Atomic Fracture

“Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,” the man said in heavily Arab-accented English.

“Someone’s in the kitchen I know,” McCarter answered immediately. “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.”

“Strummin’ on the old banjo.” The words sounded strange with a Radestani accent.

Hawkins turned to McCarter and said in a low voice, “Did Hal come up with all that?”

The Phoenix Force leader knew he was referring to Harold Brognola, Stony Man Farm’s Director of Sensitive Operations. He nodded.

Hawkins shook his head. “He’ll have these Arabs square-dancing and making moonshine before it’s all over,” he said, again under his breath.

With their identities established, the old Arab stuck his hand out in greeting. “I am Abdul Ali,” he said. “As you can see, I was told you would come.”

McCarter nodded as he shook the man’s hand. “I understand you were once in the Radestani army?” he said.

Abdul Ali’s shoulders straightened slightly. “I was,” he said. “I rose to the rank of major.”

“So what happened?” McCarter asked. “You don’t look old enough to have retired.”

“I did not retire,” said Ali. “I simply resigned. Our government has become corrupt, and the armed forces have followed in that corruption.”

McCarter nodded. The Farm’s cybernetics genius, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, had checked Ali out six ways to Sunday and believed the man was truly on the side of the rebels. So until something pointed him away from that view, McCarter would stick with it. “So you’ve been helping train the rebels?”

“We are trying to train them, and organize them into one central force to overthrow the present government,” said Ali. “There are also Special Forces Americans—Green Berets, I believe you call them—in Ramesh who are working with them, as well. But, of course, we are not publicizing that fact.”

“And Russia and China aren’t shouting it to the rooftops, either,” said McCarter, “but they’re supporting the current regime with money, equipment and advisors.”

“That is correct,” said Ali. “It is the same here as it is in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere. There may no longer be any Soviet Union, but Russia is up to its same old tricks, as I believe you Americans say.” He paused and blew air out between his closed lips, making them flutter. “It is like the Cold War all over again. As if Russia and the U.S. are playing chess on a giant chessboard and Radestan is just one of the pieces.”

The two men had begun shaking hands during the brief discourse and now they dropped their arms to their sides. “How’s the training been going?” McCarter asked.

Ali rolled his eyes. “Forming the rebels into a cohesive unit has not been easy,” he said. “Most of the time I feel like a junior high school principal or an umpire at one of your American Little League baseball games. They do not take to military discipline very well and one bunch—I call them bunches because they are too disorganized to call them anything else—cannot agree with another bunch on anything past the fact that they all want to overthrow the government.”

David McCarter nodded. “Well, we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got,” he said.

“We’ll be leading the PSOF rebels into battle once we meet up with them. So I hope at least some of the training has rubbed off.”

Ali stared at the Phoenix Force leader with his dark brown eyes. “I was told to meet with you—not to take orders from you.” He cleared his throat. “I am used to being in charge myself.”

“Some wires must have been crossed along the chain of command, then,” said McCarter. “But I’m sure we can get things cleared up.” He reached over his shoulder into the backpack he’d worn during the jump. “Hang on,” he said, pulling out a sat phone and tapping the speed-dial number for Stony Man Farm.

A moment later he said, “Sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a small problem defining the chain of command between us and our Radestani contact. Would you mind speaking to Mr. Ali for a moment?” He handed the phone to Ali.

The former Radestani major looked slightly confused as he accepted the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Hello?” he said.

The expression on the Radestani’s face told McCarter that Abdul Ali was being told in no uncertain terms who was in charge and the penalties he would risk if he continued to question the chain of command. McCarter knew that Brognola could even summon the President’s personal involvement if need be. Clearly, from the look on Ali’s face, no such intervention would be necessary.

CHAPTER TWO

It had taken years of hard labor—not just regular hours but often evenings and weekends—for Mani Mussawi to work his way up the ladder at the nuclear storage facility just north of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Even though he had been hired years before the al Qaeda strikes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, there had been some reservations on the part of his supervisors to employ him. After all, there had already been other Islamic extremist terrorist operations against the U.S. abroad, and while political correctness forbade them from openly acknowledging it, Mussawi’s name and the dark brown color of his skin had made them uneasy.

So the former Saudi Arabian subject, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, had been forced to start at the bottom in spite of his impressive MBA from Yale.

Mussawi had begun his career working for the United States’ government in the mail room, sorting the envelopes and packages that came and went each day, then pushing a clumsy cloth-and-aluminum cart around the facility to deliver each piece of correspondence to its rightful recipient. The routine had become monotonous very quickly. But Mani Mussawi had soon realized that he could not have been placed in a better position in which to begin his career.

