Act of War

by Dale Brown

  “Sergeant Major, we need to talk about what’s happened,” Jason said. “We need to file a report with the intelligence agencies, the FBI, and probably Interpol or somebody…”

  “You have your orders, Major.”

  “Excuse me, sir, but with all due respect, can you get off your macho command-sergeant-major high horse for a moment here?” Jason asked.

  “Don’t push me now, Major…!”

  “Sergeant Major…Ray, have you forgotten already?” Jason asked, almost pleading with him to listen. “We know who planned the bombing at Kingman City! We know there’s a terror cell in Brazil that has somehow managed to get their hands on a nuclear device and set it off inside the United States!”

  “I’m sure that’s what we’re going to be questioned about over the next several days and weeks, Major.”

  “ ‘The next several weeks’? Do you think we can afford to waste that much time, sir?” Jason asked. That gave Jefferson some pause. “Think about it, Ray: we had two witnesses in our hands that made Zakharov as the planner of both attacks. We had them—and the National Security Adviser to the President of the United States just drove away, leaving us in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico for God knows how long. He’s got all the evidence we brought back from Brazil, too—the Amarals and Kristen’s videotape. All that’s left is us four, and no one’s going to believe us because we’re the ones who took the CID unit to Brazil. It’s a setup, sir.”

  “Major, Mr. Chamberlain’s actions have more to do with your decisions than with what we found or suspect we found in Brazil,” Jefferson said. “Just stay in your quarters like I ordered. I’ll keep on top of things.” He held out his hand. “And give me that remote control thing for the CID units.” Jason reluctantly handed over the wrist remote control device for the CID unit. “Try doing it my way for a change, Richter.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  San Jose, California

  Two days later

  He had never seen security such as this. Upon checking in for his American Airlines flight from Mexico City to San Jose, airplane salesman and businessman Tom Estrada had to run his finger across a biometric scanner not once, not twice, but six times before he was allowed to board his flight, and his carry-on luggage was checked twice by hand. Security was everywhere—heavily armed, visible, and purposely intrusive. During the flight, no one was allowed to leave their seats without notifying a flight attendant first; no one could stand near the lavatories or galleys; and no one could get out of their seats within an hour prior to landing. Fortunately Estrada was a resident alien of the United States, because all non-resident aliens without visas had to surrender their passports toU.S. Customs upon arrival. Around the airport, security was tighter than he’d ever seen—they even had Avenger mobile antiaircraft vehicles and National Guard canine units patrolling the airport perimeter.

  After retrieving his car from the parking garage, Estrada took the U.S. 101 North expressway to San Mateo and parked near the Third Avenue Sports Bar and Grill, a small but friendly neighborhood pub that had a surprisingly well-stocked wine list and free wireless Internet access. After ordering a glass of Silver Oak Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and a small order of beef enchiladas and chatting with Grace, his waitress, who was also the daughter of his landlord, for several minutes, he opened up his Motion Computing Tablet PC and got online.

  He checked e-mail first as always, and was worried to find a series of e-mails from a specific sender, one with only a scrambled alphanumeric name and domain. The messages from this sender were small digital photos. Estrada had wired his apartment in San Mateo with a security appliance that would take a digital photo of a room in which the appliance detected motion and automatically upload the photos to Estrada’s e-mail box. Several of the photos were of Grace herself—he had hired her to clean the place when he was gone and to turn lights on and off randomly to make the place look lived-in—and she and her family were absolutely trustworthy. But some of the photos were of unidentified men wearing suits and ties, searching the place—just hours ago!

  “Hey, Grace, thanks for keeping an eye on my place for me,” Estrada said the next time Grace came over to check on him. He handed her an envelope with two hundred dollars in cash in it.

  “Thanks, Tom,” the attractive young woman said. She hefted the envelope. “How much is in here? Feels like a little more than usual. Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

  “There’s a little extra in there for you. You’re on your way to college next week, right? Barnard?”

  “Yep. But you didn’t have to do that, Tom. I was happy to help out. You’re kind of a neat-freak anyway—taking care of your place is a piece of cake.”

