Resurrection Day (8 page)

The two storey red-bricked house was in the South-East, off the Suitland Parkway, and less than five miles from the centre of DC. The property looked like a real-estate agent's worst nightmare. Several of the windows were shattered and nailed up with wooden planking, the lawn was overgrown, the roof leaked, the exterior badly needed a paint job, and to top it all, the house was located in a lousy part of town, infested with drug peddlers and scoured by crime.

It was just before one that afternoon when Mohamed Rashid turned his muddied six-year-old Explorer into the weed-covered driveway. He wore a dark blue windcheater, grey sweatshirt and pants, and as he switched off the engine he turned to his two passengers, Nikolai Gorev and Karla Sharif. 'The two men came highly recommended. They're loyal supporters of the Islamic cause.'

'You trust them?' Gorev asked.

'Yes, I trust them,' Rashid replied. 'You can be certain the Americans are going to concentrate their attention on anyone with a Middle East background once they start to look for us. It wouldn't be safe using people from our own cells. They may be under surveillance. But these men have no criminal records, or connection to any of the cells.'

Rashid locked the car and activated the alarm before he led the way up the front steps and rang the bell — twice, then a three-second pause, then twice again. As they waited for an answer, Rashid looked back across the street they had just driven into.

A long row of run-down stores stood opposite, among them a grocery and a liquor store, the pavement in front spattered with litter. A half-dozen black teenagers loitered in a group, wearing baseball caps back to front, baggy clothes and chunky sneakers. They drank from beer cans, a noisy ghetto-blaster at their feet, and didn't seem to pay the slightest attention to Rashid. Still, he guessed they hadn't failed to notice the blue Explorer and its occupants, no more than they failed to notice anything within their orbit. It was the kind of neighbourhood the police avoided venturing into unless they had a death wish, or it was absolutely necessary.

He turned back as a big, rugged black man opened the door. His name was Moses Lee and he wore a grey T-shirt, muscles bulging beneath the stretched cotton. He quickly ushered them into a hallway lit by a single naked bulb, then glanced out at the street before closing the door. 'Been expecting you brothers half an hour ago.'

'The traffic was heavy,' Rashid explained. He noticed the man take a Beretta automatic that he'd been holding behind his back and slip it into his trouser pocket. 'Why, is everything all right?'

'Sure, everything's real fucking sweet. Apart from the assholes living in this motherfucking neighbourhood. You lock the car?'

'Of course.'

'Assholes round here would steal fucking anything that ain't guarded, nailed down or securely locked.'

Moses led them into the front living room. It was a mess. The curtains were closed, the light on, and the room was scattered with magazines, newspapers and empty takeaway food containers. A portable TV flickered in a corner, a news channel on, the sound turned down, and on a sofa chair was a Heckler and Koch MP-5 machine-pistol.

Rashid said, 'Where's Abdullah?'

Moses picked up the Heckler, rested the barrel in the crook of his shoulder, nodded towards a door across the hall. 'Man's in the garage, doin' the baby-sitting.'

The garage was an integral part of the house, reached from the kitchen, and just as neglected. It smelled of oil and grease, the bare concrete walls daubed with paint splashes. A dirty neon tube was lit overhead, and parked in the middle of the floor was a muddied, dark grey Nissan van.

Gorev, Karla and Rashid followed Moses Lee over to where a clean-shaven young Arab man with designer glasses and wearing Western clothes — sneakers, jeans, a pale grey Virginia University sweater — sat on a packing crate, a pump-action shotgun resting on his lap, the breech open, exposing two live cartridges. 'Abdullah's been making sure the property is kept safe, ain't you, man?'

'Yes.'

'Any dude tries to come through that garage door without a formal invitation is gonna get some twelve-gauge buckshot up his ass.'

'You've kept the van locked and the alarm on?' Rashid asked.

'Just like you said. Been watching over the merchandise, but didn't touch nothin'.'

'We need a few minutes alone.'

Abdullah stood, cradled the shotgun over his arm. 'Of course.'

'We'll be inside when you're finished,' Moses said. 'You want me to make some coffee for you guys?'

'Thank you. That would be excellent,' Rashid replied.

