO2 and 3, responded. “Copy, Skipper. Jamming the stadium.”

The jet roared over the desert making a bee-line for the stadium. It was, as Mackey promised, a very quick trip at five hundred knots.

“There’s the stadium, ten o’clock,” said the pilot, who slowed and banked to begin a holding flight pattern above the stadium below.

The ECMOs in the rear began their electronic attack. Every cell phone call below immediately ended, and a myriad of other electronic problems began. The announcer inside the soccer stadium lost his microphone, the large replay screens went static, the remote controlled thermostats on the massive chillers ceased operation, and the hundreds of flatscreen TVs placed around the stadium in bathrooms and eateries went black.

 

* * *

 

Abdul Aziz sat in his car. He prayed and thanked Allah, then pulled the phone from his pocket. Scanning around him for security personnel and seeing no one nearby, Abdul dialed the number that would detonate the eighty Sarin bombs all over the stadium.

“Allahu Akbar!”
Shouted Abdul as he pressed the Send button.

He listened and waited.

Nothing happened. Abdul waited another second, and then he realized he was much too far away to hear the explosions. They were only small charges designed to vaporize the Sarin and send the clouds of gas into the crowds.

He nodded. He wouldn’t get to enjoy hearing the explosions or screaming yet. That wouldn’t be until he was safely at a place that had a television camera. He waited another few seconds.

Wait.

If the Sarin went off inside the stadium, there would be hundreds of panicked soccer fans streaming from the exits. Something was wrong. Abdul drove his car down the long aisle of cars and headed closer to the stadium. He could see police officers and soldiers walking calmly outside. Did they not know that the bombs had gone off yet? Was everyone dead inside? Was that possible?

Abdul drove all the way to the first row of parking, nearest the stadium, and stopped. He opened his car door and stepped out into the hot sun. He could hear normal cheering inside the stadium. Something was wrong. Abdul pointed his phone at the stadium and pressed Send again. Nothing.

He could feel panic inside his chest. Abdul got back into his car and roared out of the parking lot to the highway that would take him back to Saudi Arabia. If his attack had been foiled, then what about the base? He drove as fast as his car would go once he cleared the stadium roads. On the highway, he was driving almost a hundred miles an hour when he decided to try Rasheed’s phone. He was now ten miles from the stadium and beyond the range of the Prowler that was, unknown to him, jamming the stadium. He called Rasheed’s number and it went immediately to voice mail. It was most likely good news—their attack had already occurred. He would make sure. He called other numbers of the group to see if they would be answered.

 

* * *

 

The EOD squad was wearing gas masks along with their regular extra heavy bomb- resistant Kevlar and ceramic plates. They had carefully opened the doors of the vehicle and were looking for detonators and trigger devices. The driver was very dead, with his head blown all over the inside of the car. One of the EODs, who had opened the passenger door, had just spotted the detonator near the driver’s hand when a cell phone rang. The two EODs inside the car closed their eyes and waited to die.

It rang again. And a third time.

“What the fuck?” asked the nervous EOD.

The Senior EOD1, who was hunched over the driver, stared with wide eyes at the phone. “I think the hajji’s getting a regular phone call.” He laughed nervously.

The other EOD, sweat running down his legs and into his boots, said, “I’m sorry, Hajji can’t come to the phone right now. His head’s blown off. Please leave your name and number, and he’ll call you from Hell.”

“Take the phone. Give it to the Major. G2s gonna want to take a look.”

The EOD gingerly took the phone and stepped back from the car. He held it up and showed another EOD, who quickly moved forward and took it from him. “It’s not a detonator. It just rang.”

The EOD took the phone and jogged it back to the lieutenant who was overseeing the explosives ordnance disposal team. Cascaes was nearby and saw the exchange. He jogged over to the lieutenant.

“Excuse me, Lieutenant. I’m Special Operations, I need to see that phone,” said Cascaes.

The lieutenant looked at the stranger in civilian clothes like he had three heads. “Back up, son, we’re in the middle of trying to take a bomb apart.”

“I need the phone. The Director of the CIA and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs know I’m here, and I need that phone. I’m Senior Chief Chris Cascaes. You tell him that. Now, you can hand it to me, or I can shoot you.” He was glaring at the lieutenant, and although he wasn’t pointing his weapon, it was in his hands. “Call whoever you need to call, and hand me the god damned phone, lieutenant.”

The lieutenant face was red with anger. He handed the phone to Cascaes and pulled his radio off his belt to call the base commander. Cascaes didn’t stick around to listen. He jogged back to his team, who had reassembled to watch the EOD team work on the car that Hodges had stopped.

Cascaes pulled up the recent calls on the phone and then used his own phone to call Dex Murphy who picked it up immediately.