  “Any problems while I was gone?”

  “Nope.” She started to walk away. “Did you get the message your friend left on the door?”

  Estrada’s ears buzzed with concern. “I haven’t been by the apartment yet.”

  “A guy who said he used to work with you came by looking for you,” Grace said. “Left a note and his business card on the door.”

  Estrada thought of the digital photos he’d just downloaded. “Small guy, bald, dresses nice but wears dark running shoes?”

  “That’s him. Glad you know him. I was worried.”

  “Worried? Why?”

  “Well, he said he knew you, described you pretty well, and thought you lived in the area, but he didn’t know exactly where. I thought at first he was canvassing the area, you know, like the cops do on TV.”

  Estrada fought to look completely unconcerned. The reason for that was simple, Estrada thought: his postal mail was delivered to the same Arroyo Court address as the other three families that lived there. That meant that whoever it was who had his address was looking for him. “Well, actually, I didn’t tell the guy my address when I met up with him a while back—I’m not sure I want to work with this guy again,” Estrada lied, “but I did describe our neighborhood, so I’m sure he tracked me down.”

  “I pointed out your place to him. Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Grace,” Estrada said.

  “If he comes around again, what should I do? Should I give him your cell phone number?”

  Estrada shrugged nonchalantly, but inside his mind was racing a million kilometers per hour. “He should have it,” he said casually, “but sure, if he wants it, go ahead and give it to him.” It didn’t matter—it would be shut down soon anyway. “Another glass of the Silver Oak Cab and I’ll be ready for the check, Grace.”

  “Sure thing, Tom.”

  When she left, Estrada pulled out his secure cell phone and sent an SMS message that said simply, “Problem with escrow.” He then packed up his gear, being careful to shut down his wireless network adapter so no eavesdroppers could interrogate or “ping” the idle system, and shut the computer down. He tried to look unhurried and relaxed when Grace came over with the wine and the check, but inwardly he was screaming at her to move faster. He downed the wine much faster than Silver Oak deserved, paid the check, left his usual tip, then departed, being sure to wave at the staff and the other regulars and, more important, not to rush.

  Just like that, Colonel Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov knew that his days as Tomas “Tom” Estrada, helicopter salesman, were over.

  He got into his Ford minivan, carefully pulled out into traffic, and drove ten minutes to the Bay Area Rapid Transit station nearest San Francisco International Airport. Before he left the van in a secluded area of the parking lot, he took his SIG Sauer P230 pistol from its hiding place in his seat and stuffed it into his belt. Executing a well-rehearsed escape plan, Zakharov took the BART train across San Francisco Bay to Oakland. Security patrols were everywhere on the BART stations and on the train, but the guards looked young, tired, and bored. He panicked a bit and started looking for a place to ditch his pistol when he saw the signs warning passengers of security inspection stations ahead, but the airport-like X-ray machines and metal detectors had n
ot yet been installed.

  He got off at the Harrison Street BART station in Oakland and walked five blocks to a small café on Madison Street across from Madison Park. The word “escrow” in the status message he sent was the clue to the rendezvous location. When Zakharov first mapped out this attack plan, there was a real estate company on Madison Street near this park, in the heart of the city. The park offered good concealment; it was a mostly Hispanic neighborhood, so he wouldn’t stand out too much; and there were lots of small, nondescript hotels nearby in case he had to linger. The real estate company was no longer there, replaced by an organic bean café, but it was still a good location. Zakharov found a park bench, kept the café in view, and waited. Two hours and four drunks who wanted to use the park bench to sleep on later, he saw a faded blue Jeep Grand Cherokee drive up to the spot with a magnetic sign on the driver’s door of that same real estate company, and he crossed the street and got in the front seat. A soldier that Zakharov recognized was in the backseat, a TEC-9 machine pistol in his hands but out of sight.

  “Kag deela, Colonel,” Pavel Khalimov said as he carefully pulled out into the late-night traffic. He headed south toward Interstate 880, staying a few kilometers under the speed limit; other traffic zoomed by as if he was standing still.

