Day of Wrath

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO END GAME

Fifteen minutes after the fireball faded out of the night sky, Helen Gray still knelt at Peter’s side — holding him tight as his hand lovingly stroked her hair.

She turned her head as a tall, dapper man came into the control center, pushing through the several Fairfax County sheriff’s officers who were now studying the tightly packed array of computer hardware in stunned amazement. Ibrahim al Saud was gone — hauled away under arrest with the other wounded terrorists shortly after the police entered the bulletriddled headquarters building. So far, her FBI credentials had kept them from being arrested themselves.

Despite the early hour, the newcomer’s gray suit was perfectly pressed and his black loafers perfectly shined. She’d known him.

FBI Special Agent Paul Sandquist stopped in front of her, took in the scene silently for a minute, and then shook his head in amazement.

“Jesus Christ, Helen. How the hell do you manage to stick your neck out so far every single time? You know I have orders from the Director himself to arrest you and Colonel Thorn on sight?”

Helen nodded. “Yep.” She calmly let go of Peter, stood up, and held out her wrists. “Okay, Paul. You want to handcuff us and take us to your fearless leader?”

Sandquist smiled wryly. “Somehow I don’t think we’re going to need the handcuffs, Special Agent Gray.”

Helen felt Peter Thorn’s warm hand slip into hers and smiled back.

“No, somehow I didn’t think we would either. But let’s get going. Colonel Thorn and I have a few things to discuss with Director Leiter.”

FBI Hostage Rescue Team section leader Felipe Degarza stepped outside the Caraco hangar and immediately took the full brunt of the late morning sun.

Sweat trickled out from under his assault helmet. Black coveralls, black boots, and heavy Kevlar body armor didn’t make the most comfortable outfit under the circumstances, he decided. But it was a hell of a lot safer when bullets went flying around. Better hot and sweaty than cold and dead.

Or so his old boss, Special Agent Helen Gray, had always said. For Degarza that made it gospel.

“Director Leiter is on the line, Felipe,” Special Agent Tim Brett said.

Degarza handed the H&K MP5 submachine gun he’d been cradling to his second-in-command and took the secure cell phone Brett offered him.

“This is Degarza. The airfield is secure.”

“Thank God,” Leiter said. “Any trouble?”

The HRT section leader shook his head, — watching a line of dazed prisoners streaming out of the hangar under the watchful eyes of his own troopers and the local SWAT team. “None, sir.

We caught them with their pants down. Apparently they weren’t slated to get their first plane off until well after sunrise. Their leaden-some German guy — was still trying to get through to Chantilly when we blew the door open.”

“And the bombs?” Leiter asked. “The bombs are still there?”

“Oh, yeah,” Degarza replied. He turned back toward the hangar.

“Besides one Caraco corporate jet, I’ve got four twin engine aircraft here — and all four of them are carrying devices that look a hell of a lot like the pictures of those TN1000s you faxed us.”

“Don’t touch those weapons,” Leiter ordered. “Leave that to the experts. There’s an Army EOD team on its way to your location now. The commander’s name is Lieutenant-Colonel Greg Lyle. He’s their best man. You let him check them over first, clear?”

“Absolutely, sir,” Degarza said, unfazed by Leiter’s apparent lack of trust in his common sense. Only an idiot would want to screw around with weapons packing a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand ton punch — especially when nobody knew whether or not these terrorists had booby-trapped them.

Which left him with one burning question. “Is there any word yet from the other dispersal fields, sir?”

“So far, so good,” Leiter replied. “We’ve hit them all now.

Took a couple of minor casualties in a firefight at Page and at Shafter-Minter, but nothing serious. A few of the bastards apparently got spooked early and ran when they couldn’t make contact with Ibrahim — but we know where they’re headed. They won’t get far. And we’ve recovered nineteen bombs. According to Special Agent Gray and Colonel Thorn, that’s all they had left.”

All they had left, Degarza thought in disbelief. He sure hoped Leiter knew just how lucky the Bureau had been — and how much it owed to Helen Gray.

Vienna, Virginia Colonel Peter Thorn gingerly poked his head into Farrell’s booklined office. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything, Sam.”

Farrell looked up from the yellow legal pad he’d been furiously scribbling on. He tossed the pad onto his desk and stood up to shake Thorn’s hand. “Not at all, Pete! But I’m surprised Louisa didn’t let me know you were here.”

Thorn grinned sheepishly. “I don’t think she saw me come in. I waited till I saw her go out into your garden and slipped in the back way.”

Farrell wagged a finger at him. “No more cloak-and dagger stuff in my house, Colonel. I’m retired for good this time.”

“Yes, sir.”

The general waved him toward a chair and sat down himself.

