Targets of Opportunity (28 page)

Then he had an idea that might just help to retrieve his friends from North Korea.

Sandor finished packing his black leather bag, tossed the S&W automatic handgun on top, and slid his Walther into his waistband holster, then ran downstairs to the waiting car and slid into the passenger seat.

“Take me to the
Times
,” he told the agent at the wheel.

————

Sandor signed in at the security desk, where they called upstairs to tell Bill Sternlich he had a visitor. Sandor rode the elevator up to his friend’s office, where Bill stood to greet him.

“Man, I’m glad to see you’re back safe and sound.”

“Thanks,” Sandor said, then slapped the copy of the newspaper on Sternlich’s desk. “So what the hell do you call this?”

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, Bill, what gives here?”

Sternlich shook his head. “Frank Donaldson,” he said. “Eager beaver, wants to be Woodward and Bernstein and Murrow, all rolled into one.”

“That so? And where did he get this information? How the hell is he tying the airplane crash in the Caribbean to North Korea? How did he even find out about North Korea?”

Sternlich walked past Sandor and shut the door to his small office, then stood facing his friend. “You asking me if I told him something?”

Sandor puffed out his cheeks and let out an angry lungful of air. “I don’t have to ask that, do I?”

“No, you don’t.”

“Well get H. L. Mencken in here and I’ll ask him myself.”

“Come on, Jordan, he’s not going to tell you anything.”

“No? Well you get him in here and let’s see. Or do you want me storming around this place to find him?”

“Okay, okay,” Bill said as he went for the phone. “But calm yourself down, all right?”

Sandor did not reply as Sternlich called the reporter on the intercom and asked him to come in. A minute later they were joined by Frank Donaldson.

If Sandor disliked him before they met, he positively despised him at first sight. Khaki pants, oxford blue shirt open at the neck, with a red-stripe tie hanging down and Ivy League condescension written all over his face.

“Frank, this is Jordan Sandor,” Sternlich said. “He wanted to meet you.”

The reporter responded with a slight smirk. “Ah, your friend from Washington, we finally meet.”

Sandor, who had remained standing in the center of the small room, responded with a malicious stare that brought the younger man up short. “Where did you get this information and who the hell gave you permission to print it?” he demanded, jabbing a finger in the direction of the article that still lay on Sternlich’s desk.

Donaldson looked from Sandor to Sternlich. “What is this, Bill? I don’t have to answer to him.”

“If you don’t,” Sandor growled through clenched teeth, “I’ll rip out your windpipe and shove it up your ass.”

The young man blanched, then made a move to leave, but Sandor was ahead of him. He positioned himself between Donaldson and the door, then grabbed a handful of blue oxford shirt.

“You can’t touch me,” the reporter said.

“No? Listen, Joe College, I can kill you and toss you in a hole so deep they’ll never find you.” Then Sandor took him by the throat, shoving him hard against the wall, driving him off his feet onto his toes. “If anything happens to my men because of this, there’s nothing they’ll suffer that I won’t triple for you, you understand me, you little weasel?”

“Jordan!” Sternlich shouted as Donaldson began to gag.

Sandor was still staring into the reporter’s terrified eyes. “If you print anything that screws up the exchange of my men for Kim’s minister, I promise you, you’ll answer to me.” Sandor let him down and the young man grabbed at his throat.

“I’m going to file charges against you, you Neanderthal.”

Sandor laughed in his face. “And say what? That you’re such a pussy you pissed all over yourself?”

Donaldson looked down at the wet stain on the front of his pants, then threw the door open and ran from the room.

“Are you out of your mind?” Sternlich demanded.

“Maybe,” Sandor replied angrily. “But I’ve still got two MIA I need to get back and I don’t want this little piece of shit causing an international incident that’ll end up with my men evaporating into the North Korean ether. If we don’t have deniability, we’ll have no bargaining chip with Pyongyang. You understand what’s at stake here, Bill?”

“I think I do, Jordan, but there are proper ways to handle things and this isn’t one of them.”

