Oath to Defend

by Scott Matthews

  Almost faster than thought, Drake raised his HK416 and fired two rounds into the chest of the first terrorist to draw on him, knocking him off his motorcycle. Before he could swing his weapon toward the man on the other Harley, the man’s visor flashed red as he was knocked sideways off his motorcycle. Casey’s shot from the hillside had penetrated the side of the man’s helmet and exploded his head, killing him before he could level his Uzi at Drake.

  Spinning around, Drake saw that the man at the west end of the parking lot was gunning his Harley in his direction. He fired four rounds at center mass and saw the rider jerk as the rounds struck him. The Harley came on, even as its dead rider tumbled back onto the gravel, and crashed into the razor-wire fence, where it slid sideways in the gravel before coming to rest.

  That left the man fifty yards away at the east end of the parking lot. He was now crouching down behind his Harley, which blocked a shot from either Casey or Drake. All Drake could see was a bit of the man’s left shoulder.

  Looking for a way to make the shot, he suddenly saw the white Yukon pulling slowly off the highway behind the crouching terrorist. When the man raised his head to see if the vehicle was a threat, Casey took the shot from above, killing him with another headshot.

  Drake made sure the four men were dead before he walked to the small trailer that had been towed behind the black and silver Harley Softail. Painted black with red flames on the rear panel, it was the type of lightweight cargo trailer he’d seen pulled by motorcycles before. Seven feet long, four feet wide and almost four feet high, it was big enough to hide an atomic demolition device.

  What Drake didn’t know was if the trailer was booby-trapped or rigged to explode if the locked hatch was opened. There was a single keyhole at the rear of the trailer. It was in the nose cavity of a chrome skull and cross bones ornament.

  Gonzalez and Montgomery sprinted across the highway and stopped on the other side of the trailer Drake was studying.

  “Before we have a motorist wondering why four dead bodies are lying on the ground here,” Drake looked up and said, “bring the Yukon over and hide them in the back. Then we’ll see if this trailer’s holding the nuke Liz is looking for.”

  While the bodies were being stowed away, Casey traced Drake’s path down the ridge and jogged to his side. “Now what?” he asked.

  “Now we wait for Ricardo to show us how much of his explosive ordinance training he remembers.”

  “I’ll get the emergency tool kit in the Yukon,” Casey said. “He’ll need some tools. While I’m doing that, you might want to explain what just happened to the guy watching us from the window in the control building. He’s on his phone.”

  “Tell Billy to go see him. He hasn’t seen Billy shoot anyone.”

  Drake got down on his hands and knees to look for anything suspicious under the trailer. The sidewall substructure was made of one inch by one inch tubing that probably housed the wiring for the turn signals and brake lights on the trailer, but there didn’t appear to be anything added to the bottom of the trailer that didn’t belong there.

  As he was standing up again, Casey returned with the tool kit, Gonzalez right behind him.

  “I don’t see anything that screams ‘bang, you’re dead’ if we open it,” Drake said. “But you’re the expert.”

  “If there’s a nuclear device in there,” Gonzalez said, “I don’t think whoever planned this would risk letting one of these nut jobs blow it up when they forgot how to defuse a booby trap. You guys stand back and I’ll open it up.” He pulled a large flathead screw driver out of the tool kit Casey was holding open for him.

  Drake and Casey quickly stepped back as he looked carefully at the keyhole at the rear of the trailer. Inserting the head of the screwdriver into the nose of the skull, he hit it hard with the palm of his hand and twisted the screwdriver hard to break the lock.

  The strut-activated hatch opened slowly.

  Drake and Casey stepped forward again, and the three men saw the brown canvas transport container of a Special Atomic Demolition Device with Cyrillic lettering on it.

  “I’ll be damned,” Casey said. “I knew one of these would make it here one day. But I never thought I’d be there to see it.”

  “Is it armed, Ricardo?” Drake asked.

  “No, these SADMs require an arming device that has to be attached with a timer. This timer,” he said, as he removed it from a pouch on the front of the canvas container. “It’s not attached. We were lucky, though. They could have armed this thing in a couple of minutes.”

  “And then what?” Drake asked. “How were they going to blow this dam?”

  “If they did their homework, they probably found a spot out on the dam they figured would cause the dam to fail when this thing went off. Break through the fence, kill anyone in the control building, set the timer, and get out of here.”

  Gonzalez brought the arming device closer to his face to inspect it. The size of a baseball, it had a set of rings used to set the delay time.

  “Only they wouldn’t have made it off the dam,” he said with a grin. “These rings are set at ‘Instant.’ And they won’t turn. As soon as they attached the arming device, it would have detonated.” He paused. “It looks like whoever sent these four out didn’t want them coming back.”

  “It was a suicide mission,” Casey said. “Well, I’m glad we helped them with the suicide part.”

  “I’d better let Liz know we got here in time,” Drake said, taking out his cell phone. “Mike, see if you can convince the guy Billy’s talking with over there to let DHS handle this. Liz might have a team on the way, and I’m sure she’ll want to limit local law enforcement involvement as much as possible.”