“I don’t see why you’re acting so skittish around my wife, Pete,” Farrell continued, smiling. “You know you’re one of her favorites.”’ Thorn shook his head. “That’s hard to believe — since we both know I dragged you into the middle of one hell of a mess — not to mention the ten thousand bucks of your money we spent. And Louisa’s been around the Army long enough to know how long it’ll take the green eyeshade boys to cough up any reimbursement— if ever!”

Farrell shrugged. “Who knows? I may just write that ten thousand off as research on a book I might write someday. And maybe I’ll even bill the FBI for the time I spent answering their questions.”

Thorn grinned. Sam, Helen, and he had been held in FBI “protective” custody for nearly two days while the Bureau, the Pentagon, and the CIA all ran them through extensive and exhausting debriefing sessions. At first, it was clear that the government would really have preferred to keep the whole crewed-up affair hushed up. But there was no way the administration could clamp a lid on a major firefight out in suburban Virginia and half a dozen heavy-duty HRT and SWAT raids around the country. Not to mention a nuclear explosion right over Chesapeake Bay.

Thorn frowned. He looked out the window at Farrell’s big, green, peaceful backyard.

They’d been lucky. Very lucky. Because it was an airburst, the blast hadn’t created a lot of fallout. Plus, the prevailing winds had pretty rapidly pushed what radiation there was well out into the Atlantic.

Still, the police and National Guard units had been forced to temporarily evacuate several thousand people from the Virginia portion of the Delmarva peninsula — mostly as a precaution. Fortunately, the Defense and Energy Departments decontamination teams surveying the area were reporting only very minor levels of background radiation.

Anyway, what started out as a trickle of news leaks had rapidly turned into a flood.

The first stories had focused on the horrifying news that someone had somehow smuggled a large number of stolen Russian nuclear weapons into the U.S. itself. That had generated a whole week’s worth of mile-high headlines and hour-long TV news specials. Now the other shoes were starting to drop one right after another.

There were questions about Caraco’s involvement in domestic American politics, questions about Ibrahim’s close ties to the administration, and questions about the roles senior officials had played in trying to shut down investigations into Caraco’s secret arms smuggling.

So far he had dodged the press, but he was just about out of excuses and running room. Especially now that Congress was getting its act in gear. Both the House and the Senate were talking loudly about forming special committees to investigate the administration’s recent conduct.

One of the people they were zeroing in on was Richard Garrett — Ibrahim’s former chief lobbyist.

There were also stories that the IRS was focusing its attention on the ex-Commerce Secretary — pursuing evidence that he’d avoided paying taxes on large unreported bonuses paid by the Saudi prince.

Perhaps even more intriguing, Thorn had heard of new developments from his contacts in the intelligence community — developments that were starting to shed some light on Ibrahim al Saud’s motives for trying to destroy the United States as a world power. Investigators combing through his estate in Middleburg and through his private files in Caraco’s various headquarters kept stumbling across intriguing proof that Ibrahim had been a major player in world terrorism — maybe even the major player.

There were dozens of highly complex bank transactions that led to virtually every terrorist cell operating against the United States.

Farrell whistled when Thorn told him that. “Now there’s a golden opportunity to do some good, Pete!”

Thorn nodded. “Our guys are going to have a field day ripping out the financial roots that armed and paid people like Reichardt.”

“Reichardt?” Farrell asked.

“An ex-Stasi officer. Aka the late Heinrich Wolf,” Thorn said with grim satisfaction.

Facing charges that included terrorism and conspiracy to commit mass murder, the dead Stasi officer’s underlings had been only too happy to come clean in the hopes of receiving a life prison sentence instead of death by lethal injection.

He looked up to find Sam Farrell eyeing him closely.

“So, what are your plans these days?” the general asked. Thorn detected the long arm of Louisa Farrell in that question.

The general’s wife had always taken too pronounced an interest in his private life. He decided to play dumb. “Oh, the debriefers are still keeping me pretty busy. I’ve run backward and forward over everything we learned so many times that I’m dreaming about it now.”

Farrell snorted. “I mean, what are you and Helen up to? You see much of her these days?”

Thorn hesitated, then shrugged nonchalantly. “Not as much as I’d like.

She’s pretty hot stuff where the FBI is concerned.

They’re parading her in front of every news organization and congressional staffer they can find — touting her as the agent who almost single-handedly put an end to one of the greatest national security threats this country has ever faced.”

Farrell nodded. “Smart move on the Director’s part. I assume she’s off the hook for Mcdowell’s death, then?”

“Hell, she may even get a medal for it,” Thorn said, smiling broadly.

“The Bureau’s higher-ups are practically kissing her feet.

