Читать книгу Atomic Fracture - Don Pendleton - Страница 8

CHAPTER TWO

It had taken years of hard labor—not just regular hours but often evenings and weekends—for Mani Mussawi to work his way up the ladder at the nuclear storage facility just north of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Even though he had been hired years before the al Qaeda strikes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, there had been some reservations on the part of his supervisors to employ him. After all, there had already been other Islamic extremist terrorist operations against the U.S. abroad, and while political correctness forbade them from openly acknowledging it, Mussawi’s name and the dark brown color of his skin had made them uneasy.

So the former Saudi Arabian subject, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, had been forced to start at the bottom in spite of his impressive MBA from Yale.

Mussawi had begun his career working for the United States’ government in the mail room, sorting the envelopes and packages that came and went each day, then pushing a clumsy cloth-and-aluminum cart around the facility to deliver each piece of correspondence to its rightful recipient. The routine had become monotonous very quickly. But Mani Mussawi had soon realized that he could not have been placed in a better position in which to begin his career.

It afforded him the opportunity to meet each and every one of the workers at the facility and to get to know them on a first-name basis. He had made a point of learning the first names of the lower-echelon employees, and made sure to always address the higher-ups as “Mr.” or “Ms.” or, in the case of the many former military men and women who worked there, by their former titles. Mussawi always had a broad smile on his face as he delivered the mail. The warm facial expression, combined with his frequent inquiries about the workers’ children, parents and other family members had soon endeared him to the staff.

Oh, Mussawi thought as he lifted the can of disinfectant that he kept by his computer screen, there would always be a few of the hundred or so men and women whom he now worked with who would always view him with suspicion.

And there had been a short period right after the Boston Marathon bombing when people had once more taken a step back from him. But eventually they had begun to regard him as one of their own again. And those in the position to continue to promote him year after year had learned to trust him once more. Or at least act as though they did.

Mussawi sprayed his keyboard liberally and began to wipe it down with a clean cloth.

By showing their trust for him, his fellow employees could then sit back in their chairs and think, See, we are not racists. Not at all. We even have a man of Arabic origin working in a position of trust.Which, considering the real reason Mussawi was working where he was, made his mission a hundred times easier.

Mussawi used the cloth to push the button that would start his computer, wondering briefly if anyone might have touched it since he’d left the day before.

As the computer worked its way through boot-up and other programs for which it was preset to utilize, Mussawi caught a glimpse of navy blue out of the corner of his eye. He looked up, smiling the congenial smile that had become second nature to him since he’d begun to work his way into the hearts of the other storage facility employees at the desks crowded into the large underground office. The smile widened further as he recognized Catherine’s blond hair and blue eyes. The woman wore a navy-blue suit, and looked far more professional than she had only a few hours earlier.

Without the suit. In his bed. But she was every bit as sexy, Mani realized, as she set a disposable cup of steaming coffee on his desk.

“I thought you might need a little pick-me-up,” Catherine said right before she took a sip from her own cup. Then, in a much quieter voice, she added, “After all, you expended a lot of energy last night.”

Mussawi stared at the bright red lipstick that had just been transferred from Catherine’s mouth to the white foam cup. In his mind, he pictured her as she’d been last night, squirming under his touch and gyrating to the rhythm of their love-making. “I have a lot of that same energy left,” he whispered back, glancing quickly around to make sure none of the other people at their desks were paying them any attention. “But a little caffeine never hurt.”

The two nuclear storage facility managerial position employees’ eyes met for a moment and Mussawi felt a combination of lust and guilt flow through his veins. Fraternization such as theirs was forbidden between the men and women who worked together in this facility. Which, of course, made an affair such as theirs all the more enticing. They had been flirting for weeks, and the former Saudi knew that the rumors about them had run rampant. But they had not consummated their attraction until last night.

And as they’d lain together afterward, with the moonlight through his bedroom window causing the Anglo woman’s light skin to glow against Mussawi’s darker flesh, she had said, “We’ll have to be extra careful now, my love. We need to distance ourselves from each other at work.”

Mussawi had shaken his head. “That is the worst thing we could do. People have talked about us for weeks now. If we suddenly start ignoring each other, they will know it has finally happened.”

Catherine winked at her new lover, jerking his mind out of the reverie. “Tonight?” she asked softy.

