Best guess … someone’s prepping a charge for detonation!”
“Copy,” Dean replied. His throat was tight, his mouth dry. He looked at McCauley. “They’re picking up radiation Stateside,” he said. “Someone’s getting ready to set off a nuke.”
“Shit. Wait a sec—” McCauley touched fingertips to one ear, listening. Someone was talking to him over the SEAL command net. “The hatch leading to the forward hold has been locked from the other side,” he said. “One guess where our Tango is playing with his new toy.”
“We need to get in there,” Dean said, “by any means you have available!”
McCauley touched a switch on the radio strapped to his shoulder. “Bravo One, Alfa Team Leader. We need door-kickers on the forward deck, and we need ’em
Syed Ashraf completed the final connection, tightening the last screw holding the two major components of the weapon together. Next, he needed to attach the battery, which was in a separate case at the end of the cylinder, threading the bare ends of two copper wires around the battery posts and tightening the connections.
The trigger was still inside the case, connected to a timer. The detonator planted inside the C-4 charge within the weapon’s base could be set off by any of several means — by sending a radio signal to the trigger from a remote control unit, by activating a small LED display timer, or simply by pressing a button with a direct line of sight to the weapon. Any of those would fire the detonator, which in turn would set off the C-4, and that would slam the two pieces of metal inside the cylinder together, and the world would be illuminated by God’s holy light.
Only one more step remained — and that was to snap two triple-A batteries into the trigger, which looked like a small TV remote. The batteries were included within a small plastic bag; al-Wawi had thought of every contingency. Ashraf popped the back off the trigger’s battery compartment and opened the plastic bag.
The batteries snapped into place, one, two, and he replaced the cover.
Timer set to zero … detonator armed …
All that remained now was to …
Dean crouched lower as a SEAL pressed a switch. Yard upon yard of detcord wrapped around the locks, hasps, and flanges of the forward hold deck hatch went off with a piercing bang, followed a split instant later by the heavier blast of multiple charges of C-4 laid around the hatch perimeter. Bits of metal pinged and shrieked off the side of the deckhouse as the hatch was peeled back, lifted bodily into the air, and spun to one side like a misshapen, square-cut Frisbee ten feet across.
The C-4 and detcord — the “door-kickers” requested by McCauley — had been dropped onto the deck moments before from one of the HH-60 helicopters. Several SEALs wired the explosives to the locked forward hatch, an evolution that had taken less than two minutes. McCauley gave the word, and a SEAL fired the charge.
Now Dean and four Navy SEALs rushed forward from where they’d taken cover in front of the deckhouse, playing out black nylon line behind them as they ran. The open hatch yawned in front of him, a smoky haze still blanketing the deck around it as he stepped over the edge and into emptiness.
The ends of their lines were secured to cleats on the deck behind them, and they fast-roped into the hold, a drop of about twenty feet, letting the rope slide through gloved fingers as they descended.
Dean spun dizzyingly at the end of his line …
Ashraf lay sprawled on the deck, stunned and bewildered. The sudden blast, the sudden explosion of sunlight spilling into the hold, had taken him completely by surprise, convincing him just for a moment that something had gone wrong, that the weapon had fired accidentally, before he’d had a chance to press the trigger.
As he looked up, he saw shapes, faceless black shadows, gliding down through the light at the center of the hold. The trigger lay on the deck a meter away; his AK-47 was leaning against a crate beside him. For just an instant, he hesitated …
They were coming down approximately in the middle of the hold; as he spun clockwise at the end of his rope, dropping fast, Dean caught a glimpse of a lone figure lying beside a stack of crates against the hold’s forward bulkhead. He hit the deck, released the rope, and brought his H&K up, snapping off the safety. From the deck, he could no longer see the figure by the crates.
He rounded a stack of wooden crates just as two SEALs above and behind him, still suspended on their ropes halfway down from the open hatch, triggered their H&Ks. A bearded man in a headcloth and fatigues twisted in front of him, trying to bring his AK to bear. The SEALs fired multiple three-round bursts, triggering them so fast they sounded like a full-auto fusillade, slamming the Tango in head and chest, knocking him backward against the bulkhead, blood splattering across steel as he collapsed.
Dean reached him an instant later. “Tango down!” he yelled.
The man was clearly dead, eyes open and glassy. Something like a remote control unit lay on the deck just beyond his reach.
Dean’s gaze flicked from the trigger to the recently assembled weapon to the dead terrorist and back to the trigger. A timer display on the weapon read “000.” The thing might be booby-trapped, set to go off if he pulled the wrong wire … but one thing he could do was scoop up the remote control trigger. The back panel had popped off. He flipped out the two batteries.
The world did
Then he glanced inside the crate.
“Art Room,” he said, as two Navy SEALs came up behind him. “One Tango down, weapons secure.”
“Thank God,” Rubens said.
“Don’t thank Him yet,” Dean replied. “We still have a small problem.”
“What problem?”
“I only see two trunks here. Unless they’re hidden someplace else on board, we’re still missing ten suitcase nukes.”
19
Hold tight,” Rubens told Dean. “The NEST guys will be there in a few minutes.”
“Copy that,” Dean replied. “McCauley is posting SEALs in each hold. I’ve just been told that the ship is secure.”
“Pass a message to Commander McCauley for me, please,” Rubens said. “Under no circumstances are the pirate boats alongside the
