But before they reached the corner, the tracker showed Sophia moving. Fast.
“Oh-oh, she’s moving.”
When they reached the corner, they caught a glimpse of a white windowless van careening around a far corner.
“Do you suppose she got her drones inside the White House and has ’em on timers to give her time to get completely out of the fallout zone?” Adam asked.
“Interesting. She’s happy to send other people to their death, but when it’s time for her to make the big sacrifice, she attacks remotely.”
“Old buddy,” Jeppesen said, sweat pouring off his forehead, “this can’t be how this ends.”
“If I know anything,” Adam said, “you and me, we’ll give it our all. But we’re going to need a little help from the big guy upstairs.”
Jeppesen shouted directions while Adam pushed their powerful vehicle up to and beyond its limits, flooring it with engine screaming on the straightaways, practically rolling over with tires screeching on the turns.
They raced ahead of Sophia on a parallel boulevard, and were about to cut over and block her, when she changed direction. Again, they raced to get ahead of her, but again she veered away.
“It’s as though she knows where we are,” Jeppesen said in exasperation.
“Of course,” exclaimed Adam. “Knowing her, she’s got a drone aboard this vehicle.”
Jeppesen began searching around the dash, under the front seats. Climbing into the back, he checked nooks and crevices, under the seats, everywhere. “Ha ha! Here it is.”
Jeppesen put the tiny whirligig on the console between the front seats. Gripping the barrel of his Glock, he slammed the butt down on the mechanical insect, smashing it into a fine dust of microbits.
About the same time, the signal from the tracker in Sophia’s vehicle went dead.
“Knowing her,” Adam said, “she’s destroyed our tracking device as well.”
“Time to call in the cavalry,” Jeppesen said. Getting out his secure phone, he put out a top priority all-points bulletin on Sophia’s vehicle with its description and last known location and direction. Immediately, the night reverberated with the wail of dozens of sirens converging on their vicinity.
Jeppesen patched the police channel over the vehicle’s speakers. A patrol car reported seeing Sophia’s van and was giving chase. Others responded and set up a perimeter of roadblocks, hemming the terrorist in, cutting off escape.
Moments later, the police channel reported Sophia’s vehicle had been surrounded by cop cars in the middle of an intersection in Dupont Circle, a fashionable district packed with upscale restaurants, embassies, homes, and apartments.
His phone patched into the police channel, Jeppesen ordered, “Maintain the perimeter. Keep ’em blocked in. But stay put, take cover, and do not approach the vehicle.”
As Adam drove like a madman to get there, they listened as an officer narrated events: “A side door in the white van just opened. A drone just flew out. Another one. Three, four, a bunch of drones are pouring out of the white van. The drones are spreading out. It looks like, yes, it looks like one drone is landing on the roof of each squad car.”
Jeppesen yelled over the police channel, “It’s a trap! Get away from those drones! Get away from those vehicles!”
Ka-blaaam, ka-blaaam, KABOOM, KABOOM, KABOOM.
The explosions ripped through the Washington DC summer night.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God,” came the officer’s voice. “Every squad car is a fireball.”
At that moment, Adam and Jeppesen wheeled into view, and came to a stop a hundred yards from Sophia’s van.
“Stay back,” Jeppesen repeated over the police band, “Stay back.”
Adam and Jeppesen, Glocks out, taking advantage of what cover there was, ran crouching toward the white van. Something wasn’t right. Motioning Jeppesen to stay back, Adam crept to the open side door and peered in. The van appeared to be empty. Without going in or touching anything, Adam carefully studied the vehicle. Gradually, in the dim illumination provided by nearby street lamps and burning squad cars, he detected telltale traces of wires—and more. The van had no one in it. It was an autonomous, driverless, drone vehicle. And it was rigged to explode the moment anyone touched it.
So where in hell was Sophia?
