Day of Wrath

CHAPTER NINETEEN ARMS RACE

The floodlights surrounding the Caraco complex were bright enough to turn night into day — even two hours past midnight.

Lying prone in the tall grass fifty meters away, Colonel Peter Thorn lowered the bulky Russian-made thermal imager they’d bought at a military surplus store several hours before. A quick check of the imager’s small display confirmed his earlier supposition. The warehouse-sized building with the antenna-studded roof had to contain Ibrahim’s command and control center. This many hours after the end of the normal workday, the other two buildings in the compound were both cool — near ambient temperature. But the third was still warm — with distinct hot spots near the main door and on the roof. There were people awake and hard at work in there.

Satisfied, he laid the thermal imager to one side and picked up a pair of binoculars — scanning slowly back and forth along the well-lit fence line. He fiddled with the focus on the binoculars and whistled softly.

“They’ve got cameras covering every close approach to that perimeter.

And I’d swear there are some power leads running up that fence.”

Helen Gray turned her head toward him. “You think it’s hot?”

“Not yet,” he said. “But I bet they can throw a few thousand volts through it on command.”

“Lovely. Just lovely,” she muttered. “So we’re looking at a complete security network — an electric fence, cameras, armed guards, and probably motion sensors, too.”

Thorn nodded. “Nobody said this would be easy.”

Sam Farrell spoke up. “As I recall, Pete, I said this would be impossible, crazy, illegal, and probably fatal.”

Thorn grinned back at him, feeling somehow more cheerful than he had for weeks. The prospect of action, of actually striking back at a physical enemy, was acting as a tonic.

“Geez, Sam! Somebody should really get you to stop mincing your words.”

“Let’s take what we have to the FBI and let them run with it!” Farrell argued heatedly. He glanced toward Helen. “Let the HRT handle any raid on this place. They’ve got the manpower, the gear. and the legal right!”

Helen shook her head. “What we have, Sam, is a lot of supposition and guesswork — some of it based on evidence we took off two dead men. Men who were killed in very suspicious circumstances.”’ Thorn nodded.

They’d heard the first news reports on the bodies found near Middleburg while driving back from Leesburg.

Nobody from the FBI was saying anything publicly yet, but they knew the Bureau had to be going crazy trying to figure out how its Deputy Assistant Director heading the International Relations Branch had wound up dead in the rural Virginia woods — right beside the corpse of Caraco’s chief of European security.

Helen frowned. “If we walk into the Hoover Building with what we’ve got now, I guarantee you the first thing they’ll do is handcuff us to the nearest solid object and start piling up charges. By the time we get anybody high-ranking enough to pay attention to our story—”

“Those nukes will be detonating left and right,” Thorn finished for her.

Farrell still looked troubled. “I just don’t like going off the reservation like this. Acting this far outside the law goes against the grain.”

Hell, Thorn thought, it bothers me, too.

But he honestly couldn’t see any other way through the tangle they were in. Not only didn’t he believe official Washington could react fast enough to stop Ibrahim, he wasn’t sure who they could really trust with their story. If Caraco had one mole inside the Hoover Building, why not two?

Even if Mcdowell had been the only traitor feeding information to Wolf and Ibrahim, Caraco’s chief executive had already demonstrated the power he could exert over the capital’s political establishment. What federal official with any brains or sense was going to take on the head of a multibillion-dollar corporation who also happened to be a member of the Saudi royal family with close ties to the White House?

Especially on the unsupported testimony of a rogue FBI agent and a former Delta Force officer now slated for forcible retirement — both of whom were wanted on a variety of charges ranging from insubordination to kidnapping and murder?

Thorn snorted. That was an easy question. No one. Certainly not in time to make any difference.

He and Helen had also ruled out contacting the media. It would take the press too much time to get off its collective ass and start digging.

Besides, orchestrating a high-profile official or media investigation now would probably only spook Ibrahim into striking ahead of his planned schedule. The same argument ruled out going after the Godfrey Field hangars. The Saudi might not have all twenty bombs in place yet, but even one 150-kiloton nuke going off inside the U.S. would represent an unimaginable catastrophe.

