Seawolf Mask of Command (70 page)

“Well?” The Chechen leader heard a familiar voice.

He looked down from the bed of the truck and saw the American mercenary who’d helped plan the operation. The American—whom the Chechen guerrillas knew as “Andric”—had a chunk of his left ear lobe missing, and his nose looked like someone had smashed it with a meat cleaver some years earlier. He’d also noted that when it got cold, the scar-faced American limped slightly. The rebel leader knew “Andric” was little more than a well-paid mercenary, but he’d been instrumental in every step of the planning for the operation as well as the training of the guerrilla force.

“They are all here,” the Chechen leader admitted, a bit surprised.

“Good.” Andric was dressed like the guerillas, but instead of an assault rifle he carried just a pistol on his side and a double-edged commando knife in his boot. Of course, the Chechen leader thought, the American needed no weapon. He’d seen him kill a Russian intelligence agent who’d almost uncovered their operation when it was still in the planning stage. The American had killed the agent with his bare hands, striking with such cold efficiency the Chechen leader would hardly have believed it possible.

“Tell your men to finish off the drivers, and get those wrecks out of the way.” The American glanced at a stop watch around his neck. “I want to be rolling in fifteen minutes.”

“The drivers aren’t soldiers,” the Chechen leader pointed out. “They are civilians.”

Andric nodded in understanding. But the Chechen saw the man’s lifeless eyes turn to the helpless men in the ditch. As if to make his point, the American walked over to the ditch where the three drivers were down on their knees in the snow with their hands on their heads. Without a hint of pity or compassion, he drew the automatic pistol at his side, racked the slide, and shot all three in the head as they pleaded for their lives.

The Chechen leader watched in shock from the back of the truck. He hated the Russian Army for all the devastation they had brought to his people, but even he had not yet brought himself to be so ruthless. He was about to speak but the scarred face turned toward him, the eyes angry.

“Now, either get your men off their dead asses, or I’ll find someone who will!”

Eleven minutes later, the last truck filled with deadly nerve gas was turned around and headed back down the mountain.

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Former Mossad operative Gideon Meltzer: Founding member of Friends from Damascus. To eliminate extremists bent on destruction, this no-nonsense terrorist hunter and his crack black-ops team will go anywhere and risk anything. The daring theft of highly enriched uranium by religious fanatics forces Gideon’s team to partner with an unlikely ally: a beautiful, blind, Persian computer genius named Alaleh Koyunlu. On the run from both the intelligence agencies who think she orchestrated the theft and the terrorists who set her up to take the fall, she leads the team on a world-wide hunt for the missing material. With the clock ticking and millions of lives on the line, they’ll stop at nothing to bring down their prey.

Pelindaba Nuclear Research Facility, South Africa

H
e had feared rain.

The forecast for the evening called for showers, but the front moving through hadn’t produced any, and Farid Raad could see a few stars poking through the cloud-filled sky. The last two nights his team had been forced to cancel their plans because of weather. His men had trained to a razor’s edge. They were ready. Hiding in a small Pretoria warehouse for nearly a week, then delaying the operation for forty-eight hours had affected their mental preparation. They’d had too much time on their hands contemplating exactly what their mission meant: both its importance and the fate that awaited them once inside the facility.

The team was handpicked from thousands of believers. All sixteen members had extensive experience fighting the American-led infidels that overran Afghanistan. They’d trained in Malaysia, deep in the jungle at an aging and long-abandoned airfield from World War II.

All of the men were skilled with small arms before being considered for the great honor of joining Farid’s team. Even so, they’d spent nearly a month on nothing but weapons training. They’d fired tens of thousands of rounds at targets placed along the edge of the jungle airstrip, literally cutting trees down with a hailstorm of machinegun, assault rifle, and pistol bullets, as well as rocket propelled grenades. Even the New Zealand mercenary who’d trained them admitted Farid and his men were “ready for anything.”

A three-dimensional model of the target had been prepared in an army surplus tent. Then, after hours of fine-tuning the plan, rehearsals had been conducted on a full-scale mockup constructed on the airstrip using metal stakes and white engineering tape. All the work was done at night, and although it was believed the American spy satellites wouldn’t notice the slender engineering tape on the field, Farid had taken the precaution of removing the tape after every practice to avoid discovery of their activities. They’d trained each night for over a month, meticulously going through every possible detail. Breaching teams had been designated, rocket teams, snipers, demolitions… they’d worked tirelessly until every man could fulfill his duty blindfolded.