Chapter 42
The Washington Monument
“I ’ve got an idea,” Jeppesen said. “The FCC has used an old technology called RDF—radio direction finding—since before World War II to bust pirate broadcasters whose signals interfere with licensed stations. FCC trucks might be able to get some directional fixes on Sophia’s signals. We could triangulate her position with that telemetry data.”
Jeppesen got on the phone and lit a fire under some FCC bureaucrats to get the ball rolling. Not just rolling, but flying. Meanwhile, Adam drove them to a secret CIA staging facility at a small private airport on the outskirts of DC.
* * *
Back at the edge of the White House roof, Bob and four other Secret Service agents with night vision and high-capacity shotguns came up beside Tripnee. All six blasted away at the swarming drones. The wily buggers seemed to have built-in evasion tech. But the withering rate of fire was enough to stop the onslaught. Soon the whirr of incoming drones was no more. The swarm, every last drone, had been smashed to bits without any getting inside the building. So far so good. But would more be coming?
* * *
Jeppesen bounced up and down. “Ha! The FCC vans with large antennas are picking up directional data on Sophia’s low-frequency, long-wavelength radio signals.”
Bringing out a map of Washington DC, he and Adam pin-pointed three truck locations and, using the directional data, plotted a line from each. The lines all crossed right on the Washington Monument.
Also, the angle of the readings indicated the signals were coming from the top of the monument.
“Just like an al Qaeda terrorist to pick an iconic location dear to America,” Jeppesen said.
“Also very strategic,” Adam said. “An ideal place to orchestrate attacks on a whole slew of major targets. Not to mention, pretty much unassailable.”
“Yeah, we can’t very well just blow it up with a cruise missile.”
“It’s not like you to limit yourself like that,” Adam said, poking his old foxhole buddy. “Plus, we’ve got to find out how many nukes she’s got and where they’re located.”
The two of them planned an assault on the nearest thing to sacred ground in America, the 555-foot-tall sheer spire, the Washington Monument.
Jeppesen rapidly fine-tuned the overall arrangements, while Adam pulled on full black ops tactical gear. This included body armor, head-to-toe black clothing, soft soled, no-slip, no-sound shoes, two Glock 19s, extra ammo clips, door-buster explosive charges, flash-bang stun grenades, night vision, a Secret Service earpiece radio, climbing harness, carabiners, and other choice items.
Adam and Jeppesen walked outside onto the airport tarmac to find a modified super quiet Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The machine’s rotor blades were so silent, it had landed moments before without them hearing a thing.
That bode well for what they had in mind.
Adam climbed aboard, and the whisper-quiet ’copter rose to 10,000 feet and made a B-line for the Washington Monument.
At that moment, a Navy SEAL team made a giant, loud show of storming the monument at ground level. Knowing Sophia would have preset explosives, booby traps galore and who-knew-what else in place to prevent just such an assault, the SEALs were there to create a convincing diversion but had instructions to take every precaution not to get hurt.
The very top of the monument was a steeply sloping four-sided pyramid with two windows in each side. Sophia would have commanding views of all of Washington DC from those eight windows, but would have no way to look straight up. At least, that was Adam and Jeppesen’s reasoning.
When the Black Hawk was directly above the monument, Adam stepped out i
nto thin air. As the chopper silently descended straight down to 1,000 feet, a rope spooled out, lowering him another 500 feet. Oh-oh. A slight wind blew him off target by twenty yards. With his ear piece radio and mic he guided the pilot to bring him down onto the very peak of the steeply sloped top cap of the pyramid.
No-slip shoes or not, the pyramid’s slope was way too steep. The 500-foot fall wouldn’t be so bad, but the abrupt stop at the end didn’t sound good. Adam had come prepared. He dropped a 10-foot-diameter lasso over the peak of the roof. A rope extending from the lasso to his climbing harness allowed him to belay out, body almost horizontal, and move around on the steep slope.
Letting out some rope, he inched himself down toward a window. The key was the element of surprise. He had explosives to blow the thing open, but it would be so much better if one was already open.
