The 13: Fall

by ROBBIE CHEUVRONT

  He keyed his wrist mic and yelled to the other men, “Kirkpatrick, see to it that you guys finish this. Foust, soon as the area’s secure, you get to that nuke and disarm it. Got it?”

  “Where are you going?” Ramirez shouted over the gunfire.

  Keene was running to the parking lot now. The SUV had already sped out of the terminal. There were several cars parked. Keene opened the door to the first one he came to, a Ford F-150 pickup truck. He checked the console and the visor. No keys. He was about to jump out when he noticed the keys were in the ignition. He cranked the starter and spun the tires.

  “Keene,” Kirkpatrick said again, “we’ve secured the terminal.”

  “Good, get to that nuke and make sure it’s not on a timer.”

  “Roger that. Where are you going?”

  He fishtailed the truck off of Aviation Road. The SUV was already half a mile ahead. “To catch the man responsible for all of this.”

  CHAPTER 77

  Kirkpatrick signaled for the others to approach slowly, as they made up the last fifty yards back to the terminal. The air strike had done more than its job. It had taken out the entire front of the terminal and anyone standing within a twenty-yard radius. The few men that had been left had either scattered or had stupidly tried to fire back at them. All of the five men Givens had assembled for Keene, however, were expert marksmen. The remaining soldiers never stood a chance. In less than a minute after the strike, the only sound that could be heard was the roaring of the flames pouring out of the building.

  Kirkpatrick held them up as they got within a few yards. He wanted to make sure that there wasn’t anyone hiding somewhere thinking about a last-ditch effort at being a hero. He pulled his wrist mic up and called to Foust and Jenkins. “Six, five, this is two. All clear?”

  Both men gave an affirmative.

  “Okay. We’re holding here. I’m still not sure if anyone is holing up somewhere waiting to take a potshot at one of us. Make your way to our position.”

  Again, both men acknowledged.

  It took two minutes for the two men to meet up with the others. Once they were there, Kirkpatrick laid out the procedure.

  “Ramirez, you’re the techie here. How much time do you need to disable that thing?”

  Ramirez shrugged. “If it’s not already set to detonate, five—maybe ten minutes.”

  “And if it is?” Foust asked.

  Ramirez shrugged again. “Then however long is left on the timer.”

  “Nice,” Kirkpatrick said.

  The men moved quietly but quickly toward the H-8. It was less than a hundred yards to the plane. Jenkins and Foust walked backward, keeping an eye on the terminal behind them, just in case.

  The H-8 was still smoldering as they approached. The entire nose of the plane had been bent sideways, leaving the rear of the plane sticking up into the air. The left side of the aircraft’s wing was completely torn off, exposing the wiring and fuselage, though there was no threat from it. The strike had been a direct hit. Any fuel left in the plane would have already burned.

  The good news was the underside of the plane was fully exposed. The bomb trap, though, was wedged shut. Horn quickly dug through his bag and pulled out two pry bars. He handed one to Foust, and they got to work.

  The bad news was they no sooner had started to pry the trap open when they heard the screeching of tires as vehicles turned onto Aviation Road and Administration Building Road, the only two ways in or out of the airport. The Chinese weren’t done. It was obvious the other soldiers from the checkpoint stations would’ve heard the goings-on. They just didn’t know how many to expect. Keene had thought that, other than the few checkpoints, the majority of the manpower would be centered there at the airport. Keene had been wrong. Kirkpatrick raised his night-vision glasses to see at least four trucks heading their way. And two of them had .50 caliber machine guns mounted on them. Jenkins already had his rifle propped against the wreckage and was taking aim.

  “Take out the gunners first,” Kirkpatrick ordered.

  “Roger that,” Jenkins said as he squeezed the trigger.

  He quickly repeated the process four more times, taking out both gunners and the drivers of the trucks. The vehicles all stopped two hundred yards out, immediately returning fire.

