Viral (37 page)

The footsteps on the wood stopped. Then resumed, echoing louder across the field. Mallory finally saw the man. Watched him reach the end of the walk and look out in his direction. A large, stooped older man wearing a black-and-white security uniform. He turned to his left, where Nadra was, then looked up at the sky and seemed to say something. Then the man reached into his pocket, pulled something out and held it in his hand.
A phone?
No, cigarettes.

He lit a cigarette, blew out the match. Looking in Charlie’s direction again. Could he see the shape of the car against the edge of the
field? Mallory watched the glow at the end of his cigarette as the man inhaled. Then the guard turned and began to walk back, toward his office at the front of the station. Mallory let out his breath, listened to the guard’s footsteps. He heard Nadra scrambling farther south of the station, preparing to plant an explosive on the second set of tracks.

Two minutes later, he saw a figure running under the trees, back through the field. Nadra.

One down.

The second plant was a cell phone tower, about four miles to the northeast. There were several communications towers around the city, but this one appeared to be the least secure—the only one Jason wanted to risk taking out. A seventy-foot galvanized steel monopole that rose up from a remote field about a quarter mile from the road. A tower that transmitted cell calls in the northeastern quadrant of the city. There did not seem to be any guard, or cameras, just a tall fence surrounding the base, where the transmitters, receivers, and communications cables were stored. Strategically, it wouldn’t be a crippling blow, but psychologically, combined with the others, it would have an impact on Priest. It might force his hand and make him show himself.

Nadra had no problem climbing the fence with the two fifteen-pound explosives in her knapsack. Jason covered her through the scope again as she set them at separate locations—one to take out the transmitters and receivers, the other to take down the tower itself. Mallory crouched on the edge of the road, a hundred yards below Wells, watching both directions. At one point, he saw headlights in the distance, seeming to approach but then moving away on a southeasterly road. He turned back to the field. Nadra was running toward them again.
Perfect
. Four explosives planted.

“Now for the main event,” Jason said as he got back into the car.

Nadra took the DPG and the tanks from Wells’s car. He gave her a ten-minute head start, then began driving back in the direction they had come, along the edge of the suburban homes. After almost half an hour, he came to the old logging road that would take them into the forest. Wells punched his headlights off and drove more slowly, following the turns in the road in the spaces between the tree canopies. The trees became denser, obscuring the sky; the road narrowed.

They reached the fork: two logging roads, one of which went right, to the north, the other, left, to the southwest. Nadra had taken the fork to the right; Jason turned left.

He drove carefully over the bumpy road for another twenty-five minutes, inching along at times, finally seeing the gap in the tops of the trees that marked the clearing. He let the car coast to a stop, shifted into park and got out. Charlie lifted one of the rifles from the floor and handed it to him. From here on, they’d make better time on foot.

Both men stood in the woods for a moment, listening to the silence. They could see the lights of the airfield through the trees now, across a shallow valley—the chain-link fence, the rear of the gatehouse and the hangar. They were facing northeast, looking at the back of the complex. “See you at 11:55,” Jason whispered.

He headed toward the clearing to the south and then into the deep forest on the other side, toward the spot he had chosen earlier.
Position One
. Charlie got behind the wheel of the Honda, eased the door closed.

Their targets weren’t people; they were cameras. Five security cameras mounted on towers facing the north and east sides of the complex, the nearest about two hundred meters away, the farthest about five hundred and fifty meters away. Wells would take out the first two, Mallory the other three.

Without touching the brakes, he turned the car around by reversing, downshifting, and slipping it into neutral, scraping against trees and running through shrubbery. Then he began to drive the way they had come, keeping the lights off. At the fork, he downshifted and went left, the direction Nadra had gone, but only for about twenty yards, into a thick forested stretch where he let the car ease to a stop on its own. He looked at his watch: 11:08.

He removed the rifle from the back of the car and started walking until he found the spot that gave him a clear view of the northernmost cameras.
Position Two
. At 11:19, his cell phone vibrated. He saw that it was Nadra’s number. She would have called Wells, too. She was near the northeast corner of the complex. Mallory waited.
Showtime
.

