Ashes - Destiny In The Ashes Part 16

He took one look around and said, "Aw, s.h.i.+t. Look at that mess."

"What?" Jersey asked.

"You got blood all over the pizza box. Now what am I gonna do?" he asked, making no mention of the dead man on the floor or the shots he'd no doubt heard.

Jersey laughed out loud. It seemed nothing fazed teenagers these days.

She bent over and picked up the box. "Rinse it off with the hose out front," she said.

"But then it'll be all wet," he complained, taking the box from her.

"h.e.l.l, tell the customers you got caught in a rainstorm," Jersey offered, pus.h.i.+ng him out the door and shutting it in his face.

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While Madison comforted his wife and children, Jersey got on the phone and called the base, asking to be put through to General Raines.

"Yeah, Jersey, what've you got?" Ben asked, knowing Jersey wouldn't've bothered him with a routine report.

"Madison's wife and children were being held hostage by three men, probably FFA members," she answered.

"What's the current status?" Ben asked.

"The three hostiles were terminated with prejudice," she answered, "so we're gonna need a cleanup crew over here at the colonel's house, and maybe some counseling personnel to be with the family while we debrief him."

"Roger," Ben said. "I'll get the general and his Chief of Intel and some help and we'll be right over. Any ... uh ... injuries among the family?"

"No, just the hostiles," Jersey said, and hung up the phone.

She stepped into the living room and stood before Colonel Madison.

He glanced up at her, fear in his eyes and on his face.

"You'd better make some coffee," Jersey said to the wife, knowing that getting her back to her normal routine would help to keep her from becoming hysterical. "We're fixing to have some company from the base."

The colonel's wife wiped her eyes and nose, straightened155 155.

her shoulders, and smiled wanly at her teenage daughter. "Come on, Janine. You can help me in the kitchen," she said, standing up and taking her daughter by the arm.

Jersey cut her eyes back to the colonel, and he dropped his gaze and stared down at his hands clenched between his knees. "I had to help them," he said, his voice taking on a whining quality as he spoke. "They said they would kill my family."

Jersey shook her head. "Don't tell me your story, mister," she said, absolutely no sympathy in her voice. "Save it for your commander, who's on his way over here."

She hesitated, then couldn't resist adding, "But while you're waiting, you might be thinking up something you can say to the families of the hundreds of men you got killed to save your own family. I'd be interested to hear how you try and justify it myself."

With that, Madison put his hands over his face and began to cry. Jersey, disgusted with his gutless behavior, snapped, "Why don't you go get a couple of sheets or something and put them over the bodies so your son doesn't have to stare at them all night?"

The son was sitting next to his dad, giving Jersey the same insolent, sullen look he'd given their captors a few minutes before.

"Come on, son," Madison said, getting to his feet and heading down the corridor toward the bedrooms.

After the cleanup team had removed the bodies, and while some female psychologists were talking with the wife and kids, Ben, General G.o.ddard, Colonel Joshua Currey, who was his Chief of Intel, and Jersey sat at the kitchen table facing Colonel Ralph Madison.

Ben took the lead in the questioning. "Ralph, we're not going to get into reasons why you did what you did, but we do need to know if you're aware of any of the other officers 156.

on the senior staff who may be giving information to the enemy."

Madison began to speak, but his voice broke and he had to cough and clear his throat. "Uh, not to my knowledge, General Raines, but I wasn't given any information, just asked to give them times and dates and locations of intercept teams that were being sent out."

His face screwed up and tears welled in his eyes. "I swear I didn't know they were going to ambush the teams," he groaned. "I thought they would just tell their people to avoid those areas and our men would come home after finding no terrorists where they thought they were."

"Can you give us any information about who your captors' contacts were?"

Ben asked.Madison shook his head. "No. I gave them what I knew about our schedule of flights, and they would go into the other room and talk on their cell phones for a few minutes. I don't even know the phone numbers they called."

Ben glanced at Josh Currey. "Any chance of tracing those numbers and perhaps getting a location?"

Currey shook his head as he glanced at one of the cell phones he was holding, which had been taken off one of the dead men. "Not a chance,"

he said. "The phones are coded ... that is, the transmissions are scrambled and don't go through the routine channels most normal cell phones use."

