First Strike (50 page)

Igor: “
He's on the thirteenth floor! Run, Dewey! You can cut him off!
”

“I'll be right back,” he finally said to Daisy.

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“Tell everyone to stay where they are,” he said. “It's not over.”

Daisy nodded, putting her hand to her mouth, trying not to cry.

He charged up the stairs three steps at a time. He passed the entrance to the twelfth floor and kept moving.

“
He's almost there!
”

When he got to the thirteenth floor, he found the door to the hallway open, pushed by the wind. The choppers sounded as if they were only a few feet away. Dewey held for a half second, then slunk into the hallway, looking around but seeing nothing.

“
… he's…!
”

Igor was saying something, but Dewey couldn't hear him. Was the terrorist on the roof already? He had to be.

As much as he tried to not think about it, Dewey found his mind imagining the moment when the terrorist ripped the wire and sent the bombs tumbling to the ground—the detonation and destruction.

You won't feel it.

He ran up the stairs to the roof. There was a darkened alcove next to the door, and he swung the pistol. His eyes adjusted and he saw a shoulder-fired missile, already in its launcher.

The sound of the choppers was deafening. He glanced out to the roof. Both helicopters hovered just feet above the roofline and the surreal web of wire, saddled atop with IEDs.

Where is he?

It was pandemonium. Igor was yelling. Dewey held his .45 out in front of him, guessing the last terrorist was outside, just around the corner.

“
… Dewey!
”

Dewey covered his ear with his left hand, trying to hear Igor.

“
… behind you!
”

The next thing he knew, a knife plunged into his back. It entered below his right shoulder blade and moved deep and quickly.

Dewey let out an anguished groan as he slammed into the floor, then another as the blade was pushed farther in.

Igor's warning had been too late to avoid the knife, but it had saved his life. If Dewey hadn't turned at the last moment, the knife would've gone into his back and straight through his heart.

He couldn't breathe. Blood spat from his mouth and nose as ferocious pain savaged every part of him.

The pain from the blade handle underneath his back, banging against hard concrete, and the blunt steel now goring his chest was otherworldly, the kind of moment that can never be forgotten, a moment just before death. A moment instead of death.

Gun.

Instinct, desperation, fear, above all, an animal need to keep living made Dewey reflexively lurch, still clinging to the handgun—somehow managing to stand—and fire at the dark blur that was now above him. Dewey fought to keep his eyes open and he searched within the fading light for the terrorist, firing again and again, the dull spit of the slugs lost in the gale until he heard the scream.

Dewey kept firing, emptying the mag into the black-clad figure, until there was only the click of the chamber on empty and the watery cough of blood, choking him now. Blindness swept his eyes, and all he could hear was a low, horrible groan, as an animal makes whose leg has been torn off by the steel teeth of a hunter's trap—and he realized the sound was coming from him. He wanted to lie down, but he knew he needed to move. Not because he could do anything more. He needed to move because he knew if he didn't get to a hospital immediately, he would die.

But he tumbled to the ground.

A few moments later, he heard footsteps, then Tacoma.

“
Dewey!
”

He felt Tacoma's hand turning him over on his side so that the blade wasn't pushed by the concrete.

“Holy shit,” Tacoma said. “Igor, tell McNaughton to move the choppers back. Twelve is dead. The wind is going to knock the bombs down. Then get a mobile surgical unit up here. Dewey's been stabbed and I'm not sure he can be moved. They need to hurry. He's going to bleed out.”

Tacoma sat down next to Dewey. He inspected the knife that jutted from both sides of Dewey's body. Tacoma lifted Dewey's head so that he didn't drown in his own blood. Blood was everywhere.

“
Dewey!
”

Dewey heaved involuntarily. The spasm was like a convulsion, and Tacoma knew he was drowning.

“Igor,” said Tacoma, “change that. We need one of the choppers to lower a line down
now.
Dewey's about to go cardiac. If he doesn't get to a hospital in the next minute or two, he's going to die.”

