Jen and Mitchell stepped back.
“Did anyone order room service?” asked Jackson as he turned the corner with a guard holding a set of keys in his hand.
“You’re late,” said Mitchell, grinning at his friend.
“Sorry, I got a little waylaid,” replied Jackson. With a sharp jab in the guard’s back, Jackson said, “Open the door.”
The guard, his hands shaking, fumbled with the keys.
“Give me those,” snapped Sam as she jumped out of her seat. Snatching the keys from the man’s hands, she inserted one into the lock. A moment later, the door swung open.
“Nighty-night,” said Jackson to his prisoner as he smashed the man’s head into the bars, knocking him out cold.
Sam, Cardinal, and Yuri rushed out to thank Jackson while Mitchell took Jen by the hand and led her out of the cell.
Mitchell stepped over the body of the guard and saw Grace, Midori, and Owen standing in the hallway. “I see you brought the cavalry with you.”
“Yeah, it’s the best I could do on short notice,” replied Jackson, as he dragged the body of the unconscious guard into the cell.
Cardinal grabbed the other man, did the same, and then closed the door behind him, locking the guards in.
Mitchell glanced down at his watch and said, “According to my calculations, we still have a couple of hours to stop Houston.”
“Plenty of time to stop him from leaving with the anthrax,” added Cardinal.
“I’m sorry, but you may only have about twenty minutes,” corrected Owen.
“What?” blurted out Grace.
“McMasters has been overseeing the loading of some vehicles for the past couple of hours. I saw boxes containing the anthrax loaded into the back of an armored truck and a semi-trailer. When I was escorted out of my uncle’s office, I overheard him telling McMasters to be ready to leave in under thirty minutes, and that was nearly ten minutes ago.”
“Jesus, Owen, when were you planning on telling us?” rebuked Jackson.
“I’m sorry, with everything happening all at once it just hit me what my uncle meant.”
Mitchell picked up a rifle from the ground, checked that it had a round in the chamber, and looked over at his friends. “Folks, we haven’t a second to spare. We’ve got to stop Houston from leaving with the anthrax. Everything else is secondary.”
His friends didn’t need to be told that he was asking them to risk everything, including their lives, to prevent a global catastrophe.
Jackson clenched his assault rifle in his hands. With a grin on his face, he said, “Come on, Captain, we’ve got a convoy to stop.”
Mitchell turned his head to look at Jen and Owen. “Stay close behind Yuri. When the shooting starts, I want you both to find a way out and get as far away from here as you can. You have to contact General O’Reilly and let him know what’s going on.”
Jen opened her mouth to say something, but the resolute look in Mitchell’s eyes made her stop. She nodded her head, knowing that there was nothing she could say that would make him change his mind.
With a determined look on his face, Mitchell said, “Okay, let’s do this.”
42
Looking like a pair of medieval dragons, the Predator UAVs flew between a pair of snow-covered peaks. Flying side by side, they dipped down until they were barely meters above the trees covering a long valley as they raced towards their objective. Flying at three hundred kilometers an hour, the UAVs were identically armed with two thermobaric bombs and two laser-guided bombs. Although only one Predator was required, the second was a backup in case the other had to turn back or failed to eradicate the base and every living thing inside of it.
President Kempt, flanked by his National Security Council, sat anxiously in the Situation Room and watched the live feed from the UAVs. Although his administration had continued the previous president’s use of UAVs to strike at terrorists around the globe, this was the first time that he had personally authorized the death of another human being. He was numb inside. He kept telling himself that he had a job to do.
“Time to target?” asked Kempt.
“Just under eighteen minutes, sir,” replied Anne Hook.
“What’s your plan of attack?”
“Sir, we’ll go in with one Predator while the other stays back out of sight. If the first one fails to penetrate the blast doors, we’ll bring in the second one,” explained Hook.
Patterson said, “There’s no way in hell the blast doors will be able to survive a strike by four Paveway bombs. The instant the doors are gone, we’ll guide in the thermobaric bombs.”
Kempt turned his head and looked up at the live feed coming from the unarmed UAV still circling the base. The blast doors had closed a couple of minutes ago. Only several small side doors remained open. He could see people moving about outside, oblivious to their impending doom; their bodies looked like bright white ghosts through the UAV’s thermal camera.
Leonard put down a phone on the desk and looked over at Kempt. “Sir, that was the Albanian Ambassador on the line. He asked me to pass on that President Sava is very upset that he was not briefed earlier about the pending strike on Albanian territory. However, he is very appreciative for the three hundred million dollars you provided his nation in foreign aid.”
“I thought he’d be grateful,” replied Kempt.
“The ambassador also passed on that Albanian military units in the region have been placed on high alert. They will establish a massive army presence around the airfield and await the arrival of our Special Forces chemical warfare team.”
Patterson said, “Sir, the team is already on its way to Albania from Germany and should be there within the hour.”
“Very good,” acknowledged Kempt as he looked over at the clock on the wall. Time seemed to be passing so slowly. All he wanted was for the strike to be over, so he could put this all behind him and get on with the business of running the country. His gut, however, told him it was going to be a long time before things ever got back to normal.
43
Mitchell gently pushed open the stairway door and peered out onto the main hangar floor. He clenched his jaw when he spotted McMasters giving orders to a group of armed guards standing near the armored-vehicle convoy. A quick glance at his watch told him they had about fifteen minutes to stop Houston from leaving with the anthrax.
“What’s going on?” asked Jackson.
“I can see McMasters and a bunch of his goons standing around the vehicles,” whispered Mitchell over his shoulder.
“Houston?”
Mitchell shook his head and closed the door. Looking down at his ragtag group crouched on the stairwell, he knew that they didn’t stand a chance against the dozens of armed guards in the hangar.
They needed a diversion.
With a smile on his face, Mitchell said, “Nate, can you drive a forklift?”
“Sure, why not? It can’t be that difficult.”
A minute later, Jackson opened the door. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and then, acting as if he belonged there, he walked over to the far side of the hangar where several rows of stacked boxes stood. Parked alongside the boxes was a forklift. He took a quick look around to make sure no one was watching him and climbed onto the forklift. He switched it on and shifted it into reverse. Carefully applying power, Jackson backed up the machine and changed gears. He was about to head in the direction of several forty-five-gallon drums filled with fuel when a man with a clipboard in his hands shouted at him to stop. With an angry look on his face, the man ran over to the forklift. “Hey, who the hell told you to move my forklift?”