State of Attack (25 page)
Authors: Gary Haynes
Ibrahim put his hand into his pocket and offered Mohammed what appeared to be a tiny rubber ball about the size of a pea.
“What is it?”
“You know what it is,” Ibrahim said. “The rubber’s thin, the glass wall inside is thinner. But it should stop it breaking by accident. You mustn’t swallow it, or it will just pass through your system like a marble. Crunch it with your back teeth. It contains potassium cyanide. You’ll be dead in minutes.”
Mohammed took it, and wrapped it in his handkerchief before popping it into his own pocket.
“If anything happens, don’t let them take you alive, brother,” Ibrahim said. “If you speak, we will be undone.”
The room in Paris was part of a small basement apartment that TSM had said he rented from a distant relative, who never checked up on him as long as the rent was paid on time and who had no idea what it was used for, and wouldn’t care if she did. He’d added that the apartment was useful to him because it was only a few miles from the suburbs where the majority of immigrants lived, and that most of his freelance work was centred around there these days.
The drapes were drawn, the windows protected by shutters on the outside and bars on the inside. It was a rundown area of the city, inhabited by teenage drugs gangs and the unemployed. The security was in place to protect what TSM had said was close to one hundred thousand Euro worth of computer software and surveillance equipment.
He had access to sophisticated espionage equipment, including massive databases and satellite images. He’d said the world was full of corrupt government employees, freelance cryptographers and ex-secret service personnel, acting now as private security specialists. It just took enough money and the right contacts to have a surveillance operation equal to that of a minor state.
Tom and Lester were standing behind TSM, who was sitting on a high-backed swivel chair in front of an L-shaped desk, with a bank of flat screens. Atop the table, a transmitter and radio equipment was strewn about, the cables looking like a nest of snakes. He said that he didn’t have to worry about the authorities interfering with his business. He was protected. An acne-ridden freelance IT specialist he’d employed for the task had charged him six thousand Euro. For that, he’d gotten untraceable access, impenetrable firewalls, and the most sophisticated encryption programmes. He knew the IT guy didn’t know the real reason for his role. He guessed he just thought it was extra security precautions against bored geeks, or business competitors, the means of dealing with disabling viruses, or online espionage. He said he’d given him a generous tip and had said he’d recommend him to friends. He said he never had.
The flat screens were showing various chunks of hacked computer information and live CCTV footage from Muslim-dominated suburbs.
He said that the rule against wearing the burqa was being enforced more stringently now and that it was causing problems with an already ostracized Muslim minority, mostly from France’s former colonies and protectorates, including Algeria and Palestine. But at least it meant that men couldn’t disguise themselves as women, something that was happening in other more PC European countries where criminals were carrying out their acts with facial-recognition impunity; jihadists, too. He said that he’d been working unofficially for the CIA for years, and Tom wondered why he was being so open with them.
“The word is that Ibrahim is a hero among Sunni fighters. Like the leader of al-Nusra, no one knows his real name or where he’s from. The Mossad took photographs of him, so he’s still likely to be in disguise,” he said, as if he was talking about something mundane like the weather.
Hours later, the black transmitter on the table before TSM began to blink and made a trilling sound. TSM swivelled sideways, picked up a pair of padded headphones and placed them over his neat ears.
After a minute or more he took them off and without turning around said, “The DCRI are moving in on something. We’re moving, too.”
Tom couldn’t stop from tensing up. It was personal, after all.
The street in which the mosque stood in the small Muslim suburb was made up of other three-storey houses and flat-roofed apartment blocks. On the roofs and at every street corner in the vicinity teenage lookouts were standing with cellphones, paid a minimum wage for their services. As a light drizzle fell from the grey sky at 06:13 three Renault minivans with darkened windows came down a side street, heading for the mosque. The boys looked about like startled gazelles on the savannah and began to make calls frantically and send text messages.
Inside the mosque in the converted loft, Ibrahim was rolling up the thin padded mat on which he had slept. He’d washed, said his prayers, shaved meticulously and snipped at a few straggly hairs at the nape. He’d put on his false hair and beard and prosthetic nose. He hadn’t even told Mohammed, who was the one to be infected in France, that his hair and nose were false.
