Kicking the Can (26 page)

“They’ll try to flank me,” Patriot said. “I’m going to make my way to the front of the building. Verbalize what you see. I’ll respond as long as I’m able.”

“What are the explosions we’re seeing?”

“I’m shooting scuba tanks. I camouflaged nine tanks. Three thousand pounds per square inch vaporizes everything in a blast radius of ten feet. I’ve confirmed two kills—got the idea from
Jaws
, the movie.”

“
Spetsnaz,
” Baturina said, pointing to the screen. “Special forces soldiers.”

Drummond clicked on the three-inch cube, and the image filled the screen.

“Two bad guys at the north exit. They tried the locked door and shot out the glass.”

“Describe their armament,” Dain said.

“Body armor, assault rifles, handguns. A rifle with a two-inch diameter tube and round magazine. They’ve entered the building.”

“Shit. I was afraid of that…M32 grenade launcher.”

“OG reports air force has scrambled a Huey…confirm rifle fire and multiple explosions.

Bad guys in main conference room…pushing detonator wiring into plastic explosives. One gunman moving down the hallway, on floor two.”

“Is the west exit guarded?” Dain asked.

“Copy.”

“What the hell?” Gupta was laughing. Lowsley and Drummond were looking at Monitor B. A poster taped on the door to Gupta’s suite read, “You bad guys are a bunch of pussies,” and was signed “Drummond’s Team.”

“I thought you had to take a leak.”

“I lied.”

Moments later, a bad guy appeared. He hesitated for a moment…then pulled his grenade launcher. They saw
a flash of light from the explosion, and then the video went to black and white ants.

Baturina rushed from the bathroom.

“I thought Jiang was in the bathroom…She’s gone…and so is her scuba gear.”

102

J
ack Dain speeded, keeping his back inches from the mansion exterior. He knew the assault team to the east was heading in his direction. If they flanked him and came at him from the beach, he would be caught in a pincer movement, trapped between soldiers to the northwest. He’d be cut to pieces in their cross fire. He would have to take a chance. He sprinted, juking left and right, zigzagging his way south and west. He dove to the ground. The pavers bruised his forearms as he hit flush. His chin smacked the stone, causing him to bite his tongue. He could taste blood in his mouth. Dain crawled, pulling his body along, his legs pushing up and down like pistons, his elbows clawing wildly to keep up. Another few feet and he’d be in a position to observe the west exit unobstructed.

Dain tapped twice. The first burst from the M4 pocked the stone masonry two inches right of the soldier’s ear. The second ripped through his carotid—splattering blood in an eighteen-inch diameter. The soldier dropped to a squatted position and then fell forward, dropping heavily on his chest. The sidewalk pooled ink as he bled out. Dain stripped the rifle and magazines from the casualty.

The M32 grenade had blown out the glass in Gupta’s suite in a fiery explosion. The release of energy fanned a cloud of flames and smoke. Twenty-five feet below cubes of hot glass penetrated Dain’s hair, burning his scalp. He used the explosion as a diversion and sprinted forty yards to the fountain. He was crouching behind it, with his back to the beach. A sniper on the roof of Isle Airy was firing at will, testing the structural integrity of Dain’s protection. Bullets were impacting the fount base and reservoir, splashing water on Dain. He knew he would have company in short order.

“Patriot, there’s a soldier charging from your right. Range—twenty feet and closing.”

Dain drew his Beretta. They exchanged fire at a distance of less than half a car length. His assailant put a bullet in Dain’s right shoulder. Dain shot him in the face, and he fell forward into the fountain—his blood turning the water cherry. Dain winced in pain, his breathing labored.

“Patriot, you can’t stay there.”

“Two soldiers are moving toward you east of the boulevard.”

Dain understood the soldier who rushed him was a gambit. The enemy had more men it could sacrifice to gain the advantage. Dain sat up, his back against the fountain, and ejected a magazine. He inserted another clip. He rolled to his hands and knees, lifting the handgun over the fount wall, firing six shots, and was now crouched on his feet. It was forty yards to the bunker. He didn’t have a choice.

