Target America

79

Caraway studied the addresses as Brighton drove northeast up Orange Avenue. “Let’s gamble and head straight up to Second and Alameda,” he said. “That’s practically right outside the main gate to the base — only about three thousand feet from where the Reagan’s docked.”

“First, we’ll hit the one on Sixth.” Brighton hung a right past Spreckels Park. “We’re right here anyhow.” He pulled to the curb in front of a white split-level home with a Sold sign in front.

Caraway got out and sauntered up onto the brick porch, knocking at the door. He waited a minute, and then knocked again, harder this time. He heard a thump and stepped aside, wishing he had a pistol. A minute later, he knocked again. After three full minutes, he went back to the Bronco and spoke to Brighton through the open window. “No one’s answering, but somebody’s gotta be in there. I heard a thump.”

“What kind of a thump?” asked one of the SEALs in back.

Caraway shrugged. “I don’t know… a thump.”

“What’s your gut tell you?” Brighton asked, his head on a swivel, watching for trouble. “We’re racing the clock here.”

Caraway stood up, glancing back at the house. Then he reached into the truck and took out the Benelli 12-gauge with a fourteen-inch barrel. “I’m gonna have a look around back. If you hear this thing go off, you know we’re at the right place.”

The SEALs in the backseat primed their weapons.

Caraway disappeared behind the head-high shrubbery lining the walk leading around to the back of the house. All of the shades were drawn, and the house appeared to be deserted. He tried the knob on the back door. It was locked, so he took a step back and kicked it open. If the place had a burglar alarm, it was silent.

Caraway shouldered the shotgun and moved inside, his finger on the trigger as he crossed the empty kitchen. He smelled a faint odor of spoiled food coming from the fridge. He slipped through the dim of the empty living room and made his way to the foot of the stairs. On the floor by the front door was a small wooden knickknack sign that read “Home is where the heart is” in tacky red lettering. He picked it up and turned it over to see the tiny loop of wire on the back. He hooked it over the trim nail sticking out of the door and returned quickly to the Bronco, concealing the shotgun behind his leg from passing traffic.

He got in and took his sunglasses from the dash. “We can go. This ain’t the place.”

“What was the thump?” asked Samir.

“A friggin’ tchotchke fell off the wall.” He looked out the passenger window and shook his head, muttering, “Son of a bitch.”

Brighton paused with his hand on the shifter lever. “What’s wrong?”

Caraway lifted his foot. “I blew out my flip-flop kicking the door in.”

One of the SEALs in back chuckled as Brighton pulled away from the curb. “You didn’t bring your tactical flap-jacks, Senior Chief?”

Caraway took off both flip-flops and threw them out the window in disgust.

A short time later, they parked across the street from a single-story house on the corner of Second Street and Alameda Boulevard. It was a simple, boring-looking home with half-brick siding. The curtains were drawn, and an American flag flew from a pole mounted beside the house. Pope’s email listed the place as having been up for rent, but there was no sign in the yard now, and there was a late-nineties Jeep Cherokee parked in the drive with Texas plates.

“Anybody else think this is the place?” Brighton said.

Caraway looked over the seat at the SEAL who’d almost shot him back at the hotel. “Santiago, gimme your piece. I’m going to the door.”

Santiago handed over the Sig Sauer .45.

“Hold on a second,” Brighton said. A pair of Coronado police cruisers pulled to a stop on the NASNI side of Alameda Blvd. “What the hell is this shit?” A faint smile flickered across his face a moment later as he imagined his son saying, “Daddy said shit!”

“Cat’s out of the bag,” Samir said. “SOG must have put word out over the wire.”

“No,” Caraway said, “SOG doesn’t do that. This is something else. Somebody with the FBI must have sent word to the local fuzz.” He checked the pistol to make sure there was a round in the chamber. “This is gonna get fucked up in a hurry, Commander. Whattaya wanna do?”

“Beats me,” Brighton muttered, opening the door. “Everybody stay put.”

Caraway gave the piece back to Santiago. “Somebody get Cox on the phone and tell him to roll this way.”

They watched as Brighton made his way across the street toward the lead cruiser.

One of the SEALs kept an eye on the house. The curtains parted briefly and then closed. “I got movement inside.”

“Everybody get ready to dismount the vehicle,” Caraway ordered.

