Guardian of Lies (56 page)

The timing circuit had been modified to include an antitamper loop. Anyone trying to sever the connection to the detonator, or damage or alter the circuit board, would trigger an immediate detonation.

Alim checked the time setting, then looked at his watch. In seventeen minutes, unless someone reset the electronic clock with the handheld setter, the circuit would fire, setting off the cordite charge in the bomb’s gun barrel. In the blink of an eye, a fireball hotter than the surface of the sun would incinerate everything within the radius of a mile, including the aircraft carrier and thousands of sailors and military families on the dock. It would leave at the epicenter a crater into which the ocean would flow.

He held the small timing tool in his hand and looked out the open end of the truck searching for the two idiot brothers in the blue sedan. They were late.

Alim and the interpreter had plenty of time to put enough distance between themselves and the blast if only the car would get here. Otherwise Afundi would have to reset the clock. He looked at his watch one more time, checked it against the digital countdown clock on the time setter, and watched the seconds tick down.

“Where are you?” Thorpe was now at a computer console with a headset and mike talking to one of the pilots on the incoming choppers.

“We’re about six minutes out,” said the pilot. “I can see Mission Bay up ahead.”

There were four helicopters, one each for the two sniper teams, with the NEST team and hostage rescue loaded onto the other two. It took longer than Thorpe had hoped to gather their equipment, muster the choppers, and get everyone on board.

The game plan was the same as for the cargo truck: bring in the snipers, take out anyone in or around the vehicle, hope that they got them all and that none of them had access to a triggering mechanism. Hostage rescue would move in to breech the truck and provide security, and NEST would deal with the bomb. They would now have to do it without their leader. The head of the NEST team had been pronounced dead moments before while on the medivac flight to the hospital.

Rhytag moved up behind Thorpe, at the console, looking over Thorpe’s shoulder at the monitor. The camera showed the ground streaming beneath one of the low-flying helicopters as it screamed south toward Coronado.

“Tell them to keep an eye out for Madriani,” said Rhytag.

“Sorry,” said Thorpe, “but we don’t have time to pick and choose or identify targets. If Madriani is around that truck, he’s dead. At most, we’ll have ten or fifteen seconds of tactical surprise. After that, all hell’s gonna break loose. We have got to isolate that truck. Gimme a second.”

“Can you patch me in to the NEST team leader?” he asked.

A few seconds later a voice came over the tactical frequency.

“Stop me if you don’t have time. But I have a question,” said Thorpe.

“Go ahead.”

“If the detonator is electronic, is there any chance of jamming it?” asked Thorpe.

“We have it covered,” said the man. “The answer is affirmative if the electronic detonator is wireless remote. We scrambled two EA-Six Prowlers for the container earlier. They jammed frequencies up and down the line, any radio or microwave signal, including cell phones. They’ll do it again over Coronado. But chances are the detonator is probably hardwired, with an analog backup or antitamper device. Which means if we try to fry their electronics, we run the risk of setting it off.”

“Understood,” said Thorpe. So much for second-guessing the experts. “Good luck!”

A few minutes ago, coming out of the truck with my back to Nitikin, I had no idea where I was. But for now my universe was the concrete curb a few feet from my face. It was the strangest sensation. Lying on the pavement under the truck, I thought about life and how short it might be as I heard muffled voices in the truck above me. I lifted my head and looked out between the two front tires. And there in front of me, like déjà vu, was the familiar image of a gate I had driven by a thousand times. Suddenly I realized I was home.

The open chain-link gate and the small guardhouse a hundred yards beyond is one of the entrances to North Island, the naval base. It is less than a mile from my house. I can easily walk there. A little over a mile to the office. I look at my watch and realize that Harry is probably there now. Oh, God. The only saving grace is that Sarah, my daughter, is away at school.

No doubt we all wonder from time to time what random thoughts will stream through our brains at the moment of death, but for me I have always known deep down that they would be memories of Sarah.

“There!” said Alim. He nearly dropped the timing device as he pointed from the back of the open truck.

