FIFTY-THREE
“Wait back here,” Jack whispered.
He was thankful that Angela didn’t argue. He left her in the alleyway behind a partially crumbled brick wall and then moved on alone into the moon’s shadow cast by the large building with the arched roof.
As far as he could see, the only windows in the long building were up high, mainly for ventilation and to let daylight in. He moved quietly along the entire length of the building, looking for a way to see inside. The building was brick, and had stood the test of time. Around the back there were steel doors, but they were all locked. He might have been able to break into them, but not without making enough noise to send up an alarm. For all he knew, they could even be booby-trapped. There was a rolling door at the back of the building, but it, too, was locked.
When he reached the far side of the building, he found a shed of some sort. It had been built right up next to the main building. He climbed on a heap of discarded diesel engine blocks and gears stacked beside the shed and then used the gutter to help him climb up onto the roof. Standing on the roof of the shed, he found a place where the brick was broken up around a jagged vertical crack in the outer wall of the main building.
Jack pushed on the bricks around the broken area, looking for any that were loose. He found several. After jiggling them a little to see how easily he would be able to pull them out, he found one that was looser than the others. He carefully wiggled it out, inch by inch, being careful to make sure none of the other bricks would come tumbling down.
He was armed only with a couple of small knives. He knew how to use them, and they were often better in close quarters, but they were no match for guns at a distance. He had learned that lesson the last time he had brought a knife to a gunfight. It did not end well. He had spent months in a coma and then recovering in the hospital. If that experience taught him anything, it was that he didn’t want to get shot again.
It had also lost him Kate. She believed he was dead and so she had gone off the grid to keep any super-predators from finding her. Unfortunately, Jack couldn’t find her, either. It was discouraging to try so hard and not even be able to get any leads on her whereabouts. At the same time, he was in a way happy about it because she was keeping herself safe from any killers who might also be trying to find her.
After he had finally managed to wiggle the brick out of its place in the wall, he carefully set it down against a ledge so it wouldn’t fall off the roof and possibly alert the men inside.
He leaned down and squinted through the hole to see what he could of what was inside.
The first thing he saw almost made him fall off the roof.
There, in the middle of the room, was a spherical device about three feet in diameter. Several men were holding half of a metal outer shell up to it as another group of men were feeding a mass of wires through an opening in the shell.
A cargo van sat not far away, both of its back doors wide open. A bundle of electrical cables hung out the back.
The bomb didn’t look like some of the more sophisticated devices he’d seen, but with all the clues finally making sense, he didn’t doubt that at a minimum he was looking at a crude nuclear weapon. Except it wasn’t nearly as crude as he would have hoped. This was a relatively sophisticated device, and he would bet that its yield was enough to take out much of a big city like New York.
He could see machined brass sleeves for the exploding bridgewire already placed in the Semtex. The way the explosive was precisely shaped into geometric pieces that were being assembled into a sphere looked to have been done with care and precision.
The plutonium-239 the Mossad had found in the tread of José’s boot was bomb-grade plutonium, which told him that it surely had a plutonium pit. He could see the lead shielding of the tamper beneath where the Semtex was still being placed.
For the moment, where the plutonium for the bomb had come from was irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was that it was here, now.
Jack was sure, now, that this was undoubtedly the reason they had blown up the Oeste Mesa border crossing. They used the diversion of all the other terrorist attacks to dilute the importance of that one. Different terrorist organizations claiming credit for various attacks created confusion among the intel agencies as to what was going on. That confusion had helped them to get the plutonium pit and associated material needed for the bomb across the border and into the United States.
Everyone thought all those attacks were the big event. The other terrorists might not have realized they were pawns being used as a diversion, but they had served the desired purpose anyway, and while all that was going on this group had gotten the most crucial material for their bomb into the country. Everyone was searching the country for Muslim extremists, raiding mosques, making arrests, pulling in and questioning known radicalized people on watch lists, and poring over Islamic chatter.
No one was looking for Mexicans.
Jack estimated that the bomb was possibly only hours but no more than a day away from being fully assembled and ready. He was sure that by morning it would be loaded into the van and on its way. From what Miguel had confessed, the target was New York City. There was no reason to doubt that.
With no time to waste, Jack slid back down the roof and jumped to the ground. He moved quickly but as quietly as possible as he made his way back from the building with the bomb to where he had left Angela.
When he got to where she was supposed to be he didn’t see her. He looked around when he heard dripping water and finally spotted her, bathed in moonlight, just climbing up out of a large metal tank that had been cut in half and was lying on its side. It was partially filled with rainwater. Dripping wet, Angela climbed out over the side.
Jack was incredulous. “What the hell are you doing?”
She frowned at him like it was the stupidest question she’d ever heard. “Washing off all the blood.” She shook water off her hands. “I don’t want to get blood all over the interior of my truck.”
In an odd, crazy way, he had to admit that it made sense.
He ushered her a safe distance away from the building with the nuke. He had seen at least a couple of dozen men inside working to assemble the bomb. There could easily have been more that he couldn’t see through the small hole. He had seen a lot of AK-47s leaning against posts and tables.
He didn’t know if there were men other than the two Angela had killed who might also be walking around, taking a cigarette break, or even walking guard duty. If there were, he didn’t want to run into them.
He scanned the area one last time, then pulled his phone out and pressed one of the numbers he had programmed in.
