Full Assault Mode (43 page)

Kolt stared at the screen as it gathered cell towers to provide a location of the phone down to a hundred meters. He thought about how quickly he could finish up in the morning with the Yellow Creek staff. How soon after breakfast he could leave the CNO and her colleagues alone and get back in his rental car to focus his attention on Cindy Bird.

The shadowlike blue line crawled slowly from left to right, signaling the phone was still searching.

“Holy shit!” Kolt said. “It’s here!”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Joma delicately placed the iPhone 5 on the passenger seat. He ensured the phone line was still open, still transmitting to the receiving timer in the rear seat. This was the exact spot where a simple Google Earth photo showed ample shadow in which to hide, as well as the ability to hold an open call with the help of the 432 registered antennas in the tripoint area of Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. It was the spot where the device in the back-seat should be activated. After he activated it, what stood in the way of his achieving the objective of melting the infidel’s nuclear plant to the ground and hopefully killing hundreds of thousands of people was very little: just two twelve-foot-high chain-link security fences set roughly twenty-five feet apart and the horizontal fishing-line-size taut wire that would trip an alarm, letting everyone in the plant know that something, or someone, had breached security zone 18.

Joma had faith that he could easily overcome the fences. As vile as the infidels were, they built strong vehicles, and the SUV would easily smash through the shiny, razor-sharp, circular wire attached to the inside of the fences. Once through, it was imperative that he keep his speed so that he could get past the tall, ugly guard towers, where men with machine guns stood watch. Speed was the key. Despite his bulletproof vest, Joma had no other protection. He had to get past the guard towers quickly.

If only,
he started to think, then stopped himself. Joma missed Timothy. Why had he run away? Joma refused to believe Timothy had betrayed them. While the others were certain that was the case, Joma could not accept it. They had been through too much together. If Timothy were here now, he could have set up a sniper position, as Joma had during their last attack. His supporting fire could occupy the guards in the towers and give Joma that extra bit of time he needed.

Joma shook his head. He was on his own, and, as he told brother Nadal al-Romani, he had accepted his fate.

With nothing left to consider, Joma put the Durango in drive, eased out of the shadows, and turned the wheels slightly to the right, aligning himself perfectly with the fences and the large silver makeup tanks a couple of hundred yards in the distance. He looked at the cell in the passenger seat one more time. The phone line was still open. He then looked in his rearview mirror to ensure the green LED numbers were descending in order.

1:32, 1:31, 1:30, 1:29 …

Satisfied all was in order, Joma pressed hard on the gas pedal, flooring it with a loud squeal of the tires as they grabbed the asphalt surface and increased speed.

“Allah u Akbar, Allah u Akbar!”

*   *   *

The large volume of gunfire gave Cindy Bird the cover and diversion she needed. Opening the paracord bracelet with her picture-perfect white teeth, she quickly unwound it. She wrapped the ends around each of her hands several times to ensure she had a solid grip and reached over the driver’s head, rapidly dropping the paracord in front of his face. She yanked it backward, bringing the back of his head around the side of the driver’s-seat headrest. Bird leaned back, raised her strong leg, the one she used to punt footballs with as a kid, and brought her three-inch stiletto heels toward the lower right part of his head, as if she was trying to bust out a windshield or kick in a locked door.

The heel found the fleshy part to the right of the brain stem and below the base of the skull. She maintained violent pressure on the paracord, slowly tearing away the skin below it. She pushed with all her quad strength, jamming the designer heel an easy two inches into the base of the terrorist’s skull. She heard the terrorist stop in midscream, certain she had compromised his central nervous system. Certain she had killed the asshole, the son of a bitch that had beaten her silly, she relaxed and waited for his body to go limp as a rag doll.

But Hawk wasn’t a born killer like she thought Kolt was. The last time she killed another human being—no, the first time she killed another human being—was during the hit on the office building in Cairo last year. That time, she had little time to react. It was all muscle memory, just like her Delta-operator-training cadre told her it needed to be. And that time, Kolt depended on her tremendously. She couldn’t let him down. This time, she had a little more time to first think it over, over a month, in fact. She also had no idea where Kolt was at the moment. So Bird knew this killing was all about her and much more personal. No excuses.

