Ibrahim made a mental note to assign the troops Talal had brought to key points. If his mercenaries showed signs of wavering under pressure, they could always be kept at their posts by force—should that prove necessary.
He continued. “Herr Reichardt’s demise does not affect any part of the Operation in any way. The countdown continues. I will assume personal command and remain here—until the planes are launched and we initiate our evacuation.”
He paused for a brief moment. Not to allow them to ask questions.
Just to give them a moment to absorb his instructions.
“Very well. You have your orders. You know your assignments.
Carry on.”
As they filed out, Ibrahim signaled one of the few noneuropeans in the room, a young, stick-thin, Egyptian-born computer specialist. “Dr. Saleh?”
Saleh scurried over. “Highness?”
“I understand you have completed the attack simulation Herr Reichardt commissioned?”
The Egyptian nodded. “Yes, Highness.”
“Show it to me,” Ibrahim ordered. It was time for a final look at his master plan.
The computer expert led the way back into the crowded room used by the planning cell. With Ibrahim hovering behind him, he quickly booted up the computer at his desk. The large monitor glowed to life—revealing a digitized satellite display of the United States. It was as though a camera hovered in space several hundred miles above the surface of the earth.
The Egyptian’s hands paused over the keyboard. “I am ready, Highness.”
Ibrahim nodded. “Begin.”
Saleh’s hands danced over the keyboard, inputting instructions.
A cursor flashed over the eastern seaboard, vanished, and then reappeared as the camera zoomed in. Washington, D.C and its surrounding suburbs filled the screen.
The Egyptian pushed one final key, activating the computer simulation.
“Initiating the attack sequence, Highness.”
A thin white line appeared—heading out from Godfrey Field and moving southeast. The camera zoomed in even tighten-now focused tightly on the areas just north and south of the Potomac River. A blinking crosshairs appeared, centered on the Pentagon. The white line merged with the crosshairs.
“Detonation,” Saleh said calmly.
A fireball appeared on the screen—a roiling cloud of flame that swallowed the Pentagon whole and blossomed out over the Potomac. A shock wave rippled outward, toppling buildings, smashing highway overpasses and bridges, shattering windows—biting deep into Washington, roaring over the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, and the Capitol. More graphic overlays appeared on the altered satellite image. Each showed the expected areas of maximum overpressure, heat, fire, wind, and radiation damage.
The screen froze, showing a sea of searing flame as a firestorm spread through the devastated area.
Ibrahim smiled at the screen, imagining the chaos this one weapon would cause. “And the results, Doctor?” he asked calmly.
The Egyptian tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Assuming an airburst height of three hundred meters and taking into account only deaths and severe injuries from blast, heat, and radiation .”
“And the results?” Ibrahim asked again, this time in a firmer voice.
Saleh dropped back into reality from his abstract mathematical universe. “Two hundred thousand dead, Highness. With perhaps another two or three hundred thousand seriously injured.
Including, of course, the vast majority of America’s top political and military leadership.”
Ibrahim nodded. Perfect.
“The detonation point for this bomb is unusually low in order to achieve maximum damage against the Pentagon, Highness,” the computer specialist commented. “We could achieve even more significant civilian casualties with a higher altitude airburst.
One more along the lines of the others—two thousand feet, for example.”
“No.” Ibrahim shook his head. His first target in Washington was America’s military nerve center. Its total destruction was his top priority. Dead American civilians came second. They were a welcome dividend, however. This was not just a surgical strike.
He wanted to twist the knife as he struck home.
He leaned closer to the screen. “Continue.”
Saleh obeyed.
The monitor cycled through a succession of images—showing nuclear destruction spreading across another nineteen targets spread out across the length and breadth of the United States.