After all, she got rid of the highest-ranking traitor the FBI’s ever found in its own ranks. Mcdowell alive and going to trial for treason would have been acutely embarrassing. Mcdowell dead is a story that will soon blow over especially with all the other stuff that’s swirling around out there right now.”

“Uh-huh.” Farrell folded his hands together over his stomach and rocked back in his chair. “Pretty slick, Pete. But it won’t wash.”

Damn. Thorn kept his face immobile. “What won’t wash?”

“Trying to lure me off the subject.” Farrell leaned forward.

“Which is, what’s going on between you and Helen personally?”

Thorn hurriedly checked his watch. “Sorry, gotta run, Sam. I’m late for another skull session over at Langley.”

“Pete!” Farrell said in mock desperation. “You’ve got to give me something. Helen’s not talking to Louisa either. And if I don’t get some news out of you, I’m liable to be eating Burger King tonight instead of that fat juicy steak I’ve been promised!”

Thorn relented slightly. Farrell did have a right to know part of what was going on. “Okay, Sam. The truth is that Helen and I have both scheduled some leave together in a couple of weeks. We’ve got some serious things to discuss.”

In the Rocky Mountains, Colorado Peter Thorn turned and helped Helen up over an outcropping of rock and onto a wide, open ledge. He waited until she’d shrugged off her backpack before asking, “Well, what do you think?”

She turned to face the view and caught her breath. “My God, Peter.

It’s beautiful. Absolutely stunning.”

Thorn nodded. They were several thousand feet up the side of a mountain high on an isolated spur overlooking a green, forestcovered valley. “My dad and I used to climb up here when I was just a kid.”

Oddly enough, mentioning his father didn’t hurt as much as it once would have: His dad’s death had hit him hard three years before-especially since his mother had abandoned them both when he was just a teenager. When his father had finally lost his battle against cancer, Thorn had been left all alone in the world — until he met Helen.

She smiled at him. “So this is a special place?”

“A very special place,” Thorn confirmed: He saw her take a deep breath.

Now. The time is now, Thorn told himself. All the doubts that had always lingered somewhere far in the back of his mind withered and vanished — replace by a rock-solid certainty. He slipped his hand into his pocket, brought out a small case, and dropped to one knee.

Helen looked down at him, her eyes open wide in surprise and wonder.

“Peter? What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m proposing,” he said simply, opening the case to show her the diamond ring inside. “Will you marry me, Helen?”

“But what about the Army …” she started to say.

Thorn shook his head. They’d gone over this ground a dozen times before. Helen had often worried that they would be torn apart by the demands of their respective careers. But now he had an answer for that. “I’m leaving the Army. I signed the papers last week. As of December 1, I plan to hang up my uniform for good.”

“Oh, Peter,” she whispered. “You love being a soldier.” Thorn nodded simply. “Yes, I do.” Then he took her hand.

“But I love you more, Helen. I love you with all my heart and soul.

And I want to spend the rest of my life with you — wherever you go, and whatever you do.”

He meant every word, he realized suddenly. He knew he would miss the Army — the camaraderie, the pride, the traditions, all the emotions bound up in the time-honored phrase “Duty, Honor, Country” that had been drummed into him first as a boy and then as a young man. But the turmoil and heartache of the last few weeks had forced him to confront a deeper and even more basic truth: Helen was more important to him than anything and anyone else in the world. And he was prepared to sacrifice everything to win her heart and to stand by her side.

Still kneeling beneath a cloudless blue sky, Thorn looked up into her bright, tear-filled eyes, waiting for the answer that would change his life forever.

World News Roundup “Dateline — Riyadh, Saudi Arabia:

The first full session of the special congressional committee investigating the administration’s conduct during what had become known as “The June Bomb Plot” drew an overflow crowd.

Staffers, journalists, and curious members of the general public occupied practically every square inch of the large committee room and much of the nearby hall space — all eagerly awaiting the testimony many believed would blow the lid off a massive case of private and political corruption. Several members of the administration, the White House Chief of Staff and the Attorney General among them, were already gone — driven out of office in disgrace following revelations of their witting and unwitting involvement in Ibrahim’s machinations.

“ … I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” Helen finished the oath, lowered her right hand, and sat down beside Peter Thorn — resplendent in the dress uniform he was still entitled to wear.

He smiled at her, squeezed her hand under the table, and then forced a suitably solemn expression as the committee chairman began asking his opening question.

“Now, Deputy Assistant Director Gray, I understand—”

Helen leaned forward abruptly. “Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, I feel compelled to correct the record.” The television camera lights gleamed on a diamond ring and gold band on her left hand. “Actually, it’s Deputy Assistant Director Thorn now.”