by Cliff Ryder
“All right, hobble your way out there in front of the lights and turn around so we can get a good look at your sorry ass,” Nate ordered.
Lopez seemed to finally realize the seriousness of his situation. “Look, whatever you want—drugs, money, women, children—I’m sure we can work something out.”
Nate drew his pistol and pulled the slide back. “Go.”
Lopez hopped out in front of the lights, his satin boxers rustling in the breeze as he tried to maneuver on the hard-packed dirt without falling over.
“That’s far enough,” Nate said.
Lopez managed to turn around and stood in the glare of the headlights, shielding his eyes with one hand. “All right, you made your point. Now what the fuck do you want?”
“I always knew you were a businessman at heart, Lopez.” Nate holstered his pistol and walked out in front of the lights. “Now I’ve got a deal for you.” He reached up and took off the black knit mask, eliciting a snort of disbelief from the Mexican.
“Spencer? You broke into my house, dragged me all the way out here and broke my fuckin’ arm and leg? Do you know how dead I’m gonna make you?”
Tracy didn’t know who was more surprised, her or the gang leader. They knew each other—and had for a while, apparently. She snapped her mouth closed and focused back on the conversation.
Nate tossed the cell phone into the dirt near Lopez. “I’ll be fine, and so will you. I ran into one of your boys near the border, running illegals across the border with a couple of zetas earlier today. When I saw his tattoo, I knew you’d lied to me about what we’d discussed yesterday.”
Lopez tried to cross his arms, but only winced when a stab of pain reminded him of his broken collarbone. “So one of my boys is running wetbacks into the U.S. What’s that got to do with this?”
Nate shook his head. “Don’t shine me on, not now, and definitely not out here. The Barrio Aztecas are involved in everything that comes through El Paso, especially from the south. You knew about the Middle Easterners and that they were carrying something, but you didn’t want to give me any more information than necessary. You told me what you thought I needed to know, including the dead end of your two boys, then sent me on my way, didn’t you?”
Lopez looked as if he was going to plead ignorance again, then shrugged. “Hey, man, when word of the job came my way, I had no idea it would get so out of hand. But once it did, we were gonna take care of it our way, you know?”
“I figured as much—you were also way too cool about your two vatos getting killed. But I’m gonna do you a favor. With your help, I’m gonna take these guys down for you.”
Lopez frowned and shivered in the cool air. “Really?
You can’t even find these guys, but now you’re gonna take care of ’em for me?”
“Yup. After you get on that phone and tell whoever your contact is that one of the illegals survived the slaughter in the desert, and is at Providence Memorial Hospital, in room 305—and get that number right—I don’t need an innocent getting killed over this.”
Lopez nodded as he reached down and picked up the phone. “And you’re gonna set out the welcome mat and see who comes to call, right?” He flipped the phone open, his finger poised to dial. “Huh, can’t believe I get a signal out here.”
“Yeah, it’s as far out as we could get to have this little talk and still have you reach whoever you need to reach.
And just in case you get any ideas about sending a few of your boys over to Providence to wait and see who shows up, remember where you are right now, and who’s your only ride out of here at the moment.”
Lopez paused just long enough for Tracy to realize that’s exactly what he had been thinking about doing.
After making the call, Lopez flipped the phone closed.
“He’ll get the word out, but I’d get your welcome party set up sooner rather than later. My boy wasn’t too keen on not being in on the action himself. I managed to keep him out of the way for you—for now.”
“Good, ’cause I’d hate to have to run him in on obstruct-ing justice and attempted-murder charges,” Nate said.
“Yeah, like bustin’ into my house and dragging me out into the middle of the desert is approved procedure.”
Lopez’s entire body was shaking, and he kept his balance with an obvious effort. “Could we at least finish this in the car. I’m freezin’ my cojones off.”
“In a minute.”