Brighton went around the front of the cruiser to the driver’s door, keeping a smile on his face. “Good morning, Sergeant. I’m Lieutenant Commander Brighton, SEAL Team Three.”

The cop glanced over at the Bronco, but with the sun glinting off the dark-tinted window, he couldn’t see into the vehicle. Judging by the “bone frog” tattoo on Brighton’s upper arm — along with his military bearing, the sergeant trusted that he was probably who he said he was. “What can I do for you, Commander?”

“I absolutely know how this is gonna sound, Sergeant, but I came over to find out what you guys are doing here.”

The cop stared at him, sensing that the SEAL knew more about what was going on inside the home than he did. “We were sent over here to keep an eye on that house on the corner. What can you tell me about it?”

Brighton kept the smile on his face, feeling they were being watched by unseen eyes. “Sergeant, the Special Operations Group back in Langley has intelligence to indicate there may be a live nuclear weapon inside that house. To make matters worse, it could well be set to go off in less than an hour.”

The cop glanced over. “You mean it’s here? On Coronado?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it, with two nuclear aircraft carriers docked less than half a mile away?”

The sergeant got on the radio to the car behind him. “Mike, pull on past me down the block and park out of sight of the house.”

The cruiser behind him pulled away to the east, and the sergeant looked up at Brighton. “You got more SEALs in your rig over there?”

“I do,” Brighton said. “We were about to move on the place when you guys pulled up. Do you mind if I ask where your intel came from?”

The cop shook his head. “Mine came from dispatch; don’t ask me where dispatch got theirs. Listen, I’m gonna pull over there behind my man and get on the phone to my captain. As far as I’m concerned, this just became a military operation — hell, we’re thirty feet from the base. I’ll let my people know the navy already has men on the scene in plain clothes so this doesn’t turn into a big mess.”

“Thanks, Sarge. Tell ’em we have an EOD man on the scene as well, will ya?”

The cop nodded. “What are you guys gonna do?”

Brighton smiled. “We’re gonna get inside that house and disarm the weapon.”

“Semper Fi.” The cop winked and stepped on the gas, pulling away from the curb.

Brighton went back to the Bronco and got in. “The jig’s up. This corner’s gonna be swarming with local heat any minute, so it’s now or never. Anybody got any doubts?”

“None,” Caraway said. “They’re in there peeking out the goddamn windows at us.”

“We’ll pull around the corner and double back on foot.”

As they were pulling around the corner, three black SUVs came racing up the street toward the house from the south. The front door to the house opened, and two Caucasian men came running out with AK-47s, firing on the SUVs from the sidewalk before the drivers even had time to stop. The SEALs opened up through the back window of the Bronco as Brighton made a right around the corner. He hit the brakes just out of sight, and the team dismounted in flip-flops and bare feet.

Caraway grabbed Samir. “Stay here. If you get hit, we won’t have anybody to work the bomb.”

The SEALs ran between the houses, making their way back to Second Street, where they spotted four bloody FBI agents crouched behind the wheels of their SUVs. Several agents were dead in the vehicles. One of the panicked survivors spotted the SEALs and fired his M4, hitting Santiago in the chest and killing him instantly.

“Cease fire!” Brighton screamed, knocking away the barrel of Caraway’s Mk 12 before he could shoot the FBI man. “US Navy! Cease fire!”

“What the fuck are you doing here?” demanded the agent who had pulled the trigger.

“He’s dead!” one of the SEALs shouted, his fingers on Santiago’s carotid artery. “You motherfucker!”

Caraway grabbed his shirt and jerked him close, shouting, “Enemy front — eyes on!”

The SEAL forgot the FBI man for the moment and maneuvered for cover as a high volume of AK-47 fire from the house raked the line of SUVs. The sergeant and the other Coronado cop appeared at the corner gripping M4s as they maneuvered through the yard. They were both hit by grazing fire and immediately fell back under cover.

“The bottom of that house is brick,” Caraway said. “It’s gonna be tough reducing these guys in a hurry.”

“We got tear gas in the last truck,” the FBI man said. “But getting to it is gonna be a bitch. Those two guys who shot us up are still running around loose over there.”

Brighton raised up to fire a few rounds from the SR-25, calling down the line to Caraway. “Chief, we still got two tangos loose outside the house. Call Cox and tell him to get his ass up here!”