Belaying down, feet against the steep slope, making no sound, he eased down to where he could see the windows on the west side facing the Capitol Building. No luck. They were closed tight.
Moving with care, both for stealth and to keep from plunging to his death, he worked his way around the pyramid. The windows facing south were also closed.
He smiled to see in huge letters the Latin words Laus Deo, which in English essentially mean, “Glory Be to God,” on the east side, the side facing the rising sun each morning. But here, too, the windows were shut tight.
Continuing his traverse—ha ha—he found both windows on the north side, the side facing the White House, wide open.
Perfect. Now he could toss in a stun grenade, swing out, drop in clean, and catch her completely by surprise. He’d need both hands to grip the rope and guide himself in. Then the moment he hit the deck inside, he’d whip out his pistols and finally capture this arch terrorist.
The flash-bang grenade dropped in and exploded beautifully. The swing went well. In an instant he was through the opening and balanced on the balls of his feet. But even before landing, he looked around and saw no one. Instead, he felt heavy netting drop from above and press in on all sides, pinning his arms. Completely enveloped and immobilized, struggle as he might, he was helpless.
Sophia stepped from behind a column. Apparently not much bothered by her wounded shoulder, she pushed him back onto a heavy bench, and duct-taped him in place, binding his neck to the bench back, his arms to his sides, and his ankles to the bench legs. Cutting small holes in the netting, she tore out his earpiece radio and removed his weapons. Outsmarted, humiliated, he’d dropped right into her trap.
Sophia wore a victorious, mocking, evil smile. “As-Salaam-Alaikum. Hi, Adam. How are you doing?”
“I’m good.”
“I always liked your grace under pressure.”
“I’ve got a few questions.”
“Sure, you may as well go to your grave knowing what you were up against, what really happened, why you had no chance.”
“What happened to George?”
“A very sweet boy. But he became suspicious. So, I caught him sitting, came up from behind, and snapped his neck.”
Recoiling, Adam strained against his bindings, but to no avail. Somehow, he had to play for time, figure something out, come up with some way to stop this woman.
“How did you disable the White House drone shield?”
Sophia popped out her left eye, revealing a deep hole in her face. “Ha. Surprised? You’d be amazed the compact little remote-control bombs I can hide behind this fake eye.”
“So, you’re Cyclops?”
“I’m one-eyed, but my father, thank God, is the mastermind.”
“Your father?”
“Abdul Kareem Aziz.”
“So, you’re not Sophia Katopodis?”
“I’m Fatima Sophia Aziz.”
The idea that little Yoda-like Aziz could be Sophia’s father defied belief, but so did the fanaticism that Aziz had instilled in his daughter.
“And Abdul Aziz is the mastermind? How’d that work?”
“Beautifully, praise Allah. What subordinate reveals his true nature to his boss? By keeping a low profile and pretending to be just an ordinary Believer, my father was able to move among our people and see each for who they truly are. To succeed—to win Allah’s total support, as we obviously have—our people had to be pure, true, and devout. Besides, my brilliant father is truly humble and abhors the spotlight.”
“I’ll be blunt,” Adam said, shaking his head inside the netting. “How could a well-educated, accomplished woman like you, with all you have going for you, embrace extreme fundamentalist Islamist terrorism? Don’t you realize that—if you were to succeed—the freedoms bestowed by Western civilization would be swept away and the second-class status of women would become law?”
“I forgive you for that question. Your Western mind is blind to the true nature of the world. My father’s love for me, my love for him, and our love for Allah surpasses all that. Allahu Akbar. Allah really, truly is great, and there is no other God but Allah.”
“So why me? Why did you request me specifically?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Your friendship with the president has been in the press for years. The goal, all along, was to be invited into the White House.”
“So, you killed dozens of your people for that? How could you do that?”
