Atomic Fracture

The city looked peaceful enough from two thousand feet in the air. What he knew to be a mixture of ancient mud-and-clay structures with more modern houses, soaring office buildings and other structures appeared now only as tiny indiscernible spots. But McCarter knew that even if violence was not in progress beyond his limited vision, it only meant the government and rebels had taken a brief respite to rest and regroup before plunging back into gunfire, explosions and other attacks and counterattacks.

McCarter turned his eyes upward as he continued to fall. The aircraft that had brought Phoenix Force to Radestan was now only a tiny speck in the distance as Jack Grimaldi, Stony Man Farm’s ace pilot, steered the plane out of the country’s airspace. McCarter shifted his eyes to four other, closer, spots in the sky. Rather than moving away from him like the plane, these spots followed a descent similar to his toward the ground.

The sight brought a hard grin to McCarter’s face. He believed firmly in the adage that a true leader led from the front—which meant he had jumped from Grimaldi’s plane first. And that fact, in turn, meant he could see the other four members of Phoenix Force still above him.

Rafael “Pescado” Encizo was a Cuban refugee who had earned the Spanish name for “fish” due to his expertise under the water.

Calvin James, a former Navy SEAL, could kill enemies faster with a knife than most men could with a machine gun.

The barrel-chested Canadian, Gary Manning, could bench press close to five hundred pounds—on a bad day—and his expertise with explosives had saved Phoenix Force and thousands of innocents countless times since the inception of Stony Man Farm.

Thomas Jackson Hawkins—better known simply as “Hawk” or “T.J.”—was the youngest and newest member of the attack team. A man with a family military history he could trace back to the Revolutionary War, Hawkins spent what little time they ever had between missions engaged in any danger sport he could find.

McCarter felt his chest fill with pride as he watched the spots in the air gradually become larger. He was proud of his men. And he loved them like the brothers that they were.

The Phoenix Force leader glanced at his altitude gauge and saw that he had a few more seconds before he pulled the ripcord and allowed the parachute canopy to shoot out and fill with air. He had chosen a HALO—High Altitude Low Opening—jump to keep his team’s entry into the war-ravaged nation as low-key as possible. There would be shooting before this assignment was over, he knew. Lots of it. But the thought of his team drifting slowly down beneath open chutes—silhouetted against the sky as clearly as shooting range targets—held little appeal to him. There was nothing, McCarter knew, more vulnerable than a paratrooper as he neared the ground.

Another glance down and the Phoenix Force leader could make out more details of the city buildings in the distance. They were approximately ten miles from Ramesh, Radestan’s capital city. He twisted his neck to look straight down and saw what was obviously a small house and a larger barn.

It appeared that Phoenix Force would be landing exactly where they’d planned to do so.

A weathered, wooden-fenced corral stood adjacent to the barn’s own aged wood, and a dozen or so undernourished cattle stood inside that fence. As McCarter dropped closer, several of the bovine heads, their mouths moving up and down, back and forth, as they chewed their cud, looked up to watch him as intently as he watched them.

The Briton didn’t have to check his altitude gauge again to know it was time to pull the cord.

The sudden jerk as air filled the canopy lifted McCarter back up in the air. Then he leveled off and began to fall again—this time much slower. He took a quick inventory of the other members of Phoenix Force to make sure they had experienced no equipment failures, and mentally ticked them off in his head as he continued to glide to the ground.

His men were fine.

McCarter flipped a switch on his belt and activated the two-way radio. The team had all tuned in to a secure frequency while still on the plane, and now he made use of it. “Phoenix One,” McCarter said into the headset microphone positioned in front of his mouth. “Sound off, mates.”

One by one, the men known on the airwaves as Phoenix Two, Three, Four and Five, checked in.

McCarter looked down again at the cattle inside the corral and immediately steered his canopy toward a flat area outside the fence and away from the barn. “I’m nearing the ground,” he said into the mike. “And I’m angling away from the animals. I suggest you blokes do the same.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than David McCarter’s boots hit the hard dirt and sparse grass. Landing hard after the lower-than-usual opening of his parachute, the Briton automatically threw himself forward into a shoulder roll to spread the impact across his body. Then he popped back to his feet in time to watch the others return to Earth a few seconds later.

