Authors: Dennis Chalker
The terrorist leader's reaction was anything but what Paxtun had expected. Ishmael considered the loss of funds little more than
in'shallah
âAllah's will. Paxtun found his fatalism shocking.
“You feel that this very inconvenient fire resulted from some direct action by the authorities?” Ishmael said as he sat pensively in Paxtun's inner office. He accepted the will of Allah, but would listen to others' suspicions.
“I don't see how it could be,” Paxtun said from where he sat behind his desk. “The Detroit police and
federal agencies just don't work like that in this country, no matter what some conspiracy theorists might say. There is no profit in it for them, nothing for them to gain. Even if they were going after the drugs, and we never had any intelligence indicating any kind of active investigation, our police agencies are interested in confiscation and evidence, not destruction.”
“You may be correct in this matter,” Ishmael said. “Even if you are not, little can be done immediately. The blow to my further operations by the loss of the funds is not insignificant. We have been having difficulty moving finances around the world's banking system since your new president has seen fit to try and become something other than the adulterer, coward, and fornicating paper tiger that your last leader was. The best thing that I can do in reaction to the situation is move up my operational timetable.”
“What,” said Paxtun, “for Shaitan's Blessing?”
“Yes,” Ishmael said. “I had originally planned for our most ambitious operation to be launched next week. That is the three-day holiday your corrupt people hold to celebrate their criminal military forces.”
“You mean Memorial Day,” Paxtun volunteered.
“A proper name,” Ishmael said ominously. “It certainly will be a memorable day this year.”
“Why this weekend?” said Paxtun. “There aren't that many major celebrations within range that would make a good target, a target with a great many people concentrated in a small area. Those gatherings that have large crowds of people usually do so because of celebrities or some of our leadership being there. This year, anything like that would be under very heavy security.”
“But what also happens at that time,” Ishmael said, “is that a large number of people and their boats are in this area all at once for the first time during the year. It is the beginning of the tourist season.”
“Unofficially, yes,” Paxtun said. “But the cold weather this year may put off a lot of the usual people from coming up here this early in the season.”
“It doesn't matter,” Ishmael said, “I shall not wait any longer. My people are here and we shall strike.”
“Strike at what?” Paxtun asked. “Tourists? And aren't you limited for weapons?”
“Since no one will now leave this island or communicate with the rest of the world until after the action is underway and it is too late to interfere,” Ishmael said magnanimously, “I will explain it to you.”
Paxtun reasoned that Ishmael desperately wanted to brag about what he had planned to someone who didn't know the details. Despite all of Ishmael's talk about martyrdom and sacrifice, when it finally came down to it, he wanted someone to know about his personal dedication and sacrifice. Bragging was a weakness of megalomaniacs, and Paxtun was sure Ishmael was one. Besides, it wouldn't be any fun to be a martyr if no one knew you had been one.
“Our experts,” Ishmael went on, “have been carefully examining the new security arrangements that have been put in place in this country since the Prince so successfully struck a blow at the heart of the Great Satan in 2001. The destruction of the World Trade Center and the damage to the heart of the Great Satan's war machine are things true believers look to with pride. And they shall be given even more to be proud of by my actions.
“The loss of Iraq to the Great Satan's invaders eliminated one source of weapons that could have struck a telling blow against this land's decadent population of unbelievers. A nuclear bomb would have been the greatest of tools, but Saddam was not able to deliver one before that country's holy Muslim soil was defiled by infidels. Even the diseases and poisons he had promised us had not been completed, though the materials were on hand.
“We searched out and located a potent weapon right here on the soil of the Great Satan itself. It is one the unbelievers created themselves in their foolish arrogance. And they barely recognize its existence.”
“A weapon of mass destruction?” said Paxtun. “Here, in the United States? How? The nuclear storage sites always have tight security. Since the 9/11 attacks, that security has been beefed up a lot. Those sites are some of the most secure locations in the country. And there just aren't any stores of chemical or biological weapons that could even be approached.”
“Allah, all blessings be upon Him, provides for the dedicated true believers,” Ishmael said. “Not more than thirty miles from our location is the source for the mighty sword Allah has seen fit to put into my hands.”
