Day of Wrath

The intensifiers amplified every bit of reflected light in the hotel room — showing detail that would have been shadowed even in normal illumination. She swung toward the window and the gain-control feature cut in. The sunlight showing through a crack in the drapes would have been blinding if it hadn’t been automatically stepped down by the device.

Helen turned her head rapidly first one way and then the other. The Russianmade intensifiers were heavier than the American-designed, third-generation AN PVS-7Bs she’d trained with. She adjusted the field of view, narrowing the angle and providing greater magnification.

At last, satisfied, she slipped them off.

Farrell flipped the lights back on.

Helen stared at the gear piled high on both beds. Their equipment wasn’t as compact or as modern as that supplied to the HRT or the Delta Force — but it should work.

Their real problem wasn’t an equipment shortage — it was the lack of information.

She frowned. Good intelligence was the key to victory. That was how both the HRT and Delta trained. Comprehensive research could eliminate uncertainties. Meticulous planning could compensate for inferior numbers. And exhaustive rehearsal could let a team hit its objective and escape without a scratch.

But what did she and Peter have?

Nothing. No building blueprints. No accurate assessment of the enemy’s strength or security arrangements. Not even any sure way to stop Ibrahim’s plan from unfolding.

Christ, Helen thought, we’re trusting almost entirely to luck.

She fought down the first strands of despair. She had Peter. And Peter had her. And that would have to be good enough.

Berkeley County Airport, Outside Charleston, South Carolina (H MINUS 12)

Dieter Krauss took one last look at the clear, star-studded sky and went back inside the hangar. He mopped at his forehead and neck with a handkerchief. Even this close to midnight, the Southern heat and humidity were almost unbearable.

“Everything is in order?” his senior technician asked.

Krauss nodded abruptly. The warning from Chantilly hadn’t caught him completely off guard. He’d posted half his security detail in concealed positions overlooking the fence around their three hangars.

He would be ready if the American agents who had his employer in such a panic tried to infiltrate the field.

He ran his eyes over the two twin-engine turboprops parked wingtip to wingtip inside this hangar. “The weapons are loaded?”

The senior technician nodded. “They are, sir.”

“And the evacuation plane?”

“Standing by, Herr Krauss. We can be airborne five minutes after the last strike aircraft reaches altitude.”

Krauss nodded. The plan called for them to fly straight out into the Atlantic. Once the bombs went off, their aircraft would make an “emergency divert” landing in the Bahamas, refuel, and continue south.

Once they arrived in Mexico, he and his team would receive their final payments and disperse. The units stationed at other fields would be flying to other destinations in either Mexico or Canada. All were confident that no one would track them — not in the almost unimaginable chaos that would follow the simultaneous detonation of twenty nuclear weapons.

“Herr Krauss!”

The German looked toward the door to his office — a small room in the corner of the hangar. One of his subordinates stood in the door frame, waving him over.

“What is it?” he shouted.

“A signal from Chantilly, sir.”

Krauss crossed the hangar in seconds and tore the fax out of his machine.

WARNING ORDER From: Operations Control To: All Stations Message The Operation proceeds as planned.

Arming codes and target coordinates will follow as per schedule. Stand by.

Krauss nodded to himself. As a final security measure, Reichardt had decreed that none of the teams readying the strike aircraft would be given the arming codes or their target coordinates until an hour before the first planes took off. Once Chantilly released the data, it would take only minutes for his technicians to input each set into the appropriate aircraft.

He read the message over again. It was straightforward and to the point. Perhaps this Arab who had replaced Reichardt would do after all.

The Operation was in its final hours — and now nothing could stop it.

CHAPTER TWENTY DEAD RUN

JUNE 21

_{Outside the Carraco Complex, Chantilly, Virginia (H MINUS 9)}

His face and forehead blackened with camouflage grease paint, Colonel Peter Thorn led the way through a thin patch of forest toward the perimeter fence of Caraco’s Chantilly office complex.

They were coming in from the back side — away from the road — cutting through ground left wild as a buffer between the corporation’s Washington-area facility and the buildings belonging to its nearest neighbor — a prominent consumer electronics firm.

Fifty meters or so from the fence, he glanced over his shoulder.

Helen Gray followed silently in his wake. Only her eyes gleamed in a face daubed with the same black camouflage paint.