  Just as the first rounds whizzed past them, the trap popped open. Ramirez and Foust quickly reached in and pulled the housing down. It was stuck at first, so both men used a leg against the belly of the plane for leverage. Kirkpatrick, Horn, and Jenkins continued to lay suppression fire. The men in the trucks were all scattering and moving out to flank them.

  “How much time?” Kirkpatrick yelled over the gunfire.

  “I’ll have it loose in two minutes,” Ramirez yelled back. “The air strike pretty much did all the work for us.”

  “Make it one,” Kirkpatrick yelled back.

  Kirkpatrick, Foust, and Jenkins all began to advance on the terminal again, each one heading out in a different line. Jenkins went straight south, Foust went east, and Kirkpatrick went west.

  Some months earlier, Oakley, the well-regarded sunglasses company, had secured a government contract to make a military-grade, night-vision version of their famous sport line of glasses, and every member of the US military was issued two pair. Each man on the team had his on and could see the ground ahead like it was daylight. The Chinese soldiers had nothing of the sort. Once again, Kirkpatrick and the men were able to eliminate the attackers efficiently and quickly. In just over three minutes, all twenty or so Chinese soldiers had been neutralized.

  Kirkpatrick took out his final target and said, “Clear!”

  Jenkins and Horn came back also, “All clear!”

  The three men retreated back to the mangled H-8. Ramirez and Foust had the nuke out of its housing and lying on the ground. The bomb was approximately three feet long and fourteen inches round, in the shape of a tube. It had wires coming out of it and a display screen on the front. The timer had been activated. It had twenty-six minutes on it.

  Kirkpatrick reached inside his backpack and grabbed a small blanket out and laid it on the ground. “Give me a hand here,” he said. The four men picked the heavy tube up and set it on the blanket. He zipped up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. “We need to move,” he said. “No telling how long we have before more of them show up. Ramirez, you can start on this thing when we get in the boat.” The four men each grabbed a corner of the blanket and hoisted the bomb up. In two-by-two formation, they took off running back to the bank of the Racquette.

  They had just gotten back in the water when three more vehicles carrying more Chinese soldiers raced by them, heading into the airport. The five men used their paddles to push off and away from the bank. Foust started the little engine and twisted the throttle sticking out of the back of the engine. The inflatable quickly sped away.

  Ramirez went to work immediately on the bomb casing. He traded his night-vision Oakleys for a headlamp and handed two flashlights to Foust and Jenkins. The timer read fourteen minutes.

  “How long, once you get it opened?” Foust asked.

  “Only a minute or two,” he said, continuing to work. “But I’ll need to be still. Can’t do it on this water.”

  “We’re almost there,” Kirkpatrick answered.

  Another hundred yards and the small inflatable came to rest on the bank again. Again the four men grabbed the blanket and hoisted the bomb. They made their way out of the boat and up the bank to County Road 40, where they had left the truck.

  Ramirez tossed the keys to Foust, who popped the tailgate of the big SUV so the men could set the bomb inside. Kirkpatrick ordered the others to stand around the truck with him, watching for anything approaching. For the most part the county road was deserted anyway, but they couldn’t take any chances. Particularly now. The display read ten minutes.

  “Got it,” Ramirez said, lifting the main faceplate. “Now I just need to—uh … this isn’t good.”

  “What?” eve
ryone said in unison.

  “Anyone speak or read Chinese?”

  “C’mon!” Kirkpatrick yelled between clenched teeth. “Are you kidding me?”

  “No, I’m not,” Ramirez said seriously.

  Kirkpatrick reached inside the vehicle and grabbed one of the sat-phones. The number had already been programmed in, in case something happened to Keene and they needed to call in. He hit the call button and waited.

  “This is Jennings.”

  “Director Jennings, this is Lieutenant Kirkpatrick.”

  “Where’s Jon Keene?” Jennings asked with a worried tone.

  “I have no idea, sir,” Kirkpatrick answered. “But we have a bigger problem right now!”