And it was highly likely that the Caraco chief had far more than one of his Russian-made weapons prepped and ready to go.

No, Thorn thought coldly, the only chance they had was to get inside that compound and find some way to stop Ibrahim from launching his attack themselves. He was realistic enough to know just how long the odds were against that outcome.

And so was Farrell.

But the retired general was also canny enough to run through their other alternatives and calculate the even longer odds that one of them might pay off.

Farrell stared back and forth from Thorn’s face to Helen’s, plainly looking for a sign, any sign, that he’d made some impression on them.

Finally, he shook his head angrily. “Oh, shit, Pete. If I can’t stop you two from trying to kill yourselves, I guess I might as well try to help you do this right. What’s your plan? Hit the antennas on that roof and knock out their communications?”

“No, sir.” Thorn shook his head. “We’d have to take down all their phone and data lines at the same time. and that’s impossible. Destroying the antennas would only force Ibrahim to launch his planes on full autopilot. So maybe only eighteen or nineteen weapons hit their targets — instead of the full twenty. That’s not much better.”

“It sure as hell isn’t,” Farrell said. He chewed his lower lip.

“You think you have to go all the way inside?”

Helen answered for him. “I’m afraid so.” She sighed. “There’s got to be a command center or a control center somewhere in that building. If we take that and hold it, we should be able to do something to stop Ibrahim.”

Farrell snorted. “That’s a hell of a lot of ‘ifs,’ ‘somewheres,’ and ‘somethings,’ Helen.” He looked back at Thorn. “What makes you think taking out this son of a bitch’s headquarters is going to matter? Those aircraft and weapons will still be out there — loaded and ready to roll.”

“Timing,” Thorn said quietly. “It all comes down to timing. Whether we go after Ibrahim personally or settle for holding the command center, we have to hit him before he releases the arming codes to his dispersal fields.”

Like their American counterparts, Russian nuclear weapons could not be armed without the proper codes. Ibrahim must have obtained the necessary codes from somebody inside Russia’s Twelfth Main Directorate — the military agency responsible for the manufacture, testing, servicing, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons for the Russian armed forces. But there was no reason for him to turn that information over to his subordinates until almost the very last minute. In fact, there were a great many reasons for him to hold those codes close to his chest as long as possible. Chief among them was the fact that it would prevent any of his people from going off half-cocked — or from absconding with one or more of the enormously valuable weapons. There were a great many dictatorships that would pay millions to get their hands on one usable nuclear bomb.

Farrell nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense.” He glanced at the luminous dial on his watch. “It’s after two A.M. now. You still confident about our estimate for Ibrahim’s attack schedule, Pete?”

“Yes, sir,” Thorn said flatly.

The three of them had hashed that out in more detail on the way back from Godfrey Field. The inside parameter for an attack was the planned transfer of the Caraco executive jet from Dulles to Godfrey—1800 hours on the twentieth. The outside parameter was 1300 hours on the twenty-first — the time the jet was scheduled to depart. That was still a big window, so they’d managed to narrow it down even further.

Ibrahim was unlikely to go for a night attack. Whether his targets were cities or military bases, they were always busier and more crowded in daylight. Since there were always more small private planes in the air after the sun rose, a daylight attack also gave his improvised cruise missiles a far better chance of making it all the way to their targets without being challenged. Given the three-hour time difference across the continental United States, the earliest Ibrahim would strike was somewhere around ten or eleven in the morning — East Coast time — on June 21.

“Which means you want to go in … when?” Farrell asked. Thorn didn’t hesitate. He’d been giving that a lot of thought.

“Around one or two A.M. two days from now — on the twenty-first.”

“That’s cutting it kind of fine, Peter,” Helen warned.

He nodded. “Yeah. But there’s no way we can shave much off that. We need at least a day to find as much gear as we can. And it’ll take us the better part of another day to prep and come up with a workable plan. The way I see it that takes us all the way up to late on the twentieth or very, very early on the twenty-first.”

