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  He recognized the words as Arabic.

  Chapter 25

  Mullah Adham, aka Adam Wilhoyt, squinted into the bright light. It was time for another television appearance. He checked his watch and remembered the nine-hour difference between Iraq time and the United States’ Eastern time.

  He always had to factor that into his broadcasts. When would they be looking for him? When could he slip in and out of the Internet domain with the least possible chance at detection? He was already cloning his Internet Protocol address in multiple different locations around the world, some even in the United States. He had hacked into the source code of Cisco Systems, which gave him the ability to be anywhere at any time.

  He was the world’s most wanted terrorist now that Bin Laden was dead.

  He thought about the next series of attacks. How to characterize them? He raked his fingers through his beard, contemplating. Yes, the next attacks would be on an entirely different plane with a much larger end in mind. He needed two things: First, to continue to apply pressure to allow him to stay inside the decision-making cycle of the Americans. Second, he needed more troops, which he knew were on the way. His capture teams had been active in Afghanistan, especially.

  Once he got his new troops on the ground in America, the next attacks would happen with exponential frequency. He liked that word.

  Exponential. Increasing rapidly.

  Let the masses think about that one, he mused. Exponential frequency. Exponential terror. The media had used his phrase, inverse attacks, throughout their reporting. He was glad to give their lemming talking heads another word to parrot on his behalf.

  He wondered about the shipment of the prisoners and whether this next crop would have the talent for precision execution that Chikatilo and his team had seemed to pull off with minimum interference.

  To Mullah Adham, it was all about human capital, and he was no different than a modern-day CEO or entrepreneur who needed to find the right people to put on the bus. He chuckled at that. I’ve got the right people on the van. Crazy motherfuckers who will one minute appear to be construction workers and the next minute blow up critical targets. And we’ve got the Mother of All Battles, as Saddam Hussein had once called it. MOAB, baby. But this MOAB stands for something else: Massive Ordnance Air Burst!

  It’s all good, he thought.

  He checked the flag and the AK-74 prop, adjusted his turban, squinted at the bright lights, and said into the camera, “Listen very closely, America. Brother Osama built a deep bench. Doesn’t matter that he’s dead. The truth is, now the bench is better than the team that was on the field. Look at Syria and ISIS. All of us are brothers in arms and we are more brutal than ever before. Some may call us the Junior Varsity. Well, okay. Put me in, coach!”

  He laughed like a Halloween haunt. This was his most animated video yet. Sneering at the camera, Mullah Adham took a more somber tone.

  “Three days, three million people. Three days, three critical targets. Three days, to the third degree. Exponential. And this is no longer the ‘Mother of All Battles, ’ but it is a MOAB!”

  He stood and walked as the camera panned and followed. Viewers could see the hostage hunched and kneeling on the floor, hands bound behind his back. The knife glinted in the camera’s spotlight as Adham cut the ties binding the captive’s hands. He looked in the camera and lowered his voice, taking a much more somber and serious tone.

  “I would never kill a defenseless man. And just to show you we can kill a single individual or thousands of people at once, we will do this.”

  Uday and Hamasa stepped into the camera range wielding large curved swords. Adham handed his small knife to the captive who still was sporting the tan sandbag over his head that read, “Life’s a Bitch.”

  The captive they had held for less than a week stood and crouched into a fighting position as Adham removed the sandbag and held it in his hand. Like a referee at a boxing match, he leaned in and said, “Fight!”

  Uday’s large body momentarily blocked the camera. The prisoner circled toward Uday, placing his back toward the camera, and the three men began to move in a counterclockwise direction. Hamasa swung his sword low into the midsection of the prisoner, who doubled over. Uday lifted his sword high, in what Adham knew was a choreographed move, and swung ferociously downward, severing the man’s head. The body fell in plain sight of the camera while the head rolled out of view.