  CHAPTER 78

  Taylor was forty thousand feet in the air on a C-32 transport with two hundred American soldiers when the news came in from Washington. The Royal Navy had unexpectedly come to the rescue of the United States, via the help of one Bozwell Hamilton and retired Admiral Eli Craig. Immediately the men had begun to whoop and holler, raising fists in the air and shouting cheers. Taylor had immediately bowed her head and thanked God.

  As they approached Andrews, she looked out the small window to see two fighter jets off to the right of the plane. They were being escorted in, one of the marines told her. She didn’t know if that made her feel safer or more like a target.

  Once they landed, Taylor was taken to a car, where she was told she would be transported to the bunker where Director Jennings and the command center were. Jennings had ordered that she be brought there the moment she landed. When she got in the car, she was once again surprised. Sitting beside her and in front of her were two three-star generals. They introduced themselves and shook her hand. One of them even gave her a friendly jab in the shoulder and said, “Good work, Agent Taylor!” obviously aware of the details of her last twenty-four hours. She said thanks, but she really didn’t feel like she’d done anything special. Marianne had gotten herself killed, and Alexandra Sokolov had died from her injuries in the crash. She guessed she still had a hand in bringing the two women to justice, if you could call it that. Even though they were dead, she still felt sorry for them, wondering if somehow in the last seconds of their lives they had reconciled with God. But she doubted it. And that’s what really broke her heart.

  More news came in over the radio as the car approached the bunker. The Chinese were being pushed back. The US forces and their British counterparts had turned the tables. The Chinese were on the run.

  The guard at the base checked them in as the car pulled forward and into the narrow tunnel in the mountainside. Inside, they were led out of the vehicle and into the elevator, which took them nearly twenty stories down. Once outside the elevator, a second set of checkpoints were there. They went through the process again and finally were escorted into the secure facility. She waited for the Secret Service agent to swipe his card and for the little LED light to turn green. It did, and he opened the door without a word.

  The room was eerily quiet. Jennings was standing with his back to her holding a sat-phone. The other men turned to look at her as she walked in but otherwise paid her no mind.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, worried.

  Jennings turned to see her and held up a finger.

  “Keene’s team is trying to disable a Chinese nuke. It’s set to go off in four minutes,” Sykes said. The look on his face told the rest of the story.

  “Where is it?” Taylor asked.

  “Upstate New York. Keene and his men went there to stop them from flying it into DC.”

  Her heart immediately sank. Jon was in upstate New York with a nuclear bomb? “What’s the problem?” Taylor asked. “Aren’t they trained for this kind of thing?”

  “Keene is,” Sykes said, “but he’s not there.”

  Now she was worried and confused. “What do you mean? I thought you just said—”

  “I don’t know what’s going on up there right now,” Sykes cut her off. “I have no idea where Keene is. All I know is that his team is there, trying to stop the thing from going off and taking out half of upstate New York, Ottawa, and Montreal.”

  Megan was listening, but she was already pulling her laptop out of her bag. “Someone give me the number of that sat-phone!” she said. Jennings and everyone else turned to look at her. “Now!”

  Jennings quickly rattled off the number of the phone to her. Within seconds she was tapped into the feed of the call. “Who am I speaking with?”

  “This is Lieutenant Kirkpatrick, ma’am.”

  “That phone got a camera on it, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Turn it on. Now.”

  Megan watched her laptop screen as Kirkpatrick fidgeted with the phone.

  “We’re down to two minutes and forty seconds here,” Kirkpatrick said.

  The image came up on her screen. “Okay, what are you looking at? Show me. And put me on speaker.”

  Kirkpatrick did and tilted the phone down toward the bomb. Quickly, she took a screen shot of what Kirkpatrick and the men were looking at. “Okay, first thing you’ve got to do is remove the neutron trigger.”

