Tier One Wild (45 page)

THIRTY-NINE

While members of the California Highway Patrol and the San Francisco Police Department stood over Miguel’s bullet-ridden corpse, David Doyle parked his car in an empty lot at Barr Lake State Park, just north of Denver, Colorado. He’d been driving for nine hours straight, and he wanted to take a nap, but he did not allow himself the luxury. He knew all about Los Angeles the night before, and he also knew Miguel would be heading up the West Coast with his men now, so Doyle wanted to act here, many hundreds of miles away, as soon as possible, in order to take a small measure of the heat away from his partner. If America knew there were two missile crews loose in the country, they might worry there were three, or ten, or more. It could remove some of the focus from California.

David knew it would be many hours before he could rest easily. He might get an hour somewhere between here and his intermediate destination, but only there would he be able to call himself safe enough to sleep for any significant amount of time.

It would be another day at least before comfort. Now was time to work.

He climbed in the back of the minivan, and took his time readying a missile for launch. When he was finished, he cracked the back door, slid the Igla-S system to the edge of the door, and then crawled back into the front seat.

He climbed out of his Toyota minivan, taking his backpack with him. He pulled his high-powered binoculars out of the bag, and looked off to the southeast. There, five miles across the flat landscape of farmland laced with straight roads and dotted with simple farmhouses, lay Denver International Airport.

Through his binoculars he saw a plane, a big fat Delta Boeing 757, begin its takeoff roll. David knew that, depending on the variant, the aircraft in front of him could carry somewhere up to 250 passengers and crew.

It would be perfect.

The 757 raced down the runway, picking up speed, though through his optics and the heat coming off the ground between his position and the airport, to David it looked almost as if the huge machine in the distance were moving like a gentle wave.

Farther down the runway now, seconds from takeoff, and David lowered his binos and opened the rear hatch of the minivan. He checked the area around him, found it clear, and hefted the big weapon.

He labored to get it on his shoulder, then he turned back around toward the airport.

The plane was still there. Still on the runway, although it was down near the end of the runway now. It had slowed to a crawl, and soon it taxied off the runway at the last taxiway.

David lowered the weapon back to the rear of the Toyota and closed the door.

Why did it not take off?

Doyle grabbed his binoculars and waited for the next aircraft in line for takeoff at the far end of the runway, but it just sat there.

For ten minutes Doyle watched through his binoculars as first one, and then three, and finally all of the aircraft on the long taxiway rolled slowly down the runway, taxied back onto the taxiway, and then returned to the gate.

He had his suspicions early on as to what was happening, but it was not until he climbed back into the Toyota and headed back to the highway that he knew for certain. He turned on the satellite radio in the car and listened to the news.

A complete ground stop over the entire United States of America had just been enacted following a second terrorist attack involving a shoulder-fired missile, this time in San Francisco.

Doyle listened as early reports were broadcast about the event in San Francisco. Fragmented half-truths and wild assumptions were espoused by the news anchors, but one thing was certain. A group of men with a shoulder-fired missile had dropped their weapon before launching, and then led police on a twenty minute chase through the city.

Although the reporter said no planes were actually struck by SAMs, and it was likely the terrorists had been killed or captured by the authorities, the ground stop would go in effect and last until the FBI had determined that there was no continuing threat to aircraft in the United States.

Doyle wished he could pull over somewhere to watch raw footage of the scene on television, but instead he kept driving to the east. He looked out his passenger-side window at the airport as he passed to the north a few minutes later, and marveled at the dumb luck of those 250 infidels on that 757.

*   *   *

Raynor’s first day back at the compound since Mexico was supposed to include nothing more than a visit to Doc Markham, followed by a drive to the hospital with some mates to look in on Slapshot.

Instead, he, and most everyone else who could fit, sat in the briefing room, watching the television reports from the West Coast.

It was a somber and angry mood in the briefing room, in the entire Delta Force compound, as news report after news report broadcast each and every facet of the ongoing terrorist threat to the nation. The operators and support personnel all felt a sense of responsibility for the loss of the aircraft and the nationwide shutdown of air traffic. Even more than this, they all felt an incredible sense of impotence, knowing they were now out of the hunt. U.S. military forces would not be operating on U.S. soil, so all these men and women could do was sit and watch.

Gangster and his alert squadron were still in the hunt for more MANPADs, of course. ST6 had successfully recovered a dozen shoulder-fired missiles in Sirte, but all intelligence indicators had pointed to that cache being three or four times as large, so it seemed quite likely that another big shipment had made its way out of Libya. The Delta alert squadron, like ST6, was literally crawling the walls waiting for intel that would earn them an opportunity to go find the munitions, get them back, and smoke anyone who tried to stop them.

But Kolt and his squadron could do nothing now but train for their next time at bat. Raynor had sent much of his force off for training around the U.S., but Kolt himself was in no condition to do much more than walk up and down the Spine from his office to the briefing room with a constant grimace on his face while he fought through the pain from the injuries received in Mexico and the anguish he felt about the failure of his mission.

He was just about to leave the briefing room and head to the SCIF when CNN went live to the President of the United States. POTUS was out of the country, in Australia for a conference with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, a free-trade organization that was meeting in Sydney this year. He opened his comments about the events in California by saying he was cutting short his trip to the Pacific Rim and would be heading back to Washington as soon as the Secret Service determined it was prudent to do so.

He was subdued and reflective in his comments about the loss of life and the attack on the fabric of American society, but he was also upbeat in his assessment of the ongoing threat. He said that his attorney general would be holding a press conference regarding the case within the hour, and he was confident in the Justice Department’s ability to bring the perpetrators to justice swiftly.