All except T. J. Hawkins, who had been the last to jump out of the plane, While his chute had opened fine, he seemed to have had some sort of trouble with his steering toggles. Instead of landing outside the corral with the rest of the team, Phoenix Force’s airborne ops expert touched down inside the rustic wooden fence, barely missing one of the cows.

McCarter couldn’t help but chuckle. Neither could the other three Stony Man Farm operatives who were gathering up their chutes next to him. The three men under McCarter’s command knew why their leader had suggested they sail clear of the corral.

It was ankle-deep in cow manure.

Hawkins had seen what was on the ground where he would land, too. And he’d chosen a bone-jarring “stand-up” landing over a roll-through in the cow dung. Even then, his boots sank as if he’d landed in some muddy, foul-smelling swamp.

With a look of disgust on his face, Hawkins pulled in his chute, doing his best to avoid the manure that had clung to the light material. Once he had control of the mess, he climbed over the rickety fence.

“Be sure to walk downwind of me, would you, Hawk?” Gary Manning said.

“Yeah, you probably should keep about a hundred yards behind us on the way into town,” said Calvin James. Rafael Encizo nodded and smiled.

Hawkins was irritated. “Unless things have changed since our briefing,” he said, “we’re due to change clothes anyway before we head into town.” He reached down and pinched the material of his combat blacksuit, pulled the stretchy material out, then let it snap back into place. “These things just might draw a little unwanted attention. They practically scream, ‘We’re Westerners—shoot us.’”

James sucked in a deep breath of air, which caused his nostrils to flare in, then out again. “I’m thinking about shooting you right now myself,” he quipped. “I’m not sure just changing clothes’ll be enough to disinfect you.”

“Of course every cloud has a silver lining,” said Encizo with a straight face. “If we come across any Radestani bomb-sniffing dogs, you’re sure to end their careers.”

Hawkins shook his head and stared first at James and then Encizo. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with sarcasm. “What are you two doing risking your lives with the rest of us when you could be making bundles at the comedy clubs? I mean, I can see you on Letterman, Leno and—”

Before he could finish, the creak of an old wooden door opening came from the small frame house twenty yards away. As if he had heard the conversation and realized it was time for him to make an appearance, a short man wearing khaki work pants and a woodland-camo battle-dress-uniform shirt appeared and walked toward them. The checkered kaffiyeh on his head was held in place by a red agal that rested just above his eyebrows. The two distinct “looks” appeared to contradict each other.

“Dude looks like Lawrence of Arabia guest starring on Duck Dynasty,” James whispered.

None of the men responded, but couldn’t suppress smiles. The comment even seemed to get Hawkins over his bad mood.

A light breeze was blowing through the area, and it caused the khaki-and-kaffiyeh-clad man’s long, stringy gray beard to dance as he approached. Stopping five feet from where Hawkins stood, he looked down at the Phoenix Force man’s dung-covered boots and grinned. “If that is the worst thing that happens to you during your time in Radestan,” he said, “you will be very lucky.” Then, turning to McCarter as if he somehow sensed that the Briton was in charge, he carefully pronounced each syllable of the first line of the code phrases that had been set up by Stony Man Farm.

“Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,” the man said in heavily Arab-accented English.

“Someone’s in the kitchen I know,” McCarter answered immediately. “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.”

“Strummin’ on the old banjo.” The words sounded strange with a Radestani accent.

Hawkins turned to McCarter and said in a low voice, “Did Hal come up with all that?”

The Phoenix Force leader knew he was referring to Harold Brognola, Stony Man Farm’s Director of Sensitive Operations. He nodded.

Hawkins shook his head. “He’ll have these Arabs square-dancing and making moonshine before it’s all over,” he said, again under his breath.