“Thirty miles!” Paxtun gulped. “But there's nothing within thirty miles, or even forty or fifty miles of here for that matter. Even the old Big Rock nuclear power plant is gone. They tore it down some time back.”
“It is not quite gone,” said Ishmael. “There are still some very useful materials on the site.”
“What, reactor fuel rods?” Paxtun said. “Those are in a high-security bunker that's alarmed and guarded.”
“The weapons and skills my men have can deal with the guards,” Ishmael said. “They would not be expecting a boat full of fishermen to open fire on them as we will. It would have been better to have more firepower, but the shipment we received from our brother holy warriors will be enough,
in'shallah.
”
“But you can't move the fuel rods,” Paxtun said. “They're in massive armored containers. The containers are designed to be too big to move without some special handling gear and that isn't kept onsite. The rods are too radioactive for anyone to remove from the containers without some very sophisticated equipment. If you even had some, what would you make with them, a dirty bomb? Spray radiation all over a target?”
“The fuel rods are as you say,” Ishmael said. “They are highly radioactive and difficult to handle. The raid to obtain them would alert the authorities, and searching for such material can be done from aircraft and satellites. It would take too much time and be technically very difficult to grind the fuel rods into the fine powder needed for a radioactive bomb. And the faithful who did such work would die before they could complete the weapon. No, a radioactive dirty bomb would not be practical for us right now.
“But fuel rods are hardly the only useful materials on the site. When they disassembled the reactor, the sodium metal that they used as a coolant in that old model was also removed and stored for later disposal. That very radioactive sodium has been stored in fifty kilogram lots, each lot is in its own four-hundred-pound steel container. Those containers can be moved, given the strength of the faithful I
have with me. And there is the special equipment that I had you install on the large fishing boat you acquired for us.”
“What could you do with such a material?” Paxtun said as he sat stunned at his desk. “You can't make a bomb out of it. And it can't be made into an explosive.”
“There are many more ways to apply such a poison than from a bomb,” Ishmael said. “Just as you said, sodium metal is reactive, very reactive. It explodes violently on contact with water, and makes lye, in this case, radioactive caustic lye. All that has to be done is punch a hole in the steel containers and allow the water that is so abundant all around us, to react with the metal. My technician says that creating the holes will be easy when we use the shaped charges he has fabricated. The charges he made with the explosives you supplied.
“The fuses for the shaped charges will detonate when dropped in the water after a very short delay. A salt crystal is the only thing that will be keeping the detonator from initiating once the fuse is armed. The water will do all of the work for us.”
“You're going to poison Lake Michigan with radioactive sodium?” Paxtun said incredulously.
“Perhaps not the whole lake,” Ishmael said. “It will be enough to contaminate a great deal of the lake. The panic of this country's sheeplike people would be massive no matter where we dropped the containers. Imagine just how much greater that panic would be if we dropped the sodium overboard, say, on the fresh water intakes for the city of Chicago? The panic should be beautiful to watch. I
have the GPS coordinates for those intakes programmed into the navigation equipment on both of my boats. And Chicago is well within the range of those boats given their additional fuel loads. We will poison Lake Michigan and, if Allah wills, Chicago itself.
“Even if our actions were discovered, it would be too late for the Great Satan's minions to do anything to stop us. My men are all dedicated mujahideenâthey have waged the jihad, they are Islam's holy warriors. They would not balk at becoming martyrs. Becoming such guarantees their entrance into Paradise. I have confirmed it through my sources that the sodium is in place and we have what we need to seize it.
“There will be a major panic and destruction of a large part of the economies of a number of states and Canada. That would happen even if only a small part of the radioactive poison got into the water. The lakes would be destroyed. The water would be considered poison for years, if not decades. People are frightened by what they can't see or don't know. They could not see the poison, and they would be terrified of the radiation. Even a little bit of the sodium contamination would be enough to create a panicâand we shall have hundreds of kilos. An elegant plan, don't you think?”
Paxtun simply sat at his deskâtoo stunned to think of anything to say. The plan could work. Because of his involvement in something of such magnitude, he would be hunted forever and not be able to enjoy the wealth he had accumulated. He would have to disappear, and his mind was already considering how to do it as Ishmael continued to speak.
