by Peter Telep
“Hey, Johnny, you didn’t let me finish telling you about Athena,” Corey said.
“You got ten seconds,” Johnny told him, just as Nazari’s door opened, and the courier slipped inside.
“Okay, so they found thirteen pages of courier cards. Each page has eight cards—except for the last one, which only has three, so ninety-three cards in all. They’re emailing me the files right now. Here’s the thing. They translated some of the names on the cards, and it seems like whoever made them is using the ninety-nine names for God in Islam. But if that’s the case, then there’s still six cards missing, because like I said, we only got ninety-three. I got the boys from Athena looking for the other six.”
“What’s on the cards? More phone numbers?”
“I told those guys about the Morse Code and had them translate the first two. They found GPS coordinates, along with a date—today’s date.”
“Today?”
“Yeah, and one set of coordinates line up with a Starbucks in Seattle. The other points to a high school in Indiana.”
“Meeting places?”
“No, Johnny. I think they’re targets.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not. These are places. We have a date. Come on...”
Johnny shut his eyes. He could barely navigate through this meteor show of intel, all hitting him at once. “So... we need to know what’s on every one of those cards.”
“I know, but we have to translate all that Morse Code into GPS numbers, then ID the locations. That takes time.”
Before Johnny could react, the windows around Nazari’s house glowed, and not a heartbeat later, a mass and panic-stricken exodus began, with armed men flooding outside and sprinting around the house toward the detached garage. Others fled from the houses next door, and Willie chipped in that at least four guards now carrying rifles were running toward the fishing boat docked out back. The Lexus screeched around to the front of the house, where Nazari and his two jihadi cronies climbed inside.
“Corey, let’s get back,” Johnny ordered. “Willie, don’t lose those guys.”
Johnny broke from cover and charged toward the Suburban hidden beneath the tree canopy. Behind them, a chorus of car engines reached a crescendo. Headlights wiped across the street. Tires squealed.
“Cars are heading west,” Willie reported. “They are not going to the port. Maybe heading back to the marina.”
“Hey, guys, Josh here. I’m ready when you are.”
“Boat’s taking off now,” Willie said.
Johnny tensed. Nazari’s entourage was much too large and needed thinning, otherwise they would never get near him. It was not an easy order to give, but they had no choice; it was time to go on the offensive. He lifted his voice. “Willie, stop that boat.”
“Roger.”
* * *
Willie had been cut loose. Men would die.
The jihadis came from the right, their bow rising as they throttled up. Willie sighted the bushy haired man at the wheel, accounting for the wind, the distance, and the boat’s speed. Steady pressure on the trigger. Wait. And... Fire!
The man slumped. A second later, his three companions turned their rifles toward the island and fired haphazardly into the dunes.
Willie targeted the scrawny guy at the stern and fired once more. The round’s impact swept the little skeleton over the side and into the murky channel. In the next second, another of his colleagues dove for the control station, while yet another unleashed a salvo, the AK-47 popping, the rounds thumping and chipping into the trees at Willie’s flank.
The jihadi’s muzzle flash gave up his position, and Willie struck him center of mass. He caromed off the gunwale and slammed face-forward onto the deck.
Willie’s last target abandoned the wheel to cower behind the captain’s chair. Willie sighed and took aim at the fishing boat’s outboard, hammering it twice until the motor coughed and issued streamers of blue-gray smoke. The boat slowed and veered toward the shoreline as though it had been attacked and plundered by pirates.
In a last ditch effort, the remaining jihadi sprang up from behind the chair and reached toward a rifle lying across the deck.
Willie was waiting for him.
And no, this young man could not escape from Willie’s thousands of hours behind a long gun. For just a second, he flicked his glance in Willie’s direction as hot lead pierced his heart. A pleading look gripped his face, and his arm seemed to hang there, indefinitely, as though in a final wave before he dropped.
Satisfied with his marksmanship, Willie rose and sliced his way through the cordgrass. He shoved the boat off the bank and leaped aboard, the bow rocking as he reached the motor. “Willie here. Targets down. On my way.”