Mussawi nodded. “By all means.” But even as he said the words an uneasiness swept over him. American women were promiscuous. Had he picked up any germs or even some sexually transmitted disease from Catherine? He had insisted on using condoms. Still....

Mussawi sprayed more disinfectant on his hands and rubbed them together. It was too late to worry about that now, he thought as Catherine turned and disappeared behind one of the dozens of dividers that separated the office cubicles from each other.

Mussawi’s computer was now ready and he tapped in the complicated set of codes to access the facility’s inventory lists. He began a second set of carefully encoded entries that would eventually lead him to the whereabouts of several hundred small, easily portable nuclear bombs. “Backpack nukes,” he whispered under his breath, thinking of how very American the nickname was. He was about to access the list when Jason Hilderbrand suddenly appeared at the side of his desk. “Morning, Mani,” the man said. Hilderbrand wore a button-down collared shirt beneath a V-necked sweater-vest, and shining brightly at his throat was a silver Christian cross. “How’s it going, my man?”

Mussawi shook his head slightly. “It will be a boring day, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Inventory, you know.” Without thinking, his hand rose to his neck and he grasped the cross dangling from a silver chain around his own throat. It had been given to him by Hilderbrand soon after he’d expressed an interest in Christianity.

Hilderbrand smiled and Mani could tell that his eyes had dropped to the cross. “And how about the other thing?” he said. “The revival is still going on at my church. Great evangelist they’ve brought in. Patsy and I’d be honored to take you with us tonight.”

Mussawi thought briefly of the hot, stuffy, tent meeting to which Hilderbrand was referring, then of the soft white flesh now hidden beneath Catherine’s navy-blue work suit.

“I am sorry, Jason,” he said. “But I have a previous engagement.”

Now Hilderbrand reached up and touched his own cross. “But you’ve thought about it some more, right?”

Mussawi didn’t want to pour it on too strong. So he said, “Yes, Jason. I do think about it. A lot. But it is very difficult to reject things you have been taught since birth.”

Hilderbrand nodded. “I understand,” he said. “But keep thinking about it, okay? Sooner or later, the Holy Spirit will bring you the Truth.”

“I am doing my best,” said Mussawi, his mind still on Catherine.

“I know you are.” Hilderbrand smiled. He patted Mussawi on the shoulder, then walked away.

Mussawi returned to his computer screen and keyboard and pulled up the page listing the backpack nukes. The page had been flagged, and when he hit the icon to open his top-security interoffice email, he found an order to transfer an even dozen of the small nuclear devices to another secret storage site in the Florida Keys.

The smile that covered his face now was not for anyone else’s benefit. It was for him, and him alone. He had kept up with the ongoing hostilities in both Central and South America and had suspected for several days now that he’d get an order such as this.

Just because they were called backpack nukes didn’t mean they had to be carried to a detonation site like a college student on his way to English composition. They could be dropped from an airplane or encompassed in the nose of a rocket just like any other bomb. For that matter, they could be rigged with a timer and simply left somewhere.

Mussawi closed the email and began the next long, tedious series of codes and passwords that would get the ball rolling for the transfer. He knew the United States had no intention of using the small nukes as a first strike against any of the countries south of Mexico. But they had to be prepared for the unlikely event that Iran, or North Korea, or one of the other “axis of evil” nations with nuclear capabilities but short-range delivery systems could cut a deal to launch at the U.S. from a closer site.

After all, it was hardly a secret that the rebels in South and Central America were being backed by America’s enemies. And considering the unstable leaders who ran such countries, the decision to attack the U.S. could come based on nothing more than a sudden whim.

Mussawi stopped typing as another form appeared in his peripheral vision. He looked up to see John Karns standing patiently next to his desk. “How about lunch today, Mani?” John was a retired Marine drill sergeant who had let himself go somewhat since leaving the service. His white shirt hung over his belt both in front and on both sides.

Mussawi beamed again. “Sounds good, Sarge. But it’s your turn to pay and my turn to pick.”

Karns shook his head and chuckled. “That’s a hard one to guess,” he said. “You never want to go anywhere but McDonald’s.”

“I like Burger King, too,” said Mussawi. “But McDonald’s... It always just seems more...American.”

Karns leaned over the desk and rested both hands next to the keyboard. “Can I tell you something, Mani?” he said, whispering almost as softly as Catherine had done.