“It is in my world. I need to know where he got his information. There’s a leak, and I’m going to have to plug it fast.”

“I’m telling you, this isn’t the way. All you’re doing is making things worse.”

“Really? Well trust me on this, if I see one line in your daily rag about me or my men or any connection we have to North Korea, your staff is going to be short one obnoxious little reporter.”

“You’re out of control.”

“No I’m not, I know exactly what I’m doing,” Sandor told him. Then, without another word, he stormed out of the office, found his way to the elevators, and rode down to the lobby, a smile on his face all the way.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

TORTOLA, BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS

A
DINA WAS SEATED
comfortably on the upper deck of the yacht
Misty II
as it rocked gently at anchor in Fat Hogs Bay on the eastern side of the island of Tortola. He was entertaining two honored guests.

Antonio Bastidas was a key player in the Chavez regime. He had traveled from Caracas to join the entourage gathered in this idyllic setting to plot the destruction of the American oil industry. He was a short man in his early fifties with coarse features, a pockmarked complexion, and a crude affect that was in stark contrast to Adina’s elegant style.

Eric Silfen had been born and raised in Argentina, of German descent. Tall and thin and nearing sixty, he had thinning gray hair, a slightly stooped posture, and wire-rimmed spectacles that all worked together to promote the appearance of a world-weary college professor. In fact, he was a gifted scientist with an expertise in, and almost spiritual devotion to, nuclear and conventional explosive devices.

As soon as the steward finished serving their beverages and disappeared belowdecks, Bastidas got right to the point. “Are you concerned at all about the incident in North Korea?”

Adina responded with a slight tilt of his head, as if considering the idea. “It means nothing,” he said. “We should monitor that situation, of course, but our preparations are right on schedule. Timing is critical.”

“No need to move faster, just in case?”

“In case of what?”

“In case the Americans learned anything,” he responded impatiently.

Adina treated them to his thin-lipped smile. “What could they have learned? They’re still chasing their tails in St. Maarten and St. Barths. Who would possibly be looking at the Gulf Coast?”

Bastidas, one of Chavez’s pit bulls, was not so easily assuaged. “After their disaster with the BP oil spill, they’re always looking at the Gulf Coast.”

“Their environmental zealots are looking, not their military.”

“But we have no way of knowing if this team of American assassins got to anyone in Pyongyang with information that might compromise our plans. Can you be so certain they did not?”

“Certain? No. But what could our Asian friends have told them? We are the only ones with knowledge of the ultimate targets here.”

“Are you sure?”

The indulgent smile reappeared. “It was I who traveled to meet with the North Koreans, and I imparted to them the limited outline of our intentions. Our ally is satisfied that we will act with appropriate ferocity, that is enough for them to know.” He paused to take a sip of his drink. “I have also been informed that two of these assassins, as you call them, have been captured. We will know very soon if any breach has occurred.”

That news seemed to placate Bastidas, at least for the moment. He sat back and had a gulp of his
mojito.

Turning to Silfen, Adina said, “Shall we review the preliminary details?”

The Argentine-cum-German reached for the leather satchel beside his chair and removed several charts, laying them out on the large table before them. “As you know, we have determined that a nuclear strike is not practical. Although we may yet have access to one or more RA-115s, the likelihood of detection is too great.”

“RA-115?” Bastidas repeated.

“Yes, the so-called suitcase nuclear bombs, some of which were developed in the Soviet Union. There are still more than a hundred on the black market, but the level of radiation leakage makes them easy to identify. It is too difficult to transport them without discovery. There is also the RA-115-01, which is the submersible version, but again we face the problem of transport. Not to mention that all of these are older weapons and many of them have leaked so badly as to become ineffective.”

“Ineffective?”

“Duds, as the expression goes.”

“Seriously?”

“Quite,” Silfen replied to the Venezuelan, his tone making it clear that he was always serious when discussing weapons. “In order for these devices to remain potent they need to remain attached to a power source or risk the loss of their potency. Wherever they were stored, keeping them hot-wired for all these years would have made them dangerous, not to mention, again, easily detected.”

