“He’s risking his career,” Boone said.“But damn—if I had a sister, I’m sure I’d do the same.Blake Shepperd is not the type of a guy a woman wants to be involved with.”
“You said she’s missing.Is the sister being held hostage by Blake or someone else in the terror cell?”Radley asked.“I saw that note in the sawdust back at the cabin,” she reminded the men.
“Damn.Do we have the sister’s background info?”Gage asked.
“Not yet, but analysts are looking into it,” Holt said.“The trail involving the servicemembers is now a dead end from our standpoint.They’re not involved in the terror plot, and the disappearance of the sister and possible kidnapping is another issue altogether.We’ve got more problems though,” he said, pulling up the slides.
Radley’s eyes widened as she saw the new sites on the map Holt displayed.“The terror plot has grown.There are to be simultaneous attacks across the U.S., now including several sites in L.A.as well.The questions from the servicemember spooked them.While he was looking for his sister, not trying to foil their plans, they feared they were under surveillance by the government.”
“Which they goddamn are,” Xaden muttered.
Holt shot him a look.“The servicemembers chatting with them had no idea what they were actually plotting, but it doesn’t matter.The timeline has been sped up.”
“They’re planning to bomb all those locations?”Radley asked in disbelief.
“They’ll never be able to pull this off,” Xaden scoffed.“How would they access all those secure areas and simultaneously set off explosions?It’s a pipe dream.”
“They’ve already departed with the crates filled with explosives,” Holt said, his voice grim.“SIGINT indicates the packages were on the move this week.We just intercepted a text message overnight that they neglected to encrypt.There are no additional supply deliveries or shipments scheduled, because they’ve decided to move forward with the operation ASAP.The weapons from the warehouse outside Seattle are to be used here and in L.A.New York and St.Louis already had separate storage caches.We assess those will be on the move soon, too.”
“Holy shit,” Boone said.
“When are the attacks set to occur?”Radley asked in alarm.
Holt’s voice was grim.“Saturday.We’ve got one week to locate the terrorists, disarm them, and end the simultaneous attacks across the homeland.New York, St.Louis, Seattle, and L.A.are all targets.They might hit smaller sites in addition to the larger landmarks in those cities in order to cause mass confusion and chaos.We need to amplify our efforts to determine how they plan to go about this.Will they use suicide bombers?Backpacks?Personal vehicles?There are a number of scenarios we need to run through.Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 14
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RADLEY LET OUT A SIGHlate that evening, climbing out of her vehicle in the below-ground garage.She was exhausted, and they had a hell of a lot of work to do.Radley and Bravo Team would be back at it first thing in the morning, racing against the clock to track the terror cell members and stop the imminent attacks.
Shit.Shit.Shit.
The situation was escalating beyond what any of them wanted to imagine.Jett’s team in New York had been making leads as well, but it wasn’t enough, and they all knew it.They needed specifics.Names and IDs on every terror cell member.Security could be beefed up around the potential targets, but then what?They needed to stop the bombers before they moved into place if they hoped to stop the simultaneous attacks.The trouble was, even if they had all the names, the men were likely dispersing to multiple cities.
Where were they staying?Did they have rental cars?Were they using their own vehicles?There were more questions than answers right now, and it was frustrating the hell out of her.