“Of course,” Mussawi said, letting his eyebrows furrow slightly to show concern.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” Karns said, then cleared his throat. “But I didn’t like you much at first. I suppose I was something of a bigot. Especially after 9/11, I looked at all Arabs with suspicion. Even hated them.” He coughed a little nervously, then went on. “But we’ve been pals for what now? Ten years or so?”

“Something like that,” Mussawi said. He feigned interest. He’d heard the same no-longer-a-racist speech from several other men and women who worked at the facility, and knew practically word for word, what was coming.

“Well,” said Karns, “you’ve changed my attitude.”

And now I know we’re all brothers under the skin, Mussawi mentally predicted would be the man’s next words.

“You’ve made me realize we’re all the same no matter what we look like,” said Karns.

“We’re all individuals regardless of our ethnic backgrounds. Some people are good, some bad. But we’re all brothers and sisters.”

More elaborate than usual, Mussawi thought, but essentially the same self-serving speech. “That is a great compliment, Sarge,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Karns said before walking away.

Mussawi returned to his computer screen and keyboard. As quickly as he could, he moved through the next complex set of checks and balances to access the twelve backpack nukes that were to be shipped to Florida.

Twelve. An even dozen. Mussawi’s hand moved to the cross suspended around his neck. Twelve was also the same number as the apostles of the Jesus that Hilderbrand kept trying to sell him on.

Mussawi made several more entries to the file. And one deletion. And when he was through, only ten of the original dozen nuclear weapons had been cleared for shipment from the Colorado Springs facility.

The other two had simply disappeared, as if they’d never existed.

Mussawi sat back and clasped his hands behind his head, stretching his back as his most genuine smile of the day curled his lips upward. It was impossible to completely erase the trail he had left in his wake. His deception would be discovered. But today was Friday, and it would be Monday—at the soonest—before the backpack nukes would be missed. And by then he would be long gone from this facility in the side of the mountain.

With the two missing nukes. On his way home to Radestan.

As if ordered by God himself, Ralph Perkins—Mussawi’s direct supervisor—walked past as Mussawi closed his files and made his screen go black. “Ralph,” he said, his voice sounding slightly weak. “I am not feeling so good.”

Perkins stopped in his tracks, then took a slight step back from Mussawi’s desk. “What are your symptoms?” he asked.

“Nausea. Sore throat. And it feels like a headache’s coming on.”

“There’s a lot of flu going around,” Perkins said. He glanced at an air duct in the ceiling. “Get out of here before it circulates through the vents and makes everybody else sick, too.”

Mussawi nodded, stood and started toward the door. He wanted very badly to smile again. But it would not fit the illusion of pain and illness he had just created. So he looked down at his feet, shuffling slightly as he walked.

In his heart, however, he celebrated.

Now it was time for the final leg of his mission. The fulfillment of the destiny God had for him. He had been placed here as a mole more than fifteen years ago. To do exactly what, he had not then known. His job had been to lie low and wait for orders when the correct opportunity arose.

And finally that opportunity had arisen. The insane political correctness and tolerance of all belief systems that had infected America like the HIV virus had made it possible. Political correctness had been the most crucial element in the sham he had just pulled off.

Americans were so afraid they might offend someone that they opened themselves up to all manner of attack.

Mussawi reached the elevator in the hallway and pressed the up button. As he waited, he thought of a passage he had read in a philosophy class years before when he’d still been an undergraduate student at Yale. It had been by Friedrich Nietzsche, an atheist who God would banish forever into the tortures of Hades. But like all nonbelievers, Nietzsche had mixed truth with blasphemy to confuse the righteous. And one of those truths came back to Mussawi now.

Mussawi could not quote the philosopher verbatim but essentially Nietzsche had said that when a nation reaches a certain level of power it begins to feel sorry for, and sympathizes with, its enemies.

Which was exactly what the United States of America was doing right now.

As the elevator doors opened and Mussawi began what would be his final exit from the nuclear storage facility, the irony of it all struck him and, now alone, he laughed out loud. For years the Americans had worried that nuclear weapons might be smuggled into their beloved country. What was about to happen, however, was just the opposite.

