OUTCAST Ops: Red Ice

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The day would go down in San Francisco history as the Day of Fire.

It started on the world famous Golden Gate Bridge. Two tanker trucks, filled with a combined 17,000 gallons of gasoline, were being escorted across the bridge by a pair of Golden Gate Security vehicles, heading north. They stayed in the right-hand lane, traveling at the bridge’s posted speed limit of forty-five miles per hour.

The three-man North Korean team waited until the tankers were on the bridge before they made their move. Driving a blue cargo van, the trio prepared to show the Americans the folly of opposing the Marshal’s Will.

“Ready?” the driver asked.

“Ready,” replied the gunner, checking the Type 69’s 85mm warhead. “How’s the wind?”

“Steady at nine knots,” the third man reported. “Coming out of the west-northwest.”

The gunner hefted the RPG launcher over his shoulder. “Stand by with the second launcher, in case I miss with this one.”

“Standing by.”

“Here we go.” The driver accelerated to fifty, then sixty. The van shot past the trailing security car, then the rear tanker. By the time it reached the lead tanker, it was doing seventy-five, the driver weaving through the late morning traffic in and out of the other two lanes. By the time it flew past the lead escort car, it was going eighty miles an hour before the driver shifted into the right-hand lane and slowed to thirty-five.

A hundred and fifty yards ahead of the lead tanker, the gunner climbed a step-stool and pushed open a hatch cut into the van’s roof. As he rose, he leveled the RPG launcher in the direction of the tanker, adjusted for the wind, and fired.

Traveling at over six hundred miles an hour, the four and half pound warhead closed the 130 yards between the van and lead tanker in about half a second, passing over the truck’s cab and striking the trailer tank two feet below the top. As it passed through the steel, the warhead exploded, sending a plume of white-hot molten copper into 8,500 gallons of gasoline.

The equivalent of twenty-one tons of dynamite exploded, obliterating the tanker, the lead security vehicle and the trailing tanker, which also exploded. The twin fireballs smothered all six lanes, incinerating nine cars, melting the asphalt and super-heating two dozen of the bridge’s steel cables. The shock-wave smashed into another fifteen vehicles, throwing most into death rolls that shattered windows and killed the occupants. Three cars crashed over the side and plummeted into the water below. Cables that were already red-hot snapped under the sudden pressure. Forty people died in a blink of an eye, and another twenty-one were severely injured.

As for the instigators of the attack, they were already off the bridge, moving north at sixty miles per hour. They took the Vista Point exit right after getting off the bridge and parked the van. As the sightseers assembled to watch the thick, dark smoke rising from the smoldering bridge, the three North Koreans walked over to a waiting sedan. They got in, left the tourist lookout and headed north, driving the speed limit.

San Francisco’s BART system is the fifth busiest heavy-rail rapid transit system in the country, carrying over 400,000 people on a typical weekday. As such, it was easy to miss the two Asian men in dark suits who walked into the 16th Street Mission Station. Both carried briefcases and looked like ordinary businessmen. No one noticed them separating and getting onto different trains.

One got on the Richmond — Millbrae line, heading south, while the other headed north on the Dublin/Pleasanton line. Both men slid the briefcases under their seats. Despite the dozens of people around them, no one noticed the action, so caught up were they in texting, checking their e-mails or social media, talking on the phone or otherwise not paying attention to their surroundings.

When they reached the next station, both men exited the train, abandoning the briefcase under the seat. New people boarded and still no one noticed the briefcase.

When the north-bound train slowed as it entered the Powell Street station, the timer inside the briefcase detonated the ten pounds of Semtex inside with it. The explosion ripped through the train car with lethal force, killing everyone in the car and severely damaging the cars in front and behind it. All of the windows blew out, sending shards of glass and steel into the passengers on the platform like a monstrous shotgun blast. Smoke and flame poured out of the destroyed car. The only sound some people could hear (those whose eardrums weren’t blown out) were the wails of the injured.

Two minutes later, as the southbound BART train pulled into the Glen Park station, the second briefcase bomb exploded, with much the same results.

The final casualty toll for both bombs was eighty-three dead and 107 injured.

The boat was a Robalo R300, designed for fishing and enjoying a day out on the water. Powered by twin Yamaha four-stroke 300 horsepower engines, the thirty-foot vessel left South Beach Harbor a little after eleven, heading south-southeast at a leisurely twenty knots. Deep sea fishing rigs occupied the boat’s brass rod holders. The three men onboard, all Asian and wearing polo shirts and slacks, looked to be nothing more than friends ditching work for some fishing.

But these men weren’t fishing.

They were hunting.

One of the men stationed in the boat’s bow shouted back to the pilot while pointing ahead. “Buoy’s coming up. Front starboard side.”

Muhn nodded and adjusted the boat’s course so that it ran parallel to the line of buoys that marked the water boundary for the San Francisco International Airport Security Zone. This exclusion zone extended a mile and a quarter (2,000 meters) from the shoreline into the bay. Any boats that crossed into that zone were subject to being boarded and arrested by either the U.S. Coast Guard or the SFPD Harbor Patrol. Particularly for these individuals, that was a scenario to be avoided at all costs.

The third member of the team sat next to Muhn, adjusting controls on a radio. To anyone watching, he looked like just another boater monitoring the VHF marine channels for at-sea emergencies, weather or fishing reports. He was actually using an airband scanner, a legal device used to pick up the radio exchanges between air traffic control and incoming and outgoing aircraft, but not usually found on boats. He suddenly straightened and tapped the scar-faced captain on the shoulder. “Head south! Jetliner approaching from the southeast!”

Muhn nodded and changed his course even more, taking him away from the security zone. Both the man in the bow and the one listening to the radio moved to the boat’s stern, where what appeared to be additional fishing rod holders sat. They both knelt and worked fast to pull the real contents out and place them on the deck.

As they made final checks, a commercial passenger plane appeared in the distance to the southeast.

Oceanic Flight 674, en route from Dallas/Fort Worth to San Francisco, was making its final approach to San Francisco International. The pilot noticed the thick black smoke cloud on the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance and reported it to the air control tower.

The Boeing 747–400 crossed over the San Mateo Bridge at eighteen hundred feet, five miles out from Runway 28R. The aircraft continued descending, everything textbook…

…until three North Koreans in a boat just offshore fired two anti-aircraft missiles.

The anti-aircraft missiles the North Koreans fired at the descending aircraft were 9K38 Igla, the successor to the older Strela-3 man-portable air defense system. Known in the west as the SA-16 Gimlet, the Igla (Russian for “Needle”) was similar in warhead size to the Strela-3, but had a longer range and was much quicker than its predecessor. The result was that both missiles covered the distance between boat and aircraft in a little over six seconds.

The first missile struck the starboard wing between the two GE CF6-80C2 engines, shearing off more than half the wing and the outside engine, while sending shrapnel into the inside engine, causing it to explode. The second missile struck a fraction of a second later, ripping into the 747’s underbelly near the tail and sealing the plane’s fate. The 747 turned over and fell nose-first into the bay less than two miles from the end of the runway.

388 people died in the crash.

The three Special Forces operators immediately sped across the bay at wide open throttle. They cruised into a cove not far from Hayward, abandoned the boat and climbed into a waiting car. Ten minutes after that, they were driving into Oakland.