#1305 - The Belated Team B (Two Chapters in One)

The diesel floating on the sea surface burned fiercely, forming a sea of ​​fire that was larger than the actual surface. Even when diving nearly one meter underwater, Jack still had the illusion that he was going to turn into a saltwater shrimp.

This illusion mainly comes from the firelight refracted into the water, which seems endless.

Trying hard to use reason to suppress the panic that came from his physiological instinct, Jack grabbed Harry's arm and pointed to the left front, motioning him to follow him.

Harry puffed his lips and spit out a few bubbles, "gurgling", indicating that he understood what he meant, and then the two of them swam one after the other towards the nearest darkness that Jack could sense.

Only when he was sure that there was no more burning fire above his head and the surroundings became pitch black again did Jack stick his head out of the water, open his mouth and take a deep breath, feeling like he was alive again.

Although the smell of this "fresh air" is terrible, with an unpleasant burnt odor and the salty smell of evaporated sea water, it is still so tempting.

Harry also popped his head out from behind Jack, also gasping for breath. The two looked at each other and saw the relief of surviving the disaster in each other's eyes.

The two were not far from where they fell into the water, only about forty or fifty meters away. The helicopter that fired rockets at the two was still hovering in the sky, as if it wanted to confirm their bodies.

Fortunately, the explosion of the tanker truck was quite powerful, and the spilled light diesel formed a large burning area. The hot air and thick smoke rolled upward, making it difficult for helicopters to get too close.

It was still early in the morning, and the flames burning around the dock and the dark sea formed a strong visual contrast, with the extreme brightness and darkness appearing very distinct.

The helicopters obtained by these terrorists were ordinary civilian ones. They were not equipped with the high-power searchlights and infrared detectors that are standard on police or search and rescue helicopters. In the end, they just circled twice before leaving in a hurry.

"We are in big trouble." Jack looked at the trophy on his wrist, the junk watch he had seized before. It had stopped working because of water ingress, and the hands stopped at 12:55.

Harry was sitting on the rocks beside him, taking off his shoes and pouring out the seawater. He just smiled bitterly when he heard him say that. "I'm worried about Helen and Jessie."

The flames on the dock were still raging, and even though you were hundreds of meters away, you could still feel the heat wave blowing in your face. This also meant that there was no hope for the speedboats and small boats that were originally parked near the pier.

So a fatal problem was placed before the two men. They were trapped to death on this small island, and in five hours, this place would become a nuclear test site like the famous Bikini Atoll.

"Aziz is a relatively rational guy. He knows he needs hostages, so he probably won't do anything to them for now."

Jack wrung out his clothes and was about to put them back on, but he found that his shirt and the T-shirt underneath were so torn that he decided to just go shirtless like Harry.

"So the helicopter just now was not so much looking for our bodies as it was confirming the damage to the dock."

Harry threw away his socks, put on his leather shoes that made a sizzling sound, and stood up to look towards the warehouse. The fire at the door had been extinguished. "There are still some equipment and tools in the warehouse. Maybe we can still dismantle a usable engine and build a ship in time."

"A nuclear bomb with a TNT equivalent of 15,000 tons has an effective killing radius of less than two kilometers. Even if we row, we should still be able to make it in time."

Jack pointed to the north and said, "I remember that the ship and the helicopter were both heading north."

Harry heard the hesitation in his words, and followed his gradually raised arm to the starry sky, and asked in confusion, "What's wrong?"

"Those flashing red and green lights are the aircraft's navigation lights, right?"

Squinting his eyes and barely looking at the night sky for a long time, he even had the illusion that he was about to fall into the starry sky. Harry rubbed his eyes uncertainly, "Really?"

Jack did not answer, because there were suddenly several flashing lights in the sky, but they were no longer the aircraft navigation lights he had seen before, but the indicator lights on the paraglider.

