THIRTY-FOUR
Rafael pressed the send button of the message to the team overseeing the operation back in Iran. It was a single, simple word.
NOW.
He watched and waited. A moment later he saw the computer screens in the string of booths go dark. Border agents leaned closer, peering at monitors, then looked around at the rest of their equipment, looking for the cause of the problem. Some of them typed in commands on their keyboards, trying to bring them back to life. Others checked connections, all to no avail. There was nothing for them to find and nothing they could fix.
On the command from Rafael, hackers had initiated preloaded routines to shut down every piece of electronic equipment at every border crossing with Mexico and Canada. Shutting them all down prevented the authorities from realizing there was an attack at any one specific spot. They might assume that the hack of the border crossings was in and of itself the attack. Every part of the attack was designed to keep them from knowing what was eventually to come.
It wasn’t just the computers that went dead. All the handheld devices they depended on for everything from logging data to taking readings also went dead. Every reader and scanner linked to their system went dead.
The computers that ran the X-ray scanners, neutron detectors, and gamma detectors and logged the data also went dead.
The electricity to the entire facility simultaneously went down. The lighted message boards with lane numbers and other information that changed throughout the day went dark. Every bit of equipment went quiet.
Rafael smiled as he watched the confused faces of the border agents. Some leaned out of their booths to ask others if their systems were down as well, or if it was only them. They yelled their frustration from one booth to another. Other people were busy attempting to reboot systems to try to fix the problem. Of course, their systems would not reboot. The roving agents who checked paperwork and looked over equipment and loads returned to the booths to see why their handheld devices weren’t working.
Many of the agents in the booths picked up phones to call in, but the landline phone systems that connected them to the operations center had gone dead as well. Finding the phones not working, they turned to their cell phones, but those phones weren’t linked directly into the centers, so it would take them time to get through to the right individuals, and those people would be swamped with calls not only from this border crossing, but from them all. To make matters worse, their computer screens showed only ransom demands. Those ransom demands were of course fake, but it would be quite a while, possibly days, before they came to realize that it wasn’t really ransomware.
Even if the people Rafael was watching did get through on their cell phones, there was nothing the center would be able to do. It would take time to uncover the hack and then to regain control of their systems.
And their time had just run out.
Rafael picked up the phone with Javier’s name written on the tape on the back. It was time to begin their part of the mission. Javier would be waiting for his encrypted orders.
Rafael set the message that said GO WITH GOD.
Rafael tilted his head back to look between the lines of waiting trucks. Javier was in the lane on the far end of the facility. Although the border checkpoint was relatively level, it was somewhat higher at that far end.
Javier was driving a regular tractor trailer, but hidden inside his ordinary-looking trailer he carried a two-thousand-gallon steel tank filled with gasoline. The trailer had hatches below valves on the tank. Once he received word from Rafael, Javier hit a switch that dropped the three hatches in the floor of the truck. When those hatches sprang open, they automatically opened the gravity valves on the tank above. Gasoline poured out of three wide-opened valves and began spreading across the pavement as it ran downhill under all the waiting trucks.
Border-patrol agents smelled the gasoline and began coming out of their booths to look for the source.
Rafael picked up the phone with Esteban’s name. He could see Esteban out of his truck, standing near the rear of his trailer. Many of the other drivers had emerged from their trucks as well, because of the apparent failure of the electricity and computers, so none of the security officers thought anything of Esteban being out of his truck.
At least half a dozen officers finally converged on the truck spewing gasoline. At first, they ran around the truck, looking for the source of all the gasoline. When they saw the open gravity feed valves, they drew guns and pointed them up at Javier in the cab of his truck.
Rafael pressed send for the message to Esteban. GO WITH GOD.
Esteban, only two lanes over from Rafael’s truck, had been waiting for the order. He glanced briefly at the message for confirmation, then deliberately dropped the phone in the river of gasoline. He put a foot up on the rear crash bar that kept cars from submarining under the back end of the truck in the event of an accident, and hoisted himself up. He quickly pulled open the latch and then lifted the roll-up door. Lining the sides of the trailer’s interior were over a hundred cages. Esteban pulled the handle on a steel cable that sequentially unlatched all those doors.
The doors of the cages had springs, so once the latches were released they sprang open, one after another. Over a hundred dogs, most pit bulls, bolted from their cages and spilled out of the back end of the truck. All the dogs had been bred and raised in Mexico to be vicious. They had all been trained for one thing: to attack anyone in a border agent or highway patrol officer uniform. They had been trained to ignore gunfire and loud explosions.
All the dogs were also wearing bomb vests packed with high explosives, ball bearings, screws, and nails.
