Red Deception Read online

  Decades ago, they would have been easily spotted on radar, intercepted, caught and questioned. Not today. From 1947 to 1994, Limestone was home to Loring Air Force Base, one of the nation’s largest Strategic Air Command bases. Until its closure at the end of the Cold War, it provided immediate eyes and ears against incoming threats. Now the land was part of the Loring Commerce Centre, and nobody saw who or what was coming. Not here or across America, as the first of the rogue strike teams moved into position to prepare for their attack.

  There were more on the way.

  LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  APRIL

  Three men deplaned at Philippines Airlines, Terminal TB. They had sat separately on the nonstop flight from Manila, pleasant to the flight attendants all the way. They talked politely to seat companions, but gave no biographical information to anyone onboard. They looked like many others on the plane—friendly when required, but most of the time connected to headphones or sleeping.

  At US customs they each took different security stations, providing the rehearsed responses: “Thank you. Yes, I’m a graduate student beginning at”—here they filled in different school names—UCLA, USC, and Loyola Marymount University.

  “What department?” one agent inquired.

  “Engineering, sir.”

  The Customs and Border Protection agent smiled. “Engineering….” She looked up, compared the international student against his passport and continued, “Well, good luck.”

  With that, the hardest conversation of the day, the agent stamped the passport and returned it with the student’s visa.

  Engineering, the agent thought. That’s what her son was going into. Perhaps they could… But the Korean student was gone, already hooking up with two other fellow travelers.

  Odd, she considered. Friends, but separate lines. By the time the next passenger stepped up to her, the notion was gone.

  Strike team two was on ground.

  FIFTEEN NAUTICAL MILES EAST OF FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA

  EARLY MAY

  The skipper of the 65-foot Viking Sportfish cut through gentle waves at a comfortable eighteen knots. His luxury three-stateroom vessel normally booked at $4,500 for a full day, but he had no outgoing passengers today. Only five incoming, whom he met twenty-one miles out. The captain, like those he took onboard from a boat sailing out of the Bahamas, was deeply committed to the cause.

  The pickup was surprisingly trouble-free. United States Customs cast a blind eye to pleasure vessels leaving a homeport for international waters if they didn’t make a call at a foreign port. Under that circumstance, it didn’t satisfy the requirements of a foreign departure. It had not, in a legal sense, “departed the United States.”

  And so, a third set of foreign insurgents slipped into the country. And still, there would be more.

  PART ONE

  THE LONG FUSE

  1

  NEVADA

  JUNE

  Summerlin, Nevada. Fifty miles from the key water distribution center in Henderson. Miles from the thirstiest city in America, Las Vegas, but integral to its survival.

  Springs fed the area for 15,000 years, quenching desert Native American tribes and the white settlers who drove them out. In time, with ever-growing need, the healthy flow reduced to a trickle. Now every minute of every day, residents and visitors of the sun-scorched valley relied on water from the Colorado River, piped through a complicated system and accessible at the turn of a tap.

  The journey begins at the southwestern shore of Lake Mead where the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s Intake Station No. 2 draws water through a 20-foot-wide straw from the bottom of the reservoir three miles away.

  The water is propelled through twenty-two powerful vertical pumps– powerful because one gallon of water weighs eight pounds. The water authority’s pumps have to lift nine hundred million gallons every day. No other pumping station in the world can match that capacity and the volume.

  The pumps send the water another thousand feet higher to the River Mountains Water Treatment Plant, eleven miles away in Henderson. There, the untreated water flows into a tunnel carved through mountains. It’s first put through an ozone chamber where electrically zapped bubbles break up microscopic organisms. The water then passes through sodium hypochlorite (or bleach) and then is hit with disinfectant before being sent to a multi-stage filtration process where it pours through anthracite coal and sand. For a single gallon of water, the trip takes four hours from Lake Mead through the plant. It’s stored in three basins, then travels through nine-foot-wide underground pipes at three to five miles per hour. This takes the flow under Interstate 15—the main route southwest to Los Angeles—to a reservoir and pumping station in Las Vegas.

  The entire system makes the water available and safe to drink. But there are any number of stages along the way where this most valuable resource can become vulnerable to a terrorist attack. For the past eighteen months, Richard Harper, a mid-level engineer at the plant, had been tasked with reviewing threat analyses. He felt he knew more than almost anybody, and early on he surmised that a crippling terrorist strike would require much more than opportunity. It would take a deep-rooted supply chain and a backup network, engineering experience, ample funds, and a great deal of patience.

  On this 98-degree day, Richard Harper scanned the data on his computer screens and had a single word on his mind: Summer. One hundred fifteen degree scorching heat was only a month away. And then, the thirstiest city in America was going to get even thirstier.

  2

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  JUNE 5 7:42 AM

  Morning rush hour traffic was basically normal, just typical commuters into Washington with the squeeze occurring at the 14th Street Bridges across the Potomac between Arlington and the district. Three options: one northbound, one southbound, and the busiest route, the bi-directional Rochambeau, named for a French Revolutionary War general who accompanied George Washington in the 1781 Battle of Yorktown.

