The Enemy Within Read online

  POWERFUL PRAISE FOR

  THE ENEMY WITHIN

  AND LARRY BOND

  “Chilling and totally plausible. THE ENEMY WITHIN marks Larry Bond’s emergence as our next true master of suspense.”

  —Tom Clancy

  “A chilling look at international terrorism.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Fasten your seat belt.… An electrifying and terrifying tale, told by a master storyteller.… Shockingly accurate … riveting detail. Bravo to Bond!”

  —Steve Emerson, counterterrorism expert and coauthor of The Fall of Pan Am 103

  “Bone chilling.… His expertise as a naval officer and warfare analyst provides credibility to a topical novel I was unable to put down.”

  —Mary Matalin, co-host of CNBC’s Equal Time

  “A novel of suspense that’s worthy of the early fuss being made over it.… This superbly suspenseful international thriller has a disconcerting and uncanny ring of geopolitical truth and eerie prophecy.… The last hundred pages scream along to the surprising conclusion.”

  —Denver Post

  “A swashbuckling thriller … fast-paced … spectacular.”

  —Toronto Star

  A superb storyteller.… Larry Bond seems to know everything about warfare, from the grunt in a foxhole to the fighter pilots far above the earth.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “Action packed … blazes along … brims with techno-thriller aspects.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “A gripping tale … a fine read.”

  —Boston Herald

  “THE ENEMY WITHIN seems to have snatched headlines off the front pages of the daily newspapers as it weaves a gripping tale … in a fast-moving narrative that is eerily precise and terrifyingly real.”

  —Former U.S. Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro

  “Bond’s storytelling is superb.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Moves along with the speed of a Tomahawk cruise missile and is just as on target.”

  —Flint Journal

  “Extremely well researched and credible … an enjoyable read.”

  —Austin American-Statesman

  “THE ENEMY WITHIN represents an exciting forward evolution in plot, character, and scope for Larry Bond.… For lovers of strategic and high-tech thrillers, this book is indispensable.”

  —James Grady, author of Three Days of the Condor

  “This thriller successfully places Bond in the top group of the genre.”

  —Copley News Service

  “Compulsively readable … exciting, frightening, and full of action. Like Tom Clancy, he paints a broad canvas filled with tight closeups.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The most accurate, chilling novel about terrorism ever written. When you read THE ENEMY WITHIN, you are reading the future.”

  —Neil C. Livingstone, author of The Cult of Counterterrorism

  “An exciting page-turner … excellent descriptions and dialogue.”

  —San Antonio Express-News

  “Once again, Larry Bond has outdone himself.… A fast-paced, tightly woven page-turner about a frighteningly real threat of terrorism directed against the United States.”

  —Steve Pieczenik, author of Pax Pacifica and co-creator, with Tom Clancy, of Op-Center

  “Superb, with each piece of the puzzle adding beautifully to a very real-world scenario, while he builds the suspense until the reader begs for the orgiastic climax.… Crisp, lean writing in the service of excellent fiction that is also a chilling warning.”

  —West Coast Review of Books

  “Larry Bond is the Cecil B. DeMille of the techno-thriller.”

  —Providence Sunday Journal

  “Fascinating and scary.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “The best writer of techno-thrillers around … Bond has a superb sense of action and plot.… Nobody does it better than Bond.”

  —Tampa Tribune

  “Dynamite from beginning to end. Larry Bond captures the tense moves and countermoves of two sides locked in deadly battle with the outcome never certain.”

  —General Fred Franks, U.S. Army (ret.)

  “Larry Bond is an expert at building suspenseful, true-to-life political and military scenarios.… Puts the reader on the cutting edge.”

  —Dale Brown

  “A humdinger of a story … devilishly hard to put down.”

  —Toledo Blade

  “Bond displays a firm grasp of how the national security bureaucracy in Washington goes into action and how the military deploys.”

  —Navy Times

  “Bond sets a new standard for the techno-thriller.”

  —Orlando Sentinel

  “An outstanding novelist who succeeds on a multiplicity of levels.”

  —Rave Reviews

  “Arguably one of the best writers about war today.”

  —Reader’s Digest

  ALSO BY LARRY BOND

  CAULDRON

  VORTEX

  RED PHOENIX

  PUBLISHED BY

  WARNER BOOKS

  Copyright

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1996 by Larry Bond and Patrick Larkin

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Vision is a registered trademark of Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBrookGroup.com

  www.twitter.com/centerstreet

  First eBook Edition: November 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-57111-1

  To Jeanne and Mennette,

  with all our love

  Acknowledgments

  We would like to thank Dwin Craig, Don Gilman, Dave Hood, Mennette Masser Larkin, Don and Marilyn Larkin, Colin and Denise Larkin, Ian, Duncan, and Chris Larkin, Erin Larkin-Foster, Kay Long Martin, Elaine Meisenheimer, John Moser, Bill and Bridget Paley, Barbara Patrick, Tim Peckinpaugh and Pam McKinney-Peckinpaugh, Thomas T. Thomas, Tom Thompson, and Brad Ware for their assistance, advice, and support.

