Marks recovered his balance. He moved forward and sent his right foot squarely into the killer’s face. Blood suddenly poured from the killer’s nostrils, but he swung the poker’s grip up at Marks’s hurt shoulder. Marks fell to the ground, blinded by the shock of his pain. The killer stood and raised the poker, only to watch in surprise as Marks rolled swiftly away.
Marks crawled like a crippled dog, pulling himself along the ground with his good arm through a pool of his own blood, inching to the fireplace’s edge. Desperately, he reached his hand toward the smoldering fire and stretched for the gun that lay atop the burning coals.
The intruder came from behind him, blood flowing freely from his broken nose and gashed neck. The killer sent the iron shattering down, a crushing blow onto Marks’s shoulder. He screamed out in agony.
In front of him, Marks could see the gun resting within the fireplace. He knew that what he was about to do was his only hope of survival. He reached into the hot coals and grabbed the gun.
The metal stuck to his hand like glue, branding itself into the flesh of his palm. Bolts of pain seared through his hand and shot up his arm. The hot metal burned the skin and muscle. But Marks swallowed the pain, wheeled around, and aimed the gun at the killer above him, firing once as the killer struck with the poker again. This time the poker struck squarely across Marks’s skull, but he got the shot off. It hit the
killer in the neck. It would be Marks’s last salvo. The blow from the iron poker was too much, too direct, too damaging.
The killer was bleeding profusely now, but Marks’s shot had only grazed him. He raised the poker above his head again, Marks now powerless to defend himself.
Marks struggled to open his eyes. He wanted to see the man who was about to kill him. Mustering the last remnants of his strength, he looked up at the young man.
“Why?” he whispered.
The killer said nothing, only swung the iron poker in a brutal strike at Marks’s skull. The killer dropped the poker and stood bloody and exhausted. Only luck had left him alive, not dead alongside Marks, or instead of him. He’d never seen such a will to survive, nor such strength. For a moment, he felt admiration for the man he’d just defeated in battle. But only for a moment.
He reached down with his glove and lifted the still-hot gun from the ground near Marks’s hand. He placed it in his pocket. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a small red canister. He sprayed Marks and the Ansons with the canister. He then sprayed a small stream into the fireplace. The flames coursed along the ground to the bodies.
The killer moved to the broken window and climbed back into the cold air. The snow continued to fall in great plumes from the Colorado sky. The blood flowed freely from the assassin’s neck, nose, and skull, leaving patterns in the snow. He turned to look inside one last time at the bloody scene. The Ansons’ corpses were on fire. The flames engulfed them and soon spread to the carpet. Marks’s corpse would be next. Soon, the house would be gone.
The killer plowed through the drifts toward the corner of the barn and the snowshoes that would deliver him back to the waiting sedan, ten miles through the dark Colorado woods.
SAVAGE ISLAND PROJECT
Bitter cold wind made the safe area miserable for those who had managed to make it up from the town. The wind off the Labrador Sea crossed the great plain of water that now rushed as it was meant to, as it had for eons before. The pale gray of the horizon grew dark; soon, the arctic night would fall.
Savoy walked among the survivors, searching for Mijailovic. Of the six hundred people who lived at Savage Island, he guessed that less than half stood before him now. The rest had either been caught inside the dam during the explosion, or drowned afterward. Having passed through the crowd several times, he knew Mijailovic was dead.
A strange silence surrounded the survivors, interrupted only by the occasional crying of children. The adults appeared to be in shock.
The cold worsened with each passing minute.
Savoy’s mind boiled the situation down to its bare elements. First, the people before him would all freeze to death if help didn’t arrive soon. Second, terrorists had struck; they might be targeting other KKB facilities at that very moment.
George Kimball, KKB’s pilot-in-command, ran into the crowd, looking frantically around.
“George!” Savoy yelled.
“Terry. What—”
“Did you bring your sat?” interrupted Savoy.
“Here. What happened?”
Savoy looked at Kimball, then stared for a moment at the second-in-command, Aslan.
“Let me talk to you for a second,” he said to Kimball. He walked away from the crowd, and from Aslan.
“What is it?”
“The dam was destroyed by a bomb. Terrorists.”
Savoy dialed the phone.
“Spinale,” the voice on the other end of the phone said.
“Thank God you picked up,” said Savoy.
“Terry?”
“I don’t have time to talk. I’m at Savage Island. A bomb was set off. The dam’s been destroyed.”
“What? ‘Destroyed’?”
“Yes, you heard me. Destroyed. It’s gone. Wiped out. Hundreds were killed.”
“For Christ’s sake.”
“I need you to order a lockdown of all KKB nuclear facilities. Then call Jessica Tanzer at the FBI. Tell her Savage Island was destroyed by terrorists. Tell her we’ve ordered a lockdown and she should do the same on all U.S. nukes and LNG facilities.”
“Terrorists?”
“Yeah. Arnie’s dead. Jake White must have suspected something. That’s why they killed him first.”
“What about—”
“After you talk to Jessica, I need you to get the Canadian authorities up here immediately or the survivors will freeze to death.”
“Got it.”
“They need to fly something in here. There’s a large landing strip. If you have to, have Jessica call someone at DOD and get a military transport up here. It’s five degrees out. The wind is ripping off the ocean and night is coming.”
“Got it.”
“Tell Jessica I’m flying to D.C. tonight. I’ll call her in a few minutes. But right now, securing the nukes and getting help up here have to be your top priorities.”
“Okay. Take care, boss.”
Savoy hung up the phone. At the far corner of the safe area, he saw a trailer.
“Follow me,” he said to Kimball.