Farrell arched an eyebrow. “You actually want equipment and time to prep?” He snorted. “Hell, Pete, I was sure you and Helen were going to try to do this armed with a couple of Swiss Army knives, a flashlight, and a baseball bat. You must be getting soft.”

Thorn smiled wryly at his old boss. That was more like the Sam Farrell he knew. “We’re also going to need another rental car. There’s no way we can get all the gear we’ve got to buy in one pass. I’m afraid your credit cards are going to take another beating, Sam.”

“At this point, money’s the least of my problems,” Farrell muttered. “I still don’t see how we’re going to get through that perimeter fence without tripping every alarm they’ve got,” Helen said quietly, staying focused on the matter at hand. “And if they see us coming, we’re screwed.”’ “True. Getting through the fence is our first big problem.”

Thorn lifted the binoculars again. He studied the fence for a moment longer, then shifted his focus — intently studying the tall oak and pine trees that had been left standing outside the compound to preserve something of the area’s once-rural feel. “So maybe we don’t go through the fence …”

Richard Garrett tracked his chosen prey to a table in the White House mess.

He’d used his pass to get by the Secret Service guards at the main entrance. The White House pass, left over from his days in the administration and never revoked, was one of his prized possessions.

His ability to hobnob at will with top executive branch officials had added hundreds of thousands of dollars to his annual income during his days as a lobbyist-for-hire. Now that he represented Caraco’s interests full-time, it generated hundreds of thousands of dollars more in annual bonuses from Prince Ibrahim al Saud.

Garrett took the empty chair across from John Preston, the President’s Chief of Staff. “John, you’ve got a problem. A big problem.”

Caught off guard, Preston nearly choked on a mouthful of soup and hurriedly daubed at his mouth with a napkin. “Jesus, Dick, I’m eating my lunch here! Can’t this wait until later in the day?”

“No, it can’t.”

Preston sighed. “I assume this is about the dead guy out in the woods.

Hans Wolf or something like that?”

“Heinrich Wolf,” Garrett corrected icily. “Who just happens to have been one of the topranking executives of the corporation I represent.”

“Sorry.” Preston set the crumpled cloth napkin to one side. “I suppose you know they’ve identified the other body as a topranking FBI administrator.”

Garrett nodded. Ibrahim had briefed him on that development before asking him to go to the White House. He assumed the Saudi prince had sources inside the FBI or the Loudoun County sheriff’s department.

“Then frankly, Dick, I’m not sure what more I can tell you,” Preston said. He arched an eyebrow. “Fact is, I hear the FBI wants to find out just what on earth your man was doing with Mcdowell — before they both got shot, I mean.”

Garrett nodded. “That’s understandable. And I plan to talk to them.”

He leaned forward. “It’s like this, John. Right after that Bureau fuck-up down in Galveston, I got a pretty strange call from a General Samuel B. Farrell.”

“Farrell?” Preston looked vague. “Don’t know him.”

“Used to head the Joint Special Operations Command,” Garrett explained.

“He retired a year or so ago. Before your time.”

Preston nodded. After a short stint as a Cabinet deputy secretary during the administration’s first term, he’d gone home to Kentucky to tend the family business. He’d only surfaced as the new White House Chief of Staff after several of the other contenders tore each other to ribbons fighting over the job — mostly by leaking damaging revelations about their rivals to the press.

His chief qualification for the post seemed to be that no one had thought enough of him to regard him as a serious contender.

Most Washington observers thought he’d be chewed up, spit out, and sent packing in short order.

Garrett suspected they were wrong. He’d known Preston and his family for a long time. He’d also seen the other man ride out the President’s frequent temper tantrums unfazed. Never underestimate the staying power of a good punching bag, he thought.

“Anyway,” the Caraco lobbyist continued, “this retired general came to us with a really bizarre claim …” He rapidly sketched Farrell’s allegations that Caraco employees were involved in a deadly smuggling ring.

When he was through, Preston commented, “That sounds exactly like the story that got the FBI all hot and bothered down in Galveston.”