“Goddammit, I made the fuckin’ call—what more do you want! You’re really pushing me, Spencer.” Lopez’s face grew sly as he thought it through. “Or is that what you’re anglin’ for, huh? You doing me this favor so I owe you one, is that it?” He looked down at his limp arm and oddly bent leg. “After all this shit you did to me, we’re not even by a long shot, rulacho, and I ain’t gonna forget it.”
Nate walked over to stand in front of him. “After all this shit I did to you, I’m gonna drive you back to town, and you’re gonna call your homies and they’ll come pick you up, and you’re not gonna to do anything to me, her or anyone else. I’m not doing this for you—I’m doing it for a bigger reason than you can even begin to comprehend.
And after I drop you off, and you tell your boys whatever bullshit story you want to tell them, we’re through. No more deals, no more looking the other way, no more scratching each other’s back. I’m done with you—I’m out.”
Tracy watched the exchange as she tried to mask the shell-shocked look on her face. In the past three minutes, her entire perception of Nate had been wiped away as if it had never existed. “Paths crossed a couple of times,” my ass. Jesus, I fell for his story hook, line and sinker. And if he was withholding on that, what else hasn’t he told me? she wondered, her mind reeling.
“Just like that?” Lopez’s face had run the gamut from patronizing to incredulous to furious while Nate had been talking. “Listen, asshole, you aren’t walkin’ away from me that—”
Faster than Tracy could follow, Nate drew his pistol and placed the barrel against Lopez’s temple. “Yeah, it is that easy. The way I see it, you got two choices. Either you agree to what I just laid out right now, or you don’t, and hop yourself right into a shallow grave. Now what’s it gonna be?”
Lopez’s eyes flicked over to the barrel of the pistol resting against his skin, then back to Nate’s cool blue gaze. He was silent for a few seconds. Tracy feared he was going to do something stupid, but finally he replied, “All right, when we get back to the city, you and I are done. But know this, done means done. You get in my way on the streets tomorrow, and I will take you down without thinking twice.”
Nate withdrew the pistol from the gang leader’s head.
“Fair enough, ’cause I’m gonna do the exact same thing if you cross my path.”
“As long as we understand each other. Too bad—for a pig cop, you were all right. Now get me back into that truck before my dick freezes off.”
“I always knew you were a smart man, Lopez.” Nate didn’t help the other man, but didn’t hinder him, either. The gangbanger hobbled to the back door and climbed in.
Nate walked past Tracy as she stared daggers at him.
“I’ll explain on the way to Providence. Let’s go,” he said.
“Jesus, Kate, you been holding out on me? This guy’s got balls the size of grapefruit, and he knows how to get things done, that’s for damn sure. Where the hell did he come from, and why haven’t we poached him yet?”
Denny had checked in with Kate after attending a party thrown by a consortium of energy lobbyists in Washington. He attended several of these events each a year, so he could get the scuttlebutt about what was going down on Capitol Hill. He also kept an ear open for potential trouble spots around the world. Denny had attended in his international-businessman persona. He had run a multi-national Fortune 500 company for more than a decade before covertly joining Room 59.
After the party had wound down, he had logged on to report his findings to Kate, who had been engros
sed in listening to the events that had been going down in Texas.
After giving him a summary, she sipped iced lemon tea and shook her head.
“I’m not surprised that you’d like this guy once you heard this. I don’t have to remind you that we’re not looking for cowboys here, remember?”
Denny shook his head, which was still perfectly groomed at five in the morning. “No, we’re looking for guys exactly like this one, men—or women, for that matter—who can evaluate a situation quickly and take whatever steps are necessary to solve it. Hell, once he knew what was on the line, he barely hesitated when he had to step outside the law to get what he needed.”
Kate raised her glass to hide the quick smile on her lips; Denny had walked into her subtle trap. “Right, so what would happen if we brought him in and gave him less rules and even more control? Yes, he’s effective, but he’s too much of a loose cannon. I thought Tracy might be able to control him, but instead he seems to have brought her over to his side, which surprises me a bit.”
