Day of Wrath

CHAPTER THIRTEEN RELAYS

Colonel Peter Thorn stepped out of the shower and quickly slipped into the short-sleeved shirt and slacks he’d borrowed from their host.

Luckily, he and Andrew Griffin were much the same size. Then he left the bathroom, still toweling his wet hair — moving quietly out of long habit and hard training. He paused in the doorway to the living room.

The ex-S.A.S officer’s Charlottenburg flat occupied the entire top floor of an elegant house that had once belonged to a wealthy industrialist.

Large windows looked down onto a wide, treelined avenue — now a sea of leaves waving gently beneath a wide, cloudless blue sky. The ornate facades of the houses across the avenue rose above the bright green leaves like wind-sculpted cliffs rising from the ocean. Summer was close at hand.

Helen Gray stood gazing out the window, silhouetted by the mid-morning sun. The light cast a dazzling halo around her dark hair and brought the perfect profile of her face into sharp relief.

Thorn watched her in silence for a moment longer, committing the breathtaking image to his memory forever. He was always aware that she was a beautiful woman — but there were still times when the sheer power of her beauty rocked him back on his heels. This was one of them.

“I’ve got a penny …” he said, at last daring to break the spell she’d cast over him.

Without looking around, Helen shook her head. “My thoughts aren’t worth the price, Peter.”

“That’s my call, I think,” Thorn said.

She moved away from the window, ran her right hand lightly over the polished wood of a baby grand piano, and then turned to face him with a small, sad smile playing across her lips. “All right. I was thinking about the future.”

Thorn let the damp towel fall around his neck. “Oh? Any future in particular?”

“My future. Your future.” Her voice dropped low. “Our future.”

So that was it. Thorn joined her by the piano. “Sounds like a sensible subject.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “So why the long face?”

Almost against her will, Helen’s smile grew a little more genuine.

Her eyes regained some of their old sparkle. “Gee, Peter, I don’t know. Just because we’re being hunted by the German police, tracked by trained killers, and stand to lose our jobs on top of everything else …”

“Just that?” Thorn shook his head. He forced a lopsided grin.

“And here you had me worried.”

“Oh?” she said dryly. “You don’t think my catalogue of woes is all that bad?”

Thorn shrugged. “Well, the way I see it we’re facing three possibilities. One: We get killed. Now, I’m not planning on that.

Two: There’s always the second alternative — we go to jail.”

“And you see problems with that option, too, I suppose,” Helen prompted.

“Yep. Too embarrassing. And the food’s usually lousy.”

“So your third alternative is …”

Thorn shrugged. “We survive. We prove our case. And then we live happily ever after.”

Helen sighed. “Sounds nice, Peter. It really does. It’s too bad I’m feeling a little too old to believe in real-life fairy tales.” She looked away.

“Helen …” He turned her toward him and held her. “We’ll get out of this. I promise you that.”

“Damn it. Cut the pep talk,” she said, pulling away slightly from his encircling arms. “I’m not one of your soldiers.”

“No, you’re not,” he said more seriously. He gently tugged her closer and stared straight into her bright blue eyes. “You’re the woman I love.”

Helen briefly blushed a faint red, then shook her head. “And I love you, too. But as wonderful as that is, it doesn’t change the fundamental equation.”

“I think it does.” Thorn took her by the hand, aware suddenly that his heart was pounding faster than if he’d just finished a five-mile run.

Helen stared back at him. “Peter, this isn’t—” The sound of a key turning in a lock stopped her in mid-sentence. She swung toward the front door. “Oh, damn.” Thorn hurriedly released her.

“This is getting ridiculous,” he muttered. He could feel his ears burning bright red. First Alexei Koniev, then Mcdowell, and now Andrew Griffin.

Griffin came into the living room seconds later. The ex-S.A.S officer set his briefcase down on the floor and eyed them carefully.

“I hope I haven’t interrupted anything important?”

“No, not at all,” Thorn said abruptly.

“I see,” Griffin said, clearly not believing him. Quiet amusement danced in the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry for barging back so soon in the day, but I received a call from General Farrell at my office.”

