Target America: A Sniper Elite Novel (16 page)

34

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA,
Edwards Air Force Base

The president could smell the ozone in the darkened operations center the moment he stepped through the door, the static electricity in the air making the hair on his arms stand on end. He saw General Couture on the far side of the room talking to Colonel Eugene Bradshaw with the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing, attached to ACC (Air Combat Command). Bradshaw was the air force liaison officer whose job it was to coordinate communications with Creech AFB, located forty-some miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The president looked at the giant hi-definition monitor on the wall, seeing the overhead infrared video feed of the Luxor hotel and casino provided by a loitering reconnaissance UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) based out of Creech. The op center was alive with the murmured communications of a half dozen men and women wearing headsets, rapidly running their fingers over keyboards to collate minute-by-minute information coming in from various intelligence sources and military commands. This was the president’s first experience in such an environ
ment, and only with some difficulty did he manage to keep the sense of wonderment from his face.

“Mr. President,” Couture said as he approached with the colonel. “Allow me to present Colonel Bradshaw with the 432nd Wing.”

Bradshaw was dressed in his air force camouflage ABU (airman battle uniform). He was in his midforties, tall and slender, with a plain face and dirty blond hair cut in a sharp flattop. “How do you do, Mr. President?” He extended his hand. “It’s an honor, sir.”

“Likewise,” the president said, wiping the perspiration from his palm before shaking the colonel’s hand. “Are we about ready here, gentlemen?”

“Yes, sir,” Bradshaw said. “As you can see, the UAV is already over the target.”

“
The target
,” the president repeated softly. “My God, I never expected to hear our own military use that word in reference to an American city.”

“I can use a different word if you prefer, Mr. President.”

“You mean a euphemism?” the president asked. “No, Colonel, thank you. I’m a big boy—or at least so my mother tells me.”

Both field grade officers smiled dutifully.

“And how is she?” Couture asked, knowing that the president’s mother had been in and out of the hospital numerous times during the past few months.

“She’s holding her own,” the president said. He gestured at the video feed. “What exactly do we expect to see?”

“Not a great deal, really,” Couture replied. “We’ll see the entry team enter through the main doors, and then nothing until they come back out.”

“I’m worried the security video from the hotel will conflict with our AQAP cover story,” the president said. “How are we going to deal with that?”

“Pope’s people have already hacked into hotel security, sir.” The whole operation was distasteful to Couture, but he’d had no better plan to offer in the limited time available to them. “So there won’t be any video.”

“Okay,” the president said with a sigh. “I guess that’s one less thing to worry about.”

Bradshaw stole a glance at his immediate superior then looked at the commander in chief. “Mr. President, if I may speak out of turn, sir?”

Couture’s eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Sure,” the president said easily. “That might be a refreshing change.”

Bradshaw smiled. “It may be somewhat of a bold assertion on my part, sir, but we have an entirely unprecedented situation on our hands. There is no standard procedure for protecting this nation from an imminent nuclear attack within our borders. All of this is pure OJT, every bit of it. So if we’re found out in the long run, so be it. No one is going to be able to blame us for what we do tonight because we’re acting one hundred percent in the interest of the American people. Win, lose, or draw, we’re looking for a
live nuclear weapon
, and I’ll be proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with you in front of Congress—should it ever get that far.”

The president would never admit it to anyone, but the colonel’s remark actually made him feel better. “Thank you, Colonel. Let’s hope I never have to hold you to that.”

35

LAS VEGAS,
Luxor Hotel

Arabic music played on the stereo while Conman Tuckerman sat on the sofa in Faisal’s suite with a gorgeous, dark, and leggy twenty-three-year-old black girl on his lap. She sipped from a glass of Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” Rosé champagne—the second most expensive champagne in the world. Her name was Missy, and she smelled like heaven, with big brown eyes and short, curly black hair, and Tuckerman could tell she was enjoying his company; he’d been with enough Vegas call girls to know when they were just going through the motions. Within moments of his entering the suite, she’d gravitated toward him.