  Author’s Note

  After four books, you get to know a fellow pretty well. While there is still much to learn about Pat Larkin, I can honestly say that in ten years of working together he has always been a good friend and an excellent writer. He is good at his craft, and I’ve got to work like crazy to keep up with him.

  Anyone who’s read one of our other books knows that these are joint efforts. If this is the first one you’ve picked up, know that these truly are the work of two minds. This book is just as much Pat’s as it is mine, and he deserves as much credit as I do for its success.

  We both hope you enjoy it.

  PROLOGUE

  JANUARY 15

  Benicia Industrial Park, California, Near San Francisco

  The accident scene looked real—even to Shahin’s skeptical eyes. A crumpled Toyota Corolla sat sideways across the narrow on-ramp to Highway 680, surrounded by fragments of smashed safety glass and puddled oil. Four emergency flares cast a flickering red light across a spiderweb of concrete pillars and rusting railroad bridge supports rising above the freeway entrance. As a final touch of authenticity, the sharp, sweet smell of leaking gasoline hung in the chilly night air.

  The short, bearded man nodded to himself, satisfied that his deception would hold for the brief time required. He moved off the road and into the shadows beneath the overpass.

  His cellular phone buzzed softly. He flipped it open. “Yes?”

  The muffled voice of Haydar Zadi, his lookout, sounded in his ear. “Two minutes.”

  “Understood.” Shahin slid the phone back inside his windbreaker and checked the pistol in his shoulder holster. Their first target, their chosen weapon, was on the way.

  Perched high in the cab of his big rig, Jack Briggs saw the flare-lit wreck up ahead in plenty of time. He swore once and braked smoothly, coming to a complete stop near the foot of the ramp.

  Like most independent truckers, he preferred making his runs at night and in the early morning to avoid the Bay Area’s god-awful traffic. It was a routine that worked well—usually. But not tonight.

  Still growling to himself, he peered through the windshield. At least the Toyota’s driver didn’t seem hurt. The man had glanced around once when the rig’s headlights hit him, but then he’d gone right back to staring down at his car’s smashed front end. Might be drunk, Briggs decided. It was near closing time. Hell, only a drunk would wander off the main road into the little town of Benicia’s deserted industrial park at this time of the night.

  He shook his head angrily. Well, tanked up or not, the clown was going to have to help push that Japanese pile of junk off the ramp and out of the way.

  Pausing just long enough to square up his battered, oil-stained baseball cap and shut off the engine, the trucker yanked his cab door open, jumped down, and started across the glass-strewn asphalt in long strides. He was still several feet from the Toyota when the other man suddenly turned to face him, bringing the pistol he’d been concealing on target in one smooth, deadly, flowing motion.

  Briggs stared at the weapon in shock. His mouth fell open. “What the—”

  A single 9mm bullet caught him under the chin, tore upward through his brain, and exploded out the back of his skull.

  Shahin knelt, retrieved the spent shell casing from the road with one gloved hand, and dropped it into his pocket. Ne
atness was a habit that had saved him so many times over the past several years that he indulged it without thought. There were many others in the HizbAllah who were less careful, but none who could match his record of operational success. He rose to his feet and turned away without giving the American he’d murdered more than a single disinterested glance.

  Another pair of headlights swung across the scene and steadied as a small car, an old blue Nissan Sentra, pulled up beside the dead man’s truck. Shahin stood motionless in the sudden dazzling brightness, waiting for the two other men who made up his special action cell to join him.

  Haydar Zadi was the first out of the car. The lookout grinned in clear relief, showing a mouthful of yellowing, tobacco-stained teeth. “It went perfect, eh? Like clockwork!”

  “Yes.” Shahin nodded curtly, biting down an urge to snap at the older man. Didn’t the fool know they had no time to waste? At most they had only minutes to clear away all signs of this ambush and move their prize under cover inside the warehouse they’d rented nearby. But Zadi was a “casual”—a fundamentalist radical recruited out of the local immigrant community for this one mission. Snarling at him would only make him more nervous, more prone to panic. Instead, the Iranian gestured toward the dead truck driver. “Toss that thing in your truck, my friend. We’ll dispose of it later.”

  Zadi’s smile vanished, wiped away by his first good look at the murdered man. In the glare of the headlights, the blood pooling around the American’s shattered skull glistened black. He swallowed hard and hurried to obey.

  Shahin shook his head in disgust. He disliked being forced to rely on a squeamish amateur, but he had no choice. The HizbAllah was one of the Middle East’s largest and deadliest terrorist organizations, but outside of New York its network of covert operatives and sympathizers was still too poorly organized to support and conceal a larger force. He swung away and stalked over to the only other member of his small team.

  Ibrahim Nadhir was the youngest of them all, barely twenty. Taller than his superior, smooth-shaven, and slender, he stood staring up at the giant vehicle they had captured.

  Shahin clapped him on the shoulder. “You can drive this monster, Ibrahim?”

