Defense Breach

In addition to the Stingers, Hasseim also had access to six hundred Soviet SA-7 Grail missiles that had been sold indiscriminately to anyone willing to meet the asking price when the Communist empire collapsed. Although Grails were considerably less accurate than the heat-seeking Stingers, they possessed a range of almost four miles and, in quantity, could overcome their accuracy deficiency and contribute significantly to overall success.

All told, Hasseim held the means to attack the two United States aircraft carriers patrolling the channel’s narrow passageway at Hormuz with more than one thousand missiles. Troops to the southeast in Sirik would join fighters positioned in Bandar-e Lengeh at the mouth of the strait and across the waterway in Al Khasab to completely surround backlogged targets. Hundreds of missiles guided by infrared seekers would come raining down from all sides onto the enemy’s warships, delivering a stunning statement about the technological capabilities possessed by local Islamic militias. While certainly not on par with the glorious 9/11 attacks conducted on the barbarians’ own soil, Hasseim believed his offensive could be a decisive blow toward ending American occupation of the region. The only hurdle remaining was a computer system onboard American carriers that automatically shielded the vessels while engaging incoming targets. Hasseim now possessed one-half of a program that could disarm the protective system. If all went according to plan, he’d have the other half very soon.

At the moment, his activities were intended to misdirect the Americans. Hasseim didn’t know if his plans would be discovered prior to launching an attack, but if they were, he wanted to make sure the Americans were searching in the wrong direction until he had the time he needed.

The four men accompanying their field commander were dressed in dark pants and brown shirts with long sleeves. On their feet they wore canvas combat boots, and each carried P-90 submachine guns.

The men also wore black checkered head scarves, identical to the kaffiyeh worn by their leader. Hasseim’s army was one hundred percent Shiite, and in addition to their primary objective of driving the occupying infidels from their holy land, each member had also taken a solemn oath to eradicate the Sunni population responsible for polluting Islam.

A sudden movement in the distance caught Hasseim’s eye. A battered white panel truck was speeding their way, trailing in its wake a yellow dust cloud reaching ten feet into the air. Hasseim nodded to his companions, who walked away from their SUV in order to put a buffer of safe distance between themselves. As they moved, they brought their P-90s to the ready position.

The truck bounced over the dusty coastal trail at breakneck speed, coming to a skidding halt ten feet from where Hasseim stood. The front doors flew open, and two men jumped out and hustled to the commander.

“Allah be praised,” the first said breathlessly, “your servants have been blessed with success.”

“You have them all?” Hasseim asked in a flat voice.

“Yes,” the driver replied as he and his companion began moving toward the back of the truck. Hasseim followed a few steps behind, his P-90 loaded and cocked. His right index finger itched with anticipation as it rested on the weapon’s trigger.

When they reached the vehicle’s rear, the driver unlocked the back door and threw it open. On the floor inside, five men lay with their feet tied and their hands bound behind their backs with heavy nylon wrist wraps. Burlap bags covered their heads, loosely cinched at the throat with black shoelaces. Three were wearing United States Army uniforms, the unit patch on their left shoulders bearing the numeral one embroidered in red thread. They were members of The Big Red One—the Army’s First Infantry Division.

Hasseim’s lips curled into a cruel smile when he saw his quarry.

“The others?” he asked, indicating the two in civilian dress with the barrel of his P-90 submachine gun.

“Munjian,” the driver responded, referring to a secondary Sunni militia operating along the Iraqi border.

Hasseim signaled to the men who had come with him, and they trotted to his side. He motioned toward the captives with his chin, and two bent into the truck, grabbed a soldier by the uniform and dragged him to the floor’s edge. Upon being moved, the trussed man began jerking against his restraints, repeatedly arching his back until Hasseim took a step forward and gave the burlap bag covering the man’s head a sharp rap with the butt of his submachine gun. The soldier stiffened at the blow and stopped squirming.