Moses led Abdullah towards the kitchen and the door closed behind them. When they had gone, Rashid said, 'Moses served with the American special forces. He's an excellent shot with any kind of weapon, and much brighter than he looks. He'll protect the cargo with his life, if necessary.'

'And the other one?' Gorev asked.

'Abdullah will do exactly as he is told.'

'How much do they know?'

'Only Abdullah knows the truth. But they will both follow my orders, without question.' Rashid removed his jacket, nodded towards the Nissan. 'We'll need to test the detonation program. Make sure it's working.'

Karla Sharif looked fearful. 'Isn't that dangerous?'

Rashid ignored her as he moved towards the van. 'Let's do it.'

Washington, DC 11 November 11.30 a.m.

Seven blocks from the White House, between Tenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, is the J. Edgar Hoover building, the headquarters of the FBI. A bland concrete structure that looks like a modern fortress, crammed with over five thousand employees, it serves as the command centre for fifty-seven of the Bureau's field offices and more than seventy thousand Special Agents in towns and cities across the United States.

On the sixth floor is the Counter-Terrorism Division. Under its umbrella is the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Unit, with responsibility for nuclear, bacteriological and chemical weapons attacks on American soil. It is manned twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year by teams of specially trained agents.

By 3.15 a.m., when Director Douglas Stevens had made his emergency visit to the White House, the Counter-Terrorism Division and its WMD Unit had already got their investigation under way. A team of agents had been dispatched to Washington's airports and were checking arrival and entry lists for possible terrorist subjects. The same was happening in every US city, from Los Angeles and San Francisco on the West Coast to New York and Boston in the East and all points in between. Legions of agents roused from their beds in the middle of the night by the Bureau's field offices scattered across the country were poring over passenger lists in ports and airports, examining cargo manifests to see whether any suspect materials had recently been shipped in by air freight or in ships' containers from Afghanistan, its neighbour, Pakistan, or from any Arab country deemed suspect.

Another squad of agents had been ordered to compile inventories of any US company or chemist who had ever manufactured or worked with nerve gases, and yet another was gathering lists of suspects of Middle Eastern origin living in the US. By noon, over eight hundred agents would already be involved.

In charge of the WMD Unit was Carl J. Everly. At fifty-one, he had thinning grey hair and a badly shaped nose, a relic of his boxing days in a Boston youth club, giving him the air of a tough-looking street fighter. Which was deceptive, because it concealed one of the sharpest minds in the Division. That morning at 11.30 his office was a frenzy of activity as a half-dozen people crowded into the room. They included three FBI senior investigating officers and two chemists attached to the section. Everly fired off a question to one of the seniors. 'What's happening with our second expert opinion the Director asked for?'

'We've got three top nerve gas scientists with the US military being flown in to reassess Professor Fredericks' analysis, sir.'

Everly turned to another agent. 'What about the cargo lists, Bobby?'

'We're making slow progress. The US imports a lot of raw materials. In excess of twenty-five billion tonnes a year. We'll have to narrow it down, otherwise we're going to get swamped.'

Everly sighed. The mound of cargo manifests that would have to be thoroughly checked through was awesome. He needed to reduce the pile, at least for now. 'Go back only three months, and ignore everything else for the moment. If we find nothing interesting, go back another month, then keep going back by a month each time, right back for a year. Ray, what about the passenger lists?'

'All we've got so far is a suspected Palestinian militant who arrived at JFK three weeks ago. But it turns out the charges against him go back over fifteen years. Even the Israelis reckon he's been out of the game for at least a decade.'

'What extra help's been assigned to us?'

'Every available man the Division's got.'

'You better get in touch with any of our guys on leave. The order is all leave's been cancelled, in every department and every field office. Unless someone's ill or dealing with a dire personal emergency, they're back on duty as of today.'

Everly paused to draw breath, felt acid pains in his stomach. He hadn't eaten since the previous night, but had drunk at least a dozen cups of strong coffee. 'As soon as our boys get through talking with these nerve-gas experts, I want their report immediately. The same applies if any one of you turns up anything interesting — get in touch with me, pronto. If I'm not at my desk, you all have my cellphone number. In the meantime, everyone back to work.'

Washington, DC 12.55 p.m.