“He’s up awfully early,” Thorn commented. Christ, it couldn’t be much past 5:00 A.M. Washington time.

Griffin nodded. “I gather he’s flying down to North Carolina later today, and he was rather eager to reach me as soon as possible.”’ “With good news, I hope?” Helen asked.

The Englishman nodded again. “Very good news. He’s found a way to slip you out of Germany without alerting our rather overzealous hosts.”

The ex-S.A.S officer turned toward Thorn.

“Do you know a Colonel Stroud? One of your Special Forces chaps?”

“Mike Stroud?” Thorn said. “Yeah, I know him. He’s with the Tenth Special Forces Group. Stationed at Panzen Kasem in Stuttgart.”

“Ordinarily, yes,” Griffin answered. “But right now he’s on a rotation through the joint staff at Ramstein.”

Thorn whistled softly. That was a piece of luck. Ramstein was the largest U.S. Air Force base in Europe. It was also the hub for military passenger flights to and from the States. “And Mike’s agreed to take us in?”

“He has,” the ex-S.A.S officer confirmed. “Apparently General Farrell has a long reach — and many good friends.”

“When do we leave?” Helen asked quietly.

“I’ll drive you there tomorrow morning,” Griffin said. “I gather Colonel Stroud will need some time to arrange the necessary papers.

Still, I should think you’ll be home in America in short order.”

Home, Thorn thought.

He listened to Helen thank their host for the good news and then watched her turn away — moving back to stare out the window again. They were going home. But home to what?

Sam Farrell entered the outer office and nodded to the pleasantfaced, middleaged woman manning the desk. “Morning, Libby.”

“Good morning to you, General!” Her reaction was a mixture of surprise and pleasure. “We weren’t expecting you down here.”

Then she grinned mischievously. “Or did I miss something on my calendar.

Farrell grinned back. Libby Bauer had been his administrative assistant before he retired — and she’d worked for his predecessor as well. That made her something of an institution around J.S.O.C headquarters. “Not a thing, Libby. Is the boss in?”

“You’re in luck, sir. He’s in the building, so I can track him down for you.” She picked up a phone. “This’ll only take a minute. Why don’t you go ahead and wait inside?”

“Appreciate it, Libby.” Farrell nodded. He went through the open door behind her.

Although the room beyond was familiar, the details jarred. It still had the same wood paneling, the same ratty carpet. The big oak desk was also the same, and so were the flags on either side and the J.S.O.C crest on the wall behind it. But there were different mementos on the desk, and the plaques clustered on one wall belonged to his relief, Major General George Mayer.

Mayer appeared before he’d even had time to take it all in.

“Sam! This is a pleasant surprise! Jesus, it sure looks like retirement agrees with you.”

Farrell shook his outstretched hand. “Hell, George, you look too happy yourself! You must not be working hard enough.”

Both men were of a type: sturdy and in excellent physical condition.

Neither wore glasses — though Farrell needed them now to read. Mayer was just a smidge taller, and his narrow, angular face contrasted sharply with Farrell’s broader, friendlier features.

They shared a common background and common experiences. Mayer had served under Farrell at several points in his career, times both looked back on fondly. While he wasn’t as close to Mayer as he was to Peter Thorn, Farrell liked him — the way you like a good son-in-law. In fact, he’d strongly recommended Mayer as his own replacement as head of the Joint Special Operations Command — the headquarters controlling all U.S. military counterterrorist units, including the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team Six.

Mayer called out to Libby Bauer for coffee and motioned his predecessor toward a chair. In short order, she appeared with two steaming mugs, then disappeared closing the door behind her.

“So how’s the book going, Sam?” the current J.S.O.C commander asked.

Rumor said that Farrell was working on a novel, supposedly a thinly veiled autobiography.

“Pretty good. I sit at my desk and tell lies all day. Not a bad way to earn a living,” Farrell replied.

“But you didn’t come all the way down here to discuss literature, did you?”

“No, George. I didn’t.”