With their identities established, the old Arab stuck his hand out in greeting. “I am Abdul Ali,” he said. “As you can see, I was told you would come.”

McCarter nodded as he shook the man’s hand. “I understand you were once in the Radestani army?” he said.

Abdul Ali’s shoulders straightened slightly. “I was,” he said. “I rose to the rank of major.”

“So what happened?” McCarter asked. “You don’t look old enough to have retired.”

“I did not retire,” said Ali. “I simply resigned. Our government has become corrupt, and the armed forces have followed in that corruption.”

McCarter nodded. The Farm’s cybernetics genius, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, had checked Ali out six ways to Sunday and believed the man was truly on the side of the rebels. So until something pointed him away from that view, McCarter would stick with it. “So you’ve been helping train the rebels?”

“We are trying to train them, and organize them into one central force to overthrow the present government,” said Ali. “There are also Special Forces Americans—Green Berets, I believe you call them—in Ramesh who are working with them, as well. But, of course, we are not publicizing that fact.”

“And Russia and China aren’t shouting it to the rooftops, either,” said McCarter, “but they’re supporting the current regime with money, equipment and advisors.”

“That is correct,” said Ali. “It is the same here as it is in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere. There may no longer be any Soviet Union, but Russia is up to its same old tricks, as I believe you Americans say.” He paused and blew air out between his closed lips, making them flutter. “It is like the Cold War all over again. As if Russia and the U.S. are playing chess on a giant chessboard and Radestan is just one of the pieces.”

The two men had begun shaking hands during the brief discourse and now they dropped their arms to their sides. “How’s the training been going?” McCarter asked.

Ali rolled his eyes. “Forming the rebels into a cohesive unit has not been easy,” he said. “Most of the time I feel like a junior high school principal or an umpire at one of your American Little League baseball games. They do not take to military discipline very well and one bunch—I call them bunches because they are too disorganized to call them anything else—cannot agree with another bunch on anything past the fact that they all want to overthrow the government.”

David McCarter nodded. “Well, we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got,” he said.

“We’ll be leading the PSOF rebels into battle once we meet up with them. So I hope at least some of the training has rubbed off.”

Ali stared at the Phoenix Force leader with his dark brown eyes. “I was told to meet with you—not to take orders from you.” He cleared his throat. “I am used to being in charge myself.”

“Some wires must have been crossed along the chain of command, then,” said McCarter. “But I’m sure we can get things cleared up.” He reached over his shoulder into the backpack he’d worn during the jump. “Hang on,” he said, pulling out a sat phone and tapping the speed-dial number for Stony Man Farm.

A moment later he said, “Sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a small problem defining the chain of command between us and our Radestani contact. Would you mind speaking to Mr. Ali for a moment?” He handed the phone to Ali.

The former Radestani major looked slightly confused as he accepted the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Hello?” he said.

The expression on the Radestani’s face told McCarter that Abdul Ali was being told in no uncertain terms who was in charge and the penalties he would risk if he continued to question the chain of command. McCarter knew that Brognola could even summon the President’s personal involvement if need be. Clearly, from the look on Ali’s face, no such intervention would be necessary.

CHAPTER TWO

It had taken years of hard labor—not just regular hours but often evenings and weekends—for Mani Mussawi to work his way up the ladder at the nuclear storage facility just north of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Even though he had been hired years before the al Qaeda strikes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, there had been some reservations on the part of his supervisors to employ him. After all, there had already been other Islamic extremist terrorist operations against the U.S. abroad, and while political correctness forbade them from openly acknowledging it, Mussawi’s name and the dark brown color of his skin had made them uneasy.

So the former Saudi Arabian subject, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, had been forced to start at the bottom in spite of his impressive MBA from Yale.

Mussawi had begun his career working for the United States’ government in the mail room, sorting the envelopes and packages that came and went each day, then pushing a clumsy cloth-and-aluminum cart around the facility to deliver each piece of correspondence to its rightful recipient. The routine had become monotonous very quickly. But Mani Mussawi had soon realized that he could not have been placed in a better position in which to begin his career.

