Guardian of Lies: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  “They picked up a signal from Madriani’s cell phone,” said Thorpe. He came rushing into the command center.

  “Where?” said Rhytag.

  “San Diego.”

  “What?”

  “Intelligence picked it up two minutes ago. They’re not sure, but it looks as if the signal’s coming from somewhere along I-5, just south of San Diego.”

  “How the hell did he get there?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “He can’t be with Nitikin,” said Rhytag.

  Thorpe shrugged his shoulders. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Rhytag thought for a moment. “Pull the tactical squads back from the border,” he said.

  “Should we open up the border crossings?”

  “No. Just get the SWAT teams, some highway patrol if you can, the NEST team, and the snipers you got from Delta. Alert the hostage-rescue team and tell them we may need them on short notice. Get a precise location on the signal. Give the highway patrol the description of the cargo container and partial plate off the truck and tell them to put out an allpoints on it. If they find it, tell them to track it from a distance, but not to stop it. To monitor its location and call it in.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  From the middle of the bench seat in the U-Haul truck, Nitikin kept seeing signs as they passed them, Chula Vista, National City. He had never seen so much traffic. His mind raced with thoughts of how to free Maricela from the back of the truck, and who the two men were who were with her. But he was trapped in the middle, between the translator who was driving and Alim.

  His brain was so occupied with these thoughts that he didn’t even notice when the rental truck slipped into the right lane of the freeway. When he looked up he suddenly realized that they were driving at high speed on some kind of long off-ramp paralleling the freeway but separated from it by a low retaining wall. The cargo truck with the container on the back was still out on the highway, going straight ahead.

  Yakov nudged the interpreter.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said the interpreter.

  “You’re going to trust the two men on the truck to arm the bomb?” said Nitikin.

  The interpreter said something in Farsi. Alim responded, and the interpreter told Yakov, “The cordite charge is already loaded and the timer is set.”

  Nitikin was stunned. “The safety device is still on,” he told them.

  “Do yourself a favor and save your lies,” said the interpreter. “We saw you remove it.”

  Yakov knew this was not possible. He knew they could not possibly have seen inside the crate tucked away in the dark container when he pulled the wire.

  “Where is the truck going? What is the target?” said Nitikin.

  The interpreter said something to Alim, who smiled and said nothing.

  The off-ramp suddenly veered to the left and passed over the top of the freeway. Yakov looked out the right window and watched as the cargo container, surrounded by traffic, streamed down the freeway. Soon it was out of sight.

  Nitikin now knew that Alim no longer needed him. Yakov was running out of time. If Afundi found Maricela in the back of the truck, he would kill her in a heartbeat. Yakov was her only hope. Desperate to free his daughter, he knew he would have to do it before he took his last breath.

  By now Thorpe and Rhytag were taking their orders from a higher authority. The director of Homeland Security, now at the command center, watched the screen on the computer as well as the streaming video, on the huge monitor, being fed to them by a military helicopter. The chopper was flying at four thousand feet, high above the cargo container on the freeway below.

  The highway patrol had picked up the truck just north of San Diego and tracked it from a distance for more than twenty miles, until the interstate entered the area of Camp Pendleton, the sprawling marine base on the Pacific Coast. There tens of thousands of acres of barren hillsides replaced the endless housing tracts and subdivisions of Southern California.

  CHP units had slowed traffic several miles out in front where they could not be seen by Alim’s two men in the container truck. Over the course of several miles, driving a pattern of long, slow S curves, they finally brought the traffic to a halt. Other units cut off traffic in a southerly direction as two Delta Force sniper teams were deployed from helicopters on each side of the highway, three hundred yards out from the truck.

  Alim’s men were frustrated by the stalled traffic. Busy talking to each other they never saw a thing before the glass on the truck’s side windows shattered. A separate .308 round nailed each of them in the head at the same instant as their bloodied bodies piled up in the center of the seat.

  Most of the motorists around them never noticed a thing, even when the distant muted crack of gunfire reached them a second or so later.

  Within seconds the highway patrol started traffic moving again, everything except the truck. They emptied the interstate of vehicles for a distance of five miles and landed the NEST team and the FBI hostage unit on the highway a short distance from the truck.

  “Like clockwork.” Thorpe smiled, and slapped the table.

  They watched on the large screen as two of the FBI officers, in full black body armor, approached the rear of the container. Two more approached from the other side. They checked the two occupants in the truck. Both were dead. Still, they searched for any detonator or triggering mechanism that might be attached to the device in the back. They didn’t see anything.

  The two agents at the back of the truck didn’t open the container door. Instead one of them probed for a crack around the hinge of the door, then inserted what on the screen, from a distance, looked like a wire but was in fact a small pinhole camera with its own light source mounted on the end of a thin, flexible tube.

  The agent manipulated the tube to move the lens around inside.

  “Appears there’s a wooden crate in the center of the container.” The voice crackled over the tactical radio system where it was piped into the speakers at the command center in Washington. “Looks like lead shielding on the inner walls of the container. Can’t tell for sure.”

