The Intercept (4 page)
Authors: Dick Wolf
Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense, #Contemporary, #Azizex666
A
rshad Khan, a heavyset, fiftyish man in a blue nylon tracksuit and Puma high-top basketball sneakers, looked very much out of place among the gamers and tourists at the All-Joy Internet Café.
He sipped his hot tea and prowled the Web for newspaper stories, YouTube videos, and blog postings about the Bassam Shah incident in New York City. There was little information of value, but it satisfied his curiosity.
Photographs of sunflowers culled from a Google image search filled another open window on the monitor bike-locked to the café counter. He spotted eight new ones that he did not recognize from previous downloads, and saved them to a two-gigabyte Lexar flash drive, its activity light flickering as it stored the images.
Finally, after shifting his posture to cover the screen from casual observers, he opened a third window—a small one—and quickly browsed familiar pornography sites, ones not blocked by the café. He captured free JPEG images and video clips almost at random—lactating women, lesbian sex, gay men masturbating—until the thumb drive was full.
He unplugged the drive, paid the teenager at the door for his hour at the machine, and wished him peace. Khan spoke Urdu with a Pashtun accent, but given his casual appearance he could have been from anywhere in the Arab world. He crossed the street, savoring the cooler air beneath the canopies of the ancient oriental plane trees as he strolled. Many of the trees were five hundred years old, a fact he found reassuring. Modern life was full of so many tentative realities, but time and history belonged to no man. The future, however, was always in play.
He entered the parking lot of a squash complex, home to the game that Pakistanis had seized from their English colonial masters and dominated for fifty years. Khan unlocked the driver’s door of his brick-red Suzuki minivan, heaved himself inside, and sat there with the engine on and the air-conditioning blowing.
For ten minutes, he methodically scrutinized everyone entering and leaving the café. Khan would not return to this particular Internet café for at least another month, rotating his weekly visits among the six scattered around Abbottabad. He also monitored all passing cars, bicycles, tuk-tuks, and their drivers. He scanned the rooftops of the low buildings in this part of town. Abbottabad was one of the communities hardest hit by the catastrophic earthquake four years earlier, and no one wanted to risk the construction of more than two stories of concrete block.
When he was satisfied that he was not being followed or observed, he pulled out of the parking lot, driving three miles northeast on Kakul Road to the suburb of Bilal Town, near Pakistan’s national military academy. The high, burning sun gave rise to mirage vapors in the distance, but he was content that he was unfollowed and alone. He had made this commute many times before.
His property was roughly triangular, and he entered the grounds through a gate in the twelve-foot-high concrete wall at the western point. He pulled into a narrow alley about twenty yards long, then got out to close the first gate and open the second. This admitted him into a parking apron. Khan drove the Suzuki into one of the four bays of a garage and closed the door.
Khan saw three bicycles with wicker tool panniers in the adjoining bays. He frowned. Always easier when bin Laden was alone. Outsiders did not come often. They usually disguised themselves as workmen and stayed through most of a day, leaving after Asr when the streets of the neighborhood filled with similarly homebound laborers and servants.
Still, the presence of strangers in the house made him wary. He wished he could delay his visit, but that would only raise unwarranted suspicion. He pulled from the passenger-side floor two large yellow plastic bags containing twelve-pack cans of Coke, fresh mangoes and apricots, and a jug of bleach.
With the flash drive in his trouser pocket, Khan walked through another mantrap gate into the main courtyard. He had had the house constructed soon after the earthquake. To his neighbors curious about its high walls, razor wire, and security cameras, Khan explained that the house was also home to his uncle, a gold dealer who needed the extra protection.
The main building comprised three stories over a square footprint about fifty feet long on each side. As with the outside walls, the house was constructed with steel-reinforced cinder block, which had been further strengthened with troweled concrete to a thickness of one foot. There was no telephone or Internet connection.
Khan went in through the ground-floor entrance reserved for men, so there was no risk of encountering an unveiled woman. The interior was barnlike, with very few wall coverings and no unnecessary furniture. Ahead, a narrow staircase rose through a small opening in the ceiling to the second floor.
To his right, he heard voices coming from the parlor, a traditional room for business and reception, always near the doorway in any Arab dwelling of substance. Ever since Khan had agreed to shield and shelter bin Laden, he had disciplined himself to have stone ears.
But these voices were too loud to ignore. Emotional speech in this dwelling was rare. The visiting workmen were usually so softly spoken, they had to lean close to one another to be heard.
“Why have we not made more progress with the water tunnels?” Khan heard one of them snap.
When the man he was addressing remained silent, the sharp-tongued speaker went on.
“You have said we have loyalists on the maintenance crews. How difficult can it be to seed the anthrax?”
“The workers are never alone.” This was another voice, with a distinctly Yemeni accent. “We have already lost a man, rest him peacefully. Handling the anthrax is as dangerous to the warrior as it is to the targets.”
The first voice. “Can we reliably expect a result within six months? That is the greatest question. Money, as we all know, is an issue. Our purse is light.”
“I think not. We began this endeavor in the hope that success with the water tunnel would make the Trade Center victory seem like a stolen bicycle by comparison. But fortune has not favored us.”