* * *
A fleet of seven or eight vehicles had roared away from Nazari’s mansion and the neighboring estates, with Nazari’s Lexus positioned somewhere in the middle. The caravan was reaching speeds of ninety mph, with a Mercedes SUV bringing up the rear. Wearing his night vision goggles and with the Suburban’s lights switched off, Johnny glimpsed the driver in the Mercedes’ side view mirror, and that driver, in turn, locked gazes with him. Damn, he was following too closely.
A moment later, a jihadi in the forward passenger’s seat hung out the window with an MP5 and opened fire, the little machine gun spitting a wave of bullets across the Suburban’s hood. Two rounds punctured the windshield, leaving plasma ball patterns in their wake.
Ducking and cursing, Johnny veered into the oncoming traffic lane to avoid the shooter’s bead. Seeing an opportunity, Corey lowered his window and leaned outside with his rifle, sending a triplet of suppressed fire into the driver’s side window. A webwork of cracks spanned the glass, and blood flashed across the inside of the Mercedes’s windshield.
Without warning, the SUV cut across Johnny’s path. Shouting for Corey to hang on, he plowed into the rear quarter panel, booting the Mercedes aside and falling in behind the next car, a black crew cab pickup truck whose machine-gun toting jihadis were already hanging from the windows like gargoyles.
Corey fired again—even as they did, the cacophony of rounds whisking Johnny back to the Middle East, to that compound along the river. Blinking hard, he juked left, while Corey adjusted his bead, striking one of the truck’s tires. The pickup fishtailed to the right, the tire thumping loudly as it neared the rim.
Johnny rolled the wheel, peeling off and around the truck to accelerate. At the same time, he lowered his window, and with one hand he drew his 1911. He emptied the magazine into the truck only seconds before it spun off the road, swallowed by a dust cloud.
He glanced at Corey, whose eyes were bugging out as he gulped down air. “Holy shit!”
“No kidding. They can’t shoot or drive.”
“They’ll get lucky.”
“Eventually. I’ll hold back a little.” Johnny placed his pistol in the center console’s cup holder, allowing the barrel to cool. He drifted away from the caravan. “Willie, where are you?”
“Coming up the channel, about five minutes away from the marina—if that’s where they’re headed.”
“Josh?”
“I’m already here but laying low on the south side. Got about six guys on one of the docks. Four fishing boats just pulled up. They look like Intrepid 37s, Johnny, with triple Mercury Verados. They’re fast.”
“They spot you?”
“Not yet, but hurry. I bet these guys will pick up Nazari.”
“Roger. Our boy should be there soon. We’re on Adams now.”
“Johnny, Willie here. If you want, I can hold back. As they pull out, I’ll give them a reason to slow down.”
“No, don’t take that chance. Let’s give them a little line. Let ‘em run for now.”
One after another the cars ahead made a hard left turn onto Trevor Street, confirming their final destination.
“You smell that?” asked Corey.
“Don’t remind me.”
A mixture o
f gasoline and coolant was wafting into the cabin. The Suburban was bleeding badly. A glance at the gauges suggested she would not last much longer.
“We’ll make it,” Johnny said, squeezing the wheel even harder. “Just give me another mile. That’s all I ask.”
* * *
Talib Wakim, AKA “The Syrian,” pulled the last of the divers safely onboard his houseboat. They were temporarily anchored on Lake Meade approximately two miles northeast from the Hoover Dam in an area known as Painter’s Cove. Surrounded by deep canyons, dry washes, and sheer cliffs hanging above water as bluish black as a catfish, the cove was cloaked by an extinct volcano known as Fortification Hill.
Fifty to seventy-five feet long houseboats like Wakim’s were a common sight along the waterways leading away from the dam; in fact, whole armadas crowded with vacationers puttered between the Boulder, Temple and Virgin basins, even when water levels dropped as much as nineteen feet by the end of the season, since at its deepest point, the lake was over 450 feet deep. The houseboats were not only necessary for Wakim’s operation, but they made for perfect cover.