“It is the same damned story,” Garrett growled. “That’s why Prince Ibrahim asked Wolf to find out who was spoon feeding the general this crap. Turns out it was a couple of real loony-toon types — a Colonel Thorn and an FBI agent named Gray. You ever heard of them?”

This time Preston nodded slowly. “I’ve seen a few pieces of paper cross my desk lately,” he admitted cautiously.

“Like a pair of FBI-issued arrest warrants?”

The chief of staff smiled thinly. “You do know a lot of things, Dick.”

Garrett smiled right back. “That’s why people pay me so well, John.”

“So what does this have to do with your man Wolf and this FBI guy, Mcdowell?” Preston asked.

“Mcdowell was Special Agent Helen Gray’s superior officer,” Garrett said flatly. “We believe that Herr Wolf contacted him about Farrell, Thorn, and Gray — and arranged to meet him. And then something must have gone wrong.”

“Something?”

Garrett nodded. “Thorn and Gray, to be precise. We believe they murdered both Heinrich Wolf and Deputy Assistant Director Mcdowell — probably as part of some crazed, psychotic attempt to foil this nonexistent smuggling conspiracy they’ve dreamed up.”

Preston shook his head. “That’s a real stretch, Dick. I’ve read the reports on Thorn and Gray. The FBI is sure they’re still on the run somewhere in Germany.”

“Then the Bureau has its collective head up its collective ass.”

Garrett scowled. “Unless you can think of some other pair of trained killers with a grudge against both Caraco and the FBI, I suggest you instruct Director Leiter to get off his own rear end and start looking for those two closer to home.”

Preston looked back levelly at him. “I’m guessing there’s an ‘or else’ attached to that sentence.”

Garrett spread his hands. “This is a very serious matter, John. And Prince Ibrahim is not pleased by the slapdash way it’s been handled so far. You tell the FBI they’ve got just fortyeight hours to nail Thorn and Gray, or we’re going public with our suspicions. I really don’t think the Director wants the kind of bad press we can generate with a story about a deranged Army colonel and his FBI girlfriend running wild inside the U.S.”

Preston winced. “I’ll talk to Leiter. If Thorn and Gray are back home, we’ll find them.”

“You’ve got forty-eight hours,” Garrett reminded him, already getting up to go. “After that all hell’s going to break loose.”

Prince Ibrahim al Saud stared down at the blank screen on Reichardt’s laptop computer. He looked up. “What does this mean?”

Saleh, his computer wizard, swallowed hard. “The German protected his files with an unusually sophisticated security program, Highness. I was able to penetrate one level — but an autodestruct sequence was triggered on the second-“

“And now the files are gone,” Ibrahim interrupted.

“Yes, Highness.” The Egyptian cleared his throat. “There are methods for recovering data in such instances. With enough time, I could—”

Ibrahim glared at him. “Get out.”

Saleh fled.

Ibrahim stared down at the maddening little machine. For a split second he had the urge to toss it against the nearest wall.

The urge receded. Saleh was right. Something might yet be recovered. But not in time.

The computer had included all of Reichardt’s information on the two American agents who had caused them so much trouble including the FBI and U.S. Army dossiers and photographs the German had obtained from the traitor Mcdowell. All hard copies had already been destroyed as part of the ex-Stasi officer’s strict security regimen.

The system Reichardt had established was admirably efficient, if typically rigid. As little as possible about the Operation was committed to paper. For those few documents deemed essential, shredders were placed at strategic locations throughout the complex.

The waste was collected twice a day and burned.

Ibrahim approved of the German’s security system — in theory.

In practice, it was proving far less satisfactory.

Since Reichardt had been in charge of hunting down the two Americans — Thorn and Gray — he alone had kept permanent records on them.

And now all those records were gone — wiped into some form of electronic gibberish. Which meant he would have to rely on the FBI to hunt them down for him. Unless, of course, the Americans came to him … “Captain Talal,” Ibrahim snapped.

The former Saudi officer moved closer. “Highness?”

