by Larry Bond
“Detonation,” Saleh said calmly.
A fireball appeared on the screen — a roiling cloud of flame that swallowed the Pentagon whole and blossomed out over the Potomac. A shock wave rippled outward, toppling buildings, smashing highway overpasses and bridges, shattering windows — biting deep into Washington, roaring over the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, and the Capitol. More graphic overlays appeared on the altered satellite image. Each showed the expected areas of maximum overpressure, heat, fire, wind, and radiation damage.
The screen froze, showing a sea of searing flame as a firestorm spread through the devastated area.
Ibrahim smiled at the screen, imagining the chaos this one weapon would cause. “And the results, Doctor?” he asked calmly.
The Egyptian tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Assuming an airburst height of three hundred meters and taking into account only deaths and severe injuries from blast, heat, and radiation.”
“And the results?” Ibrahim asked again, this time in a firmer voice.
Saleh dropped back into reality from his abstract mathematical universe. “Two hundred thousand dead, Highness. With perhaps another two or three hundred thousand seriously injured. Including, of course, the vast majority of America’s top political and military leadership.”
Ibrahim nodded. Perfect.
“The detonation point for this bomb is unusually low in order to achieve maximum damage against the Pentagon, Highness,” the computer specialist commented. “We could achieve even more significant civilian casualties with a higher altitude airburst. One more along the lines of the others — two thousand feet, for example.”
“No.” Ibrahim shook his head. His first target in Washington was America’s military nerve center. Its total destruction was his top priority. Dead American civilians came second. They were a welcome dividend, however. This was not just a surgical strike.
He wanted to twist the knife as he struck home.
He leaned closer to the screen. “Continue.”
Saleh obeyed.
The monitor cycled through a succession of images — showing nuclear destruction spreading across another nineteen targets spread out across the length and breadth of the United States.
Langley and Fort Meade were vaporized next — taking with them the headquarters of the CIA and the National Security Agency. Then the heart of Fort Bragg — home of the 82nd Airborne Division, the Delta Force, and the J.S.O.C-vanished in the blink of an eye. A fifth bomb destroyed the key areas of Fort Campbell-headquarters of the 101st Air Assault Division and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. A sixth destroyed the U.S. Central and Special Operations Commands at Mcdill Air Force Base, near Tampa. A seventh and eighth tore the guts out of the Ranger battalions, mechanized troops, and training units stationed at Georgia’s Fort Stewart and Fort Benning.
More bombs detonated — vaporizing the central areas of the U.S. Marine Corps bases at Camps Pendleton and Lejeune.
Other weapons slammed into the Air Force bases in Delaware, Idaho, New Mexico, Missouri, Texas, and Washington state — eliminating whole wings of C-5, C-141, and C-17 transports, KC-10 and KC-135 tankers, B-1B and B-2 strategic bombers, F-15 and F-16 fighters, and F-117 Stealth fighter bombers.
Four more rained down across the vast naval bases at Norfolk and San Diego — the home ports for a large number of America’s aircraft carriers and amphibious warships. Many of the ships would be at sea, but crucial support facilities and the personnel needed to man them would be wiped off the face of the earth.
When the dazzling images receded, Ibrahim turned slowly toward Saleh.
“So what is your final assessment, Doctor?”
The specialist punched in one last key. His monitor displayed a series of numbers. “At a minimum, I would expect total American military casualties to run close to three hundred thousand dead and critically wounded. Equipment and aircraft losses will run from fifty to seventy percent for each unit we have targeted.”
“And the ‘collateral damage’?” Ibrahim asked, consciously using the sterile, inhuman jargon adopted by the West during its wars against Arab and Muslim nations.
The Egyptian brought up a new set of numbers. “Since so many of these bases are in or near major areas of habitation, I expect civilian casualties to be far higher — millions dead, with as many more seriously injured.
“Naturally, many of those injured by blast or fire will die in the following days,” Saleh continued. “The detonation of even two or three weapons of this magnitude would saturate America’s emergency medical services — especially its burn wards. After twenty bombs go off, a great number of those caught by the flames will simply die untreated.”
Ibrahim breathed out, still staring at the numbers displayed on the screen. His thrust at America’s heart would be even more effective than he’d dared to hope — God be praised.
Every Russian-made nuclear weapon he had purchased at such a dear price was an integral part of the grand design. By striking at U.S. intelligence agencies, he would prevent America from seeing any of its many enemies clearly. By emasculating its commando units and other rapid deployment forces, he would remove its ability to react swiftly to those challenging its parasitic interests — in the Middle East, in the Persian Gulf, in Asia, and all over the world. And by destroying its strategic airlift and amphibious forces, he would cripple America’s power to intervene in strength in crises around the globe.
Ibrahim nodded solemnly. It would take the shocked and dazed survivors years to fully rebuild the elite ground forces and sophisticated aircraft and ships his chosen weapons would destroy in a single, devastating millisecond. And by then, it would be far, far too late.
Other powers, including those loyal to Islam, and in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people, would rush to fill the void left as the United States curled inward on its bleeding wounds.
