Targets of Opportunity (49 page)

Adding to the difficulty was the sheer impracticality of disclosing to the world at large that a truck with nuclear weapons was barreling through the storm somewhere in an area with a radius of up to a thousand miles. The panic that would result and the devastation the public reaction would cause might be worse than the explosion itself.

Given that risk, most of the law enforcement officers and soldiers involved were told nothing about a possible plutonium bomb; they were only warned of a potential terrorist strike.

Patrick Janssen’s counterpart at the Baton Rouge refinery was on high alert. Between the storm and the newly released warning of a terrorist threat, military units were moving into place at all the refineries in the region as quickly as the weather allowed.

Sandor worked the radio lines while Marty and Jake guided the Seahawk through lethal crosscurrents until they reached landfall over Louisiana. All manner of information was being fed from law enforcement personnel and military on the ground, filtering it through Captain Krause’s office at the naval air base in Corpus Christi and the temporary communications center in Baytown. Although nothing had turned up yet, every man in the field was being encouraged to relay even the most insignificant data they came across. Nothing should be considered inconsequential, they were told—the stakes were too high to overlook a single detail.

Their first break came on a call that was routed through Bay-town.

“I know this isn’t much,” Janssen told Sandor over the satellite hookup, “but the police have been rousting every truck stop from Little Rock to Miami. You talk about terrorists to these truck drivers and that’s a hot button, as you can imagine.”

“I got it,” Sandor replied. “So what’s the news?”

“Found a guy in Opelousas who had a strange observation.”

“I’m all ears.”

“There’s a big diner and rest area right off Interstate Ten. This driver noticed a tractor-trailer show up, didn’t stay but a few minutes, then took off again. Says he only noticed it because they pulled up right beside him and nobody ever got out.”

“When you say it isn’t much, you’re not kidding,” Sandor replied.

“Hang on, there’s more. When the truck left, it didn’t get back on the interstate. He said it made a turnoff to the side road. This trucker calls it one of those roads to nowhere.” As Sandor thought it over, Janssen continued. “In this storm, why come to a rest area, immediately leave, but not get back on the highway?”

“When?”

“This morning. A couple of hours ago.”

“Did he describe the truck?”

“Freightliner cab, sixteen-wheel rig, trailer plain white, didn’t catch any logos, but get this—when we gave a description of what we’re looking for, he said he noticed the trailer had some unusual-looking doors on the side.”

“And how far is Opelousas from Baton Rouge?”

“How about, down the road a piece?”

“You hear that, Marty?”

The Marine nodded. “Copy that.”

“Okay,” Sandor said, “it’s a long shot but you never know. Let’s get word to everyone in that area, scope out every road that could lead from Opelousas to Baton Rouge. In fact, every road from Opelousas to anywhere.”

“Already done.”

“Good. Order them to identify but not to engage. If there’s any chance we can take them down before they ignite those nukes, it’s worth a try.”

Banahan was on the line. “Got it, Jordan.”

“Good. I’m getting on the horn with Washington; we’ll get the Air Force and the Air National Guard on this right now.”

Sandor cut them off, made the connection through Langley, and gave his latest report to Byrnes. Meanwhile, Martindale was approaching Baton Rouge from the southwest. The helicopter was still being tossed about and fuel was becoming an issue, but now they had no choice except to stay in the air and try to find the truck.

As Sandor finished with the Deputy Director, he was peering out the windows, but there was still nothing to see but rain and dark clouds. “Marty, if you were coming at this refinery in a truck, would you try to make a direct hit?”

“Hell no, couldn’t get close enough, not with a low-yield nuke. And they’ve gotta assume we’re on watch for them by now.”

“Agreed. So the questions are, how would you go at it and what’s in that truck besides the weapons?”

Jake said, “Sir, the Baton Rouge refinery is right along the bank of the Mississippi River.”

Sandor nodded. “And water seems to be their preferred medium of attack.”

“Any kind of airborne assault is too likely to get shot down.”

