These days, Charlie Griggs was driving a desk at Fort Bragg. It was his bad luck to get the job baby-sitting this maniac professor for reasons of geography. At the time the 318th Missile Squadron was being overrun by a bunch of Bible-spouting crazies, Charlie Griggs was a special guest visiting Hell Week at the Naval Special Warfare Center, the SEALs training base outside San Diego. He had just walked into the “grinder,” the forlorn asphalt exercise yard, passing under the sign, “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,” when he was ordered to fly up the coast to Palo Alto and snag the professor. At least the surprise assignment got him away from Woody Waller’s constant bragging.
God, they were a tiresome bunch, and Griggs had seen enough push-ups in the mud and screaming drill instructors to last a lifetime. As for the macho saloon antics — pouring rum on a bar and lighting it in memory of a dead colleague — well, melodrama never played well for Griggs. These days, his specialty was hostage rescue. He was an expert in demolitions and small arms fire and could tell you just how large a charge of plastique to attach to a door to blow it without killing the hostages inside. He was equally adept at “instinctive firing” and “rapid-aim fire,” and to this day, would not mind being the first one through a blown door where the first decision is whether to shoot and whom.
But Griggs’ days of rappelling down buildings are over. Lately, he’s been drawing up contingency plans for Delta Force’s counter terrorist unit, coordinating with Woody Waller’s SEAL-Team 6 and the F.B.I.’s Hostage Response Unit. Griggs hates the parochial rivalries, hates playing the role of the eager cutthroat commando, but it has to be done, or Woody Waller would gobble up ever blood-and-guts assignment. Now, the two of them have General Hugh Corrigan surrounded and are pleading their respective cases.
“General, my men deserve to be first to go down that hole,” Griggs says.
“With all due respect, Charlie, SEAL Team-6 is faster and better than any team Delta can muster,” Waller responds.
“Easy, Woody. You too, Charlie,” the general says. “You’ll both get your chance.”
“I hope so, sir.” Griggs knows he is expected to beat the drums a little harder so he sucks it up and lets loose with the macho bullshit. “My men haven’t tasted blood since Desert Storm.”
Commander Woody Waller laughs in mock disbelief. He is a square-jawed, crew-cut Hollywood version of a Navy SEAL. “That was a real ballbuster, huh Charlie? Rounding up some starving ragheads.”
“My men were human trip-wires behind enemy lines while your Malibu lifeguards were playing with boogie boards in the Gulf.”
“Individual experimental landing craft,” Waller corrects him, though in fact, they were black boogie boards sent from California for a nighttime beach landing that never occurred.
“Delta Force was eating the Republican Guard for lunch, not riding around Kuwait City in dune buggies.”
“Fast Attack Vehicles. Charlie, why are you so jealous of the SEALs, anyway?”
“Enough, already!” General Corrigan holds up his arms. “Colonel Zwick reports that Morning Star has removed the MGCS computer. There’s the distinct possibility that they already have the Secondary Launch Code or are about to get it.” The general pushes past the two rivals. “So I suggest you save your animosity for the enemy, gentlemen.”
-45-
Operation Masada
A grate opens in the floor and Jack Jericho pulls himself into the Launch Equipment Room. He moves to the door and peeks cautiously into the tunnel. Three commandos are headed his way. Jericho ducks back inside, dashes through a row of supply shelves and climbs to the top shelf. Just then, the door opens, and the commandos come in, high-low, M-16’s wheeling in every direction.
One of the commandos flicks on the light switch. Each takes a row and begins searching. In the middle row, a commando stops and listens. Maybe he’s heard something, but it could have been the footsteps of his comrades. He listens again, seems to sense something, then hears a metallic rattle above him. He looks up just as a Jeep’s heavy snow chain drops around his neck. He reaches up to toss of the chain, but above him on the shelf, Jack Jericho yanks it tight.
A gurgling sound comes from the commando who struggles against the pressure on his neck. Muscles straining, Jericho lifts the commando off his feet and ties both ends of the chain around the shelf’s support pole.
“Samuel!” one of the other commandos yells. “Samuel, where are you?”
Jericho leaps off the shelf and scurries down the row toward the light equipment pen at the end of the room.
The other two commandos race into the middle row where they find Samuel hanging by his neck, feet swaying two feet above the floor. The first commando yells to his unseen foe, “I’ll kill you myself!”
Jericho hears the threat as he opens the gate to the equipment pen.
“Come,” the second commando tells his comrade. “Let’s call for the others.”
“No! He’s in here, and we’ll find him.”
A sound stops them.
A whirring.
A blinding headlight turns into their row. Something moves toward them. They shield their eyes and see it.
A forklift!
Jack Jericho pulls back a lever, and the lift blade rises. The forklift is barely narrower than the row between the shelves. The commandos can turn and run, or they can stand and fight. Both raise their weapons and unleash a barrage of gunfire that ricochets with metallic clangs off the approaching forklift. Then, they turn and run. At the first opening, they duck into the next row, Jericho turns the corner and chases them through the maze of shelves. Finally, they come to a dead end against a concrete wall. The commandos turn and fire. Jericho hunches down into the seat of the forklift. Sparks fly as bullets ping off the steel shelf that supports the blades.
The forklift plows ahead, Jericho leaning hard on the throttle.
The commandos stand their ground.
The two-pronged forks bear down on them, gut-high.
Whomp! Whomp! The commandos are impaled like olives on toothpicks.
The forklift stops with a thud as the blades crunch into the wall, blood spurting. Jericho throws the machine into reverse, and with the commandos still attached, he wheels out of the Equipment Room and into the tunnel. He turns toward the launch control capsule and opens up the throttle. Fifty yards down the tunnel, he passes under a panning video camera.
At that moment, in the launch control capsule, Brother David looks up into the panel of security monitors. Flashing by, he sees the forklift with the two bodies aloft. “Damnation!”
David stands and looks out the small blast window overlooking the tunnel. The forklift is aimed straight for the side of the capsule. “Stop him!” Two commandos storm out of the capsule and into the tunnel. They open fire just as Jericho locks the throttle down and dives off the forklift, rolling over twice and coming to a stop within five feet of a floor grate.
The forklift rolls on, each skewered commando still hoisted there. The two commandos on the floor duck out of the way just as the forklift crashes into the capsule, plastering the bodies to its wall and streaking the blast window with blood.
Inside the capsule, David paces like a caged tiger. Turning toward Dr. Susan Burns, he fumes, “The fool dares to taunt me. He has shed the blood of saints and prophets.” David picks up a microphone and hits a button. His voice can be heard all throughout the missile facility, even in the sump under the tunnel, where Jericho now makes his way through the maze of piping. “Now, heathen, hear the Word. As it is written, ‘I will make Mine arrows drunk with blood, and My sword shall devour your flesh.’”