And the whole course of history — of the centuries-old struggle between the House of Islam and its enemies — would be altered forever. Nothing would ever be the same again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
ARMS RACE
JUNE 19
Outside the Caraco Complex, Chantilly, Virginia (H MINUS 57)
The floodlights surrounding the Caraco complex were bright enough to turn night into day — even two hours past midnight.
Lying prone in the tall grass fifty meters away, Colonel Peter Thorn lowered the bulky Russian-made thermal imager they’d bought at a military surplus store several hours before. A quick check of the imager’s small display confirmed his earlier supposition. The warehouse-sized building with the antenna-studded roof had to contain Ibrahim’s command and control center. This many hours after the end of the normal workday, the other two buildings in the compound were both cool — near ambient temperature. But the third was still warm — with distinct hot spots near the main door and on the roof. There were people awake and hard at work in there.
Satisfied, he laid the thermal imager to one side and picked up a pair of binoculars — scanning slowly back and forth along the well-lit fence line. He fiddled with the focus on the binoculars and whistled softly.
“They’ve got cameras covering every close approach to that perimeter.
And I’d swear there are some power leads running up that fence.”
Helen Gray turned her head toward him. “You think it’s hot?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But I bet they can throw a few thousand volts through it on command.”
“Lovely. Just lovely,” she muttered. “So we’re looking at a complete security network — an electric fence, cameras, armed guards, and probably motion sensors, too.”
Thorn nodded. “Nobody said this would be easy.”
Sam Farrell spoke up. “As I recall, Pete, I said this would be impossible, crazy, illegal, and probably fatal.”
Thorn grinned back at him, feeling somehow more cheerful than he had for weeks. The prospect of action, of actually striking b
ack at a physical enemy, was acting as a tonic.
“Geez, Sam! Somebody should really get you to stop mincing your words.”
“Let’s take what we have to the FBI and let them run with it!” Farrell argued heatedly. He glanced toward Helen. “Let the HRT handle any raid on this place. They’ve got the manpower, the gear. and the legal right!”
Helen shook her head. “What we have, Sam, is a lot of supposition and guesswork — some of it based on evidence we took off two dead men. Men who were killed in very suspicious circumstances.”’ Thorn nodded.
They’d heard the first news reports on the bodies found near Middleburg while driving back from Leesburg.
Nobody from the FBI was saying anything publicly yet, but they knew the Bureau had to be going crazy trying to figure out how its Deputy Assistant Director heading the International Relations Branch had wound up dead in the rural Virginia woods — right beside the corpse of Caraco’s chief of European security.
Helen frowned. “If we walk into the Hoover Building with what we’ve got now, I guarantee you the first thing they’ll do is handcuff us to the nearest solid object and start piling up charges. By the time we get anybody high-ranking enough to pay attention to our story—”
“Those nukes will be detonating left and right,” Thorn finished for her.
Farrell still looked troubled. “I just don’t like going off the reservation like this. Acting this far outside the law goes against the grain.”
Hell, Thorn thought, it bothers me, too.
But he honestly couldn’t see any other way through the tangle they were in. Not only didn’t he believe official Washington could react fast enough to stop Ibrahim, he wasn’t sure who they could really trust with their story. If Caraco had one mole inside the Hoover Building, why not two?
Even if Mcdowell had been the only traitor feeding information to Wolf and Ibrahim, Caraco’s chief executive had already demonstrated the power he could exert over the capital’s political establishment. What federal official with any brains or sense was going to take on the head of a multibillion-dollar corporation who also happened to be a member of the Saudi royal family with close ties to the White House?
Especially on the unsupported testimony of a rogue FBI agent and a former Delta Force officer now slated for forcible retirement — both of whom were wanted on a variety of charges ranging from insubordination to kidnapping and murder?
Thorn snorted. That was an easy question. No one. Certainly not in time to make any difference.
He and Helen had also ruled out contacting the media. It would take the press too much time to get off its collective ass and start digging.
Besides, orchestrating a high-profile official or media investigation now would probably only spook Ibrahim into striking ahead of his planned schedule. The same argument ruled out going after the Godfrey Field hangars. The Saudi might not have all twenty bombs in place yet, but even one 150-kiloton nuke going off inside the U.S. would represent an unimaginable catastrophe.
And it was highly likely that the Caraco chief had far more than one of his Russian-made weapons prepped and ready to go.
No, Thorn thought coldly, the only chance they had was to get inside that compound and find some way to stop Ibrahim from launching his attack themselves. He was realistic enough to know just how long the odds were against that outcome.
And so was Farrell.
But the retired general was also canny enough to run through their other alternatives and calculate the even longer odds that one of them might pay off.
Farrell stared back and forth from Thorn’s face to Helen’s, plainly looking for a sign, any sign, that he’d made some impression on them.
Finally, he shook his head angrily. “Oh, shit, Pete. If I can’t stop you two from trying to kill yourselves, I guess I might as well try to help you do this right. What’s your plan? Hit the antennas on that roof and knock out their communications?”