 

67

SITUATION ROOM

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

The Situation Room was crowded with people: White House senior staff, National Security, CIA, NSA, Pentagon, Homeland, FBI, and State Department.

The walls were covered in plasma screens—sixteen in all—and all were in use. A screen in the middle of the room had flashing, bright yellow letters and numbers:

CENCOM

00:00:00

EST ARR TARGET = 01:27:44

Four screens showed live video of Columbia University, the dormitory seen from different angles.

Another six screens displayed various iconographies of the Mexican container ship, now loaded with nearly a billion dollars' worth of guns, ammunition, and shoulder-fired missiles. Four were delivering a real-time video stream of action on the ship. Another provided an aerial view from a drone overhead. One more displayed the section of the Mediterranean, with a large flashing red X that was the ship and a green circle representing the Syrian Port of al-Bayda.

President Dellenbaugh sat at the head of the table. He was quiet. Bill Polk was speaking, presenting an ad hoc operation that required immediate action.

The ship had been moved closer to the Syrian coast in case the decision was a go. They would need to execute the plan quickly, before Nazir realized or found out the dorm had been lost.

“Nazir doesn't know the dorm has been taken back,” said Polk. “He doesn't know his men are dead. So why tell him? We shut down all live coverage from Columbia. Move the students out through the basement. Pretend the terrorists are still in control. We cave in and let the ship go. We have eleven Navy SEALs on board that boat. Send the ship in, then lay waste to whoever comes to meet it. Trojan horse.”

Harry Black, the secretary of defense, was Polk's main opponent.

“If it works, great,” said Black, his voice deep and gruff. “But if it backfires, ISIS might somehow still end up with the weapons. There are enough arms on that ship to finish the job in Syria and Iraq. Why create that sort of intolerable risk? Without the shipment, ISIS has serious, possibly fatal, problems.”

“They'll figure out another way to get weapons,” said Brubaker, the national security advisor. “This operation shows how resourceful Nazir is. It's worth the risk. We can always drop bombs on the ship if what you're saying happens.”

“And kill a team of SEALs?”

“Mr. Secretary, if what you're saying could happen does happen, they'll already be dead.”

Stacy Conneely, Langley's top ISIS analyst, chimed in. “I believe Nazir might even show up to inspect the boat,” she said.

“Ego?” asked the president.

“No, Mr. President. Symbolism. It's the image, like MacArthur walking ashore at Leyte. Actually, now that I think about it, I'd bet anything.”

“You willing to bet your life?” asked Black, pointing at the twenty-nine-year-old. “Because that's what we'll be doing with the lives of those men.”

“Yes, I would,” said Conneely. “But Bill's right. It only works as long as the illusion of Columbia is still real. We need to hurry.”

Black was mildly irate. He turned to Dellenbaugh.

“Let's quit while we're ahead, Mr. President.”

“We're not ahead, Mr. Secretary,” said Dellenbaugh. “We're behind. We created this monster. We'll be ahead when he's dead. Send the ship.”

 

68

CARMAN HALL

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Tacoma dragged Dewey as gently as possible to the edge of the roof. There was just enough space to lift him through, but it would be awfully tricky. The wires crisscrossed the entire roof like a web. He couldn't even imagine how FBI munitions would remove the wires without detonating the bombs.

He was patched into the pilot of the FBI helicopter that now hovered above the roof.

“You ready?” asked the pilot.

“Yeah, let it down. Real slow. We can't let it touch the wires.”

“Roger, guide us down.”

Tacoma glanced at Dewey. His big frame looked relaxed. He was unconscious. Tacoma realized he might never gain consciousness again.

“
Fuck that!
”

“Come again, Rob?”

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

A steel cable descended from the side of the chopper. The wind was furious. At the end of the cable, a large, heavy steel hook dangled. Still, the wind played with the cable, jostling it back and forth, until its swing was too wide. It was impossible to catch.

“No,” said Tacoma. “Bring it back up, then down.”

The same thing happened three more times. On the next attempt, something changed and the shear wasn't as powerful. The hook moved lower and lower. Tacoma—his hip pressing gently against the outermost piece of wire—grabbed it.