Tuckerman knew that Faisal was scheming to keep him in the casino until the next night so he could win back his two hundred thousand dollars. It was a common gambit in the casino world, but it didn’t matter. By sunrise, Faisal would be either dead or wishing for it. What made Tuckerman worried was the presence of Missy and the other girls. He hadn’t expected there to be seven of them in the room. He hadn’t anticipated any girls, in fact, though he probably should have. This was Vegas, after all, and Faisal was a known “matador.”

“Join me in the other room?” he whispered into Missy’s ear.

She looked at him and smiled. “Sure.” She set down the glass and stood up from his lap, taking his hand.

“Muhammad, do you mind if we uh . . .”

“Not at all,” Faisal said, looking up from the opposite sofa, his hand up a young blonde’s skirt. “Enjoy yourself my friend.”

Tuckerman led Missy into the far room and closed the door.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, peeling out of her black body dress. “Those other guys give me the creeps.” She slid her arms around his neck and kissed him affectionately.

He drank her in as long as he dared before holding her out at arm’s length. “Look, you’re not going to believe this, but I need you to put that dress back on.”

“What? Why? What’s wrong? You’re not a cop, are you?”

“No.” He took his wallet from his jacket and pulled out three thousand dollars’ worth of crisp hundred-dollar bills, all of his CIA flash-around money. He picked her purse up and stuffed the money into it.

“What’s going on?” she asked, more intrigued than alarmed.

He took his cellular from inside his jacket. “Listen to me very carefully,” he said, typing out the text message: “Seven hookers in the room!” He sent the message and put away the phone. “I’m with the CIA.”

She laughed. “Baby, I already like you, and I’m a sure thing.”

He snatched her dress off the floor and held it out to her. “Listen! I want you to put this back on and get the fuck out, because in about five minutes, federal agents are coming through that fucking door, and you
don’t
want to be here.”

She saw that he was serious and took the dress. “Is this guy a terrorist or something?”

“Yes,” he said, fully aware that he was breaking every fucking rule in the Black Ops handbook.

The phone vibrated in his pocket, and he read the message. “See?” He held the phone out for her to read: “Keep your head in the game! Six minutes and counting!”

She stepped quickly into the dress, pulling the straps up over her shoulders and slipping into her heels. “Am I gonna be in trouble?”

He gave her a quick kiss. “Whatever you do, don’t ever tell anyone you were here tonight.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding her head in earnest. “I promise.”

“Look embarrassed when we go back out there.” He reached for the doorknob. “I’m gonna tell them you started your period and walk you straight to the door.”

“Okay.”

He took her by the hand and led her from the room.

“Wow, so fast!” Faisal exclaimed, looking up from the blonde’s exposed breasts. “Are you ready for another, my friend?”

A few of the other girls laughed, and so did a couple of Faisal’s people.

Ma’mun just stared. The only man in the room not paired off, he sat glumly on a stool over by the bar.

Tuckerman kept Missy moving toward the door. “This broad’s on her period and didn’t even fucking tell me.”

“Okay,” Faisal said. “There are plenty to go around.” He didn’t personally see the big deal about a girl on her period, but he took being a host seriously, and if the girl had displeased his guest in some way, then it was time for her to leave.

Tuckerman opened the door and stepped out into the hall with Missy. “Take the stairs.” He stepped back into the room and closed the door.

“You don’t think you were kind of rude?” asked the girl on Faisal’s lap.

Tuckerman frowned at her. “Champagne and blood do not mix.”

The mood in the room changed from one of lustful camaraderie to one of collective embarrassment.

“I’m sorry, my friend,” Faisal said solemnly. “It is my fault.”

“Don’t be silly,” Tuckerman said, waving him off. “I don’t think the girl even knew, to be honest.” He shrugged and sat back on the love seat. “Maybe I overreacted. I’m the one who should apologize.”

“I’m sure she didn’t know,” the blonde said. “We live together, so our cycles are the same, and she’s a whole week early.”

“Hey!” Faisal said. “Enough now! No more talk about bloody vaginas—please!”

Everyone laughed, including Faisal’s security men, and the mood improved over the next couple of minutes, but Tuckerman was worried. He’d seen women shot and killed many times before, and it didn’t sit well with him. He checked his watch again . . . ninety seconds left.