Kolt thought the President hit all the right notes in his comments. He grabbed another cup of coffee, washed down four more ibuprofen, and stuck around the briefing room for the AG’s press conference.

The attorney general appeared live from his office in D.C. He said, “Authorities are searching the waters in San Francisco Bay near where the terrorist vehicle went under the waves. We do expect to find the body of David Wade Doyle and his remaining confederates. It is also our belief the terrorist threat to the United States has passed, and we anticipate reopening America’s skies within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

There were audible groans in the briefing room.

Monk sat in back with Benji, Gangster, and a few other men from the alert squadron. Monk said, “So the bad guy is dead, but there’s no body. Doesn’t that sound a little like every shitty horror movie you ever saw?”

Men chuckled without smiling.

Raynor spoke the consensus of the room. “If I don’t see a body, then that bastard isn’t dead.”

Kolt pushed himself out of his chair and headed back up the Spine toward his office.

*   *   *

David Doyle pulled into the driveway of an old home on East Seventy-fifth in Chicago’s South Side just after midnight. A man lifted a manual garage door and David drove his Toyota straight in, and the man in the drive shut the door quickly behind him.

Doyle followed the man through the dark and into the back kitchen door of the house. A group of women were there in the kitchen, but they just looked away as the stranger entered, and he passed them by without speaking.

Doyle was led into the living room, and he found himself face-to-face with five men, all seated on a long wraparound sofa. David was handed a cup of instant coffee, and he took a chair placed in front of the television set.

“As salaam aleikum.”

The five men answered back as one. “
Wa aleikum as salaam.
”

Months ago, when Doyle chose his resources for this mission from the thumb drive brought by the six AQ operatives from western Pakistan, he carefully selected confederates already in the United States who could help him hide out if he ran into trouble. These sleeper cell agents needed to be as committed to the cause as he was, and they needed to be prepared to martyr themselves for the cause if David ordered them to do so.

He found a suitable group in Chicago. They were Saudis who had lived in the U.S. for over a decade, and the five men ranged in age from nineteen to thirty-seven. Three of the five men had trained at AQ camps in Pakistan, and all five had expressed a willingness to commit jihad against their adopted nation.

Doyle decided they would be perfect for his needs, even though they knew nothing about the mission they would undertake. He had contacted them in Mexico knowing that he would use them in some capacity, but now was the moment of truth, the point when they would learn their role in the coming event.

“The Americans have stopped flying all their aircraft,” said the oldest in the room, Abdul Rahman.

Doyle just nodded. “I knew they would do this. It serves our purpose. Each day the skies over the United States are empty, Americans lose billions of dollars. They will do everything they can to find us and end the threat to their planes.”

“They say on the news that they think you died in San Francisco.”

Doyle smiled at this. “Another benefit for our operation. This means they will resume flights shortly, and they will lower their guard. Our success is all but assured, my brothers.”

“So … what will we be doing?” another man asked.

“We are going to go to the one place where there will still be air traffic.”

“Where is that, Daoud?”

“Washington, D.C.”

The men looked intelligent and resolute, and this was good. Doyle needed to teach them in short order how to fire missiles, and even though this did not take much in the way of skill or talent, it would take their concentration. Still, Doyle knew, the hard part was getting men who would point the missiles at aircraft full of live humans and pull the trigger. Doyle needed these five Chicagoans to help him with that.

“I need to know that I can trust you.”

“You can, Daoud. All of us have been waiting for years for our martyrdom operation. We have rifles and ammunition buried in the backyard. We can dig them up tonight.”

“Very well. We will need them,” David said. “But first it is time for your lessons. Let us begin.”

Doyle left the room, and then returned with a single Igla launcher. He placed it on the oak table, and then put a rocket alongside it. The five men stood around the table as the al Qaeda operational commander showed them the basics of the weapon. He loaded the missile into the tube and attached the power supply, and then he hefted it onto his shoulder.

After a moment he passed it around to the four other men. Each one held it, looked through the round sights, squeezed the hand grip with a sweaty and shaky hand, and then passed it on around the room.

After an hour David felt the men had a perfunctory knowledge of the weapon and how to fire it.

Doyle next went into his explanation of the mission. All five men found it both audacious and brilliant.

When he was finished he asked, “Any questions?”

“Yeah,” said a thickly built man in his early thirties. His voice was more Chicago than Saudi Arabia. Doyle had already identified the man as the leader of the cell, but he gave equal respect to all five of the operatives. “When do we leave?”

“We will leave in the morning. I will rest for a while, and then we will travel in two vehicles. Inshallah, we will arrive at our destination with time to spare.”

FORTY

Kolt Raynor lay in his dark trailer and listened to the sound of gentle rain on the metal roof. He cursed the mattress under him. He’d lived like this for years, and it had never bothered him before, but now that he was sporting a couple of broken ribs he found himself missing the added support of a box spring. Moving around on the mattress was hell.

He sat up with a wince, and found his way to his feet. He headed into his tiny kitchen toward the coffeemaker, but the sound and lights of a vehicle pulling up outside stopped him in his tracks.

He looked at his watch and saw it was not yet 0500.

Kolt rarely received visitors to his trailer, and never at this hour.

As he opened his front door, TJ came jogging in from the rain. “How you feeling?”

Kolt shut the door behind him. “I feel like I spent a couple hours in an industrial washing machine on the spin cycle.”

“Anything new on Jason?”

“Slapshot is recovering,” said Raynor. It was the word the doctors used, so Kolt had used it himself, though he knew it could mean virtually anything short of dead.

“That’s good to hear.” TJ just stood there in the little trailer.

“Were you just in the neighborhood?” asked Kolt jokingly.

Timble hesitated before saying, “I have a proposition for you.”

“Okay.”