The Enemy Within (32 page)

She and all the others trapped in the four-lane underpass were incinerated. More than a dozen other cars and trucks on either side of the explosion were also scorched and burned. The vehicles on Olive and Boren streets above were either flipped over or fell through into the inferno below.

Half a minute after the echoes of the enormous blast faded away, stunned motorists left their cars on the highway and stood staring in shock and terror at the burning mass of twisted steel and concrete clogging the gap where the overpass had once been. Buildings on either side of the highway were burning, and the agonized screams and shrieks of those who were trapped and on fire tore through the sudden silence.

Burien, Washington Hamid Algar and his two comrades, Anton Chemelovic and Jabra Ibrahim, watched the television in rapt fascination. Coverage of the disaster had started only moments after Hamid had returned to their apartment, and now, like the rest of Seattle and America, they viewed the live television feed. But while the rest of the country watched in horror and fascination, the three Iranian-trained commandos were performing battle damage assessment.

The picture now on television came from the roof of a nearby office building. From above, the destroyed overpass looked like nothing more than a giant, blackened hourglass filled with rubble and twisted metal. Emergency vehicles surrounded the crater.

The reporter now on camera, stunned by the carnage and rattled by the lack of hard information, kept repeating the single, inadequate word: “tragedy.” It had been a tragic accident, there had been a tragic loss of life, and so on. Area hospitals were jammed and some of those with less critical injuries had been farmed out to smaller clinics. At the moment, the death toll stood at twenty-five, but that was expected to climb rapidly as searchers pulled apart the rubble. Sixty-three had been seriously hurt. Seattle’s burn wards were full.

The National Transportation Safety Board had already dispatched an investigative team to the area. They would land at Boeing Field at 2:10 P.M. Algar, Chemelovic, and Ibrahim all relaxed slightly. At least initially, the Americans were treating the tanker blast as an accident. They would find no immediate clues that this was a terrorist attack. When the NTSB’s investigators discovered the truth later, their trail would be days old, and it would be a very faint, very cold trail.

They nodded to each other. Tehran would be pleased.

Chemelovic, a Bosnian, had actually made the bomb. His gift for electronics had earned him special training in demolitions at Masegarh, and now both of his teammates praised his work. Algar told him several times exactly how he had placed the device. By the time the Syrian finished retelling the story, Chemelovic had a grin covering half his face. His skills had won a great victory in the war against the godless West.

Jabra Ibrahim rose from the couch and snapped the television off.

“Come on, both of you. Help me pack.”

Ibrahim, a Lebanese, had provided security and cover for the three-man cell. He’d rented the apartment, done the shopping, and organised all the logistics during their short, one week stay in the Seattle area. He was the conscientious one, the one who’d worked on their laptop computer while the others watched television.

Their personal gear went into one duffel bag, and their tools and weapons into another two. While Algar and Chemelovic cleaned up, Ibrahim meticulously went through each room, each closet, and each cupboard looking for anything that belonged to them or came from them. A scrap of paper, a button, anything that might provide a link to them.

When Chemelovic and Algar returned from loading their gear into the Nova, they helped in the search. A few small items were found, a tool under a piece of furniture and a sock, one of Algar’s, under another. Shamefacedly, he took possession of the offending article and stood next to Chemelovic as Ibrahim, the team leader, berated them both for sloppy security.

Finally, he handed each of them a rag and a bottle of cleaning solution. Systematically, they wiped down every smooth surface, every wall and every object capable of holding a fingerprint. While none of them had ever been fingerprinted by the American government, a print here might link them to some past act or location, or some future one.

Just after noon, they were finished. The three piled into the blue Nova and pulled out of the lot. Ibrahim drove, and he stopped in front of the apartment complex’s rental office. Grabbing an envelope, he jumped out of the car and ran in.

The day manager, a stout, middle-aged woman, glanced up from her crossword puzzle. “Oh, Mr. Rashid. You here to check out?”