Farrell set his coffee aside This was the moment of truth. He’d promised Peter Thorn he’d try to kick the U.S. government into gear on the wild-assed story the younger man had told him. Now it was time to honor his promise. He just hoped Thorn wasn’t barking up the wrong tree. “There’s a container ship headed for Galveston — maybe already there. I believe someone’s trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States aboard that ship.”

Mayer grinned. “Look, Sam, you can’t run drills like that anymore, you’re out of the—” He stopped, studying Farrell’s expression more closely. His grin faltered and then vanished. “Jesus, you’re really not kidding, are you?”

“No,” Farrell said. “And this is no drill, George.”

He ran quickly through all the information Thorn had given him.

“Christ.” Mayer stood up and started pacing — as though he could work off the horrible implications of what he’d just been told by walking.

“You really think this Caraco Savannah has a nuke on board?”

“Yes,” Farrell said simply. He was committed now.

Mayer spun on his heel. “Who else knows about this, Sam? Have you taken this to the FBI or anybody else?”

Farrell shook his head. “Not yet. You’re the first.”

“Jesus.”

Farrell understood his successor’s confusion. The military, the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, the Department of Energy, and almost every other arm of the U.S. government had given a lot of long, hard thought to the potential threat posed by a nuclear weapon smuggled onto American soil. Procedures had been established, organizations created, and yet here he was bypassing the whole establishment in the blink of an eye.

“Just what the hell’s going on here, Sam?” Mayer asked. “What’s your source for this data?”

“HUMINT,” Farrell said, using the acronym for human intelligence — a fancy term that meant an agent, someone who’d acquired the information the hard way.

“What kind of HUMINT?”

“Someone reliable,” Farrell said.

“Meaning you can’t tell me? Or won’t?” Mayer asked.

“Unfortunately, maybe a bit of both, George.” From what Thorn had told Farrell, Thorn’s name was probably mud around all of official Washington. So there wasn’t any point in attributing the data directly to the younger man. The armed forces and the political establishment had missed the boat before — all because they’d viewed an intelligence source with suspicion.

“But you’re convinced that this isn’t just some cock-and-bull story spun by somebody who’s had one too many drinks?” Mayer asked again.

“I think this is gospel, George,” Farrell said, hoping like hell that his faith in Peter Thorn wasn’t misplaced. “And if I thought I could get action through the normal channels, believe me, I’d be filling out all the proper forms faster than Libby Bauer can make coffee.”

“Uh-huh,” Mayer grumbled.

Farrell knew what his successor was thinking. Farrell hadn’t exactly been known as a stickler for Army regulations during his time as head of the J.S.O.C. But then nobody in the special warfare community was especially proficient at genuflecting before all the established bureaucratic icons. And Mayer was no exception.

“Okay, Sam.” The other man sighed. “If you’re so damned sure about this, I’ll send up a flare and we’ll see what scurries for cover.”

Farrell nodded silently. That was more than he had any real right to ask. He just hoped it would be enough.

Ninety miles north of Wichita, the driver of the big eighteenwheeler yawned and opened his window a crack. Cold early morning air whipped through the cab, rustling the papers and maps scattered across the dashboard. Feeling slightly more awake, he took his eyes off the road for just a moment and glanced back toward the cot rigged up in the space behind the two front seats.

The driver spoke up. “We’re almost to the junction.”

His partner rolled over and sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his own eyes. “Good.” He climbed forward into the passenger seat and peered out through the dirty windshield. “More of nothing?” he asked.

The driver nodded, looking out at the same flat landscape of fields and isolated farmhouses he’d been watching go by ever since the sun came up.

The two men had been driving almost continuously since leaving Galveston late the previous day — taking four-hour shifts behind the wheel, and stopping only for quick meals at the diners and fast food restaurants liberally sprinkled up and down American highways.

Whenever they stopped, one man always stayed behind to guard the truck and its precious cargo the five crates loaded at the Caraco warehouse.

A big green road sign loomed up on the shoulder of the highway — announcing that they were approaching the junction with Interstate 70. I-70 ran east and west across the central portion of the United States. Turning east would take them through St. Louis, Indianapolis, Columbus, and eventually all the way to Baltimore. Going west would set them on a road toward the Colorado Rockies, Denver, and the whole network of highways crisscrossing the Western United States.