It afforded him the opportunity to meet each and every one of the workers at the facility and to get to know them on a first-name basis. He had made a point of learning the first names of the lower-echelon employees, and made sure to always address the higher-ups as “Mr.” or “Ms.” or, in the case of the many former military men and women who worked there, by their former titles. Mussawi always had a broad smile on his face as he delivered the mail. The warm facial expression, combined with his frequent inquiries about the workers’ children, parents and other family members had soon endeared him to the staff.

Oh, Mussawi thought as he lifted the can of disinfectant that he kept by his computer screen, there would always be a few of the hundred or so men and women whom he now worked with who would always view him with suspicion.

And there had been a short period right after the Boston Marathon bombing when people had once more taken a step back from him. But eventually they had begun to regard him as one of their own again. And those in the position to continue to promote him year after year had learned to trust him once more. Or at least act as though they did.

Mussawi sprayed his keyboard liberally and began to wipe it down with a clean cloth.

By showing their trust for him, his fellow employees could then sit back in their chairs and think, See, we are not racists. Not at all. We even have a man of Arabic origin working in a position of trust.Which, considering the real reason Mussawi was working where he was, made his mission a hundred times easier.

Mussawi used the cloth to push the button that would start his computer, wondering briefly if anyone might have touched it since he’d left the day before.

As the computer worked its way through boot-up and other programs for which it was preset to utilize, Mussawi caught a glimpse of navy blue out of the corner of his eye. He looked up, smiling the congenial smile that had become second nature to him since he’d begun to work his way into the hearts of the other storage facility employees at the desks crowded into the large underground office. The smile widened further as he recognized Catherine’s blond hair and blue eyes. The woman wore a navy-blue suit, and looked far more professional than she had only a few hours earlier.

Without the suit. In his bed. But she was every bit as sexy, Mani realized, as she set a disposable cup of steaming coffee on his desk.

“I thought you might need a little pick-me-up,” Catherine said right before she took a sip from her own cup. Then, in a much quieter voice, she added, “After all, you expended a lot of energy last night.”

Mussawi stared at the bright red lipstick that had just been transferred from Catherine’s mouth to the white foam cup. In his mind, he pictured her as she’d been last night, squirming under his touch and gyrating to the rhythm of their love-making. “I have a lot of that same energy left,” he whispered back, glancing quickly around to make sure none of the other people at their desks were paying them any attention. “But a little caffeine never hurt.”

The two nuclear storage facility managerial position employees’ eyes met for a moment and Mussawi felt a combination of lust and guilt flow through his veins. Fraternization such as theirs was forbidden between the men and women who worked together in this facility. Which, of course, made an affair such as theirs all the more enticing. They had been flirting for weeks, and the former Saudi knew that the rumors about them had run rampant. But they had not consummated their attraction until last night.

And as they’d lain together afterward, with the moonlight through his bedroom window causing the Anglo woman’s light skin to glow against Mussawi’s darker flesh, she had said, “We’ll have to be extra careful now, my love. We need to distance ourselves from each other at work.”

Mussawi had shaken his head. “That is the worst thing we could do. People have talked about us for weeks now. If we suddenly start ignoring each other, they will know it has finally happened.”

Catherine winked at her new lover, jerking his mind out of the reverie. “Tonight?” she asked softy.

Mussawi nodded. “By all means.” But even as he said the words an uneasiness swept over him. American women were promiscuous. Had he picked up any germs or even some sexually transmitted disease from Catherine? He had insisted on using condoms. Still....

Mussawi sprayed more disinfectant on his hands and rubbed them together. It was too late to worry about that now, he thought as Catherine turned and disappeared behind one of the dozens of dividers that separated the office cubicles from each other.