“Does it, Kate? You know what’s at stake here, and I think your analysis put together the two people best suited to find this nuke outside one of our own operatives.” Denny leaned forward in his leather chair. “I think they’re doing exactly what you want them to do, the law and their careers be damned in the bargain if necessary.”
Kate bristled at the insinuation. “You have one too many at that Georgetown mansion? No one made them break the law to get that information. They know full well the risks they’re taking. What they’re doing, in their eyes, is the right thing—putting the end result ahead of the means. That’s what we do here every day, so watch that sanctimonious tone.”
“Now who’s been staring at their computer monitor a little too long? I didn’t say I disapproved. Shoot, you know some of the things I’ve done in the name of God and country, and thankfully it was to people who deserved it.
And it’s one thing to send in one of our boys or girls to do a job we know needs doing. It’s just that sometimes I find it a bit unnerving to deal with people who don’t know who’s really pulling the strings to make them dance, people who are on our side, too. Yet we expect the exact same results from them.”
Kate slumped in her chair and took a breath. Denny’s words had hit a nerve, one she preferred not to show. “Yes, but we’re only so large, and even with our resources, we can do only so much ourselves. But if we wait for the bureaucrats to get off their keisters and actually act instead of just endlessly discussing the threat, who knows how many might suffer or die in the meantime? If the American intelligence community is a huge, often indiscriminately wielded club, I like to think of us as the scalpel that excises the dangerous cells before they destroy the entire body.
Sometimes there can be a bit of collateral damage—unfortunate but necessary, I’m afraid. And as an ex-SEAL, you must have run into the same thing more than once.”
Denny had, in fact, commanded a team of the elite military force for several years. “Yeah, and I was never fond of it back then and still am not. These two are certainly competent, and I’d like to see them both come out of this in one piece,” he said.
“You and me both, so let’s see if we can’t give them some help. How you coming on that list of potential launch points?”
“I put some of our brightest on this, with dinner for two at the D.C. Capital Grill on the line as a reward for their analysis within eight hours.”
“Really? What happens if your winner lives outside the area?”
Denny smiled. “I fly them in and put them up at no cost—but they don’t know that yet. By the way, why are you so sure that a company is involved—why not just a few guys who rent a truck and drive it into a metropolitan area to set it off?”
Along with the screen she was using to talk to Denny, Kate had her own data-mining screen open, as well as a window with all of the available information on their ultimate quarry, Sepehr al-Kharzi. “That’s a good question, but the answer is quite simple—al-Kharzi doesn’t think that way. His psychological profile indicates a fervent belief in his cause, jihad, of course, but also a grandiose way of thinking. His last attempt on America involved the largest amount of explosives that would have been used in the U.S. since the Oklahoma City bombing. He aspires to be the next bin Laden—a megaterrorist whose name would strike fear into our hearts, and strengthen his allies. The suitcase nuke would cause death and destruction in any city it was detonated in, but that’s only striking at one head of the hydra he thinks America is. His ego wants more than that, which is why we think he’s trying to execute something on a much higher scale. For all the low-profile living he’s been doing, he wants to take a swing at us that will send America reeling, and that means outdoing 9/11, which is a tall order indeed.”
Denny frowned. “Yeah, which makes it even more unlikely that he or his people haven’t popped up on someone’s radar yet.”
“No one ever said that the terrorists haven’t learned from their mistakes. For every ill-conceived plot to attack an isolated fuel pipeline at JFK, there’s an as-yet-undetected sleeper cell working very hard to contaminate the water supply of a major city. They’re becoming smarter, more capable of exploiting the holes in our security net, which, as you well know, are pretty large in places—like the border,” Kate said.
“Yeah, yeah, no need to remind me. We’ve got a couple marked as highly probable. One’s a trucking outfit that regularly makes runs back and forth across the border, with the target percentage of Middle Eastern employees.