“I assume you are proposing a viable alternative?”

“Of course. Back in 2004, the Ahmadinejad regime experimented with underground, implosion-type devices. The North Koreans provided some of the technology for those tests, which took place in the Iranian desert. The trials would have gone unnoticed, but Kim insisted that the last one include a nuclear component. The West became incensed, the International Atomic Energy Agency stepped in, all testing was halted.”

“But the results were successful?”

“Extremely,” Silfen assured him. “The most interesting result was the manner in which these explosions reacted underground.” He pointed to the first chart and all three men leaned forward to review a drawing composed of various waves accompanied by numbers indicating the force of the expanding blast. “There is a mechanism known as a high-voltage detonator which can be joined to an EBW. That’s exploding bridgewire,” he explained without looking up. “When properly positioned the result is a series of shock waves that can approximate an earthquake or cause a tidal wave, or both, depending on the size of the charge and where it is deployed.”

“So,” Bastidas said, “if we can launch these underground, near the refineries in the Gulf of Mexico…”

“We can utterly destroy both facilities,” Silfen finished the thought.

“And,” Adina added, “it may even be possible to make it look as if it is a natural disaster. This is certainly not crucial to the result, but it may help to add to the initial chaos.”

Bastidas was confused again, and said so.

“You see, my friend, as I said to you earlier, it is all about timing.” Adina was clearly pleased with this aspect of his plan. “We are within days of the first hurricane of the season in the Gulf of Mexico. As you have likely heard there is already a tropical gale forming off to our southeast. In the next week there are predictions of more intense storms and, hopefully, we will see the usual series of hurricanes veering into the Gulf. We don’t need anything reaching the power of Hugo or even the recent assault of Ike on those coastal towns. A normal Category One hurricane should be quite sufficient to cover our tracks and, if it does not, there will be little remaining of our efforts to give the Americans any way to credibly fix the blame. They will have suspicions and accusations, of course, but the damage will have been done. That is the main thing.”

Bastidas continued to study the first chart, as if there were something else he should understand. He finally sat back, lifted his cocktail, and said, “Surely these refineries have defenses in place for this sort of attack.”

“Surely,” Adina agreed pleasantly. “But we have three advantages in our little chess match. First, we are in the process of gathering inside information on those security mechanisms. Second, by taking out the communications center in Fort Oscar we have damaged the surveillance capabilities of the American military in the area. Not crippled them, I admit, but at least slowed them down. They still have naval reconnaissance and satellite capability, but we have helped our cause.” He paused to take a sip of his cocktail.

“You said three,” Bastidas reminded him.

“Ah yes. With Fort Oscar down, we can deliver these charges by submarine. It will be far more difficult for them to detect our movements until it is too late to prevent the attack.”

“Submarine?”

Adina offered up another version of his thin-lipped smile. “A nice touch, don’t you think?”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

MARAND, IRAN

A
FTER THREE DAYS
in custody Rasa Jaber was beyond hope. Her husband had fled to the United States without her. Her captors refused to believe she had no knowledge of his defection or the reasons behind it. Her life had become a jumble of fear, disappointment, isolation, and betrayal.

She sat on the cement floor of a windowless cell, her arms clutched tightly around her knees as she hunched in the corner, struggling to make sense of all this. After the initial interrogation, which had lasted more than twenty-four uninterrupted hours, she was tossed into this hole and left here. Alone. Stripped naked, she felt the rough concrete against the tender skin of her bottom every time she moved, a reminder of the utter degradation she was suffering. They had not tortured her. They had not beaten her. They had simply deprived her of her dignity and of any human contact. Her food, such as it was, came through a slot in the large, thick metal door once a day, or what she guessed to be once a day. She had no idea how long she had been there. She existed in total darkness, without sanitation or running water. It was warm and dank and she was sickened by the foul odor of the tiny room.