36

LAS VEGAS,
Luxor Hotel

The CIA plant/concierge was of Arabic descent. He’d been working at the Luxor for the past eighteen months, spying on Arabic gamblers, and though he had gotten to know Faisal pretty well during that time, he had never once suspected the man might be funding terrorists. He stopped the elevator on the nineteenth floor. “I sure hope you guys are right about this.”

“Makes two of us,” Gil replied, wrapping a green and black
shemagh
around his head. The other three operators were Alpha, Trigg, and Speed. Once all their faces were concealed behind
shemaghs
, making them look like Shiite raiders, they unzipped the valises they had brought along and armed themselves with suppressed AK-47 rifles.

“You’re sure there’s no guard outside the room?” Gil asked.

“If there is,” said the concierge, “he’ll be the first one I’ve seen.”

“Okay,” Gil said to the others. “Remember, only gutter Arabic.” This was a shorthand form of communication they had developed during their time in the Middle East that they could use in the dark without immediately giving themselves away as Americans. It was barely rudi
mentary Arabic, but to the untrained American ear, they would sound enough like Arabs to convince any witnesses they were terrorists. “And try like hell not to hit the women.”

He checked his watch. “Okay,” he said to the concierge. “Ninety seconds. Let’s go.”

The concierge turned the key, and the inclinator rose to the twentieth floor. The doors opened with fifty seconds to go, revealing an Arabic security man sitting on a chair against the wall. He looked up just in time to catch a 7.62 mm round right between the eyes. His head snapped back as blood, brain, and bone spattered the wall, and he fell out of the chair. The bullet had continued on through the wall, but didn’t seem to have alerted anyone.

No one said a word to the CIA man about getting it wrong as they dismounted the inclinator and attached the breaching charges to the door; combat was an ever-evolving set of circumstances, where nothing ever remained the same.

 • • •

WITH TEN SECONDS
left on the clock, Tuckerman sat forward on the love seat to line himself up with his target. The door imploded with a bang, and he launched himself at Faisal, delivering a flying elbow to the bridge of his nose and taking the couch over backward, dumping both Faisal and the girl onto the carpet.

The girls screamed, and Faisal’s security men struggled to gain their feet even as they were being shot down with perfectly placed bursts of heavy-caliber fire. Blood flew as the men went down without ever managing to draw their weapons. Only Ma’mun succeeded in drawing a pistol before he took a three-round burst to the face, exploding his head. His pistol went off as he flew back against the bar and crashed to the floor.

With all secondary targets down, Gil ran forward and pulled Tuckerman off of Faisal, making sure they were both still alive, and quickly secured Faisal’s hands with flex cuffs. The women were sobbing and lying on the floor covering their heads, two of them wounded by flying door fragments. Only Faisal’s blonde was silent. Speed and Trigg began dragging the others one by one into a bedroom, shouting violently at them in gutter Arabic, to keep up the charade.

Tuckerman got to his knees beside the blonde and saw the bullet hole just above her left eye. He grabbed her up into his arms, realizing that Ma’mun had inadvertently shot her as a result of a motor reflex spasm in his arm.

Gil kicked the dead girl out of Tuckerman’s arms and hauled him to his feet, shoving a silenced USP .45 into his hands and growling at him to get moving. Speed slammed the door to the bedroom where the other five girls were now flex-cuffed on the bed, all of them still sobbing loud enough to be heard through the door.

Tuckerman moved to cover the hall where the CIA man was pulling the laundry cart from the elevator. Alpha gave Faisal a shot of sodium pentothal to knock him out, and Trigg tossed him over his shoulder, carrying him into the hall and dumping him into the cart. They covered him with bed linens and began wheeling him down the hall toward the service elevator, with the CIA man leading the way.

 • • •

MISSY WAS STILL
standing in the stairwell debating whether to leave her roommate behind when she’d heard the explosion that took out the door to Faisal’s suite. She grabbed the door handle and opened it a crack, just in time to see what looked to her like an Arab terrorist charging into the room with a machine gun. She was still peering through the crack in terror when the Arabs came back out of the room pushing the laundry cart in front of them, an Arabic concierge leading the way.