“Regarding practical matters,” Ishmael said. “We
will launch the operation Sunday. My followers, my sons, will be forgiven by Allah, all blessings upon His name, if they continue their preparations for the operation over His Sabbath on Saturday.”
Dawn had been over hours earlier on Saturday morning, the day after the Factory raid. Friday afternoon had passed without the cell phone ringing to demand more weapons. It may have been that Bear had delivered the only extra Jackhammer in existence to Arzee's people the day before. But now Reaper and his men were running on borrowed time. Whoever had Reaper's family had to eventually learn about the fire at the Factory. Then they would probably decide to get rid of any excess baggage and Reaper would be too late to save his wife and child.
Reaper had been up since long before the sun had risen. He was studying all of the intelligence they had collected. Deckert had gone out and bought some Great Lakes navigation charts detailing the waters off Leland and North and South Wolverine Islands. The charts indicated extremely deep waters off the islands for the most partâexcept for some shallow reefs to the south of the main island.
The rest of the papers had been dealt with. The documents in Arabic had been collected and secured in boxes. Reaper knew that whatever those documents contained, their anonymous delivery to certain authorities would get the information they contained into the proper hands. He made certain that nothing on those documents, or the boxes that held them, could identify Reaper or any members of his team.
The men with him in the house that day were people that he felt closer to than blood kin. They were his brothers in arms who had offered all they had when he needed it. That meant a great deal to him and he swore to keep them as safe as he knew how. Part of this commitment came from the fact that Reaper knew he would have to ask them for their help once more. His family wasn't safe yet.
Reaper directed that the cash they had recovered from the factory be packed back into the salesman's case for the time being. He intended that his partners would all get to share in the proceeds, but for the time being, they had decided the bag was nothing more than a war chest. It would be used to pay for what they needed to get Reaper's family back.
As Reaper went over the papers that remained spread out on the kitchen table, counter, and just about every available surface in the room, he heard a heavy knock at the front door. The “Open” sign for the shop hadn't been lit in several days, and it was far too early for a weekend customer anyway. The police wouldn't have knocked like that and waited, and the men they hunted wouldn't have knocked at all.
Going to the front door, Reaper could see a
shadow through the optical peephole in the center of the door. Since no light illuminated the interior of the house, Reaper knew that his looking out the peep wouldn't make a shadow that someone else could see from the other side. That kind of shadow could show a gunman that a target was poised on the other side of the door. The huge man standing on the porch made Reaper very glad he had looked, and more than a little surprised at what he saw. He had to move quickly to unlock and open the door before many more of the heavy-handed knocks took it off its hinges.
“Enzo!” Reaper said as he pulled open the door. “God damn, it's good to see you.”
The big man on the porch resembled a reincarnation of some pirate from centuries past. The huge muscular frame, square face framed off by a thatch of dark red hair, and a beard the same color, fit perfectly with the small gold earring in the man's left ear. The booming voice that sounded out of that barrel-chested individual also fit the pirate image.
“Reaper, you grim-looking bastard, good to see you, too,” Enzo Caronti almost bellowed. “Now let me in before some woodland critter drags me off into this wilderness you live in.”
“If it did, it would be too bad for the critter,” Reaper said as he stood to the side and let his old friend and Teammate in. “How the hell did you know to show up? No, don't tell meâBear called you, didn't he?”
“Well if I hadn't, it's not like you would have,” Bear said with a big grin plastered on his face as he came down the stairs.
“Well, ho, ho, ho, yourself, Bearski,” Enzo said as
the two men clasped in a strong hug. Stepping back, Enzo held open the door for Bear and Reaper to look out.
“It's time for Santa to bring all the bad little boys their presents,” Enzo said as he indicated with his chin where the two SEALs should look. “I brought my sleigh.”
In the driveway was a shining black Chevrolet Silverado Suburban with silver trim and dark-tinted windows. The big SUV was covered with road dust but still loomed impressively. What looked even more impressive to Reaper at the moment was what rode behind the Suburban.