Down the street, two blocks away, he saw the blue sedan coming this way.

Alim looked down at the timing device and checked the clock. Still enough time, if they moved. They could get across the bridge and head south toward the border. He had already mapped out a surface street that would take them on a direct line to the building on this side of the border and the tunnel beneath. Even if they got only halfway, they would be well beyond the blast zone. Once inside the building and into the tunnel, nothing could touch them. Within days, Alim would be back in the Zagros Mountains of his homeland, a hero to his people.

Alim turned once more expecting to see the blue sedan pulling up to the truck, but it wasn’t there. Now he could see it again, up the street. The idiots were backing the sedan into a parking space at the curb two blocks away. Were they blind? Couldn’t they see the truck? Afundi cursed out loud.

“Jamal!” he hollered at the translator, who was standing guard outside the truck. The interpreter stuck his head in the open door.

“Go get them. Tell them to drive the car down here, and hurry.”

The translator took off running, all the speed he could muster with his stodgy middle-aged body.

Alim checked the clock and his watch, then disconnected the lead wires. He didn’t bother to close up the wooden panel. Instead he quickly made his way to the door, jumped from the truck, and pulled the lift door down behind him. He sealed the latch and looked for the padlock, checked his pockets, and suddenly realized Jamal had been twirling it on his finger.

By the time Alim turned to look, the translator was already a block away. He shook his head and raced up toward the cab. He opened the passenger door and grabbed his day pack. He pulled from behind the seat another larger sports bag that held an assault rifle, three clips of ammunition, and two bottles of water.

He took a drink as he walked toward the rear of the truck with the two bags. The blue sedan hadn’t moved. And he could no longer see Jamal, either on the street or the sidewalk.

Afundi shook his head, glanced at the unlocked latch on the back of the truck, and started moving as fast as he could down the sidewalk and toward the car.

Iam sliding sideways under the truck so I can see down the sidewalk behind us when I realize we are alone. I can see him in the distance walking the other way, toting two bags over his shoulders.

“Herman.”

“Yeah.”

“Slide out on your side. There’s nobody here. I think they’ve gone.”

The three of us make our way out from under the truck on the left side. We stay low, moving toward the front of the truck so that if someone on the sidewalk looked back they wouldn’t see us.

We wait until he is a block away and then race for the lift gate in the back. Herman throws the gate up as Maricela and I clamber aboard. Herman comes in behind us and lowers the gate, but not all the way.

He holds it up a few inches, just enough for light to come in so Maricela and I can try and get her father free. He is shackled to a metal rail along the inside of the fiberglass box.

Maricela removes the tape from his mouth and eyes as I try to figure out some way to release his hand from the metal rail.

As soon as the gag is out of his mouth, he starts spitting instructions at his daughter in Spanish.

“What’s he saying?” I ask Herman.

She is arguing with him.

“He wants her to go. He wants us all to leave now. He says to run as fast as we can.”

I look down and see the open panel on the side of the wooden crate, get on my knees, and look inside. There is a green metal container, just a little smaller than the crate itself.

“Ask him”—I look up at Maricela—“ask him if there’s any way to stop it.”

Herman is looking around desperately for something to prop up the door with so he can help me.

She says something to him and Nitikin responds with an answer that seems to take forever.

“He says there’s a safety. A wire on the side of the metal box inside the crate. But he says it won’t do us any good. It will stop the big bomb, but the little explosion will kill us all anyway. He says we must leave now.”

“There must be a way to stop it,” I tell her. “Ask him again. Tell him we’re not leaving until we stop it.”

She speaks to him and they argue. He yells at her. She reaches up and pulls on his arms, trying to free his hands as tears run down her face. Suddenly he says something, a quieter and calmer voice this time as he looks over his shoulder at the crate behind him.

“He says there’s a pipe sticking out of the metal box inside, near the top, in the front. It should have two wires coming out of it. Do you see it?”

I look, but I can’t see a thing. It’s too dark inside the crate, especially with the lift gate down.