“I’m with you on that too,” Sandor said. “And the Mississippi, last time I looked, runs south, that right?”

They both agreed.

“Which means, if we’re going to find this damned needle in a rainstorm, we’ve got to get north of the refinery.”

“Aye aye,” Martindale said, then increased his speed.

“But we’ve got to run low enough to see the damn thing.”

The Seahawk took the turn smoothly, even in the gale winds, and Martindale banked the craft in an arc that led them west so he could circle back around from north to south along the sweeping curves of America’s largest river.

Sandor radioed back to Janssen and Banahan.

“It’s only an educated guess,” he told them after he explained the approach they were taking along the Mississippi, “but we’re on our way now. Call and have some of the men positioned for an attack from that direction.”

Banahan assured him he would take care of it.

“How’s my Korean girlfriend?”

“Safe and sound.”

“No flights north today.”

“That’s right. Ronny Young is babysitting her as we speak.”

Sandor nodded to himself, wondering, if these nukes went off, whether he would have done Hea a favor after all, putting her in harm’s way. “Keep pushing for information,” Sandor said, then signed off and contacted Captain Krause.

————

The two drivers who were ferrying Luis and Francisco and their deadly cargo to their destination had already made the turnoff from Samuels Road and were heading west to the area above the eastern bank of the Mississippi.

They had been spotted by a state trooper when they passed Port Hudson, but the officer had not yet received the APB, so he didn’t think much of it—other than the fact that it was an odd place to take a large rig in this storm. Now that he had the alert, he called it in.

Sandor was making another vain attempt to see something on the ground when Banahan relayed the report, immediately patching in the trooper to provide details.

“There are a whole lotta places a trucker can pull off the road in a hurricane like this,” the officer told them, “but headin’ down to the river, you’ve gotta have shit for brains to be anywhere near the water today.”

Sandor asked him for the precise location of the turnoff, then told him to stay where he was. “Do not approach or engage them,” he said. “We’ll be back to you in a few minutes.”

Martindale, who was listening in, swung the Seahawk around while Sandor got back in touch with Captain Krause.

“It’s sketchy at best,” Sandor admitted, “but it’s all we’ve got right now, and I’m not far from there. Two problems though. First, we’re about to run out of fuel. Second, if we get too low they might spot us before we see them, which is going to be a real problem if they actually turn out to be the guys we’re after. You’ve got Coast Guard and Navy running up and down the river?”

“That’s affirmative, we’ve asked them to get moving, although we’re about to get slammed by the brunt of Charlene so I don’t know how much good they can do.”

“And I don’t know how much longer we can stay in the air,” Sandor admitted.

Just then the copilot, who was working with binoculars, saw a sixteen-wheeler parked near what appeared to be a municipal boat launch. “Off the port side!” Jake called out.

Through the rain he could make out the tractor-trailer sitting just beside a concrete ramp used to roll small craft on their trailer hitches into the river. In these conditions, there was no one with a boat anywhere near the area. In fact there was no one in sight but the large rig.

“Marty, take us back hard to starboard!” Sandor hollered, then he told Krause what they’d seen.

“Roger that,” the CO replied. “I’ll have two CG vessels there pronto.”

“We need to approach with caution,” Sandor reminded him. “We don’t know how or where these devices are supposed to be detonated. We go barging in and we may be the problem instead of the solution.”

“All right,” Krause agreed, “give me the coordinates and we’ll make an oblique approach. But remember, I’d rather have these things go off three miles upriver than right beside the refinery.”

“Understood,” Sandor agreed. Then he turned to Martindale and his copilot. “You boys know what this is about, so here’s the deal. You’re going to set me down somewhere in the woods on this side of the river and I’m going after them. You’re short on fuel and you’ve risked your lives for the past two hours, so you get the hell out of here, nothing to be gained by hovering around in the middle of a hurricane, especially given the payload they’re carrying.”

“And what are you supposed to do when you get down there?” Martindale asked. “If that’s really the truck those kids at Coulter told you about, there are at least four men aboard. Maybe more by now.”