Ben smiled slightly. "Yeah, I know. It's the same technology my people are using to keep in touch with the teams. It's pretty much intercept-proof."

"We can't even use the phones' redial b.u.t.ton since it takes a special code to activate the phone," Currey said. "They're completely useless to us."

Ben leaned back in his chair. "Well, I think to make sure no other officers are being blackmailed in a similar fas.h.i.+on, I'd recommend that all of the senior men and their families be moved onto the base until this war is over."

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"That's gonna take some doing," G.o.ddard said.

Ben shrugged. "It's the only way I know to protect your men and your information from coercion. That still won't keep someone from selling information to the enemy, but judicious and frequent use of lie detectors and such should keep that sort of treachery to a minimum."

"What do you suggest we do about Colonel Madison here?" G.o.ddard asked Ben, wondering what the SUSA man would say.

Ben looked at Madison, his face a mask. "That depends on how useful he is to your war effort. I'm not much one for punishment for punishment's sake. The man was put in an impossible situation. If he's good at interpreting intel, then I'd continue to use him, after some suitable slap on the wrist like losing some rank and pay. But if this war lasts as long as I think it will, you're gonna have need of all the good men you can find."

G.o.ddard slowly nodded and looked at Madison. "You think you can pull your s.h.i.+t together and get back to work, Ralph?" he asked. Though his words were harsh, his voice was not unkind and his expression was more one of sympathy than censure.

Madison nodded eagerly. "Yes, sir!" he said.

"Good. Then get in there and pack your family up for a trip to the base."

Ben cleared his throat. "Uh, General, I have a suggestion to make if it's all right."G.o.ddard laughed. "Now, don't go getting shy on me now, Ben," he said.

"Why don't we leave a couple of men here just in case some of the FFA types pay a visit?" he asked. "That way, we might just be able to catch a couple of live ones we can question."

"Good idea, Ben. And I'll have my men in Intel keep these cell phones close in case a call comes in from their boss. Maybe we can fool him enough to set a trap."

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"Won't hurt to give it a shot," Ben agreed, though he knew the higher-ups in the FFA, if they were smart enough to have remained undercover and undetected by the U.S. counterin-telligence agents for this long, were not going to be fooled by any plan as simple as that.

He got up from his chair at the table and smiled at Jersey. "Come on, Jersey. It's time we got back to the base before our Scouts take off on their missions."

"Roger that, sir," Jersey answered.

159.

Achmed Sharif, the leader of Abdullah El Farrar's western contingent of terrorists, stood up in the pa.s.senger seat of his confiscated HumVee as it stood idling on the outskirts of Boise, Idaho. His second in command, Mohamed Omar, was in the driver's seat, and his FFA contact, Billy Wesson, sat in the backseat cradling his AK-47 in his arms.

It was just before dawn and the sky to the east was beginning to lighten with the coming of the sun, clouds on the horizon starting to color with brilliant oranges and yellows signaling the coming arrival of morning.

Scattered along the interstate highway behind the lead HumVee were over thirty trucks containing Sharif's original twenty Arabs and another 150 men and women of the FFA who'd joined up with the caravan as it made its way south and east from the coast.

All of the insurgents were armed with a variety of weapons that had been confiscated from Army depots, National Guard armories, police stations, and even gun shops that had been overrun and taken by the terrorists on their journey across the US.

"What do you suggest as our plan of attack, Mr. Wesson?" Sharif asked as he peered at the buildings of downtown Boise, barely visible in the early morning light.

"We have two objectives here, Achmed," Wesson said, 160.

making Sharif's teeth clench at the overly familiar tone. "The most important is to take control of the airport without doing too much damage to the fields, so we can bring in more men and weapons when we're ready. The second objective is to take out the local authorities, consisting of the police station and the highway patrol headquarters."

"And how do you propose to do this?" Sharif asked, sitting back down onhis seat and turning to look at Wesson over the back of that seat.

"Well," Wesson said, rubbing his chin. "The airport ain't gonna give us no real problem. Other than a few rent-a-cops, they ain't gonna have much security."