——

Sonny Quinn, who was dragging the rubber boat hard, pulled up his diving goggles, wiped the water stains on his face, waved to Jack who was waiting on the beach, and greeted him with the iconic Texan greeting.

"I need to know where we are right now." Harry interrupted everyone's "greetings" rudely, "There is a nuclear bomb on the island with a timer activated."

"This is Zis Island, located south of the Florida Keys." Jason did not show much surprise. "So what the fat man said is true? Is there really a nuclear bomb on the island?"

"We saw with our own eyes that the terrorists started the timer." Jack grabbed Jason's wrist and checked the time on his watch. "There are about four and a half hours left. We need to evacuate nearby residents immediately. That's a W-80 nuclear warhead with a yield of over 15,000 tons."

The seals who were originally laughing suddenly became serious. Jason signaled "Full Metal" Scott Carter and team doctor Trent to follow Harry into the warehouse for confirmation, and he pulled Jack to the side.

"The helicopter will arrive in 10 minutes. Do you mind telling me what's going on?"

Omitting some oolong scenes, Jack briefly recounted their experience last night, and then concluded, "'Dark Jihad' must have subsequent attack plans.

This nuclear bomb was just a rehearsal. They filmed it and asked Harry and I to confirm the authenticity of the three nuclear bombs. Then they used a helicopter and a cargo ship to transport the remaining two. "

"Map." Jason waved and asked Sonny for a plastic map. He found the island of Zis where everyone was at the moment, and directly drew a circle with a marker with it as the center. Then he breathed a sigh of relief.

"Fortunately, the nearest inhabited island, Key West, is 10 nautical miles (20 kilometers) away."

"Notify the residents on the island to evacuate first, and remember to ask all nearby ships to stay away." Although Jack had no expectations for the American officials' execution ability, he still reminded them.

Although the threat of nuclear terrorism against the homeland is the highest level of national security alert, known as a "catastrophic threat," he doubts whether the authorities will issue an order through the Emergency Alert System (EAS) requiring people to evacuate immediately.

After all, things are different now than they were in the past. After the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), it integrated a large number of departments including Customs, Border, Coast Guard and even the Secret Service, but its actual role can only be described as difficult to describe in a few words.

Faced with various natural disasters and accidents, the federal departments under DHS have shown their inability to prevent, respond and even recover afterward.

Not to mention that this nuclear bomb was still a long safe distance away from the inhabited Florida Keys. Even if it was about to explode in downtown Miami, Jack doubted whether the authorities had the courage to immediately issue a nuclear threat alert.

The more likely scenario is that they would spend two or three hours arguing about the authenticity of the intelligence, with the various departments arguing and buck-passing, and then half an hour before the explosion, they would announce that there was not enough time.

When a disaster finally happens, the federal government and local governments will start to pass the buck, and it will eventually escalate into a two-party dispute. As for the lives of the people,

It is only equivalent to the equivalent of "Little Boy" back then, and today's nuclear bombs are clean and hygienic, and the residual radiation dose is incomparable to that of the past. What's more, didn't the people of Hiroshima survive in 1945?

Anyway, it won't blow up on Capitol Hill. At that time, we can provide the people with an emergency loan of $770 so that they can buy iodide drugs, and then issue each family a bill of $200,000 for cleanup.

After all, dealing with nuclear radiation requires quite professional skills, which is much more difficult than the rubble left behind after a wildfire.

As Sonny was reporting on the radio, Harry, his hands covered in wet cement, came back with Full Metal and team doctor Trent, who was holding a Geiger counter.

Jason knew the answer when he saw the solemn expressions of his two teammates. After getting the confirmation, he couldn't help but frowned, "You said that the remaining two nuclear bombs have been transported away. Do you know where they went?"

The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!

Jack glanced at Harry and saw that he looked a little distracted. He knew that he must be worried about his wife and daughter who were taken away, so he answered directly, "One was loaded into a truck and sent to a freighter, and the other was transported away by helicopter.

