Shadow Tyrants

TEN

For a moment, everyone in the op center froze, including Max, who stared at the sight of the missile disappearing into the distance.

Linda had been glued to the radar looking for any signs of an incoming aircraft or missile. Nobody had been expecting a missile launch from a container on the Triton Star.

“What kind of missile was that?” Max asked Murph, the ship’s foremost weapons expert.

“BrahMos cruise missile,” Murph answered without hesitation. “Supersonic. Indian design.”

Max’s first priority was the safety of the ship. “Activate defensive measures. Lock on with an anti-aircraft missile and fire.”

“Firing Aster,” Murph said. The Oregon’s hull reverberated with the sound of the European anti-aircraft missile rocketing out of its tube toward the cruise missile.

“Gatling guns and Metal Storm coming online,” Murph added.

The Aster anti-aircraft missile was their primary defensive weapon. But if the cruise missile turned around and avoided the Aster, the Oregon also had secondary defenses. Hull plates retracted to reveal three six-barreled Gatling guns that fired 20mm tungsten shells at a rate of three thousand rounds per minute. The Metal Storm gun rose out of the stern, ready to fire a wall of five hundred electronically activated rounds in the span of six milliseconds.

“Is the missile turning back toward us?”

“Negative,” Linda said. “It’s tracking on a straight path away from us southeast.”

“Time to target?”

“If it doesn’t change course,” Murph said, turning to look at Max with a concerned expression, “time to intercept the cruise missile is thirty-two seconds.”

“What’s the matter?”

“The BrahMos got a ten-second head start, and it’s almost as fast as the Aster.” The short-range anti-aircraft missile was designed to intercept airplanes and missiles coming toward the ship, not for chasing them down.

Murph put a map up on the viewscreen showing the red dot of the cruise missile heading away from them at Mach 3 and the Aster missile in pursuit, gradually gaining on it at Mach 3.5.

“If we’re not the target,” Max said, “where’s it heading?”

“Could be a ship in that direction,” Linda said, “though I don’t see any on the scope.”

“The target isn’t a ship,” Eric said. “Look at the map.”

Eric zoomed out and extended a dotted line along the BrahMos’s current heading. It was heading directly for Diego Garcia.

“Hali, get in touch with Diego Garcia any way you can and tell them that a cruise missile loaded with a toxic nerve agent is coming their way.”

Hali shook his head. “I still can’t contact anyone there, but I’ll keeping trying.”

“Ten seconds to impact,” Murph said.

The distance between the two dots was closing at an agonizingly slow pace.

Murph starting counting down.

“Five… four… three…”

Then he stopped. The dot representing the anti-aircraft missile winked out.

“What happened?” Max asked.

Murph slapped the panel in frustration and turned to him. “Ran of out fuel just before it caught up with the target. Now there’s no way for us to shoot it down.”

“How long until it hits Diego Garcia?”

“Nine minutes,” Eric said.

“Potential casualties?”

“If that missile is loaded with even half the Novichok that was reported stolen, we’re looking at a catastrophe.”

“Hali, get me Juan.”

After a moment, Hali said, “The Chairman’s on speaker.”

“Juan,” Max said, “Rasul just launched a BrahMos supersonic cruise missile from the Triton Star. We fired an Aster but couldn’t shoot the BrahMos down. You’re going to have to track him down and get him to send the missile’s abort code.”

“Easier said than done. We’re still looking for him.”

Max looked at the timer Eric had put up on the screen showing the missile’s time to impact.

“Not to put any pressure on you, but if you don’t find Rasul in the next eight minutes and thirty seconds, every person on Diego Garcia is going to die.”

Juan moved quickly down the accessway to the next corner, with Eddie close behind covering their rear in case Rasul circled back around them. He stopped at the crossing passageway and peered around the corner, but Rasul wasn’t in sight. Finding him in the maze of corridors in the next eight minutes was going to be a crapshoot.

“Max,” Juan said into his earpiece mic, “if we can’t catch Rasul, I might have a backup plan. Have Hali call Langston Overholt and get him to link up with Barbara Goodman at the 50th Space Wing in Colorado Springs. Tell him it’s about Operation Theseus.”

“You and your Plan Cs,” Max said. Juan could practically hear him rolling his eyes at Juan’s tendency to improvise last-minute schemes. “It’s the middle of the night back in the U.S. We’ll just wake them up.”

