Second Strike Read online

  Also by Peter Kirsanow

  Target Omega

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Peter Kirsanow

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Kirsanow, Peter N., author.

  Title: Second strike / Peter Kirsanow.

  Description: First edition. | New York, New York : Dutton, [2018] | Series: A Mike Garin thriller ; 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017034560 (print) | LCCN 2017039416 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101985335 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101985328 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781101985342 (softcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: United States. Central Intelligence Agency—Fiction. | Intelligence officers—United States—Fiction. | Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3611.I769845 (ebook) | LCC PS3611.I769845 S43 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034560

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Solveig

  CONTENTS

  Also by Peter Kirsanow

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

  —WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

  PROLOGUE

  Pain is functionally irrelevant to the doomed.

  Pain is an alarm, an early warning signal to the living: Damage has been done to the body, damage that, if not abated, could lead to disability or death. It is the basest of survival mechanisms.

  But for the doomed—more precisely, the very soon to be dead—pain is superfluous. It serves no useful purpose.

  To Michael Garin, whose timeline was almost at zero, the deep gash on his right shoulder that trailed nearly to his elbow was, therefore, a temporary irritant. The guard, now deceased, who had serendipitously inflicted it had caused little more than a distraction. Garin’s objective remained uncompromised.

  A mistake had to be rectified, a mistake that was potentially catastrophic. Garin, moving silently up the stairs toward the lower level of the fuel fabrication facility, M56 submachine gun pressed against the lacerated shoulder, was charged with correcting that mistake. Successive administrations had let the problem fester, hoping that it would resolve itself or that China would assume some measure of control over its lunatic client. But the lunacy grew unabated until it became clear that a crisis was emerging, one that would escalate from peninsular conflict to regional battle to war.

  Garin’s Omega team—comprised of eight tier-one special operators trained to interdict and destroy rogue WMD programs—should have been deployed sooner, but political advisors in the White House and careerists in the State Department had insisted on a graduated diplomatic approach to induce Pyongyang to curb, if not abandon, its nuclear weapons program. The approach failed. Nuance and sophistication had rarely been effective approaches toward the hermit kingdom.

  President Clarke, with just over a month left in his administration, opted to launch a series of cyberattacks against North Korean nuclear weapons facilities and its missile launches to sabotage its nuclear program.

  The cyberattacks succeeded, causing their missile payloads to crash into the Sea of Japan. But then someone got too clever and decided to disguise the attacks as South African. Until then, the North Koreans believed the misfires had stemmed from ineptitude, but once they discovered the true cause, they employed remedial measures to thwart the attacks. But not before their mercurial leader ordered the missile program to be ramped up significantly, creating a dangerous instability in the re
gion.

  The incoming Marshall administration determined direct action was necessary. As a feint, reports were leaked that SEAL Team Six had been deployed for a decapitation strike against North Korean leadership. The rumor was that the team was aboard the aircraft carrier USS Vinson in the Sea of Japan. This, planners expected, would cause North Korea to harden its defenses on its east coast. Omega, however, would enter the country from Korea Bay, on the opposite coast, and make their way inland to the nuclear weapons complex at Yongbyon, approximately seventy miles north of Pyongyang.

  It had taken the Omega team more than eight hours to stealthily maneuver around the dense coastal patrols and move just one mile inland. From there they rendezvoused with a civilian contractor for the South Korean National Intelligence Service, who conveyed them forty miles by panel van to the outskirts of Yongbyon. They breached the heavily guarded perimeter of the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific compound, crawling through a claustrophobic tunnel constructed by another group of civilian contractors, and emerged in a storage room in the subbasement of the nuclear fuel rod fabrication plant.

  Garin led the team cautiously down a long, dimly lit concrete corridor under the main floor of the facility. Intelligence indicated that the facility would be largely empty of personnel at this time of night, with only a handful of security guards on the main floor. But, then, intelligence had failed to anticipate the guard in the stairwell with a bayonet affixed to his rifle. Garin, having dispatched the guard with a thrust of a tactical knife to the throat, moved slowly nonetheless, his team following in intervals of five to six feet. Each wore a balaclava and was outfitted exclusively with weapons and gear used by the Korean People’s Army Special Operations Forces to limit evidence of any US involvement in the operation. Of course, if any of them were killed it would be clear the team was of Western origin; thus, their unstated protocol was that none of them would be captured.

  Following immediately behind Garin was John Gates, who moments before had deposited twenty kilograms of Semtex beneath the center of the main floor. Behind him was Gene Tanski, a former Delta operator, who deposited another twenty kilograms of Semtex. Two other quantities of Semtex had been placed at opposite ends of the facility—one between powder vaporization and powder production and the other at powder processing. The engineers assured Omega that simultaneous detonations would collapse the facility. They’d already planted two other packages of Semtex at strategic locations in the adjacent reprocessing building, where weapons-grade plutonium was separated from spent fuel rods.

  Garin began moving his team more quickly, with only minutes before the packages were to be detonated. Four facility guards appeared around the corner ahead. Garin struck the lead guard in the left eye socket with an SOG tactical knife, then spun to his right and whipped his arm toward the second guard, the knife penetrating the guard’s right temple. Before the trailing guards could react, John Gates sprang forward and jammed his own blade in the third guard’s solar plexus, withdrew it, and, with an overhead arc, thrust the blade into the throat of the last guard. Elapsed time: a shade under five seconds.

  Garin signaled to his team to move forward, the group continuing to quicken their advance. As they neared the entrance to the tunnel, obscured behind and between two massive compressors, Manny Camacho, bringing up the rear, stage-whispered to Garin, “Boss, you need to see this.”