Some of the dogs began fighting each other, but most single-mindedly charged toward border agents and highway patrol officers. The dogs storming around all the standing trucks at the border checkpoint created confusion and disarray. Tactics used in the training of border agents and police for gaining control of a situation suddenly became worthless. While prepared for an assault by men, they were not prepared for an attack by dozens of vicious dogs.
Some of the dogs raced in and latched on to a leg with their powerful jaws. The dogs would never release the leg they had in their jaws, so the men now had a heavy dog anchoring them. Men drew guns and shot the dogs clamped on their leg, but the damage had already been done.
Other dogs clamped on to arms held up defensively. Once they had that arm in their teeth, they shook it for all they were worth. The stocky dogs had powerful neck muscles, and when they shook their prey it tore muscle from bone. Other dogs, running at full speed, leaped up at the men, knocking the wind from them as they knocked them down. Once they had their prey on the ground they went for the throat or face. There was no effective way to physically fight them off. Only guns could stop them.
One dog leaped onto and grabbed a female officer by her breast. As she toppled back with the dog on top of her she drew her gun and shot it, only to have another dog race in and clamp her face in his powerful jaws. When he shook her head, it tore neck muscles and ripped flesh from her face.
People everywhere, both agents and truck drivers who had gotten out of their trucks, screamed in terror or pain. Some of the drivers who had been waiting at booths saw the erupting chaos, put their trucks in gear, and took off to escape before they were caught up in the attack. Men in other trucks leaped out and ran, leaving their trucks blocking the lane between booths.
While some dogs attacked the same man, most of the angry animals raced throughout the facility, looking for people in uniforms to attack. They spread out as they ran, going after any uniformed officer they saw.
It only took seconds for guns to be drawn. Officers everywhere began shooting at the dogs. A few took down a dog, but many shots missed the racing animals as they zigzagged through all the trucks and people. The shooting diverted their attention from the true danger.
As officers tried to shoot the dogs, the timers on the vests the dogs were wearing ran out and the bombs exploded. Everywhere throughout the entire facility the dogs’ bomb vests started going off. It didn’t matter if a dog had been shot dead. The vests had already been armed, and they exploded by their internal timer, sending shrapnel streaking out in every direction.
People close enough but not directly taken down by the explosion were shredded by the ball bearings and nails. People farther away were hit with shrapnel and went down. Others were wounded but still able to run. They did their best to stop the bleeding of injuries as they ran. Many ran directly into another explosion, where they were blown limb from limb.
While some detonators went off almost immediately after the attack started and created mass confusion, others had delays of anywhere from ten to sixty seconds, adding to the confusion. As bombs were going off, the dogs left alive continued their attack, until their bomb vests in turn exploded. Those explosions spread the pandemonium and death out to those who had not been in the original danger zone.
Several of the officers around Javier’s truck turned to shoot at the dogs that raced in toward them. Others held their weapons pointed up at Javier, since he was the driver of the truck dumping thousands of gallons of gasoline all over the ground. They yelled at him to get out of the truck or they would shoot.
Javier was holding a dead man’s switch.
Rafael knew that Javier yelled “Allahu Akbar” back at them. They grasped the meaning and immediately began retreating even as they opened fire.
A few seconds later Javier’s truck exploded with a ground-shaking thud.
The men in close, climbing up to open the driver’s door to the truck, were vaporized when the massive bomb in the sleeper compartment of his truck cab detonated. The huge explosion sent debris flying in every direction. The expanding shock wave from the explosion knocked people from their feet. It rocked all the trucks trapped at the checkpoint. Rafael’s truck rocked in turn as the blast wave raced past.
The catwalk above the booths came apart and parts of it blew high into the air. Half of the booths and personnel in them were blown to pieces, adding to the flaming debris flying through the air. The big axle and tandem wheels off a truck sailed out over the row of booths and into California.
A massive ball of red flame laced with orange and yellow tendrils expanded from the initial explosion. Rafael squinted at the bright blast. Fire boiled over the surrounding trucks. Black smoke swelled up into the air.
Almost simultaneously the gasoline vapor from all the fuel that had poured out across the area caught fire with a chest-pounding thump, igniting the gasoline that had poured across the ground.
Trucks to the side couldn’t even attempt to escape by driving around, because they were hemmed in by natural terrain that rose up in most of the area around the checkpoint. Where there wasn’t a natural obstruction, massive cement barriers had been placed to prevent anyone from trying to drive around the checkpoints to get into the United States. Those barriers now created a tightly confined trap that was rapidly becoming a killing field.
All the while more of the vests on the dogs kept exploding in a deadly drumbeat, creating a continual cacophony of earsplitting booms. The air everywhere was filled with shrapnel. Men still standing went down.
With the dogs released, Esteban started into his truck to detonate the bomb in the front of his trailer.
