Cole?”
Jason looked up at the man through puffy, swollen eyelids. “Yes.”
Sharif’s dark eyes radiated hate. “Do you have a brother or sister?”
“No.”
Sharif pulled a knife out of his belt. “Infidel. When I cut your head off, it will be to remove your father’s seed and yours from the face of Earth.”
Jason’s hands trembled, his breathing rapid, bile rising in his throat.
Sharif touched the blade to the center of Jason’s throat. He smiled, his teeth wet with saliva. His men watched him for a moment, the only sound coming from a blowfly hovering and buzzing above Borshnik’s body.
He lowered the knife. “There will be a better time for your death,” he said, placing the knife in the sheath. “Perhaps you will be the young man who is there when the atomic bomb detonates in this country. It will be an explosion heard around the world. They will call you the ultimate suicide bomber. But I do not believe paradise will await you, Jason Canfield.” He turned to his men. “Take the infidel to the boat.”
In less than ten minutes, the ten U-235 canisters were loaded on the forty-five foot Sea Ray at the end of Pier 13. Sharif looked at two of his men standing on the dock and said, “Rayhan, you and Nasif take the SUV. Proceed to Savannah. We will contact you before we arrive at the docks. Meet with Hashmin and Yasir. They are holding the professor’s daughter in the house we rented. I will speak to the professor directly. I feel positive that he will be most cooperative.”
The men nodded and ran back to the Ford Navigator. Sharif boarded the boat with the rest of his men. “Cast off!” he yelled. They untied the stern and bow ropes. “Go! Go! Now!” Sharif ordered. The man behind the wheel gunned the big diesels and within a minute the Sea Ray was on plane, the pilot heading for the channel markers.
“Set a course to Savannah, Georgia. Up the river from there is a place-the Savannah River Site. It is America’s largest facility for the manufacture of nuclear bombs. And near there lives the man who will make ours.”
Sharif glanced at Jason, bound and lying on the salon floor. He said, “Your time is short Canfield. Admit and recant all of the atrocities your country does, on video, and perhaps you will live. Or you will die strapped to an atomic bomb.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT
O’Brien pulled onto a service road. The chain on the gate had been cut, the gate partially open. “Follow the yellow brick road,” he said.
“Don’t follow it too far,” Hunter said, reaching into the back seat for two assault rifles. He put one on his lap and the second between the seats. “Backup’s coming. We have two choppers in the air-”
“Tell them to stay back. Stay back far enough so Borshnik can’t hear them. All he needs is an excuse to slit Jason’s throat.”
Hunter hit numbers on his cell. “Keep the birds back … yes … at least half a mile, maybe more if they’re coming over the river.”
Three vans of federal agents and six SUVs filled with SWAT team members pulled up behind O’Brien. Hunter and O’Brien got out of the car and briefed the men. O’Brien said, “We’ll look for the most obvious point of entry in relation to wherever the hostiles have their vehicles. Cab driver is a non-hostile. A twenty-year-old male is being held hostage. His name is Jason Canfield. I will need four men to follow me. Hunter can use that many on the rear and sides of the warehouse we enter. The rest of you spread along the perimeter of the buildings.”
Hunter said, “We’ll leave the vehicles here. Follow the tree line down toward the water and then separate.”
O’Brien hid behind a tall growth of weeds next to a fence and looked at the scene less than one-hundred feet in front of him. He could see at least three bodies. Something in his gut told him there would be more.
“It’s time we paid our respect to the dead,” Hunter said in O’Brien’s earpiece. “Gents, cover Sean and me as we run for the cab on the east side of the warehouse.” From where Hunter lay in cover, behind a partially crumbled seawall, he watched as O’Brien used a hand signal for the two of them to move forward. Both men ran hard, heads down, zigzagging toward the parked cab.
Except for the slight sound of a chopper in the distance, silence. O’Brien rose to look in the taxi window. “Head’s almost gone,” he said in a low voice.
“Look ….” Hunter mumbled, pointing toward two bodies. “Man, what the hell did they do to Gates?”
“Borshnik electrocuted him. Same fate his father got in 1951.”
“Eye for an eye. The second body, it’s one of Borshnik’s men. I recognize him from the Chapman’s Fish House camera. What the hell’s going on, Sean?”
O’Brien was silent for a few seconds. “Gates was killed in there, where there’s electricity … this guy was probably taking the body out for disposal … maybe to dump it in the river but never got that far. Somebody nailed him in the back of the head.”
“Maybe it’s Mohammed … or one of his guys.”
“Gates was a big man. Would have taken two of Borshnik’s men to carry him down to the river.”
“Which means-”
“Borshnik has a defector. Eric, tell your men we’re working our way around to the other side of the building. The main entrance.”
Hunter relayed the information, and requested four SWAT members for backup. He and O’Brien kept low, hugging the exterior wall. O’Brien peered around the edge of the building. “Another down. Looks dead.”
Hunter used a hand signal and four members of the SWAT team converged next to them in seconds. They approached the body.
“Even without a forehead,” Hunter said, “this guy looks like the second man in the Chapman’s video. Why is he here and Gates and the other Russian back there?”
O’Brien knelt down for less than five seconds. Then he rose and motioned for the men to come to the partially opened wooden door. He whispered, “Blood splatter was blocked by something with a corner side, like a box. Maybe a briefcase. Whatever it was, it’s gone. So are the guys who did it. I think he met someone here. Could have been a payoff. We might find a lot of blood in there.”
O’Brien and the men moved stealth-like though the rooms and halls. They followed blood splatter on the floor to a room with an open door and cautiously entered. The smell of gunpowder, blood, and burnt electrical wire was in the air.
“Holy shit …,” mumbled one SWAT member.
“It was a fuckin’ slaughter,” said another.
They counted nine bodies. Hunter knelt by Borshnik and looked at the bullet hole in the center of his chest. “Looks like the auction is off,” Hunter said sarcastically. “He’s the oldest here … the son of the only Russian spy ever killed by execution in America. He carries out his own revenge and gets a bullet through the heart. Ironic-it’s not by us, but by a new breed of spies-Islamic jihad extremists.”
“The hate is the same,” O’Brien said, looking at Borshnik’s body. “They took Jason. Mohammed Sharif has him.”
“Looks like Sharif had the same idea we had. But he was faster.”
“That’s because he knew the location before we did,” O’Brien said. “And I’m betting the reason why is that dead man in the front lot, he sold out. O’Brien walked to a window facing the front entrance. He studied the area while the men checked the bodies for signs of life. Then O’Brien stepped across the room, trying to avoid pools of