  More than seventy-five thousand vehicles cross the Interstate 395 bridge every day. Right now, 392 vehicles were bumper-to-bumper for all 2,483.1 feet of the Rochambeau’s span. Two sixteen-foot U-Haul delivery trucks (which had seen better days) were in the slow traffic approaching the bridge. They were roughly twelve car lengths apart, in separate lanes. The drivers crept along, stopping and starting every few feet. It was one of those mornings. Soon it would be another kind of morning.

  NEW YORK CITY

  THE SAME TIME

  Inbound Manhattan traffic was moving surprisingly well in the center tube of the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River. Two self-driving cars entered from Weehawken, New Jersey. Usually it’s hard for autonomous vehicles to recognize lanes in darkened tunnels, but the cars’ Chinese software (developed by Baidu, the nation’s version of Google) worked exceptionally well. For now, the cars sensed the traffic flow and maintained constant speed. For now.

  ST. LOUIS

  THE SAME TIME

  Nathan McGowen had piloted his 10,000 horsepower pusher for more than thirty-three years, most of it along the same stretch of the Mississippi. He knew the river in good weather and bad, day and night. He had an innate sense for how much time it would take to bring his haul to a stop in any conditions. He knew how the wash of another passing barge would affect his steering, or how close he could pass an approaching shipment in the channel.

  There were few Mississippi pilots, if any, better than Nathan McGowen on the mighty river. But none of his experience would serve him today.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The pair of U-Haul trucks headed toward the nation’s capital and onto the Rochambeau, the center vehicular span of the 14th Street Bridges. A morning storm had cleared out, but the roads were still slick. Accidents would happen—most unintentionally, but one now on purpose.

  In the right lane, the lead U-Haul lurched forward and hit the back of a black Nissan with out-of-state plates. The impact caused the Nissan to slam into the car in front of
it, a Chevy Impala. Traffic stopped. Some fifty feet back, the second U-Haul did the same in the left inbound lane. Predictably, commuters began yelling at one another and pointed to the trucks as the cause. But when they approached, the Hauls were both empty.

  The drivers, wearing identical jeans, black mock turtlenecks and baseball caps, were moving fast, weaving around the stopped traffic. They tipped their hats low to evade the bridge surveillance cameras, hopped the railing to the pedestrian sidewalk, and ran toward the Virginia side of the bridge, where two motorcycles awaited them. The first man covered the .22 miles in one minute and five seconds. The second arrived ten seconds later.

  Precisely two minutes after leaving their vehicles, both trucks, each loaded with 30 pounds of C4 in the undercarriage, exploded. The blasts tore a 35-foot hole in the cement. The trucks plummeted into the Potomac along with 16 other cars. The blast zone took out another 37 vehicles, killing nearly 100 commuters in seconds. The shock wave blew windshields and windows out of cars in both directions, seriously injuring scores more. Many on the bridge were instantly blinded.

  NEW YORK CITY

  At the pre-programmed location, the two self-driving cars slowed to a stop. That was at the 4,108-foot mark in the tunnel: the halfway point.

  There were no drivers to get out, only nearby commuters to die. Twenty-three immediately, 44 more injured when they understandably panicked and ran. The tunnel’s ceiling held after the twin blasts; 97 feet of earth protected the tube from the river. But smoke bellowed out from both ends and the twin explosions immediately closed the route. The city’s three other tunnels were shut down within minutes, as were the subway tunnels between Manhattan and New Jersey and Manhattan and Brooklyn.

  ST. LOUIS

  McGowen whistled an old Irish tune, “Whisky in the Jar.” He looked forward to seeing lots of friends at his upcoming retirement party. One more month, the 63-year-old pilot thought; he was still pondering the milestone when a 9mm bullet tore through his head and exited the windowpane of his towboat as it navigated three barges up the Mississippi toward St. Louis. He was the last of his crew of seven to die.

  The assassin, with seafaring skills to match his ability to kill, set the port azimuth stern drive (ASD) to seven knots and a degree course that would bring it directly into the base of the west tower of the four-lane Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge. Finished onboard, the assassin, a man of medium build with dark hair, was met by an accomplice on a Jet Ski a quarter-mile from the target. They sped away, as had three other accomplices. The collision alone would not do enough damage to the bridge, named for the great St. Louis baseball player, but the explosives strategically placed on the barges ten minutes ago would.

  Two minutes later, the ASD brought the lead oil barge to a collision course with the bridge support, whereupon the first explosion sent a fireball upwards that instantly incinerated 62 morning commuters. The second and third explosions succeeded in dumping more than 3,600 tons of oil in the channel, which caught fire and in turn consumed all other craft within 500 yards.

  Billowing black smoke could be seen for miles.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Commuters fled the bridge in both directions. Many were on their phones, calling loved ones or their offices in the District or Virginia. Others just ran for their lives. Some stopped to help victims—one of them was Dan Reilly.

  Reilly was on his way into D.C. in the backseat of a taxi. He’d flown into Reagan National from his Chicago corporate headquarters at Kensington Royal Hotels. He had a meeting scheduled on the Hill that clearly wasn’t going to happen now. Not today—probably not for many days. The fact that he was in the backseat of the taxi and behind an armored car probably saved his life and his driver’s.