“I’ll try to get close enough to take a couple of them down, delay them until the cavalry shows up. Then we’ll figure out how to disarm the bombs.”

“Easy as that?”

“As long as our friends get there in time.”

“Well, sir,” Martindale said as he unbuckled his harness and climbed out of the pilot’s seat, “at least you’ll have me for company in the meanwhile.”

Sandor smiled. “I guess this is not a debate.”

“No, sir,” the Marine replied with a grin. “Jake can land this thing on a dime, and two of us on the ground will be a whole lot better than one, don’t you think?”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, NORTH OF BATON ROUGE

J
AKE TOOK THEM
toward the river, north of where they had spotted the truck. Sandor and Martindale lowered themselves from the Seahawk with the same ropes and winches the Navy SEAL team had used to enter the Gulf of Mexico. As soon as they hit the ground they disengaged their harnesses, unhooked the bundle of weapons they had packed, then hurried into a wooded area that was about half a mile inland.

Given the strong winds and relentless rain, they hoped their landing went unnoticed by the men near the truck. Whether it did or not, they were ready to move as soon as they unclipped themselves. When they signaled to Jake that they were clear he hit the recoil switch that drew in their lines, then banked the chopper hard to the northeast and disappeared into the storm, away from the sight line of the targeted area.

Martindale was in full assault garb, Sandor in black slacks and sweater, although he was still wearing the helmet from the helicopter with the two-way radio connecting him to both Marty and their COMCENT in Corpus Christi. Each man was armed with an S&W .45 1911 automatic, an M-4 carbine with extra clips, grenades, and flares. In the knapsack they had one pair of binoculars, a satellite phone, a portable Geiger counter, and an array of other monitoring devices. They went through the package, setting themselves up with their weapons as Martindale shouldered the backpack with the remainder of the electronic hardware, then they pushed off at a trot, heading south and toward the edge of the river.

It was possible, of course, that this truck was not the one they were searching for, but logic told Sandor otherwise. Not only had they run short of leads, but there was something about a large tractor-trailer stopping at the shore of the Mississippi River three miles north of the Baton Rouge oil refinery in the face of an oncoming hurricane that defied any reasonable explanation other than enemy action.

Occam’s razor, DCI Walsh would say.

They moved swiftly through the sparsely wooded area until they were less than a hundred yards from the boat launch.

————

Unfortunately, the maneuvering of the Seahawk had not gone undetected. Luis and Francisco spotted the helicopter when it banked east across the river and, although they did not see Sandor and Martindale disembark, Francisco told the other two men to be on alert.

“We may have company soon,” he told them. “Could just be some sort of aerial patrol related to the hurricane, but be ready.”

Meanwhile, the four of them were unloading the large crates from the trailer. Their jobs were relatively simple. They were to assemble the two ovoid-shaped vessels that were custom crafted of gray fiberglass, virtually undetectable once they were in the water, especially in the midst of this storm. Each craft had a preprogrammed navigation system and gyroscopic balancing mechanism. When they finished putting these devices together they would open the smaller crates containing the nuclear weapons, each of which was equipped with a digital timer. The plutonium orbs were packed separately. After the detonation systems were lowered into the pods and secured in place, the timers would be set and the navigation programs initiated. Only then was the plutonium to be inserted.

Then the hatches on each pod would be snapped shut and the fiberglass shells slid down the ramp into the Mississippi, where their small engines would run them downriver with the current. Assuming the timing was reasonably accurate, two nuclear blasts would occur just along the banks of the Baton Rouge oil refinery, the results of which would be an obliteration of the facility; a fire that would rage for months because of the impossibility of getting near the epicenter of a nuclear blast to deal with the conflagration; radioactive fallout that would impact the surrounding area; and, if the stars aligned for Adina’s plan, damage along the Mississippi that would cause inestimable harm to the neighboring areas to the north and the south.

The key, as far as the four Venezuelans were concerned, was to put these bombs into play, get into the truck, and drive as fast as they could to escape the impending cataclysm.