  “Hold on a second. Let me take a look.” One of the NEST team specialists came in for a closer look at the monitor on the Panasonic Tough-book laptop where the video from the pinhole camera was being viewed. “Move it around a little more.” He lifted his face mask and looked more closely at the computer screen. “That is lead shielding,” said the tech. “Hold on a second, you wanna make sure there’s no trip wires or detonating devices running from the door.”

  The agent kept moving the lens around.

  The agent kneeling behind him at the computer looked at the screen closely as the tiny eye of the camera lens scoured the sealed interior of the container. “I don’t see any wires. Just some kind of large wooden crate in the center of the floor. I can’t see any wires or anything running to it. What else am I looking for?” asked the agent. He was seeking guidance from the NEST team.

  One of the NEST team members came up behind them carrying a Geiger counter, searching for evidence of radiation emissions.

  “Not getting much. Slightly more elevated than normal background radiation is all.”

  “What am I looking for in terms of initiators for detonation?” said the agent at the computer.

  “Probably a timing device,” said one of the NEST team.

  “What would it look like?” said the agent.

  “Most likely it would be inside the crate,” said the technician. “You wouldn’t be able to see it.”

  “Well, what do we do?” said the agent.

  Thorpe and Rhytag sat anxiously watching the big screen listening to the chatter over the speakers in the command center.

  Three members of the NEST team huddled a few feet from the agents. “Do you wanna try and move it? Bring in a heavy-lift helo. We could haul it out to sea, dump it in deep water.”

  “Plutonium, I’d say yes. But not uranium. The salt water could complete the chemical bond between the two elements of HEU in the gun and start a chain reaction. We’d get a part
ial or full-yield nuclear blast, and the onshore winds could carry the fallout across half of Southern California.”

  One of the other team members agreed with him. “Besides, they could have a barometric trigger on it. Either that or if there’s a timed detonator and it goes off as we’re lifting it, we’ll end up getting an airburst.”

  They all knew what that meant. Little Boy had been designed specifically for an airburst over Hiroshima at the end of the war. The bomb had achieved maximum devastation over the widest possible area from an altitude of less than two thousand feet.

  “That means we take it apart here,” said one of them.

  “I’d say that looks like the best alternative among a bad lot.”

  They all agreed. “Let’s get the tools,” said one of them.

  They had already taken steps to move everyone back along the highway a distance of at least two miles in either direction, including all of the highway patrol units. All that lingered now was the single helicopter for support that mounted the camera through which Thorpe, Rhytag, the head of Homeland Security, and the rest in the room watched on the big screen. The chopper hovered about a quarter mile off and zeroed in with a powerful telescopic video lens.

  “Why don’t you guys go back to the safety point?” said one of the agents. “There’s no sense in all of us staying up here. I can pull the doors by myself.”

  “Two miles out and two miles back, we don’t have time,” said the head of NEST. He was already donning a radiation suit from their equipment bags, dropped from the helicopters when they landed. “Besides, if we get a full-yield detonation it won’t make much difference. On the other hand, if we get a fizzle I want you and all of your agents as well as the rest of my team to take cover over there behind that concrete divider.”

  None of them argued with him. Thorpe and Rhytag watched on the screen as two more members of NEST put on radiation suits. Then the two men joined the agents behind the concrete divider.

  There were two doors on the rear of the container, each with two sets of heavy locking pins, one at the top and one at the bottom. Each locking pin was controlled by a levered handle. Pull up or push down on the handle and the pin would be released.

  The head of NEST gripped one of the levered handles on the container door. “Are you ready?” he called out.

  “Go ahead. Do it.”

  He pulled the handle up, sliding the heavy steel pin from the latch at the top of the container. “Got it. That one’s out. One down, one to go,” he said.

  He took the second lever at the bottom of the door. “For some reason this one doesn’t want to come,” he said. He let go of it, straightened his back, and took a deep breath.

  He pushed again. “Damn thing’s stuck ”

  “Be careful, don’t force it,” said one of them.

  “The container’s got some dents. It’s just bent.” This time he put his full weight on the lever. The pin started to slide from the hole. “Got it,” he said.

  Several hundred pounds of steel plate backed by a liner of lead shielding hit the leader of the NEST team like a rocket sled. The heat from the blast radiated in ripples from the back of the container, tearing the door from its hinges. It tossed the man’s limp body fifty yards down the highway as the steel door, sliding along beside him on the pavement, threw up sparks.

  An instant later the shock wave rattled the camera on the helicopter a quarter of a mile away and broke up the picture for a few seconds.

  “Oh, no!” said Rhytag.

  When the images flickered back into focus, they could see sheets of flame and smoke billowing from the open end of the cargo container. The side nearest them was bulged out by the blast. It flattened the rear tires of the truck, and one of them caught fire.

  “Bring in fire suppression. Foam And get an ambulance in here now.” There was chaos at the scene as two of the agents jumped the divider and ran toward the downed man. The two NEST team members, hampered by the bulky radiation suits, moved more slowly. They cleared the divider and approached the back end of the twisted container. One of them was holding a Geiger counter.