“No, sir.” Thorn shook his head. “We’d have to take down all their phone and data lines at the same time. and that’s impossible. Destroying the antennas would only force Ibrahim to launch his planes on full autopilot. So maybe only eighteen or nineteen weapons hit their targets — instead of the full twenty. That’s not much better.”
“It sure as hell isn’t,” Farrell said. He chewed his lower lip.
“You think you have to go all the way inside?”
Helen answered for him. “I’m afraid so.” She sighed. “There’s got to be a command center or a control center somewhere in that building. If we take that and hold it, we should be able to do something to stop Ibrahim.”
Farrell snorted. “That’s a hell of a lot of ‘ifs,’ ‘somewheres,’ and ‘somethings,’ Helen.” He looked back at Thorn. “What makes you think taking out this son of a bitch’s headquarters is going to matter? Those aircraft and weapons will still be out there — loaded and ready to roll.”
“Timing,” Thorn said quietly. “It all comes down to timing. Whether we go after Ibrahim personally or settle for holding the command center, we have to hit him before he releases the arming codes to his dispersal fields.”
Like their American counterparts, Russian nuclear weapons could not be armed without the proper codes. Ibrahim must have obtained the necessary codes from somebody inside Russia’s Twelfth Main Directorate — the military agency responsible for the manufacture, testing, servicing, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons for the Russian armed forces. But there was no reason for him to turn that information over to his subordinates until almost the very last minute. In fact, there were a great many reasons for him to hold those codes close to his chest as long as possible. Chief among them was the fact that it would prevent any of his people from going off half-cocked — or from absconding with one or more of the enormously valuable weapons. There were a great many dictatorships that would pay millions to get their hands on one usable nuclear bomb.
Farrell nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense.” He glanced at the luminous dial on his watch. “It’s after two A.M. now. You still confident about our estimate for Ibrahim’s attack schedule, Pete?”
“Yes, sir,” Thorn said flatly.
The three of them had hashed that out in more detail on the way back from Godfrey Field. The inside parameter for an attack was the planned transfer of the Caraco executive jet from Dulles to Godfrey—1800 hours on the twentieth. The outside parameter was 1300 hours on the twenty-first — the time the jet was scheduled to depart. That was still a big window, so they’d managed to narrow it down even further.
Ibrahim was unlikely to go for a night attack. Whether his targets were cities or military bases, they were always busier and more crowded in daylight. Since there were always more small private planes in the air after the sun rose, a daylight attack also gave his improvised cruise missiles a far better chance of making it all the way to their targets without being challenged. Given the three-hour time difference across the continental United States, the earliest Ibrahim would strike was somewhere around ten or eleven in the morning — East Coast time — on June 21.
“Which means you want to go in … when?” Farrell asked. Thorn didn’t hesitate. He’d been giving that a lot of thought.
“Around one or two A.M. two days from now — on the twenty-first.”
“That’s cutting it kind of fine, Peter,” Helen warned.
He nodded. “Yeah. But there’s no way we can shave much off that. We need at least a day to find as much gear as we can. And it’ll take us the better part of another day to prep and come up with a workable plan. The way I see it that takes us all the way up to late on the twentieth or very, very early on the twenty-first.”
Farrell arched an eyebrow. “You actually want equipment and time to prep?” He snorted. “Hell, Pete, I was sure you and Helen were going to try to do this armed with a couple of Swiss Army knives, a flashlight, and a baseball bat. You must be getting soft.”
Thorn smiled wryly at his old boss. That was more like
the Sam Farrell he knew. “We’re also going to need another rental car. There’s no way we can get all the gear we’ve got to buy in one pass. I’m afraid your credit cards are going to take another beating, Sam.”
“At this point, money’s the least of my problems,” Farrell muttered. “I still don’t see how we’re going to get through that perimeter fence without tripping every alarm they’ve got,” Helen said quietly, staying focused on the matter at hand. “And if they see us coming, we’re screwed.”’ “True. Getting through the fence is our first big problem.”
Thorn lifted the binoculars again. He studied the fence for a moment longer, then shifted his focus — intently studying the tall oak and pine trees that had been left standing outside the compound to preserve something of the area’s once-rural feel. “So maybe we don’t go through the fence …”
The White House (H MINUS 47)
Richard Garrett tracked his chosen prey to a table in the White House mess.
He’d used his pass to get by the Secret Service guards at the main entrance. The White House pass, left over from his days in the administration and never revoked, was one of his prized possessions.
His ability to hobnob at will with top executive branch officials had added hundreds of thousands of dollars to his annual income during his days as a lobbyist-for-hire. Now that he represented Caraco’s interests full-time, it generated hundreds of thousands of dollars more in annual bonuses from Prince Ibrahim al Saud.
Garrett took the empty chair across from John Preston, the President’s Chief of Staff. “John, you’ve got a problem. A big problem.”
Caught off guard, Preston nearly choked on a mouthful of soup and hurriedly daubed at his mouth with a napkin. “Jesus, Dick, I’m eating my lunch here! Can’t this wait until later in the day?”
“No, it can’t.”
Preston sighed. “I assume this is about the dead guy out in the woods.