Almost dwarfing the vehicle that towed it was a big, black boat on a multiaxle trailer. The boat looked a bit like an enlarged version of the inflatable vessels the two SEALs had long been used to, but its up-curved bow and other lines indicated it had a hard hull. Standing near the center of the craft they saw a glass-paneled “phone booth” coxswain's station. Surrounding the station was a canvas cover that secured the inner hull of the boat. At the stern of the vessel hung two large, powerful Evenrude Mercury 250-horsepower outboard motors. The black-painted covers on top of the outboards looked as if they could encase an average-size car engine.
“There you go,” Enzo said. “Bear told me to bring a boat up from the Creek, and this is one of the newest available.”
“This is from the base at Little Creek?” Reaper said.
“Not from the Navy, if that's what you mean,” Enzo said. “This is the USIA Swift Attack Vessel II.
It's a low-profile attack vessel. Since I left the Special Boat Teams, I've set up my own marine security outfit. We're using these boats at my company for tactical waterborne training. This is the twenty-four footer, the biggest I could get on short notice that had a trailer available for it.”
“She looks great,” Bear said. “What's it like?”
“The design is based on the inflatable boats we used at the Teams,” Enzo explained. “But the hull's made of welded aluminum for strength and durability. The boat's stable as all hell in almost any sea state and the aluminum tubes are individually sealed so sinking it is a real job. With those twin Mercs on the back, it'll hit fifty to fifty-four knots, so she's fast and agile as hell too. These boats practically dance across the water.
“Rangewise, the motors will draw a gallon a mile wide open. There's a 180-gallon fuel tank so that should take us as far as you want to go. If we need any more range, we can always pick up a couple of extra fuel tanks at any boat chandlers.”
“Two outboards,” Reaper said.
“You know the rule,” Enzo said. “Two is one, one is none. If an engine folds, we still have the other to move us along. That top will protect the coxswain, and there's also a Global Positioning System, marine radios, marine radar, and a fishfinder sonar rig. Everything is a stand-alone system and there's a triple battery rig for power. The cooler is a little small, though.”
“Damn,” said Bear. “A small cooler, you say?”
“Yeah, we'll have to stock up on beer twice,” Enzo laughed. “Speaking of beer, aren't you going to offer a Teammate one? I've been on the road for
fifteen hours getting here, and that included a stop off for some more gear.”
“More gear?” asked Bear as the trio headed back into the house.
“Yeah,” said Enzo, “your message said to bring some heavy hardware if I could put my hands on some in a hurry. I couldn't get much, but I think you may like one particular item.”
When Enzo entered the house, he met Ben and Max. He and Max stared at each other until Enzo recognized the ex-marine as the sniper he and Reaper had pulled out of a hot spot in Kafji shortly before Desert Storm kicked into high gear. That immediately made the two men fast friends. Meeting Ben MacKenzie and Keith Deckert resulted in the automatic mutual respect given among fellow warriors.
Seeing all of the documents spread out everywhere told Enzo that the mission Bear had spoken about was a very real one. It didn't take much of Reaper's explanation of the situation to convince Enzo to put his hat in the ring. These were his Teammates and one of them needed himâthat's all it took.
After a few minutes of discussion, everyone went out to Enzo's Suburban to bring in the gear he had brought. The man had filled the back of the SUV, and there were more containers, packages, boxes, and tubes in the SAV II, secured under the canvas tarp.
What they found in the back of the Suburban intrigued Bear the most. He had asked Enzo to bring a heavy weapon in case they had to take on a small boatâin the paperwork they had gone through they had found a receipt for a forty-one-foot commercial fishing boat and a twenty-nine-foot Fountain
“Fever” power boat. They knew the group that had these boats were well financed.
What Enzo had brought was big; it filled two Army duffel bags locked together with a chain. It extended from the back door of the Suburban almost to the front seat, requiring the smaller side passenger seat in the rear to be folded down to let the bags fit. The package was heavy. One man could carry it, but it had to have weighed more than a hundred pounds.
Once back inside the house with everything, it became Christmas exactly as Enzo had suggested it would. Only this Santa had brought a bunch of really nasty presents. Enzo apologized for not being able to bring a .50-caliber Browning machine gun as Bear had suggested. What he had brought proved to be pretty fair-sized.
