"Going hot!" Clark shouted again, and pointed his pistol at the wall so he could turn it once again into a searing torture device.
"Please, no!"
"Who has the bomb?"
Jack Ryan Jr. looked through the thermal binoculars at the warehouse a hundred fifty yards away. He"d just gotten off the phone with Sam Granger, who told him Clark and Chavez, along with Rainbow, had ended the terrorist incident at the s.p.a.ceport in Kazakhstan. He"d relayed this to Mohammed and Dom, who were both elated. Now they were concentrating on making sure whatever Rehan had in store here did not come to pa.s.s.
"What is your plan, you son of a b.i.t.c.h?" he whispered softly.
His phone vibrated in his pocket and he grabbed it. "Go for Ryan."
"It"s Clark."
"John! I just heard from Granger. Great work!"
"Listen to me. You have problems."
"We"re okay. We"ve tracked Rehan and his men to a warehouse at the Lah.o.r.e Central Railway Station. They are in there now and we are waiting on more SSG soldiers to arrive so we can take him down."
"Jack. Listen! He"s got a nuke!"
Jack opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Finally, softly, he said, "Oh, s.h.i.t."
"He switched out a bomb with Safronov. It must be with him right now."
"Do you think he"s about to-" Jack could not even say it.
"Kid, you"ve got to work on that a.s.sumption. When he learns the Baikonur attack failed, he may reason that the Pakistani government might hold on to power. He will be desperate to start a bigger war so the Army can take control. If a nuke flattens Lah.o.r.e, Pakistan will retaliate immediately with their own weapons. Both countries will be devastated. Rehan must have a place he can go wait it out."
Again Ryan tried to speak, but there were no words. "What can we . . . What do we . . . None of us know how to deactivate a bomb, even if we could get past the ISI and LeT men holding it. What the h.e.l.l are we going to do?"
"Son, there is no time for you guys to get out of there. You have to go after the bomb. Just gain control of the weapon and our experts here will talk you through removing the detonators."
Jack Ryan Jr. just muttered, "Understood. I"ll call you back."
Just then, Ryan heard the low thumping of helicopter rotors approaching from the west.
Caruso was by his side. "I only heard one half of that conversation, but it sounded bad."
Jack nodded, then called out to al Darkur, "Mohammed. We need the best nuclear munitions expert we can find in the area to get their a.s.s here right now."
Al Darkur had heard enough of the conversation to put it together. "I will call Islamabad and get my office to work on that, but I don"t know if we have time."
Riaz Rehan stood behind Drs. Noon and Nishtar from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission. The two scientists leaned over the bomb; it was still housed in the wooden crate marked "Textile Manufacturing, Ltd." The bearded men made final adjustments to the detonator. They had bypa.s.sed the fuses, and now, with the press of a b.u.t.ton, a countdown clock would begin running backward from thirty minutes.
When the clock reached zero, the northern half of the city of Lah.o.r.e would cease to exist.
Rehan had devised Operation Saker"s fallback plan some months back. From the very beginning he had known that there were only two ways to ensure that the government of Pakistan would fall. If a stolen Pakistani nuclear device was detonated, anywhere on earth, there was no question that the prime minister and his cabinet would be forced from power in disgrace.
And if a shooting war with India broke out, there was no question that the Army would declare martial law, push out the prime minister and his cabinet, and then quietly sue for peace.
The first event, that Safronov and his militants blew up a bomb, was, of course, preferable, but the second event meant war, nuclear war. It would leave Rehan and the Army in power, but facing the possibility that they would rule only over nuclear ash.
Safronov had failed, so Operation Saker was possible now only with war. Detonating a nuke in Lah.o.r.e in the midst of the current crisis would start this war. It was a pity, but Rehan knew that Allah would forgive him. Those good Muslims who died here would die a martyr"s death, as they had helped to create the Islamic caliphate.
That said, Rehan himself wasn"t planning on going out in a mushroom cloud. He looked at his watch as the thumping of the helicopter rotors filled the sky. His Mi-8 was here to pick him and his men up. He, Saddiq Khan, and the four other JIM men with him would leave via air, they would race to the north, and they would be safe from the blast in plenty of time. From there they would continue on to Islamabad, where Army units were already ama.s.sing in the streets.
The general thought it likely a military coup could be under way by daybreak tomorrow.
The helicopter landed outside, and Rehan ordered the PAEC doctors to initiate the detonation sequence.
