Abdul-Ahad’s team moved beyond his position, giving him a protective front line as he brought them closer to Paradise, as three of the ten characters needed to begin the countdown of the nuclear payload surfaced on the BlackBerry’s screen.
… Now a fourth character… Six more to go…
His fingers continued to strike the plate in blurred fashion.
… A fifth character… Another step closer to Allah…
Several meters ahead Majid and Qusay’s aim remained true, keeping the officers pinned until Qusay’s torso suddenly erupted into a wellspring of red as bullets stitched across his chest, his wounds opening and paring back like the petals of a rose bloom as the impacts lifted him off his feet and carried him backwards. Majid never wavered, knowing all risks hold the possibility of getting caught before the mission was completed. When his weapon ran dry, he expertly released his empty magazine and quickly seated another, then fired at the muzzle flashes. All around him pieces of earth kicked up as bullets trailed along the sand, the strikes getting closer to Majid, who maintained his position on a bended knee.
Abdul-Ahad tapped the keyboard at a frantic pace, the characters on the LED screen appearing much too slowly for his liking with six of the ten characters in place. Next to him a bullet hit the sand. But the man carried on without reacting, his fingers continuing to move with pinpoint accuracy.
From minimal cover, an officer lying in the prone position leveled the sight of his assault rifle and drew a bead against Majid’s temple, his breathing now shallow and controlled, his patience forced until the moment he pulled the trigger.
In a measure of time that seemed much too slow and surreal, Majid’s face above the jaw line scattered to the winds, leaving nothing but pulp, gore and glistening bone, as he fell back on the sand with his arms splayed outward in mock crucifixion.
“Surrender your weapon!” someone shouted. It was the same voice that Abdul-Ahad heard earlier, the command voice who quickly translated into Spanish, “Entregue su arma!”
… Eight characters, two more to go…
“¡Ésta es su oportunidad pasada de entregar su arma, o… abriremos… el… fuego!” This is your last opportunity to surrender your weapon, or… we… will… open… fire!
In what was left in the feeble lighting — of the lights that had not been cleared or doused by Abdul-Ahad’s team — the Arab went for his sidearm stuffed in the waistband of his pants. All he needed was a few precious moments to punch in the last two codes that would make this part of the world a no-man’s-land of blistered earth for the next ten thousand years. It would be a symbol of Allah’s power. And his will to die for the cause a symbol of his peoples’ faith.
The moment he directed his weapon to fire off a few rounds to keep them at bay, there was a retaliatory burst of gunfire, clean and precise, the bullets punching fist-sized holes into Abdul-Ahad’s chest, which drove him back and knocked the BlackBerry from his hand.
And then an awkward silence followed — a momentary lasting of something intangible that hung in the air like a shroud — like that brief moment of uncertainty of whether or not the situation was totally contained.
With measured prudence the agents pressed ahead with their weapons directed to points forward, and policed the area by motioning the end of their weapons from left to right, each man scoping his surroundings for insurgents.
When the bodies were checked and confirmed dead and the area cleared, the officers lowered their weapons and stared at the bounty.
Undamaged in the firefight with its shell dulled and coated with a misting of fine dust, lay the aluminum case like some obscene Ark mired in the sand. Next to it laid the Blackberry.
“Drugs?” The question was obviously rhetorical since the transportation of illicit narcotics was generally considered the norm.
Sergeant Cary Winslow, a seasoned vet of quiet demeanor and heavy moral value, labored to a knee, grabbed the BlackBerry, then gave it a once over and noted the eight symbols markedly similar to Russian print in the display window. Snapping the faceplate shut, he then fit the unit into his shirt pocket and made his way to the aluminum case.
In the glow of the spotlight he could tell that the outer shell was burnished to a chrome finish, but had lost a lot of its luster having been layered with a fine coat of desert sand.
“How many kilos you think something like that holds, Cary?” Officer Roscoe Winchell was basketball tall and appallingly thin. When he spoke he did so with a Mid-Western drawl, even though he was born, bred and raised in upper New York. “Looks like a cartel run.”
Winslow didn’t answer. Instead, he undid the clasps and lifted the lid with all the prudence of releasing the ills of Pandora’s Box. What he found inside was not what he expected. Beneath a Plexiglas shield were three spheres surrounded by electronic plates, panels and a hard drive.
“OOO-wee,” remarked Winchell, removing his cap then scratching an itch at the edge of his scalp before returning it. “What you reckon that be, Cary?”
Winslow fell back, his eyes remaining fixed. In better lighting one would be able to see the sudden gray creeping across his face or the goose bumps racing along the length of his arms. As someone who was trained to detect anomalies crossing the border, Sergeant Winslow immediately fastened the case and ordered his team to back away. “I need all personnel to maintain a perimeter,” he ordered.
“What is it?”
“You never mind, Roscoe. You’ll find out soon enough. Right now I want you to get on the mike and call headquarters. Tell them to contact the FBI immediately. Tell them we got us a Dante Package.”
“A what?”
“A ‘Dante Package!’ Now go!”
The deputy was off and running. In the background the other deputies stood silent and mute.
With less than one year away from retirement, Sergeant Winslow shook his head in non-belief and looked skyward. Stars glittered like fairy dust and the smell of the desert air was crisp and clean and unadulterated. And then he closed his eyes. They did it, he thought. They finally tried to get one across.
And then he reconsidered. After sweeping his gaze across the feebly placed borderline with its crooked posts and barbed wire fencing, there was no doubt in his mind that at least one nuclear device crossed over the boundary.
He had no doubt at all.
‘Dante Package’ was the code name for a low-yield nuclear weapon packaged to be mobile, such as in a suitcase or a backpack. During the Cold War, Russia processed dozens of such devices that looked like a five-gallon drum fitted into a canvas backpack. But what the members of the FBI, NSA and Cisen — Mexico’s CIA counterpart — were looking at was anything but.
This device was state-of-the-art, a far descendant of the Cold War version.
Within a brilliant cast of lighting, provided by a perimeter of lamps set up in a perfect circumference around the scene, the aluminum case was spotlighted as the centerpiece of attraction, with the dead Arabs lying supine in the blood-stained sand next to it.
The marginal wind, however, cooled off the landscape, as if to settle the scene.
At three-thirty in the morning the deputy director of the FBI’s Phoenix field office didn’t bother with the tie or expensive shoes, but wore jeans, sneakers, and a tan shirt that was tucked in just enough to reveal his belt badge. Beneath the armpit of his left shoulder he wore a pancake holster with the stock of his sidearm in easy reach.