Mussawi was about to smuggle two nukes out of the United States. They would go to Radestan. One would be set off in the desert as a demonstration of power. The other would then be used as a bargaining chip. A big bargaining chip. His Islamic freedom-fighting brothers would threaten to detonate the other backpack nuke in downtown Ramesh if the current president did not immediately step down and turn the country over to al Qaeda.

The mole rode upward in the elevator, watching the numbers above the door light up, then go dark again as he passed each floor. The situation would never get to the point where Ramesh had to be destroyed; Emad Nosiar had assured him of that. The current government was weak, and the president would give in. There would be no need for the second bomb. No innocents would die.

Mussawi whistled the “Star Spangled Banner” softly as he walked toward his car. Nazis, Communists, Islamic terrorists—none of them could ever really bring down the United States. Not completely, anyway. But his adopted country was about to implode when it was discovered that the nukes going to Radestan had come from America.

Because Nietzsche had been right. The U.S. felt so guilty that they were successful that they tried to make up for it with political correctness.And political correctness would be the downfall of the United States.

Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia

AARON “THE BEAR” Kurtzman grasped the arms of his wheelchair and swiveled it slightly as he picked up the telephone next to the computer. Stony Man Farm’s number-one cyber expert pressed the receiver to his ear. “Yeah, Hal?” he said into the mouthpiece.

“I’m on my way in,” Brognola advised in his familiar, deep, level voice. In the background Kurtzman could hear the rotor hum of what he knew must be a helicopter.

“I’ll be here,” Kurtzman said, then hung up the phone.

Fifteen minutes later Hal Brognola came through the door to the Farm’s Computer Room and walked up the wheelchair ramp that led to Kurtzman’s long bank of computers. Clamped between Brognola’s teeth was the stub of a well-chewed cigar—one of his trademarks.

The atmosphere at the top-secret counterterrorist facility known as Stony Man Farm was serious but familiar. Each individual who worked out of the Farm was a top expert in his or her field, and everyone else was aware of that fact. So while there was still a sort of paramilitary order to be followed, the warriors—both on the home front and in the field—were on a first-name basis with one another thanks to mutual respect.

So when Kurtzman said, “Hello, Mr. Director,” over his shoulder without looking toward Brognola or stopping his fingers, which were flying across the keyboard, it came out sounding more like a nickname than a title.

“Ah,” said Brognola as he stopped next to the wheelchair at the top of the ramp. “We’re being formal today, are we?”

“Why not?” said Kurtzman. “It might class this joint up a little now and then.” Strands of his wild, prematurely white hair had fallen over his forehead and he swept them back with one hand.

“Okay, then, Mr. Bear,” the director said, referring to Kurtzman’s nickname earned for his massive physique. “What have you got for me?”

“A lot. And not much.”

“Maybe I should address you as Mr. Dickens, then,” Brognola said. “That sounded an awful lot like, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’”

Kurtzman whirled the wheelchair almost 180 degrees to face the man. “There’s internet chatter like crazy among the crazies,” he said matter-of-factly. “Almost an eight hundred percent increase in what we’re used to.” He inhaled a deep breath. “So we’ve got to assume something bigger than usual is in the works.”

“But you don’t know what it is?” Brognola chomped down a little harder on the cigar stub.

Kurtzman nodded and more strands of hair bounced on top of his head. “Precisely,” he said. “Which I guess would fall under your Dickens’ quote as being in the ‘worst of times’ category. However I did pick up the word nuke encoded in one email. But for the most part, they—whoever they are—have gone to a whole new software program.”

Brognola’s eyebrows lowered. “We can thank that little weasel Edward Snowden for that,” he said. “I’d like to get my hands around his throat. He’s the reason our enemies have changed software and everything else they can.” He clamped down harder on his cigar, then changed the subject slightly. “Nuke, of course, is our abbreviation for nuclear. Do you mean—”

“Yes,” Kurtzman interrupted the big Fed. “Most everyone in the world, regardless of language, calls nuclear weapons ‘nuclear weapons.’ And they use the same shorthand version of the word—nuke—just like we do. The atom was first split by men who spoke English and so the word has become integrated, without change, into just about every culture on Earth.”

“Was the word used in any sort of context you could make out?” the director asked.