The big rig turned west and accelerated.

The loading door lock turned slowly — so slowly that the noise it made was almost impossible to hear just a few feet away. The second the latch cleared the frame, two men slammed the loading door up and whirled aside: Half a dozen black-clad figures instantly poured inside through the opening and fanned out across the warehouse. Each man carried an MP5 submachine gun at shoulder level, ready to fire.

Shouts of “FBI!” filled the building — echoing and then gradually trailing off as the assault force realized the warehouse was unoccupied.

And not only unoccupied. The whole building was completely empty — stripped down to the bare, freshly painted walls.

FBI Special Agent Steve Sanchez heard the “allclear” over his tactical radio and entered the warehouse. He tugged off his gas mask and cradled it under his arm. His nose wrinkled at the overpowering smell of new paint permeating the building. The assault force leader saw him coming and joined him near the entrance to the building’s small front office.

“Nothing?” Sanchez asked.

“Nada,” the other agent replied. He nodded toward the vast empty open space around them. “You sure this is the right address, Steve?”

“Yeah.” Sanchez slowly scuffed at the concrete floor with the toe of his boot, adjusting to the new situation he and his team faced. It was a frustrating end to a very long night. The EMPTY QUIVER alert passed to the Houston field office from D.C. had caught him at his son’s soccer game.

Rounding up the other agents assigned to the field office had taken time. Rousting enough port officials to confirm that the Caraco Savannah had offloaded cargo in Galveston had consumed several more hours. By the time his people had tracked the generators, or jet engines, or whatever they were, to this address on Meridian Street, it was well past midnight. Organizing this raid and securing the necessary warrants had pushed the clock forward to near dawn. To now.

And for what? Whatever had been stored in this warehouse was long gone.

Frowning, Sanchez turned to one of his subordinates. “Get the Caraco operations manager in here — right now!”

Frank Wilson, Caraco’s Galveston port operations manager, was a big man — nearly a head taller than Sanchez. He was fighting both hair loss and a growing potbelly. Right now he was also fighting sleep. FBI agents had come hammering at his door at four in the morning.

Sanchez swung toward the disheveled Caraco executive.

“Well, Mr. Wilson? Would you care to explain what was going on in here?”

Wilson blinked, staring at the empty warehouse around him.

He turned innocent eyes on the FBI agent. “Explain what, Agent Sanchez?”

He shrugged. “As I tried telling your people earlier this morning, I’ve never set foot in this building in my life.”

“Now how is that possible?” Sanchez asked sarcastically. “You are the top dog for your company in Galveston, right?”

Wilson nodded. “That’s right. But Caraco’s a big corporation, Agent Sanchez. Very big. We’ve got more than half a dozen subsidiaries here in the States alone — and more overseas. I run the port operations for the company. We mostly handle shipments of refinery and pipeline equipment for our energy division.”

He shrugged and continued. “But this warehouse was leased by Caraco Transport. That’s a separate outfit entirely.”

“How separate?”

“Different personnel. Different chain of command. Different procedures. Hell, different pay scales, for all I know!” Wilson said.

“That’s the way the higher-ups like it, Agent Sanchez. It’s part of the whole new wave in corporate management — less topdown direction, more bottom-up innovation.”

Sounds more like a recipe for potential chaos and ducked responsibility, Sanchez thought cynically. He was a Bureau man through and through, and good or bad the FBI ran on procedure and centralized control. He tried again. “Did you ever meet any of the people working at this facility, Mr. Wilson?”

The Caraco executive shook his balding head ponderously.

“Nope. But then I never had any reason to. Like I said, we’re separate outfits — and I’ve had a ton of work on my plate these past few weeks. We’ve got a big contract to build a pipeline in Central Asia coming up.”

“What about any of your other employees, sir? Did any of them have any contact with the people running this warehouse?”