“Got it!” yelled Tacoma. “Steady now! I need two more feet.”

He pulled the cable down toward Dewey, lying at his feet, until the hook was just above him. Tacoma latched the hook to a steel loop on Dewey's vest.

Now came the hard part. Working with the chopper winch, Tacoma would have to help lift Dewey so that all parts of his body avoided the wire on the way up.

“Okay, guys,” said Tacoma. “Real slow. Can you see me?”

“Yeah, we got you. Here we go.”

The cable tightened and Dewey's slack body climbed up into the air. His head was beneath the outermost edge of wire. Tacoma grabbed Dewey and—just as his head was about to bump into the underside of the wire—heaved Dewey away from the roof. Tacoma gritted his teeth as he held Dewey away from the wire as the helicopter lifted him up. When he was above the plane of the wire, he held another few seconds, then slowly let the pendulum of Dewey's large frame move back above the wire, directly underneath the chopper.

“Lift him!” yelled Tacoma.

“Roger,” said the pilot.

Two men pulled Dewey's bloody body inside the hovering chopper. One of them saluted Tacoma, who nodded back. The door shut and the chopper lifted, then slashed nearly horizontal as it bolted away from Carman.

 

69

NEAR AL-BAYDA

SYRIA

The container ship moved slowly toward a deserted promontory of land near al-Bayda, a windswept, out-of-the-way coastal town just south of the Turkish border.

The ship was guided by a single tugboat, manned by Syrian fishermen loyal to ISIS.

Al-Bayda was remote, which was precisely the point. Remoteness was what was called for under the circumstances. A deep hole lay along the promontory's northern edge, the result of being dredged more than fifty years ago when someone in the Syrian government had decreed that al-Bayda have its own deepwater pier. But the pier was never built. Only the trench remained, along with a large flatland just next to it.

Miguel counted at least a dozen flatbed trucks, all waiting for the cargo. Several pickup trucks and three SUVs were parked nearby, in view of the ship but not in the way of the gantry crane that would be used to off-load the boxes of weapons.

Two men stood on the bridge of the 662-foot ship: Miguel, the vessel's Mexican captain, and another man, much younger, who wore a black nylon mask over his face. He also had on a black short-sleeve button-down shirt, black pants, and boots. He clutched an AK-47, which he trained at the ground, only a few feet away from Miguel.

Miguel's eyes moved right. A black pickup truck appeared along the rocky shore, its headlights on.

Miguel watched the ship's speed relative to the unfinished jetty, knowing they were going too fast, but he knew the hull of his ship was of no consequence to the pigs of ISIS. A few moments later, he felt a slight kick from somewhere near the bow. The tugboat had delivered them hard into the dredged-out trench near the ugly, empty shore.

Crewmen anchored the ship and extended the gangway to the rocks below.

It was 2:48
A.M
.

Miguel flipped on the vessel's lights, illuminating everything in bright yellow. He left the bridge and took the stairs to the deck of the ship.

He walked to the starboard side and stood looking down on the dock. Two men emerged from the pickup truck, both ISIS. One wore jeans and a gray T-shirt. The other had on black khakis and a short-sleeve shirt. Both men had on black ski masks.

“They all look the fucking same,” he muttered. “Why bother with the masks?”

They stepped to the edge of the rocky coastline.

“Start unloading,” ordered one of the men, pointing to the containers.

“I need a signature first,” said Miguel.

The two men conferred. “Bring it down here.”

“You come up here.”

“No,” said the man on the right. “Bring it down!”

Miguel shook his head.

“No. These are my orders from the United States government. These do not belong to you until I deliver them.”

Again, the two men conferred. After more than a minute, both men moved to the walkway and climbed aboard the ship.

Miguel met them near the top of the gangway.

“Which one of you is Nazir?”

The two men looked at Miguel, then at each other.

They conversed in Arabic for more than a minute.

The tall Arab spoke. “
Give us the fucking containers,
” he seethed.