Target Omega

by Peter Kirsanow

  —

  Luci Saldana was fascinated by the madman.

  This was her third consecutive year acting as part of a support crew for Bob Janasek’s attempt to finish Badwater. For the third consecutive year he’d failed, but this time he’d made it almost to the one-hundred-mile mark.

  Luci and fellow support-crew member Vicki Starks made sure Janasek was properly hydrated, properly medicated, and resting comfortably in his hotel room before they proceeded to the Diamondback to party—for some, the primary attraction of Badwater.

  And shortly thereafter the madman appeared.

  What fascinated Luci most about the madman was that he had absolutely no business being here. He wasn’t a distance runner. In fact, Luci doubted he had ever run even a half marathon, let alone an ultramarathon, and one in 110-degree heat no less. She knew this because Luci was a runner herself—mostly 10Ks and the occasional half marathon—and she was familiar with the distance runner’s physique: muscular calves, lean but developed thighs, thin, almost emaciated torso and arms. The madman, however, was built more like an NFL running back or mixed martial arts competitor: six feet two inches, approximately 210 pounds, sprinter’s legs, broad shoulders tapered to a narrow waist, and powerful arms—far too much muscle and upper-body weight to be carried over long distances.

  The madman’s name was Tom Lofton. He occasionally patronized the Dale City, Virginia, recreation center, where Luci worked the desk part-time while she was studying for her master’s in physical therapy.

  For the last year, Lofton had been coming in to work out once or twice a week. Unlike most of the other patrons, whose workout schedules rarely varied, Lofton never came in at the same time twice in a row. Sometimes he arrived at five A.M., other times at ten P.M., and a variety of times in between. Occasionally, he wouldn’t show up for a week or two.

  The rec center members who were distance runners would hit the treadmills for five- to seven-mile runs during the winter. In warmer months they would run several miles outside after some light weight training. Lofton’s workouts couldn’t be more different. Although they varied, each consisted of intense cross- or interval training. Numerous sprints up the steep hill behind the center followed by multiple sets of squats, dead lifts, power cleans, presses, and plyometrics, with virtually no rest in between.

  Luci occasionally saw male rec center members, including some of the former Marines from Quantico who resided nearby, watch in fascination. Lofton’s sessions were brutal, almost sadistic. But they weren’t distance workouts. They were the workouts of someone for whom superb conditioning was more a matter of function than fitness.

  The male members weren’t the only ones to notice Lofton. Shortly after he began working out at the rec center, Luci noticed that the female members began paying more attention to their appearances. Day-Glo spandex shorts replaced drab sweatpants. Some sported new hairstyles and hints of makeup. They weren’t daunted by Lofton’s unpredictable schedule; they simply attended more often on the chance that he might be there.

  The ladies were, however, frustrated by Lofton’s apparent obliviousness to their presence. In the gym he was all focus and exertion.

  Luci was one of the few people at the center to whom Lofton ever spoke, even if it was just a greeting. Luci found him courteous and respectful, not qualities she normally found among the good-looking guys she knew. And Lofton, thought Luci, was hot. Not in the soft, pretty-boy way some guys in school or the center looked; rather, he had an intense, serious appearance that suggested looks were not an acceptable substitute for accomplishment.

  Despite what Luci believed to be the wrong training approach, it seemed Lofton had planned to make one of those accomplishments completing the Badwater course. Impossible. But those who knew him as Mike Garin wouldn’t have bet against him. Not even his fellow operator Gene Tanski, whose long familiarity with him had produced something closer to reverence than proverbial contempt. They’d seen him go from challenge to challenge. Battle to battle. And prevail. Always. No matter the obstacle.

  Luci was more than a bit disappointed when Lofton was unable to participate. On first seeing him at Badwater, she was hoping she would have a chance to get to know him after the race. In fact, had she known he was actually going to show up, she would’ve volunteered to put a support team together for him. The man had a story, and she was determined to find out what it was.