“You’d have to ask them that question, Agent Sanchez. I sure don’t know.” The big man shrugged again. “I suppose some of my guys might have run across these folks in the bars after work, but I don’t make it my business to pry.”

“I can see that.”

“Look, Agent Sanchez,” Wilson said kindly. “If you want to know more about this operation, why don’t you contact Caraco Transport’s headquarters directly? I’m sure they’d be happy to answer your questions.”

“I’ll do that, Mr. Wilson,” the FBI agent replied. “Any idea where exactly that might be?”

“Sure. They’re based in Cairo.”

“In Egypt?” Sanchez heard himself ask.

Wilson chuckled. “Like I said, we’re a big company.”

Already imagining the tangle of official forms, mounting phone bills, and foreign language translators he was about to wade into, Sanchez signaled one of his subordinates to take the Caraco executive away and get a written statement from him.

He turned back to face the warehouse. Caraco employees or not, he knew the characters who’d leased this place weren’t just model tenants when they’d stripped this place down to the bare floor. They’d systematically tried to destroy any trace of their presence. Nobody did that without a damned good reason — like hiding illegal activity.

The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was: What kind of illegal activity? An FBI addendum added to the EMPTY QUIVER alert questioned J.S.O.C’s HUMINT source — implying the goods being smuggled were far more likely to be some kind of illegal drugs than nuclear weapons.

Well, Sanchez sure hoped the higher-ups in the Hoover Building were right, and the Army was wrong. Missing a big shipment of coke, heroin, or pot was bad. Missing a smuggled nuke … He waved his section leaders over and started issuing orders.

“Okay, let’s start tearing this place apart. Check the Dumpsters.

See when the trash was last collected. Calder, you start interviewing the businesses nearby. Find out what they’ve seen. I want every license number of every car or truck that’s ever been parked within a hundred yards of this place. And get the physical evidence teams in here ASAP?

An agent speaking into a cell-phone caught his eye. “Do you want NEST?” she asked.

The highly trained specialists of the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Emergency Search Team were standing by on high alert.

If the FBI raid had turned up any evidence at all of illicit nuclear material, NEST would have come swooping in to find the stuff and remove it safely.

Sanchez shook his head. “Tell NEST there’s nothing for them to do here.”

He didn’t know whether that would make the DOE folks happy or unhappy.

Sanchez moved outside — away from the fresh-paint stink and the maddeningly empty building. For now, he suspected they’d run into a dead-end. The Caraco Savannah herself was halfway across the Atlantic, bound for Germany again. It would be days before her crew could be questioned.

Whoeever these people were, he thought, they’re pros. But nobody could vanish into thin air. They’d made the job of tracking them harden-but not impossible. If he had to, he’d interview everyone in Galveston until they found somebody who could give them a name or a description.

Hell, if need be, he and his agents would scrape that goddamned paint off the walls a square inch at a time.

Sanchez narrowed his eyes. Somewhere, somehow, they’d find something.

It might take days, maybe even weeks, but he and his fellow FBI agents would find the trail. He pushed the thought that it might already be too late far to the back of his mind.

Prince Ibrahim al Saud’s habit after morning prayers was to check his e-mail, listen to the BBC news, and get caught up on the night’s developments in his various business enterprises. He never forgot that the world kept moving while he slept.

The private study in his Middleburg home was actually a suite, with an office for his personal secretary, a meeting room wired for satellite teleconferencing, and his own palatial inner sanctum.

Ibrahim’s desk faced a wide picture window that overlooked the lush, green Virginia countryside. Bulletproof glass ensured his personal security. Double panes and vacuum sealing offered protection for his personal secrets — thwarting any attempted hightech eavesdropping.

Like the rest of the house, the study reflected his heritage, position, and wealth. Priceless handwoven Hamadan rugs covered the floor — matched by other rugs on the walls. Dozens of precise, colorful geometric patterns covered the rags and wall hangings, each hiding a single flaw that served to remind the viewer that only Allah could attain true perfection. Tables of beaten, handworked brass held bowls of fruit and dates, and a coffee urn.

Ibrahim scanned the front page of the New York Times. Nothing of great interest, he thought. Only one item caught his eye.

