King knew Thomas was speaking of Kyle and Juice who’d busted Petrov themselves a year ago.
“As you are also aware by now, Sergio Martinez got away, never to be seen again. I was forced to drop that entire cover and switch gears, using the knowledge I’d gained from putting the deal together with Petrov. I managed to get ahold of some of Petrov’s things before your men could, and I found that he’d been dealing with Marcus Christian. That is when MI6 put me in play as Kenneth Sizemore. I put him in contact with the man who took over for Petrov after he was arrested. All of the nukes were made, so there only needed to be someone to move them on the black market in Petrov’s absence. That is where the name James Carter comes in.”
“But James Carter is you,” Sam said. “You came back in the facial recognition.”
“Yes, well . . . just let me finish.”
Sam waved her hand.
“Right. Well, I knew James Carter had taken over selling what was left of the nukes for Petrov because he reached out to my old cover, Sergio Martinez, to buy, since Petrov had already made the inroad. Sergio conveniently declined but referred James to me, Kenneth Sizemore. This is how I got close to Marcus. I did the deal for Marcus, four mini nukes in total. But at the last minute, just four days ago, Marcus was having trouble trusting me. I don’t know why, but he just was. So he gave me an ultimatum. Find and kill the agent who’d been watching him, or I was out.”
“He knew there was an agent watching him?” King said.
“All men such as Marcus have someone watching them, and they all know it. It’s the ones who learn to evade such agents who make it in the long run as criminals.”
“Let me guess,” Sam said, “this is where you faking your own death comes in.”
“It was all I had,” Thomas said. “I had to deliver a verifiable agent, and I had to do it fast. If I missed the transfer of the nukes, I missed out on bringing the entire operation down. And trust me, it’s bigger than you think. We estimate that Petrov made almost thirty of these mini nukes. He was completely reckless, that’s why he’s in prison, but he hid them well and had a backup plan.”
The van rounded a long turn on the freeway, and the lights at Dulles came into view.
“You’d better bring this home, Thomas,” King said as he nodded out the window. “You’re running out of real estate.”
“So I killed myself. Verified photos and all. Obviously doctored so I looked nothing like Kenneth Sizemore. Marcus was pleased, but what put it over the top was the entire plot to ensnare the CIA’s finest—the two of you—and keep them off Marcus’s scent for good measure.”
“So you really did set the trap at the safety deposit box . . . and in Monte Carlo?” Sam said. “We could have been killed!”
This time it was Sam who lunged forward, but Omari wasn’t ready. She landed a right hook to Thomas’s jaw, and the smack nearly echoed inside the van. King pulled her back into her seat while Thomas wiped the blood from his lip.
“She hits nearly as hard as you do, mate,” Thomas said to King.
King let that one slide. Besides, he was probably right.
“Anyway,” Thomas went on, “I have kept up with you very closely, Samantha. I knew these guys wouldn’t be able to get to you.”
“You couldn’t possibly know that,” Sam said, still seething.
“I could, and I did. I hired them. We all may not get along in this van, but I respect what you’ve accomplished.”
Sam and King paid the compliment no mind and waited for Thomas to continue.
“Right, so, with me taking out an agent and using him to potentially kill you two––the very people the CIA would have called on to intervene––I’d won Marcus over. But to get him to let me in on the plan, I had to go above and beyond. And the genius I pulled by having James Carter’s identity attached to my personal passport through our fine IT men and women at MI6, well, it got me all the way into the fold.”
“You swapped James Carter’s info for yours in all the databases so you could tell Marcus that James would be the fall guy when all of this was said and done,” King said.
“You got it. And it’s what got me on the plane to come here. And it’s what allowed me to see what Marcus is going to do next. The bomb at the airport, I swear to you, that was a last-minute decision, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”
“Yeah?” King said. “Then how did you end up at CIA headquarters?”
“After the bomb exploded, I literally jumped out of the car.”
“You were in the car with Marcus?”
“He was in the car in front of ours. I was in with three other of his men. When I found out what he’d done, I waited for a busy intersection, then I bailed. I ran about a mile in and behind apartments until I found a cab. Then it was straight to CIA headquarters. My handler was supposed to reach Director Lucas, but I guess with all the frantic movement after the bomb, he was delayed.”
King opened his phone. He had a missed call from Director Lucas. He pressed the contact to call back.
“The planes are ready for you at Dulles,” Director Lucas said as he answered the phone. “I have a few men for you to take with you. They’ll brief you when you arrive.”
“Brief me?” King said. “On what? You don’t know what we’re doing.”
“I do. Thomas’s handler at MI6 got ahold of me. Thomas explained everything to him on his cab ride to Langley. You’ll be headed for the coordinates on the New Madrid fault line. And please God, don’t let that maniac, Marcus, see this thing through.”
“So Thomas is telling the truth?”
“He is. And X, we need you to pull off some of that showstopping magic you’ve used in the past. Can we count on you?”
“Y-yes. I’ll do everything I can.”
“Check in on your way there.”
