Chapter 18 #2
The reporter, of course, followed him. “Your body is ripped. You’ve got the right haircut.
You’re stoic. You’ve been watching this field like a guard dog.
You’ve got that ear mike. I heard the word terrorist more than once.
Yeah, you’re a SEAL. What’s up, buddy? Is Al-Qaida gonna blow this football crowd all the way to Philly?
Ha, ha, ha.” He made the mistake of getting right in Zach’s face.
Even worse, some other of the media were starting to take interest in their “discussion.”
“Fuck off, newsboy.” Zach picked him up and shoved him aside.
Undaunted, the jerk followed him outside, motioning for a cameraman to follow. “Son of a bitch! There’s gonna be a terrorist attack, isn’t there?”
The cameraman raised his equipment. A big mistake.
“You take one single friggin’ picture of me, and I’m gonna ram that camera down your throat. You’ll be shittin’ parts for weeks.” Into his ear mike, he said, “Cage. A little help here, buddy.”
Within seconds, Cage had flipped himself down off the roof and stood beside him.
The two news dorks were staring at Cage with mouths gaping. He guessed they had never seen anyone do a front flip off the roof of the press box.
“We have a situation,” Zach said to Cage.
“I can see that, good buddy.”
The reporter and cameraman didn’t know what hit them. They soon found themselves in a private VIP restroom, bound and gagged, with the door locked tight. There were a few VIPs who might have to take a piss in the plebeian stalls down below like the rest of the world.
Up on the roof of the press box, he and Cage scanned the area with binoculars.
“Is it possible this was all a false alarm?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I got a funny feelin’,” Cage said. “My mawmaw would call it the heebie jeebies.”
“Same here. The hairs are standing out on the back of my neck like porcupine quills. But, man, we’ve swept this stadium top to bottom; we’ve screened everyone who came in; we’ve done everything possible to make this perimeter secure.
There’s got to be something we’ve missed.
In fact, I...” Zach’s words trailed off.
His heart began to race, and his blood went cold. “Omigod! The hot air balloons.”
“What?”
He put the binoculars to his eyes again.
Cage did likewise.
“Check out my three o’clock. They’ve got something planned in one of those balloons. Watch. One of them will break loose soon and sort of drift this way.”
“Black Sunday,” Cage said.
“Huh?”
“Remember that old Bruce Dern movie where terrorists planned to attack from a blimp over the Superbowl stadium?”
Within seconds, they contacted the rest of the team, CentCom, aircraft in the region, bomb control, and every other military and police unit within a twenty mile radius.
He and three other SEALs were in an SUV headed toward the balloon site, but already they could see one of the balloons starting to drift.
Ironically...or perhaps not so ironically.
..it was one with an American flag motif.
During the next hour, helicopters dropped bomb specialists into the unmanned balloon to disable the explosives.
It became apparent that the plan would have called for a gunman to shoot the balloon with a long-distance weapon, probably from over by the expressway.
Once the balloon started to deflate, the clock would have started.
The bomb had been set to go off during the third quarter, as close to center field as possible.
Fans would have thought it was a special planned entertainment.
University officials would have thought it was a balloon gone astray.
None of the terrorists could be found, but they did find evidence in a local motel room, amidst the piles of fast-food debris, all of which was gathered for fingerprint analysis.
Maps of the stadium and surrounding area.
Details of explosives. And on a scrap of discarded paper that hadn’t completely flushed down the toilet an odd reference to Navy SEALs. ..him, in particular.
Did Arsallah have something to do with this?
How did he know Zach would be here?
Suddenly, Zach pulled out his cell phone and called the commander. “Zach here. Hey, Mac, quick question. How come you put me on active duty?”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Your timing stinks, lieutenant. Aren’t you supposed to be cleaning up after this near-bomb attack?”
Zach bristled. “That’s just what I’m doing. Where did the order come from to put me on this op?”
“How the hell—”
“It’s important, Mac. In fact, it’s urgent. Check it out, and call me right back.”
Zach’s body was on red alert as he filled the rest of the team in on his suspicions.
Fifteen minutes later, Mac called back, and his tone of voice was ominous. “The call to put you on this op came from a low-level secretary in the Department of Defense...a secretary who has suddenly disappeared. This is a royal FUBAR. I’m sorry, Zach—”
“Dammit! Get to my house right away.”
“I’m already on my way. The police are ahead of me.”