  “Ma’am, this is Captain Ramirez. I’m a bomb technician. I can disarm the device. The problem is I can’t read the symbols to make sure they haven’t wired something weird.”

  Taylor had already assumed this. It was the reason she had taken the screen shot. “I’m already running it through a software program,” she said. She clicked a couple buttons and said, “There. I’ve just sent it back to your phone, Captain. It should be on your screen.”

  “Got it!” Ramirez said.

  Everyone sat motionless and silent for the next minute. According to Kirkpatrick, they had less than two minutes to get the nuke disarmed. Everyone watched the clock on the wall as the second hand ticked down. One minute and thirty-two seconds later Ramirez came back on the line.

  “All good! Package is secure.”

  Everyone in the command center clapped and cheered. Jennings walked over to Taylor and gave her a big kiss on the forehead.

  “Taylor, you are possibly the second best asset I’ve ever had.”

  She smiled. “Yeah, who’s the first?”

  Jennings’s smile faded as he let out a sigh. “Jon Keene.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Don’t know. Haven’t had time to ask.” He turned from her and picked up the phone again. “Lieutenant, you still there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Taylor pointed back to her laptop. “I’ve got him here. You don’t have to use that thing,” she said pointing at the sat-phone.

  Jennings hit the button and put it on the table. “Where’s Jon Keene?”

  “Don’t know, sir. Once we secured the airstrip, he took off. Said he saw someone he needed to chase after.”

  “Who?”

  “No idea, sir. He didn’t say. He just put me in charge and took out of there.”

  Sykes whispered something in his ear. Jennings stepped back and looked at him with disdain. “He’s my best man, Bob. And he’s the reason why everything we’ve done tonight has been successful. No way!”

  Taylor stood up and spun Jennings around to face her. “What? What’s going on?”

  “It’s going to be all right. Jon can take care of himself.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her pulse began to quicken again.

  Jennings gently grabbed her by the arm and led her aside. “Listen, Jon is the best operative this agency has ever seen. I don’t know who he’s chasing, but if he left those men to go do it, then I have to believe the target was worth it. But we have to get that nuke back here under our supervision. We can’t just let it sit there.”

  Just as he was finishing, she heard Sykes speaking into the laptop’s microphone. “Okay, gentlemen. You are to proceed back here immediately. Under no circumstances does that device leave your immediate sight. Do you understand?”

  “What about General Keene?” Kirkp
atrick answered.

  “Keene is on assignment. Your orders are to report back here with that device. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

  Megan heard the click, signaling that the connection had been severed. “What does he mean? On assignment?”

  “Military’s first code of conduct,” Jennings answered. “Never leave a man behind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Sykes just told them, in so many words, that there was more to the assignment than they were aware of. That Jon is still operating. Otherwise, they would’ve gone looking for him.”

  “Is there?” she asked, agitated. “Is there more?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Jennings said apologetically.

  “Then where is he? Why did Jon leave his men and go chasing after someone?”

  “I have no idea.”

  CHAPTER 79

  Keene had been following the three SUVs now for almost an hour. The cover of night had kept him from being seen. The F-150 was solid black, and with a cloudy night providing no light from the moon or stars, the truck was the perfect vehicle to tail his prey. He had heard about the new night-vision Oakleys that the military boys had been using for the last six months but had never seen or used them until tonight. Pretty impressive, he thought. He’d been driving for an hour now with no headlights in the pitch dark, and he could see as well as if it were broad daylight.

  He had no idea what road they were on or where it was leading, but he knew it was out in the middle of nowhere. He hadn’t seen another car since they left the airfield. He was sure, though, wherever it was they were going, it was going to be someplace secluded. The man he was following would take extra care not to be found.

  He’d crossed the man’s path once before. At the time, the man was just a Ministry of State Security agent—China’s security and intelligence agency—though it was possible he had been connected to the PLA at the same time. China often used high-ranking military officials in their intelligence agency. The agents were pulling double duty, so to speak. Regardless, the man was military now.