  “Oozhasna,” Zakharov said. “How do you feel, Captain?”

  Khalimov rubbed his chest where the bullet from Zakharov’s sniper rifle had hit him. “It was not broken. I will be fine. How was the flight from Mexico City, sir?”

  “Terrible. Security coming back into the United States is oppressive.”

  “Then it is mostly for show, sir—I had little trouble getting in,” Khalimov said. Unlike Zakharov, Pavel Khalimov had no secret identities in other countries—he was a Russian commando, plain and simple. He carried no identification, passports, driver’s licenses, or credit cards, just a bit of cash. He traveled fast and light at all times. Whatever he needed, he stole—money, weapons, clothes, vehicles, anything and everything. “Security patrols are concentrating around the larger ports of entry and larger vessels—it is laughably easy to get a small vessel into a small port.”

  “Do not get cocky, Captain—it will only get worse,” Zakharov said. He told Khalimov about his Web cam pictures and his house-keeper’s encounter. “We will have to wrap up all operations in the Bay area. My Estrada identity is surely compromised—perhaps the Americans are actually able to utilize those biometric scanners now. If they have perfected the national database to check international fingerprint records, they will eventually hunt down Estrada.”

  “The fact that you were not apprehended on the spot here in the United States, even with all the security in place, despite the worldwide dragnet that is certainly out for us, is promising,” Khalimov pointed out. “I tell you, sir, the American security apparatus is all bark and no bite. The level of scrutiny is extremely low, their level of training and experience is very low except for the most high-profile duties, and already the American people are squawking about the invasion of privacy and loss of their rights. Whatever they set up will not last long. The Americans are simply not accustomed to tight internal security.”

  “I feel that is changing rapidly, Captain,” Zakharov said, “and now is the perfect time to strike. Is everything ready?”

  “Yes, sir,” Khalimov replied. “We added two four-man strike squads as a backup, for a total of six going at the target itself. We have the original twelve squads handling security.”

  “Very good. And the devices you will use?”

  “The outer security teams will use C-4 with the gasoline in the fuel tanks as accelerants,” Khalimov replied. “The inner security units will use divided amounts of HMX and ONC. We will have CS gas and high-explosive grenades to use to disperse first responders as well.”

  “You will not use units that carry only ONC?” Zakharov asked. ONC, or octanitrocubane, was the world’s most powerful explosive—over three times the explosive power of TNT—but was available in relatively small quantities and at vastly greater cost. HMX (High-melting-point explosive), or cyclotetramethylenetetranitramine, was almost as powerful as ONC but was more readily available. C-4, or Composition-4, was the world’s most widely used and widely available explosive material, although not as powerful as the other two.

  “I felt the risk was too great, sir,” Khalimov explained. “The mission might not be accomplished if the attack units carrying only ONC were captured. I felt it necessary to have each of the four main attack units have the same destructive power. Unfortunately we were unable to bring in enough ONC for just one vehicle to do the job per squad.”

  “And the device itself?”

  “Safely delivered and ready for arming, sir,” Khalimov said.

  “Atleechna. Pashlee. Let’s go.”

  They drove northbound on Interstate 880 to the Oakland–Bay Bridge. Traffic was very light. It was a good opportunity to look at the new security measures instituted on California’s large bridges and tunnels. The ten lanes of freeway on-ramps leading to the bridge were narrowed into three, with Humvees and Bradley armored vehicles stationed here and there.

  “The National Guard forces do not appear to do much here, sir,” Khalimov explained. “Every now and then they will stop a large delivery truck to search it, but generally the soldiers stay out of sight. They appear to be very sensitive to rush-hour traffic lines and will open up three more lanes approaching the tollbooths twice a day for three hours each time.” He shook his head. “Ten dollars cash now just to cross this bridge into San Francisco, unless you use one of the electronic wireless express-pay devices. Outlandish. It is twelve dollars now to cross the Golden Gate Bridge into the city. All of our vehicles have the payment devices.

