Perilous Cargo

Not far from the warehouse, he walked silently over the small stone footbridge that crossed the Bagmati River. Farther upstream, temples lined the banks of the waterway the Hindus and Buddhists believed was holy, but the man was not interested in the spiritual potential of the water—only the rippling, gurgling sound that helped hide his movements. The moonless sky ensured there were plenty of shadows, and the late hour left the streets empty and quiet.

Kathmandu was unlike any other city in the world. It was a city of contradictions—wealthy tourists mingled with poor-by-choice monks and hotels catering to the rich found near ancient shrines. Nepal was a strange place, and Kathmandu, a crossroads of religion, money, crime and constantly shifting political powers, was the hub. He liked it, though he was glad that this night would see him on his way home.

With no fear of being seen by late-night tourists in the remote district, he found the stone shrine he’d been seeking, reached inside to find the switch and slid the hidden panel aside. Cobwebs and dirt covered the handle, but he wiggled it back and forth, eventually pulling it free of its lock. Below the shrine, the opening for the staircase came free, revealing a steeply twisting set of stone stairs. He stepped inside and used another mechanism to close the panel behind him.

The man ignored the torch holders and slipped his night-vision monocle into place. The corridor hadn’t been used in years and he chuckled to himself. Some secrets were just forgotten, waiting to be exposed. He knew many of them, in cities and countries far and near. In fact, some might say he was a walking, talking secret himself.

The descent ended and a long corridor stretched ahead of him. He knew the hallway extended beneath a small market square, then a fenced parking area and, eventually, the warehouse. People walked over this passage every day, ignorant of its existence. Part of it was caved in, but he faced nothing more difficult than scrambling over a dirt mound. He paused, caught his breath and then climbed another set of stone stairs that ended in a sealed door above his head. This one opened onto the warehouse floor.

The escape tunnel had originally been dug by monks decades before inside a small temple. Later, the temple had been torn down and the warehouse had been built in its place. During the fall of the USSR, some factions within Russia had needed a facility and thus purchased it for their own use.

The man peered at the door, then found the small niche that would, hopefully, open it after all these years of disuse. He needed all of this to work. And it did. The door opened a crack, enough for him to pull himself up and inside a small office in the warehouse itself. So far, he’d triggered no alarms.

He slipped in, then snuck through the open office door and moved along the wall toward an interior sentry, half-asleep at his post. The man pulled a knife out of his boot. His movements were so swift the sentry had no time to shout as the man clasped a hand over his mouth and shoved the tip of the blade into his carotid artery. He lowered the guard to the ground as he grabbed his ID. After edging along the wall to the main entrance, the man swiped the guard’s badge along the electronic keypad and watched the lights flash as the bay door began to open.

He sprinted back toward the massive platform truck with the nuclear warhead attached and began to climb into the cab. Shots rang out and ricocheted off the door. He turned, drawing his own weapon, and fired back, knocking the assailant down in one shot. There was no time for playing around.

He got behind the wheel and started the truck. The warehouse doorway was beginning to fill with Russian soldiers, most of them milling around in confusion. He reached out the window and opened fire, scattering the sentries as they looked for cover. He shifted up another gear and drove through the door before they could lower it again.

He didn’t bother to head for the gate, just aimed for the nearest section of chain-link fence and tore through it. The bullets bouncing off the truck didn’t bother him. As soon as he cleared the facility he checked his mirrors. No one was in pursuit. The man smiled, knowing the chaos he’d caused would keep them busy. He shifted into high gear and headed for the Friendship Highway.

Everything would be different now. It was only a matter of time.

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_ec578c0c-68a6-511a-b7ec-853ec65ea416)

As Hal Brognola, the director of the Sensitive Operations Group based at Stony Man Farm, walked down the silent hallway, he knew that whatever was waiting for him in the Situation Room probably wasn’t something he wanted to hear. He sighed and stopped in front of the door, where a silent Marine guard waited. Brognola removed his Justice Department ID card, held it up for the Marine’s brief inspection, then swiped it through the reader. The Marine opened the door for him, then stepped aside smartly. “Good evening, sir,” he said.

“Want to bet?” Brognola growled under his breath.

Stony Man Farm was a covert operations base whose existence was known by a very few and whose director answered directly to the President. Its missions were varied, ranging from domestic anticrime and terrorism to foreign intelligence operations—anything that the United States couldn’t officially be seen—or get caught—doing. Brognola had been in charge for a long time, which perhaps explained why he went through so many antacids in a given day and certainly explained why he knew that a call from the White House at two in the morning wasn’t good news.