Wakim stroked his gray beard as the young diver tugged off his mask. “Any problems?”
“None.” The boy’s eyes shone in the moonlight, and his beard glistened with water. “It was even easier than when we practiced in Iowa.”
“We’re proud of you,” said Wakim. “Allah is proud.”
The boy nodded. “I wish Dr. Shammas were here.”
“We all do. Now get changed. We’ll eat something on the way back.”
Nearly five weeks of work carried out by twelve divers and twenty more brothers from a nearby enclave had drawn to a close.
Four thousand pounds of slurry explosives stolen from UXD in Texas had been packed into hundred pound satchels. Those satchels had been hiked overland to prearranged locations around the lake. Once the explosives had been transferred to one of the three houseboats they had rented, the boats sailed to within a mile of the dam. Under the cover of darkness, each satchel was transported underwater by a pair of divers wearing rebreathers that emitted no bubbles or signature on the surface. To account for the added weight of the explosives and to cut transport time nearly in half, each diver wore a pair of Jet Boots—battery powered propulsion devices that included small thrusters strapped to each man’s thighs. These, too, allowed for clandestine passage. Meanwhile, the boats retreated to the cove and waited.
Destroying the Hoover Dam would require a nuclear weapon, but Wakim and his brothers had something more tactical and creative in mind, something within the realm of their capabilities that would have an equal if not more severe effect.
The idea had come to him based upon the discovery of the quagga mussel in Lake Meade. The infidels would never recognize the relationship between a seemingly innocuous mussel and what they had in mind.
* * *
Johnny guided them over the rutted dirt road. Nazari’s caravan had churned up a dust cloud that swelled like the haboobs Johnny had witnessed in Iraq. For a few seconds, visibility was down to a meter, and then as abruptly, the road reappeared, with the marina lying about hundred meters ahead. Johnny pulled over. They seized their rifles, hopped out, then stole their way into the trees. The big Mercury outboards hummed a collective bass note as he and Corey reached the building, jogged along the wall, then crouched tightly at the corner.
Nazari and his men divided themselves between the four Intrepid 37s, with Nazari climbing aboard the boat with the dark blue hull. Beyond them, near the docks about fifty meters to the left, came Willie’s fishing boat, drifting soundlessly between two shrimp boats and disappearing from view.
The last of the men boarded, and Nazari’s boat took the lead, blasting away from the marina, with the other three boats falling in behind him like obedient bodyguards. Johnny counted at least five men aboard each craft, perhaps twenty combatants in all. Nearly in unison, they rolled left, heading northeast up the channel toward Matagorda Bay. The chalky lines they drew across the water faded as Johnny and Corey rose cautiously from the building.
On cue, Josh came tear-assing around the docks, The Marauder’s waterjets blaring, its camouflage pattern hull suggesting it was more than just an interceptor boat but a living, breathing predator with offensive and defensive mechanisms spawned over thousands of years. She was difficult to see, highly maneuverable, and spat venomous lead.
Willie came charging down the dock to join them as Josh slowed. All three hopped on board, gathering behind Josh inside the wheelhouse. Josh throttled up, and Johnny’s head jerked back as they entered the channel, their wake crashing in fountains against the shoreline.
“Where’s he headed now?” Willie asked.
“Maybe back to the port,” answered Johnny. “Maybe that container ship’s his ride out.”
“Hey, Johnny,” Corey interrupted. “Just got a text back from Athena. They still haven’t found the missing cards, but they decoded a few more for us. They said some of the cards have both a date and time: zero eight hundred Eastern Standard.”
“What time is it now?”
“About zero two, but we’re an hour behind, so we got five hours till something happens,” said Corey.
“Damn, all right, boys, listen up. I talked to Gatterton. He told me that Plesner’s working with the guys from D&S Equities. I know one of those guys, Nicholas Dresden. He did a big presentation at the Ordnance Disposal Conference down in Florida last year. One of his companies recycles explosives and works with EXSA down in Peru—and that’s no coincidence. Whatever they’re doing with these jihadis is huge.”