“He’s on the way!”

A Chechen dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt stepped from the shrubbery two houses down on the same side of the street and opened fire with an AK-47, killing all four remaining FBI agents and wounding another SEAL before Brighton dropped him.

Now only Brighton and Caraway remained combat effective.

“Fall back through the houses!” Brighton shouted, grabbing the wounded SEAL by the wrist and dragging him. “There’s still another one loose in our rear!”

Caraway ran down the walk, grabbing the SEAL’s other arm, and together they dragged him back through the neighboring yards to the police cars where the two wounded cops lay bleeding in one of the cruisers.

“Backup’s on the way,” the sergeant groaned, holding his gut.

“Where the hell is Samir?” Brighton said.

“The Arab lookin’ guy?” The other cop pointed down the block. “One of those bastards took a shot at us from over there, and he took off after him with my M4.”

Cox’s red Blazer came screaming down Alameda from the northeast, screeching to a halt when Caraway ran out to flag him down. The naval air station across the street had gone on alert, and Marines were gathering at the gates along with armored Humvees bristling with .50 caliber machine guns.

Cox sat gripping the wheel. “We saw what happened to the FBI from the other end of the street and came around this way.”

“We have to move on that house and take it now,” Brighton said. “If the feds show up in force, they’ll shut us down, and there’s no telling how much time they’ll waste putting together their master plan.” He looked at his watch. “It’s 08:15.”

“Why haven’t they just blown up the damn thing?”

“They probably don’t know how,” Samir said.

Brighton turned around to see the EOD man standing there with a long gash in his forehead, holding an M4. “Fuck you been, sailor?”

“Killing a Chechen,” Samir said, wiping the blood from his face with his hand. “At least I think he’s dead. I hit him pretty fucking hard with the barrel of this rifle.”

Caraway grinned. “It’s a carbine.”

“Whatever,” Samir said. “They haven’t blown the bomb because they don’t how to reset the timer, and it doesn’t have a dead-man switch.”

“How do you know all that?”

Samir looked around. “Because we’re still here.”

“Maybe they’re just dedicated to their schedule,” Brighton ventured. “Waiting till the last possible second.”

“Sure, maybe, but would you be that stupid?”

Cox yanked the SAW from the front seat. “Hear all those sirens? We’d better move.”

The six SEALs moved off past the houses, with the EOD man bringing up the rear. The house on the corner came into view, and the Chechens inside began taking potshots at them.

Cox propped the SAW’s bipod on a brick wall. “I’ll pin ’em down. You guys flank left and right!” He opened fire on the front of the house, raking it back and forth in steady bursts of suppressing fire. The enemy was forced to take cover under the hail of fully jacketed 5.56 mm rounds. Brighton took Samir and one other SEAL across the street toward the north side of the house. Caraway and three others ducked between the FBI vehicles with M4s to flank south.

Sirens were screaming in from every direction now, police cruisers, ambulances, and fire trucks alike.

Caraway and his people ran around to the back door, firing directly into the house on full auto. Men inside began shouting to one another in panicked Chechen, realizing they were about to be sieged out.

Brighton and his men stopped at the side door on the north side, holding fire to await Caraway’s imminent breach.

Cox’s combat instinct told him the moment was ripe, so he bolted across the street and kicked in the front door, spraying automatic fire into a pair of wounded men laying on the floor.

Three Chechens came shouting from the kitchen at the back of the house. Cox summersaulted beneath their arc of fire, twisting around with bullets ripping into his legs as he let loose another murderous hail of fire, cutting through the wall and killing all three men as they became tangled together in their attempt to get clear. He ran out of ammo and tossed the SAW aside, grabbing an AK-47 from the dead man beside him.

“I’m in!” he screamed. “I’m in!”

He got unsteadily to his feet, bleeding from his legs as he stomped pugnaciously through the tiny house. Someone was shuffling around in the back bedroom as Caraway brought his men in through the back door. Cox limped down the hall to find a man shoving something into a crawl space at the back of the closet. He shot him with the AK-47 and dragged him out by the feet.

Caraway came into the room, seeing that Cox was badly wounded. “Whattaya got?”

“Get Samir,” Cox said, sinking painfully to his knees. “The bomb’s in the closet.”