Day of Wrath

Besides, orchestrating a high-profile official or media investigation now would probably only Spock Ibrahim into striking ahead of his planned schedule. The same argument ruled out going after the Godfrey Field hangars. The Saudi might not have all twenty bombs in place yet, but even one 150-kiloton nuke going off inside the U.S. would represent an unimaginable catastrophe.

And it was highly likely that the Caraco chief had far more than one of his Russianmade weapons prepped and ready to go.

No, Thorn thought coldly, the only chance they had was to get inside that compound and find some way to stop Ibrahim from launching his attack themselves. He was realistic enough to know just how long the odds were against that outcome.

And so was Farrell.

But the retired general was also canny enough to run through their other alternatives and calculate the even longer odds that one of them might pay off.

Farrell stared back and forth from Thorn’s face to Helen’s, plainly looking for a sign, any sign, that he’d made some impression on them.

Finally, he shook his head angrily. “Oh, shit, Pete.

If I can’t stop you two from trying to kill yourselves, I guess I might as well try to help you do this right. What’s your plan? Hit the antennas on that roof and knock out their communications?”

“No, sir.” Thorn shook his head. “We’d have to take down all their phone and data lines at the same time. and that’s impossible.

Destroying the antennas would only force Ibrahim to launch his planes on full autopilot. So maybe only eighteen or nineteen weapons hit their targets — instead of the full twenty.

That’s not much better.”

“It sure as hell isn’t,” Farrell said. He chewed his lower lip.

“You think you have to go all the way inside?”

Helen answered for him. “I’m afraid so.” She sighed. “There’s got to be a command center or a control center somewhere in that building.

If we take that and hold it, we should be able to do something to stop Ibrahim.”

Farrell snorted. “That’s a hell of a lot of ‘ifs,’ ‘somewheres,’ and ‘somethings,’ Helen.” He looked back at Thorn. “What makes you think taking out this son of a bitch’s headquarters is going to matter?

Those aircraft and weapons will still be out there — loaded and ready to roll.”

“Timing,” Thorn said quietly. “It all comes down to timing.

Whether we go after Ibrahim personally or settle for holding the command center, we have to hit him before he releases the arming codes to his dispersal fields.”

Like their American counterparts, Russian nuclear weapons could not be armed without the proper codes. Ibrahim must have obtained the necessary codes from somebody inside Russia’s Twelfth Main Directorate — the military agency responsible for the manufacture, testing, servicing, and stockpiling of nuclear weapons for the Russian armed forces. But there was no reason for him to turn that information over to his subordinates until almost the very last minute. In fact, there were a great many reasons for him to hold those codes close to his chest as long as possible. Chief among them was the fact that it would prevent any of his people from going off half-cocked — or from absconding with one or more of the enormously valuable weapons. There were a great many dictatorships that would pay millions to get their hands on one usable nuclear bomb.

Farrell nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense.” He glanced at the luminous dial on his watch. “It’s after two A.M. now. You still confident about our estimate for Ibrahim’s attack schedule, Pete?”

“Yes, sir,” Thorn said flatly.

The three of them had hashed that out in more detail on the way back from Godfrey Field. The inside parameter for an attack was the planned transfer of the Caraco executive jet from Dulles to Godfrey—1800 hours on the twentieth. The outside parameter was 1300 hours on the twenty-first — the time the jet was scheduled to depart. That was still a big window, so they’d managed to narrow it down even further.

Ibrahim was unlikely to go for a night attack. Whether his targets were cities or military bases, they were always busier and more crowded in daylight. Since there were always more small private planes in the air after the sun rose, a daylight attack also gave his improvised cruise missiles a far better chance of making it all the way to their targets without being challenged. Given the three-hour time difference across the continental United States, the earliest Ibrahim would strike was somewhere around ten or eleven in the morning — East Coast time — on June 21.

“Which means you want to go in … when?” Farrell asked. Thorn didn’t hesitate. He’d been giving that a lot of thought.

“Around one or two A.M. two days from now — on the twenty-first.”

“That’s cutting it kind of fine, Peter,” Helen warned.