SIXTY-TWO
The hair on the back of Jack’s neck lifted and stood stiffly on end.
“What?”
“The bomb we stopped before was supposed to go off in New York City later this afternoon—at four o’clock, when the city is full of people working as well as tourists and rush hour traffic that would have the streets clogged. The more people outside, the more radiation and burn deaths there would be.”
“Angela, we stopped that from happening.”
“Yes, but there’s a second bomb. This one is going to go off in Washington, DC, later today at the same time—four p.m. The terrorists wanted two bombs to strike at the heart of the Great Satan—New York and Washington. We stopped that first bomb, but there’s a second one. It’s completely assembled, it’s in place in Washington, it’s live, and it’s ready to detonate.”
Jack almost felt as if he were having an out-of-body experience, as if he were looking down on himself having this conversation.
“Angela, how do you know this?”
“I saw it all in Cassiel’s memories as I held his dying brain in my hands.”
Jack took a breath to compose himself. He told himself that it wasn’t possible, that she was simply imagining the worst. And yet, he had already seen this young woman do the impossible.
“What did you see in these visions, or memories? Can you tell me exactly what you saw that makes you believe this?”
“I saw the leader of the terrorist group responsible for the entire mission, for both bombs. His name is Rafael. Rafael always had Cassiel stay close by him.
“Rafael and his team are Iranian, but they grew up speaking Spanish, eating Mexican food, and dressing as Mexicans so that they would be able to easily infiltrate the US. Mexicans can go virtually unnoticed here in the US. That was their plan: blend in as Mexicans.
“But make no mistake. They are Iranian, steeped in the Iranian goal of world dominance. They believe that the ISIS caliphate is illegitimate. They intend to bring about the real caliphate.
“They’ve spent their entire lives training for this mission. They’ve studied with not only Iranian nuclear scientists, but nuclear scientists from North Korea and Pakistan. Rafael knows enough to be a physicist, but this mission is his purpose in life, his only purpose. They want to die with the bombs they have built, the culmination of their life’s work.
“The first time I saw those four, I thought they were Mexican. The entire team snuck into the US illegally posing as Mexicans. Out of all of them, only three were caught. American lawyers helped get them out of detention and got them a court hearing six months from now. They vanished into America as the lawyer knew they would. The authorities didn’t stop any of the others, and some sanctuary cities and states even protected them, like my own state did, and like California did.
“Cassiel wasn’t raised with Rafael and his team. An Iranian commander named Hasan saved Cassiel from execution for murder and assigned him to go with Rafael. Rafael didn’t like it. Neither did Cassiel.
“Rafael left half of his team to complete the assembly of one of the two bombs. That was the bomb we found. That team was supposed to take that bomb to New York City when it was finished, but they all died in the explosion when they were attacked.
“When Rafael could no longer get in touch with any of that team, he rightly assumed that they had been discovered and were dead. He knew they would blow up the place and themselves with it to prevent any chance of discovery of their larger plan. They wanted Rafael’s part of the mission to go on to succeed. When they detonated those explosives, it left it all up to Rafael to complete the mission he and his team members were raised to do.
“That was why Rafael had split his group—to increase the odds that one of them would succeed. Once split, the two teams had minimal contact.
“Rafael built the second bomb at another location—on a long, backwoods loop off the main road not far from here. That loop, Duffey Road, only goes past a scattering of houses and camps. Most of the houses belonged to factory workers and have been long abandoned. Rafael’s team finished the construction of the second bomb in a barn on one of those properties. Anyone who saw them thought they were Mexicans who didn’t speak English.
“When it was finished, Cassiel rode in the cargo van with Rafael as he took the bomb to Washington, DC. The other members of his team went in separate cars so they wouldn’t all be together if anything went wrong.
“Yesterday they set up the bomb on the top floor of a tall building owned by a shell company owned by a series of shell companies owned by their Iranian-backed terrorist group. The building was selected to get the bomb as high in the air as they could to create the maximum destruction and death possible. Everything has been in the planning stages for decades.
“Cassiel was the one part of the mission that had not been part of the plan. Cassiel didn’t want to die a martyr with the rest of them.
“Once they got the bomb in Washington, Cassiel had time to kill, literally. So, he snuck away when they weren’t paying attention to him, stole a car, and came here to kill me.”
Jack pressed his hands to his head. “Where is this bomb? We need to call people who can stop it.”
Angela was shaking her head. “I can’t tell you where it is.”
“What? Why not?”
“I only know where they built the bomb, here, in Milford Falls, in a place on Duffey Road, because I recognized that road in Cassiel’s memories. But I’ve never been to Washington, so those snippets of his memories don’t tell me the location of where it is now.”
Jack gestured down at the brain in the bowl between them. “Can you touch it or something and get more information?”
Angela made a face. “It’s dead, Jack. It’s just gray mush, now.”
Jack stood, pressing his hands to his head again as he paced. “We have to stop it. We can’t let it go off.”