“Issue another alert to all the airfields. Warn them that the two Americans, and possibly this General Farrell, may make some further attempt to disrupt the Operation. They may attempt to destroy some of our aircraft or to gather additional evidence. Include the descriptions I gave you earlier in your alert message.”

Ibrahim had racked his brains for those descriptions. Farrell’s had been the easiest of all. They’d actually met. But he’d only seen photos of the other two briefly — and only black-and-white photos at that.

“Yes, Highness.”

“I also want security tightened here.” Ibrahim closed Reichardt’s laptop with one hand — shutting off the meaningless, blinking C: \ prompt that seemed to mock him.

He looked up and began snapping out his orders. “Deploy a patrol around this building-beginning at sunset. And I want our guard force strengthened. Most of Reichardt’s people have East German military or secret police training. Issue them with sidearms for use in an emergency.”

“Should I electrify the fence, Highness?” Talal asked.

“Not yet.” Ibrahim smiled mirthlessly. “I might find that difficult to explain to our American employees in the rest of the complex. The fence can wait for another day.”

To clear the compound of all nonessential personnel on the Operation’s crucial final day, the Saudi prince had arranged a series of motivational seminars at one of Washington’s finer hotels. All the region’s legitimate Caraco employees were expected to attend. Call it a special kind of severance package, he thought coldly.

When Talal had gone, he turned his gaze back on Reichardt’s computer.

Who could say how much potentially damaging information was still hidden deep in its recesses? Certainly the German had known far too much about Ibrahim himself, the terrorist organizations he funded, and his methods. Ibrahim made a note to take the machine with him when they evacuated this facility. He would keep it safely in his grasp until Saleh or some other expert pried all its secrets loose.

He turned away and stalked through a gray, unmarked fire door into the room just beyond the planning cell.

The lights in the Operation’s control center were kept dim — to avoid any interfering glare on the multiple television and computer monitors that were placed strategically around the room. Two rows of four aircraft control consoles occupied most of the space, but communications equipment took up one entire wall, and metal workbenches filled nearly all of another. The benches were littered with tools, electronic components, and circuit diagrams.

Ibrahim noticed that the screens on one of the control consoles were dark. He frowned and moved up behind the two technicians who were crouched peering into an open panel in the back. They were speaking softly to each other in German — probably debating some technical point.

“What is going on here?” he asked sharply. “Why wasn’t I notified of this equipment malfunction?”

Startled, both men spun around and then hurriedly straightened up.

“I’m sorry, sir, but this just happened. A video board failed,” the senior technician answered quickly. “We’ve identified the problem and we expect to have the unit back up in a few minutes at most.”

“This equipment is all new, sir,” the younger man added. Even the control center’s dim lights gleamed off the German’s smooth-shaven head. A small gold loop piercing his left eyebrow waggled when he spoke. “The components are still burning in. These ‘infant mortality’ cases are quite common at this stage. But we’ll sort them out.”

Ibrahim kept his temper under control. With Reichardt dead, he had to take up the reins — and that included tolerating grubby, dirty-fingered mechanics like these.

“The technical details do not interest me, gentlemen,” he ground out angrily. “The fact that a piece of equipment failed does. I expect to be informed instantly of such an event in the future. Is that clear?”

Both technicians nodded rapidly.

“Very well, then. Finish your repairs.”

Ibrahim turned away, focusing his attention on one of the working aircraft control consoles. It was built around two monitors — one a television, the other a color computer display.

The television screen was blank. So was the computer monitor. In use, the TV would show the pictures taken by one of the cameras his crews had mounted on each attack plane.

The computer screen would display the position, altitude, speed, fuel status, and other relevant flight data of up to four separate aircraft.

Ibrahim ran his eyes over the rest of the console. A custom-designed electronics panel augmented a standard computer keyboard.

The panel held UHF radio controls, jacks where headsets could be plugged in, basic flight instruments, and a series of selector switches. A joystick, black cable coiled around it, perched on top of the console.

He nodded, satisfied by what he saw. These consoles were for use only in an unforeseen emergency. Barring that, his aircraft would fly to their targets entirely on their own — using the preset flight plans loaded into each autopilot. Once they were airborne, nothing could stop him from plunging the United States into a cleansing nuclear fire.