Ibrahim nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Hume. We all finished the program this morning.” He’d rented the three-bedroom apartment on a weekly basis with the story that he and the others were reps from a Silicon Valley data processing company who had come to the Seattle area to attend courses at Microsoft University. It was a common and believable cover one which no one felt compelled to check.

“And how did you do?” the manager asked, busy counting the money in the envelope he’d handed to her.

Ibrahim smiled. “We received top marks, Mrs. Hume. Straight As.”

NOVEMBER
9

Special Operations Headquarters, Tehran

(D
MINUS
36)

LYNX
Prime via
MAGI
Link to
MAGI
Prime:

1. Attack successful. Preliminary damage assessment attached.

2.
LYNX
Bravo confirms cell in movement to Portland, Oregon.

Security unbleached. Standing by for further orders.

General Amir Taleh finished reading through the latest status reports from his widely scattered forces and nodded in satisfaction. The first two of his planned attacks had been carried out with perfect attention to detail. A third, set for the Houston area, had been scrapped at the last moment to avoid tighter security at the intended target a railroad crossing near a poor, predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhood. He shrugged. His field commanders had acted intelligently there. It was too soon to risk compromising the whole operation to press home an attack against higher odds.

He looked up at Captain Kazemi. “You understand I wish to see the latest videotapes as soon as they arrive?”

His aide nodded crisply. “Of course, sir. I’ve left explicit orders at the communications center.”

Besides the trained agents in embassies and elsewhere who made up his official intelligence network, Taleh found himself relying increasingly on news reports from the United States to monitor the progress of his covert war. Curiously and foolishly left uncensored by their government, the networks were a unique and useful source of information. They mirrored, and often led, American public and political opinion.

And from what Taleh had seen so far, the right notes of hysteria were beginning to be sounded over the American airwaves. He picked up the phone on his desk and punched in the internal code for the head of the operations planning section. “Colonel Kaya? Come to my office immediately. Bring the next set of strike orders with you.”

He hung up and rocked back in his chair, envisioning the havoc his next set of signals would wreak on the United States.

Every attack against America sprang from his mind from his will. When he saw the results, it was a personal satisfaction. It was partly revenge for all the evils the Americans had inflicted on his beloved country over the years, but he knew revenge by itself was pointless. That was where his predecessors had failed. His terror operations only had merit if they were part of a larger campaign.

Taleh smiled fiercely. The initial stages of
SCIMITAR
had gone well. It was time to increase the tempo.

NOVEMBER
12

Chicago, Illinois.

(D
MINUS
33)

Bundled up against the cold, Nikola Tomcic stood on the sidewalk beside an idling green Dodge minivan. He wanted a cigarette, but the short, stocky Bosnian Muslim suppressed the urge. They’d already cleaned out the cheap basement apartment that had sheltered them for the past several weeks, and his tobacco was packed away with the rest of his personal gear. He would simply have to wait. As his instructors had said so often, patience was one of the qualities of a good soldier.

Bassam Khalizad, his team leader, sprinted back from the mailbox and clapped him on the shoulder. “They’ll get the keys in a few days,” the Iranian remarked, his smooth face oddly boyish without its customary beard and mustache. “Not that the fools will care.”

Tomcic nodded sourly. Although the lackadaisical management at the old brownstone apartment house had made it attractive to Khalizad’s team, he still thought the landlords were sloppy even decadent. The wizened old man and woman who owned the building were clearly used to renting out their property to all manner of deviants drug users, alcoholics, boy-lovers, and the rest. So long as they were paid in cash, the landlords paid no attention to their tenants.

Khalizad motioned the young Bosnian into the back of the minivan and slid onto the seat beside Halim Barakat, their driver. “We’re set. Let’s go.”

The sallow-faced Egyptian grunted and pulled out into the light, midday traffic. He threaded the van through the streets with ease. Tomcic had once heard him say that navigating through Chicago was nothing to one used to driving a taxi through Cairo’s teeming alleys. Since the team had slipped across the border with Canada, it had been his job to study the terrain, to know this American city as well as a skilled general knows his chosen battlefield.