Chapter Forty-Two
“As we added more targets to the list, I realized we were the only good guys in America who knew the attack was coming—just four rednecks with the world on our shoulders.”
—Corey McKay (FBI interview, 23 December)
The container ship Mawsitsit had docked at the Port of Houston and was assigned to berth T5 at the Bayport Container Piers, where she would conduct drayage, offloading her containers with the assistance of Tropic Breeze Drayage Limited. Operations would begin within the hour.
This berth assignment—which was quite deliberate—put Mawsitsit approximately 6,800 feet from LML Oil Gas & Chemicals Tank Farm, which Abdul Satar Rostami now observed through the compass bridge’s panoramic windows.
The farm resembled some weirdly futuristic moon colony cordoned off by walls of pipes stacked like ribs between dozens of white, cylindrical tanks with flat tops. Each of the farm’s eight sections housed a dozen or more tanks of a particular size, and by Rostami’s count there were over two hundred arranged in neat formations. To the north lay ribbons of railroad tracks and highways sliding into the gloom.
Behind him, the ship’s captain was bound and being held at gunpoint, along with the first officer, while the rest of the complement had been murdered, their bodies jettisoned into the gulf. Once more, the captain demanded his release, and once more Rostami reared back and punched him in the left eye, which had already swollen shut.
After shaking the pain from his knuckles, Rostami sighed. In a few short hours and before sunrise, the Baktar-Shikan missile systems stored below would be delivered to the deck. Those missiles were part of a much larger cache that had been smuggled out of Pakistan years ago. Though only a rumor, Rostami heard that some of those systems had found their way through border tunnels along the Mexican-American border and had wound up somewhere out west, where they had been hidden... until now.
Allah’s righteous wrath would once more be unloosed upon the United States. The sword would be delivered to their black hearts, and Sharia Law would descend upon them like a storm at first, and then, like the gentle rains to cleanse them of their impurities and prepare them for new lives in the service of Allah. For this, Rostami was ready to martyr himself, as were his men. The rewards in the afterlife were great. With a chill of anticipation, he left the bridge, heading below deck, where they would review the operation one last time.
The men grinned as he entered the crew quarters.
“Allahu Akbar!” he cried.
* * *
Michael Bhardwaj had been teaching ACP Chemistry 1 & 2 at North Central High School for the past twelve years. He had created a fulfilling and engaging life for himself in Indianapolis, marrying a dark-haired beauty he had met while attending Indiana State University. They had two wonderful children: a girl, Elizabeth, now ten; and a boy, Thomas, about to turn nine, although young Thomas already sounded like a seasoned attorney, arguing daily for candy and more video game time.
Despite being a father, a devoted husband, and a consummate professional, Bhardwaj had never lost his own childhood excitement for science, for the study of atomic theory, chemical bonding, kinetics, thermodynamics, and descriptive chemistry. He brought that enthusiasm to his classroom, where his students outperformed all others in the district and won numerous contests. He had been nominated three times as teacher of the year and had won the award twice for his commitment to learning. He was the faculty advisor for the high school’s science club and recruited guest speakers from the local rotary to give presentations about their careers to his students. He coached his son’s little league baseball team and was vice president of his homeowners’ association. His wife, an Italian Catholic raised in New York, had insisted upon the children attending church and receiving their first Holy Communion. Bhardwaj had endorsed that decision, and subsequently they had become avid church goers and volunteered for community projects, especially those that benefited the elderly and/or less fortunate.
In sum, Mr. Michal Bhardwaj was a model American citizen, a gifted teacher, and a pillar of his community. He was thirty-eight years old. He had the rest of his life ahead of him.
But it was all a lie.
Bhardwaj was not his real name. His father was not Indian as he had told his wife, nor had his parents been killed in a car crash. They were both alive and well and living in Pakistan. While he wore no beard and currently did not own a Quran, he had been born and raised a Muslim. As ordered, for the past twelve years, he had kept Allah in his heart, secretly honoring who he truly served.