King ended the call. There was just too much unraveling at once, and he was having a really hard time keeping up. His phone dinged, and it was a text message from President Bobby Gibbons: Just spoke with Lucas. He filled me in. Just wanted to tell you I have faith in you, son. And thank you for what you do for our country. Godspeed.
King showed Sam the text.
“What the hell is going on?” she said.
“I have no idea,” King said. “But obviously it’s a big damn deal. And apparently Thomas is the only one who can fill us in.”
“So Michael spoke with your CIA director?” Thomas said.
“He did. Now can you kindly tell us what the hell one of the biggest earthquake fault lines has anything to do with Marcus Christian and his mini nukes?”
Sam looked at King like he had two heads. And at the moment, with a seemingly unending stream of information, King felt like maybe he did.
31
Alexander King and his team wasted no time ushering Thomas Bishop onto King’s plane. The middle of the night, with no traffic on the roads or on the runway, made it easier. The CIA placed two other field agents aboard King’s plane, then six more in another plane to follow them. They brought a lot of toys along with them: AR-15s, sniper rifles, and plenty of other tactical gear such as night-vision goggles and a few drones. King was transported back to his days in Special Operations when he would run teams equipped with similar gear into some of the worst places in the world. Even though these planes were headed to apple-pie Middle America, he’d been told what they were going into was possibly more dangerous and potentially far more devastating. Not to mention it was on home soil.
The plane left the runway. So far all King knew for sure was that they were headed to a small county airport in New Madrid County, Missouri. They were headed there because one of the largest fault lines in the world was there, and that was apparently where Marcus was also taking his nukes. Kyle managed to get ahold of Juice midflight through his plane’s radio, and he was only a couple of hours from the same airport, so he diverted to meet King there.
“Okay, Thomas,” King said, “you have us where you want us. You’re on the pla
ne, we have reinforcements, and I am flying my team into the most under-researched mission in the history of my career. How ’bout you fill in the details. Start with the New Madrid fault line. I grew up a few hours from it, but I’ve heard only broad strokes.”
“Please understand that I knew nothing about this until the plane ride here. If I had, your government would have been notified immediately. Seeing as how Marcus’s presentation didn’t happen until we were over the Atlantic, there was nothing I can do.”
“You’ve professed your innocence many times already,” Sam said. “We’ll let Director Lucas sort that out once this is over. For now, just tell us what is happening and why we should care.”
“I’m sorry to have put your through all of this, Sam. I just didn’t have—”
“You didn’t have any choice but to endanger me and Xander. Yeah, we got that part too. Carry on.”
Thomas let out a frustrated breath, then went on sharing what he knew. “The New Madrid Seismic Zone, as Marcus made sure we called it, is the most active seismic zone east of your Rocky Mountains. He doesn’t call it a fault line for reasons that have to do with the rocks below the ground or something. He’s apparently been obsessed with earthquakes since he was a child. I don’t know. Not important. What is important is that, although it isn’t talked about like the fault lines in California, it is just as active, and apparently, because of the nature of the earth in the middle of your country, the damages will be far worse. If the Bay Area in California had an 8.0 earthquake, it would be felt for a hundred miles or so. If the same earthquake occurred in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, it would affect an area of up to twenty times larger than the California earthquake.”
“Twenty times?” Omari said. “That’s like, all the way past New York from Missouri?”
“Or farther, says Marcus.”
“All right, so what are we talking here?” King said. “What’s his play?”
“He’s hoping that detonating three nukes along the seismic zone will trigger a bigger quake than the last one that happened in the 1800s. It was an 8.0. Obviously, there wasn’t a lot standing back then, but it devastated everything in its vicinity. Today, we’re talking millions more people.”
“Millions more around, meaning population, or millions dying?” Sam said.
“Both. Marcus thinks anything above an eight will wipe out everything from Memphis to St. Louis. I’m not sure how far that is because I’m not from here, but he said the last earthquake they had in the region was a 6.7, and it made church bells ring over a thousand miles away.”
“Holy shit,” Omari said, and he spoke for everyone.
“Can we stop it?” King said.
“I don’t know,” Thomas said as he shook his head. “He obviously knows I ran, but I don’t know what that will mean for what he’s trying to do. He could move everything. But something tells me, a guy like him, who is a meticulous planner, will think he can get it done without changing things.”
The plane was quiet. King couldn’t believe this was happening. It sounded about as off-the-wall as any terrorist attempt he’d ever heard of. But after a minute with his thoughts, he began to see that it was kind of genius. Terrorists, for some reason, like to target major cities. Their attempts are often foiled because those are the closest watched by operators in all American agencies. Something like invoking an earthquake would do way more harm, cause way more fatalities, and it can be set up without a single person seeing you. Impossible in any manner of populated area.
“Sam,” King said, “have Director Lucas get an expert on this New Madrid Seismic Zone on my phone ASAP. We first have to know if what Marcus is trying to do truly has a chance of triggering an earthquake.”
