by Todd Turner
“So, now you expect me to tell you more? You want me to trust you as well?” Her eyes were boring a hole in Craig.
He looked straight back into her eyes and said, “I need you to trust me. I need you to help me, so we can limit the impact of this. This benefits your people, too. You know our leaders would have no choice but to retaliate. Can you even image what that would be like? If what you have told us and continue to tell us is true, you are the only hope for millions of people, not just Americans. I want you to know, if you help us, if you cooperate, you will never want for anything again. You and your mother will be taken care of for the rest of your natural lives, granted for at least the next fifteen years, yours will be in a federal prison, I’m sorry, but there is just no way around that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stout, for your honesty.”
“The most peaceful time I remember is the summer with my parents at the Caspian Sea. Oh, what a beautiful place that was.” Her melancholy made it clear that she wanted to live a life of her choosing, not one chosen for her.
“Ms. Kundi, that place no longer exists, you can only ever be there in your memories,” Scott said. “Since the Ayatollah ordered the thousands of Cyprus trees cut down—that once lined the beautiful shore—I’m not at all sure the present-day sight would be anything close to what’s in your mind. So maybe it’s for the best.”
“Why did he do that?”
“It seems he built a massive vacation complex there and felt the trees obstructed the view of the sea.”
“Damned fool.”
It was a start.
June 28, 21:05 EDT
Detroit, Michigan
“Which car do you want to know about first?” asked Rezeya.
Since they already had one in San Francisco, Scott wondered where that one was intended to go; asking about it perhaps would ease her into giving up the other cars.
“The one we found near San Francisco—where was it supposed to go?”
She gave him a troubled look. Yes, she’d agreed to help, but this was it. This was the moment she would be a traitor to her past and all that defined her life.
“Very well. I will tell you as I have promised. Now I hope and pray you are good on your word as well,” said Rezeya. “There were several cars on the same ship that arrived at that port of entry. From the reports I’d received at work, I’d noticed one car that was going to be delayed to its destination due to a mechanical failure. This is also when I knew I might have to run.
“That car was supposed to go to Albuquerque; more specifically, to Espanola, New Mexico. It was being delivered to Henry Valencia Chevrolet, where it had been ordered by a customer in nearby Los Alamos. But with the mechanical failure, I reallocated another car for that destination, sparing the city of San Francisco as one of the targets.”
“A customer?” asked Craig, ignoring her comment about sparing San Francisco. He was glad that was one less target, but he wanted to focus on the others.
“One of ours. You call them sleepers, of course. His mission was to get a menial job at the National Laboratories in Los Alamos, drive the car to work one night and fulfill its mission.”
“Its mission being to destroy the National Laboratories along with himself?” Craig asked with no small amount of disgust, immediately regretting his interjection. He privately resolved for Scott to continue without his asides.
“Much of the world looks at the facility where the atomic bomb was developed with disdain and disgust.”
“That’s true—and that early end to that war saved hundreds of thousands of lives, all around.” Craig could hear himself arguing.
“Maybe the world’s issue with this has to do with the staggering number of nonmilitary causalities—terrorism, by your own standards. It was the best example used by our early leaders to justify our means, that the world had changed, that standard military action was less than efficient,” Rezeya replied.
“That’s a hell of a reach in logic,” said Craig, digging himself in deeper against his own rule.
“Setting aside your own dogma,” she challenged, “how is a terrorist act defined?”
“Number one, it’s an act performed by an individual or a group not considered to be a sovereign government. Number two, it tends to focus on civilian targets to accomplish its primary intent—that is, to create terror and anarchy so the government must bow to the demands of the terrorists,” Craig responded.
“Just so: the intent behind Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to instill the fear of further reprisals and obtain unconditional surrender.”
“You can’t ignore it was done by a sovereign nation at a time of war.”
“Ah, but there are those who believe the Islamic Nation has sovereign rights and is at war with America.”
Craig took that in. It was a perspective he couldn’t outright reject.
“OK, but the question remains: Is the dispute of Islam with America or the West? Or is it just with anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the same beliefs? That’s the problem, and I think you’re beginning to see it yourself,” Craig felt he had to point out, despite the risk that she might not talk.
“Yes … perhaps so,” acknowledged Rezeya.
June 28, 22:43 EDT
Detroit, Michigan
“I’m still not supportive of the idea of bringing a terrorist’s mother here in order to appease her,” grumbled Craig, as he and Scott took a moment outside of the area where Rezeya was being held. “No. No, I don’t like it one fucking bit!”
“Would you freaking calm down?” Scott shot back. “There’s one way and one way only you are going to get what you need to minimize this disaster!” Craig’s concern showed. He noticed Scott said minimize and not eliminate.
Scott continued. “That’s right, I said minimize. The reality is very doubtful that we will be able to locate all the devices before they are programmed to detonate.”
“So we are doomed to failure?”
“Only by the insane all-or-nothing standards of fail–succeed measure used in the CIA and FBI. Everything is not simply black and white. The measurement of success here is that we can save millions of lives, even if there’s no way to make this quietly go away.”