  Reilly opened the car door, got out, and quickly assessed the situation. Disastrous, he reasoned. Definitely an attack. He’d experienced it before. Others hadn’t, so he helped those he could. First, a woman struggling to get her infant out of a back-facing car seat. Next, a disoriented older couple, a pregnant woman, two executives carpooling who clung onto each other, and a group of students on their way to D.C. on a school tour.

  He found a middle-aged woman unresponsive in a car. Her doors were locked. Reilly grabbed a small slab of cement that had been blown forward in the explosion. He smashed the driver’s side window, reached in, unhooked the seatbelt, and pulled her out. Her breathing was labored. She needed immediate medical help. Reilly looked around. There were dozens of others slumped over their wheels, on the ground in pain, or scrambling to get to safety.

  Some automatically shot cell phone video over their shoulders as they escaped. Reilly ignored them. And because Washington was Washington, there were uniformed military personnel commuting to and from the Pentagon. They quickly volunteered, and one came to the aid of the woman Reilly had just extracted.

  “She needs attention. Might be a heart attack,” Reilly said.

  “I’ll check, I’m a medic. See who else needs help.”

  Reilly went from car to car in his immediate area. He helped those he could get to. They included people in shock who were otherwise unharmed, but so disoriented they walked toward the blast zone. Reilly turned them around, pointed the way off the bridge, and had them hold hands to make their fleeing a purposeful group activity. Reilly tried to get closer to the twisted and smoldering vehicles in the blast zone, but the intense heat and toxic smoke that came in rolling waves prevented him from making real ground. Besides, he couldn’t tell if the bridge section would hold.

  He stood and took stock of what to do next. The answer came to him. Run!

  A truck, just feet from the spreading fire, was leaking gas. It was flowing in his direction. In a matter of seconds another fifty feet of the bridge would be engulfed in flames. Reilly caught up with the group he had walking hand-in-hand. He took the lead and shouted, “Move, fast! Now!”

  Dan Reilly was in complete crisis mode now. There was no time for calm. He used all the authority in his voice and body language to get people through the chaos. The sounds, the smells, and the sight took him back to other locales, other attacks—all too recently, a terrorist attack in Tokyo, and years before that, Afghanistan.

  Now, as President of Kensington Royal Hotels’ international division and the force behind the creation of the company’s global threat assessment program, known as Red Hotel, Reilly relied on instinct. He was, after all, Army-trained and State Department-tempered. Experience drove the dark-haired, six foot, 180-pound corporate executive in this new moment of crisis.

  “Faster!” he yelled.

  They only had seconds before the gasoline explosion that would undoubtedly trigger others. He guided people past ringing cell phones that would never be answered, past body parts, past debris. Past death.

  “Keep going. Don’t look back! Faster!”

  The group had swelled. Now everyone was running for their lives.

  And then it came. The boom and the heat flash at the same time.

  Reilly and the servicemen and women carried those who couldn’t walk. Fifty feet more. Forty, he said to himself. A few more steps.

  Once on solid ground, Reilly, like the others, collapsed and took in the scene: Billowing gaseous smoke, one car after another engulfed in flames, loud popping and louder explosions. And approaching overhead, Coast Guard rescue helicopters, while fireboats headed midstream from the southern shore.

  Dan Reilly had done enough. Others would do better.

  He rose and began walking away, but spotted the corporal who had administered to the woman. The young enlisted man shook his head in sorrow.

  “She didn’t make it,” he said. “But a lot of other people did.”

  Reilly simply nodded and patted the soldier on the back. He walked toward the line of oncoming emergency vehicles, military and civilian, their sirens screaming. He wasn’t sure how he’d get anywhere, or for that matter where he should go. But he had a friend to call in cases like this, a friend who would surely be into what
the hell just happened.

  He was surprised when he got a clear cell line out. He figured they’d either be clogged, or Homeland Security would have had the towers silenced. Crisis protocol usually dictated that cellular communication be cut to prevent potential wireless signals from triggering explosive devices. But for now, they were on.

  How much time had actually gone by? Reilly wondered. It felt like an hour since the blasts. Reilly looked at his watch, and for the first time saw that his arm was bloody—and that it had been just seven minutes since he last checked his watch in the cab.

  “Hello.”

  “Bob, it’s Reilly.”

  “Can’t talk now, buddy. Busy,” came the reply. “Suppose you heard.”

  “Heard?” Reilly helped a woman who had fallen. “I’m there!” Bob Heath gasped.

  “There? 14th Street Bridge, there?”

  “Yes. Awful.” For the next minute Reilly described the scene, minimizing his own efforts.

  “Jesus Christ, are you okay?” his friend asked.

  “Yeah.” He looked at his hands. The blood was not his. He felt his head, touched his chest: no injuries. His grey-green suit was a mess, his shoes were covered in soot, but he was fine.

  “This was well-executed,” Reilly noted.

  “Timed with the others,” Heath replied.

  “What others?”

  “You don’t know? Minutes apart, attacks in New York and St. Louis. Each at major transportation choke points.” Bob explained more.