  “Oh, yes.” Nadhir reached out a single hand and actually caressed the side of the big rig. His eyes were dilated. “It is a beautiful machine. A perfect machine.”

  Shahin suppressed a shiver. Tehran’s revolutionary mullahs had refined the brainwashing techniques originally taught them by North Korean and Vietnamese instructors. He understood the value of what they had done to Nadhir. But surely no man could be at ease in the presence of one remade into the living hand of Allah.

  He followed the younger man’s fixed, adoring stare and smiled for the first time. The truck itself was nothing. Anyone with money could buy or lease such a truck. No, the real prize for this night’s work was the big rig’s cargo: a massive, cylindrical steel tank full of ten thousand gallons of high-grade gasoline.

  Highway 101, north of San Francisco

  The Marin County commuter tide was in full flood shortly before the sun rose. Tens of thousands of cars crept slowly south along Highway 101, inching through San Rafael, up the lone incline above Sausalito, through the Waldo Tunnel, and downhill toward San Francisco. Headlights glowed a ghostly yellow through the fog still shrouding the approaches to the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Two vehicles ground forward with the rest. Four cars behind the lumbering gasoline tanker truck driven by Ibrahim Nadhir, Haydar Zadi gripped the steering wheel of his old, battered Nissan, darting occasional, frightened glances at the quiet, angry man seated beside him.

  Shahin scowled at their slow, snail-like pace. As their local contact, Zadi had been responsible for scouting this section of their route. But nothing in the older man’s reports had fully prepared him for this halting procession of luxury sedans, sports cars, and minivans. It was grotesque—an evil display of wasted wealth and power. Though a child on foot would arrive in San Francisco sooner, not one of these decadent, arrogant Americans could bear the thought of parting with his prized automobile.

  Inside the Iranian, contempt warred briefly with envy. His scowl grew deeper. These people worshipped their creations of steel, chrome, fiberglass, and rubber above all other things—above even God Himself.

  So be it, Shahin thought with grim finality. The HizbAllah would teach these idolaters a harsh lesson—a lesson scrawled in fire and blood. His dark eyes settled on the gasoline tanker truck up ahead. “How much further?”

  “Two kilometers. Perhaps less,” Zadi answered. He cleared his throat nervously. “The last exit before the bridge is very near.”

  Shahin nodded, ignoring the fear in his companion’s voice. The old man would have to hold his cowardice at bay a while longer.

  He leaned forward to get a better look at their surroundings. The steep hillsides of the Marin Headlands rose to the west—black masses still more felt than seen through the last remnants of night and fog. To the east, the ground fell away into the dark waters of San Francisco Bay. Distant lights twinkled along the eastern horizon, slowly fading as the sky paled before the rising sun. Ahead to the south, the Golden Gate Bridge’s massive towers and suspension cables were already visible, rising out of the mist.

  CHP Unit 52

  Inside a sleek black-and-white cruiser parked just off Highway 101, California Highway Patrol Officer Steve Dwyer sat sipping the last cup of coffee from his thermos, studying the cars streaming past him through bleary eyes. He yawned, trying to get some oxygen into his bloodstream. After a long shift spent scouting for drunks, joyriders, and other lowlifes, the steady crackle of voices over his radio and the lukewarm coffee were just about the only things keeping him awake,

  Dwyer stifled another jaw-cracking yawn and ran a hand over his scalp, frowning when his fingers slid along skin where only months before there had been hair. This goddamned job was getting to him, he thought. Hell, he was only thirty-two—way too young to be going bald. Maybe he could put in a stress claim and get the department health plan to cough up for some of that Rogaine stuff before he started hearing Kojak jokes and finding lollipops taped to his locker.

  The sight of a gasoline tanker mixed in with the traffic streaming past him brought the CHP officer fully awake. For safety reasons, tankers and other carriers of hazardous materials were banned from the bridge and its approaches during rush hour. Everybody knew that, didn’t they? For damned sure, every trucker who wanted to keep his license knew that. Everybody except this idiot, obviously.

  Dwyer plucked his radio mike off the dashboard. “Dispatch, this is Five-Two. I have a HazMat rig trying to cross the Gate.” He squinted into the slowly growing dawn. “Plate number is Delta, Tango, Two, Nine, Four, Five, Three. I’m making the stop now.”

  With its lights flashing, the CHP cruiser pulled onto the highway.

  Highway 101

  Shahin cursed as the American police car suddenly slid in right behind Nadhir’s truck. The Iranian bent down to tear open the gym bag between his feet. He tugged a Czech-made Skorpion machine pistol out of the bag and checked its twenty-round clip. Satisfied, he flipped the weapon’s folding wire stock into place and looked up. “Bring me close to that police car!”

  When Zadi hesitated, the Iranian lifted the Skorpion’s muzzle, aiming it casually at the older man’s stomach. His eyes were cold. “Do it,” he said softly.

  Horrified, Haydar Zadi swerved left into the next lane and accelerated. Horns blared in outrage behind them.