He only made it two steps before he was brought down by a hail of bullets from a few of the California Highway Patrol officers still alive.
Rafael had been expecting it. They had planned and trained for it. He picked up another waiting phone and immediately pressed the send button. As he did so, he ducked.
Almost instantly, Esteban’s truck blew apart in another massive explosion, bigger than the first. But this one was to a large degree a shaped charge meant to expend most of its energy to the right side. The blast blew apart the truck beside it, and the one beside that one that had been sitting at the gamma ray detector in front of Rafael’s truck.
Flaming debris ripped down poles and power lines. The metal siding off one of the trucks spiraled up into the air. A massive chunk of metal hit the hood of Rafael’s truck with a bang and bounced over the cab. The air was filled with smoke trails left by burning, unrecognizable bits of wreckage sailing through the air.
Trucks that were trapped and unable to move were engulfed in flames from the burning gasoline that had spread under them. Blazes whooshed to life all throughout the standing vehicles. Men screamed as they were burned alive in the cabs of their trucks. Others tried to escape by running through the rivers of burning gasoline. As they ran, their shoes and then their pants ignited. Flames roared up to engulf their shirts and then their hair. Screams came from faces inside swirling columns of fire.
Many of those running figures succumbed to the smoke or breathed in the flames and collapsed in the inferno. People ran in every direction, trying to skirt flaming trucks and flying debris, trying to find safety. There was none.
Acrid, thick black smoke rolled across the scene, obscuring the lines of trucks. Orange flame licked out from the wall of inky smoke. Throughout it all, the bomb vests on the dogs with delayed fuses continued to explode. Explosions shocked the air.
If ever there was a scene of hell, this was it.
Trucks at the front up near the booths that were not caught up in the fire or destroyed by the explosions sped away to escape the mayhem. Most of the border agents were dead. The few that weren’t were tending their own wounds or trying to find a way to fight back. They were not worried about trucks that began fleeing in a panic from the death and destruction. As they picked up speed going for the few openings in the debris and wreckage, they collided with other trucks also trying to escape. Other drivers tried to maneuver between the damaged vehicles, or around crippled trucks, driving over smoldering bodies and leveled border check booths.
The explosions from the dogs’ bomb vests finally trailed off. Rafael checked his watch to make sure the timers had all run out. He didn’t want to get caught by an explosion from a dog running from the scene. The dogs were trained to be unafraid of gunfire and explosions, but in some their natural instincts took over and they were panicking to get away from the flames. He didn’t see any of them still around the immediate area.
Finally, the time had arrived. Rafael jammed his truck into gear and released the brake. With the truck in front that had been blocking his way at the neutron and gamma detectors now mostly obliterated, Rafael began gathering speed and plowing aside torn pieces of the trailer. An axle with tandem wheels still attached spun like a top as it was knocked off to the side. Large sheets of metal siding toppled as he crashed through remaining pieces of the truck beds.
All around trucks burned and people screamed—some in pain and some for help. Some of the other drivers and the border agents tried to rescue people trapped in burning trucks. Fuel tanks continued to rupture and pour diesel fuel on the fire, creating thick clouds of black smoke. Even though he had rolled up the window, Rafael could feel the withering heat radiating from the fires.
As he gathered speed, he rammed into what was left of one of the truck cabs that had been in line ahead of him. The shell of the body and tires had been mostly blown away in the explosion. He used his truck to push it, trying to get it out of the way. Instead of being pushed aside, it rotated sideways ahead of Rafael’s grille, sliding sideways on bare rims in front of his truck. With no bodywork left, the dead driver could be seen hanging in his seat belt, his left arm blown off from the explosion.
Rafael kept pushing the skeleton of the truck cab until they were past the booth area. Once clear he spun the wheel to turn his truck to push the smoldering wreck of a truck cab off to the side.
Throughout the entire attack and aftermath, Cassiel had sat quietly watching. He said nothing and took no action. Fortunately, he didn’t attempt to lift his gun to shoot out the window at the enemy when he had a chance. Rafael had told him beforehand that their job was to play the part of innocent victims caught in a terrorist attack.
The last thing they needed was to have anyone who was still alive, or any of the officers rushing to the scene from nearby areas, see someone shooting an AK-47 out of the passenger window of an escaping truck. That would instantly tip them off that Rafael’s truck was part of the attack. It would ruin years of planning. The plan was for Rafael to look like one of the many innocent trucks frantically fleeing the scene of death and destruction.
There were trucks that, once past the carnage, pulled over. Drivers jumped out to render assistance to the scores of injured. But many more trucks simply fled in a panic, too horrified by the carnage to want to stay.
Rafael wanted to be in among those innocent people fleeing the scene. He wanted to look like any other Mexican truck driver racing away for fear of his own life.