Jason Wells fired first. Mallory heard the quick, sharp sound of the medium-weight bullet thudding into the first camera, and then the
second. Followed by silence. He waited another four minutes, until Wells set off his diversion: a slow fuse gasoline bomb triggered with a small plastic explosive.

Mallory crouched then, and he aimed. Dialed an elevation into the 10-power scope of his rifle to correct for the arc at four hundred meters.

Sighted. Adjusted.

Fired.

He saw the bullet smash into the camera, the glass lens shattering, and felt a quick rush. Then he sighted the second camera, farther north. Adjusted his rifle. Dialed in a new elevation. Fired. Missed.

He looked south and saw the glow of flames beginning to light the trees where the dry shrubbery had caught fire on the ground below the pine and eucalyptus trees. He aimed the gun at the camera again as it moved slowly to its right, toward his position. Checked his adjustment, fired. This time, the bullet took out the front of the lens.
Yes
. He turned his rifle to the northeastern edge of the enclosure next. The longest shot, some five hundred fifty meters. Mallory dialed in the new elevation. Aimed. Fired. His bullet nicked the side of the camera, knocking it slightly off kilter but not disabling it. Mallory set up to try again. Checked his setting. Aimed. Fired. Hit it this time, the lens shattering.
Bingo
. All of the cameras were disabled now on the east and the northeast perimeter of the field. Mallory stood and began walking back to the car, feeling pumped with adrenaline.

Nadra should be north of the airfield now, in the woods near the northeast corner of the fence. By the gas tank, waiting for a response.
Position Three
.

Jason would be moving north through the trees, toward Nadra’s location.

A minute passed as Charlie walked back through the woods. Two minutes.
Nothing
. They had estimated it would take ninety seconds from the firebomb detonation for a response, but four minutes passed and nothing happened.

Charlie felt an apprehension after the brief euphoria. He reached the car and got in. Reversed direction, easing back into the thick shrubbery, snapping down plants and weeds and small trees. He shifted to neutral, then to drive, steering his way back toward the fork in the road.

Then suddenly the silence was shattered with bursts of automatic rifle fire—bullets slamming into the trees, thudding into the trunks. A row of stadium lights lit up the southern corner of the compound and the burning woods.

Mallory shifted to neutral as he rounded the turn, letting the car drift to a stop, then shifting to drive and pressing hard on the accelerator. The trip to the main road would take another ten minutes. Then fifteen minutes more to reach the northern loop. There was more commotion behind him, lights and gunfire. And then the rotors of a helicopter. But he also saw the fire spreading through the forest in his rear-view mirror.

Mallory thought about Nadra, lying in the woods north of him, waiting for Jason. Waiting to go inside the fence.

As he came back to the road, Charlie saw a procession of headlights in the distance and downshifted again. A dozen or so Jeeps, speeding his direction, toward the southern loop road and the south entrance to the airfield. Armed security, probably. He assumed the first phalanx of security people had already entered the complex from the western entrance.

The cars whipped past, not noticing him tucked into the edge of the forest. 11:33. Behind him, fire trucks and helicopters were responding, trying to put out the fire. The diversion had worked, but maybe not well enough. They needed a second, larger diversion. The gas tank. He pictured Nadra again, emerging from the woods with the explosives in her arms, running toward the fence.

Driving with his lights out, Charlie came to the northern loop road, an old trucking route, and turned left. He was traveling west now, parallel to the northern border of the airport complex. To the right of the road was barren scrub land that had once been soybean and maize farms. To the left were fields of tall weeds.
Here’s where it gets tricky
, he thought.

Twice, truck headlights came at him from the other direction, and Mallory pulled off to the left, finding a spot among the weeds and tree clusters to hide the car. Once, a chopper flew overhead, the beam of its spotlight combing the forest, sweeping across the scrubland and the road. Missing him. At last, he came to the spot on the left that Jason had chosen for him to wait. It was marked by a distinctive v-shaped tree top. Mallory turned toward it and shifted to first gear.
Position Four
.