Oh, my!

But the driver, more powerful than she expected him to be at this moment, suddenly shuddered. She knew he certainly was stunned by the penetration into his upper neck. It had taken a full two inches of her heel, this she was certain of.

It obviously wasn’t enough to put an end to Hawk’s misery.

Holding on as tight as she could to both ends of the paracord, she pulled with all her remaining strength, pushing the heel end of her stiletto deeper.

She felt the man fall forward toward the steering wheel, pulling Hawk’s foot from her heel while leaving the heel embedded. Regardless of what had penetrated his upper neck, the terrorist obviously recovered from the initial shock quickly, and he certainly wasn’t dead yet.

“NO!” Hawk screamed as she looked directly at the business end of a stainless steel semiauto pistol held high over the terrorist’s head. It was wobbling, showing the terrorist was having trouble blindly aiming at the psycho bitch in the backseat.

Two shots rang out.

Hawk slid the olive-green and tactical-tan military-grade paracord back to her from around the terrorist’s neck, leaving the heel embedded several inches inside the man’s brain.

She then pulled one of the running ends to her until she felt the plastic end. She moved it toward her lips, took a deep breath, and started to blow.

*   *   *

The Yellow Creek security officers in elevated, ballistically protected positions opened fire after seeing the Durango crash through several layers of protective fencing and razor wire. Small arms fire, all .223 caliber bullets fired from Colt-model assault rifles, entered the front fenders and hood, tearing small holes into sections of the heavy-laden SUV engine. The shooters were nervous, but the advanced thermal sights mounted on the top of the rifles’ upper receivers ensured they didn’t miss often.

Three rounds tore into Joma’s 7.62-level IV-rated body armor protecting his vital area. The armor did its job, stopping penetration, but leaving severe blunt trauma on his chest cavity. He had expected this and was well prepared. But the round he couldn’t defend against was the one that found his left upper thigh muscle. Barely slowed by the Durango’s thin steel doors, the copper bullet sliced his femoral artery in half and exited the underside of his leg. A two-inch-diameter exit wound ensured he began losing blood fast.

But he had already succeeded. He didn’t have to ram the truck into the large tanks. He didn’t even have to get within a vehicle’s distance. One hundred feet was close enough. Farooq had told him more than a month ago that the TNT-packed, vehicle-borne IED would leave a large blast hole in the asphalt drive, but that wouldn’t cause a meltdown. What would be critical, and a done deal, is if the blast overpressure buckled the three-eighth-inch-thin metal circular makeup tanks’ walls nearby. Once disfigured, gravity and the sheer force of the thousands of gallons of makeup water inside the tanks would buckle the rivets. The tanks would rupture, and water would flow out at 650 gallons a minute. Without the water, in less than an hour, the aluminum fuel assemblies holding the nuclear fuel rods deep inside the reactor’s core would overheat. Eventually, melt the container rods. Eventually, create a radiological catastrophe that would impact hundreds of thousands for generations to come.

If the officers had only spotted the vehicle earlier. Maybe taken some shots to flatten the tires, slow it enough to allow others’ overlapping cross-fire to finish the job. Or maybe taken out the driver. Anything to prevent the truck from coming within a hundred feet of the large tanks.

*   *   *

Cheers went up inside the command center as the DI 5000 thermal-analytic security cameras slewed to cue, remaining fixed on the smoking Durango. Officials threw their hands in the air, ecstatic to see the red box locked on the display screen and the heat of their officers’ bullets tearing into the vehicle’s engine block. Certainly happy at what had just been done there were high fives for everyone. To them, the protective strategy had worked. It was sound. Its effectiveness was something they always argued about but that was difficult to prove short of an actual attack. The truck bomb was stopped; the terrorists had failed.

Kolt knew it was too close, though. He looked at the camera screen closely, then back to the large overhead photo on the wall. Then he looked at the close-to-scale terrain model off to the side. Too close. The VBIED was still too close. If not too close to the tanks, then possibly to everyone in this building.

Kolt bolted through the crash-barred door and exited the central alarm station without saying a word. There was no time to discuss it. No time to evacuate plant employees, or even to make a plant announcement over the PA system to move away from the northeast corner of the protected area and the imminent blast.