Inside the Situation Room he’d expected to find a large assortment of military brass, but he was startled to see only one man: the President himself. At the moment, his back was to Brognola as he watched some spy satellite footage playing on one of the many video screens in the room. He turned when the door shut.

“Hal,” he said, pausing the feed. “Thank you for coming in.”

“Of course, Mr. President,” he said. The two men shook hands. “What’s the situation?”

The President laughed. “You always come straight to the point, Hal. It’s one of the reasons I like you.”

“You don’t call me at this hour if there isn’t a situation, sir. Usually a bad one.”

“True enough, and this one is more precarious than I’d like, Hal, which is why the only people here at the moment are the two of us. If the Joint Chiefs heard about this, we’d have no way to contain it. As it is, I’ve had to seal everything with ‘Presidential Eyes Only,’ and anyone else who’s seen it has been sent on a long vacation with direct orders to keep their mouths shut.”

“That doesn’t sound precarious, Mr. President,” Brognola said carefully. “That sounds like an end-of-the-world kind of problem.”

“The truth is, Hal, we could be looking at a major disaster, but I think—with your help—we might be able to get on top of it.” He turned and restarted the video feed at the beginning. “This is a clip from one of our satellites as it passed over Kathmandu about twelve hours ago. Routine surveillance, so the angle isn’t very precise. The analyst who saw this come through cleaned it up and damn near wet himself.”

Brognola didn’t speak but took up a position next to the President and watched the screen. The blurred images solidified, showing a mobile launching platform, complete with a nuclear warhead and rocket, moving away from a large building. Guards were shooting at the vehicle, but it was heavily armored and kept right on going, hitting the road and then disappearing from the frame. The data analyst was clearly on his game because the next sequence showed the truck on a deserted highway, heading away from the city. Then it was lost again.

“Did he do any still image enhancement?” Brognola asked.

The President nodded and typed in the commands, bringing up the slides. The side of the rocket was in shadow, but the markings were unmistakable. They were Russian.

Brognola nodded thoughtfully, then took a seat at the conference table. After the Cold War, the Soviets had either lost or hidden a large number of nuclear weapons, though which one this represented was impossible to say. “I was right, Mr. President,” he said. “Precarious was an understatement. Who else knows about this?”

“The director and deputy director of the CIA, the Vice President, and you,” he said. “Plus the soon-to-be-vacationing analyst.”

Brognola cleared his throat. “Don’t let the analyst go anywhere,” he advised. “In fact, have him brought in on some pretense. Arrange for him to be held until this is over.”

“You’re afraid he’ll talk?”

“If he hasn’t already, yes, I am. Let’s find out for sure if he’s made any calls or spoken to anyone since his debrief, and hold anyone he’s even said good-night to. He knows there’s a nuclear missile roaming around in Nepal or Tibet. I’d suggest we take him out of circulation immediately.”

The President glanced at his watch. “He’s still in with the deputy director, going over it all one more time. Give me a moment.” He picked up a phone, dialed, then spoke softly into the receiver. “It’s done,” he said. “They’ll keep him at Langley for the time being.”

“Good. Now, who else knows?”

“I already told you, Hal—”

“Excuse me, sir, I mean which countries?”

“Well, we’ve got to assume the Russians know—it’s their damn missile that’s been stolen.”

“Did we have any indication that they were housing arms in Kathmandu?”

“There were plenty of rumors at the end of the Cold War, of course, but that’s all they were at the time—rumors. The intelligence coming out of the former Soviet Republic was terrible. The CIA didn’t have anything concrete or we’d have moved on it long ago.”

“But the CIA had something?”

“One field agent offered up an unconfirmed report, but it was little more than something he’d heard.”

“Based on what we’re seeing here, I’d say it’s been confirmed,” Brognola said.

The President stood and paced while Brognola gathered his thoughts.

“Sir, if China finds out...” he started.

“Then any hope we have for Tibet is lost,” he finished. “Worse, if that damn nuke gets launched into China...”

“Then we could be looking at World War III.”

“Exactly,” the President said. “That seems like a pretty good reason to kick you out of bed, wouldn’t you agree?”

“No complaints, Mr. President.”

“All right, so what do you recommend?” he asked.

“Have we had any contact with the thief? Any ransom or other demands?”