“In case you didn’t notice, most of them were deeply flawed. Masood Wahhab and the crew of Saadet, for example, were sinners and an affront to Allah. Roxanna was just too ambitious and full of herself. Of course, some were good, devout people who just had to be sacrificed for the greater good. As you people say, you can’t cook an omelet without breaking some eggs.”
“The cave explosion and the laptop erasure were your doing?”
“You’re catching on. Maybe you’re not so dumb.”
“The prisoners off Bora, did they really threaten you?”
“Nope. Just had to kill ’em to keep ’em from blowing my cover.”
“What about those assassination attempts on you?”
“Oh, that was Mossad,” Fatima Sophia Aziz said, as she sat down on a bench facing Adam. “They were onto me. What a lucky break to have Jeppesen put out word I was dead. Otherwise the Israelis probably would have told you Americans to watch out for me. That was a close one. But Allah, as usual, was watching over me.”
“How did you get bombs and drones here?”
“My brother, Ramzi, with our advance team, sailed into Chesapeake Bay and up the Potomac River a month ago.”
“Your brother? Your dad?”
“I’m genuinely sorry you’ll be dead and won’t see it. Even if something were to happen to me, Ramzi and my father are unstoppable. Without doubt, we, or they, will decapitate the Great Satan.”
“You have more nukes? More drones?”
“Of course, the roof of the Lincoln Memorial, being lower than the surrounding walls, makes an ideal staging area. Okay, I’ll grant you your people thwarted the first grand attack. But we’ve got enough drones and bombs to demolish the Pentagon, Capitol Building, CIA, and FBI buildings, and still have bombs left over. It’s going to be nuclear winter around here for a while.”
“You realize you’re insane. You’ve got to be stopped. You will be stopped.”
“Adam, you don’t realize your own importance. I have a feeling once you’re dead, the wind, the will to resist, is going to go out of Tripnee and Jeppesen, the only people who have even the remotest idea what America is up against.”
Sophia picked up an AK-47 lying on the bench beside her, and aimed it at Adam. “Well, enough of this. It’s time to get on with it. I’m sorry you and I couldn’t have met under other circumstances—with no Tripnee around. You’re not bad for an infidel. But this is goodbye. Allahu Akbar.”
Swallowing, Adam blurted, “Would you grant a dying man one last wish? Would you do one of your twirls? I’ll confess, I’m always mesmerized when you do that.”
Sophia smiled in triumph. “Why not?” She put down her AK-47, brought her shapely form up
from her bench, rose onto her tiptoes, and, in front of the window Adam had jumped through earlier, began a slow twirl.
At that precise moment, Sophia’s head disappeared in a pink mist.
“What an absolutely terrific girlfriend,” Adam said to the open window facing the White House.
Author’s Note
The events and characters described herein are fictional, while the places are real. Dream Voyager’s route through the Greek Islands exactly matches the itinerary described in the author’s short non-fiction sailing narrative “Sailing the Greek Islands: Dancing with Cyclops.” The only difference being somewhat less bloodshed.
By the way, if you enjoyed this book, please post a review or two on Amazon, Good Reads, etc. Thank you!!!
—Bill McGinnis
About the Author
A California native with a Master’s in English literature, William McGinnis wrote five non-fiction books about whitewater rafting and sailing—and now writes thriller novels—stories that captivate, delight, and inspire. Bill is well-known as the river-exploring founder of Whitewater Voyages. His passions include hiking, woodworking, staring into space, audiobooks, and exploring new paths to adventure, friendship, and growth. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His author website is www.WilliamMcGinnis.com.
Books by William McGinnis:
Whitewater Rafting
The Class V Briefing
The Guide’s Guide Augmented: Reflections on Guiding Professional River Trips
Sailing the Greek Islands: Dancing with Cyclops
Disaster on the Clearwater: Rafting Beyond the Limit
Whitewater: An Adam Weldon Thriller (#1)
Cyclops Conspiracy: An Adam Weldon Thriller Page 17