Once the bound prisoner was still, one of Hasseim’s men gripped him under the armpits while another grabbed him around his knees. Grunting under the effort, they lifted the trussed American and hefted him clear of the truck’s cargo hold, making space for their two teammates to duplicate their action with a second soldier. The truck’s driver and his companion followed suit when the second team moved away, pulling the final soldier from the back of the truck. Staggering slightly, they followed the others, carrying their soldier from the vehicle toward a spot designated by Hasseim roughly twenty yards away. There the soldiers were thrown onto the ground to await their fate. Although they remained motionless, their raspy breathing could be heard through the burlap sacks covering their heads, as rapid and shallow as a trapped rabbit’s.

“Move them apart,” Hasseim ordered as he slung his P-90 over his shoulder. While his men obeyed his order, he walked to the panel truck’s open passenger door, reached into the leg space in front of the seat and came out holding an Uru Model II submachine gun. The stockless 9 mm Brazilian assault rifle had a well-earned reputation for fouling when exposed to the slightest amount of moisture or dust in the chamber. Despite its notorious unreliability, the inexpensive weapon with its 30-round magazines was a favorite among Third World militias. The Sunni Munjian was known to have outfitted their members with Urus.

Hasseim rammed the rifle’s slide to the rear and let it fly forward, chambering the first of the thirty slugs waiting inside the clip. After scanning the area with dispassionate eyes to make sure his men were clear, he pulled the weapon into his shoulder and, leaning forward slightly, opened fire on the trussed soldiers laying on the ground.

The Uru spit death on full-auto, filling the air with mind-panicking chatter. Hasseim swept the gun from left to right and back again, hosing the men from head to toe with lethal lead. The 9 mm slugs tore the corpses to pieces, slamming through flesh and bone before exiting through gaping holes the size of tennis balls. The Uru’s firing pin finally clicked onto an open chamber, and the weapon fell silent.

Hasseim’s eyes were glassy, his face flushed. He placed the Uru on the ground at his feet and turned to the truck’s passenger seat. This time, he brought an American M-16 from the front leg well.

The two Sunni militiamen were chanting death prayers when they were pulled from the back of the truck to a spot thirty yards from the soldiers’ corpses. There they were unceremoniously dumped onto the ground, and Hasseim reenacted his prior murderous action, spraying the captives with M-16 rounds.

When the magazine was exhausted, he lowered the rifle, his ears ringing from the auditory assault of the M-16’s automatic barrage. His rapid breathing irritated the inside of his nostrils with the stench of death and cordite that now hung heavy in the late afternoon humidity. As his men rushed forward to cut the bonds from the dead men, he took a few steps back, handing the empty M-16 to one of his assistants. When Hasseim’s men finished arranging the bodies, it would appear all had died in a firefight. Skirmishes between independent militia and NATO forces were an everyday occurrence in this region; there would be no reason for anyone to doubt the evidence.

“Abbas,” Hasseim called out, bringing a thin young man with alert brown eyes to his side. “Give this to one of them,” he said softly, holding out an eight-gigabyte memory stick wrapped tightly in a plastic sandwich bag.

Abbas took the memory stick and hustled to the side of the Sunni on the left as Hasseim began walking to his SUV. Only he and his driver would take the trip back, the others would remain to arrange the scene.

“The Americans will be alerted?” Hasseim asked the driver, although his tone conveyed the question was more a statement than an inquiry.

“Within hours. We’ll give them GPS coordinates. They’ll be here tonight,” the driver replied.

Hasseim took a final look toward the water when they reached their vehicle. The sun was low, reflecting off the Gulf’s rippled surface. In his mind, he pictured the narrow channel jammed with American warships. From the highlands above the strait, militiamen equipped with hundreds of missiles would find the unprotected vessels easy targets. Allah be willing, the remainder of the code would be delivered to his servants and the infidels would be destroyed.

Running a dry tongue over his chapped lips, Hasseim climbed into his SUV. For the first time since morning, he thought of his most recent partners in Las Vegas, the city that in Hasseim’s mind, said all there was to say about Western civilization.