  Adham stuck his face into the lens of the camera and flashed an eerie smile. “More hostages. More mayhem. Exponential, baby!” Adham shouted into the camera.

  He stepped behind the camera, which was still live, thinking about the next move against the Americans. Where were they? Would they find him?

  After all, even though they were redeployed from Iraq, they were all around him.

  He zoomed the camera on the back of the bloody, severed head lying next to the “Life’s a Bitch!” sandbag that had been the hostage’s shroud. The back of the sandbag was facing up. It read:

  And Then You Die!

  General Stanley Bream, the Inspector General of the Army, sat in the basement of the Pentagon with several other high-ranking officials to include the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense.

  “Do we know who was just killed?” Arthur Buchanan, the Secretary of Defense, asked.

  “We have no idea without getting a look at the face. The uniform had no nametape. The intelligence teams are doing visual and audio forensics as we speak,” General Frank Thomas, the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, said.

  “With the attacks on Fort Brackett and Suffolk, and now this, we obviously have to take this guy seriously,” Buchanan said.

  “Three days, three million people? That’s a stretch, sir,” Thomas countered.

  “Well, general, a few days ago you told me our military bases were secure.” Buchanan sat back after scolding the chairman and said, “Anybody have any thoughts?”

  Bream piped up. “The reference to MOAB, sir, might be a clue.”

  “To what? The mother of all battles?” Buchanan scoffed.

  “No, sir. To the largest nonnuclear bomb in existence, called a Massive Ordnance Air Burst. DoD did a recall on all of those a few years ago. We should check them to make sure we’ve got them all,” Bream said.

  The Air Force Chief of Staff, General Mike Sharpley, was quick to comment. “We’ve got them, sir. But we’ll be glad to do as the Army Inspector General suggests.”

  Bream took this as the jab it was intended to be and played humble.

  “I’m sure they’re all accounted for, sir. It’s just an idea since he made reference to it.”

  “It’s a good idea. General Sharpley, have an inventory done immediately. I want to know in an hour what our status is,” Buchanan directed, and then departed.

  Bream walked to the window of the E-Ring conference room, poured himself a cup of coffee, and stared at the Potomac River and the night lights of Washington, DC. His mind ran through his latest victory.

  It’s a good idea, the Secretary of Defense had said. Then the man had acted on his recommendation. That had settled that. It was clear to him that he was the right choice to be the next Army Chief of Staff.

  After about forty-five minutes of waiting, the meeting reconvened abruptly, aides madly scurrying around passing out sheets of paper labeled TOP SECRET/ SPECAT. Bream stood behind his designated chair anxious to see what information the paper contained.

  Buchanan reentered the conference room looking harried, obviously already having been briefed on what they were about to learn.

  The Air Force Chief of Staff looked sheepish and suddenly Bream’s throat clutched. He was just digging for a good idea, grasping at another rung on the ladder. He hadn’t thought there was a remote possibility that he was correct that there might be a missing MOAB.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll have a seat, General Sharpley will tell us about his inventory of Air Force MOABs that was just conducted,” Buchanan said
.

  “Sir, all of the MOABs are kept in an underground bunker in Nevada. We are supposed to have forty-two and we have forty-two.”

  Bream heard a collective sigh around the room, but not from him. He was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “But one of them is a concrete dummy, which means that we have a live unaccounted-for MOAB out there somewhere.”

  Dear God, Bream thought. That was tantamount to having a suitcase nuke on the loose in the country. And he was probably sitting at ground zero for its detonation.

  “We have to alert the President immediately,” Buchanan said. Then turning to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he said, “Now does three million seem so unlikely?”

  Bream thought about it. If Mullah Adham was going to kill three million people it had to be in a high-density area. He had several thoughts running through his mind, but would claim victory here and live to fight another day.

  “All military installations are to go immediately to full alert,” Buchanan ordered. “And, General Sharpley, find that MOAB.”