He stood up and turned around to face the door after it had been opened. He saw Mohammed standing there. He was panting and looked distressed.
“We have to leave now.” he said. “A brother is waiting for you two streets away on a red moped. He has a spare helmet. Wear it.”
Ibrahim moved over to the corner of the room and snatched up a hessian bag before darting outside the room, following Mohammed.
By the time they had gotten to the third floor Ibrahim heard the crackling sound of splintering wood. He rushed to the street-side window and peered down. Outside, a team of men were readying themselves on the sidewalk, wearing regulation bulletproof vests, heavy Kevlar helmets, and carrying blast-resistant shields and MP5 submachine guns fixed with red-dot sights. Some wore infrared googles, while others had small cameras perched on their shoulders. The mosque had a CCTV camera above the wooden door and just inside of it a steel inner door, which Mohammed had said he’d explained away to the authorities as being a necessary deterrent to gangs of extremist right wingers.
Ibrahim knew that the team on the street below would have breaching charges and that all of the exit routes on the ground would be covered. He turned and looked at Mohammed.
“The roof hatch,” Mohammed said.
Feeling desperate but refusing to give up hope, Ibrahim nodded just as a dull explosion meant the inner door had been breached. As they ran up the narrow staircase to the loft he heard heavy footsteps as the French charged up the first flight of wooden stairs.
Less than a minute later, after Ibrahim had scrambled through the roof hatch, Mohammed took his handkerchief from his pocket, unwrapped it and put the pea-shaped pellet into his mouth. He could have tried to escape, too, but his sacrifice would give Ibrahim valuable time, however brief. He counted two swings from what he guessed was a two-handed steel ram before the door’s locks and bolts were smashed through. He’d closed the roof hatch already and had switched off the light.
They stormed in, the beams from their flashlights seemingly scanning every inch of the room, picking out discarded clothes, empty bottles of water, a plywood closet. Grinning, he raised his hands.
“Get down. Down on the floor,” one said.
He obeyed. A second later the left side of his face was shoved into the carpet. He felt a boot on his neck, another on his ankles. His hands were deftly secured with flexi-cuffs. The plastic nipped his skin and he winced.
He said a silent prayer and bit hard on the pellet, feeling the cool liquid poison pass down his throat.
“God is Great,” he murmured.
Tom had agreed to drive TSM’s sedan because he spoke fluent French and could understand the instructions from the sat nav. Lester was sitting beside him, grumbling about not understanding a damn thing, including why they were heading for a Muslim suburb and what the hell they were going to do once they got there, even though Tom had told him they were there to observe. TSM was sitting in the back, a pair of small earphones in his ears attached to a black-box receiver, a laptop on his thighs.
En route TSM had explained that a potential suspect was hiding out at a nearby mosque. Tom had asked him how the DCRI had known this and TSM had said that the DCRI had a handful of Muslim assets on the payroll and that they did the rounds of the mosques, picking up what intel they could. One had heard a rumour that a Yemini was sleeping at a mosque and although it might not be much, it could be. It turned out to be the nearest one to which the vehicle had been parked, the one with matching numbers on the plate recounted by the French woman. Together, that was just too much of a coincidence.
TSM had given Tom and Lester holstered SIG Sauer P229s chambered in 9mm, saying that Crane had said they were their favourites. But they were for ultimate self-defence only, and that, TSM had said, meant that only if someone was pointing a gun barrel down their throat.
“They haven’t thrown up a police cordon,” TSM said. “So we’ll stop just after the next left.”
TSM said that the anti-terrorist squads had had to go in as stealthily as possible, given the many lookouts, and that a fleet of police cars and emergency vehicles would have meant that the operation would have been fatally telegraphed. They’d only gotten the intel six hours ago, and that even though the squads were fast response, they still had to be briefed and put a plan together. It would have been better to have gone in a few hours earlier, before twilight, at least, in the hope that most people in the vicinity were still asleep. But it was what it was.