He let the car idle. Scanning the woods to the south through his night-vision rifle scope.

Charlie looked at his watch: 11:47. Nadra should have already planted the explosives by the fuel tanks.
No, they should have detonated by now
. She should have dialed his phone to let them know she was finished.

Where are they?

He watched the fire spreading from the southern corner of the airport. Helicopter searchlights probing the woods. Another truck approached from the west, whooshed past.

11:51. Charlie kept scanning the forest, left to right, for signs of anything moving. Nothing. 11:53. Suddenly, what sounded like a deep peal of thunder jolted him, rumbling the earth, shaking the car. The initial explosion was followed by another. The ground shook once again as the gas tank blew up and a fireball spread across the sky like a mad fireworks display, shooting plumes of flame high into the air, turning to clouds of thick, dark smoke over the forest. Charlie felt the heat as the flames lit up the woods.
The main diversion
. Jason Wells had placed a cell phone in each of the explosive devices. When he dialed the numbers, the ringing of the phone created a vibration in the bombs, activating a circuit to the blasting cap that detonated the explosive.

He heard three smaller explosions then, in succession, two diversions, one blowing the door off the hangar.

And then another, more distant sound. He saw headlights on the road behind him. Not a truck this time. Something else. He waited, holding his breath. A procession of smaller lights, lower to the ground, seemed to bounce off the pavement, coming toward him from the east. Another caravan of Jeeps.

11:59.

Mallory squinted into the trees, coughing now, as low clouds of smoke spread dark and acrid through the woods.

Where are they?
Would they be able to make it through this?

Behind him the Jeeps passed, heading west, maybe fifty yards away.

New sirens sounded in the distance. The smoke had turned thicker. He lifted the rifle again and scanned the forest through the scope. Left to right, right to left. And after a moment, he thought he saw something: a dark shape, moving through the smoke among the
trees. Or maybe not. Shifting, going side to side, back up the hillside. Running, back toward Position Four.

Nadra!

12:08.

For a moment, he lost her in the smoke and the darkness and the shadows—and then he saw her emerge, running out into the clearing, ducking down, slipping, regaining her footing.
Yes!
Nadra was safe.

But where was Jason Wells?

Nadra ducked down beside the car. Grabbed the passenger door handle, pulled it open, slid in.

“Jesus,” she said.

“Are you okay?

“I lost my fucking cell phone.”

“Where’s Jason?”

“He should be right behind me.”

They sat and stared into the forest, coughing.

Nothing.

“Come on, Jason!”
Nadra hit her hand on the dashboard. “God dammit, come on, Jason! Come on!”

It was 12:12 when they saw him, running through the smoke, coughing violently. He looked disoriented. But when he saw them he changed course, heading straight for the back passenger door and getting in.

“Motherfucking smoke!”

Nadra slammed his palm. Charlie slipped the car into reverse, turned, then drove. The sky was bright with stars and moonlight, but there were no other lights visible to the east for maybe half a mile. He found the road and followed it, lights out, pushing the accelerator hard now, narrowing all of his attention on staying within the edges of the road. It was a while before anyone thought about talking.

“Shit!” Nadra said. Her face was covered in soot.

Jason said nothing.

“What happened?” Charlie finally asked.

“It didn’t work.”

“What didn’t?”

“The DPG. It didn’t work. It wouldn’t go in the tank.”

“Jesus,” Jason said.

He took out his cell phone. Covered the light with the palm of his hand and pushed a speed dial number. Moments later, the ground shook again. Mallory felt the car rattle violently, a tremble down his spine. An orange-black fireball shot into the sky behind them. Another gas tank fire. Maybe they would be too busy now containing the damage to worry about giving chase.
Maybe
. Charlie pressed the accelerator to the floor, driving sixty, then seventy, on the dark highway, lights out, following the course Jason had mapped. They tasted the odor of burning gasoline and spent explosives in the breeze all the way in. The fire in the woods was burning wildly now.