Helen Gray finished laying out the first wave of their newly purchased equipment and stood back to look it over. The gear completely covered one of the room’s two queen-size beds. Acquiring it had taken several trips and a sizable chunk of their cash reserves.

The big-ticket items they’d picked up had come from one of northern Virginia’s police supply stores. To get them, she’d had to show her FBI credentials and fill out a form — but that piece of paper should take several days to make its way far enough up the official ladder to set off alarms. She was sure the store owner had been surprised when she’d plunked down close to three thousand dollars in cash, but nobody questioned the FBI too closely.

Helen moved closer to the bed and hefted the heavy tactical assault body armor she’d bought. These bulky Kevlar vests had been among the most critical pieces of gear on their wish list. No matter how she and Peter got inside the Caraco compound, they were going to be heavily outnumbered. Armor tough enough to shake off pistol and light rifle rounds might give them at least a fighting chance to last long enough to do some good.

She put the assault vests back down and moved on to unwrap the radios she’d purchased at the same store. They were police-issue, two-way “vox,” or voice-activated, sets. Each weighed about a pound or so and came with a headset. She installed the batteries and then adjusted all three radios to a common frequency.

A military surplus store had supplied the web gear and ruck sacks they would need to carry everything they were taking in with them. The same place had also sold them a tube of black camouflage grease paint.

The packs of firecrackers next to the web gear had come courtesy of one of the Fourth of July fireworks booths already springing up on what seemed like every open street corner.

Helen put the firecrackers down as the door swung open and Peter Thorn came in, weighed down by shopping bags.

“Success,” he announced. “I put a couple of hundred miles on the car, and I had to run through two hardware stores, an autobody shop, a gun store, a chemical supply house, a Radio Shack, and a building supplies place — but I got everything.”

“Any trouble?”

Peter shook his head. “Nope. I only had to show my handydandy Chris Carlson armed forces ID two times. Once at the chemical supply place and the second time when I picked up the Primacord and detonators from the building supply store.”

“Nobody asked what you wanted those for?” Helen asked.

“Sure,” Peter said. “I told ‘em I wanted to clear some stumps off a piece of property I’d just bought. No muss, no fuss.”

“And you paid cash?” she finished for him.

Peter grinned. “Yeah. And I paid cash.” He set one bag carefully apart from the others and in a corner of the room. “That one’s got the nitric acid in it.”

Helen nodded.

He started unloading the rest of his purchases, building a pile on the other bed: plastic pipe sections and caps, glue, duct tape, a sack of nails, black powder, a container of the putty auto body shops used to repair dents, and other ingredients.

When Peter was done, he started sorting them into the order in which he would need them. He picked up the auto body putty and frowned.

“There’s going to be one hell of a stink when I start mixing this stuff up. Let’s hope the bathroom exhaust fan can handle it.”

Helen nodded. The resiny putty, the black powder, and a few other common household chemicals could be combined to make a low-grade equivalent of C4 plastic explosive. But it was a dangerous process — one that required precise measurement and timing.

It was also a process that was notoriously hard on the olfactory nerves.

She caught the pair of tiny digital cooking timers he tossed her and laid them beside the firecrackers and some small lengths of tungsten filament. “Houston, we have liftoff,” she murmured to herself.

Peter disappeared into the bathroom with the bulk of his purchases.

Helen was just finishing her preparations when Sam Farrell returned from his own various expeditions. His arms were full, and she had to go back to the car and help him carry in the rest of his plunder.

Farrell had drawn the best part of the shopping list — at least as far as she was concerned. He’d bought the extra weapons and ammunition they would need for the assault. While he’d joked about “pulling rank” to get the job, the plain truth was that neither of them could have done it. To buy firearms you needed to show a driver’s license and other forms of ID. Their phony armed forces badges wouldn’t have cut it. There was also the fact that some of the more expensive purchases could only be made by credit card.