A third voice, this one slightly off, the speaker an Arab though not using his first language. “We have the poison payload. We now also have a Shadow 600 drone purchased from the Romanians, rated and waiting in Toronto. It has an engine and fuel tank that will get it to New York, Boston, or Philadelphia from the Canadian border, flying below air traffic radar coverage. Maybe even, with the grace of Allah, enough to reach Washington, D.C. The drone is big enough for a payload of dust, salted on leaflets or confetti. Times Square at their New Year celebration. That would be most impactful.”
Khan had failed utterly in his resolve to hear nothing. In fact, so mesmerized was he by the confrontational back-and-forth, he did not detect bin Laden’s bare footsteps descending the stairs.
Bin Laden always waited until everyone had assembled before joining a meeting. He encountered Khan in the hallway and glared at him at first before his long face softened. He had entrusted Khan with his life, and this was not without great consideration. Before Khan stood the most wanted man in the world, the living object of the wrath of the world’s most powerfully evil nation.
What did it matter that Khan overheard the strategists of his inner circle discussing their plans? Khan had sworn to take his own life rather than be captured and tortured. And he would do it too. By the grace of Allah.
Bin Laden reached out to his friend’s shoulder. He extended his other hand palm up.
Khan smiled in relief, at first mistaking this gesture for one of friendship. Then, realizing his mistake, he reached deep into his long pocket and handed bin Laden the Lexar flash drive.
“As always, we are safe,” said Khan.
Bin Laden nodded, slipping the drive into the folds of his robe. “You would be more comfortable in the kitchen,” said bin Laden.
Khan nodded, said thank you, and turned and walked to the kitchen. He was most relieved to have escaped the tension in the entry parlor, and looked forward to a repast before midday prayers.
He heard bin Laden’s voice rise in fury as he encountered his advisers—“You foul my house!”—before Khan quietly closed the kitchen door, moving to the teakettle on the stove.
B
in Laden stood before the men seated in the antechamber parlor. They looked at him like surprised students caught brawling by an imam.
Bin Laden moved to his cushion and folded his legs, sitting down among them.
“You foul our one purpose under Allah by compounding your failures. The same plans I hear over and over. Ambition without results. Bomb this. Bomb that. Nothing original, nothing intelligent. From the moment of approach, you are all wrong.”
He looked at each face in turn, wanting to strike a chord deeply in them. For this was not simply a disciplining. He was disgusted. He was angry.
“Failure has somehow become noble. How is this? A wrong we need to right.” He kept his voice low and patronizing, addressing them as though explaining rules to disobedient children. “We have achieved our preliminary goal, inciting the United States into invading Muslim countries. We have drawn the enemy into engaging long wars of attrition. But we are far from achieving our ultimate aim—that of collapsing the world economy that is controlled by the Americans, and installing in its place a Wahhabi caliphate to rule according to God’s law.
“Our strike at the heart of capitalism eight years ago was a triumph, not because it killed three thousand people, but because it instilled fear in the hearts of the American people. For what are three thousand deaths to a nation of two hundred seventy-five million? A trickle from the bucket. Our victory was in striking down a symbol of their wealth, their strength, their prestige. Their perfidy. We weakened them, not in number but in spirit. We humbled them.
“And since that time, what? A few bodies in the London attacks? That could have been just as easily carried out by common gangsters. And now this most recent embarrassment in New York. We could not even manage to get one single soldier of God into the city subway. Instead of a blow to remind them that they will never, ever know peace, we allowed them another burst of confidence. Another victory to show their people.”
The Yemeni spoke. “Plans are increasingly difficult now,” he said.
“You are only seeing what they want you to see. The Americans are devouring their treasure in order to prevent us from doing what we have already done. Their airport surveillance makes it exceedingly difficult to succeed with an airliner, yes. But, I ask you—why should we wish to repeat ourselves? We have failed to innovate. If we have learned nothing else from the past decade, it is that we must be more bold, rather than less. We declared jihad against the United States government because it was unjust, criminal, and tyrannical. Not because it was easy. Thirteen years later, it is no less so.”
“With respect, my friend,” said one of the others, “the enemy has learned well.”
“That, I reject. It is not they who have learned well, it is we who have learned poorly. I have been praying on this recently. We have given up our greatest advantage, and that is the element of surprise. Always in battle, the moment arrives when courage and a calculated risk turn the tide. Years ago in Afghanistan, we learned when we chose to sacrifice thousands in order to close Khyber Pass to the Russian supply convoys. It worked. By the light of Allah, we wore them down. We bled them slowly, the work of a thousand leeches, until they retreated. We have now drawn the Americans into the same trap. They are stuck, bleeding like a pig, and yet still refuse to change their way of life that so offends God.” Bin Laden removed an empty hand from the folds of his robe, pointing at each man in turn. “We are at the moment of Khyber Pass now. We will part today with a vision of beautiful success, and a divine plan to achieve it.”
The room was silent for a long minute. The man who spoke halting Arabic lifted his hand, asking permission to speak. Bin Laden nodded.