The door to the nineteenth floor burst open one flight down, and six men with pistols in their hands poured into the stairwell. One of them wore a white T-shirt with LAPD—Los Angeles Police Department—on the front. They were in town for their shift sergeant’s bachelor party in the room directly beneath Faisal’s suite. They’d heard the blast and were on their way up to check it out.

“What the hell’s going on up there?” the sergeant demanded. He was the one in the T-shirt, a barrel-chested fellow with a thick mustache, and, being in his midthirties, the oldest. The others looked like they were probably in their mid- to early twenties, rookies mostly.

“Terrorists!” Missy blurted, jumping back from the door.

The sergeant mounted the stairs with the rookies right on his tail. They stopped at the door to the twentieth, and Sergeant Mustache opened it a crack to see men in Arab headgear shoving a laundry cart down the far hall.

“Fucking towel-heads with machine guns!” he said in a harsh whisper. “Definitely
tangos
! We’ll hit ’em hard and fast!”

 • • •

TUCKERMAN WAS LOOKING
back over his shoulder toward Faisal’s suite when the door to the stairwell opened and the cops poured into the hallway. Shots rang out, and he was knocked off his feet. He opened fire with the .45 at the bodies coming toward him, downing a big man with a mustache wearing an LAPD T-shirt.

The rookies panicked and began pouring fire down the hall.

The SEALs whipped around with their AK-47s and shot down the remaining five out-of-town cops without having time to think about what they were doing. The CIA man was dead with a bullet through his head and throat, and Tuckerman was bleeding out fast through a hole in his gut.

“It’s the abdominal aorta,” Trigg muttered in a low voice, grabbing a hotel towel from the laundry cart and jamming it against Tuckerman’s belly. “He’s gonna bleed out.”

A guest dared to poke his head from his room. Gil whipped around with his AK-47, and the guest ducked back inside, slamming the door.

“We need a fuckin’ AAT!” Trigg hissed, referring to an abdominal aortic tourniquet, a pneumatic Velcro tourniquet that wrapped around a wounded soldier’s abdomen, functioning a lot like a pneumatic pressure cuff used for taking blood pressure.

“Put ’im in the goddamn laundry cart!” Gil ordered.

“He’ll fucking bleed out!” Trigg grabbed a sheet from the cart and started to wrap it around Tuckerman’s body. The towel was already completely soaked with blood. “We can twist this tight over the towel. Call for an ambulance!”

“Get him on the elevator!” Gil took his iPhone from his harness and turned it on. He did not notice that Marie had left him a voice mail and would not have paid it any attention if he had. They got Tuckerman onto the service elevator, and Speed ran back for the laundry cart
containing the unconscious Muhammad Faisal. The dead CIA man was left behind in the hall.

Gil had seen enough men die in combat to know that Tuckerman would be dead before they made it to the ground floor, but he got Crosswhite on the phone and made sure the paramedics would be ready to meet them at the service entrance below.

“Who were those fuckin’ assholes?” Speed asked ripping the
shemagh
from his head.

“Beats the fuck outta me.” Gil knelt down beside Tuckerman, putting his hand beneath his head. “How ya doin’, partner? You gonna hang on for us?”

Tuckerman reached for Gil’s free hand. “Thanks for not letting me rot in prison,” he said softly. “I’m sorry I disappointed you.” He glanced at Trigg. “You can let go, dude. The pressure’s killin’ me.”

Trigg’s face contorted with emotion, and he released his grip on the twisted sheet tourniquet.

Gil squeezed his hand, feeling the dying man’s grip fading fast. “Anybody you want me to talk to when this is over? Anybody you want me to go see?”

Tuckerman shook his head, his face pallid. “I’m good to go, Chief. You guys are my family.”

Gil bent down to kiss his forehead. “You rest easy, brother. We’ll catch up to you on the other side. You wait for us there! Hear me?”

Tuckerman winked. “You know I do . . .” A few moments later he was gone, leaving behind only the faintest of smiles.