  “What are you reading on the meter?”

  “Nothing. A few rads above background.”

  “Doesn’t make sense. The shielding’s been blasted out.” The two men disappeared into the smoke at the rear of the container.

  Everyone in the command center sat silently, their eyes riveted on the huge screen as they listened for voices over the tactical communication system.

  A few seconds later the two men emerged from the smoke. “Conventional explosives,” said one of them. He pulled off his hood, sweat pouring down his face as the camera zeroed in on him.

  “It could be Semtex or C-four, or some other synthetic, I can’t be sure.”

  They could hear the electronic wail of sirens in the background as the ambulance made its way up the highway. “There are traces of elevated radiation around what’s left of the wooden crate inside, but the device is not there.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  After separating from the cargo carrier, the rental truck continued west for almost a mile until it approached a high-arching bridge over what appeared to be a big harbor dotted with yachts and large ships. The truck moved along at full speed, staying with the traffic as it climbed onto the bridge, two lanes in each direction separated by a concrete divider.

  Yakov could see what appeared to be a kind of fairyland through the mist ahead of them. Below the bridge on the left were white sand beaches and a nestled cove harboring luxury boats, brigantines, and other exotic sailing craft.

  Straight ahead there was what looked like an island except for the endless strip of sand that disappeared into the haze along the ocean to the south. The area directly across the bridge was awash in lush vegetation, a green oasis of palms and billowing eucalyptus. Though he didn’t know it, Nitikin was looking at a golf course. In the distance he could see the broad blue expanse of the Pacific. And laid right at its sandy shore, the fantasy touch of a layered wedding cake, an immense wooden structure with red roofs in various shapes, its round one topped by a cupola itself capped by a large American flag. It was the Hotel del Coronado. The place where the film Some Like It Hot had been shot back in the sixties.

  None of this meant a thing to Alim. He was seated next to the Russian on the front seat with only one thing on his mind.

  Off to the right, a little over two miles away, Alim could see the immense flat expanse of the ship tied up to the dock as four fireboats out in the channel shot arcs of colored water, red, white, and blue, high into the air in celebration. It was the moment Afundi had worked for since that morning in Havana at Fidel’s linen-covered dining table, when through sleepy eyes he first saw the photograph of the aircraft carrier the Americans called the USS Ronald Reagan, the viper that had nursed the warplanes that killed Alim’s mother and father.

  For months, information had come from comrades-in-arms around the world tracking the progress of the ship as it moved from one ocean to the next. Reports were sent to Havana from newspapers and online blog sites reporting the current location of the carrier and its strike force.

  From his camp in Colombia, Alim devoured the news, like Ahab chasing the great white whale. At one point he was nearly sick with stress when he read reports that the carrier was expected to proceed to its home base, restock its stores of supplies, and return to sea before the bomb could be ready.

  But as Castro had told him that morning, this was destiny. A typhoon swept across the far Pacific and the great carrier, which was on its way home, was diverted to the Philippines. According to American propaganda the ship and its devil fleet were assigned to fly aid missions carrying food, water, and medicine to stricken islanders. Despite all of the Americans’ lies, Afundi didn’t care as long as the ship was delayed.

  Then ten days ago he’d received the final piece of information that the Reagan had weighed anchor in the Philippines. Two sailors on leave the night before had told some girls in Cebu that they would call them from San Diego the minute they reached port,
and gave them the date the carrier would arrive back home.

  After more than six months at sea, the crew of fifty-five hundred, more than were killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, now lined her decks for the arrival. Thousands of family members and friends were gathered along the pier in the shadow of the ship. This did not include the entire carrier strike group now in the harbor, missile cruisers and destroyers, frigates and supply ships, along with part of the carrier’s air wing, now down on the field at North Island Naval Air Station.

  The destruction from the single atomic blast would dwarf the events at Pearl Harbor. Worse for the Americans, who seemed to suck their strength from their vanquished enemies, there would be no identifiable foe to whom they could attach blame, no place where they could scratch their itch for vengeance. They would have to lick their wounds and complain of injustice to a world that no longer cared.

  As the truck rumbled across the bridge and down past the open ticket kiosk on Coronado, Alim saw the promise of the future, the destruction of the great powers at the hands of single individuals such as himself. With a single weapon in the back of a truck, they could now deliver death and destruction on a level never before dreamed of in history. If the gun was the great equalizer of men, then the infliction of nuclear terror was the ultimate counterweight for oppressed people everywhere. It was the dawning of a new age and Alim Afundi was about to give it birth.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  I look at Herman as the truck begins to slow. Perhaps it’s tied up in traffic or is pausing for a stop sign. It comes to a complete stop, then begins to back up. We feel the rear end of the heavy vehicle maneuver to the right.

  “He’s parking,” says Herman. He gets on his feet and moves toward the rear of the truck’s bed.

  The driver finishes the maneuver. The truck suddenly lurches to a stop and Herman stumbles a bit, then catches himself, and the driver turns off the engine.