Ted Bell - Spy

It was succeeding. Top knew, because the hand of Allah was with him, lifting him toward the sun. Top had seen the future. All was going according to Destiny. His destiny. His alone.

Various monitors depicted units of the American National Guard units now manning the borderlines of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. Too little, too late, in the eyes of Top and Khan, this vain effort to suppress the violent eruptions along those fragile 2,000 miles.

It was only a feint, at any rate. Khan had predicted a full-blown war with Mexico over the border. For all they knew, it still might happen. Two nations, one border. Always an opportunity. For two years, Khan had held secret meetings with the Mexicans. These had been arranged with the help of a certain German Ambassador, a man named Zimmermann, now dead. Zimmermann, accompanied by certain high-ranking members of the government in Mexico City had traveled to Sao Paolo and brokered a deal with Khan.

The Mexicans’ motives were clear. It wasn’t the spread of Islam that ignited them. Or drew them into Khan’s coterie. With the exception of the German, it wasn’t even money. It was the chance to avenge the abuse and perfidy suffered at the hands of their northern neighbor. And to reclaim precious northern territories seized by the Yankees in the bitter U.S.-Mexican War of 1848.

The movement of the few remaining American reserves to hotspots along the southern border meant major cities, including Washington, DC, were woefully exposed to the impending attack. When the time came for the second wave of his planned attacks, there would be plenty of fireworks in Chicago, New York, Boston. But the Big Bang, as Top gleefully dubbed his first strike, was reserved for the sacred capital.

The only real misfortune thus far was the loss of the Muammar Massaouri family, three of the faithful, devoted sleeper comrades, who seemed to have been sacrificed at the farm in Virginia. The Massaouris had missed a scheduled sat com call with the UCB. This was to be an internet data burst, subsequent to the successful launch of the unmanned vehicle. The message never came. All attempts to contact them had failed. It was assumed Dr. Massaouri and his family had been killed.

To their everlasting glory, the Massaouris had successfully launched the unmanned underwater weapon. Even now, Bedouin was en route to the target thirty miles north of Morning Glory Farm. The video images streaming from the submarine’s nose camera were murky and dark but of no crucial importance.

The sophisticated UUV, an unmanned underwater vehicle developed over the years by Dr. Khan for littoral area incursions, was transporting the 150-kiloton nuclear weapon. After undergoing months of successful sea trials here on the Igapo River, Bedouin had been preprogrammed with GPS waypoints for navigating the Potomac en route to her destination in Washington. Every hour, a needle-thin antenna broke the surface for a data burst to the com sat traveling far overhead.

So far, God willing, the little torpedo-shaped craft was performing perfectly.

She weighed just less than two tons. She was powered by a large bank of lithium batteries, quiet and undetectable. In the busy river, the noise of Bedouin’s propulsion system would also be unnoticeable. The underwater robot’s forward-looking radar allowed it to make constant course corrections to avoid obstacles or other craft in its path. At its current speed, twenty-two knots, it would reach the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC, well ahead of schedule. The thick lead shield inside the hull would prevent its detection by any nuclear-sensitive probes along the way.

Once inside the basin, Bedouin would remain there, inert and immobile, buried in the mud a few thousand yards from the White House until the appointed hour.

The Appointed Hour. It was drawing nigh. Top sighed, and gazed at the over-sized digital clock above the monitor bank. It continued to roll down inexorably to the zero hour, now a thousand minutes away. He was thinking in minutes now. Even seconds. And every one counted.

“Where is Hawke?” he shouted to one of the technicians manning the perimeter defense system. “Get the map up on the screen.”

“The blinking orange dot is Hawke’s vessel,” Dr. Khan pointed out.

“I don’t want a fucking dot, I want a live picture.”

Khan looked at him, but held his tongue. They had come a long way together. It was no time to let the man’s intemperate behavior distract him from his destiny. Any blasphemy could be tolerated now. In a few hours, it would be his finger on the button.

A technician said, “We have no drone on him at this moment, sir.”

“Why not?”

“The enemy shot it down, sir. A missile.”

Silence, save the electronic hum of the equipment, settled over the room.

“He has missiles on this fucking speedboat? Why was I not informed?” Top asked, trying to keep his voice low and controlled.

The short technician with the bushy beard was visibly trembling now. “It only just happened, sir. A few minutes ago. I thought you’d been told.”

Top waved him away. “Assuming the vessel maintains current speed, when does the enemy enter the mined portion of the river?”

“Two hours, perhaps less.”

“Track his speed. Any change, let me know.”

Suddenly, Khan’s hand was on his shoulder and his lips were close to his ear. “I think you should take him out with attack drones,” Khan said softly, eyes up on the screen. “Take him out now, my brother, and be done with him.”

Top’s eyes flashed. “Did you not hear what this man just said? He’s got a missile defense system! The acoustic mines will protect us from this mosquito. Nothing could survive that stretch of water.”

“With all due respect, my dear brother, I imagine we have more drones than he has missiles. His is not a warship, after all.”

“You imagine! What if you’re wrong? What then? I’m left defenseless.”

“Muhammad, calm yourself. We’ve been at this too long without sleep. I’m going to rest in my quarters until the final hour approaches. Please let me know should anything develop that requires my immediate attention.”

Without another word, the robed man strode toward the elevator at the back of the darkened room. Top watched him leave with some satisfaction. He had no need of him now. Destiny was in his hands alone.

“Any word from the Xucurus?” Top asked the room.

“Nothing yet,” a controller murmured, afraid to look up.

Before reaching the small elevator, Khan paused at the last row of flat-screen monitor workstations. Each workstation was a semi-enclosed pod and comprised a small, virtual-reality environment for the controllers. The key components were screens displaying live streaming video from the trailer trucks en route to Washington.

Once the trucks resurfaced inside the cartel-owned garage at Gunbarrel, Texas, they had been driven northeast by diverse routes to the American capital. Live video superimposed upon 3-D situation maps using satellite photos, made the controllers work possible. GPS coordinates and a multidirectional live video feed from each vehicle were fed to a COMS satellite positioned over the East Coast of the North American continent.

Inside each monitor pod sat a controller and a sensor operator. The man on the left actually drove the vehicle; while the other monitored every kind of road, traffic, and weather condition. He ensured all traffic laws were strictly obeyed. In combat, he would also provide constant battleground feedback, giving second-by-second direction to the controller. These were the men who actually operated the remote machines, using a large joystick resembling something in an arcade.

“I’d mind your trucks if I were you, Muhammad,” Khan said, just loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room. “One of them appears to be lost.”