I don't know their final destination, but I can roughly guess where the nuclear bomb on the freighter went."

As he spoke, he took the map from Jason and drew a line on the Florida Keys.

"'Road to Heaven'?" Jason looked puzzled.

Harry came back to his senses and nodded, explaining, "If they plan to ship to ports on the East Coast, they can just load it directly onto the ship, no trucks are needed.

They knew that if a nuclear bomb exploded, coastal ports would be tightly sealed and the Coast Guard would be deployed to search for the whereabouts of the ship, so there was only one possibility. "

Harry pointed at Key West Island. "They will use this cross-sea highway in the archipelago. If we calculate the time, they may have landed by now."

The "Road to Heaven" that Jason refers to is what Harry calls the Florida Keys Cross-Sea Highway.

At the southernmost part of the Florida Peninsula, known as the "Ding Ding" of the United States, there is a broken and long island chain called the Florida Keys.

This is an archipelago, or more precisely, a long and narrow island chain consisting of about 1,700 small islands.

The southernmost tip of US Route 1, after leaving the peninsula, is this marine highway consisting of 42 cross-sea bridges, which connects nearly 100 major islands in the archipelago and is known as the most beautiful "Road to Heaven" in the world.

Because the Florida Keys are less than 80 nautical miles (145 kilometers) from Cuba, the Immigration Bureau set up roadblocks and checkpoints at the northernmost end of the highway in the 1980s to search for contraband and illegal immigrants.

This behavior was complained by residents of the islands, and the Key West City Council also believed that the Immigration Bureau's actions seriously affected the islands' economic pillar - tourism.

After several failed attempts to remove the checkpoints, the then mayor of Key West did something out of the blue and pulled the city council together to declare the independence of the archipelago and establish the "Conch Republic."

The mayor proclaimed himself president, declared war on the United States, and led a group of people into the local air force base, launching an "attack" on the soldiers in the base with water guns and bread.

The "rebellion" lasted only one minute before it was declared a failure. The mayor, who proclaimed himself president, led the people in surrender, which was an extremely humorous way of protest.

Interestingly, although the Immigration Bureau later removed the roadblocks and checkpoints, the federal government never made any official response to the rebellious declaration, which was regarded as tacit approval of the establishment of the "Conch Republic".

So in the Florida Keys today, the "Conch Republic" has become a tourist gimmick. Key West has its own "national flag", "national emblem" and even "passport". Everyone who comes here to travel can buy a blank passport and fill in their own name.

It is precisely because of such historical reasons that this marine highway is now unobstructed and has no checkpoints. This also means that once a truck carrying a nuclear bomb completes the 182-kilometer journey and enters the inland of the Florida Peninsula, it will be very troublesome to find it.

Soon, two MH-60R "Seahawk" helicopters that had fought with the SEALs on Alcatraz Island flew over to Chess Island to pick up people. Gibson, wearing a heavy bulletproof vest and holding an M4A1, was the first to jump off the plane.

When the middle-aged fat man saw Harry, shirtless and showing off his muscular body, he was about to say something, but his eyes fell on Jack, who had the same look, and he couldn't help but whistled at him.

"I bet that Jack's muscular body is more popular with girls than you."

Harry glared at him and walked towards the helicopter without looking back, "Let's go, I need to communicate with the higher-ups immediately."

——

Putting on headphones to block out the noise of the propellers, Gibson said loudly, "The Air Force has sent an E-7A Wedgetail AWACS aircraft to search for the helicopter carrying the nuclear bomb. Hopefully, the other party has not had time to land.

You said the terrorists might be carrying heavy firepower, so we did not mobilize the police force on the island and temporarily only set up a blockade at the northernmost end of the cross-sea highway.

A helicopter belonging to the DEA has spotted a suspected terrorist convoy consisting of two trucks and a Lincoln sedan. Helen and Jessie may be in the Lincoln.