Nishtar and Noon were honored to be the ones who cleared the pathway to the caliphate.
With a press of a b.u.t.ton Noon said, "It is done, General."
The twelve LeT men knew their role, as well. They would remain behind to guard the weapon, and in so doing they would be shahideen. Martyrs. Rehan embraced each man quickly with the charisma that had been getting men like these to do his bidding for more than thirty years.
The ISI men walked quickly toward the door, with Rehan the nucleus of the entourage. The thumping of the rotors just outside was nearly deafening as the Mi-8 landed in the parking lot. Colonel Khan pulled the metal door open and stepped out into the night. He beckoned the rest of the group forward, but his eyes shifted up quickly at the shouting of an alarm from one of the Lashkar operatives in the second-floor window. He spun back toward the rail yard in front of him, and he saw what had drawn the guard"s attention. Two dark green pickup trucks bearing the logo of Pakistan Railways raced across the access road of the tracks, approaching the helicopters.
Khan turned to Rehan. "Get in the helicopter. I will get rid of them."
The trucks stopped just twenty-five yards shy of the chopper and fifty yards from the front loading dock of the warehouse. They parked next to a pair of full coal carrier cars left parked on a spur of track at the edge of the access road, and several men climbed out of the trucks. Khan could not see how many, since their bright lights were in his eyes. He just waved to the men, motioned for them to turn around and go away, and he pulled his ISI credentials out and held them up to the light.
A man stepped in front of the beams and walked closer. Khan squinted, tried to make him out. He gave up, just reached out his hand with his ISI credentials, and told the man to turn around and forget what he saw here.
He never did see the man"s face, and he never did recognize Mohammed al Darkur, and he never did see the pistol in the major"s hand.
He saw a flash, he felt the ripping in his chest, and he knew he"d been shot. He fell backward, and as he fell, al Darkur"s second shot caught him under the chin and blew out his brains from below.
As soon as al Darkur killed Colonel Khan, Caruso and Ryan, both having just climbed onto the coal carrier next to the trucks, opened fire on the windscreen of the helicopter with their booming G3 rifles.
While they fired at the helo, Mohammed"s two officers flanked to the right. They ran to the corner of a small switching station on the edge of the tracks. Here they opened fire on the men in the windows of the warehouse.
The LeT gunman quickly had al Darkur"s men sighted, and one of the two officers was killed with an AK blast across his legs and pelvis. But the second officer took out the sentries, and when al Darkur made it over to his position and picked up his fallen comrade"s G3, they suppressed the men firing at the loading door to the warehouse.
Ryan and Caruso"s heavy gunfire killed the pilot and copilot of the Mi-8 almost immediately. Their bullets-each man fired a full thirty-round magazine through the aircraft-also tore through the cabin, killing and injuring several of the ISI guards who had already boarded. Rehan himself was at the chopper"s door, and the gunfire, just barely heard above the sounds of the Mi-8"s engine and rotors, made him dive to the parking lot, and then roll away from the helo. His men returned fire on the gunmen on the coal carrier, five ISI men against two attackers, but the ISI men were armed with only pistols, and Jack and Dom picked them off one at a time.
Rehan climbed to his feet, ran behind the helicopter, and raced down an alleyway to the west of the warehouse. A surviving member of his protection detail ran behind him.
Caruso and Ryan dropped from the coal container. Jack said, "You and the others go for the warehouse. I"m going after Rehan!" The two Americans ran off in separate directions.
Jack turned down three darkened alleyways before he caught sight of the fleeing general and his bodyguard. Rehan was in good condition, as evidenced by the way he ran, and the way he knocked others to the ground as he did so. Sporadic groups of civilians, laden with family possessions, rushed through all parts of the railway station, looking for conveyance out of the embattled city. Rehan and his younger goon pushed past them or barreled over them.
Jack dumped the big c.u.mbersome rifle in favor of the Beretta pistol, and he sprinted with it, alternately finding and then losing and then finding Rehan in a warren of outbuildings and warehouses and disconnected rail cars across the tracks from the busy train station.
Jack turned back to the west; other than the light of a sliver of moon it was completely dark here, and he jogged between two sets of parked and dormant pa.s.senger trains. He"d made it no more than fifty feet between the trains when he sensed movement ahead. In the dark a lone man leaned out from between two cars.
Jack knew what was coming; he dove headfirst to the ground and rolled on his shoulder just as the crack of a pistol shot filled the air. Ryan continued his roll, came out of it on his knees, and he returned fire twice. He heard a grunt and a thud, and the darkened figure fell to the ground.
