Guardian of Lies

SIXTY-FIVE

Alim opened the passenger-side door to the truck and climbed down onto the curb at the side of the road. He motioned for Nitikin to follow him.

The street was in a quiet residential area on what had once been an island many years before. It was still called North Island, but the narrow strip of water that had once separated the island from the town of Coronado had been filled in by the military when the island had been taken over as a naval base before World War II.

The street itself was one lane in each direction, with little traffic due to the fact that it dead-ended at a gate to the naval base. On each side of the street were expensive homes. On the east side where the truck was parked, they were more in the nature of estates, each one fronting on San Diego Bay, some with large boats docked on the water behind them. The sidewalks were virtually abandoned except for the occasional jogger or a resident walking a dog. The commercial and shopping areas of town were three miles away, to the south, along Orange Boulevard, near the Hotel del Coronado.

All the traffic for the homecoming of the USS Ronald Reagan had been routed through the main entrance to the base several blocks to the west, leaving this area almost deserted.

Afundi was wearing white overalls with a zipper down the front, the kind a painter or furniture mover might wear. There were two large pockets in the pants that passed directly through to the pockets in his slacks underneath the overalls. He carried a small Walther PPK pistol in the right pocket of his pants and made a point of showing it to Nitikin as the Russian stepped down out of the truck.

Alim said something to the interpreter, who told Nitikin to go and stand by the back of the truck.

The Russian immediately did as he was told, while Afundi and the interpreter continued to talk up front.

As he reached the back of the truck, Yakov’s eyes were riveted on the latch sealing the truck’s rear lift gate. He glanced at Alim and saw that he was deep in a discussion with the interpreter over something. Nitikin realized he would never have another chance. It was now or never. Casually he stepped off the curb and behind the truck, then silently opened the latch and without a sound lifted the door just enough to look inside.

Before his eyes could adjust to the darkness, Herman’s pocketknife was at his throat.

I cup my hand over Maricela’s mouth before she can cry out or say anything as I hold her quietly in place. Then I turn her head so she can see me and put the forefinger of my other hand to my lips.

She nods, and I let go of her.

Silently she crawls forward toward her father until she is right in his face as he whispers something to her in Spanish. She eases Herman’s knife away from his throat, then turns and motions that I should follow her and does the same to Herman. I crawl quickly forward.

By then Maricela has slipped through the two-foot opening under the lift gate. Herman holds the gate up as Nitikin helps his daughter to the ground where he directs her under the back of the truck. I follow her, and Herman takes up the rear.

A second later, without a word being spoken, the three of us are flat on our stomachs on the pavement under the truck. An inch at a time we ease slowly forward so that our feet won’t be seen by anyone standing up close next to the lift gate at the back of the vehicle.

I can feel the heat of the exhaust from the manifold and hear the engine tick and tack, issuing all the noises of contracting metal as it cools.

Herman is on the driver’s side, I’m on the right, with Maricela between us, each of us with the sides of our faces pressed to the pavement. I can see the shoes of the other man standing at the curb next to the pas senger door. His left foot is so close that if I tried I could reach out and touch it with my right hand as we continue to inch forward toward the center of the truck.

Suddenly I feel someone touch my left hand. I lift my head and turn as Maricela is looking directly at me. She mouths something, but I don’t understand what she’s saying. Then she points up toward the bottom of the truck. I look at the undercarriage but I don’t see anything. She taps my hand again and shakes her head. She mouths the words “my father.” This I understand. Then she squeezes my hand and forms the word “bomb” with her lips as she points up toward the bed of the truck. Her father has told her the bomb is on the truck. The wooden crate!

Yakov had gently lowered the lift gate and was just about to latch it when he heard Alim’s raspy voice hollering by the side of the truck.

Afundi suddenly realized that Yakov had disappeared. An instant later the driver’s door opened and both men converged on the Russian from opposite sides of the vehicle.

The translator was twirling a closed padlock around his finger, shaking his head and smiling as he looked at the Russian.

Afundi had his pistol in his hand, looking at Nitikin through slit eyes until his gaze fell on the open latch at the back of the truck. Seeing it, he pushed Yakov out of the way and threw open the lift gate. He pointed the pistol inside as he scanned the interior and the large box. His focus finally centered on the area around the wooden crate up near the front wall, directly behind the cab.

Alim was about to climb onto the bed of the truck when his fingers touched something tucked just inside the corner behind the metal track that guided the lift gate up and down. He stopped and reached into the recess behind the railing. There his fingers found a small clamshell cell phone. He looked at it for a second and then turned to Yakov. He held the phone up and said something.