3

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Hal Brognola was sitting at the conference table, engaged in quiet conversation with Carmen Delahunt and Akira Tokaido, two-thirds of what Aaron Kurtzman considered to be the best cybernetics team anywhere. They stopped talking and looked up when Mack Bolan stepped into the room.

“Striker,” Hal Brognola greeted the warrior.

Bolan pulled a chair away from the conference table and slid in next to Delahunt.

“Something I didn’t ask,” he said, looking at Brognola as if they were in the middle of a conversation, “was how they came to our attention in the first place.”

“Homeland Security phone monitoring,” Brognola replied. “Key words and patterns flagged them for follow-up investigation. Akira started looking into their actions three weeks ago.”

The hacker snapped his bubble gum a few times in rapid succession before saying, “Rookies. Lame attempts to cover their tracks. E-mail, phone and bank records are all over the place. They’re definitely selling a code they say will disable ADAS.”

From his seat a good six feet away, Bolan could hear a tinny percussive sound coming from Tokaido’s high-fidelity earbuds. As he often did, he wondered how the young man could hear and carry on normal conversations while rock music was coursing at ear-splitting volume into his auditory canals.

“If we know who they are and what they’re trying to do, why don’t we just go get them?” Bolan asked.

The others looked directly at Brognola, who said, “Let’s wait until everyone gets here. Carmen has to be brought up to date, too.”

The wait was not long. Bolan poured himself a cup of coffee from the insulated carafe placed next to the cups. The coffee was a high-quality blend, not Kurtzman’s horrid brew. He had barely taken his first sip when the door to the War Room opened.

Barbara Price entered first, followed by Huntington Wethers, then Kurtzman pushing his wheelchair forward with both hands, a cup of his infamously strong coffee in a holder mounted to the chair’s left arm.

The three found places at the conference table, Price sitting directly across from Bolan, whom she greeted with a slight smile as she eased herself onto the upholstered cushion and pulled her seat closer to the table. Kurtzman moved to the open spot at the head as nonchalantly as if a chair had never occupied the space there.

“Who’s up?” he asked while taking his brimming coffee cup from its holder and tasting a small mouthful of the steaming drink before putting it onto the conference table’s highly polished surface.

“Let’s get a summary,” Brognola answered. “Striker asked how we initially latched on to them, and Carmen has been out of the loop. Akira?”

“Robbie Maxwell’s group,” Tokaido said, referring to the team’s contact at Homeland Security, “picked up keywords and phrases. Not sure if it was random. Home Security monitors employees at companies like Nautech more than ordinary citizens. After the initial alert, Maxwell put one of his guys into Nautech’s facility in San Diego while we investigated four engineers whose names he gave us. Like I just said to Striker, they tried covering their tracks, but it was easy to trace phone calls and money deposits into numbered accounts in the Caymans. Each account received a deposit of five million dollars.

“Bank records led us to the four engineers,” Tokaido continued, ticking off each name with his fingers. “Sherry Krautzer, David Thompson, Wesley Maple and Marlene Piaseczna. Maxwell’s group was all set to arrest them when the four suddenly vanished.”

“Security leak?” Wethers asked, displaying the methodological approach that Kurtzman had known would be a perfect complement to Delahunt’s intuition skills.

“We thought so at first,” Brognola jumped in to answer the question. “But Maxwell’s guy was very discreet. These four were not tipped-off. They were just lucky.”

“Not too lucky,” Bolan said in a flat voice, remembering the names spoken by the young woman at the cabin who had identified herself as Sherry Krautzer. “Three of them are dead. Marlene Piaseczna is the only one who wasn’t in Manitoba.”

“We believe she’s the ringleader,” Brognola replied, “but Maxwell also thought there could be a fifth conspirator. Akira’s money trail gives support to that idea. Twenty-one million withdrawn from the source banks, but only twenty million redeposited into the four accounts in the Caymans.”

“I can see young engineers going on a wild spending spree,” Delahunt said. “Fast cars, electronic gadgets, designer clothes and jewelry—a kid with money for the first time could go through a quarter mil in nothing flat.”