Jack shot the still man a third time before moving forward, warily, to check the body.
Only when he got close enough to roll the man over on his back was he able to tell that this was the bodyguard and not General Rehan.
"s.h.i.t," Jack said. And then he ran on.
Ryan saw Rehan in the distance a moment later, then he lost him again as a long pa.s.senger train lumbered past, but when it continued on he saw the big general moving one hundred yards on, toward the crowded train station.
Jack stopped, raised the Beretta, and aimed it at the distant figure in the dark.
With his finger on the trigger, he stopped. A hundred-yard shot for a pistol was optimistic, especially now that Jack was breathing heavy from the run. And a miss could send a round right into a building chock-full of hundreds of civilians.
Ryan lowered the handgun and sprinted on as trains approached in both directions.
Dominic Caruso and the surviving ISI captain kicked in a boarded window on the south side of the warehouse. The boards crashed onto the floor, and immediately the two men dove out of the way of gunfire. The captain reached around with his rifle and fired several semiauto shots inside the building, but Dom gave up on this entry point and ran around the warehouse, finding a disused side door. He shouldered in the door, it broke at the hinges, and he fell to a dusty floor.
Immediately heavy gunfire from the center of the warehouse erupted, and sparks and dust kicked up all around Dom. He leapt to his feet and scrambled back out of the doorway, but not before a bullet fragment from a ricochet off the wall tore through his right b.u.t.t cheek.
He stumbled to the concrete outside, grabbing onto his burning wound. "Motherf.u.c.ker!"
He stood again slowly, and then looked around for some other way to get into this building.
Mohammed al Darkur grabbed a Kalashnikov dropped by a dead LeT militant near the front door to the warehouse. With it he fired a full magazine at a cl.u.s.ter of men crouched behind a large crane and a large wooden container near the center of the room. Several of his rounds tore into the box; splinters flew in all directions.
Al Darkur spun the dead man over and took a rifle magazine out of his pocket and reloaded, then leaned around and started firing more selectively. He thought it possible the box contained the nuclear device, and he did not feel great about shooting the contraption with an a.s.sault rifle.
He"d killed two of the Lashkar terrorists, but he saw at least three more close to the box. They returned fire on Mohammed"s position, but only sporadically because they were also taking fire from two other directions.
The major worried that they were all in for a protracted gunfight. He had no idea how much time he had until the bomb went off, but he figured that if he was going to be crouched here much longer he, and much of Lah.o.r.e city, was going to be incinerated.
General Riaz Rehan climbed onto the first occupied platform of the Lah.o.r.e Central Railway Station that he reached after his long run. Crowds of pa.s.sengers were boarding an express train to Multan in the south of Pakistan. The general pulled his ISI credentials and pushed his way into the ma.s.ses; as he gasped for breath, he shouted that he was on official business and everyone needed to get out of his way.
He knew he had only twenty minutes to get out of town and clear of the blast. He needed to be on this train when it moved, and when it moved, he needed to make sure the conductor kept the train going through Lah.o.r.e without stopping at any other stations.
Whoever the h.e.l.l had just attacked him was still fighting it out with the Lashkar-e-Taiba cell back at the warehouse; Rehan could hear the persistent gunfire. He"d seen only a couple of shooters, and they looked like local police. Even if they did overrun his cell, he was sure that no gang of street cops was going to disarm his bomb.
He made it onto the train, still pushing and wheezing, and he shoved his way through the phalanx of pa.s.sengers standing in the aisles. He needed to get up to the front car, to wave his credentials or his fist or his gun in the conductor"s face to get the train out of here.
The train did begin to move, but it rolled painfully slow; Rehan himself moved faster than the wheels beneath him as he made it closer to the front. He punched a man who would not step aside and shoved the man"s wife back down into her chair when she tried to grab his arm.
In the pa.s.senger car nearest the locomotive, he found a little s.p.a.ce to run, then he made his way forward to the vestibule with the door to the outside and the door to the next car. He pa.s.sed the open door on his right and saw the platform pa.s.s by. Just as he looked a young white man in a police utility vest leapt onto the moving car, crashing his shoulder against the wall of the tiny hallway between the cars. He looked right at Rehan, and the Pakistani general swung his pistol toward the man, but the big white man grabbed the general and knocked him against the wall.
The pistol fell to the floor of the car.