“That’s why I could use your help.”
He turned back. “What do you mean?”
“I need you to drive me. I don’t think I could stay awake the whole way if I drove myself. I’m totally exhausted. If you drive, I can nap a bit on the way.”
“Drive you? What the hell are you talking about? Are you out of your mind? How is that going to locate the bomb?”
“Don’t you see? If we go on the roads Cassiel took going to Washington from here in that van, and then back the same route from Washington in the car he stole, back here to kill me, I will see things I recognize from his memories.
“I will be able to use those memories I saw from his mind like a trail of bread crumbs to find my way back to the bomb. That’s how we find it.”
Jack was near to sputtering in frustration. “And then what?”
“And then I’m going to kill them.”
Jack gaped at her. “As simple as that. You’re going to kill them.”
“Yes.”
“You held a brain in your hands, and you saw a second atomic bomb that’s now in a building somewhere in Washington, DC.”
“That’s right. Are you going to help me or not?”
The whole thing was so crazy he could hardly keep his composure.
“Better yet, I’ll call in help and have a tactical force go with us. They will be able to handle the situation once we get there and find the place.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“You think I’m going to trust the same kind of people who had me in chains and wanted me to confess to being one of these terrorists? Fuck them. Fuck them all.”
“Angela, for god’s sake, this is different! We’re going to need a tactical team. They’re the only ones who can handle a situation like this.”
“Listen to me, Jack. I saw everything Cassiel saw. The bomb is ready. They have the electrical equipment attached to fire the exploding bridgewire to detonate the bomb. It’s ready now.
“They have observation points from windows. They have lookouts on the street. If they so much as see a SWAT team doing a drug raid down the street, they will blow the bomb. They will not risk failure. They will not delay. If they get so much as a whiff of something wrong, they will detonate the bomb.”
“But if the team—”
“They have a dead man’s switch—a man sitting on a metal chair that’s wired to the electrical supply. If an assault team rushes the place and he moves it will detonate the nuke.
“It’s all wired up and ready to go. They’re only waiting until the scheduled time of four p.m. to set it off because they want darkness settling over the scene in the aftermath to add to the terror, but if they need to, they will go earlier.
“If you call in anyone, they will fuck it up and that bomb will turn Washington, DC, to glass.”
“But the military can strike from a distance. They can send in rockets or if they have to, take down the whole building.”
“Rafael explained to Cassiel how even if the enemy sent in a rocket, the speed of that explosion is not as fast as the detonation of the exploding bridgewire. He said that in a race of microseconds, the nuke will win.”
“But—”
“Look, Jack, this group has been planning for this mission their entire lives. These are the point men. They plan to die in the glorious explosion against the Great Satan. This is the culmination of their life’s work.
“Their commanders have consulted with experts from North Korea to Pakistan on the construction of the bomb to make it as big as possible and they’ve gamed out every conceivable possibility of attack or countermeasure. They have it all thought out and every base covered.
“Those terrorist attacks all across the country were meant to cover what they were doing at the border crossing. They took out that border crossing with ease despite the power of the government arrayed to stop nuclear material coming in over the border. They made it look easy. No one, none of these experts you talk about, even realized that in that attack this group drove two nuclear bombs right across the border, did they?
“The only thing any ‘experts’ or tactical team or whatever you get to go in there are going to accomplish is to detonate that nuke a few hours ahead of schedule. They will get Washington, DC, wiped off the face of the earth.
“You’re thinking exactly like they expect you to think. You’re playing their game, just the way they want you to play it. You can’t win playing by their rules.”
“Jesus Christ, Angela, we have to get experts in there!”
“No, we don’t. I’m telling you that won’t work. I’ll handle the situation myself once we get there.”
Jack took a step back to stare at her. “How the hell do you think you’re going to do that?”
“I’ve already seen everything.” She tapped her temple with a finger. “It’s all in here. I know what the building looks like, inside and out. I know all the people with Rafael. I know Rafael. I will stop them.
“I’m the only contingency they haven’t modeled. I’m the only thing they haven’t planned for. Just like all the killers I find, I’m the wild card they hadn’t expected.”
“Angela, you have to listen to reason—”
“I’m telling you for the last time. I’m not going to cooperate with your fucking experts. They’ll get everyone killed. That’s not speculation, it’s a fact. I’m not going to allow that to happen.
“I’m not offering you a choice, Jack.
“It takes about six hours to drive from here to DC, maybe a little less. That will get us there late morning. We’ll have plenty of time—at least four hours. If something goes wrong, like I get killed, then you can still call in your government people. But I’m telling you, that will be the end of Washington, DC, and a lot of innocent people.”
Jack was shaking his head. “This is nuts.”
But at the same time he could see that what she was saying actually made sense—in a weird, crazy, psycho way. To Angela it made perfect sense. To her way of thinking, Rafael would be expecting the possibility of an attack by a tactical team.
What they would not be expecting, was … Angela.