Mussawi’s computer was now ready and he tapped in the complicated set of codes to access the facility’s inventory lists. He began a second set of carefully encoded entries that would eventually lead him to the whereabouts of several hundred small, easily portable nuclear bombs. “Backpack nukes,” he whispered under his breath, thinking of how very American the nickname was. He was about to access the list when Jason Hilderbrand suddenly appeared at the side of his desk. “Morning, Mani,” the man said. Hilderbrand wore a button-down collared shirt beneath a V-necked sweater-vest, and shining brightly at his throat was a silver Christian cross. “How’s it going, my man?”

Mussawi shook his head slightly. “It will be a boring day, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Inventory, you know.” Without thinking, his hand rose to his neck and he grasped the cross dangling from a silver chain around his own throat. It had been given to him by Hilderbrand soon after he’d expressed an interest in Christianity.

Hilderbrand smiled and Mani could tell that his eyes had dropped to the cross. “And how about the other thing?” he said. “The revival is still going on at my church. Great evangelist they’ve brought in. Patsy and I’d be honored to take you with us tonight.”

Mussawi thought briefly of the hot, stuffy, tent meeting to which Hilderbrand was referring, then of the soft white flesh now hidden beneath Catherine’s navy-blue work suit.

“I am sorry, Jason,” he said. “But I have a previous engagement.”

Now Hilderbrand reached up and touched his own cross. “But you’ve thought about it some more, right?”

Mussawi didn’t want to pour it on too strong. So he said, “Yes, Jason. I do think about it. A lot. But it is very difficult to reject things you have been taught since birth.”

Hilderbrand nodded. “I understand,” he said. “But keep thinking about it, okay? Sooner or later, the Holy Spirit will bring you the Truth.”

“I am doing my best,” said Mussawi, his mind still on Catherine.

“I know you are.” Hilderbrand smiled. He patted Mussawi on the shoulder, then walked away.

Mussawi returned to his computer screen and keyboard and pulled up the page listing the backpack nukes. The page had been flagged, and when he hit the icon to open his top-security interoffice email, he found an order to transfer an even dozen of the small nuclear devices to another secret storage site in the Florida Keys.

The smile that covered his face now was not for anyone else’s benefit. It was for him, and him alone. He had kept up with the ongoing hostilities in both Central and South America and had suspected for several days now that he’d get an order such as this.

Just because they were called backpack nukes didn’t mean they had to be carried to a detonation site like a college student on his way to English composition. They could be dropped from an airplane or encompassed in the nose of a rocket just like any other bomb. For that matter, they could be rigged with a timer and simply left somewhere.

Mussawi closed the email and began the next long, tedious series of codes and passwords that would get the ball rolling for the transfer. He knew the United States had no intention of using the small nukes as a first strike against any of the countries south of Mexico. But they had to be prepared for the unlikely event that Iran, or North Korea, or one of the other “axis of evil” nations with nuclear capabilities but short-range delivery systems could cut a deal to launch at the U.S. from a closer site.

After all, it was hardly a secret that the rebels in South and Central America were being backed by America’s enemies. And considering the unstable leaders who ran such countries, the decision to attack the U.S. could come based on nothing more than a sudden whim.

Mussawi stopped typing as another form appeared in his peripheral vision. He looked up to see John Karns standing patiently next to his desk. “How about lunch today, Mani?” John was a retired Marine drill sergeant who had let himself go somewhat since leaving the service. His white shirt hung over his belt both in front and on both sides.

Mussawi beamed again. “Sounds good, Sarge. But it’s your turn to pay and my turn to pick.”

Karns shook his head and chuckled. “That’s a hard one to guess,” he said. “You never want to go anywhere but McDonald’s.”

“I like Burger King, too,” said Mussawi. “But McDonald’s... It always just seems more...American.”

Karns leaned over the desk and rested both hands next to the keyboard. “Can I tell you something, Mani?” he said, whispering almost as softly as Catherine had done.

“Of course,” Mussawi said, letting his eyebrows furrow slightly to show concern.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” Karns said, then cleared his throat. “But I didn’t like you much at first. I suppose I was something of a bigot. Especially after 9/11, I looked at all Arabs with suspicion. Even hated them.” He coughed a little nervously, then went on. “But we’ve been pals for what now? Ten years or so?”