Lighter and lighter materials pelted the field, then came a rain of fine, choking dust. Mixed in were burning bits of green paper, the contents of the black duffel. The meth lab had become a smoking hole in the ground.
Dripping wet, Carl Lyons appeared through the drug-profit confetti, a muddy smudge on the forehead and cheek of his ski mask.
Glancing at the surviving slaves scattering in all directions, Blancanales said, “What do you think, should we call INS to pick them up?”
“Not our job,” Lyons replied. “Besides, these people have been through enough for one day. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The two men quickly dragged the limp bodies out of the blackened, blistered SUV and brushed some of the glass off the leather seats. Lyons then drove it on two flats across the field where Schwarz waited beside the combine. As he rode in the back with the Barrett, Schwarz looked up at the gore sprayed over the headliner and dash and said, “Man, I really made a mess of this ride, didn’t I?”
Lyons flattened the gas pedal and the SUV bounded forward, porpoising over the furrows and slewing through the soft, tilled earth. The designated landing zone was a half mile away from the killzone, just in case the mop-up was incomplete.
It wasn’t.
When Lyons stopped the Lexus, nothing but rims were left on the driver’s side. At once a gray-and-red helicopter popped up out of the north, swinging in very low and very fast. Because of the ongoing federal airspace surveillance, Jack Grimaldi’s landing was touch-and-go. The second the skids struck dirt, Able Team piled in.
No time for small talk.
A half-smoked, unlit cigar clenched in his teeth, Grimaldi vaulted the chopper off the ground with a sickening lurch, then wheeled it around 180 degrees, dropping to fencepost height and really putting the hammer down.
“DEA closing in?” Blancanales asked as he snapped into a safety harness.
“Are you kidding?” the deeply tanned pilot growled over his shoulder. “The Feds’ mouths are still hanging open.”
“Then where’s the goddamn fire?” Lyons asked.
“Two hours away. Just got word from the Farm on the secure line. Shit has hit the fan over on the coast…this one’s big time.”
CHAPTER TWO
Stony Man Farm, Virginia,
9:49 a.m. EDT
Fourteen minutes after the Russian sub ran aground on Ediz Hook, eight minutes after receiving a frantic hot-line call from the White House, five minutes after Jack Grimaldi was notified of the situation via secure scrambled channel, Hal Brognola was still staring at the satellite feed replay on the flat-panel wallscreen. He couldn’t help himself. The other members of the Stony Man team—mission controller Barbara Price, weapons specialist John “Cowboy” Kissinger, and the elite cyber squad of Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, Huntington Wethers, Akira Tokaido and Carmen Delahunt—were all having the same reaction.
Recurring disbelief.
The image on the screen was that shocking.
The bow of the huge black foreign warship jutted out of U.S. waters, its submerged propeller churning up plumes of froth. In the background, not one hundred yards away, stood the little orange Coast Guard air station hangar at the tip of Ediz Hook.
A second flat-panel wallscreen was filled with jerky live-feed video with sound from a circling Coast Guard helicopter. A dense pillar of smoke boiled up from the sub’s sail, drifting lazily south over the little mill town.
Brognola knew that at that moment additional Coast Guard and Navy helicopters from Neah Bay and Whidbey Island, respectively, were en route, as was the emergency-nuclear-response unit from sub base Bangor on Hood Canal. ETA on the ENR team was five more minutes. Meanwhile, scrambled A-6s from Whidbey Naval Air Station were already screaming low over the scene, sealing off the airspace.
As the Coast Guard video zoomed in tight on the sub’s stern and the churning prop, the head Fed couldn’t help but grimace. Nuke-powered boat running full tilt half out of the water, smoke pouring out amidships. Brognola wasn’t the only one who visualized dire consequences.
“For pete’s sake, why doesn’t the crew shut down the engines!” Barbara Price exclaimed.
“It’s got to be hotter than hell in there,” Hunt Wethers said. The African American, former Berkeley cybernetics professor gestured at the screen with the mouthpiece of his unlit pipe and said, “Why hasn’t anyone bailed from the sub?”
“Maybe they can’t get out,” Akira Tokaido suggested. “Exit routes all blocked…”
“Actually, the damage doesn’t look that bad,” Kissinger told the young Japanese American. “Like a lot of the Russian subs, the hull is probably made up of two layers, an inner and outer skin with six feet of crush space between them, so even grounded there might not be a full breach. I’ve never seen that design configuration before, but the ship is similar to the Bars class attack subs—something just over three hundred feet in length. There’s got to be at least thirty or forty crew on board.”
“Is it carrying nukes?” Delahunt asked. The redheaded former FBI agent and divorced mother of three put her finger right on the hot button.
“It’s an SSN, not a ballistic-missile sub,” Kissinger said, “but who knows what armament’s on board.”
“There’s a nuclear reactor, though,” Brognola countered.
“Actually there are probably two pressurized water reactors,” Kissinger corrected him.
“They are the critical issue at this point,” Brognola said. “Something’s already burning inside.”
Kissinger immediately picked up the thread. “If sub’s reactors catch fire,” he said, “their nuclear material will be released into the surrounding air and water. If there are nukes onboard, they won’t detonate from the heat, but their payloads will be dispersed.”
Aaron Kurtzman pivoted his wheelchair to face the others. “With strong tides running all the way to Seattle and Tacoma,” he said gravely, “the scale of the disaster would be unthinkable.”
“And for all intents and purposes, irreparable,” Wethers added.
The last comment was met by silence.
“The ENR unit is going to have to work quickly,” Kissinger said. “They’ve got to get inside the ship, put out the fires and shut down propulsion. After that, they can start a full damage assessment, structural and nuclear. If it turns out the sub can be safely towed off the point, they have to identify and secure all hull breaches by sealing internal bulkhead doors.”
“Do you think they’ll meet resistance from the crew?” Price asked.
“A separate SEAL team will deal with that,” Brognola answered for him. “They’ll handle the initial boarding and pacification, if necessary.”
The scene on the live-feed video suddenly shifted as the Coast Guard chopper wheeled to the north, flying around the edge of the smoke plume. The Hook’s narrow road curved past the Daishowa pulp mill before joining up with the mainland at the head of the bay. Five Port Angeles police cars were parked across the two-lane road with lights flashing. On the far side of the cruisers, the town’s entire complement of fire engines and ambulances sat idling, waiting for an all-clear so they could approach the stranded ship.
Traffic had already started to back up on the road behind the EMTs. It wasn’t just night-shift mill hands who’d deserted their posts for a look, or morning-shift workers waiting around for their day to begin. The resounding impact of the sub’s grounding had awakened