The Marines wore fatigues and shifted their weight anxiously, ready to run through walls, tear down buildings, and initiate a stockpile of terrorist corpses. Nick instructed the team commander that he needed a surgical approach to the attack. They couldn’t afford to go in loud and heavy. It might trigger an early detonation of the White House missiles and would defeat their purpose altogether.
Sergeant Hal McKenna was the Marines’ team commander. He was in his sixties and looked more like someone’s grandfather than team leader of an elite group of sharpshooters and soldiers. Until you got close enough to notice the scar. A six-inch gouge from the corner of his right eye to the middle of his jutted chin. One look and you immediately tendered respect. Nick could tell it was job related without asking. The knife must have been serrated. It devoured too much healthy tissue to allow a clean repair. Some poor surgeon must have worked desperately just to keep his face intact.
McKenna squatted low while the Marines and others gathered around him. The blueprint of the cabin was stretched out on a bed of pine needles that scratched at its underside. McKenna was at the middle of an inner circle, which spread into the murky wilderness behind them. The stand of trees where they gathered wasn’t very dense and it allowed for virtually everyone to get a clean look at him. A large streak of moonlight filtered between the canopies of pine trees and illuminated the opening where they assembled.
“Here,” McKenna said, pointing to a spot on the diagram. “This is where they’re most vulnerable.”
Nick nodded, half listening to the briefing and half studying the latest satellite images that McKenna had brought from Phoenix. Matt was beside him with a magnifying glass, examining the same photos. They were taken a couple of hours earlier, right at dusk. Nick was steering a penlight across the images without really knowing what he was searching for. But something bothered him. Kharrazi was too sharp to allow himself to be cornered without an escape plan. Somewhere in the photos there was a clue. He just needed to recognize it.
McKenna was elbow to elbow with a Marine Sergeant and focused everyone’s attention to a specific target. “So we launch the 720 in this window and—”
“No,” Nick said.
Seven or eight heads turned toward Nick, including McKenna whose scar created a scowl on its own. “Excuse me?” McKenna said.
Nick opened his palms and tried the soft approach first. “The reason I directed you to formulate a plan was because of your hostage rescue skills. We need to be surgical. Quick and stealthy.”
McKenna’s face appeared to be fighting two or more emotions. “You have a hostage inside I don’t know about?”
“Yes, I do. The detonator. If we start a firefight, they could detonate the missiles early and make this entire mission a moot point.”
“What about Kharrazi?” McKenna said. “Isn’t he inside?”
Nick glance down at the satellite photos. “I don’t know.”
“That’s great,” McKenna said. He looked down at his watch. “We’ve got sixty-eight minutes until a missile takes out the White House. Even if we get inside the building in less than thirty minutes, that gives my bomb guys a half an hour to deactivate the detonator. If they can. And on top of that, we have to be stealthy. Any other requests, Agent?”
“That’s enough,” Matt said, locking eyes with McKenna.
An awkward silence hung in the night air. Nick considered the restraints those sixty-eight minutes put on them. He thought about Julie lying in her hospital bed ordering him to kill Kharrazi. Her bruised face looking up at him, her eyes pleading with him for retribution. He wiped his temple and was surprised to find it moist with sweat in the cool, autumn night. He needed to stay focused on the White House, though. He couldn’t afford to let Kharrazi force him into a mistake. Not now.
“You’re right,” Nick said.
McKenna raised his brow. The scowl deteriorated and the grandfather face returned.
“Yes,” Nick continued. “We don’t have time to do this my way. But we must get to that detonator first.”
McKenna nodded. “Okay. Where do you suspect it is?”
“Well,” Nick looked over McKenna’s shoulder and added his own penlight to the blueprint. “Something that important would be protected fairly well. I would have to say it’s in the basement.”
“Agreed,” McKenna said. He moved his finger around the perimeter of the diagram. “Here. This is the outside entrance to the basement. It’s in the back of the cabin below two second-story windows. We could get in there without entering the cabin. We secure the basement and gain control of the detonator before they can react.”
Nick asked, “How, um…”
“Stealthily?” McKenna finished for him. A slight grin tugged at the corner of his lip. He looked over at a young man who sat next to the group with his legs crossed. A small digital device sat on the ground in front of him. A pair of wires extended from the device to his ears where he covered them with his hands. He was concentrating so hard, his face looked as if he had an upset stomach.
McKenna waved a hand and snapped a finger to attract his attention. “What have you got, Kelly?”
Kelly made eye contact with McKenna for a moment, then returned to his trance. Ten minutes earlier an Apache helicopter had flown directly over the KSF cabin and dropped a transmitter on the roof of the cabin. A sticky malleable device that would fasten itself to the A-frame with little noise. Kelly’s palms pressed even harder to his ears. “Singing, Sir.”
“Singing?”
“Yes, Sir. If I’m not mistaken, it’s an old Kurdish anthem. Apparently they’ve heard about the President’s press conference and sense victory.”
McKenna looked at Nick. “Let’s get over there before the party breaks up.”
“Sir.” A soldier stood under the dipping branch of a mature pine tree. His face was painted so dark that his eyes seemed luminescent. “We have a problem.”
“What’s that soldier?”
“The place is land-mined with motion detectors, Sir. A quarter mile around the entire complex. There’ll be no sneaking up on them.”
McKenna scooped up a handful of dirt and slammed it down. “This is getting better all the time.”
Nick reached into his duffle bag and came out with a green handle and flipped it a couple of times like a baton.
“What’s that?” McKenna asked.
Nick pulled up on the expandable antenna and admired the instrument. “Electronic jamming device. It’ll jam any frequencies within a mile radius. We cut off their power, destroy any generators, and jam any other signals. They won’t be able to see or hear us coming. Plus, the sentries outside won’t be able to communicate with the cabin, or each other.” Nick pushed a button on the plastic handle and a green light began to blink. “Let’s see if there’s still any singing going on over there.”
Chapter 36
Nick crouched low in a thicket of woods outside of the KSF cabin. He looked at his watch. They had forty-nine minutes to get inside and disable the detonator. Adrenalin pumped through his veins. Beside him, Matt worked his Glock with his hands while examining the terrain with hawk-like eyes.
Nick looked up at the night sky and felt the stillness of the night. A hundred federal employees surrounded the cabin, yet Nick couldn’t hear a twig snap. They’d set off the jamming device and had made easy work of the twenty KSF soldiers patrolling the exterior of the cabin. With silencers and superior night vision, they’d taken their positions and readied to encounter the strength of Kharrazi’s force who would certainly be waiting for them inside the building.