Rehan recovered quickly, then launched himself at his attacker, and the two of them slammed their bodies hard against the surfaces in the small confines of the vestibule for thirty seconds before they fell back through the door, into the crowded coach car. Civilians scrambled out of the way as best they could. Many screamed, and some men shouted and shoved the fighting pair back toward the vestibule.
Here they continued to fight. Ryan was faster, fitter, and better trained in hand-to-hand combat, but Rehan had more brute strength, and the Pakistani used this, and the tight quarters, to render his opponent unable to get the upper hand.
Jack saw he wasn"t going to win anytime soon against the bigger man while pressed into the tiny tin can of the vestibule between the cars, and he did not want to leave the area, since he knew his friends were fighting to the death for control of the nuclear weapon, so he did the only thing he could think of. With a scream to muster all of his strength, he wrapped his arms around the big general, kicked his feet up on the wall of the vestibule, and pushed back with all his might.
Rehan and Ryan tumbled together out of the train. Their bodies separated as they hit the hard ground and rolled alongside the track.
Major Mohammed al Darkur had given up at the front entrance of the warehouse; the gunfire was just too heavy. Instead he moved around to the side, where he found his ISI captain still firing through an open window. From the sound of it, there were no more than three or four men remaining p.r.o.ne behind the crane, but they had good cover.
And then the rear wall of the warehouse, behind the LeT gunmen, exploded inward. Wood and mortar and brick blew into the room behind a large truck that continued rolling through the wall, only to crash into the crate and stop. While al Darkur watched from the open window he saw the militants stand and open fire on the vehicle, pouring jacketed lead through the windshield.
Dominic appeared at the new opening in the rear wall. Mohammed had to hold his fire immediately, as the American was directly downrange from him. The major held his hand up so that his captain would check his own fire.
While they watched, Dominic fired over and over from his G3 police rifle into the men. There were four, and they bucked and spun and fell to the ground as he moved on them in a crouch, his big weapon firing during his approach.
"Mohammed?" Dominic shouted after the shooting stopped.
"I am here!" he replied, and al Darkur and his captain ran into the large open room, up to Dominic. The American looked into the long wooden crate, and then down at a wounded militant lying next to it. "Ask him if he knows how to turn off the bomb," Caruso said.
Mohammed did, and the man answered. Immediately al Darkur shot the terrorist in the forehead with his rifle. By way of explanation, al Darkur shrugged. "He said no."
The portion of track where Ryan and Rehan found themselves was still on the grounds of the Lah.o.r.e Central Railway Station, and the ground around them was full of the detritus one would find in any urban rail yard; stones and trash and portions of discarded track were strewn all around the two men as they both climbed to their feet after their rough landing from the train that pa.s.sed alongside them. Jack Ryan knelt for a big rock, but the general kicked at him before he could get it. Ryan ducked the blow and then rammed Rehan in the chest with his shoulder, knocking him back to the ground. As the two men fought in the dirt and rocks and trash alongside the moving train, the Pakistani took hold of a small segment of iron rebar, and it whipped through the darkness and missed Ryan"s face by just a few inches.
Jack took a few steps back, away from Rehan, turned to find something to use as a weapon, but Rehan barreled into him from behind. Both men crashed back into the ground. Jack grunted with the impact, his Kevlar vest saving him from a broken jar that would have sliced him open.
Rehan climbed up to his knees, Jack still facedown below him, and the general grabbed a large brick from the trash around him. He lifted it up into the air, over Ryan"s head, and prepared to crush his skull.
Jack bucked hard, throwing the larger man to the ground next to him.
Ryan reached out, ready to grab anything to use as a weapon, and his right hand wrapped around a heavy and rusty railroad spike. He took the spike, leapt to his knees, and then leapt again, diving toward Rehan, who was trying to climb back up off the ground.
In the air, Jack positioned the spike in front of his Kevlar vest, pressing the head of the iron point against the rigid vest, and he held it there with his hand as he landed on his enemy. He slammed down on him with all his weight.
His body and his vest hammered the rusty spike into General Riaz Rehan"s chest.
Jack rolled off the big man and climbed slowly back to his feet.
Rehan sat up, looked down at the iron barb sticking into him, bewilderment on his face.
Weakly, he put a hand on it. He tried to pull it out of him, but he realized he could not, so his hand fell back to his side.
Ryan, his face covered in dirt and smeared blood from the encounter, said, "Nigel Embling sends his regards."