"Rent-a-cops?" Sharif asked, not being familiar with the term.

"Yeah, you know. Hired guards from a security company. They'll only be armed with pistols an' maybe a rifle or two. Nothin' we can't handle."

"What about the police and highway patrol?"

"There we're gonna have to be a mite more careful. Both the cops an' the highway patrol offices will have plenty of firepower, but it'll most likely be locked up. If we hit 'em fast an' hard, we should be able to get 'em 'fore they can open up the arms lockers an' get all their men armed with the heavy stuff they have on hand."

Sharif nodded slowly. "So, you would divide up our forces, with the strongest going to the police and highway patrol, and send a smaller unit to take the airport?"

"That's the way I'd handle it if I was in charge," Wesson said.

Sharif smiled slightly. At least the man was finally learning his place, which was in fact very low on the order of importance.

"Good, then that is how we will proceed," Sharif said, turning back around to face the front of the vehicle. He pulled a map of the Boise area out of the glove box of the HumVee and opened it on his lap.

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Mohamed Omar leaned over and s.h.i.+ned a small flashlight onto the map, watching Sharif's finger as he traced out the locations of the airport, the police headquarters, and the offices of the highway patrol.

"Mohamed," Sharif said, "I will command the attack on the highway patrol and you will lead the attack on the police station, since those are the two most dangerous a.s.signments."

"What about the airport, Achmed?" the second in command asked. "Who will take command of that unit?"

Sharif glanced into the backseat. "Mr. Wesson, of course."

"Who, me?" Wesson asked.

"Yes. I want you to take a number of your FFA friends and go to take control of the airport while Mohamed and I attack the other two targets."

Wesson pursed his lips, and then he finally nodded. "Okay, no problem,"

he said.

The attacks on the police and highway patrol buildings were planned to take place between 6:30 and 7 o'clock in the morning. That way they could catch the men arriving for the morning s.h.i.+ft in the building atthe same time as the men leaving the night s.h.i.+ft so as to maximize the number of policemen and highway patrol officers killed.

Achmed Sharif and his men surrounded the highway patrol building, which was set off by itself on the eastern side of town. They'd parked their trucks and cars two blocks away in an empty field so as not to draw attention to their presence.

Once the terrorists were in position, Sharif sent two FFA men carrying satchels loaded with fragmentation grenades to the front and rear entrances, while another made his way to the power box on the outside of the building.

At Sharif's signal, the lone man cut the power to the building, while at the same time the other two men stepped through the doorways.

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As soon as all the lights in the building went dark, the men squatted just inside the doors and began to pull grenades from their satchels.

When the explosions began to ring throughout the building, the terrorists materialized out of the darkness and rushed into the doors, front and back, their AK-47's chattering a song of death and destruction as they spread out through the corridors.

Several of the invaders were wearing night-vision goggles to make it easier for them to pick out their targets.

The screams and yells of the highway patrolmen were punctuated with the explosions of the fragmentation grenades and the harsh guttural roar of the Kalashnikovs as they killed hundreds of patrol officers.

In less than thirty minutes, the highway patrol building was a ma.s.s of roaring flames, sending the acrid scent of burning flesh rising on the morning air.

Sharif lost only four men in the a.s.sault, while every patrol officer on the premises was either killed in the initial a.s.sault or burned to death as the building collapsed in a heap of smoldering ruin.

The police station downtown presented a more difficult problem for Mohamed Omar. It was part of a block of buildings and wasn't set off by itself, so the attack needed to be different from the one on the highway patrol headquarters.

Omar sent men into each of the neighboring buildings and out onto the roofs. From there, they crossed to the roof of police headquarters. It was an easy matter to cut the lock on the roof door and gain access to the stairs leading inside.

Once the roof men were ready, they signaled Omar, and he sent men into the front and back doors simultaneously.

Desk Sergeant Malcolm Watts looked up from his magazine to see a man of Arab extraction walk in the front door carrying what looked like a machine gun in his arms.

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"What the ... ?" Watts exclaimed, reaching for the pistol on his hip that he hadn't drawn in his entire fifteen years on the force.