“We must direct our energy toward a target of such powerful symbolic importance to the Americans that its destruction will resonate for generations.”
Bin Laden nodded. At the very least, he was confident that his words had gotten through to them.
Another said, “They are waiting for a direct attack from us.”
“Precisely. And we should never give them what they anticipate.”
“But our resources have dwindled.”
“All the more reason to act smarter, to move more swiftly. With an economy of effort. We must think in a new way. What is our goal? Anwar.”
Anwar, the younger man directly to bin Laden’s right, said, “Not the destruction of lives, but the destruction of a way of life.”
“A people.” Bin Laden returned his hands to the folds of his robe. “We must lead them like the dogs they are, manipulate them through their weakness. Their existence is an affront to all that is good in the universe. We need a single target of supreme consequence. A strike that will break the soul of the Western demon. Our enemy has raised its heavy shield in anticipation, inviting us to strike it directly, like fools.” Bin Laden sat up, seeing clearly as though visited by a bolt of divine inspiration. “Instead, we will feint to expose their vulnerability—and then strike deeply and cleanly. Remember, a strike to the ankle is just as fatal as one to the throat. For the giant still falls.”
A
irman third class Donnie Boyle had been in Mortuary Affairs ever since he finished basic training the year before. He had bargained with the recruiter in Boston and gotten an assignment to Germany, but at the time he had no idea this kind of job even existed.
At first, handling the dead gave him the same evil dream night after night. In it, the mangled parts he unloaded off aircraft from Iraq and Afghanistan reassembled themselves into men and women, sat up, and asked him if they could bum a cigarette. He always told them he didn’t smoke, which he didn’t, whereupon the bodies came apart again and sank down into a pool of greenish liquid.
Boyle got over the dreams in about a month, but he still hated the job. It ate away at him like an ulcer. Two or three times a week, a giant C-17 Globemaster touched down bearing a load of brushed aluminum coffins. Each was draped with an American or English or Australian flag. Long before Boyle got to Ramstein, they had discontinued the arrival ceremonies with Class A uniforms, bands, and salutes. It had gotten to be too much to bear for everyone involved. Now they unloaded the planes with a forklift. A forklift. But respectfully.
From the runway apron, the dead were transported by flatbed truck into a refrigerated hangar. That was where the forensic specialists took over. After the deliveries, Boyle and the other guys who worked on the ramp helped open the coffins. You never knew what you were going to get. Inside could be anything from what looked like a man or woman taking a nap, to something resembling a large, burned pot roast, to anything in between. Sometimes, there was so little left—no dog tags or labeled uniform—they could not positively identify the dead soldier in Kabul or Baghdad.
The main task in Ramstein was figuring out who had died for his or her country. Because everybody assigned to Mortuary Affairs already had top secret security clearance, it was easy to pull out Boyle with two other guys when the contents from bin Laden’s house arrived. The assignment orders were UFN—Until Further Notice. Word was it would be three days, tops.
Three days away from the coffins. It was a stone gift.
The first load from Pakistan came in on a white Gulfstream jet with no markings at all, not even a tail number. The crew did not disembark. The jet sat dark on the airfield, way across at one of the grass-covered humps where they used to store nukes.
Within the hour, a camo Marine Corps C-130 touched down and taxied over to the Gulfstream. Boyle and the others rode a cart out to facilitate the offload into the bunker.
From the outside, the bunker looked like a World War II ruin. They entered through a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot storage locker with piles of broken machinery and aluminum sheeting all over the floor. At the far end of the clutter, a steel door opened into a ten-by-ten-foot air lock. On the side walls of the chamber, white Gen-Nex painters’ coveralls, tie-on face masks, and booties hung on hooks. Boyle suited up, pulling blue latex gloves from a box on the door rack. Tedious work, but so was popping open coffins.
No forklifts here. Boyle and the other two men worked like movers, slogging through a long day toting sealed crates, taped cardboard boxes, steel picnic coolers, and an endless number of bags of rocks and dirt. Every time they went inside, they had to suit up; every time they went out, they had to shed the coveralls, masks, gloves, and booties.
The room beyond the air lock was not what he had expected from looking at the grass bunker outside. It was a clean, brightly lit compartment, about fifty feet by fifty feet, with computer stations in the center and deep wall racks set against white-enameled tin walls. To Boyle’s mind it resembled a morgue for possessions.
Perpendicular to the storage racks were metal tables, each with its own laptop computer and tray of instruments. Scalpels, scissors, tongs, piles of plastic bags, magnifying glasses, tins and vials of liquid, a dissection microscope. The interior was air-conditioned to sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit. The artificially cold air scratched his throat, and the steady hum of the blowers gave him the sensation of being airborne or underwater.
Two guards in field armor and battle hats stood watch, each wielding an M16, making radio checks into their boom mics once every fifteen minutes. The offload took eight hours. Afterward, the airplanes refueled and taxied away, made a running turn into their takeoffs, and disappeared into the rainy night over Germany.
An officer showed up while Boyle and the others were finishing the last of the Gatorade. His orders to them were to forget what they had just done. In the morning, they would be needed to run errands to and from the bunker. The officer didn’t say for whom.