“Okay, let’s put this guy with his friend,” Jackson whispered to Arielle, as they each grabbed the guard and carried him into the same dumpster.
“Two down, one to go,” Chaos called to Falcon. “Keep an eye on that last guy. Arielle’s going to take a closer look around while I check in with Archangel.”
“Roger that.”
“Archangel, Chaos.”
“Chaos, Archangel. Go ahead.”
“Archangel, we have twenty-six bombs. Our contact has advised that he saw two trucks leave this warehouse late yesterday afternoon escorted by a few Humvees. It looks like they’ve started to move these.”
“Chaos, any idea where they took them?”
“Possibly. From what we can tell so far, it looks like they know how to arm these things. They’ve been working on the pre-flight arming controls in the rear-subassembly of the bombs. I guess this is something they’d need to do if they want to deploy them with Turkey’s F-16s. With this in mind, it kind of limits where they’d be taking them.”
“That it does. Anything else?”
We’re going to need to advance the schedule a bit. We haven’t been discovered but it’s only a matter of time before they realize we’ve been here. We had to kill two of the guards in the warehouse here. I would expect the morning crew will be here in a few hours and then word will get out pretty quick. They won’t be able to move these things right away — these things are over 800 pounds and twelve feet long so they’ll need to bring in some more trucks. They have a few trucks in the yard but not enough to move all of them.”
“Understood Chaos. Be advised, kickoff is scheduled for six o’clock, your time. That’s just over twelve hours from now. Is that going to work?”
“Yeah, that’ll work fine. Chaos out.”
“Okay, Archangel knows the situation here,” Jackson whispered over the radio to Arielle and Falcon. “Kickoff is scheduled for six this evening. What’s the situation with the last guard?”
“He’s still in the office, totally oblivious to everything.”
“Falcon, is there any way we can get the bodies of these two guards out of here without him noticing us?”
“I think we can do that. Once we get past the doorway to the office, we should be fine.”
“Good idea,” Arielle chimed in, catching on. “I’ll wipe up everything so there’s no sign we killed these two. Once the front guard notices his friends are missing, he’ll start looking around. We haven’t touched anything so nothing will be missing — nothing like sowing a little confusion in the ranks. This should definitely buy us some time.”
“We need to hurry before the sun comes up,” Falcon added.
XXXIV
“Carmichael.” Jim said into his phone.
“Jim, we’ve got confirmation that ISIS has started to move the nukes,” Admiral Jack ‘Archangel’ Fisher advised. “I just spoke with Chaos. He advises that they’ve found twenty-six of the bombs. About half a dozen of them are in some state of disassembly. From the way Chaos put it, they’re working on the pre-flight arming controls — which really only has one conclusion. Their contact witnessed two trucks leave with a Humvee escort. Destination unknown, but headed north.”
“That settles it then. We need to go tonight. If they’ve figured out how to arm these things — and they’ve started moving them — we need to go tonight.”
“Agreed, I’ll let everyone know over here.”
“General, what’s the news out of Turkey this morning?” Baghdadi asked Shishani.
“Imam, things are going well. We hold everything in eastern Turkey and are making inroads on both Konya and Merzifon air bases. I expect we’ll have overrun both of these, possibly by this evening.”
“Excellent. Abdul, what are your plans for the Israeli pilots?” Baghdadi asked Shishani’s chief of staff.
“We’ll be holding a public trial for each of them followed by their immolation shortly thereafter. However, I’m still not exactly sure when we’ll conduct the trials. I want to wait and see how the Mahdi operation unfolds before we begin those. Once that has played itself out, we’ll get the trials started. That might be more towards the end of the week, or even into next week, depending on how things go.”
“I have to agree with Abdul, Imam,” General Shishani added. “We’ll know more from Kayani this afternoon. If everything goes as expected, we should be able to launch the operation anytime once he’s completed the work on the F-16s. If we hold the trials at the same time as the nuclear attacks, we gain nothing.”
“You’re really going to do this?” Secretary Johnson interrupted.
“Madam Secretary, nice to… see you,” General Van exclaimed, noting a look of utter contempt on the Secretary’s face. “Of course we are. Why would we go to all of this trouble if we didn’t intend to use them.”
“You’ll never get away with this,” Johnson replied.
“Madam Secretary, who is going to stop us?”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that, General,” Baghdadi added, turning to General Van, his new air chief. “I know we originally thought to initiate Mahdi Monday morning. However, Dr. Kayani indicated he thought he’d be done with the first planes this afternoon. Is there any reason we couldn’t launch right after he’s done?”
“No, there really isn’t,” General Van replied. The former Incirlik commander continued, “the pilots are ready and the targets have been chosen. All we’re really waiting on is Dr. Kayani.”
“Very good. Ahmet, I want you to leave for Batman right away. I want you to launch Mahdi as soon as Dr. Kayani has completed his work on the first of the fighters up there. He’s indicated that he believes he’ll be done by early to mid-afternoon so he should be just about done by the time you arrive.”
“Excellent, I shall leave at once.”
“Imam, there is one other thing regarding the nuclear bombs.”
“What is that, Abdul?” General Shishani asked.
“It seems that two of the guards in the warehouse have gone missing. We can’t find them anywhere.”
“What? How are we missing two guards? We had the place surrounded with guards on the outside and three more inside.”
“Yes, we did, sir. Nothing is missing concerning the bombs, including the ones that were partially disassembled, but two of the guards are gone. There’s no sign as to what might have happened to them, either. We’ve thoroughly questioned the one remaining guard inside and he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary until it was time to change the guards about an hour ago.”
“Keep looking for them, Abdul. We need to find them.”
“Sir, we haven’t stopped looking for them since we discovered this. We’ll find them.”
“Like Mohammed said, Abdul, keep looking until you find them,” Baghdadi added. “Also, we need to alert Doctor Kayani. I want him down here as soon as possible. If he can find someone to fly him here, so much the better.”
“I shall let him know,” Shishani replied. “I would think we could get him here mid-afternoon.”
“Very good. Let me know when he arrives, Mohammed. Also, Abdul, I want you to release another video today. I want to show the world our two guests here ‘inspecting’ our nuclear arsenal, to lend credence to the validity of everything.”
“Excellent idea, Imam, I’ll set it up for just after lunch. That’ll give me some time to get everything compiled and still get it out in time so most of America can see this first thing in the morning.”