Chapter 24

 

Pentagon

9:45 a.m.

 

Seth McDermott cruised into the conference room waving a copy of Hartford’s hijackers’ demands before Bruce and Sarah even knew that communication had been established.

“They don’t identify themselves,” Seth told the gathered team. “But it sounds strictly al-Qaeda. They’ve identified two dozen prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. They’re demanding their immediate release.”

Bruce Dunn took the piece of paper and quickly scanned the names of the prisoners on the list. He didn’t recognize any. He passed the list to Sarah and turned to one of their assistants.

“Don’t bother with an A to Z, yet. I need to know where they came from and how they got there. I also need to know how long they’ve been there. Anything you need besides that?”

“No,” she said, handing the list to the assistant.

“Then get going,” Bruce snapped. “I want it done ten minutes ago.”

The young officer took off with the list.

“Is that all of it?” Dunn asked Seth.

The young man shook his head. “They’re demanding the transfer of five hundred million dollars to a bank account in Switzerland and safe transport out of the country.”

“Or what?” Sarah asked.

“If their instructions aren’t followed, they intend to detonate the submarine in New York Harbor at 0600 tomorrow morning,” Seth relayed the information. “And if there is any attempt to stop them, they’ll launch every Tomahawk cruise missile on the sub at targets up and down the Eastern seaboard and then self-destruct right there in Long Island Sound.”

“The end result is the same,” Sarah said.

“Worse,” Bruce replied grimly. “We’ll have mass destruction in the cities from the missiles and radiation poisoning that will make much of the region, including New York City, uninhabitable. It’ll make the meltdown at Chernobyl look like an afternoon in the park.”

For a long time, Dunn had felt that the East Coast was way too vulnerable. The entire region was so densely populated and, in the event of an emergency, there was really no place for people to go. Not in a short time frame like the one they were facing now.

Seth wasn’t finished. “You’re right. They say they have the VLS weapons locked in on an unspecified number of nuclear power plants—starting with Waterford, Indian Point, and Three-Mile Island.”

“The question is whether the president will order a strike,” Sarah said, looking at Bruce.

“They’re also claiming that their sonar is fully operational,” Seth added. “They say they have the ability and the will to sink any ship and down any aircraft that directs hostile action against them.”

“Jesus,” one of the team murmured.

Dunn put a checkmark next to the name of Paul Cavallaro before looking around the room. Between those assigned to the job and others who were in and out with information, there were a dozen people in the conference room. But after Seth’s news, you could hear a pin drop. The impact of this could be so far reaching, the fatalities unimaginable.

“What’s the mood next door?” Sarah asked the question that had also been forming in Bruce’s mind.

It was all fairly straightforward, Bruce thought. Does the U.S. lie down and submit, hoping that these hijackers would honor their promise? Or do we take the old approach of acting tough, of charging in and having the situation very literally blow up in our faces.

Seth said. “No one is committing to anything yet. They’re trying to sort out the information before putting together a number of possible responses.”

And most of the senior officers were probably already aboard choppers en route to the White House. Potential plans would be formulated next door, but the final decisions would be made by the man on top, President Hawkins. Well, Bruce thought, by Hawkins and the string-pullers behind the curtain.

“New reports are in from FBI on the pictures from the shipyard’s surveillance cameras,” Sarah announced, looking at her computer screen and the message that had just popped up. “Let’s get back to work people and see if we can figure out who these bastards are.”

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