After a dinner of Dungeness crab cakes, fettuccine with Alfredo sauce and a dessert of baked pears, Senator Hazelton invited Secretary Rallings and Drake to join him on the terrace for cognac and a moment of conversation.
While they enjoyed their Remy Martin VSOP, Drake excused himself. He stepped aside and called Mike with a small handheld radio from his jacket pocket. Mike and the rest of the team were using headsets and commo packs. He hadn’t wanted to upset dinner by showing up wearing the same special ops gear.
“Delta Two, how are things out there?” he asked.
“Quiet summer night. Nice place to live. Three is lakeside near the boathouse, Four and Five are on the perimeters, and Six is out front. I’m to your left in the bushes below the terrace. The State Police aren’t exactly happy we’re here, but what the hell, it isn’t their spread. How was dinner?”
“Okay, if you like crab cakes, fettucini Alfredo and baked pears in chocolate sauce. You’ll get yours later. The men are enjoying a cognac. When Secretary Rallings leaves, we’re out of here. Keep me posted.”
“Roger that, Delta One.”
Drake rejoined the men on the terrace and turned to look at the lights from a couple of boats still out on the lake. The first boat he noticed was a large powerboat, forty feet or longer, motoring slowly to minimize its wake and not disturb the party on the aft deck. It was headed east, he saw, with its green starboard lights showing.
The second boat was smaller and closer to shore. Drake could tell by the rumble of its inboard engine that it was either an old classic or one of the newer ski boats with a large V8 engine. Nothing on the water sounded quite as good, at least to his ears. He watched the second boat for another minute and then stepped away to call Mike.
“Two, what’s Three say about the boat headed our way showing green and red? Most boats stay out in the middle at night. Looks like this one’s headed our way. Can he see who’s aboard?”
“Three, can you tell who’s aboard the boat headed our way?” Mike asked.
“Two, it just slowed, and it’s barely making wake. I make five men in the boat. They don’t seem to be talking much. This isn’t a party boat. Might be our guys.”
“One, you copy? Might want to get the guests inside. I’ll coordinate until you return.”
“Roger Two, you have control. Be back in a minute,” Drake answered. He moved quickly in front of the two men and turned them toward the house.
“I need you to go inside right now. Senator, take Mom with you to the safe room,” Drake ordered, motioning to the Senator’s bodyguard stationed at the rear door.
“We have a threat headed our way. Please get everyone down to the safe room, and don’t leave them until I come for you, understood?”
The former State Trooper looked to the Senator for directions, where he received a nodded agreement, and started to hustle the men inside.
Senator Hazelton pulled away and faced Drake.
“Are they seriously trying again? Here, my home?” he asked with his jaws clenched and lips pulled tight.
“Leave the lights on in the house when you go down. I don’t want them to know they’ve been spotted,” Drake said.
Drake walked quickly down the steps from the terrace to the ground below and stepped into the shadows.
“Two, One here. What’d you see?” Drake asked and plugged an earpiece into his handheld radio.
“One, the boat’s fifteen yards off the end of the Senator’s dock. They’ve shut off their engine and running lights. Unless they ran out of gas at the wrong place, wrong time, and the battery died as well, they’re our guys,” Mike answered.
“Two, make sure we’re right. We’re civilian security, we have to let them declare hostile intent before we respond. When they get out of the boat, I want Three to ID what they’re carrying. If they’re armed and head our way, we’ll use flash bangs when they’re off the dock. If they come up firing, defend yourselves. Everyone clear on that?”
“One, Two here. Clear.”
“One, Three here. Clear.”
“One, Four here. Clear.”
“One, Five here. Clear.”
“One, Six here. Clear.”
“All right, gentlemen, let’s see what they have. Three, where are they?”
“One, end of the dock. Guy driving the boat doesn’t steer so well without power. He hit it pretty hard. Two guys are out and holding the boat, two more are getting out. Guy in the back looks like he’s staying in the boat.”
They watched as four men gathered on the dock and then walked towards them.
“One, Three here. We have four armed men headed our way. Night vision shows four M4s, one with a grenade launcher. Everyone has a holstered pistol. Dark T-shirts, body armor and balaclavas. They’re not here to borrow gas for their boat.”
“Roger that, Three. When they get twenty yards beyond Three’s position, Four and Five throw flash bangs on my count,” Drake said. He watched the four men walk toward him in a well-rehearsed V formation. In another ten seconds, we’ll find out how rehearsed they are, he thought.
“Four and Five, on my count. Five, four, three, two, one.”