“Dex, I’m going to read off a phone number. It was an incoming number to a cell phone we just took off a dead bomber at the base. Maybe you can get a GPS on the phone.”

“Outstanding, read it to me.”

Cascaes gave Dex the number, and Dex hung up and started making phone calls.

Chapter 42

 

It had been a frantic few minutes of calls between Langley, Cascaes, base commanders, and flight crews. When it was settled, Cascaes grabbed Moose and relayed the latest orders.

“Here’s the deal. Whoever called the bomber that Hodges took out is heading out of the area on Route 5. We have his cell phone GPS. I want you to grab a couple of men and hop a Black Hawk to that location. We want him alive, Moose. You bring his ass back here and we find them all. You copy?”

“Roger that, Skipper. I’ll take Ripper and Hodges. I’ll bring him back.”

“Alive, Moose!”

“Yes, sir,” he snapped, and then ran off to tell Ripper and Hodges.

 

* * *

 

Abdul was racing down the desert highway towards the border. With the base attack successful, border security might be tougher. His passport was forged, and his alias wouldn’t raise any suspicion, but still he was worried. He turned on the car radio and listened to Al Jazeera, hoping to hear news of the attacks. It was regular programming. Abdul cursed under his breath.

Why hadn’t the Sarin bombs gone off? They had tested the prototypes and they had worked every time. What had gone wrong?

 

* * *

 

High overhead, thirty miles away, an EA-6B Prowler circled the airspace over the stadium, jamming all frequencies. The pilot received an incoming transmission from the airbase.

“Big Dog, this is Downtown. I have a message for your second seat, over.”

The pilot looked over at Mackey in the second seat.

“Downtown, second seat is ears on, go ahead with your message, over.”

Mackey listened intently.

“Just took a call from the Virginia Company. A cell phone recovered by EOD gave a number and GPS location of a target. There’s a small team en route to intercept. Security at the stadium has been alerted and the rest of the team is en route. Continue all electronic countermeasures. Over.”

The pilot looked at Mackey. “That mean something to you? We’re supposed to stay here on station.”

“Yeah. Listen, the same group that attacked Al Udeid tried to hit the stadium. If our guys grabbed a phone off a dead bomber, it means they may be able to trace it back to the caller. But the stadium still has whatever Sarin bomb they hid in there. You just keeping jamming everything. My team is heading over to help the locals.”

The team had been ordered by Dex to head over to the stadium. With the base threat resolved, and the stadium attack imminent, the Joint Chiefs had convinced the President to send in the team. Three of the base EODs were still working on the last car bomb, but there were three others on the base and two of them had bomb dogs.

An EA-6B Prowler and a Black Hawk helicopter roared off after the GPS coordinates gleaned from the phone number. As long as the phone stayed on, the Prowler and Black Hawk would find it. In the rear of the helicopter, Moose, Ripper, and Hodges rechecked weapons and discussed how they would take down the car without killing the occupant.

The rest of the team, now accompanied by the two EODs with their K9 partners, were in a Blackhawk helicopter roaring over the desert towards the stadium.

“Who are you guys?” asked the Senior EOD, a dog handler named Mark Franklin.

Cascaes played it as straight as he could. “Senior Chief Chris Cascaes. We’re Special Operations and we were never here, you copy? We need you and your dogs. All you need to know is that we’re good at what we do, and we need
you
to be good at what you do.”

Franklin nodded and extended a hand. “Mark Franklin, and that’s Jeff Krekeler. Our K9s are the best. If there’s a bomb in the stadium, we’ll find it. The only problem is, it’s a big stadium, and there’s only two of us. What are we looking for? Any idea?”

“That’s the problem. We don’t know. We have a Prowler from the base running countermeasures. If it’s an electronic detonator, we’re safe. If there’s someone inside holding a trigger, we’re fucked. We’re assuming it’s a bomb to detonate Sarin gas into the crowd. That means dispersal. The stadium is climate controlled, so maybe we check around the chillers first. Getting it into the air vents is a good way to get it into the air. Other than that, I don’t have any good guesses. The stuff works best when detonated from above and allowed to rain down like a mist. I think we start the search from the top of the stadium at the chillers and work our way down.”

“Roger that. Damn. Sarin? Are they evacuating the stadium?” asked Franklin.

“Negative. We still don’t have one-hundred percent proof the attack is even going down here, and even if we did—if we start evacuating, maybe they detonate as soon as they realize we’re on to them. We need to find the bomb and kill the bomber. Oh, and try and hold your breath if things go south.”

“That’s great, thanks.”

The Black Hawk banked hard and the pilot’s voice came over the speakers. “Time to LZ sixty seconds.”

Jon yelled over to Cascaes inside the loud aircraft. “Hey, Skipper, the security at the stadium know we’re inbound?”

“I sure hope so. The last thing we need is the good guys shooting at us.”

BOOK: The Team
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