  Vicki prodded her to make a move. Luci didn’t need much encouragement. The interest was certainly there; it was more a matter of screwing up the nerve. Lofton wasn’t the most approachable person. Not only did he have the demeanor of an executioner—albeit a handsome one—but when he spoke, his unnervingly deep voice tended to intimidate everyone within earshot.

  Luci knew she was attractive enough. She was pretty and fit and, as the baby sister of four older brothers, was comfortable around men and knew how to make them comfortable around her. She had an infectious gregariousness that made everyone near her more talkative.

  Luci had observed Lofton sitting alone in the corner of the lounge for the last hour. In that time she had fended off the good-natured advances of two members of other support crews, downed four beers, and toyed with three different opening lines to use on Lofton. She finally rose from her seat and told a giggling Vicki to wish her luck, when she noticed a tall, wiry man who looked as if he had just driven a herd of cattle to the rail yards approaching Lofton from behind. Luci took a few tentative steps forward before the trail boss took a seat opposite Lofton. He wore cowboy boots, jeans, and a black T-shirt that revealed Popeye forearms laced with a road map of veins and arteries. His hair and beard were the color of pewter and his deep-lined face was almost as taciturn as Lofton’s. Whoever he was, he looked like a serious man who had seen and done serious things. Luci returned to her seat and ordered another beer.

  —

  The man who had sat across from Garin was Clint Laws, and although not truly a trail boss, he was, at least, a Texan.

  The magic waitress placed beers in front of both men and nearly succeeded in escaping with Garin’s empty when Clint placed his hand on her arm. “Darling, I truly appreciate the effort. I do. But is there any chance on your next trip back, those pretty little legs of yours might just bring me something a man all growed up might drink? I’m thinking Jackie, Johnnie, or maybe even Jimmy?”

  The waitress gave Laws an easy smile and walked away more slowly than she had moved all night.

  “Class. Real class,” groaned Garin. “Your sorry butt’s way too old for her, Clint.”

  “That’s not what those hips say. And those hips don’t lie.”

  Garin shook his head. Laws was not just a character but, quite literally, an original.

  One of the first members of First Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, colloquially known as Delta Force, he had been among the pioneers to guide the continued evolution of modern asymmetric warfare.

  The process of developing specialized unconventional combat units had begun as early as World War II and continued through the early sixties. By the time of US involvement in Vietnam, American special operations forces were well established.

  But the need for a hyper-elite quick-reaction force tasked solely with neutralizing catastrophic threats to US security became critically apparent after January 17, 1966. On that date a US Air Force B-52 collided with a tanker during a midflight refueling over the Mediterranean. The B-52 disintegrated in midair and the four Mk-28 hydrogen bombs it was carrying fell to earth near the coastal town of Palomares, Spain.

  Conventional explosive material inside two of the bombs detonated, scattering metallic debris below. The radioactive remains were almost immediately recovered and secured.

  A third bomb was recovered wholly intact within hours of the incident.

  The fourth bomb, however, couldn’t be found.

  Frantic, President Lyndon Baines Johnson ordere
d the deployment of scores of ships and planes, along with more than ten thousand troops, to search for the missing bomb. It took nearly three months before the fourth and final nuke was recovered in the Mediterranean at a depth of three thousand feet.

  After an intense bout of awkward diplomacy with the Spanish government, the matter was quickly laid to rest.

  Seemingly.

  In fact, only one of the bombs reported destroyed by its conventional explosives had actually exploded. The other couldn’t be found. Thousands of American troops and dozens of planes and naval vessels quietly continued searching for the missing bomb.

  Obviously, recovering an American nuclear weapon intact would have been a huge intelligence coup for the Soviets, who had learned from an asset in the US State Department that one bomb was still unaccounted for. So they, too, dispatched troops to find the bomb. But in contrast to the massive US deployment, the Soviets sent only a fifteen-man squad of specially trained Spetsnaz GRU commandos, guided by a handful of KGB analysts.

