“What about Kharrazi?” McKenna said. “Isn’t he inside?”
Nick glance down at the satellite photos. “I don’t know.”
“That’s great,” McKenna said. He looked down at his watch. “We’ve got sixty-eight minutes until a missile takes out the White House. Even if we get inside the building in less than thirty minutes, that gives my bomb guys a half an hour to deactivate the detonator. If they can. And on top of that we have to be stealthy. Any other requests, Agent?”
“That’s enough,” Matt said, locking eyes with McKenna.
An awkward silence hung in the night air. Nick considered the restraints those sixty-eight minutes put on them. He thought about Julie lying in her hospital bed ordering him to kill Kharrazi. Her bruised face looking up at him, her eyes pleading with him for retribution. He wiped his temple and was surprised to find it moist with sweat in the cool autumn night. He needed to stay focused on the White House, though. He couldn’t afford to let Kharrazi force him into a mistake. Not now.
“You’re right,” Nick said.
McKenna raised his brow. The scowl deteriorated and the grandfather face returned.
“Yes,” Nick continued. “We don’t have time to do this my way. But we must get to that detonator first.”
McKenna nodded. “Okay. Where do you suspect it is?”
“Well,” Nick looked over McKenna’s shoulder and added his own penlight to the blueprint. “Something that important would be protected fairly well. I would have to say it’s in the basement.”
“Agreed,” McKenna said. He moved his finger around the perimeter of the diagram. “Here. This is the outside entrance to the basement. It’s in the back of the cabin below two second-story windows. We could get in there without entering the cabin. We secure the basement and gain control of the detonator before they can react.”
Nick asked, “How, um. .”
“Stealthily?” McKenna finished for him. A slight grin tugged at the corner of his lip. He looked over at a young man who sat next to the group with his legs crossed. A small digital device sat on the ground in front of him. A pair of wires extended from the device to his ears where he covered them with his hands. He was concentrating so hard, his face looked as if he had an upset stomach.
McKenna waved a hand and snapped a finger to attract his attention. “What have you got, Kelly?” McKenna asked him.
Kelly made eye contact with McKenna for a moment, then returned to his trance. Ten minutes earlier an Apache helicopter flew directly over the KSF cabin and dropped a transmitter on the roof of the cabin. A sticky malleable device that would fasten itself to the A-frame with little noise. Kelly’s palms pressed even harder to his ears. “Singing, Sir.”
“Singing?”
“Yes, Sir. If I’m not mistaken, it’s an old Kurdish anthem. Apparently they’ve heard about the President’s press conference and sense victory.”
McKenna looked at Nick. “Let’s get over there before the party breaks up.”
“Sir.” A soldier stood under the dipping branch of a mature pine tree. His face was painted so dark that his eyes seemed luminescent. “We have a problem.”
“What’s that soldier?”
“The place is land-mined with motion detectors, Sir. A quarter mile around the entire complex. There’ll be no sneaking up on them.”
McKenna scooped up a handful of dirt and slammed it down. “This is getting better all the time.”
Nick reached into his duffle bag and came out with a green handle and flipped it a couple of times like a baton.
“What’s that?” McKenna asked.
Nick pulled up on the expandable antenna and admired the instrument. “Electronic jamming device. It’ll jam any frequencies within a mile radius. We cut off their power, destroy any generators, and jam any other signals. They won’t be able to see or hear us coming. Plus, the sentries outside won’t be able to communicate with the cabin, or each other.” Nick pushed a button on the plastic handle and a green light began to blink. “Let’s see if there’s still any singing going on over there.”
Chapter 36
Nick crouched low in a thicket of woods outside of the KSF cabin. He looked at his watch. They had forty-nine minutes to get inside and disable the detonator. Adrenalin pumped through his veins. Beside him, Matt worked his Glock with his hands while examining the terrain with hawk-like eyes.
Nick looked up at the night sky and felt the stillness of the night. A hundred federal employees surrounded the cabin, yet Nick couldn’t hear a twig snap. They’d set off the jamming device and had made easy work of the twenty KSF soldiers patrolling the exterior of the cabin. With silencers and superior night vision, they’d taken their positions and readied to encounter the strength of Kharrazi’s force who would certainly be waiting for them inside the building.
But Kharrazi had months, maybe even longer to prepare for this battle. Nick had thrown together a crew of Marines and FBI agents in just a couple of hours. Kharrazi would leave little to chance.
Nick smelled drifting smoke from a distant fireplace. A mile or so away a father was probably reading bedtime stories to his children, blissfully unaware of the danger that lurked just over the ridge. Nick wondered what it would be like to be so insulated from the harsh realities of the world. While parents tucked in their fragile youngsters, people like Nick were chewing Rolaids by the handful, acutely aware of the threats that awaited them.
Now, Matt was to his left and Jennifer Steele to his right. Both had rifles tight against their cheeks aiming at the two upstairs windows, the only openings on their side of the cabin. Flanking them were a team of Marines. Agents Rutherford and Tolliver were tucked in behind the Marines with Silk. The night covered them like a blanket of moss.
McKenna tapped Nick’s elbow and gave a silent thumbs up. Then he nodded toward a Marine Sergeant twenty yards away in the brush and got a nod back. McKenna raised his right hand. He let it hang there while the chain of command responded with their appropriate signals. It seemed he was about to drop his hand when something peculiar occurred.
The upstairs window opened abruptly and a balloon slipped out. Just as quickly the window was shut. Nick heard the flutter of night vision visors flapping up and down. Unlike the forest they hid in, the cabin stood in a clearing and the moon bathed the walls of the cabin with significant light. That made night vision somewhat superfluous, yet some soldiers still tried both ways.
Matt looked over at McKenna awaiting instructions. He seemed frustrated. McKenna had given orders not to shoot until he gave the signal, but he couldn’t have anticipated this. Matt twisted his attention back and forth between McKenna and the window, then to Nick. McKenna appeared unsure, his hand still frozen over his head. Nick saw the balloon moved downward in a gradual angle toward the tree line where they hid.
Nick saw Steele aim her rifle at the balloon.
“Don’t,” Nick said, louder than he should. He knew that it didn’t matter now. Kharrazi obviously knew where they were.
“Call off the attack,” Nick said to McKenna.
“What?”
“No time to argue. Call it off.”
McKenna waved his hand signaling a stand down. The balloon slowly drifted toward them. Only it didn’t quite drift. It seemed to move in a straight line. The wind was having no effect on the balloon’s direction. Nick’s stomach twisted into a tight cramp. With the time constraints given them, they had frantically planned for a sudden offensive with little regard for a defense.
“Do you have gas masks?” Nick asked McKenna.
“Sure,” McKenna answered, with paralyzed confusion on his face.
It was too late. The balloon only had another twenty feet to go. Maybe ten seconds before it hit the tree line. But where was it headed? Nick calculated the spot where the balloon would first contact the pine trees. He aimed his binoculars to the contact point, scrambling to see something. Anything.