The twin barracks bags held a massive World War II 20mm L/39 Finnish antitank rifle. All the men in the house had a lifetime interest in weapons, but this blaster was something unusual even for them.
Enzo explained that the semiautomatic rifle measured eighty-eight inches long and weighed 109 pounds empty. One of the larger boxes held an unusual short wooden ski-folding bipod mount that attached to the bottom of the impressive weapon. And it was definitely impressive.
The stainless-steel harmonic-style flash hider on the muzzle of the weapon had five holes along the sides of the long, flat, rectangular device, each hole larger than an average man's finger. Two large triangular steel boxes with flat bottoms accompanied the gear, the boxes were outfitted with shoulder straps to make carrying them easier. Inside each of
the boxes lay two huge black-metal magazines. A magazine held only ten rounds of ammunitionâbut what ammunition!
Each cartridge weighed three-quarters of a pound and launched a projectile the size of an entire 12-gauge shotgun shell. The foot-long rounds were mostly loaded with black-painted pointed steel projectiles. One magazine had been loaded with rounds with yellow-painted projectiles that had flat-nosed aluminum fuses screwed into their tips. The men all knew high-explosive ammunition when they saw it.
“Where in the hell did you get this rifle?” Reaper asked, “Steal it from a dinosaur hunter?”
“Naw, I didn't steal it,” Enzo responded in a hurt tone of voice. “There are these older, what you might call âsouthern Miami expatriates' who had it left over from their days of shooting up some island or other down south. They gave it to me some while back in partial payment for a debt. When Bear mentioned an island, I thought of this and brought it along. There's a ground mount for it, that bipod over there, and there's a specially machined pedestal mount that's in the front of the SAV. It's kind of a classy old cannon, isn't it?”
“I like it,” Bear said from down on the floor where he played with the big gun.
“That hand crank on the side pulls the bolt back with a gear arrangement,” Enzo said. “The big thing on the pistol grip under the trigger is a bolt release, you squeeze that in and the bolt slams shutâdon't leave your fingers there. It's semiautomaticâthey made a fully automatic version for shooting at planes, but this isn't it. If you want it to autoload each shot, you have to hold the bolt release in.”
“Is that it?” Bear asked.
“Isn't that enough?” Enzo replied.
“What's in the other containers?” Reaper asked.
“More stuff,” Enzo said. “Bear didn't give me a lot of time to grab shit, so this is what I could get. I have ballistic dry suits since Lake Michigan is going to be real cold this time of year.”
“What are ballistic dry suits?” Reaper asked.
“Yeah, they're new,” Enzo said. “They have pockets front and back to take a slip-in waterproof panel of Point Blank's Legacy I premier level 2A soft body armor. Give you a hell of a lot more protection than the old suits, and they keep you warm.
“The other boxes have the leg-inflator tanks for the suits in case you want to blow them up for more buoyancy. Also some Military Exotherm II jumpsuits for keeping you warm under the dry suit. Fins, masks, weight belts, waterproof bags for weapons. And that barracks bag over there has two M72A3 LAW rockets.”
“LAW rockets?” Reaper gaped at him.
“Yeah, well, I could only come up with two of them. I got you two M26A1 frag grenades, too.”
“Only two fragmentation grenades?” Reaper said with an eyebrow raised. “Enzo, you must be slipping.”
Enzo just shrugged his shoulders.
“What's in the long tubes we left back in the boat?” Ben asked from where he stood near the door.
“Fishing poles,” Enzo said.
“Of course,” said Ben.
“I've also got an M14 rifle with a folding stock I use on the boat,” Enzo said. “There are ten twenty-round magazines for that. And this thing's kinda
cool,” he said reaching for another box. “I couldn't come up with an M60 or a .30-caliber machine gun fast enough, but this should do for your guys.”
Pulling up the box and opening it, Enzo lifted up what looked like half of a very strange machine gun.
“What's that?” Deckert said, looking on.
“It's a new weapon just on the market,” Enzo said. “Really it's not a whole weapon. It's called a Shrike. It's an upper receiver assembly that lets you turn an M16-style weapon into a belt-fed 5.56mm light machine gun. The Teams are just starting to look at it and there are damned near none available. I talked the owner of Ares Inc., the company that's making this, into letting me have it.”