Langley and Fort Meade were vaporized next—taking with them the headquarters of the
CIA
and the National Security Agency. Then the heart of Fort Bragg—home of the 82nd Airborne Division, the Delta Force, and the J.S.O.C-vanished in the blink of an eye. A fifth bomb destroyed the key areas of Fort Campbell-headquarters of the 101st Air Assault Division and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. A sixth destroyed the U.S. Central and Special Operations Commands at Mcdill Air Force Base, near Tampa. A seventh and eighth tore the guts out of the Ranger battalions, mechanized troops, and training units stationed at Georgia’s Fort Stewart and Fort Benning.
More bombs detonated—vaporizing the central areas of the U.S. Marine Corps bases at Camps Pendleton and Lejeune.
Other weapons slammed into the Air Force bases in Delaware, Idaho, New Mexico, Missouri, Texas, and Washington state—eliminating whole wings of C-5, C-141, and C-17 transports, KC-10 and KC-135 tankers, B-1B and B-2 strategic bombers, F-15 and F-16 fighters, and F-117 Stealth fighter bombers.
Four more rained down across the vast naval bases at Norfolk and San Diego—the home ports for a large number of America’s aircraft carriers and amphibious warships. Many of the ships would be at sea, but crucial support facilities and the personnel needed to man them would be wiped off the face of the earth.
When the dazzling images receded, Ibrahim turned slowly toward Saleh.
“So what is your final assessment, Doctor?”
The specialist punched in one last key. His monitor displayed a series of numbers. “At a minimum, I would expect total American military casualties to run close to three hundred thousand dead and critically wounded. Equipment and aircraft losses will run from fifty to seventy percent for each unit we have targeted.”
“And the ‘collateral damage’?” Ibrahim asked, consciously using the sterile, inhuman jargon adopted by the West during its wars against Arab and Muslim nations.
The Egyptian brought up a new set of numbers. “Since so many of these bases are in or near major areas of habitation, I expect civilian casualties to be far higher—millions dead, with as many more seriously injured.
“Naturally, many of those injured by blast or fire will die in the following days,” Saleh continued. “The detonation of even two or three weapons of this magnitude would saturate America’s emergency medical services—especially its burn wards. After twenty bombs go off, a great number of those caught by the flames will simply die untreated.”
Ibrahim breathed out, still staring at the numbers displayed on the screen. His thrust at America’s heart would be even more effective than he’d dared to hope—God be praised.
Every Russianmade nuclear weapon he had purchased at such a dear price was an integral part of the grand design. By striking at U.S. intelligence agencies, he would prevent America from seeing any of its many enemies clearly. By emasculating its commando units and other rapid deployment forces, he would remove its ability to react swiftly to those challenging its parasitic interests—in the Middle East, in the Persian Gulf, in Asia, and all over the world. And by destroying its strategic airlift and amphibious forces, he would cripple America’s power to intervene in strength in crises around the globe.
Ibrahim nodded solemnly. It would take the shocked and dazed survivors years to fully rebuild the elite ground forces and sophisticated aircraft and ships his chosen weapons would destroy in a single, devastating millisecond. And by then, it would be far, far too late.
Other powers, including those loyal to Islam, and in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people, would rush to fill the void left as the United States curled inward on its bleeding wounds.
And the whole course of history—of the centuries-old struggle between the House of Islam and its enemies—would be altered forever. Nothing would ever be the same again.
JUNE
19
Outside the Caraco Complex, Chantilly, Virginia (H
MINUS
57)
The floodlights surrounding the Caraco complex were bright enough to turn night into day—even two hours past midnight.
Lying prone in the tall grass fifty meters away, Colonel Peter Thorn lowered the bulky Russianmade thermal imager they’d bought at a military surplus store several hours before. A quick check of the imager’s small display confirmed his earlier supposition. The warehousesized building with the antenna-studded roof had to contain Ibrahim’s command and control center. This many hours after the end of the normal workday, the other two buildings in the compound were both cool—near ambient temperature. But the third was still warm—with distinct hot spots near the main door and on the roof. There were people awake and hard at work in there.
Satisfied, he laid the thermal imager to one side and picked up a pair of binoculars—scanning slowly back and forth along the well-lit fence line. He fiddled with the focus on the binoculars and whistled softly.