Craig was still grumbling. “I’d prefer the quietly go away, no one ever needs to know, and those responsible are quietly dropped off a cliff somewhere option, not reunite them with their mommies to live happily ever after.”
“Grow up! You know damn well these women will never ever have a moment of bliss. They’ll be hiding from their accomplices for the rest of their lives, however short that may be.”
That actually seemed to appease Craig to some degree, and Scott asked himself again for the hundredth time, How the hell can I love this guy?
“In a nutshell, there are seven atomic bombs positioned around the country all set by the atomic clock in Boulder, Colorado. At twelve o’clock midnight on July fourth, they will detonate.”
“For a guy who is much more emotional than I’ll ever be, you sure didn’t sugarcoat that one. Why don’t we just turn off the atomic clock or at least its transmission?” asked Craig.
“Yeah, I thought of that, but the bombs were activated when they approached their respective ports and came into the range of the clock’s transmission. Once the time is set to the clock, the bombs are dependent upon their own quartz movements to detonate. The designers are OK with a few seconds between detonations due to minor clock inaccuracies but wanted make sure it wasn’t a few minutes or hours.”
“Jesus,” followed by a long pause, was all Craig could manage. Once he had absorbed it, the magnitude of scale, his mind went into autopilot crisis response mode.
“OK, seven bombs. I take it we’ll have to triage them?” asked Craig.
“Ideally, but we are still getting details about the cars those bombs are contained in, where they are right now, as opposed to the dealership they were shipped to. Our source has given us the dealerships, the date and time of the arrival of the cars, and in cases
where the cars have been sold to customers, all the details of that transaction.”
“Sold? Wait a minute, you mean there are unsuspecting customers out there with atomic bombs in their car they know nothing about?”
“No, the buyers are actually sleepers. They got a menial job at some strategic location, as a janitor, say, or a night maintenance person at a place like the Naval Base San Diego or the National Laboratories. Or maybe the car was put into rental service near a military base like Fort Bragg with the hope some enlisted grunt would need wheels.”
Craig paled.
“I’ve surmised,” Scott continued, “based on where the cars were delivered to. Most of the sleepers’ actual jobs and locations weren’t known to our source. Typical smart ‘need to know’ organization. Albuquerque, though, we have Rezeya to thank for: she did know it was ordered by an employee of the National Laboratories. She didn’t have this knowledge from her organization, but rather from the dealer who’d ordered the car, and called to follow up on its ETA.”
“How’d the dealer know? From a credit application? I can’t imagine these people were that dumb!”
“No, they aren’t, unfortunately for us. It was pure luck, since it was a cash deal; but at some point, the dealer saw the buyer’s employee ID tag clipped to his belt. He used the information to push the shipping of the car, telling Rezeya, We gotta do our best for the ‘boys’ working at the labs. When the car had been delayed in San Francisco—because it was the one we found—she reallocated the car intended for San Francisco, as she felt Los Alamos was a more important target.”
Craig began to look as though he’d underestimated the turning of Rezeya.
“Humph, I’ll be damned. She seems to be willing to give it all up. You still a hundred percent your balls on the line kind of sure she’s really on our side now?”
“I’m sure, but I’d appreciate you keeping my balls out of it.”
“So … I need to find seven cars, with only color, make, model, year and VIN? And that those cars could be just about anywhere within about a hundred miles of a dealership’s location?”
“Yeah. You’ll need plenty of help you can trust.”
“Trust? Fuck are you kidding me? The only person I trust with this is me!” He instantly regretted saying it as the words left his lips.
“Unless you can make seven clones of your narcissistic ass in the next ten minutes, I don’t see you have a much of a choice,” said Scott, frustrated with Craig’s most annoying trait of overconfidence.
Craig exhaled a long breath, then bluntly asked, “What are the damn locations?”
June 29, 16:15 EDT
East Coast, United States
The largest multi-enforcement operation in the free world began on June 29 at 14:15 Mountain Daylight Time. Given that the atomic clock is in Boulder, Colorado, it was thought that the clocks would all be set to Mountain Time, that the terrorists wanted the bombs to go off simultaneously.
Analysis of the San Francisco bomb’s detonator revealed there was a GPS locator as well, indicating the intent was to detonate the bombs over a three-hour period. Clearly, they wanted to maximize the terror as much as possible. The agony and anxiety created while a nation is forced to anticipate the next explosion exploits the terror most effectively.
The worst part of this was that the bombs on the East Coast would be the first to explode by three hours. The population density of the East Coast presented additional challenges in finding the cars and at the same time evacuating the cities.
In Washington, D.C., and Newark, New Jersey, the FBI would head up the search. The local police departments would be enlisted but their instructions would be limited to locating and holding the car, then immediately contacting the FBI. The FBI’s counterterrorism unit had instructions for disarming the device based on the study of the bomb found in San Francisco.