As Tom turned the corner he slowed down and parked up beside a cluster of trash bags. The drizzle had turned to rain and the wipers were on full speed. The stench from the bags seemed to permeate the interior of the car and Lester began coughing and bitching.
An angry crowd had gathered outside a house about thirty yards up, clanking trash can lids onto the ground and shaking their fists in the air. A man was being carried out of the mosque, with a blanket over his head. Above, a police helicopter was scanning the crowd with a searchlight, even though it was all but light, the wash from the rotors dishevelling hair and clothes. As three police cars raced past the sedan, their sirens screaming, Tom hit the steering wheel with his palm.
“He’s dead,” he said, looking in the rearview at TSM.
TSM removed one his earpieces. “A second helicopter is following a moped, with a pillion passenger. They saw a guy climbing out onto the roof. He passed over five adjoining roofs before climbing down a fire escape. The crowd aren’t random. They prevented the snatch squad from going after him on the ground. But the guy with his head covered could be Ibrahim. And if he is he’s dead already, as you say. Whoever he was, he didn’t have an ID card on him. Everyone refuses to carry one in these parts.”
“So we go after the moped?” Tom said.
“Yes. According to the helicopter co-pilot, it’s heading into the centre of the city.”
Lester turned around. “Can you get me one of those?” he said, pointing at the receiver.
TSM smiled. “For ten thousand Euro I can get you anything you want, my friend.”
“Can we focus here?” Tom said, irritated.
TSM gave him the latest location and put the earpiece back in.
Tom turned the ignition fob key, jabbed in the details to the sat nav, and jerked the stick into reverse before executing a three-point turn.
Ibrahim got off the moped outside a glass and chrome shopping mall, clutching his hessian bag. It was already busy with commuters and those coming off the night shift, buying breakfast or bread and milk from the ground-floor supermarket outlets. He patted the driver on the shoulder, who still had the moped revving, and watched briefly as he zigzagged into the heavy traffic.
Looking up he saw the hovering police helicopter. The noise of the traffic and the moped’s engine had masked the sound as they’d travelled through the Paris streets and highways, but he’d guessed it’d still been there. Shrugging, he walked over the sidewalk onto the wide pink and grey paving-stone path, slick with rain, leading to the mall, and glanced to the left and right, making sure nobody was shadowing him on the grassy flanks.
As he heard a siren in the near distance, he figured he had maybe a few minutes to do what he intended.
Trust no one, he thought.
In that instant he decided that he couldn’t risk coming back to Europe, even if it meant scaling down the international nature of the attack. But no, he thought, others would volunteer for that. For now he had to concentrate on getting out of France safely. But, despite his body language to the contrary, he felt the world closing in on him, felt an undeniable sense of fear, the fear of being caught before he could carry out his sacred task.
Two minutes later, Ibrahim was in the public restroom on the mall’s ground floor. He’d checked underneath the cubicles, and had seen that they were empty. He stepped behind the entry door and waited. After thirty seconds the door opened, as he hoped it would. A middle-aged man came in, wearing a business suit. He had silver hair and looked as if he took the French habit of eating a two-hour lunch to its limit. Clearly sensing someone behind him he turned.
Ibrahim rushed at him. The man put up his arms instinctively, and Ibrahim kicked him hard in the groin with his instep. The man doubled over and let out a shrill scream like an injured rodent. Ibrahim sidestepped behind him, pulled the Frenchman’s head back and punched him in the throat with an awkward hook. As he let go of him, the man dropped, his head jarring on the tiled floor, his out-of-condition body twitching.
Ibrahim moved over to where the aluminium urinals were and tilted a heavy metal trash can. He dragged it over to a white china toilet pan in one of the empty cubicles. He squatted down and put his arms round the base of the trash can. Straining and gritting his teeth, he just managed to raise it up above the pan before swinging it down. The china shattered and a gush of water flooded out.
He dipped down and picked up a piece of the china with a serrated edge, putting it into his pocket. He pulled out a handful of tissue paper from the dispenser next to the cistern, turned and watched the water spreading across the blue-tiled floor. He dragged the trash can over to the closed entry door and wedged it against it.