THE ROUND ARMORED HATCH cover above the driver’s position was folded back and Kyle dropped easily into the compartment on the front left of the M-113 that contained the nuke. Again, he was on familiar ground because he had driven these boxes before. To break the monotony of long hours of down time in Afghanistan, he had occasionally joined some other guys in taking a few old APCs into the empty desert for some totally unauthorized off-road racing.
He adjusted the seat on its post so that he could see through the viewport and also use the infrared periscope. Swanson was not planning to shoot anybody, but did not want to have his head sticking out of the hatch as an easy target. His right foot rested on the large accelerator pedal. He checked the hand brake and the hydraulic service brake pedal. The only major change he could see was that a sort of steering wheel on a yoke had replaced the twin tiller handles to make driving easier. It had an automatic transmission. Sweet.
There was no key, just a switch to turn it on. Kyle clicked it and the big 350-horsepower diesel coughed and grumbled to life. The dials flickered and showed a full tank of diesel, which would give him a range of more than a hundred miles.
Swanson hoisted himself back through the hatch and went over to his prisoner, stripped away the AK-47, and tossed the weapon into the other APC. The young terrorist’s eyes grew wide in fear. “Relax, Junior. You’re free to go,” Kyle said. He removed all of the tape and stuffed it in his pocket so as to leave no sign that the man might be there against his will. “Good luck.”
The prisoner stood perfectly still for a moment, rubbing his wrists as his captor disappeared back inside the big armored vehicle. The hatch slammed and locked. When the engine roared, Junior broke from his trance and ran to retrieve his rifle. He had been left behind as bait.
Swanson slipped the transmission into gear, pressed down hard on the accelerator and the powerful engine roared as the 23,000-pound vehicle lurched into motion. Its rolled aluminum armor made quick work of the closed, thin door and he plunged through, straight out onto the concrete apron. He turned the steering wheel to the left without touching the brakes, as easily as he would have turned a pickup truck. Lining up with the secondary gate, he stomped the accelerator and the APC chewed across the open area. The improved tracks and suspension kept the ride steady and the big machine smashed through the locked gate.
Off to his right, tips of fire still pierced the dark sky as buildings blazed in the foreign compound and Kyle took a side road that led far around the fighting. Within five minutes, the broad tracks of the APC were off the concrete and onto desert sand as he headed into the deep nowhere.
30
THE WHITE HOUSE
“HE DID WHAT ?” STEVE Hanson, the chief of staff for President Mark Tracy, pushed away from his desk in surprise. After a career in the turbulent world of high-tech start-ups, bitter political campaigns, and a long stint in Washington, Hanson believed he was immune to shock. “Are you bullshitting me, General?”
“Not at all. You heard me right.” Major General Bradley Middleton, the commander of Task Force Trident, was seated in a brown leather chair in front of Hanson’s desk. A small fire burned in the fireplace, giving off a faint, pleasant tinge of smoke. “Gunny Swanson stole a nuke last night.”
“Good Lord. The man never does things by half measures, does he? Just outright stole it?”
“Like a thief in the night, Steve. He broke into the Khobz military facility, found the tactical nuclear warhead mounted in its very own APC beside the missile launcher and drove off with it. With CIA help, a heavy-lift CH-43 helicopter made a rendezvous with him in the desert about twenty klicks outside of town and Swanson took the APC straight on board. The TNW is secure in the weapons bay of the USS Enterprise even as we speak. The armored personnel carrier was dumped overboard.”
“Incredible. The Saudis have no clue?”
Middleton shook his head and ran a hand over his close-cut hair. A big smile spread over the square jaw. “No. That’s the real beauty of it. Swanson also snatched up some terrorist beforehand and abandoned him inside the missile storage building, where he was killed during a shootout with the Saudis. They look at the corpse as proof that the terrorist was part of the group that had also attacked the Khobz oil workers’ compound. He actually was to be part of a rebel RPG team that ambushed a convoy rushing out of the military base. So the obvious conclusion was that his terrorist buddies took the TNW. Is that confusing enough?”
“And Swanson is okay?”
“Yep. The chopper dropped him off on a stretch of beach north of Khobz and he walked back to the CIA safe house. He radioed a report to Major Summers in Kuwait and she forwarded it to me.”
Hanson stood up, holding the yellow legal pad on which he had made notes. “This might be a game-changer, Brad. We know something the Saudis don’t, about their own nuclear weapon.” The chief of staff lapsed into a terrible Hispanic accent for a quirky Ricky Ricardo imitation from I Love Lucy: “The new king has got some ’splainin’ to do.”
“Right.” Middleton laid a folder on Hanson’s desk. “Steve, you keep that copy so you can brief the boss and I’ll privately feed you any more details as they come up. The CIA and the Pentagon obviously already know about what happened, but I told them to keep the secret compartmentalized since it was a black Trident operation. I told them that President Tracy would land on them hard if there were any leaks. So, you need anything else?”
Hanson placed the folder atop his tablet and headed for the Oval Office. “Yeah. Tell Kyle to find another one.”
31
KHOBZ, SAUDI ARABIA
NO LOOSE ENDS. KYLE Swanson remained absolutely still, concentrating totally on the final stages of the fighting that had unrolled at the mosque only 400 meters from his hide. The window on the far side of the shadowed room was open and his emotions were replaced by purpose.
Since the Saudi authorities did not know what had happened to the nuclear warhead, other than that it had disappeared, he intended to keep the mystery tight and intact. To do so meant he was going to have to kill some people. That did not bother him, because in his judgment, they were enemy combatants. Swanson’s personal habit was that when presenting a gift to an enemy, one should wrap it very carefully so as to keep their attention on the unimportant things, like the shape of the box or the crinkly yellow paper wrapping, and not the bomb inside. The trick was as old as the wooden horse at Troy and usually worked. Today, he would add a final flourish of distraction on his theft at the base by tying a big bloody red bow.
Kyle had returned to the safe house just before daylight and found both Homer and Jamal busy closing up shop, arranging det cord and explosives in a pre-arranged pattern that would not only destroy the structure but make it cave in upon itself.
“The Boykin Group is out of business,” Homer declared. “It won’t be long before the Saudis start wondering about how a handful of foreign workers just happened to have enough automatic weapons, ammo, and grenades to whip a pretty big onslaught of rebel bad guys. Come dark, we will be gone.” He rubbed his eyes, and then looked fondly around the well-stocked basement that had been maintained over the years. “Shame to lose all this, but we’ve got no choice. Our cover is blown.”