Dain felt a sharp, piercing pain in his leg as a bullet ripped into his left hamstring. Airborne when the bullet struck, its impact turned his legs thirty degrees, and he landed awkwardly. Blood coursed from his shoulder and leg. Sand caked to the open wounds. The effects—light-headedness and chills—were overpowering his adrenaline boost, but pain was his friend. By God’s grace, he made it to the bunker. Dain pulled the rifle from his left shoulder and stuck it through the gap made in the sand bunker and fired on both soldiers. He shot one in the Adam’s apple and the other in his knee. The sniper continued to fire. He didn’t have the angle. Dain surveyed his leg. The bullet had entered and exited his hamstring. Dain grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket. His yell into the headgear was deafening. Drummond knew sheer determination willed his bloody deltoid to cooperate. Dain made a tourniquet to reduce the blood flow from his leg. His shoulder throbbed, and the pain kept him alert.

Instinct told him to start crawling down the trench. Keep moving.

Dain was eight feet from his previous position when the first grenade exploded. The force of the concussion wave slammed his head and body against packed sand. Dain was grunting and clawing at the sand, trying to keep moving. His ears were ringing, headgear gone. He changed direction back to his original position. The next grenade hit at a distance of fifteen feet, a position he would have been had he continued to crawl. They were using M32s to destruct the bunker in ten-foot intervals.
The third grenade hit fifteen feet behind in the water, causing a huge splash.

If I’m going to go for it, the time is now. Before the haze clears…

Dain pushed off with his good leg and dove into waist-deep water. He felt the sting of saltwater burning his leg and shoulder. His eyes were open, but the seawater was blurring his vision. He continued to kick and paddle, propelling his body deeper, drawn toward the glow of yellow light, expecting the next grenade to finish him. His lungs burned, and his ears were ringing. He reached the sea floor at a depth of thirty feet. The pain from his damaged eardrum was excruciating. To his surprise and relief, he found a scuba mask wrapped around a regulator and tank that were held in place by a weight belt and marked by a glow stick. He depressed the button on the regulator and pressurized air cleared the seawater from the regulator. He inserted the silicone mouthpiece and took a long pull of air.

Drummond had disobeyed his order and left him a full tank of air.

He cleared the mask, tilting it up and blowing bubbles to displace the water. Nausea seized his body, and he chunked out vomit, aspirating food particles through his regulator mouthpiece. When he didn’t choke, half expecting to die in a sea of vomit, he grabbed the scuba tank and swam underneath the dock. The ascent released the pressure on his eardrum. Dain surfaced, wedging himself between dock buoy floats and the sheathing. Rays of daylight were visible through the synthetic planks…

103

P
eter Lowsley pointed to a three-inch cube previously unlit.

“There.”

Drummond double clicked on Monitor B. Jiang stood in Baturina’s suite, patting her hair with a towel. She was still in her wet suit and booties. Drummond resized the image to six inches so the other cubes were visible. Baturina shrieked in horror.

“Get out of there, Jiang; a soldier is coming.” The soldier was on the move again. The tower was triangular in shape. The floor plan included three seventy-five-foot wings, all converging in the center. Dain was housed in the south wing; Lowsley and Gupta were in the west wing. Baturina and Jiang shared the southeast. The soldier’s search was methodical. He was in Dain’s suite. Jiang had less than sixty seconds before…

Jiang tossed her towel on the bed and sat next to it. She unzipped her wet suit and pulled at the shoulders and sleeves until the suit dangled at her waist. She used the towel to dry off her upper body. She hesitated for a moment…as if listening, then stood and walked to her easel. She turned the easel toward the camera in the
suite. She lifted a piece of cloth draped over the canvas, unveiling a portrait of Baturina. Instinctively, she smiled, and murmured, “I love you, Baturina…I love you!” There was no mistaking what she had uttered. She turned toward the door. The last thing they saw was Jiang raising her hands to shield her face…The camera feed went to ants.

Baturina let out a cathartic cry of anguish and toppled onto the floor, hysterical. Lowsley and Gupta scooped her up and took her to one of the bedrooms.

104

W
hen Jack Dain regained consciousness, he heard the roar of turbine engines and the distinct sound of a 30mm machine gun spitting bullets in rapid fire. It was an A-10 strafing. Three minutes later, he heard rotor blades and the explosion and vibration of a missile impacting the island. Dain was too weak to smile. The medic said he had lost a lot of blood. Dain lifted his chin, and then morphine rushed through his body—carrying him away on a magic carpet ride.