  Chapter 26

  Mahegan pressed his body against the metal frame of the ship’s bridge. The bow spotlights were crisscrossing the sky like an airbase under attack with antiaircraft gunners searching for bombers. He could hear the wet smack of the ocean swells against the hull some thirty feet below his position. Sounds of men running along the ladders and deck mixed with the metallic screech of rubbing ship metal.

  He recognized the shouts in Arabic as orders to grab ropes, secure fenders, and prepare to dock.

  Prepare to dock?

  His initial concern that his unique entry to the boat had caused alarm ebbed quickly as he watched the choreography of a ship crew move not to battle stations, but to the specific points on a ship that required manning prior to docking.

  He looked to his right and saw a rope as thick as his forearm coiled around a circular winch. Three huge rubber fenders linked together like sausages were stacked directly behind him and may have been what softened his landing. There was nowhere for him to move without being noticed and he suspected he was seconds away from being discovered.

  Mahegan retrieved his knife at the same time he heard a metallic door open from the cabin. The door opened toward him, providing him both cover and concealment for the moment. A man dressed in dark clothing with an AK-47 slung across his back leaned over to begin unfurling the rope.

  Mahegan used the butt of his K-Bar to strike the man on the rear of his skull. His target slumped forward, unconscious. He still wasn’t clear on who was friend or foe and didn’t want to start killing anyone just yet.

  He secured the man’s AK-47 rifle and dragged him toward the rubber fenders, leaving him there as he quickly moved toward the open door. He snapped the night-vision goggle on his head and scanned the long axis of the boat using the door as cover. He could see several men scurrying across what appeared to be steel planks covering a cargo hold, the kind street crews used to cover a work in progress.

  The boat slowed as he entered the cabin and stepped into a stairwell, or what he knew the sailors called ladders. He raced to the bottom, spiraling four times, and then came upon a metal door that locked from the outside. He saw a bar nestled across the door resting in u-shaped joints, one of which had a padlock securing the bar in place.

  Curious about what might lie behind the door, Mahegan used the AK-47 to butt-stroke the lock and unhinge the securing mechanism. He removed the lock, tossed it aside, and then lifted the bar, which freed the door.

  He pulled open the door and was immediately knocked back by a stench that he recognized as sweat, feces, and urine. He turned on the Maglite beneath the barrel of the AK-47 and saw about twenty pairs of eyes staring back at him. They were silent, cowering, seemingly expectant of harsh treatment.

  He stepped back into the hall and closed the door, placing the bar over the u-joints. Then he turned around and raced up the steps. He had no idea what he had just seen. Prisoners. Like on a slave ship.

  Or ghosts.

  As he reached the door he had first entered, he noticed it was now closed. He continued up the ladder until he reached another door, which was open. He could see inside the ship’s bridge. There were four men staring ahead, watching the bow and something else. He heard voices on the radio.

  “Le Concord, this is Ocean Ranger, you’re fifty meters from our stern.”

  Then a voice from inside the cockpit said, “This is Le Concord, we’ve got you. We will come alongside and then my crew will throw the ropes and establish the bridge.”

  Mahegan had been on missions in his past when he had witnessed underway replenishment, a form of transferring supplies between two ships without having them collide.

  “Aye, Le Concord. Be careful, we’ve got another vessel tethered to us.”

  He quietly retreated to the door through which he had entered, opened it, and stepped back into his original position on the deck. It seemed that the entire crew was focused on coming alongside the Ocean Ranger.

  From his vantage along the starboard side of stern, he saw the anchored Ocean Ranger, highlighted by the Le Concord spotlights as if on a Broadway stage. It had a big boom arm hanging over it like a construction crane. A transfer of some type was going to occur. Mahegan guessed it was going to be the prisoners. Maybe they were slave labor at the gold drop site? Or maybe they were slave labor for Copperhead?