  Garin glanced back at Camacho, who was pointing at the entrance to a room to the right. The look on his face was one of astonishment. Garin turned back and entered a room that appeared to be for storage—but the only items within it were four high-backed metal chairs with what appeared to be a human being strapped to each. Their faces were mutilated and their scalps had been pulled from the tops of their respective skulls down to their shoulders, the skin hanging limply across their chests like bibs. Pools of blood were congealed on the plastic-covered floor beneath them. A scene that transcended hell.

  Garin knew they needed to keep moving, but as he motioned his team onward he had a sickening sense that he would soon encounter the author of that scene.

  CHAPTER 1

  LOGAN AIRPORT,

  AUGUST 14, 6:35 A.M. EDT

  It was all so much nonsense, she thought. Deliriously theoretical nonsense. Almost science fiction. Nonetheless, Meagan Cahill—no-nonsense big-firm litigator Meagan Cahill—sat at the counter of an eatery in Terminal B of Boston’s Logan Airport, sipping iced coffee and listening as Ryan Moore Hammacher once again expounded ominously on something called the Arlanda Event.

  She listened because Ryan happened to be her current romantic interest. She listened because he was endearingly earnest and because there was, frankly, little else to do as they waited for their flight to Reagan National to begin boarding.

  Most of all—she admitted to herself with a twinge of guilt—she listened because railing about an impending apocalypse had proven to be remarkably lucrative, and Ryan had spent a not inconsiderable portion of his earnings on Meagan.

  They’d met a little more than two years ago when the MIT professor of electrical engineering and computer science retained her firm, one of Boston’s most prominent, to sue a Route 128 corridor tech company for appropriating software he’d developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She obtained a sizable settlement for Ryan and shortly thereafter he called her for drinks. They’d been seeing each other ever since.

  Her trial lawyer instincts telegraphed that Ryan would propose marriage sometime after they arrived in D.C., perhaps after his testimony later that morning before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, but more likely after his afternoon testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

  She would accept, sincerely but pragmatically, knowing that she wouldn’t find a better partner. And he was not unattractive, although his large head, spindly arms, and awkward gait made him resemble a giant marionette. A mischievous and vaguely lustful recess of her mind flashed to an image of his head atop the body of Corey Raines, the brawny Red Sox catcher she’d briefly dated, but she banished the thought with another twinge of guilt.

  This would be the fourth time she’d accompanied him to Washington for testimony before some obscure committee of Congress. Each time previously the hearing had been anodyne. Only a few congressmen, a smattering of staffers, and a few other witnesses had been present. No C-SPAN; no print reporters.

  Yet after each hearing, Ryan’s speaking fees, as well as the number of requests, rose. After the first hearing, he was tendered a consulting agreement from a defense contractor nearly equal to his annual salary at MIT. After the last hearing, he’d entered into another for more than twice the cumulative earnings from his entire academic career. And DARPA had recently retained his services to develop certain software in collaboration with cybersecurity experts. All because Ryan Moore Hammacher was the Herald of Doom.

  As the coffee parted the early-morning fog in her brain, she listened to him finish his latest jeremiad, just as the gate attendant announced that boarding would begin in a few minutes. “. . . And there’s no way of preventing it, at least not on an individualized basis. They’d become weaponized. Scores of catastrophes combined to create an event without parallel in history.”

  Meagan heard herself say “horrible” for perhaps the third time that morning.

  “What’s more, they know it. But they haven’t created the systems or countermeasures to prevent it. Unforgivable.” Ryan fished in his pocket and placed a tip on the counter. “Watch my bag? Quick dash to the men’s room before we board.”

  Meagan finished her coffee as she watched him cross to the lavatory on the other side of the concourse, politely dodging and yielding to travelers headed toward their gates. She smiled. A kind, sweet man playing Chicken Little on a grand scale. Thankfully, he’d already made his small fortune, because news reports showed that the president, Congress, and the military now were more concerned
about the threat of electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attacks, understandable given the recent Russian-Iranian efforts in that regard. It was the EMP experts’ turn to become wealthy preventing Armageddon, while Ryan retreated to the ordinary life of an academic.

  A minute later, priority boarding for the flight to D.C. was under way. Meagan gathered her belongings and Ryan’s bag and proceeded to the line at the gate.

  As regular boarding began, she glanced back toward the men’s room. Ryan’s dash had stopped being quick several minutes ago. A dozen passengers more and the door to the Jetway would soon close. No time for subtlety. Meagan walked briskly to the entrance of the men’s room and called Ryan’s name.

  No response.

  She called again. Nothing.

  She took a few tentative steps toward the entrance. “Ryan, boarding’s about done. We gotta go.” A beat. “Ryan?”

  She cocked her head and listened. “Ryan? Hello?”

  She peeked around the corner into the brightly lit, white-tiled lavatory lined with a series of sinks on the left wall and a half dozen urinals on the right. Between them, lying spread-eagled on the floor and staring at her with lifeless eyes wide open, was Ryan, his chin resting in a pool of foamy saliva.

  Meagan’s screams echoed off the restroom walls and into the concourse just as a voice announced the final boarding call for United Flight 7181, scheduled for a seven A.M. departure to the nation’s capital.

  CHAPTER 2

  PACIFIC NORTHWEST,

  AUGUST 14, 9:27 A.M. PDT

  Sean McDermott hated being afraid. He hated having to concede he was afraid as much as the sensation of fear itself.

  He knew that to others he didn’t look like the kind of man who was afraid of much. He was big—a former heavyweight wrestler in college—with a head shaped like an anvil and a face resembling a bulldog’s. In fact, nothing much did scare him. But flying did, even though he had more hours in the air than some commercial pilots. As human resources director for a multinational steel company with facilities across the globe, he flew several days a week.