“Call and—”
“I already called. There’s no answer.”
Zach swore a blue streak.
“Settle down, boy. You’re not going to accomplish anything in that frame of mind.”
“How would you feel if one of your kids was taken by someone like Arsallah?”
There was silence.
“Keep me on the line till you get there,” Zach ordered, followed by, “Please.”
He could hear the commander talking on another phone to someone. Whatever he heard was causing him to curse, too.
“We’re here. There are three guards disabled. Not dead, but they must have been given a huge zap from a taser. The tangos operated from the house across the street.”
“The Lehman’s?”
“Yeah. Tied up the husband, wife and two teenagers in a basement closet for about twelve hours. They’re scared shitless, as you would imagine.”
“Someone needs to take Arsallah down. The bastard is a walking target from now on. I don’t care what the ‘play nice’ diplomatic service says, or the two-faced state department.”
Mac ignored his rant. “Listen, I’ll call you back once I’m inside, but Zach, there’s something you need to know.”
“What?”
“It’s bad.”
There was an increasingly loud buzz in Zach’s ears.
“Britta was here, and she’s gone, too. There was a struggle. And...and blood.”
The buzzing exploded in his head, and he went off to the side of the parking lot where he puked his guts out. Once he rinsed his mouth with the bottled water Cage handed him and was reasonably calm, he told the men, “Get us on a transport asap. Arsallah has fucked with the wrong guy this time.”
“No, dude,” Sly corrected, putting a hand on his shoulder, “Arsallah has fucked with the wrong guys, as in plural. We are Navy SEALs, and we are covering your six, all the way.”
I am woman, hear me...kick your butt...
The plan was to take her and Sammy out of America immediately after their capture.
They were taken to a parking arena of the airport.
Sammy cowered behind her, his arms wrapped around her thighs.
Arsallah and a half dozen other men were there, wearing long Arab-style gowns and head coverings.
Two of the balaclava-covered men were there, too, including the one whose nose she must have broken.
When he yanked the hood off his head and glared at her, she saw that his nose still dripped blood.
All of them, except Arsallah, carried weapons.
Face rigid with anger, Arsallah snapped some foreign words at Sammy, who whimpered to Britta, “I do not want to go to him. Help me.”
Arsallah repeated his order, and Sammy walked up to his grandfather, feet dragging with reluctance.
The grandfather stared with contempt at his grandson, who came only as high as his thigh, then spat on him.
Sammy, bless his brave little soul, just stood still, tears welling in his eyes.
When Arsallah yelled some other words at Sammy, the boy replied, but apparently made the mistake of speaking English, not the Afghan language. For his sin, his grandfather slapped him hard across the face, knocking him to the ground.
“You son of a camel’s arse!” Britta tried to go to the boy, but two guards held her back. One of them punched her in the shoulder, causing her to bend over and go unseeing for a moment.
Upright again, she heard Arsallah snapping questions at the boy, and Sammy answering him back in the “correct” language. Arsallah obviously did not like the answers and shoved him aside, stalking up to her.
Sammy wore his sleeping outfit, which was called pee-jays: loose braies and a shert with little bears imprinted all over. She wore one of Zachary’s knave-he SEAL tea-ing sherts, which barely covered her undergarments. They were barefooted.
Glaring at the message on her shert, Arsallah asked in broken English, “You are the whore of the infidel?”
“Which infidel?” That answer merited her a slap as well. Being taller and stronger than Sammy, she at least was able to stay on her feet. She bit her bottom lip to prevent herself from telling this whelp of Satan what she thought of him.
“The infidel Floyd who soiled my daughter and bred this American cur.” He nodded his head toward Sammy who was at her side now. Why he saw only the American half of his bloodline, and not the Afghan side as well, Britta did not understand.
“I am no whore.”
“You were found in his bed.”
“A guest bedchamber.”
He waved a hand as if it was the same thing. “Has he fucked you?”
Britta knew that he used such vulgar language to insult her. Still, she flinched. Then made the mistake of revealing, “We have made love.”
Arsallah grinned evilly and told a man at his side, “We will use them both, the harlot and the mongrel, as hostages.”
They were then pushed and punched, even kicked repeatedly, for the next hour or more, but nowhere that bruises could be seen by outsiders...outsiders being members of something called Al-Jazeera, who talked at length to Arsallah and pointed black boxes, called cameras, at her and Sammy.