  “On my way,” Casey said and gave him a two-fingered salute.

  Drake smiled and walked to the side of the Yukon and leaned against it, where he took a moment to breathe deeply through his nose and relax his muscles. The adrenaline dump was still racing his heart and raising his blood pressure. He was familiar with the boost his body had given him in the face of danger, and he also knew how to ride out the return of the neuropeptide Y level in his brain to normal. After a minute, he found Liz’s number in his contact list and waited for her to answer.

  “We got it, Liz. It’s a Russian atomic demolition device. We also have four dead terrorists in the back of Mike’s Yukon.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No casualties here. Just a nervous Corps of Engineer employee we’re trying to calm down. You’ll want to let him know everything’s all right before he gets the state police up here.”

  “Will do. I’ve just borrowed a new Lakota helicopter from the Oregon National Guard and a DHS team from Eugene is on its way. I’m coordinating the operation to recover the nuke from here with the governor’s office. We’re trying to keep this out of the press.”

  “You should be able to,” Drake said. “The four of us here at the dam are the only ones who know what we’ve recovered. You might have to create a story about the four dead terrorists, though.”

  “I’m working on it. The massacre at the polo field is being linked to drug traffickers and a cartel dispute over drug routes to Canada. We could say the four at the dam were tracked down by undercover operatives whose names will not be released.”

  “Thanks, we don’t need any publicity.”

  “You’re welcome. Before you go, the Secretary says thanks, job well done, and Larry needs to talk with you.”

  Drake heard Green being called over the noise of what sounded like a hastily assembled command center.

  “Drake, I worked with your friend Paul and the Bend PD,” Green told him. “We traced calls on Vazquez’s phone to the hangar house at Sunriver. Calls were made from there to Vazquez at the Pronghorn Resort and a number of calls to someone at Wyler Ranch. That’s gotta be where they ran this operation from.”

  59

  Sitting comfortably in a brown leather armchair next to a picture window looking toward the mountain
range to the west, Barak caressed the bottle of his favorite single malt scotch he was holding. An empty crystal tumbler sat on the glass-topped end table next to him.

  He had waited patiently for a call. His man riding the last of the four Harleys had been instructed to call once the demolition device was out on the dam. He’d been promised a nice reward for making the call, a payoff Barak knew he would not have to make. Still, he thought, the sum was large enough that he felt sure the man would call him shortly before the detonation took his life.

  But the call had not come. Had he failed again? He had waited twenty years for the green light to start working down his assassination list of prominent Americans. He had begun a month ago, but he had failed at the last moment to kill the Secretary of Homeland Security. And now the coup de grace that he’d designed to panic America and earn him respect as the leader of the worldwide jihad might not have happened.

  How could he have failed? No one could have known the nuke they had purchased from Venezuela, courtesy of Iran and Russia, was in Oregon. No one except the men who’d brought it here for him. No one knew the dam was the target, either, except for those same men. And of those men, only Saleem had the opportunity to betray him. But there was no reason he could think of that the young Hezbollah leader would disobey him. Nothing would be gained by doing so.

  If Allah had allowed him to fail again, Barak told himself, it surely must be that his years living in Las Vegas while he developed the security firm that concealed his team of assassins had corrupted him. It was true that he had enjoyed some of the pleasures of the West his religion despised—he abruptly set the bottle of scotch on the end table—but he had decided it was necessary to hide his mission and his true identity. He didn’t know how else he could have developed the business clientele he had without pampering and hosting all the American businessmen, plus more than a few Muslims who supported the cause.

  With a shout of hot rage and icy despair, Barak rose from his chair and threw the bottle of Glenmorangie against the face of the river rock fireplace.

  “Get the Hawker ready to leave,” he shouted at his pilot, who was watching TV in the next room. “I want to be airborne in fifteen minutes.”

  Then he calmly walked to the closet in the master bedroom and retrieved the two black duffle bags of Semtex, the detonator caps, and a disposable cell phone. Each duffle bag held five pounds of Semtex. That was more than enough to level the two-story house and its hangar. When he was safely out of the house and ready to takeoff, he would dial the pre-set number and detonate one duffel bag of pre-wired Semtex. The explosion that would eliminate any trace of evidence he’d ever been in Oregon. The other duffel bag would travel with him for the next battle.

  He carefully set both of the duffle bags on the floor in the middle of the great room, then returned to the bedroom to load his travel bag and collect the nylon range bag with his other weapons. His next stop was going to be Toronto, Canada. Its cooler climate would require a different wardrobe, so he tossed just a few items of clothing in his bag along with his leather shaving kit.

  He had a safe house in Toronto that was three adjoining apartments in one of the densely populated, high-rise buildings that were overwhelmingly occupied by Muslim immigrants. He would have no trouble hiding in Toronto. The city had the highest concentration of Muslims living in North America, but he thought he would grow a full beard…just in case.

  For now, though, it was just a matter of getting out of Oregon and in the air before anyone knew he was involved with trying to blow up the dam in the mountains.

  Taking a last look around the master bedroom, he carried his travel bag to the top of the stairs leading down to the hangar.