“I need more light.”

“Screw it,” says Herman. He throws the lift gate all the way up. Light streams in through the back of the truck. I see the two wires and then the black metal pipe. Dangling from the end of the wires is a small green circuit board not much bigger than a playing card.

Alim wondered what was going on. He was halfway between the truck and the car and he still couldn’t see the two brothers anywhere. But Jamal was in the passenger seat looking down at something in his lap. Alim could see him even with the late-afternoon sun glinting off the car’s windshield.

With the straps from the two heavy bags over his shoulders Afundi waved his arms in the air and signaled for the car to pick him up. But Jamal wasn’t looking. His attention was drawn to something else.

At this rate, by the time Alim made it to the car, they would have to drive back to the truck to reset the timer in order to gain enough of a cushion to get away. As he thought about it, Afundi turned and glanced back over his shoulder at the truck, then turned back toward the waiting car. He was walking toward the sedan before the image in his brain registered. When it did, he stopped dead, turned around, and studied the back of the truck. The lift gate was up!

Alim dropped both bags on the sidewalk, unzipped one, and pulled out the Kalashnikov along with two of the loaded clips. He pushed a clip up into the receiver, slapped it home, then cycled the bolt to chamber the first round. He left the folded stock closed knowing the gun would be easier to conceal.

He tried to signal Jamal, who was still sitting in the passenger seat. It looked as if he was reading something. In his mind, Alim made a pledge to shoot the bastard and to take the heads of the two brothers with a sword at the first opportunity.

“I think I see it.” I follow the wires with my eyes until they disappear beyond the end of the pipe.

Nitikin tells his daughter something.

“He says that’s the breech of the gun barrel. There is a cork…
¿cómo se dice?
” She says something in Spanish to her father. He corrects her.

“He says it’s a plug,” she says. “The plug screws into the end of the barrel where the wires go in. Do you see it?”

Herman comes over to the crate and moves around behind me to stay out of the light. He pulls on the tie-down rail holding Nitikin’s wrists to the wall, hoping to free him so the Russian can help me.

I feel with my hand along the two thin wires until I find where they disappear into what feels like tiny holes in the threaded plug. The plug is screwed into the end of the barrel. The metal is warm to the touch. I don’t even want to ask what is causing the heat. With my fingernail I can feel about a quarter inch of exposed thread along the edge where the plug sits above the closed end of the barrel of the gun.

“Yes. I can feel it,” I tell her.

She relays this to her father, who is looking anxiously over his shoulder as Herman jerks on the steel rail, trying to free him.

He says something else to her.

“If you can unscrew the plug, he says you will be able to pull the wires, they will be attached to something…I don’t understand the word he is using,” she says.

“It’s a detonator.” Herman is jerking hard on the metal rail tie-down as he speaks. Then he stops for a second to catch his breath. “He says it’s an electronic detonator attached to a cordite charge. Which means it’s probably enough to take your hand off up to the elbow. ’Course if it goes off in the gun, you won’t have to worry about that.”

“My father says that once the small explosive charge is removed the gun will no longer work. If we throw the small explosive out the door, no one will be hurt when it blows up.”

I trace the wires back up to the end of the gun and feel the plug with my fingers once more. I touch the sharp edges of a hex head, like the hexagonal head on a bolt, only larger. If I had an expandable wrench I might be able to get a purchase on the plug and unscrew it. I try turning it with my fingers, but it won’t budge.

The two small MH-6 Night Stalkers came in at two thousand feet with their blades running on whisper mode so that the sniper teams could reconnoiter the area around the truck.

Using forward-looking infrared (FLIR), the “little birds” searched for warm bodies out in the clear and then zeroed in on the windows of the truck’s cab.

They circled for two or three minutes, but the only heat signatures they picked up came from the box in the back where the thin fiberglass shell revealed four separate figures as well as a larger square inanimate object that seemed to be emitting heat. The object rested on the forward center section of the bed, up near the cab.