“He wants to know where it came from,” said the interpreter.

Nitikin locked eyes with Alim for a moment, then glanced back at the phone in his hand. “Tell him it’s mine. I have two of them,” he said. Then Yakov touched the front pocket of his pants with one hand as if to show them where the other phone was.

An instant later the interpreter was searching his pockets. Alim exploded and struck the Russian across the side of his face, full force with the back of his hand, the one holding the pistol. The front sight on the Walther’s short barrel caught Yakov’s cheek and ripped a jagged inch-long wound just under his left eye. The force of the blow sent the Russian to the ground.

Before the interpreter could pick him back up, Nitikin had sprung to his feet. His quickness surprised the two men as he spit a string of Russian invective at Afundi, blood dripping down his face.

Alim dropped both phones onto the pavement and stomped them into tiny bits of plastic and metal. He said something in Farsi.

“He wants to know who you called,” said the interpreter.

“Tell him I wanted to talk to my daughter, to make sure that she was all right, but he never went to Panama, so I couldn’t get a signal.”

As he listened to the translation, Alim eyed Yakov for a moment and then he smiled. “Tell him that his daughter is dead. Tell him I had her killed in San José and that she died slowly and screaming in pain.”

“There is no need,” said the interpreter. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Tell him!” Afundi yelled. He pointed the little pistol at the translator and then directed the barrel back into the Russian’s face before the translator could finish delivering the message.

Nitikin’s eyes showed his fury but it rolled off Alim like water. He motioned Yakov up into the back of the truck and the interpreter followed him while Afundi covered the Russian with the pistol.

Alim checked his watch as the interpreter slipped the closed padlock into his back pocket, pulled a set of handcuffs from his left front pocket, and pushed Nitikin toward the front of the truck and into the shadows where anyone driving by or walking down the sidewalk was less likely to see him. Then the interpreter clasped one of the handcuffs around the Russian’s wrists.

Alim kept checking his watch, then looking over his shoulder for the blue sedan. The two brothers who were supposed to take care of the Mexican should have been here by now.

From his pocket the interpreter pulled several pieces of cotton cloth, balled them up, and stuffed them into the Russian’s mouth. Then he retrieved a roll of duct tape and placed pieces over the Russian’s mouth and eyes.

With his mouth closed tight, Nitikin had to struggle to avoid choking on the cloth while he breathed through his nose. Blinded by the tape over his eyes, he was forced to hang on to the tie-down rail for fear of becoming disoriented, losing his balance, and falling.

Only then did Alim climb into the back of the truck. He pulled a screwdriver from his inside pants pocket, removed the side panel from the wooden crate, and checked the electronic timing circuit.

The timing device had been procured from a manufacturer in Switzerland and modified by technicians in Alim’s homeland before being trekked across the ocean in a Cuban diplomatic pouch. It was designed for industrial use and employed a handheld time setter about the size of a cell phone. This plugged into the small electronic circuit board that contained the digital timing chip. The circuit board was connected by two wires to the electronic detonator, which in turn was embedded in the cordite charge in the breech of the nuclear gun barrel.

The timing circuit had been modified to include an antitamper loop. Anyone trying to sever the connection to the detonator, or damage or alter the circuit board, would trigger an immediate detonation.

Alim checked the time setting, then looked at his watch. In seventeen minutes, unless someone reset the electronic clock with the handheld setter, the circuit would fire, setting off the cordite charge in the bomb’s gun barrel. In the blink of an eye, a fireball hotter than the surface of the sun would incinerate everything within the radius of a mile, including the aircraft carrier and thousands of sailors and military families on the dock. It would leave at the epicenter a crater into which the ocean would flow.

He held the small timing tool in his hand and looked out the open end of the truck searching for the two idiot brothers in the blue sedan. They were late.

Alim and the interpreter had plenty of time to put enough distance between themselves and the blast if only the car would get here. Otherwise Afundi would have to reset the clock. He looked at his watch one more time, checked it against the digital countdown clock on the time setter, and watched the seconds tick down.

“Where are you?” Thorpe was now at a computer console with a headset and mike talking to one of the pilots on the incoming choppers.

“We’re about six minutes out,” said the pilot. “I can see Mission Bay up ahead.”

There were four helicopters, one each for the two sniper teams, with the NEST team and hostage rescue loaded onto the other two. It took longer than Thorpe had hoped to gather their equipment, muster the choppers, and get everyone on board.