Swiftly, efficiently, with the expertise of people trained to use them, Helen and Farrell unwrapped and examined three Winchester 1300 Defender pump-action, 12-gauge shotguns. The general had also picked up bandoliers, speedloaders, and two hundred rounds of shotgun ammunition — plus more ammo for his Beretta and Mcdowell’s SIG-Sauer P228.

The shotgun ammo came in five-round boxes. Most of it was triple-ought, three-inch magnum loads holding nine pellets the size of pistol bullets, but there were also several boxes of solid slugs and sabot.

The solid slugs were just that — one lead round filling the entire shotgun shell. They were terribly inaccurate when fired from an unrifled barrel, but they made very good “doorbreakers.”

The Winchester sabot rounds were more exotic. Each shell carried a smaller, finned projectile. Using them allowed a shotgun to be fired accurately at a distant target — and with enough punch to go through a steel door.

They’d almost finished when Peter emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of noxious vapor.

Farrell coughed. “Any problems?”

“Aside from my stinging eyes?” Peter shook his head. “The stuff’s curing now in the tub.” He took in the arrayed weapons with a satisfied smile — a smile that grew even broader when he saw the aluminum suitcase Farrell had set beside the bed. A small, embossed plate above the handle read “Mossberg.”

“I’ll be damned, Sam, you actually found one,” he said.

“Had to, didn’t I?” Farrell countered. “This whole thing would have been off otherwise.”

Peter nodded. “True.”

“I called eight places before I found one in stock, and even then I had to drive all the way out to Annapolis to get it,” Farrell said with some satisfaction.

“A gun store in Annapolis?” Helen asked.

“A boating store.” Farrell released the catches on the front and opened the case. A Mossberg 590 shotgun nestled inside, securely seated against dark gray foam. The stainless steel barrel had a Day-Glo orange plastic cylinder attached. The case also contained two boxes of special ammunition, three bright orange packages marked “Spectra line, 360-pound test,” two large, line carrying plastic heads designed to float on water, and two arrowshaped heads intended to carry a line longer distances.

“Say hello to the Mossberg line launcher conversion kit,” he said. “I paid extra to have them throw in the shotgun.”

Peter stared down at the Day-Glo orange cylinder. “Black electrical tape,” he said. “We’ve got to wrap that thing in tape.”

Farrell nodded. He plucked a grappling hook out of another bag. “I also picked this up at a sporting goods store.”

“Perfect.”

“There’s just one problem, Pete. Somehow you’ve got to fit this,” Farrell said as he tapped the grappling hook, “onto this.”

He held up one of the narrow, arrowshaped distance heads.

Peter’s boyish grin crept back onto his face. “Not a problem, Sam.”

He rummaged around in the pile of equipment he’d bought. He turned around. “Welcome to Thorn Construction, Incorporated.”

Helen and Farrell both stared at the small welding torch and goggles in his hand.

“Jesus, Pete,” Farrell said finally. “Louisa’s going to be so glad I gave you all our savings. That’ll sure come in handy around the kitchen.”

Helen hid a smile.

“French toast in one point five seconds,” Peter said matter-of-factly.

He put the welding torch down. “Any luck on the nightvision gear?”

“Yeah,” Farrell said, still shaking his head. He pulled two large boxes out of another bag. “I found these in the first sporting goods store I went in. And every store after that. Apparently almost everyone has this model in stock.”

Helen flipped open one of the boxes and lifted out a clumsy-looking assembly that seemed like something out of a Rube Goldberg nightmare.

Two eyepieces were connected to a rectangular case and then fed into a single long lens. There were two straps to hold the whole assembly in place. One strap went around the wearer’s head while the other ran across the wearer’s chin. A heavy battery case in the back offered some counterbalance. Wires connected every component. It would have been comical if she hadn’t known how useful something like this could be. She looked up. “Russian-made?”

Farrell nodded. “They’re second-generation light intensifiers, but they’re not surplus. They’re brand new, with a one-year warranty.”

“How much?” she asked.

“Seven hundred each.” Farrell shrugged. “One of the places had some Western-made imagers. They were nicer, lighter, and clearer, but they were also twenty-five hundred bucks a pop. My Visa card has overdraft protection, but that kind of tag would have given it vapor lock.”

