Right now the station was running its noon news hour, a story about flooding along the Ohio River. The translator gave the information to Ri quickly and confidently, but other than to verify her ability as a translator, the general wasn’t interested. His mind was racing now, thinking about the importance of the next few minutes.
He had entered into this operation with doubt and anger, but as the scheme had progressed, as the pieces fell into place with the finding of the assassin in Syria, and as he’d heard reports back from his agents in Mexico City who were secretly monitoring the actions of the Maldonado cartel, he began to become cautiously optimistic about the entire enterprise.
And when the American President stole the mineral refinery equipment two days earlier, indicating to all he knew Ri’s operation to build the processing plant directly correlated with the operation to obtain ICBM technology, General Ri knew Fire Axe — his operation in Mexico City — had to succeed for his operation in Chongju to succeed.
As if by curse or by fortune, one scheme folded into the other.
For Ri to live… Ryan had to die.
He held a hand in the air, stopping the translator’s work in mid-sentence. Ohio could drown or wash away, Ri could not care less.
“You may pause until the important news comes on the air.”
The translator swallowed uncomfortably. “Apologies, Comrade General. How will I know what is important?”
Ri’s sad eyes blinked and brightened, and his nearly perpetual frown curved upward. “You will know.”
As the Beast made a left off Costa Rica onto Vidal Alcocer, Ryan waved to a small crowd behind a barricade. Most seemed happy to see him, but a few angry-looking people, young males and females, waved a banner that he was not able to read.
Ryan turned to Styles. “I bet the Maldonado killing in Acapulco gave you a few headaches.”
Styles said, “Speaking as ambassador to Mexico, I confess it was a difficult time diplomatically, at least in our dealing with the general public, since the Maldonado brothers did enjoy some popular support around portions of the western regions of the country.”
Ryan nodded.
“But if I might be allowed to speak as a Marine for a moment.”
“Please do.”
“That son of a bitch needed to go.”
Jack nodded again.
Styles leaned forward. “I understand totally if you are not at liberty to say, Mr. President. But I sure would be curious to know if we, in fact, had operators on the ground in Acapulco.”
With a dry look Ryan replied, “Can neither confirm nor deny, Ambassador.” And then he finished the line with a little wink.
Styles turned to look out the window. “You just made my day, Mr. President.”
Four blocks away, two men, one Mexican and in his twenties, the other Iranian and in his forties, sat at a small round table in the back corner of a Starbucks, both men leaning over a mobile phone. The older man held a white cordless telephone in his hand, but it was hidden under the table, resting on the backpack between his feet. Anyone paying attention might notice both men were perspiring, but the other patrons of the shop were engrossed in their own conversations and work.
Adel Zarif watched the video feed intently, hesitant to blink lest he miss the first limousine. Gordo moved the camera around more than Zarif would have liked, and the image shook and jerked as the crowd around the man at the barricade jostled him to get their own cameras up and into position.
But Zarif thought it was a gift from Allah that the image on Emilio’s little phone settled down and centered perfectly just as a black Suburban passed in front of the wall, and the first big black limousine passed, its Mexican hood flags whipping in the breeze.
At the back of the Starbucks, Adel Zarif muttered softly to himself, “Allahu akbar.”
At the same moment, his tablemate, the Maldonado man Emilio, simply said, “Come mierda.” Eat shit.
Zarif pressed the button on the phone and connected the call.
Even here in the Starbucks, more than three blocks away, the explosion was deafening.
58
A dark gray cloud covered everyone and everything.
The entire street, the side streets around, the edge of the street market on the west, and the open parking lot on the east — everything in a twenty-five-yard radius from the blast site — was completely obscured by smoke and dust and tiny airborne particles of concrete.
Many outside the impenetrable cloud for another twenty-five yards in all directions were dead or dazed or disoriented by the force of the blast. Eardrums were stunned and ringing. Equilibrium was disrupted by the concussion.
Another twenty-five yards in all directions was consumed by wrecked vehicles or other confusion. Shrapnel this far out still caused death, windows were shattered, car alarms blared.
No one screamed for several seconds, the confusion and disbelief overpowering the natural sensation of fear.
Secret Service Agent Dale Herbers was one of five men in a Suburban six vehicles ahead of SWORDSMAN. The blast behind them had sent debris raining down on the roof of his SUV, but the driver looked back in his rearview and prepared to stomp on the gas. If they were under attack, the first rule was to get POTUS out of the engagement area as quickly as possible.
But the sheer size of the rolling cloud of destruction behind him caused him to doubt standard protocol. Would the Beast even be able to roll out of the kill zone?
The driver called into his mike, trying to find out what he needed to do, but he did this simultaneously along with thirty other agents, and his transmission was walked over.
Herbers was the lead agent in the vehicle, so in the absence of any other instruction, he knew he’d need to lead the four men with him. He realized from the size of the blast that his vehicle might possibly be the closest to the President that had not been destroyed. But there was no way he was going to order his driver to back into the cloud to go looking for SWORDSMAN, because for all he knew, the President was lying injured in the street.
Instead, Herbers made a brave call. “Pull over to open the lane, then everyone bail, cover, and evacuate!”
The driver raced the vehicle to the side of the six-lane road, giving as much open space as possible for any cars behind to continue on if they were able. The five agents then unloaded quickly, drawing their SIG Sauer pistols as they did so. This action put them in danger, of course, but there was no way they were continuing on without knowing if the Beast was operable or even intact. And all Secret Service agents knew their primary job was to cover and evacuate the principal, so Herbers and the others began sprinting toward the massive gray cloud.
Almost instantly Herbers saw his call to pull to the side of the road was folly. Nothing was going to be rolling to the south on Vidal Alcocer. They passed wrecked Suburbans, lying on their sides or perpendicular to the traffic lanes, windshields shattered, tires ripped apart and smoking. These SUVs weren’t moving without a dozen men pushing them out of the way, and there was no time to stop for that until SWORDSMAN was safe.
Here and there a few men had climbed out of the damaged vehicles, but Herbers also saw bodies in the road and slumped over steering wheels.
On his right a crowd that had gathered behind the barricades on José J. Herrera looked like a massive tangle of prostrate bodies. Herbers slowed here to train his gun on any potential threats, but the only movement he saw was a little writhing and staggering by a few survivors in the midst of the stillness of death in the crowd.