Once a member of the Muslim Brotherhood Egypt’s violent Islamic faction Barakat had fled to Iran and into the hands of General Taleh’s recruiters following a government crackdown on dissent. For him and for millions of Egyptians like him, the murdered Anwar Sadat and his moderate successors were nothing more than American and Israeli puppets. The chance the Iranians offered Barakat to lash out against Islam’s enemies had been irresistible.

Barakat kept to the larger streets, but he included one or two random turns, paying close attention to his side view mirrors each time. It didn’t appear that they were being followed. Good enough. He turned his attention to the road ahead, driving with extra precision and care. There were so many things to worry about: the chance of an accident, a random police stop, a carjacking. While the odds of any of them happening were low, and a carjacking would certainly not succeed, anything out of the ordinary could compromise their mission. That worried him most. It worried them all.

Their orders from Tehran were clear: Security was paramount. They could not risk discovery. They must not be captured.

Barakat gripped the steering wheel tighter, focusing on his job as they bounced and jolted over the potholes that dotted this city’s streets. It was important that they all concentrate on their jobs. He drove, Khalizad planned, and the others, well, the others had their own special tasks.

This part of Chicago was a checkerboard of middle-class neighborhoods and rundown public housing. The racial lines were almost as clearly drawn, with white on one side, blacks and Hispanics on the other. And all of the poverty-stricken public housing projects were overrun with crime, with drugs, and with gangs.

Barakat eyed the passing cityscape grimly. A product of the Cairo slums himself, he knew only too well how easy it was to set such places ablaze with hatred.

“Pull in here.” Khalizad nudged him gently and pointed to a deserted block of mostly boarded-up houses and businesses. Fair-haired Emil Hodjic, another Bosnian, was waiting for them behind the wheel of another van, this one dark blue, parked in front of a small abandoned grocery store. He had rented the vehicle that morning, using a forged Illinois driver’s license and a credit card issued in the same false name.

Barakat pulled in behind Hodiic’s vehicle. Led by Khalizad, he and Tomcic scrambled outside lugging duffel bags containing their weapons and other gear. The Egyptian took pains to lock the Dodge behind him. They would need it again soon enough, and the iron bars protecting the empty store’s windows and doors spoke volumes about the kind of neighborhood they were in.

Hodjic met them near the rental van’s rear doors. “Gloves!” he reminded them sharply.

The Iranian and his two companions nodded and paused long enough to pull on thin, flexible leather gloves usual enough wear against the biting November winds blowing westward off Lake Michigan. More important, wearing the gloves should make sure they left no damning prints for later investigators to find.

Barakat slid behind the wheel and took a moment to familiarize himself with the controls. Behind him, the other three got to work.

Stripping off their winter jackets, they opened the duffel bags and pulled out body armor, black coveralls, and black ski masks. Each of the coveralls bore a white sword on the back, hilt upward to resemble a cross. The body armor went on first, followed by the coveralls and masks.

A weapons check came next. Each man carried a military style assault rifle and a pistol in a shoulder holster. Hodjic passed a tiny TEC-9 machine pistol up to Barakat, who laid it on the seat beside him and covered it with his coat. He was not expected to need it, but graduates of the harsh training at Masegarh learned early on not to take chances.

Khalizad snapped a thirty-round magazine into his M16 and glanced at Tomcic and Hodjic. The two Bosnians nodded back silently, tightly gripping their own weapons. They were ready.

Barakat put the rented van in motion, and the three men in back checked their watches. They were seven minutes away from their objective. Plenty of time. Like paratroopers preparing for a combat jump, they checked each other over, looking for loose gear or forgotten items.

Finally, they crouched facing the rear door. They had to brace themselves against the twists and turns of the van, but the Egyptian was taking the shortest route he could and driving as carefully as he could. A fender bender now would be an unmitigated disaster.