Juan triggered the homemade explosives they’d laid inside the unfinished building.
The shaped charges had been carefully positioned for the maximum effect. As each went off, its force was funneled into sandbaglike redoubts of cement powder the men had stacked on every floor. From the ground level up, each sequential explosion sent a blooming gray cloud of dust blasting from the building in a scene reminiscent of the Twin Towers collapse. In seconds the fine powder had formed an impenetrable curtain of dust that lofted from street level to nearly two hundred feet and covered a two-block radius. It would take at least ten minutes for the light breeze to clear the dense fog from the area. Until then, no one would be able to see anything happening on the streets around the construction site.
Hali Kasim ignored the screaming pedestrians as he and his men dashed from the van, each carrying lengths of braided cable. The gas masks filtered out the worst of the cement dust, but he could still taste it with each breath. As for the IR masks, they allowed him to see the descending hook and the infrared lamps wired to the cable in his hand, but for the rest, it was like running through a forest fire.
The driver of the armored van would be trained to ram his way out of the accident and was probably in the process of doing so when Cabrillo kicked off the explosives. Now, like everyone else on the street, the driver and his men sat paralyzed by the enormity of the explosions that appeared to have leveled the adjacent building.
Hali fumbled to the front of the truck and looped the wire around the axle. He used a parked car to leap onto the roof with the two loose ends. Looking up, he saw the IR lamp on the hook gliding through the gray clouds like a tiny star amid the darkness of night. Kasim’s men had passed their cables around both rear axles and handed the ends up to Hali. Their job done, each stripped off their gear and vanished into the panicked crowd. The fleeing pedestrians were coated with cement dust and resembled ghosts stalking a foggy moor.
Up in the tower Juan maneuvered the hook so it was directly above the multiple bundle of IR lights atop the armored van. He could see them move a bit as Hali steadied himself on the vehicle’s roof.
“Okay, that’s got it.” Hali’s voice was muffled by his gas mask. “You’re right above me. Lower the hook about ten feet.”
“Lower ten, roger.” Juan paid out more cable, watching closely as the two points of infrared light merged. Without the lamps, finding the truck in the turbid swirl of dust would have been impossible.
“Hold there.” Hali fed the eyeholes at the ends of each cable through the heavy snap hook so that all six were secured. “Okay, Chairman, she’s all yours. Give me a second to get clear, and haul away.”
The Lebanese-American jumped to the ground and was about to let the current of running people carry him away when a cop from the lead cruiser suddenly reared out of the dust cloud. For what seemed like forever the two regarded each other. The officer’s eyes widened in his dust-streaked face as he finally recognized the object in Hali’s hand was a gas mask. That was as much a reaction as Kasim would allow him. Because he lacked Eddie Seng’s martial arts training, Hali had to settle for a swift kick to the cop’s groin before he took off running.
He managed just a few yards when he spotted another officer getting out of the rear-guard cruiser’s passenger side. The man was dazed by the car crash and explosion but had the presence to carry his big flashlight and a blocky automatic pistol. He was halfway out of the car when he saw Hali running through the storm of cement power. He recognized Hali’s Arab features despite the dust and made a snap assumption. He tried to raise his weapon above the doorframe, even though the angle for a shot was all wrong. Hali threw himself bodily against the cruiser’s door, breaking one of the cop’s ankles and pinning him momentarily. Hali reached for the gun, realized the cop had an iron grip on the SIG Sauer, and rammed his elbow into the cop’s face until his fingers went slack. Kasim wrenched the weapon away and took off again, leaving the unconscious officer in a heap on the pavement.
High above the fight, Juan Cabrillo put pressure on a joystick to raise the hook, tensioning the cables for a moment before lifting the seven-ton armored truck from the ground. Once he’d hauled it thirty feet off the street, he flicked the joystick to rotate the tower crane counterclockwise. He watched as the bright flare of IR light turned through the roiling dust. He slowed the rotation as the truck swung over the street where Franklin Lincoln waited with the semi.
As part of their preparations back in the warehouse, Linc and Hali had cut off the top of the trailer, split it lengthwise with cutting torches, and then remounted the two pieces on long hinges so the entire box could be opened to the sky. An IR light had been mounted on each corner of the trailer. While the dust had begun to settle at his elevation and his view out the cab windows was clearing, down at the truck the cement dust still billowed. Yet Juan could clearly see the rectangular pattern of lights with his goggles, and he gently lowered the armored van once it was positioned within the grid.
Linc had been waiting atop the tractor cab, and as soon as the van’s tires flattened slightly under the vehicle’s weight, he scrambled to release the hook. As soon as it was free, he radioed Juan to clear out, then returned to the cab. He put the transmission into first gear and hit the remote device to seal the trailer roof.
The guards were now isolated, and even if they’d called for help during the grab, they hadn’t seen anything in the dust storm, and the local police would be busy for several hours as they pieced together that this hadn’t been a terrorist attack.
Juan checked his watch just before descending the long ladder that ran down the tower crane’s single support column. From explosion to securing the armored van had taken one minute, forty-seven seconds. Thirteen less than he’d expected, but then he was working with the best. He could barely see to grope his way across the construction site, moving like a blind man through the dust storm. Grit filled his eyes and choked his lungs. It took five long minutes to find the gate. He climbed the chain-link fence and lowered himself to the sidewalk.
The street was at a standstill, and the curbs were empty of people. A fine, pale powder covered everything, like ash from a volcano. He had to brush his hand against the cars parked along the street to guide himself out of the worst of the swirling storm, and it wasn’t until he was two blocks from the ambush site that he could finally see enough to pick up his pace. Police cars were fast approaching, their lights slashing through the clouds like lighthouse beacons.
“What happened?” asked an Englishman standing outside a cafe. His clothes were clean as opposed to Juan’s dust-covered work clothes.
“I think some sort of construction accident,” Cabrillo lied, coughing.
“Dear God. Do you think anybody was hurt?”
Juan looked back at the settling cloud. “Not a soul,” he said, knowing this time he was telling the truth.
Rudolph Isphording knew a little about how the Russians were going to pull off his rescue, so he wasn’t as stunned as the guard in the back of the van with him when they heard the screech of brakes and the crash of metal from a traffic accident. The big truck came to a sudden stop. But when an instant later the building next to the courthouse seemed to collapse, Isphording’s fear was genuine.