  It hit him like a roundhouse sucker punch. Locklear had told him that everyone was curious as to why no locals had been hired to help with the clearing contract at Dare County Bombing Range. It was because Nix and his minions in Iraq and Afghanistan were clearing out the ghost prisons dotted throughout the countries. Mahegan himself had interrogated detainees in these facilities spread around Afghanistan, which were little more than medieval dungeons. Each cell was a solitary endeavor with a rancid mattress on a dirt floor with no place to relieve oneself.

  He saw it now: twenty prisoners chained together, stomping around the Dare County Bombing Range for bombs. Nix probably felt justified using this method because the men were enemy combatants. Mahegan couldn’t argue with the concept, but still it was wrong. He knew that throughout the course of combat that they had captured as many innocent men as guilty ones. Chances were that ten of the twenty men in there were guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If even that.

  Satisfied with his knowledge gained from this ship, he found the ladder that allowed him to crawl over the gunwale. He secured his equipment, checked the borrowed wetsuit for tears, and climbed down the hull of Le Concord. He held on to the last rung above the water until he could see the stern of the Ocean Ranger.

  Then he slipped into the freezing cold Atlantic Ocean.

  Chapter 27

  Vinny Falco watched his boss, Sam Nix, pace in the control tower. The man was nervous, he surmised. Falco had no love for Nix. He was merely a means to an end, but he played along.

  “Seriously, who is this guy?” Samuel Nix asked.

  They were standing in the control tower of the bombing range, which afforded them multidimensional views. First, they could see the darkened landscape of the swampy impact area and the closer confines of the base area with its warehouse and residential buildings. Next, to the east they could see the winking lights of Roanoke Island and Kitty Hawk beyond that. On their displays and terminals, they could monitor intrusion points into the bombing range where they could see the marginally repaired front gate and the klieg lights that had been established around the “crime scene” near the landing craft. They could also see a single satellite video feed from the deck of the Ocean Ranger. Total knowledge management.

  “He’s a former Army badass, like I told you. Out now, and up for a dishonorable discharge from that dick Bream. Word is an MVX-90 killed one of his Delta buddies. He’s pissed about it and wants revenge,” Falco said.

  Falco was standing behind Nix, looking over his shoulder at the Ocean Ranger streaming live video. They co
uld see the small container ship Le Concord nudging closer, coming alongside and feeding the ropes back and forth, transferring supplies and people.

  “Whose word is that?”

  “Sources, boss. I have spies everywhere.”

  “No shit, but you work for me.”

  Falco hesitated, debating what to say. “Sheriff’s department. Word has it that he’s a drifter with a grudge.”

  “Why the hell would he be flying over our Galaxy site?”

  “Let’s hope that’s all he’s doing. I’m heading over to the airfield in a few minutes to see what Dakota and Mahegan come back with.”

  “What are you thinking? Photos?”

  “Best case, photos. Worst case, the crazy son of a bitch jumped into the ocean and swam to the ship.”

  Nix turned and looked at Falco.

  “No one’s that crazy,” Nix said.

  “Do I need to remind you of the hole he cut through our operation today? And I don’t even think he planned on that. He’s a natural fighter. Like some pilots are naturals at the stick, this guy finds a small clue, some piece of intelligence, and he goes for it. That’s how these guys work. I saw it in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of sitting back and debating some piece of information, they grab it, pursue, and stay on the offensive. That way they never give anyone a chance to catch up with them. Keeps their opponents on their heels, makes them react by using cell phones and speeding up their decision cycles.”

  “We need to speed our cycle up.”

  “That’s exactly what he wants us to do,” Falco said.

  “I’m not going to sit by while this dick dismantles everything we have worked so hard for.”

  “Not saying that, boss. I’ve already called the crew on the Ocean Ranger and they’re on the lookout for him. The Lucky also.”

  “Remind me to change the name of that one,” Nix said, grimacing.

  Falco ran a hand over his shaved scalp, then tugged at his goatee.

  “She’s not all bad, boss.”