WARNING ORDER
From: Operations Control
To: All Stations
Message
The Operation proceeds as planned.
Arming codes and target coordinates will follow as per schedule. Stand by.
Krauss nodded to himself. As a final security measure, Reichardt had decreed that none of the teams readying the strike aircraft would be given the arming codes or their target coordinates until an hour before the first planes took off. Once Chantilly released the data, it would take only minutes for his technicians to input each set into the appropriate aircraft.
He read the message over again. It was straightforward and to the point. Perhaps this Arab who had replaced Reichardt would do after all.
The Operation was in its final hours — and now nothing could stop it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
DEAD RUN
His face and forehead blackened with camouflage grease paint, Colonel Peter Thorn led the way through a thin patch of forest toward the perimeter fence of Caraco’s Chantilly office complex.
They were coming in from the back side — away from the road — cutting through ground left wild as a buffer between the corporation’s Washington-area facility and the buildings belonging to its nearest neighbor — a prominent consumer electronics firm.
Fifty meters or so from the fence, he glanced over his shoulder.
Helen Gray followed silently in his wake. Only her eyes gleamed in a face daubed with the same black camouflage paint.
Like him, she was heavily laden with weapons and a bulging rucksack containing her share of their hurriedly improvised assault equipment.
He started moving again. Crickets chirped nearby and then fell silent — momentarily hushed by the whispering passage of their feet through the grass and underbrush. An owl hooted mournfully somewhere off in the distance.
A few meters from the cleared area surrounding the fence, Thorn stopped at the foot of a towering oak tree and looked up through the tangle of broad, gnarled branches and leaves. Then he turned toward the brightly lit Caraco compound — measuring angles and distances by eye.
He nodded to Helen.
“Delta Two to Delta Three. Delta One beginning ascent.” Her hushed voice ghosted through his headset, reporting their position and status to Farrell. The retired general was hidden among the trees on the other side of the compound — keeping an eye on the main gate.
Thorn flipped up his nightvision gear. This close to the edge of the compound he had enough light — and he needed the depth perception denied by the Russian-made light intensifier’s single lens.
Moving rapidly, he unslung his Winchester shotgun and rucksack, clipped a hacksaw onto his web gear, and then tugged on a pair of close-fitting, heavy leather work gloves. Knee pads and shin protectors completed the outfit. He was set.
“Peter,” Helen whispered in his ear. Thorn turned. “What?”
“If you even think of whistling “I’m a lumberjack, and I’m okay,’ this whole mission’s off,” she warned.
He grinned, then swung back, grabbed one of the large, thick branches just above his head, and levered himself up and into the oak. He climbed higher, moving from one limb to another — but always staying close to the trunk and well inside the concealing canopy of leaves.
Thorn stopped about halfway up. Going higher was impractical.
The boughs were clustered closer together barring easy passage.
They were also narrower and less likely to support his weight. He looked down. He was roughly twenty-five feet off the ground. Good enough.
Slowly he edged further out from the tree trunk, gingerly testing each step to make sure the limb he was standing on could take his weight without snapping. To transfer some of the load, he wrapped his left hand tight around a higher branch and pulled himself part way up.
Two steps. Three steps. The bough swayed suddenly, creaking as it sagged toward the ground. Thorn froze. Far enough, he thought — inching backward ever so slightly.
He was facing the Caraco compound — about ten meters from the fence.
Beyond the fence, a cleared strip of close-cropped gross soon gave way to a half-filled parking lot. The square, antenna-topped building they believed contained Ibrahim’s command and control center rose just beyond that — roughly sixty meters in from the fence. Leaves and the slender twigs branching off from other boughs obscured much of his view.
Time to make a nice, discreet hole, Thorn thought.
Still balancing himself with his left hand, he carefully unclipped the hacksaw from his web gear. He paused and whispered, “Delta Two, am I clear?”
Helen’s equally quiet reply crackled through the headset.
“Wait one. Two.man patrol coming down the fence now.”
Thorn stood motionless, every sense straining. There. He heard them now — the clink of metal on metal, the muffled sound of boots tromping across grass, a quick mutter in guttural German. From his vantage point he caught one quick glimpse of the guards as they passed by, checking the fence for any signs of tampering.
One side of his mouth quirked upward. Both men in that patrol were carrying what looked an awful lot like H&K MP5 submachine guns slung over their shoulders. They were also wearing body armor. These guys sure as hell weren’t the usual corporate rent-a-cops working for minimum wage and the chance to wear a fancy uniform.
“You’re clear, Delta One,” Helen said. “They’ve turned the corner and are moving away. We should have another fifteen minutes before they make the next circuit.”
Without waiting any further, Thorn started in — sawing rapidly away at the tree limbs that blocked his view of the headquarters building.
Leaves and slender pieces of lranch spun away into the shadows below.
He was taking a calculated risk — betting that none of the debris would drift far enough to land within view of the TV cameras monitoring the fence.
More narrow boughs felt the hacksaw’s sharp-edged bite and spiraled away toward the ground below. When he’d cleared a rough two-by three-foot oval in the foliage, he stopped cutting and clipped the saw back onto his web gear.
Thorn reversed course, climbing down by the same route he’d taken coming up. He crouched on the lowest and largest branch and leaned outward. “I’m set. You ready?”
In answer, she reached up and handed him the Mossberg 590 shotgun they’d converted into a line launcher. He slung it carefully over his shoulder, feeling the points of the grappling hook he’d welded on dig into his back.
Thorn looked back up toward the top of the tree, calculating how long it would take him to get there and get set. He glanced down at Helen, held up three fingers, and saw her repeat the signal.
Her voice came over the radio again, issuing instructions to Sam Farrell. “Delta Three, this is Two. Set your timer for three minutes on my mark.”
Thorn saw the second hand sweep through the number twelve on his faintly luminous watch face.
“Mark.”