The two went to the trailer. Inside, heavy blankets were stacked in piles against the back wall. On one side of the trailer, more than twenty large kerosene heaters were lined up. Boxes of food were stacked in the corner. The safe area existed for emergencies, for a catastrophe such as the dam failing. But surviving a disaster would be moot if there weren’t a way to stay warm for the hours it would take help to arrive.
Savoy walked out of the trailer. “Listen!” he yelled to the crowd. “I need everyone to listen to me.” He paused a few moments while people moved in closer.
“My name is Terry Savoy,” he said. “I work for KKB. Help is on the way. I need able-bodied men over here immediately. Now. Let’s go.”
A group of men, shell-shocked from the events of the past half hour, lined up at the trailer.
“Let’s get the heaters going first,” Savoy ordered. “Line them up every ten feet or so, in a circle. Then we’ll pass out blankets.”
Soon, the heaters started to flare up and a makeshift assembly line went to work. Men carrying blankets came out and started to pass them out.
Savoy approached one of the men setting up a kerosene heater, a foreman named Ned.
“I have to leave now, Ned,” said Savoy. “I want you to take charge. Can you do that?”
He looked at Savoy then looked at the crowd. He closed his eyes for a moment, then said, “I’ll do it.”
“A plane’s en route,” said Savoy. “Keep everyone warm. Huddle around the heaters. The heaters will burn for thirty hours or more. They’ll be here long before that, I promise you.”
Savoy passed through the crowd.
“Are there children who don’t know where their parents are?” he asked. A few hands went into the air; a teenage girl with curly brown hair, a small boy no more than five or six years old, a dark-haired girl of three or four who stood alone, in shock. “Let’s bring them with us,” he said to Kimball. “I’ll get the little ones.”
Savoy walked back to Ned. “We’re taking some of the children. If we missed anyone, if there are children without an adult, assign an adult to them. Don’t leave any kids by themselves. Got it?”
Ned nodded.
“Let’s go,” he said to Kimball. Aslan, the second-in-command, began to follow them back to the airstrip. “You’re staying here,” Savoy told him.
Aslan stopped and looked at Kimball.
“We need two crew,” said Kimball. “You know that.”
“I’ll take the risk,” said Savoy. “Now let’s go.”
“What, you think
I
had something to do with this?” said Aslan.
“I don’t have an opinion and I don’t care what you think,” Savoy said. “You’re not coming. Get over it. Go help get blankets on the women and children.”
A few minutes later, as the Gulfstream took off, Savoy looked at the three children. The boy was asleep. The teenage girl had her arm wrapped around the shoulders of the little girl. They looked startled.
He picked up the satellite phone and dialed.
“Spinale.”
“It’s me.”
“Mounties are on the way. Won’t be there until sometime after midnight. They scrambled a C-130. Should work on the big airstrip there.”
“Good work. Did you lock down the nukes?”
“Done. We established level-two protocols.”
“Are you telling me the reactors are still at full capacity? The job up here was done by insiders. Shut the facilities down. Now.”
“Got it. Let me put you on hold.”
Savoy sat back and shook his head. He closed his eyes and rubbed them.
The phone clicked on again with Spinale’s voice.
“Done. Sorry about that.”
“No apologies. After we get off I want you to get all employee manifests at the plants. I want all employees of Middle Eastern descent identified.”
“What then?”
“Let’s ask Jessica. Personally, I’d lock them up and ask questions later. But get her on the phone for me.”
A few clicks came over the satellite.
“Jessica Tanzer.”
“Jessica, it’s Terry Savoy.”
“Terry, how are you?” asked Jessica.
Savoy had known Jessica Tanzer, the head of the FBI’s office of counterterrorism, for more than a decade. Jessica was Savoy’s main point-of-contact within the FBI on all matters concerning KKB security. Because the company owned and operated thirteen nukes, Savoy abided by a complicated set of regulations, security protocols and reporting frameworks that meant nearly constant government interaction. Savoy liked her. She was smart, quick, efficient—and unafraid to make decisions.
“How am I?” asked Savoy. “Let’s just say I’ve been better, Jess. Did Spin bring you up to speed on what happened up here?”
“Yes, he did, but I’m still trying to absorb it. Where are you now? Are you on your way to Washington?”
“Yeah, and I have three kids with me. They’ll need care when we land.”
“Go to Andrews. We’ll have someone there for the children. Are they all right?”
“They just lost their parents. One of them can’t be more than four years old.”
“We’ll take care of them. I’ll have a chopper to bring you downtown. Tell me what you know.”
“Two maintenance men. Mirin and Amman. I can’t remember their last names. Corporate will have them. Been here a while, over three years, embedded. I saw the blueprints. They planted some sort of powerful explosive in one of the turbines.”
“Did you keep the blueprints?”
“Yes.”
“Did they write anything down on the blueprints?”
“Lots. Arabic, looks like. I saw the letters ‘OC’ dash nine in a couple of places.”
“ ‘
OC nine
’? I’ll run that by our munitions people.” She paused a moment. “Has Spin told you anything?”
“About what?”
Another second’s hesitation. “Capitana’s been destroyed.”
“What? Colombia? The Anson field?”
“Right. We don’t know if there are any survivors. Another massive explosion like yours, this one at the seafloor. The platform was destroyed. That’s all I know.”
“I was supposed to go down there next week,” said Savoy, shocked, trying to catch his breath. “What about the nukes?”
“Nothing. We have them locked down. Not just KKB’s. Every nuke in the U.S.”
“You need to do more than
lock
down,” said Savoy. “These guys were insiders. You need to
shut
down, and look for suspects who fit the profile.”
“Can you get us employee manifests?”
“Got them,” Spinale chimed in. “You’ll have them in a few seconds.”
“This was done by embedded employees,” said Savoy. “Long-timers. We’re not talking about guys hopping on an airplane with a box cutter. These guys worked here nearly five years.”