Algeria’s Islamic rebels had slaughtered another four French nuns — this time in the capital city itself. He made a mental note to funnel more money into the rebel leadership’s secret accounts.

Even civil wars were expensive, and good work should be rewarded.

The phone rang. He snatched it up. “Yes.”

“This is Reichardt. We’ve had some trouble.”

Ibrahim slid the newspaper aside. “I’m listening, Herr Reichardt.”

“The FBI raided our Galveston facility an hour or so ago.”

Ibrahim felt a cold calm settle over him. “And?”

“The Americans found nothing, Highness,” Reichardt assured him. “I took the precaution of accelerating our operation there two days ago. I’ve prepared a full report.”

Ibrahim swiveled in his chair to face the low table behind his desk.

It held a highspeed fax machine. “Send it.”

Within moments of his order, the fax machine clicked and hummed — spitting out several typed sheets. Reichardt remained silent during the transmission, and Ibrahim quickly skimmed each page of the report before dropping them, one at a time, into the shredder next to the machine.

Reichardt’s report was thorough at least. It summarized everything the ex-Stasi officer had learned about the progress and intent of the FBI’s investigation. But very little of the news was good.

Caraco Transport’s Cairo headquarters reported receiving an urgent query from the American embassy about the Galveston warehouse. They were requesting instructions. And the master of the Caraco Savannah had radioed that he had received orders from both the American and German authorities to proceed at his best possible speed to Wilhelmshaven — where agents of the two governments would board his ship and interview his crew.

Worst of all was the news from Reichardt’s contact inside the FBI itself. The Americans had been looking for a smuggled nuclear weapon, and the initial alert had come from a source reporting to the U.S. D.O.D counterterrorist command — the J.S.O.C.

“So this Colonel Thorn is still causing trouble for us,” Ibrahim said softly. “Despite your best efforts to silence him.”

Reichardt hesitated. “Yes, Highness. It appears so.”

“And where are this irritating American and his woman now? Still on the loose somewhere in Germany?”

“Yes,” the ex-Stasi officer admitted. “But they are being hunted by the German police — and now by their own people as well.”

Ibrahim frowned. “And yet somehow they seem able to bring all our plans to an end. I find that. interesting. Don’t you, Herr Reichardt?”

“The weapons are safe, Highness,” Reichardt replied. “And I promise you that this latest FBI investigation will hit a dead-end.”

Ibrahim felt his temper flare into rage, stung beyond restraint by the German’s smug self-assurance. “These investigations should have hit a dead-end at Wilhelmshaven, or Pechenga, or Kandalaksha!” he roared.

A shocked silence greeted his sudden outburst.

Ibrahim wrestled for self-control, anger at Reichardt warring with anger at himself for showing such weakness before the other man. “Your failures are endangering my plans, Herr Reichardt,” he said icily at last. “I will not tolerate that.”

“I understand, Highness,” the German said stiffly.

“When your government collapsed in ruin, I took you and your people under my protection. I provided you with employment, with power, and with a new purpose,” Ibrahim said. “In return, I expect success — not excuses.”

“I understand,” Reichardt said again.

“Good.” Ibrahim swept the pile of shredded paper into a wastebasket.

It would be burned later in the day. “Now then, you agree that this FBI investigation could be … inconvenient?”

“Yes, Highness,” the other man said. “I believe the time is too short for the Americans to learn anything significant, but their inquiries could put pressure on us at an awkward time.”

“Very well.” Ibrahim swiveled back to his desk. “Perhaps I can repair the damage your overconfidence has caused.” Reichardt wisely said nothing.

“Have you finished your round of inspections?” Ibrahim asked.

“I have, Highness,” Reichardt replied. “Everything is in order.

All will be ready on the appointed day:. I fly back to Dulles this evening.”

Ibrahim nodded. “Confer with me on your return.” He hung up and buzzed his private secretary. “Connect me with Richard Garrett. At once.”

He leaned back in his chair, contemplating the rolling landscape outside with hooded eyes. It was time to tighten the chains.