“How are we going to find Rasul in a five-hundred-foot-long ship in less than eight minutes?” Eddie asked Juan.

“He’s wearing an NBC suit,” Juan replied, “so that means he’s planning to set off his own Novichok release.”

Eddie nodded. “He wants to get rid of witnesses.”

“But we’ve put a crimp in his plans. He wasn’t expecting two ships.”

“He’ll want to get the nerve agent airborne. Maybe he already had a plan to do that.”

“Then why make a run for it and go into the ship? When I saw him…” Juan’s voice trailed off as he replayed the shoot-out in his mind.

“What?” Eddie asked.

“I only saw him for a split second, but I don’t think he was wearing gloves.”

“He wouldn’t have forgotten them.”

“I don’t know,” Juan said. “Maybe he had them in his pocket, but if he didn’t, he’ll need some replacements.”

“They can’t be just any old gloves. They’d have to be chemical-resistant.”

“Like rubber gloves. I can think of two possibilities. One is the mess, where they might have rubber gloves for cleaning. The other is that he’s circling back to take the ones from Keith Tao’s suit.”

“Split up?”

“It’s our best shot,” Juan said with a nod. He couldn’t check his watch, which was inside his suit. “We can’t have much more than seven minutes left.”

“I’ll take the mess,” Eddie said.

“I’ll check Tao. And remember, we need him alive.”

Eddie nodded and ran toward the mess.

As Juan sprinted back the way he’d come, he radioed Max the plan. Max told him that Raven, Linc, and MacD were suiting up and would be over to help out with the search as soon as they were ready. He also said they were down to six and half minutes and still no contact with Diego Garcia to warn them of the approaching danger.

He decided to go around and between the row of containers. If Rasul had done the same, Juan would be coming up behind him.

When he got to the space between the containers, he could see the front door still ajar. Beyond it was Tao’s body.

The suit was bloody, but the gloves were still attached to it.

Juan moved forward with the submachine gun raised until he got to the end of the row and eased around the open door. Still no sign of Rasul.

He was about to consider this plan a bust when he heard a piece of metal clang inside the container. Juan poked his head around the corner and saw Rasul emerge from the decontamination chamber with gloves on that matched his suit.

Juan could have kicked himself for not checking the duffel. If the gloves were still inside, that was the only reason Rasul would have returned.

Rasul was holding a bucket with a rocket-powered line thrower. In a flash, Juan knew what he had in mind.

“Drop it, Rasul!” Juan yelled.

Rasul turned and looked at him in stunned disbelief, visible because he had a full-face mask instead of the goggles that Juan wore.

He didn’t hesitate. Despite Juan’s warning, he aimed the top of the bucket at the sky, and his hand reached for the trigger.

Juan fired a single round at Rasul’s shoulder. He needed him alive.

Rasul spun and collapsed onto his back, but he closed his finger on the trigger as he fell. The rocket launched past his head and into the decontamination chamber, where it ricocheted around until it ran out of fuel.

Juan ran forward. Rasul reached for a pistol in his belt, but the gloves were clumsy enough that Juan got to him first and stepped on his wrist.

“How do I send the self-destruct code to the missile?” Juan demanded with the P90 pointed at Rasul’s face.

“The phone in my front pocket,” Rasul said with a smile.

With his boot still on Rasul’s good hand, Juan reached down and pulled out the phone. He pushed the HOME button, and the screen asked for the passcode. Juan’s gloves were designed to work with touchpads.

“What’s your passcode?”

“I’ll never tell,” Rasul said with a gurgle. The smile had disappeared. His lips were turning blue.

It was the Novichok. The nerve agent had gotten into the suit where Juan had shot him.

“You only have a few seconds left to live,” Juan said. “Tell me the passcode or I’ll just use your thumbprint when you’re dead.”

His back arched, and he screamed in agony as the Novichok took control of his body. Then he went silent and rigid, but Juan could see that the eyes were still seeing. They began to water from the misery he was going through.

Juan yanked off Rasul’s gloves and tried to unlock the phone with the fingerprints on both of the assassin’s thumbs.

Nothing. Even if there was an abort signal to be sent from the phone, they’d never be able to crack it and gain access in the next five minutes.

That left one chance. Juan ran toward the Oregon. If he couldn’t stop that missile from detonating over Diego Garcia, every person at the military base would suffer Rasul’s gruesome fate.