Helen nodded her understanding. Counting the credit card bills that would eventually come due, they’d already spent more than ten thousand dollars of Farrell’s money. Obtaining additional funds would require cashing in some of his investments — and that would take time they didn’t have.

“You want to check them out now?” Peter asked.

“Let’s do it.” She adjusted the straps, slipped the Russian-made nightvision gear over her head, and clicked the battery switch.

Farrell killed the lights.

Helen fumbled for the focus knob, adjusting the intensifiers for a wide field of view. The familiar pale green image was grainier than that produced by the more sophisticated gear she’d trained with, but it was serviceable.

The intensifiers amplified every bit of reflected light in the hotel room — showing detail that would have been shadowed even in normal illumination. She swung toward the window and the gain-control feature cut in. The sunlight showing through a crack in the drapes would have been blinding if it hadn’t been automatically stepped down by the device.

Helen turned her head rapidly first one way and then the other. The Russian-made intensifiers were heavier than the American-designed, third-generation AN PVS-7Bs she’d trained with. She adjusted the field of view, narrowing the angle and providing greater magnification.

At last, satisfied, she slipped them off.

Farrell flipped the lights back on.

Helen stared at the gear piled high on both beds. Their equipment wasn’t as compact or as modern as that supplied to the HRT or the Delta Force — but it should work.

Their real problem wasn’t an equipment shortage — it was the lack of information.

She frowned. Good intelligence was the key to victory. That was how both the HRT and Delta trained. Comprehensive research could eliminate uncertainties. Meticulous planning could compensate for inferior numbers. And exhaustive rehearsal could let a team hit its objective and escape without a scratch.

But what did she and Peter have?

Nothing. No building blueprints. No accurate assessment of the enemy’s strength or security arrangements. Not even any sure way to stop Ibrahim’s plan from unfolding.

Christ, Helen thought, we’re trusting almost entirely to luck.

She fought down the first strands of despair. She had Peter. And Peter had her. And that would have to be good enough.

Dieter Krauss took one last look at the clear, star-studded sky and went back inside the hangar. He mopped at his forehead and neck with a handkerchief. Even this close to midnight, the Southern heat and humidity were almost unbearable.

“Everything is in order?” his senior technician asked.

Krauss nodded abruptly. The warning from Chantilly hadn’t caught him completely off guard. He’d posted half his security detail in concealed positions overlooking the fence around their three hangars.

He would be ready if the American agents who had his employer in such a panic tried to infiltrate the field.

He ran his eyes over the two twin-engine turboprops parked wingtip to wingtip inside this hangar. “The weapons are loaded?”

The senior technician nodded. “They are, sir.”

“And the evacuation plane?”

“Standing by, Herr Krauss. We can be airborne five minutes after the last strike aircraft reaches altitude.”

Krauss nodded. The plan called for them to fly straight out into the Atlantic. Once the bombs went off, their aircraft would make an “emergency divert” landing in the Bahamas, refuel, and continue south.

Once they arrived in Mexico, he and his team would receive their final payments and disperse. The units stationed at other fields would be flying to other destinations in either Mexico or Canada. All were confident that no one would track them — not in the almost unimaginable chaos that would follow the simultaneous detonation of twenty nuclear weapons.

“Herr Krauss!”

The German looked toward the door to his office — a small room in the corner of the hangar. One of his subordinates stood in the door frame, waving him over.

“What is it?” he shouted.

“A signal from Chantilly, sir.”

Krauss crossed the hangar in seconds and tore the fax out of his machine.

Krauss nodded to himself. As a final security measure, Reichardt had decreed that none of the teams readying the strike aircraft would be given the arming codes or their target coordinates until an hour before the first planes took off. Once Chantilly released the data, it would take only minutes for his technicians to input each set into the appropriate aircraft.

He read the message over again. It was straightforward and to the point. Perhaps this Arab who had replaced Reichardt would do after all.

The Operation was in its final hours — and now nothing could stop it.