Fearing panic, local politicians were slow to consider mass evacuations of their communities. As a result, an unprecedented order came from the White House, based solely on information from Craig and Scott. The president—against the judgment of his advisors—decided the consequences of not evacuating far outweighed the political risks of ordering an evacuation and being wrong. He gave very little weight to what people might think when the potential for loss of life was so great.
Evacuations would begin based on anticipated difficulty. Newark and New York would begin evacuation procedures at 8 a.m. on July 2. This would balance the interests in delaying as long as possible in hope the car would be found, thereby negating the necessity of evacuation and the need to remove people from harm’s way. All other cities would have a twenty-four-hour deadline.
The governors of New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, due to their proximity to Newark and Washington, D.C., were informed by President Barton himself. They were ordered to mobilize their National Guard units. All traffic was to be reverse flow, leaving Newark and all communities in a twenty-mile radius. This of course included the 14 million people in all five boroughs of New York City, many of whom didn’t have a car.
New York City had every imaginable mode of transportation at its disposal. The trick was directing the masses of people in such a way that one method wasn’t underutilized while another method had more people than it could accommodate in the given time.
After the embarrassing crisis in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, every major U.S. city began the process of reworking evacuation measures. Unfortunately, as is always the case with the public, the vast majority never listens.
How well would they follow the plan? That is precisely the question authorities faced starting in New York City. Every addressable citizen had been given instructions on where to proceed in case of a mass evacuation. Some were told to go to the airport, some to the ferry ports, others to the train stations, yet others to the bus authority; and, of course, many would be using the subways to get to those locations. Come the time of the actual order, though, would any of them remember where they were supposed to go? Or worse, would they simply ignore the instructions, choosing instead the method they preferred? The answer, well, they were about to find out.
June 30, 10:40 MDT
Los Alamos, New Mexico
Only antigovernment wackos in New Mexico became an issue to get out of danger’s way. This area of the country had always drawn people eager to buy into just about every crackpot theory that involves a conspiracy, from Big Brother to the deep state and worse. Not only do they exist, according to believers these entities are out to control, deceive, and otherwise screw over the common man at every turn. They remain convinced that if the government says to do something, it is in your best interest to do the exact opposite.
Not coincidentally, this isn’t a densely populated part of the country, a fact not lost on Craig. Also, the likelihood of finding a brand-new import car in the desert is far greater than in the greater metropolitan area.
Even though the investigation stage had ended, Craig was still charged with heading up every aspect of this mission by the president himself. “I don’t give a shit about the chain of command right now. I need someone I know can produce results, someone I can trust to ride asses and take no shit—no fucking pun intended. You tell anyone who dares to ask, they can follow your orders or resign, and they can call my office to confirm,” is what he’d said.
Craig had pointed out he’d been at this for almost six days now with very little sleep and was nearing his physical and mental limits. He’d asked the president if someone fresher wouldn’t be more capable. The president’s mumbled answer was something to the effect that he’d rather have him, as tired and weary as he was, than someone he didn’t emphatically trust, especially while the betrayal of Secretary Bonner was still a stinging wound. “The very fact you are still objective enough to see your limitations is exactly why I need you in there and not some renegade cowboy general.”
Craig had learned from Rezeya the general location for every car. That was critical, of course, but
not knowing precise location was a problem. Even worse, while Rezeya had information about both the dealership and when a sleeper was used to take over the car, she had no idea what the sleepers’ orders were or where they would drive or park the car to strike. She didn’t even know what the intended targets were. He still marveled at the effectiveness in which Scott had been able to turn her, even though he still bristled at the thought she’d escaped prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.
The team arrived at the National Labs in full force, with twenty desert-camouflaged Humvees, six of which had center-mounted gun turrets, six black FBI Chevy Suburbans, among which was the FBI’s local office bomb squad, and several state and local police cars. Like a choreographed ballet, the Humvees took position at every entry/exit point of the facility while unmarked black FBI vehicles sped in: a one-second delay live satellite image on their navigation system showed the location of the car in the civilian employee parking lot.
Bombs can be detonated in any number of ways. The complexity of the process can vary exponentially, depending on how the bomb is armed and the trigger (or triggers) to detonation. The team in this case had a working knowledge of the bomb’s design, thanks to the forensic analysis of the one discovered at the Benicia, CA, port. They knew in advance how these bombs would be armed, and that they had only one trigger to detonate. Knowing there were no trip wires that would deploy the bomb by breaking in, the bomb squad unceremoniously smashed the car’s rear windows, pulled out the rear seat cushion, and began the process of defusing the bomb using the information provided by the bomb disposal team in San Francisco. Since the detonation was solely by an internal clock set to detonate precisely at 12:01 July 4, there was no risk in cutting the power supply wires to the bomb. Fortunately, the bomb makers did not have a failsafe, since they didn’t assume any bombs would ever be discovered. Typically, a failsafe might be as simple as any wire cut, automatically detonating the bomb. This oversight was a rare lucky break to this horrible turn of events. Within twenty minutes, the danger was nullified.