When a woman answered, Jack gave her the code in. She checked briefly, then asked what she could do for him.
“Give me Dvora. It’s an emergency.”
It was the middle of the day in Israel, so he expected she would be available. As Jack waited he continued to watch for trouble. Angela was doing the same.
Dvora quickly picked up. “Jack—what’s the emergency?”
“I’m in Milford Falls—”
“Did you find Angela Constantine, then?”
“Yes. Listen to me. You need to tell the Americans to activate NEST. They’re going to need to get people in here.”
There was a brief moment of stunned silence before she came back. “The Nuclear Emergency Support Team? Has there been a radiological accident?”
The purpose of NEST was to be ready to send teams to recover any kind of nuclear material or devices like dirty bombs. He wasn’t sure they were prepared for a fully functional, live nuclear bomb, but if anyone was prepared to deal with it, it was the NEST team.
“No. Listen to me. We’ve got a live atomic bomb.”
Again, there was a moment of silence. “All right, we’re contacting them right now. Is the site secure?”
“Hell no it’s not secure. The device is shortly going to be on its way to New York City.”
“They monitor for radiation levels all over the place around the East Coast.”
“This is a plutonium bomb. Plutonium is hard to detect in the first place and this one has a lead tamper around the pit. From the looks of the sophistication of it, they will probably use other shields to protect it on their way to New York City. These people know what they’re doing. I expect their truck is shielded. Any radiation will likely be tightly contained. It’s highly unlikely it would be detected.
“But even if some new, supersecret detection equipment did pick it up before it got into the city proper, that will be little consolation if they set it off when they’re intercepted. The blast radius, the firestorm, and the radiation would devastate a vast area. They don’t need to have a direct hit. With a nuke, close will do.”
“I’ve got red lights going up across the board with our contacts,” Dvora said. “Do you have coordinates?”
“I took the coordinates right at the site of the building they’re in. Sending them now.”
“Okay, got them.”
Jack knew that once the authorities secured the weapon they would need to get the NEST team in to disarm it.
“Let the Americans know that it’s not likely to have any fail-safe systems. But I would bet they have contingency plans for an attack.”
“I’ve got other operators notifying the DHS, NSA, and the FBI as well as the Pentagon as we speak. I don’t know what kind of tactical team they are going to want to deploy.”
“I suspect that whoever is closest will go in.”
“All right, Jack, we’re on it. We’ve got our entire center activated. We’re lighting up the Americans.”
Jack let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Dvora. I’ll stay on site until they get here just to make sure the terrorists don’t leave with the bomb. If they do we’ll follow them and I’ll update you with any information. Call me if you need anything more.”
“Stay well back from the area in case they can’t get boots on location fast enough. They may decide to send in a drone or jet to put ordnance on the site.”
“For god’s sake, I really don’t think they ought to be using explosives around a nuclear bomb.”
Explosives wouldn’t set off a nuke—it needed an electrical charge to detonate it—but there was always the risk of radioactive contamination from debris. They could inadvertently turn it into a dirty bomb.
“Given the situation, and the potential risk, that may be what they need to do. It’s their call,” Dvora said.
Jack knew what she meant. If an atom bomb was going to go off, better it go off in central New York State than in a major population center.
“Please tell them I advise against any heavy ordnance.”
“Do you think they will listen to what we tell them?”
“No, I suppose not. By the way, don’t let them know who is providing this intelligence. I’m not exactly welcome on the inside anymore.”
“Already anticipated that, Jack. We’re only saying that we have eyes-on intelligence. Since it’s us calling they will assume that it’s one of our agents.”
“Thanks, Dvora. I’ll call you if anything changes on the ground.”
After he hung up, he turned to Angela. She was watching him.
“I think it would be safer if we got some distance away from here. There’s liable to be lots of gunfire. I wouldn’t want either one of us getting hit with a stray round. Is there somewhere with some elevation where we can watch and see what happens?”
Angela nodded. “I know a place.”
They rushed to the truck but drove slowly out of the industrial complex. If the terrorists had lookouts, Jack didn’t want to alert them to the sound of a truck racing away. That would surely get them riddled with bullets.
Once they were on the road leaving the complex, Angela took the first turnoff onto a dirt road. It took them up through heavy woods to the crest of a hill, where she parked the truck at a gravel area at the end of the road. She grabbed a pair of binoculars from behind the passenger seat before they got out. They walked a short distance through maple and oak trees to a spot where they could overlook the entire area.
Angela handed him the binoculars. Jack surveyed the sprawling complex. The moonlight was enough to allow him to see all the buildings and vast stretches of concrete. He located the building where the terrorists had the bomb. If their truck left, he would be able to spot it.
If their cargo van left, and no one showed up in time, Jack knew he would have to try to stop it. If necessary, they would have to ram it to disable it so it couldn’t get to New York City.
Angela and Jack sat down on a rock ledge and waited, watching to make sure the men down in that building didn’t leave with the bomb. The minutes felt like hours as they waited for someone to show up. Jack didn’t know if it would be police cars, a drone that would fire a missile, or something in between. The problem with getting a team like SEALs or Delta Force in here was that they were likely not close by. But then again, Jack didn’t know anything about what American forces were available, where they were deployed, or what kind of aircraft they had at their disposal. He did know that they were effective and always ready.
He hoped they were close enough.