Infiltration into South Africa from Zimbabwe had been potentially hazardous, but the Zimbabwean contact took them across the border without any trouble. It wasn’t until they reached Pretoria that Farid’s men learned of their target. Even now, as they saw their objective brilliantly lit before them, Farid was still the only member of the elite force who knew the full extent of their mission.

He checked the luminous dial on his watch.

It was time.

Farid turned to his comrades lying hidden around him in the tall grass. He pointed toward the breaching team. These men had received additional training and were equipped with everything they would need to safely infiltrate the compound.

The two men crossed the road at a sprint and went to work on the first of three fences. The first line of defense was relatively easy to penetrate. It took less than a minute to cut a four-foot-high hole in the galvanized wire mesh. Carabineers and lengths of rope were then used to pull the fence apart and the rest of the team sprinted through. The breaching team closed the opening behind them, trying to leave as little evidence of their passing as possible.

Farid and the rest of the assault team took up defensive positions short of the next fence. It was a fifteen feet high, similar to the previous one, except for the sinister humming coming from it. His breaching team, with their protective equipment on, went to work. Embedded in the fence just above ground were electric wires carrying ten thousand volts of electricity. The breaching team used an insulated bundle of high capacity copper cables to reroute the power from a section of the fence and then cut a four foot square opening.

There was a third and final fence for the team to pass through. It wasn’t electric, but there were motion detectors built in to detect anyone trying to climb over. But they weren’t sensitive enough to pick up the breaching team as they cut an opening, allowing the team to pass through unnoticed.

Farid kept an eye on his watch. By plan, they had ten minutes to breach the three fences. During training, their best time to breach all three was seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds. This night, they made it through in under nine minutes.

A full minute ahead of schedule.

Farid turned to his men, searching their faces. No fear. No doubt. They all knew what fate lay ahead of them, but he saw no hesitation in their eyes.

He’d chosen well.

Farid led them through the final opening and directly into a water-filled drainage ditch. Nearly a foot of rain had fallen within the last few days. An acceptable discomfort, he allowed, since the moving water made motion detectors useless here. One hundred meters later they were beyond the motion detection grid. The team went down to one knee, with just the CCTV cameras to deal with now.

Mahmud, his electronics specialist, moved closer.

“I’m ready, brother,” the youngest member of the team whispered.

Farid held up a fist to silence everyone. A roving patrol of two security guards, unaware of the infiltrators close at hand, discussed a recent rugby game as they passed. Farid waited until the two men had disappeared behind the facility’s fire station.

“Now,” he whispered.

Mahmud broke from cover and raced toward the back of a solid blockhouse. A grey junction box was mounted on the rear of the building. Farid watched nervously, knowing that this was potentially the riskiest part of their infiltration. The box contained the CCTV cables for every camera on this side of the facility. The box was locked and alarmed with a magnetic trigger.

Farid watched as Mahmud opened the box in less than forty seconds and began splicing into the various CCTV cables. There were thirty of them, and he needed to find five specific ones. But Mahmud was as well trained as the rest, and he took just under four minutes to complete his task. Once finished, the CCTV cameras between Farid’s team and their objective had been corrupted. The security center a mile away would see only the constant image of quiet streets and empty fields when Farid and his men moved forward.

The cameras now disabled, Farid turned to his men.

They had come so far. During the planning phase of the operation, there’d been doubt by many that his team would get to this point. Their intelligence about the facility had been detailed, but there were always the unknown variables such as new security upgrades, roving patrols, or human error. The biggest danger, though, was a possible infiltrator within the cellular structure who’d sold out Farid and his brothers. This had been Farid’s greatest concern during the planning, training, and infiltration into South Africa. It had seemed the height of arrogance to think they would get this far, and he was prepared to carry out his mission even from the drainage ditch.

But now, with his team within one hundred meters of their objective, it was too late for anyone to stop them.

Farid smiled at his men and spoke softly, “Now’s the time, brothers. Paradise awaits!”

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Weaponized anthrax. So deadly a mere gram has over 100 million lethal doses, and terrorists are now in possession of it. When the world’s intelligence agencies are unable to locate the extremists before they unleash their pandemic, governments turn to the Friends From Damascus. This rogue counterterrorist team will go anywhere and take any risk to deliver their form of justice to extremists. But this time the team faces an unexpected challenge from within its own elite ranks.

Their newest member, Katya Petrova, has lost all faith in humanity – the world’s and her own. Her bleak and ravaged past as a Russian agent has destroyed her sense of self-worth. Before the team can hunt down the terrorists and the toxin, Petrova must learn to believe in herself again. Then she must earn the trust of the team’s sniper, Joe Proffitt.