Sandor asked him for the precise location of the turnoff, then told him to stay where he was. “Do not approach or engage them,” he said. “We’ll be back to you in a few minutes.”
Martindale, who was listening in, swung the Seahawk around while Sandor got back in touch with Captain Krause.
“It’s sketchy at best,” Sandor admitted, “but it’s all we’ve got right now, and I’m not far from there. Two problems though. First, we’re about to run out of fuel. Second, if we get too low they might spot us before we see them, which is going to be a real problem if they actually turn out to be the guys we’re after. You’ve got Coast Guard and Navy running up and down the river?”
“That’s affirmative, we’ve asked them to get moving, although we’re about to get slammed by the brunt of Charlene so I don’t know how much good they can do.”
“And I don’t know how much longer we can stay in the air,” Sandor admitted.
Just then the copilot, who was working with binoculars, saw a sixteen-wheeler parked near what appeared to be a municipal boat launch. “Off the port side!” Jake called out.
Through the rain he could make out the tractor-trailer sitting just beside a concrete ramp used to roll small craft on their trailer hitches into the river. In these conditions, there was no one with a boat anywhere near the area. In fact there was no one in sight but the large rig.
“Marty, take us back hard to starboard!” Sandor hollered, then he told Krause what they’d seen.
“Roger that,” the CO replied. “I’ll have two CG vessels there pronto.”
“We need to approach with caution,” Sandor reminded him. “We don’t know how or where these devices are supposed to be detonated. We go barging in and we may be the problem instead of the solution.”
“All right,” Krause agreed, “give me the coordinates and we’ll make an oblique approach. But remember, I’d rather have these things go off three miles upriver than right beside the refinery.”
“Understood,” Sandor agreed. Then he turned to Martindale and his copilot. “You boys know what this is about, so here’s the deal. You’re going to set me down somewhere in the woods on this side of the river and I’m going after them. You’re short on fuel and you’ve risked your lives for the past two hours, so you get the hell out of here, nothing to be gained by hovering around in the middle of a hurricane, especially given the payload they’re carrying.”
“And what are you supposed to do when you get down there?” Martindale asked. “If that’s really the truck those kids at Coulter told you about, there are at least four men aboard. Maybe more by now.”
“I’ll try to get close enough to take a couple of them down, delay them until the cavalry shows up. Then we’ll figure out how to disarm the bombs.”
“Easy as that?”
“As long as our friends get there in time.”
“Well, sir,” Martindale said as he unbuckled his harness and climbed out of the pilot’s seat, “at least you’ll have me for company in the meanwhile.”
Sandor smiled. “I guess this is not a debate.”
“No, sir,” the Marine replied with a grin. “Jake can land this thing on a dime, and two of us on the ground will be a whole lot better than one, don’t you think?”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE
Jake took them toward the river, north of where they had spotted the truck. Sandor and Martindale lowered themselves from the Seahawk with the same ropes and winches the Navy SEAL team had used to enter the Gulf of Mexico. As soon as they hit the ground they disengaged their harnesses, unhooked the bundle of weapons they had packed, then hurried into a wooded area that was about half a mile inland.
Given the strong winds and relentless rain, they hoped their landing went unnoticed by the men near the truck. Whether it did or not, they were ready to move as soon as they unclipped themselves. When they signaled to Jake that they were clear he hit the recoil switch that drew in their lines, then banked the chopper hard to the northeast and disappeared into the storm, away from the sight line of the targeted area.
Martindale was in full assault garb, Sandor in black slacks and sweater, although he was still wearing the helmet from the helicopter with the two-way radio connecting him to both Marty and their COMCENT in Corpus Christi. Each man was armed with an S&W .45 1911 automatic, an M-4 carbine with extra clips, grenades, and flares. In the knapsack they had one pair of binoculars, a satellite phone, a portable Geiger counter, and an array of other monitoring devices. They went through the package, setting themselves up with their weapons as Martindale shouldered the backpack with the remainder of the electronic hardware, then they pushed off at a trot, heading south and toward the edge of the river.
It was possible, of course, that this truck was not the one they were searching for, but logic told Sandor otherwise. Not only had they run short of leads, but there was something about a large tractor-trailer stopping at the shore of the Mississippi River three miles north of the Baton Rouge oil refinery in the face of an oncoming hurricane that defied any reasonable explanation other than enemy action.
Occam’s razor, DCI Walsh would say.
They moved swiftly through the sparsely wooded area until they were less than a hundred yards from the boat launch.
Unfortunately, the maneuvering of the Seahawk had not gone undetected. Luis and Francisco spotted the helicopter when it banked east across the river and, although they did not see Sandor and Martindale disembark, Francisco told the other two men to be on alert.
“We may have company soon,” he told them. “Could just be some sort of aerial patrol related to the hurricane, but be ready.”
Meanwhile, the four of them were unloading the large crates from the trailer. Their jobs were relatively simple. They were to assemble the two ovoid-shaped vessels that were custom crafted of gray fiberglass, virtually undetectable once they were in the water, especially in the midst of this storm. Each craft had a preprogrammed navigation system and gyroscopic balancing mechanism. When they finished putting these devices together they would open the smaller crates containing the nuclear weapons, each of which was equipped with a digital timer. The plutonium orbs were packed separately. After the detonation systems were lowered into the pods and secured in place, the timers would be set and the navigation programs initiated. Only then was the plutonium to be inserted.
Then the hatches on each pod would be snapped shut and the fiberglass shells slid down the ramp into the Mississippi, where their small engines would run them downriver with the current. Assuming the timing was reasonably accurate, two nuclear blasts would occur just along the banks of the Baton Rouge oil refinery, the results of which would be an obliteration of the facility; a fire that would rage for months because of the impossibility of getting near the epicenter of a nuclear blast to deal with the conflagration; radioactive fallout that would impact the surrounding area; and, if the stars aligned for Adina’s plan, damage along the Mississippi that would cause inestimable harm to the neighboring areas to the north and the south.
The key, as far as the four Venezuelans were concerned, was to put these bombs into play, get into the truck, and drive as fast as they could to escape the impending cataclysm.
It did not take long before Sandor and Martindale came within range. “Looks to be four of them,” Sandor whispered into the microphone imbedded in his helmet as he watched them working in the pouring rain. The truck had been backed up to the river, the doors to the trailer now wide open.