It afforded him the opportunity to meet each and every one of the workers at the facility and to get to know them on a first-name basis. He had made a point of learning the first names of the lower-echelon employees, and made sure to always address the higher-ups as “Mr.” or “Ms.” or, in the case of the many former military men and women who worked there, by their former titles. Mussawi always had a broad smile on his face as he delivered the mail. The warm facial expression, combined with his frequent inquiries about the workers’ children, parents and other family members had soon endeared him to the staff.

Oh, Mussawi thought as he lifted the can of disinfectant that he kept by his computer screen, there would always be a few of the hundred or so men and women whom he now worked with who would always view him with suspicion.

And there had been a short period right after the Boston Marathon bombing when people had once more taken a step back from him. But eventually they had begun to regard him as one of their own again. And those in the position to continue to promote him year after year had learned to trust him once more. Or at least act as though they did.

Mussawi sprayed his keyboard liberally and began to wipe it down with a clean cloth.

By showing their trust for him, his fellow employees could then sit back in their chairs and think, See, we are not racists. Not at all. We even have a man of Arabic origin working in a position of trust.Which, considering the real reason Mussawi was working where he was, made his mission a hundred times easier.

Mussawi used the cloth to push the button that would start his computer, wondering briefly if anyone might have touched it since he’d left the day before.

As the computer worked its way through boot-up and other programs for which it was preset to utilize, Mussawi caught a glimpse of navy blue out of the corner of his eye. He looked up, smiling the congenial smile that had become second nature to him since he’d begun to work his way into the hearts of the other storage facility employees at the desks crowded into the large underground office. The smile widened further as he recognized Catherine’s blond hair and blue eyes. The woman wore a navy-blue suit, and looked far more professional than she had only a few hours earlier.

Without the suit. In his bed. But she was every bit as sexy, Mani realized, as she set a disposable cup of steaming coffee on his desk.

“I thought you might need a little pick-me-up,” Catherine said right before she took a sip from her own cup. Then, in a much quieter voice, she added, “After all, you expended a lot of energy last night.”

Mussawi stared at the bright red lipstick that had just been transferred from Catherine’s mouth to the white foam cup. In his mind, he pictured her as she’d been last night, squirming under his touch and gyrating to the rhythm of their love-making. “I have a lot of that same energy left,” he whispered back, glancing quickly around to make sure none of the other people at their desks were paying them any attention. “But a little caffeine never hurt.”

The two nuclear storage facility managerial position employees’ eyes met for a moment and Mussawi felt a combination of lust and guilt flow through his veins. Fraternization such as theirs was forbidden between the men and women who worked together in this facility. Which, of course, made an affair such as theirs all the more enticing. They had been flirting for weeks, and the former Saudi knew that the rumors about them had run rampant. But they had not consummated their attraction until last night.

And as they’d lain together afterward, with the moonlight through his bedroom window causing the Anglo woman’s light skin to glow against Mussawi’s darker flesh, she had said, “We’ll have to be extra careful now, my love. We need to distance ourselves from each other at work.”

Mussawi had shaken his head. “That is the worst thing we could do. People have talked about us for weeks now. If we suddenly start ignoring each other, they will know it has finally happened.”

Catherine winked at her new lover, jerking his mind out of the reverie. “Tonight?” she asked softy.

Mussawi nodded. “By all means.” But even as he said the words an uneasiness swept over him. American women were promiscuous. Had he picked up any germs or even some sexually transmitted disease from Catherine? He had insisted on using condoms. Still....

Mussawi sprayed more disinfectant on his hands and rubbed them together. It was too late to worry about that now, he thought as Catherine turned and disappeared behind one of the dozens of dividers that separated the office cubicles from each other.

Mussawi’s computer was now ready and he tapped in the complicated set of codes to access the facility’s inventory lists. He began a second set of carefully encoded entries that would eventually lead him to the whereabouts of several hundred small, easily portable nuclear bombs. “Backpack nukes,” he whispered under his breath, thinking of how very American the nickname was. He was about to access the list when Jason Hilderbrand suddenly appeared at the side of his desk. “Morning, Mani,” the man said. Hilderbrand wore a button-down collared shirt beneath a V-necked sweater-vest, and shining brightly at his throat was a silver Christian cross. “How’s it going, my man?”

Mussawi shook his head slightly. “It will be a boring day, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Inventory, you know.” Without thinking, his hand rose to his neck and he grasped the cross dangling from a silver chain around his own throat. It had been given to him by Hilderbrand soon after he’d expressed an interest in Christianity.

Hilderbrand smiled and Mani could tell that his eyes had dropped to the cross. “And how about the other thing?” he said. “The revival is still going on at my church. Great evangelist they’ve brought in. Patsy and I’d be honored to take you with us tonight.”

Mussawi thought briefly of the hot, stuffy, tent meeting to which Hilderbrand was referring, then of the soft white flesh now hidden beneath Catherine’s navy-blue work suit.

“I am sorry, Jason,” he said. “But I have a previous engagement.”