“They’ve got cameras covering every close approach to that perimeter.
And I’d swear there are some power leads running up that fence.”
Helen Gray turned her head toward him. “You think it’s hot?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But I bet they can throw a few thousand volts through it on command.”
“Lovely. Just lovely,” she muttered. “So we’re looking at a complete security network—an electric fence, cameras, armed guards, and probably motion sensors, too.”
Thorn nodded. “Nobody said this would be easy.”
Sam Farrell spoke up. “As I recall, Pete, I said this would be impossible, crazy, illegal, and probably fatal.”
Thorn grinned back at him, feeling somehow more cheerful than he had for weeks. The prospect of action, of actually striking back at a physical enemy, was acting as a tonic. “Geez, Sam!
Somebody should really get you to stop mincing your words.”
“Let’s take what we have to the
FBI
and let them run with it!”
Farrell argued heatedly. He glanced toward Helen. “Let the
HRT
handle any raid on this place. They’ve got the manpower, the gear. and the legal right!”
Helen shook her head. “What we have, Sam, is a lot of supposition and guesswork-some of it based on evidence we took off two dead men. Men who were killed in very suspicious circumstances.”’ Thorn nodded.
They’d heard the first news reports on the bodies found near Middleburg while driving back from Leesburg.
Nobody from the
FBI
was saying anything publicly yet, but they knew the Bureau had to be going crazy trying to figure out how its Deputy Assistant Director heading the International Relations Branch had wound up dead in the rural Virginia woods—right beside the corpse of Caraco’s chief of European security.
Helen frowned. “If we walk into the Hoover Building with what we’ve got now, I guarantee you the first thing they’ll do is handcuff us to the nearest solid object and start piling up charges. By the time we get anybody high-ranking enough to pay attention to our story—”
“Those nukes will be detonating left and right,” Thorn finished for her.
Farrell still looked troubled. “I just don’t like going off the reservation like this. Acting this far outside the law goes against the grain.”
Hell, Thorn thought, it bothers me, too.
But he honestly couldn’t see any other way through the tangle they were in. Not only didn’t he believe official Washington could react fast enough to stop Ibrahim, he wasn’t sure who they could really trust with their story. If Caraco had one mole inside the Hoover Building, why not two?
Even if Mcdowell had been the only traitor feeding information to Wolf and Ibrahim, Caraco’s chief executive had already demonstrated the power he could exert over the capital’s political establishment. What federal official with any brains or sense was going to take on the head of a multibillion-dollar corporation who also happened to be a member of the Saudi royal family with close ties to the White House?
Especially on the unsupported testimony of a rogue
FBI
agent and a former Delta Force officer now slated for forcible retirement—both of whom were wanted on a variety of charges ranging from insubordination to kidnapping and murder?
Thorn snorted. That was an easy question. No one. Certainly not in time to make any difference.
He and Helen had also ruled out contacting the media. It would take the press too much time to get off its collective ass and start digging.
Besides, orchestrating a high-profile official or media investigation now would probably only Spock Ibrahim into striking ahead of his planned schedule. The same argument ruled out going after the Godfrey Field hangars. The Saudi might not have all twenty bombs in place yet, but even one 150-kiloton nuke going off inside the U.S. would represent an unimaginable catastrophe.
And it was highly likely that the Caraco chief had far more than one of his Russianmade weapons prepped and ready to go.
No, Thorn thought coldly, the only chance they had was to get inside that compound and find some way to stop Ibrahim from launching his attack themselves. He was realistic enough to know just how long the odds were against that outcome.
And so was Farrell.
But the retired general was also canny enough to run through their other alternatives and calculate the even longer odds that one of them might pay off.
Farrell stared back and forth from Thorn’s face to Helen’s, plainly looking for a sign, any sign, that he’d made some impression on them.
Finally, he shook his head angrily. “Oh, shit, Pete.
If I can’t stop you two from trying to kill yourselves, I guess I might as well try to help you do this right. What’s your plan? Hit the antennas on that roof and knock out their communications?”