  Five months after the accident, the Spetsnaz squad located the missing bomb in the hills of a sparsely populated coastal area south of Carboneras, about twenty miles from Palomares. Within twenty minutes of the discovery, more than two thousand US Marines had the Spetsnaz team surrounded.

  After an extraordinarily tense standoff lasting several hours, and a flurry of urgent calls between the White House and the Kremlin, disaster was averted when the Soviets surrendered the nuke.

  The incident became the subject of numerous analyses by the CIA and DIA, both of which were astonished that a small team of Soviet special operators was more effective at finding and securing the bomb than a much larger American force, a force that also had the advantage of knowing the area and general conditions in which the bombs were lost.

  Reports were written, recommendations made. But they were shelved for nearly two decades. Then, in October 1986, a missile tube on a Soviet Navaga-class nuclear submarine exploded in the Atlantic approximately four hundred miles east of Bermuda. Several US naval vessels were dispatched to the area, but before they could reach the sub, it sank eighteen thousand feet beneath the surface with an estimated thirty nuclear warheads.

  Neither the sub nor its arsenal of warheads was ever recovered.

  Thereafter, President Ronald Reagan tasked Vice President George H.W. Bush, a former director of the CIA, with forming a quick-reaction force modeled after the Spetsnaz squad and designed to interdict, recover, and/or destroy any loose or rogue weapons of mass destruction—regardless of the source. The vice president tapped a highly regarded special operator, Lieutenant Colonel Clinton Laws, to spearhead the development, recruitment, and training of the force and, ultimately, to command it. Laws handpicked a diverse team of some of the best tier-one special operators in the US military, putting them through an ungodly eighteen-month training program at a four-thousand-acre southern Nevada compound affectionately called the Ranch, a tongue-in-cheek takeoff on the CIA’s own training facility in Camp Peary, Virginia, the Farm.

  The process was arduous and consumed several years but took on greater urgency with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the nightmare possibility that nuclear weapons housed in former Soviet republics might be stolen by or sold to terrorists or state sponsors of terror.

  Laws commanded the force for nearly a dozen years and upon his retirement continued to supervise training at the Ranch. The man he picked as his successor to head the team was killed under circumstances known only to the president and a few others. By then, Laws had already identified Mike Garin as the next leader of the team.

  Laws ran both hands through his hair and sat back in his seat.

  “Well, tell me about Pakistan, Chief.”

  Garin registered only mild surprise. “Who says I was in Pakistan?”

  “The Washington Post, that’s who.” Laws pantomimed reading a newspaper. “Pakistani officials refused to comment on reports of an explosion and collapse of a tunnel at the nuclear facility in Wah Cantonment. The ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, assures that there was no breach of the compound. Reports continued to emerge of numerous bodies being pulled from the debris, reports strongly denied by Pakistani sources. . . .”

  “When did you begin reading The Washington Post?” Garin asked.

  “Opposition research, Chief.”

  “No, I mean when did you begin reading?”

  “Ho, he’s got jokes.” Laws casually scanned the premises. “I’m guessing those weren’t prairie dogs in that tunnel. So, should I assume you can neither confirm nor deny?”

  “You know the protocols.”

  “I wrote the protocols. So, I say again, tell me about Pakistan.”

  “Check the after-action report. I’m sure Kessler would be happy to read you in.”

  Laws frowned. “That little Kraut’s got no sense of gratitude. Every once in a while when he needs something, he’ll feed me some useless intel and claim it’s on an eyes-only basis. Usually nothing more important than directions to Burger King. But he acts like he just told me about the Manhattan Project. Other than that, the miniature little bastard treats me like a crazy uncle.”

  “Smart man.”

  “Not gonna throw me a bone, Chief? Something that’ll make an old dried-up operator feel warm and fuzzy? Lord knows with your repulsive face repellin’ the honeys, I’m not gettin’ any tonight.”