The game plan was the same as for the cargo truck: bring in the snipers, take out anyone in or around the vehicle, hope that they got them all and that none of them had access to a triggering mechanism. Hostage rescue would move in to breech the truck and provide security, and NEST would deal with the bomb. They would now have to do it without their leader. The head of the NEST team had been pronounced dead moments before while on the medivac flight to the hospital.

Rhytag moved up behind Thorpe, at the console, looking over Thorpe’s shoulder at the monitor. The camera showed the ground streaming beneath one of the low-flying helicopters as it screamed south toward Coronado.

“Tell them to keep an eye out for Madriani,” said Rhytag.

“Sorry,” said Thorpe, “but we don’t have time to pick and choose or identify targets. If Madriani is around that truck, he’s dead. At most, we’ll have ten or fifteen seconds of tactical surprise. After that, all hell’s gonna break loose. We have got to isolate that truck. Gimme a second.”

“Can you patch me in to the NEST team leader?” he asked.

A few seconds later a voice came over the tactical frequency.

“Stop me if you don’t have time. But I have a question,” said Thorpe.

“Go ahead.”

“If the detonator is electronic, is there any chance of jamming it?” asked Thorpe.

“We have it covered,” said the man. “The answer is affirmative if the electronic detonator is wireless remote. We scrambled two EA-Six Prowlers for the container earlier. They jammed frequencies up and down the line, any radio or microwave signal, including cell phones. They’ll do it again over Coronado. But chances are the detonator is probably hardwired, with an analog backup or antitamper device. Which means if we try to fry their electronics, we run the risk of setting it off.”

“Understood,” said Thorpe. So much for second-guessing the experts. “Good luck!”

A few minutes ago, coming out of the truck with my back to Nitikin, I had no idea where I was. But for now my universe was the concrete curb a few feet from my face. It was the strangest sensation. Lying on the pavement under the truck, I thought about life and how short it might be as I heard muffled voices in the truck above me. I lifted my head and looked out between the two front tires. And there in front of me, like déjŕ vu, was the familiar image of a gate I had driven by a thousand times. Suddenly I realized I was home.

The open chain-link gate and the small guardhouse a hundred yards beyond is one of the entrances to North Island, the naval base. It is less than a mile from my house. I can easily walk there. A little over a mile to the office. I look at my watch and realize that Harry is probably there now. Oh, God. The only saving grace is that Sarah, my daughter, is away at school.

No doubt we all wonder from time to time what random thoughts will stream through our brains at the moment of death, but for me I have always known deep down that they would be memories of Sarah.

“There!” said Alim. He nearly dropped the timing device as he pointed from the back of the open truck.

Down the street, two blocks away, he saw the blue sedan coming this way.

Alim looked down at the timing device and checked the clock. Still enough time, if they moved. They could get across the bridge and head south toward the border. He had already mapped out a surface street that would take them on a direct line to the building on this side of the border and the tunnel beneath. Even if they got only halfway, they would be well beyond the blast zone. Once inside the building and into the tunnel, nothing could touch them. Within days, Alim would be back in the Zagros Mountains of his homeland, a hero to his people.

Alim turned once more expecting to see the blue sedan pulling up to the truck, but it wasn’t there. Now he could see it again, up the street. The idiots were backing the sedan into a parking space at the curb two blocks away. Were they blind? Couldn’t they see the truck? Afundi cursed out loud.

“Jamal!” he hollered at the translator, who was standing guard outside the truck. The interpreter stuck his head in the open door.

“Go get them. Tell them to drive the car down here, and hurry.”

The translator took off running, all the speed he could muster with his stodgy middle-aged body.

Alim checked the clock and his watch, then disconnected the lead wires. He didn’t bother to close up the wooden panel. Instead he quickly made his way to the door, jumped from the truck, and pulled the lift door down behind him. He sealed the latch and looked for the padlock, checked his pockets, and suddenly realized Jamal had been twirling it on his finger.

By the time Alim turned to look, the translator was already a block away. He shook his head and raced up toward the cab. He opened the passenger door and grabbed his day pack. He pulled from behind the seat another larger sports bag that held an assault rifle, three clips of ammunition, and two bottles of water.

He took a drink as he walked toward the rear of the truck with the two bags. The blue sedan hadn’t moved. And he could no longer see Jamal, either on the street or the sidewalk.

Afundi shook his head, glanced at the unlocked latch on the back of the truck, and started moving as fast as he could down the sidewalk and toward the car.