Jack Coughlin - Clean Kill

At the front gate, soldiers were reorganizing and pushing the wrecked Humvee out of the way to resume their mission into Khobz to save the embattled foreign workers. Kyle cut the tape from Junior’s legs, grabbed him and shoved him through the doorway. They stood exposed in the bright lights of the large building.

Two boxy, flat-tracked vehicles squatted in the middle of the building, side by side, each pointed toward one of the rollup doors. Swanson recognized them as variants of the familiar old M-113 armored personnel carriers that the U.S. Army had introduced a half-century earlier, during the Vietnam era. The basic design had been steadily modified and updated to meet different needs and the versatile APC became a standard armored vehicle for many jobs in many armies.

He climbed aboard the nearest one and peeled away a sand-colored tarpaulin that stretched the length of the vehicle. Below it, a pudgy missile was nested in the cargo bay above a web of pipes that made up the hydraulic launch system. Kyle grunted in satisfaction. From his days of hunting mobile SCUD missile launchers in the deserts, he was familiar with this system.

When ready for action, the rear deck of the APC would be lowered to create extra space, then the missile would be raised into position and it could be fired by remote control from the second APC, the command vehicle. This pair matched up with the modern Humvees parked outside. The entire operation was not for air defense at all. It was a shoot-and-scoot missile launching system. They could drive it almost anywhere and target almost anything.

The missile was blunt on its nose, which told Swanson what was in the cargo hold of the other APC. He climbed down from the first, tied Junior to a protruding metal strut, then jumped aboard the second one. A large weatherproof container was secured in the cargo hold and it was stamped with yellow and black circular radiation warnings: a tactical nuclear warhead.

In his mind’s eye, he could envision the little convoy rushing to a mapped firing position, the removal of the warhead from its box, and how it could be married to the missile body and launched in a matter of minutes. Whether the target was an invading Iraqi army or an Israeli city or an American naval battle group, this was a dangerous puppy. Kyle estimated it was relatively low yield, since it was for battlefield use, but still more powerful by itself than the bombs that were dropped on Japan.

Time was sliding away. Once the military relief column from the base reached the foreign compound, the fighting would end quickly and guards would resume their standard duties, including checking the base. The warehouse building would not stay empty forever. He called Homer on his sat phone and told the CIA agent what he needed.

T HE ROUND ARMORED HATCHcover above the driver’s position was folded back and Kyle dropped easily into the compartment on the front left of the M-113 that contained the nuke. Again, he was on familiar ground because he had driven these boxes before. To break the monotony of long hours of down time in Afghanistan, he had occasionally joined some other guys in taking a few old APCs into the empty desert for some totally unauthorized off-road racing.

He adjusted the seat on its post so that he could see through the viewport and also use the infrared periscope. Swanson was not planning to shoot anybody, but did not want to have his head sticking out of the hatch as an easy target. His right foot rested on the large accelerator pedal. He checked the hand brake and the hydraulic service brake pedal. The only major change he could see was that a sort of steering wheel on a yoke had replaced the twin tiller handles to make driving easier. It had an automatic transmission. Sweet.

There was no key, just a switch to turn it on. Kyle clicked it and the big 350-horsepower diesel coughed and grumbled to life. The dials flickered and showed a full tank of diesel, which would give him a range of more than a hundred miles.

Swanson hoisted himself back through the hatch and went over to his prisoner, stripped away the AK-47, and tossed the weapon into the other APC. The young terrorist’s eyes grew wide in fear. “Relax, Junior. You’re free to go,” Kyle said. He removed all of the tape and stuffed it in his pocket so as to leave no sign that the man might be there against his will. “Good luck.”

The prisoner stood perfectly still for a moment, rubbing his wrists as his captor disappeared back inside the big armored vehicle. The hatch slammed and locked. When the engine roared, Junior broke from his trance and ran to retrieve his rifle. He had been left behind as bait.

Swanson slipped the transmission into gear, pressed down hard on the accelerator and the powerful engine roared as the 23,000-pound vehicle lurched into motion. Its rolled aluminum armor made quick work of the closed, thin door and he plunged through, straight out onto the concrete apron. He turned the steering wheel to the left without touching the brakes, as easily as he would have turned a pickup truck. Lining up with the secondary gate, he stomped the accelerator and the APC chewed across the open area. The improved tracks and suspension kept the ride steady and the big machine smashed through the locked gate.

Off to his right, tips of fire still pierced the dark sky as buildings blazed in the foreign compound and Kyle took a side road that led far around the fighting. Within five minutes, the broad tracks of the APC were off the concrete and onto desert sand as he headed into the deep nowhere.

THE WHITE HOUSE

“H E DID WHAT ?” S TEVEHanson, the chief of staff for President Mark Tracy, pushed away from his desk in surprise. After a career in the turbulent world of high-tech start-ups, bitter political campaigns, and a long stint in Washington, Hanson believed he was immune to shock. “Are you bullshitting me, General?”

“Not at all. You heard me right.” Major General Bradley Middleton, the commander of Task Force Trident, was seated in a brown leather chair in front of Hanson’s desk. A small fire burned in the fireplace, giving off a faint, pleasant tinge of smoke. “Gunny Swanson stole a nuke last night.”

“Good Lord. The man never does things by half measures, does he? Just outright stole it?”

“Like a thief in the night, Steve. He broke into the Khobz military facility, found the tactical nuclear warhead mounted in its very own APC beside the missile launcher and drove off with it. With CIA help, a heavy-lift CH-43 helicopter made a rendezvous with him in the desert about twenty klicks outside of town and Swanson took the APC straight on board. The TNW is secure in the weapons bay of the USS Enterprise even as we speak. The armored personnel carrier was dumped overboard.”

“Incredible. The Saudis have no clue?”

Middleton shook his head and ran a hand over his close-cut hair. A big smile spread over the square jaw. “No. That’s the real beauty of it. Swanson also snatched up some terrorist beforehand and abandoned him inside the missile storage building, where he was killed during a shootout with the Saudis. They look at the corpse as proof that the terrorist was part of the group that had also attacked the Khobz oil workers’ compound. He actually was to be part of a rebel RPG team that ambushed a convoy rushing out of the military base. So the obvious conclusion was that his terrorist buddies took the TNW. Is that confusing enough?”

“And Swanson is okay?”

“Yep. The chopper dropped him off on a stretch of beach north of Khobz and he walked back to the CIA safe house. He radioed a report to Major Summers in Kuwait and she forwarded it to me.”