  “The troops stationed on both sides of the bridge are lightly armed except for their vehicles. The Humvees carry fifty-caliber machine guns. There are usually four on each side, two in the westbound and two in the eastbound sides. The Bradleys are fairly new and represent the most serious threat. They have a twenty-five-millimeter Bushmaster cannon with sabot, high-explosive, and armor-piercing rounds, and a 7.62-millimeter coaxial machine gun. They all appear to be the M2A1 variant instead of the more capable M2A3 or M3A3 models. They have TOW antitank missile launchers fitted but I do not believe they carry any missiles in them—they may still be in storage magazines in the vehicles, but none appear to be in the launchers themselves. There are usually Bradleys on either side of the bridge, one on the eastbound and one on the westbound side. They move them several times daily but that appears to be just for maintenance or crew rotation purposes, not for tactical reasons.”

  “A little more than just show, but not a real defense force,” Zakharov summarized.

  “My opinion as well, sir.”

  They crossed the Oakland–Bay Bridge into San Francisco, then exited the freeway and made their way to the Financial District. The streets at this hour were almost deserted, but the police presence was noticeable. “Approximately one police cruiser every other city block in the Financial District,” Khalimov said. “No parking allowed on the streets—everyone must use parking garages, and they are heavily patrolled.” They stopped at a traffic light at Market Street between Main Street and Spear Street. “The heaviest security is here, at the U.S. Federal Reserve Building. One special police cruiser on each corner; absolutely no cars allowed to park or wait here.”

  “But no military forces?”

  “I have seen several Humvees down here, sir—I am surprised they are not here now,” Khalimov said. “There have been news pieces on complaints by citizens about the military presence in downtown San Francisco—they say it affects tourism and scares everyone. Perhaps they took them away.”

  “We will not count on that,” Zakharov said. “We assume the vehicles that are here will be heavily armed military patrols.”

  From Main Street, they made their way to California Street and drove up the steep boulevard to Van Ness Avenue, then to Lombard Street and on
to the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge heading toward Marin County. Huge outdoor lights had been set up, illuminating the tollbooths and bridge approaches like daytime. They passed two Bradley Fighting Vehicles here. “Security appears even heavier on this bridge,” Zakharov observed.

  “It is all for the TV cameras, sir,” Khalimov said disgustedly. “The Golden Gate Bridge is a symbol of the Western United States and the state of California, and they put more National Guard forces out here to show the public they are defending them. But they are no more capable than the ones in Oakland.”

  Zakharov looked at his aide carefully. “You appear more confident than I have ever seen you, tovarisch,” he said. “Perhaps…too confident?”

  “I am confident of success, sir,” Khalimov admitted, “but it is not overconfidence. It is disgust.”

  “Disgust?”

  “This is their country, one of their greatest cities,” Khalimov spat, “and they try to act as if nothing whatsoever is wrong. They were attacked with a nuclear weapon, for God’s sake, and yet they pretend that everything is ahuyivayush’iy.”

  “As you were, Captain,” Zakharov said. “Don’t let these people’s attitudes about their life and society cloud your judgment. Keep fully alert and ready at all times.”

  “Yes, sir,” Khalimov said. “I will. But they are making this seem too easy.”

  “Beliefs like that will get us killed, Pavel. I order you to stop it and concentrate,” Zakharov said seriously. “You thought it would be easy to trap Jorge Ruiz in Abaete, too.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about me.”

  They drove across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County, struck by the incredible contrast of going from a large cosmopolitan high-rise city to a wooded countryside in just a few kilometers. Just past the Marin County Airport north of Novato on Highway 101, they exited the freeway onto Redwood Highway and proceeded to the Redwood Landfill, then to a side road, stopping near a set of railroad tracks. Khalimov made a radio call using a short-range FM transceiver, and a man with an Uzi submachine gun appeared out of the darkness and unlocked an old, rarely used railroad access gate on the far side of the landfill. Khalimov drove inside to the incinerator facility. Inside an area marked with signs carrying skulls and crossbones that read DANGER HAZARDOUS WASTE DISPOSAL AREA and POS REQUIRED, they were met by a man wearing a respirator and carrying an Uzi submachine gun.