Drake watched his men on the left and right throw their flash bangs at the feet of the advancing formation. The new fuel-air devices forced particles of aluminum powder out through small holes in the bottom of the plastic canisters when they detonated. An acoustic pulse and blinding flash of light shocked the still night.
The four men, however, did know what they were doing. Somehow, the man in the boat saw what Mike’s men were about to do and yelled, “flash bang.” The four men dropped to their knees. With their ears covered and eyes closed, they waited until they regained their bearings. Then they started firing wildly to the left and right, where they suspected the flash bangs had come from.
“Three, what happened?” Drake asked as the smoke was clearing.
“The guy in the boat yelled “flash bang” just before the grenades exploded. He’s drifting back out into the lake. Want me to take him out?”
“No, but can you identify the boat?”
Drake watched as the men stood and walked forward, firing their weapons on full automatic. They walked four abreast, like it was the gunfight at the OK Corral.
This has gone far enough, Drake decided.
“Four and Five, take the men on the flanks. Mike and I will take the middle.”
While Drake was still acquiring his target, the head of the terrorist on the left exploded in a faint red mist. The terrorist on the right dropped at the same time. Neither of the two men left standing slowed or turned. He heard Mike fire a second before he fired, and the last two terrorists fell.
“This is One, report,” Drake ordered.
Each man quickly signaled they were all right.
“Three, where’s the boat driver?”
“One, he drifted out when the shooting started. He’s fifty yards out, just sitting there.”
“Could you see any identification on the boat?” Drake asked.
“Only thing I could make out was the name Pre-Owned on the stern,” Three answered.
“What’s he doing now?”
“One, he’s raising what looks like an RPG. Holy shit, he’s aiming right at you!”
In the second it took to focus on the boat, Drake recognized the flash and the whitish blue-gray smoke of a shoulder-fired grenade launcher. He dove to the ground next to the wall of the terrace, and hoped Mike had done the same.
The grenade warhead exploded through the door the State Trooper had just closed minutes before. It formed an aerosol cloud in the Senator’s house that ignited in a powerful fireball. The fuel-air explosive, or thermobaric weapon, consumed all the oxygen inside, and the lack of oxygen, in turn, created an enormous overpressure, or shock wave. The combination acted like a small, tactical nuclear weapon, without the residual radiation.
In microseconds, the pressure of the explosion flattened the first floor of the Senator’s home, collapsing the structure above it, traveling outwards to sheer off the trees near the house.
Drake was stunned and covered with debris-the force of the explosion had vectored outward over his head. He twisted to look at the burning structure behind him, and prayed that everyone inside was protected in the basement safe room.
“Mike, you all right?” he shouted.
After a long moment, Drake heard a shaken answer.
“Think so. Hit the deck when I heard RPG. May have a concussion. Don’t know about the rest of the guys.”
“Mike, I’ve got to see if they’re safe inside. You okay to check on the team?” he asked, knocking pieces of debris from his shoulders and head.
“I think so. Go.”
Drake ran to the east side of the burning rubble that had been a home until minutes ago. He tore his way through fallen and burning flooring to the door into the basement, and kicked away blast debris that had fallen against it. The explosion had collapsed most of the flooring above the stairs leading down to the basement, but the reinforced walls and ceiling of the basement itself hadn’t buckled.
Drake ran down the stairs to the door of the safe room and pounded on it three times.
“Senator, it’s Adam. Are you all right?”
“This is Agent Miller, Secret Service. Tell me something about the Senator tonight that he can verify before I open this door.”
“Well, I had a glass of Ken Wright pinot noir with dinner.”
The door opened, and the State Trooper asked, “What the hell happened?”
“They hit us with a thermobaric grenade. Is everyone safe?”
Drake could see the Senator and his mother-in-law were pale and shaken. The Secretary was standing beside them with a grim look on his face. The country had been lucky since 9/11, due to a lot of hard work and dedication, but the look on the Secretary’s face acknowledged things had just taken a turn for the worse.
“We’re fine,” the State Trooper said. “Is it safe to come out?”
“What’s left of the house is burning above, but you might be able to bring them out through the basement and up those stairs over there to the garage. If it’s blocked, keep them here and get someone to come down the way I did to help you.”
Drake ran upstairs and outside to find Mike’s team gathered around him. State Troopers were on their radios, calling for assistance.
“Mike, put somebody in charge and, if you’re okay, come with me. Defer all questions to the Senator until we get back. I know where Kaamil’s headed.”