David’s heart leaped. Stunned, he looked up at the sky. The Americans had arrived. Zalinsky had come through. Langley was watching their backs after all, and David could hardly believe it. He wanted to smile. He wanted to laugh. But they weren’t out of the woods yet. He propped Fox up against one side of the ambulance and gave him back the MP5.
“Shoot anyone you don’t recognize — you got it?”
“Got it, boss.”
“I’ll be right back,” David promised, then took his AK-47 and raced to find Crenshaw.
“Nick!” he shouted as he ran through the flames and smoke and toward the pickup. “Nick? It’s me, David. Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” Crenshaw shouted back. “Is that really you?”
“Yes, it’s me, Nick,” David replied. “Don’t shoot. I’m coming around.”
He was glad to hear Crenshaw’s voice, but when he got to his colleague’s side, all the color drained from his face. The man had been shot multiple times. David counted two bullet holes in his chest and several more to the legs.
David groaned and bit back a curse. “What happened?”
“I’m fine,” Crenshaw lied. “I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not fine,” David replied. “We need to get you out of here.”
“Did you see those missiles?” Crenshaw asked. “Those were Hellfires. I thought we were toast for sure when those reinforcements arrived. But somebody up there is taking care of us, eh?”
“They certainly are,” David said, but he was worried his friend was slipping into shock. Crenshaw’s voice was actually quite strong. But he was losing blood quickly and didn’t seem to be focusing on the issue at hand: survival.
“I’m going to pick you up now,” David said. “Steve is over by the ambulance. We need to get you over to him. Now hold on tight. Let’s go.”
As David picked up Crenshaw, the man began writhing in pain. For a moment, David doubted the wisdom of moving him at all, but he had no choice. His only shot at disabling the warhead was keeping the team together. He hoped Crenshaw could hold a weapon for a few more minutes and provide at least some covering fire, as more reinforcements were sure to arrive at any moment.
Despite Crenshaw’s shrieks of pain, David heaved him over his shoulder and ran him to the ambulance as well, shouting ahead to Fox to let him know they were friendlies. Fortunately Fox heard them and held his fire.
David lowered Crenshaw down on the other side of the ambulance and gave both men orders to watch his back. This was it. He needed five minutes. No more, but no less either. Despite their severe injuries, both men gave their word.
47
Once again David and his team could hear the distinctive, high-pitched whine of an incoming Hellfire missile. All of them pressed themselves to the ground and covered their heads and faces and felt the ground shake violently as another massive explosion erupted a few hundred yards to the north. As David looked up, he could see that Zalinsky had struck again, this time taking out the Syrian special police unit that was just about to overrun them.
Still, there was no time to breathe easier. David asked Crenshaw and Fox if either of them still had their satphones with them. Fox had his and handed it over. David speed-dialed the Global Operations Center at Langley.
“Don’t say thanks,” Zalinsky said when he came on the line. “There isn’t time.”
“I know,” David said. “But thanks anyway.”
“You’ve got more special forces units rolling from the air base. You need to get this warhead disabled and then get your men out of there.”
“I’m with you on that,” David said.
He tried to open the back of the ambulance, but it was stuck. He tried to pry it open, but to no avail. Then he used the butt of his machine gun to smash what was left of the rear window and tried to jimmy the door open, but it still wouldn’t work. Abandoning that approach, he entered through the front door and crawled into the back, opened the protective steel case, and found himself staring at an actual, viable, fully armed Iranian atomic warhead. He used a Swiss Army knife to carefully unscrew a plate on the side and within seconds was looking inside the heart of the weapon.
The problem, however, was that there was no angle by which the cameras on the Predator could see what he could see. Thus, Zalinsky and the nuclear weapons experts at his side back at Langley were at a severe disadvantage, unable to assess the weapon’s precise design or possible security features.
Zalinsky ordered David to begin describing everything he saw. David shuddered. He’d broken out in a cold sweat and his hands were shaking.
“It looks a lot like a W88,” David began, referring to the U.S.’s most advanced thermonuclear warhead.
“It can’t — Khan’s design wasn’t that advanced,” said Zalinsky, referring to the plans that A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, had sold to the Iranians several years earlier.
“Then Saddaji improved it,” David insisted.
He described to Zalinsky the key components he saw one by one, beginning with the Primary at the top, the bomb’s initial explosive trigger, designed to create an implosion that would begin to release the thermonuclear detonation.
“Is it spherical?” Zalinsky asked.
“No.”
“Two-point?”
“Yes.”
“Hollow-pit, fusion-boosted?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What about the Secondary?” Zalinsky asked, referring to the weapon’s additional explosive trigger, whose function was to accelerate and intensify the implosion and create a maximum thermonuclear blast. “Do you see that, too?”
“I do.”
“Is that one spherical?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“All-fissile, fusion-boosted?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Uranium or plutonium pit?”
“Looks like the core is plutonium-239, sir,” David replied. “But it’s got a uranium-235 spark plug and a U-235 pusher as well.”
“What about high-explosive lenses?”
“I see two of them.”
“How about in the lower left corner, down near the base of the warhead?”
“There’s a booster gas canister,” David replied. “And there’s a small metal pipe going from the canister into the heart of the Primary.”
“And the metal casing around the whole device? What shape is it?”
“I don’t know,” David said. “It’s kind of curved — like an hourglass or a peanut.”
Zalinsky cursed. “They really did it,” he sighed. “This thing could take out all of Tel Aviv.”
“Or all of New York,” David added, his heart pounding so hard he thought Zalinsky ought to be able to hear it.
“You can’t let it ever get that far,” Zalinsky ordered.
“I won’t, sir,” David replied. “I promise.”
Suddenly fresh gunfire erupted.
“What is that?” Zalinsky asked.
David frantically looked around through the windows of the ambulance but couldn’t see clearly.
“I don’t know,” he told Zalinsky. “I don’t have a visual.”
He called to Crenshaw, but Crenshaw said he didn’t see a thing. Just then, however, another burst of automatic gunfire erupted, then a second and a third.
“Steve, man, you okay?” David shouted.
“No,” Fox shouted back. “I’ve got three hostiles approaching up Highway 7. And another dozen moving up the street — maybe more.”
“Can you hold them off?”
“Not for long,” Fox shouted. “Not without help.”