It would be easy enough to blackmail or even take out a driver and replace him with a cell member, and roll the nuke straight through the checkpoint. They’re supposed to be searched, and the cargo highways are monitored, but a heavily shielded box could still could get through. It’s one of our strongest leads. A second one is a small commuter airline based near El Paso. They might try an aerial detonation to disperse the radiation, not to mention the EMP could disable most of a city if the bomb goes off at ten thousand feet—”
“What was that?” Kate had been scrolling through her own list, looking at her own narrowed list of possibilities, which still numbered at least a dozen, and she had barely cracked the T s.
“The Electro-Magnetic Pulse is the disruptive radioactive energy wave created by an electromagnetic bomb, or it can also be a byproduct of a nuclear detonation. Supposed to damage transistors, components of electronic devices, that sort of thing. Tests have shown the damage varies depending on the type of circuit used, but with so many electronics in America, if one of those was set off, it would probably knock out a lot more than just thousands of toasters and radios.”
For a moment, Kate didn’t hear him, as all her attention was focused on her computer screen, where a single name had caught her attention—Spaceworks, Inc.
A quick tap on the screen brought up all of the information NiteMaster had acquired, including their Web site, which showed them to be a research-and-development facility that constructed rockets for businesses to use in commercial space ventures.
Her own words replayed in her mind— He aspires to be the next bin Laden.
Could he have managed to put something this complex into place? She brought up everything they knew about the company. Its owners, history, roster of employees, everything she could find. Once the picture of the grinning owner, Joseph Allen, appeared on her monitor, along with his completely clean background, Kate’s gut feeling solidified into something more—the certainty that this was the vehicle al-Kharzi planned to use to carry out his attack against the U.S.
“Earth to Kate. Hello, Kate, you got something?”
“Yeah, Denny, I think I do.” Kate gritted her teeth as she scrolled through the data. She discovered Joseph’s father had been a radical Muslim thirty years earlier. “The son follows in the footsteps of the father,” she muttered under her breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Denny. We need to scramble a hacker team— pull the best ones
we have ready right now. They need to work on infiltrating this company’s network ASAP. Tag one of them to get satellite time over the compound so we can get an idea of what we might be facing. Also, get me the dossiers on whoever’s up in the midnight-team rotation.
If there’s enough time, we can send them in to take out the facility. Finally, we need to figure out how to stop them before they fire, and if they manage to get it launched, how to stop the rocket before detonation—”
“Whoa, whoa, Kate, why don’t you bring me up to speed first on what you’ve got there?”
She linked him to the Spaceworks site, and he whistled.
“How do you know you’re right about this?”
“It fits al-Kharzi’s profile. The head of the company is a fifth-generation Muslim born in the U.S. His father immigrated from Syria back in the 1960s, and had connections to terrorist groups that fought in Lebanon. It seems that he left for the U.S., and found an even bigger enemy.
Joseph has kept his nose scrupulously clean, but that’s just what a sleeper agent does now, isn’t it? If I’m right, he could cripple the entire eastern or western seaboard with the right missile, the suitcase and the EMP blast. I’ve got to let Tracy and Nate know—I think we’ve found our sleeper cell.”
Denny held up his hand. “Before you do that, you need to know that the rocket has to be taken out before it launches. Once it’s airborne, there is no contingency plan to stop it by shooting it down.”
Kate’s smile was grim as she dialed. “Then I guess we’d better make sure it doesn’t get launched.”
Sepehr took a deep, steadying breath, and stared straight into the small digital videocamera, preparing to record the message that would be broadcast throughout America and the world. He was taking complete responsibility for what he would wreak in the next few hours. His message would emphasize that he had accomplished this from inside the United States itself, serving as a clarion call to the rest of the holy warriors around the world that, for all its vaunted might, the imperialist superpower was vulnerable, filled with weak, morally corrupt people who deserved to be destroyed by the cleansing blast he would unleash, the first, he hoped, of many.