Kolt ran past post 7, who was located in a ballistic-steel, V-angled defensive position with his protective mask already donned. Kolt gained the covered stairwell, descended two flights of stairs, and exited, turning down a hallway near the cafeteria. He hadn’t passed anyone else by the time he exited the administration building into the courtyard at full gait.

He sprinted toward a thirty-foot-high ballistic enclosure, passing directly underneath, yelling as he ran.

“Cease fire! Cease fire!”

An armed officer inside a ballistic tower at three hundred yards’ distance, the one on the northwest corner of the plant, opened up. It was impossible for him to discriminate between friend or foe. Kolt was wearing civilian clothing. He obviously wasn’t a security guard. The shooter could at least determine that. All plant employees were drilled in what to do when under attack. They knew to take cover and stay there, something they demonstrated numerous times during their own mock exercise attacks. So, to the armed responder a few football fields away, a man running at full speed across the opened protected area could be nothing but a terrorist.

Bullets kicked up the ground around Kolt’s boots as they slapped the asphalt with each long stride. He reached the Durango and grabbed the driver’s-side door, yanking it open. The terrorist was still alive. His gray pants were puddled in blood from the exit wound on his left leg. The black body armor was shredded in three different spots, two in the chest and one over the upper belly. His right shoulder was covered in blood. His breathing labored.

What the hell!

“Joma?” Kolt said as soon as he looked at the driver’s face.

Kolt reached for the back passenger door and yanked it open. There it was. Where the backseats were before, three simple wooden crates filled the area, each the size of an average microwave oven. Wires protruded from the top of each box and met in the middle. Red duct tape held the wires together as they snaked into a black plastic box. The green LED readout was obvious. The numbers showed 14—fourteen seconds.

Kolt couldn’t believe his luck. It had been several seconds since he looked at the timer. The number wasn’t changing; it seemed stuck on 14. For some unexplained reason, the VBIED counter had stopped before detonating.

Euphoric about his good luck, Kolt turned his attention to Joma. Kolt knew better than to leave the bomb where it was. Anything could trigger it. He had to move it. Get it out of the protected area. If it ultimately exploded, preventing any negative effects on any safety-shutdown equipment was critical. Besides, Kolt knew that for EOD techs to be successful in disarming the bomb, they would need it much farther away from the nuclear fuel rods inside the reactor and the spent-fuel rods in the spent-fuel pool.

No, the VBIED had to go.

Kolt grabbed Joma by the chest armor with his right hand and pulled the terrorist slightly toward him, leaning over and unbuckling the seat belt. With both hands, Kolt tugged until Joma lost his grip on the steering wheel. Kolt hadn’t seen the handcuffs securing his right wrist to the steering column. He grabbed the cuffs and shook them, tugging vigorously, trying to pull them loose. No luck.

Kolt thought about asking Joma for the key. Or even digging into his pockets for them. He quickly figured that wouldn’t work. He had one option left.

Kolt grabbed Joma’s left arm and left pant leg. He pulled Joma off his seat and let his body collapse to the ground next to driver’s-side foot step. Joma’s right arm was still tethered to the steering column, the only part of his body still inside the Durango.

Kolt started to step into the vehicle. He sat in the bloodstained driver’s seat and heard a tone of three beeps. Instinctively, he looked into the rearview mirror. The green LED clock now read 13. Somehow, the bomb had reactivated and the timer was ticking down.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” said Kolt.

Kolt instantly knew he blew it. He was unaware of the dead-man’s switch Joma was likely connected to. It must have been inside the seat, the weight of a human controlling the firing sequence. He was severely aggravated at himself for being so sloppy. Nothing he could do but to get the VBIED as far from the tanks as possible.

Kolt turned the key. Nothing. The engine refused to turn over. The smell of radiator fluid mixed with the acrid smell of fresh blood. Kolt threw it in neutral. He stepped out of the Durango and turned to face the front of the vehicle, reaching back in to place his right hand on the wheel. He braced his left hand against the door jam. And he pushed. And pushed. The flat front tires gave Kolt trouble. As did Joma’s pooling blood on the street. Kolt’s boot treads had no luck in gaining purchase.