  “Tim,” he shouted to his pilot, who was cleaning out his own bedroom, “Take my two personal bags to the jet and get ready to leave. I have one last chore to complete here, and then I’ll join you.”

  When his pilot acknowledged the order, he walked to the window and looked out at the airport runway. This small airport didn’t have a tower, and there were just a few planes below him that looked like they might be leaving any time soon. Well, he thought, leaving as soon as they were ready shouldn’t be a problem.

  His immediate concern, aside from leaving the resort, was whether he should let anyone know where he could be reached. He had no intention of calling Ryan, his contact with the Alliance who had brokered the delivery of the nuclear demolition device from Venezuela, or his sponsor at the Brotherhood in the Middle East. All three would know of his failure soon enough and expect an explanation he was unwilling to provide until he was safely out of their immediate reach.

  He also briefly considered alerting Saleem to be extra cautious on his way back to Tijuana. While he wasn’t altogether sure he could trust the younger man, he had delivered the nuke from Mexico to Oregon successfully. Perhaps it was only the difference in their ages that made him wary of Saleem’s loyalty, that and his mixed Lebanese and Mexican blood. He concluded that Saleem had enough of a head start and would be fine.

  Grabbing the duffel bag of Semtex that was going with him, Barak walked downstairs to his Hawker. As he always had, he would trust his fate to Allah.

  60

  After a sprint back up the ridge above the dam, Casey prepared the Relentless for a dash back to Sunriver. Seated next to him, Drake waited until they were in the air before asking for help in using the helicopter’s Garmin avionics to acquire satellite images of the hangar house.

  With a touch of the display screen in front of him, Casey switched the touch screen in front of Drake. “This’ll give you the global connectivity option,” he said. “Touch the icon for Internet access and select Google Earth, then enter Sunriver Airport. It won’t be a live shot, but it will show you our options when we get there.”

  After following these instructions, Drake leaned closer to study the shot of the southern end of the runway and the adjacent row of hangar houses. “Looks like the only place to land is right next to the house on the taxi way,” he said. “The other side has houses for a hundred yards, then trees. The good news is the noise we make on approach won’t be unexpected at an airport.”

  “The house faces a street on one side and the airport taxi way on the other,” Casey said after a glance at the display. “Do you want to wait for Larry to block the street if Barak’s there and makes a run for it?”

  “I think we’ll get there before Larry does. He’s with Liz at the command center she set up in Bend.”

  “Adam, if Barak is there, he’s not going to just sit around and wait to be caught. Remember how he slipped out of that resort in Cancun? And then the villa south of Tijuana? I think we should lock the place down and then go after him.”

  It was good advice, and Drake knew he should listen to his friend. They had survived more than one close call by playing it safe. But he also knew he didn’t want to chance letting the man get away again. In a month’s time, Barak had tried to kill him, a sitting cabinet member, and what remained of his family. If Barak was behind the massacre at the polo field and the attempt to blow the dam and kill a hundred thousand innocent people, he needed to be stopped. It was a risk Drake was willing to take.

  “Let’s see what it looks like when we get there,” he said. “The last thing I want is to let this guy live to kill another day.”

  They flew low and fast down the eastern slope of the Cascades toward the Sunriver Resort without talking for several minutes. Both men were thinking about the actions they might have to take shortly.

  Casey touched the communication icon on his display screen and called Green at the command center in Bend. “Larry,” he said, “we’re five minutes from the Sunriver Airport. Let Liz know we’re hoping to make a surprise visit to our friend with the jet. If we find him, she needs to be ready with a story to match the other stories she’s putting out.”

  “Just you and Drake? I heard from Ricardo, he’s still at the dam.”

  “Just the Lone Ranger and Tonto,” Casey said, �
�and the element of surprise.”

  “Hope you find him, boss. Good hunting.”

  Drake looked down ahead and to his right and saw the golf courses ahead that crisscrossed over the Little Deschutes River at the Crosswater Resort.

  “We chase Barak to the Mexican Riviera and back and find he might be less than a mile or two from where we’ve been staying,” he said. “Amazing!”

  “You think he came back to Oregon to get revenge?” Casey asked as he dropped down to five hundred feet and touched the display panel to activate the Nav/Com functions and make sure there weren’t any other planes landing or taking off from the small airport he needed to avoid.

  “He had to have been planning this for longer than a month,” Drake replied. “Arranging to get a nuke smuggled here had to take awhile. At least I hope it did.” He got up and walked back through the passenger cabin to the storage locker and switched out the magazine in his HK assault carbine for a fresh thirty-round one. Then he returned to his seat beside Casey.

  “Veer to the west of the hangar house over those other homes,” he said after taking another look, “and then flare around and set down on the taxi way so we block his plane from coming out. I’ll make my way to the side of the house next to the hangar door. I’ll cover you as you move in.” Casey nodded. “It looks like you can boost me up to reach the bottom of the railing on that deck. I’ll enter through the sliding doors up there. You make it around to the front door on the other side. If I take fire, shoot your way in.”

  “What about his pilot?”

  “If Barak’s pilot is here, he’s been helping the wrong side. He’ll have to make a choice.”