Thomas cleared his throat. “Not to interrupt, because I think that is a smart move to get an expert, but that is why Marcus is risking everything to do this. His father was an expert seismologist, which is why he knows a big enough shock to the seismic zone will set it off. How big will it go? That, no one knows.”
“One thing we’ve left out,” Sam said, “then we can get right back to your thought, Xander. What exactly is his reason for wanting to attack the United States in the first place?”
“That I didn’t learn from him,” Thomas said. “However, my team was able to get me the story of how his mother died in an earthquake, the one whose fault line she and Marcus’s father were studying at the time. Apparently, though, it wasn’t the earthquake that killed her; it was the lack of medical attention and search and rescue help. Marcus’s father apparently sued the US government, lost, then drank himself to death. Marcus blames the US for both their deaths. As would any nonlogical psychopath with zero ability to control brain functions such as anger or empathy.”
“All right.” King let out a sigh. “I guess the why doesn’t matter. And neither does how the mini nukes made it into the US, but I still want to know.”
“James Carter,” Thomas was blunt.
“So Juice was wrong,” King said, looking over at Sam. “James really did smuggle them on that plane with the other weapons, then took them from there. Juice almost stopped him.”
“Almost,” King said. “Making it even more deniable for Marcus in case something went wrong. It could all be put on James.”
Thomas hung his head. “Except for the bomb at Ronald Reagan Airport. All I can say is that he was looking worried over the last hour or two of the flight. Maybe paranoia was setting in, or a sixth sense that we were all on to him. Possibly he thought lighting the entire airport on fire would exonerate him.”
“And it will exonerate him if he pulls this off and disappears,” Sam said.
“We can’t let that happen,” King added.
“Excuse me, Mr. King?” One of Director Lucas’s agents had unbuckled and walked over to the four of them. He was wearing a pack on his back and held what looked like the Ghostbusters’ proton pack in his hand.
“What the hell is that?” Omari said.
“I’m Agent Eric Forsberg,” the agent continued. “I need to brief you on this.” He nodded toward the thing he was holding in his hand.
“Like O said,” King said, “what the hell is it?”
“This is the latest prototype PRD, or portable radiation detector. This one is also equipped with a portable radiation portal monitor. It’s really pretty amazing.”
“Okay, Forsberg, what does it do?”
“It detects SNMs, special nuclear materials, such as anything radioactive. This new device can shoot a beam of high-energy photons up to a kilometer away, and that beam can detect any SNM in that particular area.”
“English?” Omari said.
“If you point this at a nuke,” the agent said as he pointed to the gun-like portion of the device, “it will show any SNMs on this monitor.” He moved the small monitor back and forth.
“We have three nukes going to three separate places,” Thomas said. “How many of those have you got?”
“Just two. And we’re damn lucky to have that. These just passed testing last month.”
“Thank you for the brief, Forsberg,” King said. “You’ll be with the group we are meeting there. Make sure your other man who knows how to work it briefs the other agents.”
“He’s doing so on the other plane now. But, sir, you won’t be taking one with you?”
“You only have two, right?”
“Right,” Forsberg said.
“Thank you, that will be all,” King said, then looked back at Sam. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Flying blind into the most unpopulated area?”
“It’s the best we can do. They have a better chance of finding the nukes with those detectors, and they’ll need the attention of the highest populations.”
“That’s suicide,” Thomas said. “It will be nearly impossible to find a large briefcase with no detector.”
“Sounds like just about every other job we’ve taken. Feel free to go with the detectors,” King said. Then he motioned to
Omari and Sam. “But we’ll be jumping right into the fire.”
“You’re mad. Just let that one blow. I can show you the region where it’s being placed. The population is far less dense. You must concentrate on the populated areas.”
“Yeah? And what happens if one nuke is enough to set off an earthquake, Thomas?”
Thomas was quiet for a moment. “Well, I guess since I’m so close to the seismic zone, I would hope some fearless agents could find it in time.”
“Exactly,” King said. “And that’s precisely what we plan on doing.”
32
As King’s jet drew closer to the New Madrid County Airport, King ended his call with the seismologist that Director Lucas had put him in touch with. The call confirmed what Thomas was saying, that any of these five-kiloton nukes could possibly set off a major earthquake. But all three of them almost certainly would. In an honest moment with himself, King felt about as defeated after that conversation as he could ever remember. With an SNM detector, it would be really difficult to find the nukes. Without one, it would be like finding a needle in three haystacks. There had to be a better way. And as he did every time he felt low about a mission, he turned to the one person who always made him feel like at least he had a chance.
“Sam?” King took a seat beside her and turned his back to the rest of the plane so they could have a private moment.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” she said.
“You shouldn’t.”
King moved close. The jet engines kept their voices from traveling throughout the cabin. King nodded in the direction of Thomas several feet away. He wanted to add a little humor before the morbid conversation.
“The hell did you ever see in that guy anyway?”
Sam smiled. “Deflect with comedy. Your go-to, I’m afraid, Xander. And believe it or not, he can be quite charming.”
Power Move (Alexander King Book 4) Page 13
