Collateral Damage - Marc Cerasini [59]
"No wonder it was so quiet in the L.A. office," Morris quipped.
"Are you tracking that truck now, Morris?"
"I am," Morris replied. "After the blast, I positioned a satellite over that section of Central Pennsylvania, and homed in on the bloody bastards."
Anticipating Jack's next request, Morris called up the location of the training school on his monitor. He whistled.
"Good instincts, Jack-o. That truck is making a beeline for the SOTTS. It should arrive in half an hour or so."
"Alert the school, warn them what they're up against. And see if you can reach Ryan personally."
"I'm on it, Jack," Morris replied. His fingers flew across the keyboard as he entered the codes to send out the dispatch.
In Kurmastan, Jack felt the heat from the smoldering ruins. "They've struck first," he said softly. "Before we could stop them."
"We'll get them," Morris insisted. "We're using highway surveillance cameras to check license plates. Every state and local police department has been alerted. Dr. Guilling has arrived here in New York. He's shifting satellites over the eastern seaboard. It's only a matter of time..."
"Did you say Dr. Guilling was in New York? I thought Ted was at Langley," Jack said.
"The new director brought him along. In fact, nearly everyone has been replaced with the interim director's people. They marched in here like a conquering army and swept the place clean." O'Brian chuckled. "It's a wonder I kept my job."
"I'm boarding a helicopter now," Jack said. "Locate those trucks, and relay their coordinates to me as soon as you get them."
* * *
8:38:25 P.M. EDT
Special Operations Tactical Training School
Security Gate
As soon as Ryan Chappelle got the warning from CTU, he alerted the rest of the men in his barracks that they were about to be attacked — for real. The men immediately sprang into action.
"If this operation is successful, it will be the fastest ambush ever mounted in the history of counterterrorist operations."
The speaker was Joe Smith. Like the other instructors at the counterterrorism seminar, Smith was an active duty special operations soldier, and the name he was using was an alias.
"If it doesn't work, we're all going to be in trouble for raiding the armory without proper authorization," said William Bendix. The tall African American had the body of a pro wrestler and a shaved head. He wore a utility vest, sans shirt, and a briefcase-sized magnetic mine was slung over his broad back.
"As senior officer, I'll take responsibility. If this is a bust, it'll be my neck under the hatchet."
Smith spoke with quiet authority and a southern drawl. He clutched a Heckler & Koch UMP .45 with a twenty-five-round magazine in his large hands, and several concussion grenades were hooked to the belt of his black denim pants. A big man, he had stained his face and hands with shoe polish that rendered him nearly invisible in the darkness. Smith crouched behind a decorative stone fence, watching the well-lit road that led from the front gate at the bottom of the hill, right up to the main building.
"This whole thing sounds loco to me, man," said Ben Johnson, a Hispanic standing close to Smith. "Mad cultists driving trucks of death? Come on. Someone at Langley must have had an Austin Powers moment to feed us that kind of intel."
His teeth white against a face streaked with dark paint, Johnson held a Colt Commando in his scarred fist.
"You've got it wrong. The threat is real," protested Ryan Chappelle, the Regional Director of CTU Los Angeles.
"You heard about the blasts in Carlisle, and you read the alert that came over the military wire. And I spoke to one of my operatives, personally. This intelligence is solid — from one of my best agents. Though I don't like Bauer personally, his job performance is..."
"Bauer? Are you talking about Jack Bauer?" asked a man who called himself Martin Eden.
"That's correct," Chappelle replied. "Jack was Delta Force before he came