Javad had reminded his men that the greater the cost to the Americans here, the better chance they gave to the Iranian people in their homeland. If the Americans understood the cost of war, who knew how many Iranians they could save? They were defenders of their great nation, Javad had told his men.
He wondered if they had all believed it. They certainly hadn’t looked like they had reservations. Once they had the rifles in their hands and moving targets in front of them, perhaps the killer’s instinct had taken over.
Javad saw a man in a charcoal suit who lay quivering and bleeding next to his luxury SUV. One of Javad’s men shot him in the head and marched on, firing at the fleeing passengers and into the cars.
Javad gripped the metal fence atop the overpass, his mouth agape. He hadn’t even bothered to put his own vest on. He didn’t feel there was any need. The three men had walked fifty meters by now. Dozens of bodies lay strewn in their wake. Every few seconds, more cracks of gunfire. Changing of the magazines. Aim. Fire. Repeat.
Then one of Javad’s men fell to the ground.
At first Javad thought he had stumbled, but then the second team member — the one who had been walking in the center of the highway — fell backward as well. That one’s head turned into a bloody mess.
Javad should have expected it, but it still came as a shock. He hadn’t seen any source of resistance. The surprise evaporated by the time he saw the third man killed.
The third man saw the second go down and began walking toward that direction, looking for the attacker. The third man went down in a similar manner. A single headshot. No clear shooter. All three of Javad’s men had been killed inside of twenty seconds.
Javad had known that they would die. But he had expected a grand, televised shootout with police. After all, they were killing civilians. Who would be fighting back in this group? He didn’t see any police cars. He supposed that it was possible there was an unmarked law enforcement vehicle out there in the sea of stopped traffic.
Javad suddenly felt the powerful urge to walk back to his van and grab his own rifle. From his vantage point, he could pick off his men’s killer. But that would alert people to his position, and make any attempt to escape much less likely to succeed. Perhaps he could…
The section of highway where his dead men lay exploded into a mix of grey dust and yellow flame.
Javad felt the heat and pressure of the burst and dropped to the ground, alarmed by the explosion. What was going on?
Chase dropped the third shooter with a single shot to the head and continued to scan for targets. He found none on the highway. The shooting had subsided. Now the only sounds were of car engines, moans, and cries. Cries of anguish and cries of fear.
Chase had used the school bus for cover. Now he walked past it, around the flaming wall that lit up their section of highway.
He found his next target.
The man stood on the overpass, nearly hidden behind the green exit sign that read Rt 7 Leesburg Pike Falls Church Tysons Corner. He had a rifle in his hand. The same kind that these gunmen had. Was he a spotter? Or was there more violence to come?
Chase sprinted underneath the overpass and out of view of the man. Then he began to run up the grass hill behind the overpass, to where he would be able to jump the fence and get to the man with the gun.
It was during his climb that the highway behind him exploded.
The satellite feed had red dots that overlaid the locations of the phones the Chinese were using to activate the vest bombs.
Each vest was filled with a combination of plastic explosive and shrapnel material. They were designed to look and feel like bulletproof vests, but the phones that were hardwired into them connected to the detonation switch.
The satellite feeds showed that two of the Iranian machine gun teams were still at it, walking their fire through crowds of screaming civilians, stuck in traffic. One of those two feeds now had the flashing blue lights of police vehicles arriving on scene.
But the third satellite feed showed the most “advanced” scenario. Once the gunmen were determined to be killed, the Chinese duty officer here on the island sent the signal to detonate their vests. Red blinking dots overlaid the satellite feed with a reference number to be sure that they were detonating the right vest.
These explosions served two purposes. They increased the casualties and destroyed much of the evidence. The Chinese team that had put this mission together had used Iranian suppliers when obtaining their explosive materials.
The FBI and ATF would still undoubtedly uncover the identities of the Iranian team. That was expected and intended. But there would be no interrogation. It was always possible that the Iranians might have seen something that would lead a professional investigator to discover that Chinese hands were involved with this operation.
That couldn’t happen.
Lena looked at the monitor. On the screen, all three of the Iranian gunmen had been killed before the vests were detonated. But in some of these other sections of the Beltway, where similar attacks were being executed, it was possible that the Iranian attackers might surrender or be captured. The explosive vests made sure that interrogations would not happen.
Lena walked closer to the screen where the vests had already been detonated. “You just detonated three of them. But I see four red markers on that screen. Why has that one not been detonated?”
The duty officer walked over to one of his personnel at their computer terminal and spoke rapidly to him in a low voice. Then the duty officer looked up and said, “Ms. Chou, it looks as if that one is not being worn. It is inside this van here, parked near the top of this highway overpass. We think that this man here is part of the team — one of the Iranians. He is standing on top of the overpass, watching. But he is not wearing his vest.”
“Is he in the blast range?”
The duty officer again asked the man at the computer terminal something. Lena saw on the display that a cursor measured the distance from the unexploded vest to the man standing on the overpass.
“He’s right on the edge of the kill zone. But if that vest is inside the vehicle, it could affect—”
Lena held up her hand. The duty officer followed her intense gaze back to the satellite feed.
One of the personnel in the room said, “Sir, in scenario number two, all three men have been either killed or captured. Permission to detonate their vests?”
“Yes, execute.”
“Proceeding.”
Lena said, “If that is indeed the Iranian not wearing a vest, it appears he is being taken into custody.”
A white male jumped the fence of the overpass behind the Iranian. The man held up a handgun and walked towards the Iranian. Lena was pretty sure this was the same man who had killed the three attackers just a moment earlier.
The Iranian was much closer to the vehicle than the approaching man. Lena wondered if the Iranian would make a run for the van. That would be preferable, increasing the chances he would be killed the closer he got. But he didn’t run. The Iranian kneeled down and placed his hands on the back of his head, obviously following orders.
“Ms. Chou, should we send the cleaner team?”
She said, “No. Detonate the vest immediately.”
Chase walked toward the man, aiming his 9mm Sig at the guy’s center mass. The man had dark brown hair and Middle Eastern features.
“Get down on your knees and put your hands on your head,” Chase yelled.
The man was already on the ground. Chase thought it looked like he was deciding whether to make a run for it, but then he saw the gun and did as Chase commanded.