  Garin smiled for the second time that night, a personal best. Laws was in some ways like an uncle, though far from crazy. He was something of a legend in the special ops community. Even though he’d been officially retired for more than a decade, the various US intelligence agencies still sought his advice and occasionally engaged more specialized services on a contract basis. He maintained an impressive network of contacts both overseas and domestic, well-placed individuals whom Laws had cultivated over several decades who would still return a favor thought long forgotten.

  It wouldn’t surprise Garin that Laws knew there had been some type of recent operation in Pakistan, although he wouldn’t have gotten the information from Kessler. And he wouldn’t have known the specific purpose of the operation or any of its details. Laws thrived on such information, but he knew there was almost no likelihood he’d get it from Garin. It was, after all, Laws who had scouted Garin more than a dozen years ago. Laws had plucked the former Ivy Leaguer from the midst of SEAL Qualification Training and set him on a path only a handful of men had ever followed. It was Laws who had harnessed the volatile mix of testosterone and adrenaline within Garin and tempered it with appropriate measures of training and discipline, forging an especially lethal instrument to be unleashed in the war on terror. The training had been more important than the discipline. Indeed, Laws had already heard from Dan Dwyer, an Annapolis football coach, about Garin’s preternatural discipline. Many helped train Garin, but Laws was his mentor. And Garin was his prized pupil.

  The magic waitress reappeared with a shot glass and a full bottle of Johnnie Walker Red. She placed the bottle and glass on the table, grinning at Laws all the while, causing Garin to marvel at the old man’s way with women. As he watched her walk away, he conceded that there was, indeed, no deceit in those hips and recalled that Laws was celebrated among the special ops community for more reasons than one.

  Laws poured himself two fingers and hoisted his glass to Garin. “Tell me something, Chief, and be honest. When did your sorry fieldcraft go all the way to hell?”

  Before Laws could knock back the drink, Garin replied, “If you’re referring to whether I noticed the guy sitting at the near end of the bar, blue trousers, gray blazer, white open-neck shirt, thick black hair combed back, copper complexion, two-day stubble, about thirty-five, five foot ten, maybe 185 pounds, who’s been nursing a tonic water for the last hour and fifteen minutes and should have a sign taped to his forehead that says ‘Which one of these objects doesn’t belong?,’ then I’d say
it all went to hell the first day you took me to the Ranch.”

  Laws blinked once, put down the drink, and leaned forward, his forearms on the table. “I was referring, smart-ass, to that pretty little señorita with the long black hair and big brown eyes sitting at the other end of this dump, about twenty-seven, maybe five foot three, 105 pounds, yellow sundress, who looks to be charging hard through her fifth Bud and has been staring at you for the last fifteen minutes like she wants to have your babies.”

  For once, Garin thought, he had the old man. “You really didn’t notice him, not until just now, did you?”

  Laws threw back the scotch, grimaced, and exhaled forcefully. “Who? Mr. Obvious?”

  Garin nodded, a self-satisfied expression forming on his face. The old master, starting to slip, had zeroed in on the lady and had completely missed the possible bad guy.

  Laws slowly poured another drink and looked at Garin, a kid who thought he’d beaten his father at H-O-R-S-E for the first time. “You mean the Mr. Obvious whose black 2009 Ford Taurus rental car, Arizona tags RG53588, Nike gym bag in the backseat, is sitting in the parking lot?”

  Garin’s shoulders sagged visibly, his jaw taut in frustration. The old man had checked him once again, but he didn’t dwell on being bested. He glanced at the man nursing the tonic water, then back at Laws. It had been drilled into Garin that if there is any question, there is no question; if a threat is possible, it is certain. The possibility of a sniper on the roof was the certainty of a sniper on the roof. To operate otherwise was to court disaster, if not death. His mentor caught Garin’s hesitation and knew the conversation would turn more serious.

  “Something I should know, Chief?”