Guardian of Lies (57 page)

As the snipers hovered in place, the larger Blackhawk put the NEST team down in the middle of an intersection cleared by the police. They dropped their duffel bags with their gear and asked one of the officers to load them into patrol cars and to follow them to the site. They took only their tool belts with the basic implements needed to get at the bomb. As soon as the empty bird lifted off, the next chopper, carrying the hostage rescue team, used the same controlled intersection and deposited the agents.

Together the two teams jogged east down the street toward San Diego Bay and the box truck parked two blocks away.

The snipers circling in the air overhead asked the NEST team about the wisdom of firing through the fiberglass shell of the truck’s back half.

The answer came back in a flash, negative. Depending on the source of detonation and whether the people inside could trigger it, a loose round in the wrong place or a ricochet and they could set off the device.

Alim folded the stock back on the Kalashnikov, unzipped the front of his overalls, and slipped the assault rifle inside to conceal it. He held it with his right hand by the pistol grip with one finger on the lever between safety and full automatic.

Afundi moved to the other side of the street, into the shadows, and slowly walked back toward the truck. Halfway down the block he stopped and set up under some trees, behind a parked car.

Because of the deep shadows inside the truck he couldn’t see far enough into the open back end to make out what was happening.

Alim checked his watch and knew he was now at the point of no return. He either had to break and run for the car to get across the bridge at near-light speed, or take his chances on entering the truck to reset the timer. It was one or the other. The single certainty was that he couldn’t wait any longer.

Herman finally realizes that what he needs is leverage. He grabs the wooden panel from the side of the crate and looks at it. It is heavy, made of South American junk wood, something called Ipe, hard as iron and almost as strong.

He slides the wooden panel up under the tie-down rail a few inches from where Nitikin’s hands are chained, puts his foot against the inside wall of the truck’s box, and lifts with all of his might. The washer and bolt holding the section of rail in place from the outside of the box pops through the fiberglass. Herman grabs the loose section of railing and bends it back. A second later Yakov is free.

Maricela tries to grab her father to hug him. She wants to wipe the blood from the side of his face but instead the old man goes down on his knees and moves toward the opening in the crate.

I get out of his way, figuring if anyone can do it, he can. I watch him as he stretches his arm to the end of the barrel and strains with his fingers to turn the breech plug. I can see the pain on his face as his fingers are rubbed raw by the metal.

Herman drops from the back of the truck and runs around to see if there are any tools in the cab of the truck, but I hear him pulling on the doors. Both of them are locked. Next he starts pounding on the window trying to break it, but he can’t, at least not with his fists. A few seconds later he’s back in the truck shaking his head.

“Lemme try,” he says.

I tap Nitikin on the shoulder and point to Herman. We want to get the man with the brawn in there. The Russian backs out of the opening in the crate and Herman squeezes into it. He tries to turn the plug, but it’s frozen tight. None of us can get a grip on it or sufficient leverage to turn it.

“Ask him what happens if we pull wires?” I say.

Maricela puts the question to her father, who quickly shakes his head. I don’t have to wait for the translation. I can tell by the look on his face that this is not a good idea.

“Be careful of wires,” I tell Herman.

Just as Alim started to break cover to head for the truck, the ear-splitting rush of noise overhead sent him ducking back into the shadows under the trees. The helicopter streaked through the sky, cut an arc directly over the truck, and proceeded on a direct course toward the naval carrier.

For a second Afundi thought it was probably just part of the festivities in the harbor, but a moment later a man in black combat gear with a rifle rushed from in front of a house a few doors down. Another broke cover farther on. They both approached the truck from the same side. Suddenly another helicopter moved in and hovered overhead no more than fifty yards in front of Afundi’s position. The sound of the rotors and whine of the turbine engine drowned out every other noise. It also gave Alim just the opening he needed.

He pulled the rifle from his overalls, unfolded the stock, and pushed the safety lever all the way down, setting up for single shots. Alim took careful aim and squeezed off a round. He watched as one of the men in black fell to the ground ten feet out from the truck. Quickly he moved the muzzle and acquired another target and faster than he could think he dropped it.

The noise of the helicopter and the beat of its rotors lay like a blanket over the sound of Alim’s shots as he picked off two more. By now the pavement behind the truck was littered with bodies.

“Where is it coming from?” one of the snipers asked.

“I don’t know.” They were baffled. “It could be coming from the back of the truck.” The element of surprise was gone and so was the initiative. The order was given to pull back and a few seconds later the helicopter dipped its rotors and disappeared out over the bay.

As I watch a guy in military gear go down just beyond the open door to the truck, I think he has tripped. But as I stand and look, I notice that he isn’t moving. When I see the other two go down, I know someone is shooting but we can’t hear them because of the noise of the helicopter.

Maricela sees what is happening and starts toward the door. I grab her and pull her back.

Behind me Nitikin is shaking his head. Then Herman comes out from inside the crate.

“No use,” he hollers. “We need something to turn it.”

I put Maricela’s back against the inside wall and tell her to stay there, not to move. Her dad comes up to take care of her, and I join Herman by the open crate.

“Any ideas?” I say.

“No.” I can see the fear in Herman’s eyes. The only saving aspect is that when it happens, it is likely to be so quick that none of us will even feel a thing. If I had a phone at this moment, I would call Sarah and say good-bye.

Suddenly the roar of the helicopter is gone and all I hear is the plaintive cry of Maricela as she calls my name. By the time I turn and look she is pointing out the back of the truck toward her father, who is outside on the ground running.

I scurry across the bed of the truck on my hands and knees until I land flat on my stomach at the open door. Trying to present the smallest target possible, I watch as the Russian reaches one of the bodies prostrate on the pavement behind the truck. He bends over, fumbling with something on the man’s belt.