105

T
he beach was shot up. The bunker mangled, holes blown seven feet deep. Dain’s M4 was lying at the water’s edge. No sign of him. Isle Airy was consumed by fire. Detonations on all three floors converged—inferno.

Drummond sat in the chopper listening to the verbal exchange through headsets on his way to the air force base in Qatar. The boat on the north shore failed to heed the command to arrest its engines, and they blew it out of the water with a sidewinder missile when it attempted to fire a shoulder-launched rocket. Two soldiers lay facedown on the beach, hands locked behind their heads. Seven bodies had been recovered. The CIA and Dubai police force met the pleasure craft that launched the Zodiac at Dubai Marina. Six foreigners were taken into custody.

THE DECISION

106

C
hris Drummond felt like shit. They refused to give him an update on Dain’s condition, and there was no word on whether Jiang’s body had been recovered. Nauseous from the helicopter ride, the thumb drive wrapped in cellophane and inserted in his rectum made him feel constipated. There was one way to remove it without surgical intervention.

“What part of my statement don’t you understand?” Drummond said to the base commander, his frustration palpable by the tone of his voice. “For the umpteenth time, I refuse to debrief until I speak with the president.” He stood with his wet suit pulled down to his waist. The seawater had dried on his body, and tiny white crystals of salt stuck to his skin.

“Put them in the annex next to the barracks. Let them get cleaned up and feed them. I’ll put a call in to the president.”

“I was not able to upload the file to OG,” Gupta said. He took the thumb drive from Drummond and placed it into the USB port of Dain’s laptop. He opened the file without incident and scanned the contents.

“It appears to be all here. If this superhero thing doesn’t work out for you, you have a bright future as a
smuggler.” Gupta tried to laugh at his feeble attempt of humor, but it faded. “I copied the file to the laptop and deleted the file from the thumb drive.” He handed the laptop back to Drummond, who changed the passwords, as Gupta had suggested. Gupta placed the thumb drive on the concrete floor and smashed it with the heel of a combat boot. The aluminum chassis flattened, destroying the hard drive. He picked up the flattened drive and pieces of black plastic and deposited them into a garbage can. Drummond placed the laptop under his arm, and the two walked to the food service area. Drummond possessed the only copy of the proposal. The file contents had been encrypted using Dain’s software.

Vogel appeared to be consoling Baturina. Lowsley was sitting at a table chewing a mouthful of sandwich, washing it down with a glass of milk. He raised his head and nodded once to acknowledge their presence.

“I don’t know if the commander is jerking me around or if it’s the bureaucratic nature working through normal channels. I’ve made it clear I don’t intend to debrief until I speak with President Cannon. They either don’t know or won’t tell me Dain’s status. Jiang’s death has also not been confirmed.”

Drummond shared with them the conversations he heard in the helicopter. Gupta, Lowsley, Baturina, and Vogel held hands, and Drummond prayed—thanking God for safe deliverance. They prayed for Dain’s healing and recovery and prayer for Jiang—hope that her family and nation would know her sacrifice. Lowsley gathered the team to watch the CNN broadcast airing breaking
news on the television in the lounge. The journalist announced Dubai’s pro-Semite posture was the cause for the island bombing. The terrorists were rumored to be sympathetic to Iran’s sovereign right to nuclear armament.

107

S
peaker Bennett was seated in the conference room at the offices of Bigelow and Stamper, a boutique law firm in DC.

“We’ll file suit asking the court to prohibit disclosure of the proposals submitted by the teams participating in Donald’s Contest. It will be your word against the president’s.”

Bennett was encouraged by the attorney’s communication.

“We can send a draft to the White House by six p.m. this evening and file the suit at nine a.m. tomorrow. We’ll ask for an injunction until the case is heard. Even if they expedite, it will be two to three weeks’ time—enough time for the super committee to finalize a plan and announce the implementation.”

“What if they rule against us?”

“If Cannon prevails in district court, we’ll move it to federal appeals and refile our request for injunction. That will buy another month. If we lose the appeal, the super committee will have had time to proceed with its own plan. At that point, the legal outcome will be moot.”