“But they didn’t,” Brognola said. “We’ve been into their apartments. There’s some evidence they were planning to leave the country, but they didn’t go out and buy a bunch of stuff. That missing million bothers me.”

“Did the Piaseczna woman betray her comrades?” Price asked.

“I don’t think so,” Bolan answered. “If there were separate accounts in the Caymans for each name individually—” he glanced at Tokaido, who gave him a confirming nod “—she wouldn’t be able to get at her co-conspirators’ money, so greed wasn’t a motive. The killers in Manitoba tried to strong-arm the remaining code from the engineers there. They didn’t have it. Piaseczna must be holding the second half the buyers wanted, and she was savvy enough to make sure everything would never be in one location.”

“Striker’s right,” Brognola said. “Homeland Security couldn’t put names to the killers’ corpses you left at the cabin in Manitoba, but they’re sure they were from the Middle East.”

“Amateurs!” Kurtzman exploded from the end of the table. “Stupid engineers! Thinking they could hold back half the code and leverage it into providing protection for themselves. Didn’t they realize their customers were cold-blooded murderers?”

“Never mind their customers,” Brognola said. “What about their new partners?”

Turning to Bolan, he added, “You’ll love this. Maxwell put some of his people on the money trail. It also leads to the McCarthy Family in Las Vegas.

“It seems,” the man from Justice continued, “that our engineers hired McCarthy to be a go-between for the final piece. According to Maxwell’s Las Vegas source, the remaining segment of code is apparently planned for delivery to one of McCarthy’s men. McCarthy is passing it on to the terrorists, whoever they are.”

“Slick move,” Price said. “The engineers must have been terrified of their buyers. They thought delivering half the code would keep them safe until they got all their money. But they knew once their customers had the complete product there would be no reason not to kill them. So they hired the Mob to make the final delivery. Slick but stupid. Out of the frying pan. How reliable are Maxwell’s sources, Hal?”

“They’re good. After 9/11, Homeland Security realized the crime families might be tempted at some point to link up with a terrorist element. They have some deep plants in McCarthy’s organization.”

“How would young engineers in San Diego go about hiring the Mob? How would they get the initial contact?” Price asked.

“Too many possibilities,” Wethers answered. “A friend of a friend’s friend, an in-law connection, it could be anything. Pursuing that question is probably not worthwhile. More than that, I’d want to know how they linked up with the terrorists.”

“Internet,” Brognola said confidently. “Employees at defense firms, especially young engineers, are prime targets for subversive groups. If these engineers went looking, they’d easily find a buyer.”

“But we don’t know who that buyer is,” Wethers interjected.

Brognola finger-combed his hair while shaking his head. “No, we don’t.”

Delahunt said, “It doesn’t matter. The important fact is that someone has to get to McCarthy, find out where Piaseczna is planning to make the final drop-off and stop her from doing it.”

“I agree,” Price said. Looking across the table at Bolan. “I guess you’re going to Sin City.”

“What about the microwave weapon?” Kurtzman asked of the contraption now stored in one of the outbuildings on the compound.

“Marketing,” Tokaido answered. “It’s years behind microwave research, not state-of-the-art at all. I think they built it at their cabin to show they were real engineers. When Piaseczna contacted potential buyers, what did she have for credentials? Something like that gives a rogue engineer credibility.”

“Then it served its purpose,” Bolan stated. “And it led us to where we are.”

He stared into the distance as if he could see through the walls to where the woman named Marlene Piaseczna was hiding.

“Rogue engineer, indeed,” Kurtzman said softly. “Stop the sale, Striker. You have to make sure—” He was interrupted by the buzzing of his PDA, which he pulled from a pouch on the side of his wheelchair.

His face transformed into a frown as he held the module at arm’s length and read the display.

“There was a firefight early this morning across the Iraqi border in Iran,” he told the Stony Man Farm team. “A few United States soldiers and two Sunni were killed. One of them was carrying a piece of ADAS code.”

“I think,” Wethers said into the sudden silence, “we may have stumbled upon the buyers.”

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