Kurtzman shook his head. “Negative. But keep in mind it’s also a word that gets kicked around all the time in cyberspace slang. It could mean our worst fears—some terrorist group has gotten its hands on a nuclear bomb and is planning to use it somewhere in the world. But that’s not necessarily the case. There’s a lot of bragging, and posturing, and bring-on-the-jihad-high-school-pep-rally-type crap thrown around between the terrorists these days, too.”

“Now I see what you mean by having a lot and having nothing,” Brognola said. “But we’ve got to always assume it could mean something disastrous.”

Kurtzman nodded. “Of course we do,” he said. “The bottom line is that I just don’t know exactly what’s going on at this point.”

The SOG director stared the computer genius straight in the eye. “You aren’t telling me you can’t decipher this new software cyber babble, are you?” he asked, a puzzled look on his face.

Kurtzman almost smiled. He did his best to remain modest about his abilities with what he often referred to as his “magic machines.” And most of the time he was successful in that modesty. But he also knew there was no one in the world quite as skilled in both the science and art of cyberspace as he was. That wasn’t his ego speaking, either. It was just the way it was. Or as Yogi Berra had once said, “It ain’t brag if it’s true.”

“No, Hal,” the man in the wheelchair said, “I’m not telling you I can’t decipher it. I’m just telling you that because of all of the intelligence information Snowden leaked about how we follow terrorists, they’ve gone to whole new programs and it’ll take a little while for me to figure them out.” He paused and took another deep breath. “The terrorist groups—all of them—are getting much better at covering their tracks than they used to be. There are so many of them, and they’ve linked up with dozens of Third World countries in the Middle East and Africa. Which means they’ve gained access to more sophisticated electronics than they used to have.

“They’re also getting more and more help from former Soviet computer experts who hire themselves out as sort of cyber mercenaries.” The Farm’s cyber genius shook his head slowly as he scratched the side of his face. “It’s a lot like the difference between what we were when Stony Man first started and where we are today. In the beginning, we were lucky to have computers that could even access the internet, send email, whatever. And now...” He turned slightly and swept a hand across the front of the dozen or so computers to which he had access. “We’ve progressed,” he said. “But so has the enemy.”

A thin smile curled the corners of Brognola’s mouth and the cigar stump rose at a steeper angle between his teeth. “In the old days we were lucky to have two-way radios with face transmitters and headphones,” he agreed. “So yeah, we’ve come a long way.” The cigar stub had almost disappeared inside his mouth now and he took it out and dropped it into a trash can just to the side of Kurtzman’s desk.Then, reaching inside his jacket, he pulled out a leather cigar carrier, slid the top off and produced a fresh stogie—which wouldn’t be smoked any more than the last one had been. Sticking the cigar in his mouth, he returned the case to his pocket and said, “But the world was a safer place in those days, overall. I never thought I’d miss the old Soviet Union. But at least they were more practical when it came to things like nuclear warfare.” He chomped down on the cigar. To Kurtzman, it looked as if he was only a few tobacco leaves away from biting the cigar in two. “Moscow knew that a nuclear strike would mean nuclear retaliation, and be disastrous for both countries and the whole world. These terrorist organizations either don’t realize that or don’t care. They think they’re on a mission from God.”

“They’re about as much on a mission from God as the Blues Brothers were on Saturday Night Live,” Kurtzman said.

Brognola chuckled. Then his eyebrows lowered and his voice turned serious. “Okay,” he said. “I’d better get going. I’ve got to track down Able Team. They’re test-firing some new weapons with Kissinger off-site, and I think we’d better get that done right away. Because when you decipher this chatter flying back and forth across computer land I suspect they’ll be on an immediate flight out of here to...wherever.” Kurtzman turned back to his keyboard. “Will do, Mr. Director,” he said as his hands once again flew across the letters, numbers and symbols with lightning speed.

“Thank you, Mr. Bear,” Brognola said as he started walking away. He had gone only a few steps when a computer in the bank in front of Kurtzman suddenly rang out with a siren not as loud, but not unlike an emergency tornado warning in the suburb of some Southwestern U.S. city. Kurtzman wheeled to it, then tapped a few keys and stared at the screen.

Brognola stopped and turned back.

A moment later Kurtzman’s head swiveled and he stared at the big Fed. “You know that ‘wherever’ you said Able Team would be flying off to, Hal?” he said.

Brognola nodded.

“I know where it is,” said Kurtzman.