The fishing boat drifted lazily in the dark night about half a mile north of Nantucket. The lone boatman had been watching the long, slow approach of the NantucketEagleferry and patiently awaiting his signal.
Just over one hundred yards from theEagle’s route, the boatman noticed a blinking red light on the port side. His contact was ready for pickup. The boatman tossed his cigarette into the dark water, pulled a flashlight from his duffel bag, and blinked back a series of lights.
The boatman started the engines. Compared to theEagle’s massive engines, the twin Mercury 250-horsepower engines barely made a sound. Pointing the sloop’s bow in the direction of the ferry’s wake, he guesstimated the position of his contact. In about four minutes, he spotted a red light just above the water. The boatman slowed the sloop and allowed it to drift downwind until he was positioned to make the rescue.
The boatman hung a dive ladder over the side, then shifted the motor into Neutral. The man in the water waited for the boat to stop rolling in theEagle’s wake before attempting to haul himself aboard. The boatman held out his hand to his brother-in-arms and helped him into the craft.
The men did not recognize each other, nor did they expect to. Even in the beam of the flashlight, both could see that the boatman was darker-skinned than the man who had jumped off theEagle.
Without saying a word, the swimmer pulled off his backpack, settled himself on the deck, and reached inside for a waterproof bag.
Engrossed in the setup of his mission’s next step, he failed to notice the boatman’s movements near the cockpit. The machete blade hit the back of the swimmer’s neck with such force that it sliced easily through his vertebrae and stuck in the deck of the boat. The swimmer’s head tumbled into his own lap.
The boatman had followed his orders exactly. Now to make the call. He picked the waterproof bag out of the pool of the swimmer’s blood and extracted the preprogrammed cell phone.
The boatman used one of his own phones to quickly send a one-word text:GLORY. Then he pulled out the SIM card and threw the phone, the machete, and the tiny chip into the black seawater, along with the swimmer’s head and body.
As the ferry glided toward Nantucket Harbor, the boatman tacked in the direction of Martha’s Vineyard and gave the engine all the gas he could. He needed to put at least half a mile between his sloop and theEagleif he was to escape the brunt of the coming explosion.
At 10 p.m., he found the number in the speed dial of the swimmer’s phone and called it.
The war was about to begin.
CHAPTER 39
NantucketEagleferry
The cell phone rang inside the U-Haul. The voltage in the ringer function was more than enough to send a charge of electricity into the fuse igniter and through the blasting caps buried in the Semtex charges.
The blasting caps instantly ignited the explosive, which in turn generated enough force to lift the U-Haul off the deck even as the copper disks embedded in the vehicle cut through its cargo hold, through the deck, and into the hull of the ferry directly beneath it.
Sound travels roughly 350 meters per second.
By the time they heard the explosion, every person on the NantucketEaglewas either dead or about to be.
The boatman looked at his watch. Everything was right on schedule. He kept the sloop on a westward bearing toward Martha’s Vineyard. In a few minutes he would change course, turning east toward the west coast of Nantucket, the location of his next assignment.
CHAPTER 40
Nantucket Memorial Airport
One minute earlier, the man stationed at the motel—the first man to exit the green garbage truck—had pulled two grenade launchers from his duffel bag, extending both LAWs to ready them for action.
Standing less than fifty feet from his target, he raised the first launcher to his shoulder, armed the firing device, and took aim.
The instant the grenadier heard the sound of the ferry exploding, he squeezed the trigger. The door to the room where the day-shift Secret Service agents lay sleeping was an easy shot. The 40mm grenade exploded on contact.
The grenadier never looked up. He quickly armed and aimed the second LAW and fired directly into the room next to the first. If all the agents weren’t killed by the explosion of the round impacting the room, the overpressure would be enough to render them incapable of responding to the impending attack.
The grenadier targeting the airport control tower—thesecond man from the garbage truck—had simultaneously prepared his weapon. His first shot found its target, punching a hole about a foot wide in the side of the tower, the shrapnel scattering into a fan-shaped pattern as the grenade exploded. The air-traffic controller standing at his post observing the peaceful Nantucket sky never knew what hit him.
The second round hit the tower halfway between the ground and the roof. It penetrated the framework and started a fire between the interior and exterior walls. Fueled by the persistent Nantucket breezes, the blaze soon spread throughout the structure, causing it to spontaneously combust.
No response from anyone at the airport. Another strategic prediction proving dead right.
The grenadier saw a bright flash of light on the runway, signaling that the third partner had used a thermite grenade to melt the engine block of the garbage truck he had parked there. It would have to be towed off the runway in order for any plane to land. He waved to his first accomplice down the street at the motel and started to jog away from the airfield toward their next location.
The helicopters would be landing soon. They needed to be ready to attack them.