Mohamed Rashid stepped over to the van and took a set of keys from his pocket. There was an alarm keypad on the ring and he pressed the button. The Nissan's lights flashed, and the central locking disengaged. He swung open the rear doors. Inside were two sealed oil drums, their tops locked securely with metal bands. He knew that inside those drums, securely placed in layers of shock-resistant foam, were three hundred toughened-glass balls, each not much bigger than the size of a tennis ball, and individually filled with a colourless liquid chemical.

On the floor, next to the drums, was a laptop computer. It was hooked up to a satellite dish receiver, which was placed near the front of the van. The laptop was also connected to the drums by slim electric cables. Farther back in the van was a black leather briefcase with sturdy brass combination locks. Only Rashid knew the secret of what was contained in the briefcase, but for now he was interested only in the laptop computer. He rolled up his sleeves and climbed into the van. Gorev and Karla joined him, hunched in the back.

Rashid detached two of the leads that ran from a connector on the back of the computer, one to each of the drums. 'I've disconnected the detonators. Now for the disk.'

Sweat sparkled on his temples as he removed a square, hard plastic wallet from the breast pocket of his shirt, opened the laptop and switched it on. After a few moments, the screen nickered to life and the boot program started to load. It took about a minute, and when it had finished Rashid opened the plastic wallet, slid out the disk, inserted it into the slit at the side of the laptop, and hit the enter key. Within another couple of minutes the computer had loaded the contents of the disk, and then a prompt appeared at the top left of the screen: 'ACTIVE. TO PROCEED, ENTER PASSWORD.' Rashid tapped in the Arab word al-Wakia; the screen cleared, and another line appeared, replacing the first one: 'ENTER COUNTDOWN PERIOD'.

Rashid entered the figures 00.00.05 and hit enter again.

Another line appeared on screen: 'COMMENCING COUNTDOWN. FIVE SECONDS BEFORE DETONATION.'

The figure 5 he had entered started to count down: 4. 3. 2. 1. 0.

Then the screen flashed a message: 'DETONATION CODE FIRED.'

Seconds later, another message flashed below it. 'PROGRAM WORKING. DETONATION CODE NOW RESET. TEST RUN COMPLETE.'

'It works.' Rashid smiled. 'Thanks be to Allah.'

Gorev noticed fine beads of sweat on the Arab's upper lip. 'What's the matter? You look worried.'

'I'm not. But I know the power of this chemical, what it can do. If the detonators were connected when the code was fired, we'd all be dead by now.'

'You're sure it's safe?' Gorev asked.

Rashid nodded. 'Until we're ready to teach the Americans a lesson, if we must. And when that happens, we program in whatever time period we want — be it five seconds or five hours, or however long we need to get far enough away from Washington. The computer will do the rest, and detonate the drums once the exact amount of time has elapsed. And there's the other alternative. That Abu Hasim will decide to detonate it himself, remotely, with a satellite signal.'

'And what if the computer goes haywire?' Gorev asked grimly. 'Or generates a spurious signal to trigger the drums?'

'I've been assured that can't happen, Gorev. There are safety circuits built into the detonators that require them to be addressed by a specific code from the computer. Otherwise they won't explode the chemical. And there are only two ways they can be addressed. Either by us, with our program.' Rashid gestured to the satellite dish. 'Or by Abu Hasim over the airwaves, if he remotely accesses the computer with a satellite signal. At all times, the laptop remains in a stand-by mode, ready to receive his signal, even while it's switched off. And it has a long-life battery pack that will last for weeks once it's in a stand-by mode.'

'We better pray you're right and it's safe.'

Rashid wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand, removed the disk, replaced it in the plastic wallet. Then he turned off the computer, gingerly reconnected the detonator leads and climbed down out of the van. When the others had joined him, he locked the rear doors and flicked on the alarm again. He heard the electronic 'beep', the clunk of the front doors locking, and consulted his watch. 'It's time the Americans realised what's in store for them. Time to let them see the power of our weapon.' He pulled on his jacket, said to Karla, 'You can drop me off back in Washington. I'll meet you both later.'

'You don't need company?' Gorev asked.

Rashid shook his head. 'No, I'll do this alone.'

The White House 9.55 a.m.