“Target acquired. Do I have a green light?”

“Take him out,” said Thorpe.

The sniper squeezed the trigger. The recoil rocked his shoulder as the bullet sliced through the air.

When he rises back up and turns to face me, I can finally see what it is that he has in his hand. Nitikin starts to run back toward us. He takes two long strides. His eyes connect with his daughter as his upthrust hand releases the heavy item, tossing it toward the bed of the truck. Just as he does it, the bullet rips through his upper body, sending a cloud of crimson mist out the front of his chest.

The wrench clatters across the smooth metal bed of the truck. I hear the shriek from Maricela as she tries to get past me and out the back. She is desperate to reach her father, sprawled on the pavement. From my knees I smother her in my arms and drive her back against the fiberglass wall of the truck.

As the helicopter peeled away out over the bay, Alim threw the assault rifle and the extra clip into some bushes, and ran toward Jamal, in the car down the street.

Afundi abandoned the two bags he’d left on the sidewalk across the street. There was no time. Pike’s computer and the newspaper from Castro were not worth dying for.

He closed the distance on the blue sedan. Breathless, he reached the driver’s side and climbed in. “Why didn’t you pick me up?” Alim looked at the ignition. “Where are the keys?” He saw a patch of blood on Jamal’s shirt and the fixed gaze of death in his eyes.

Liquida reached for Alim from the backseat and had the ether-soaked rag over his face before he could move. Alim fumbled for the pistol in his pocket, but it was too late.

With the sound of the shot that kills Nitikin, Herman jumps out from the opening in the side of the crate. He sees for the first time what has happened and within seconds he is over to help me with Maricela. He lifts her and carries her back into the darker interior of the sheltering truck.

I scramble across the floor to retrieve the six-inch crescent wrench that Maricela’s father purchased with his life. Two seconds later, my head is in the opening at the side of the wooden crate. I feel for the metal plug at the breech of the gun, adjust the spanner wheel until the wrench fits snugly over the hex head on the plug. Then I pull. It won’t budge. I pull again, this time harder. Then I realize I’m turning it in the wrong direction. I push on the handle. It doesn’t move. I jar the handle with my hand, giving it more muscle.

“You want me to try?” says Herman.

“Nooo,” I groan. But then the plug begins to move. A slow quarter turn at first, and then it loosens. I pull off the wrench and turn it with my fingers, twisting the two wires as I go. Suddenly the plug comes free in my hand.

Carefully I lift it straight out, away from the closed end of the barrel. I feel the heat from the radiation inside and quickly draw my hand with the plug away from the gun. The entire assembly comes free, the metal plug with the wires running through it. On one end of the wires is the electronic detonator. On the other is the small green circuit board with the timer.

I hold it gingerly in my hand as I get to my feet and walk toward the open door. I get down from the truck and throw the assembly as far as I can, out onto the street.

I yell at the top of my lungs, “The detonator is out. The bomb is safe.” Less than a minute later an explosion the size of an MD-80, a large cherry bomb some say is a quarter stick of dynamite, goes off in the street.

Within seconds a federal agent on a squad car PA system tells us to come out of the truck with our hands in the air. Men in tactical gear surround us with rifles as officers throw us to the ground.

Agents in black Kevlar storm the truck and huddle around the crate inside.

Police stand over us holding rifles as others search our pockets, pat us down, and cuff our hands.

Maricela struggles to get to her father. One of the cops kneels on her back, jamming her face into the pavement as two of his burly brethren grab her hands and manacle them behind her back.

“Leave her alone,” I say.

“Shut up.” I get the muzzle of a rifle jammed into my back.

Liquida turned the key in the ignition and started the car. With all the confusion around the truck two blocks away, who could blame them for not noticing the small blue sedan as it pulled away from the curb, did a U-turn, and headed south toward the Coronado bridge.

It took a few days for the dust to settle. By then federal authorities had hauled the device to a safe location where they could study it and dispose of the fissile materials when they were finished. The press and the media never got wind of exactly what had happened.

The president had delayed his televised warning by an additional half hour to provide more time for logistical planning. In the meantime, the device had been defused and the need for a warning evaporated. None of the more than ten thousand people on the naval base that day ever learned just how close they had come to Armageddon. Nor did the thousands who lived in Coronado or those in San Diego, across the bay.

Within days of the event, government analysts, physicists, and weapons-design experts assessed the potential yield of Nitikin’s device and crunched the numbers. They determined that the distance between the giant aircraft carrier moored at the dock and the epicenter of the blast where the truck was parked was just over half a mile, which placed the carrier squarely within the zone of total destruction.

Structures within a mile of the epicenter would have been totally destroyed, either by the blast effect or by heat from the fireball. Within that one-mile radius, virtually no living thing above the surface of the sea would have survived. Those who were not instantly incinerated would have suffocated as a result of oxygen deprivation, all oxygen having been consumed in the blast, or from the lethal dose of radiation poisoning.

Within a two-mile zone the vast majority of those in the open, without shelter, would have been killed. Any wooden structures would have been, for the most part, ignited by the superheated air from the blast and destroyed by fire.

Beyond that, radiation poisoning would have devastated those who survived the initial blast, some of whom would die within days, others over longer periods.

Much of the city of Coronado would lie in ruins. The blast effect, unimpeded by any structures on the water, would reach across the bay to wreak havoc on buildings along the waterfront in San Diego, and the effects of radiation would drift across the harbor and contaminate large portions of the city as well as the suburbs beyond. To those with visions of the California dream—balmy beaches and bikinied blue-eyed blondes—Southern California would never look the same again.

But for Paul Madriani and Katia Solaz, the most important item may not have been the bomb. Their salvation was found farther down the street.