by D S Kane
Cassie followed behind the last team member.
* * *
Abu Ghazi Al-Khiel, head of the security forces responsible for the Houmaz family compound, looked at his wristwatch. Another hot, dry day in Riyadh. No one from the compound had reported in for over twenty-four hours.
His job as security manager was to ensure there was no unpleasant reason for this failure. He’d found himself busy all day with tiny “emergencies.” Now he finally had a few minutes. Al-Khiel dialed the phone number and waited. Again, there was no response. He tried once more. Concern made its way into the expression on his face, followed by a growing sense of panic.
He got into his Jeep, slammed the door, and drove as fast as possible several miles down the desert road to the compound.
* * *
Fifteen mercs marched silently up the staircase of the Washington Monument. Cassie ran last up the stairs, following the soldier with the videocam unit. She wondered why she felt compelled to be with her mercenaries. After all, she added no value to the mission.
In the lobby, the remaining mercs all put maintenance uniforms over their armored shirts and left the monument to patrol the area and send tourists away.
* * *
At the top of the stairs of the Washington Monument, the mercenaries found the the doorway to the viewing chamber empty. From here, tourists could get a grand view of the nation’s capital. The door, made of heavy steel, was put in place to prevent a fire from destroying the monument. It also served to prevent access by graffiti artists, though it hadn’t blocked the terrorists. From the staircase, behind the group of soldiers, Cassie could see its lock had been picked and it was closed now. The terrorists had mangled the nearby elevator’s buttons.
* * *
On the other side of the door, Sultan Raman, along with Abu Aziz and Farad Aghassar, sat enjoying the view for the last time in their lives. The fourth member of the team had died in the van; the mole had slammed his head harder than Raman had originally thought. Less than two hours from now the timer would explode the nuclear device and they would be martyrs in heaven, forever enjoying the fruit of virgins. Pesi Houmaz had decided the explosion must take place at noon, and only if someone discovered them should they manually set off the device.
The heavy door remained shut and locked. In the confined space, the sun slowly heated the area. The mujahidin had all removed their gas masks to wipe their faces clear of perspiration. None of them had thought it important to put them back on.
Farad said, “How peaceful now.” He lifted his heard toward the very faint noises of conversation from the other side of the door. “What’s that?”
Raman’s hand held the bomb’s manual trigger and he put it on his thigh while he drank water from a bottle. “Nothing to worry about. Even if tourists come up the staircase and want to see the view, there are signs we placed stating the monument doesn’t open on Sunday until 2 p.m. The door being locked should give them no cause for concern. They’ll just go back down and leave. Even if someone does notice us, we can always explode the bomb earlier than ordered.” He pointed to the red button on the switch and turned back toward the viewing window, oblivious to the small enemy platoon on the other side of the door, less than five feet away.
* * *
At 10:04 a.m. the lead merc—a tall man built like the models in health-club advertisements—stood on the staircase and whispered into the Bluetooth headset built into his gas-mask helmet, “Captain Sadler here. We’re at the top. There is a closed steel door here and adequate clearance for the gas tube at the doorjamb. We’re inserting it now. We’re green light for pumping gas.”
In response one of the gas-team members, Ina Boric, a short, muscled woman, replied into her mike, “Gas is now on. Potassium cyanide levels register a normal exit out through the other end of the tube.” Then, impatience in her voice, she asked, “Infrared sniper, what is your status? How many are they? Are they still warm?”
From the trees near the Ellipse a hundred yards away, sitting just under the top branches, a man’s voice with a Southern twang boomed. “Corporal Isley reporting. All four are still warm, Sergeant Boric.” His drawl was as terse as her Israeli accent. “I’ll let you know when their temps indicate they’re dead. Why don’t you try to relax. You sound tense.”
She scowled.
* * *
Farad’s eyes slipped shut, and then his eyes bulged as his saliva bubbled. He choked and coughed, then nudged Raman. Blood dripped from Raman’s nose, foam poured from his mouth. Farad’s expression showed confusion. He reached for his gas mask but he was sitting on it. Too late, he finally reached for Raman’s leg where the bomb’s trigger lay.
He fumbled with the switch for manual override and groped with the safety cover as his body spasmed into death. His finger jerked at the trigger and missed it by millimeters. His fingers moved over the trigger for another try, but death left him with fingers tight against the switch, no longer able to push.
* * *
Abu Ghazi Al-Khiel gawked at the two corpses pinned to the conference room wall within the compound. Dry blood pooled black on the hardwood floor. Crucified, the two men looked like huge, gray, spread-eagled butterflies.
The odor of decomposing flesh overpowered him. Al-Khiel vomited where he stood. As his lunch hit his boots, it mixed with blood. Now the odor was worse, and he vomited again as he ran toward the door to the parking lot.
He wiped his tearing eyes and sat on the ground. He tried to catch his breath while he considered the situation. Al-Khiel had open to him two completely different courses of action. He could call the police. It was likely they’d think he’d murdered his employers, or at least that someone paid him to help those who had. It was unlikely they’d think him innocent. And very likely he’d never work in security again. He could just run, as fast and as far as he could. If he was lucky, he might be back to Egypt before someone else found their corpses.
He covered his nose with his jacket sleeve and returned to the conference room, looking for evidence to indicate who, how, or when this had been done to the two naked brothers. He looked around and found nothing. Then he noticed the writing burned into the chests of one of the brothers. Unlike most security officers, Al-Khiel could read English. He took time trying to read the letters, pronouncing each syllable seared into the bodies. Then, instead of running away, he used his cell phone to dial the Saudi State Police.
* * *
Sergeant Boric emitted an almost silent growl. Twenty minutes gone. The mercs waited, not able to proceed until it was evident the gas had exterminated the men on the other side of the door.
And time was running out. Boric’s voice was just above a whisper. “The terrorists might be wearing gas masks if they suspected a maneuver such as this, or a very stiff updraft might have sucked the gas directly out through the monument’s view windows if they forced them open. If the gas didn’t work, we’ll have to resort to sniper fire, although our new tech armor-piercing bullets fired from the copse of trees through the monument’s stone won’t be accurate in stopping them. Even snipers aren’t always lucky. The walls might well shift the trajectory of the bullets.”
Behind her, ten feet away at the end of the group of mercs, Cassie asked quietly, “Status?” Boric simply crossed her lips with her finger, requesting silence.
Cassie felt useless. Worse, she might cause her mercs to lose focus having to deal with her. She thought about returning down the stairs, but found herself unable to force her legs to move.
Then Isley reported. “Boric, their temps are dropping. Down to 94 degrees and change. They’re dead as they’ll ever get.”
One of the mercs tried the door. Locked. He tried forcing it, but it wouldn’t give. The hinges on the inside of the door were steel, not accessible from the side of the door where the mercs stood. One of the mercs removed a lock pick set and tried opening the door.
He failed repeatedly as the minutes passed.
Cassie said, “Let me, I’m good
at this.” The merc passed her tools and she knelt, examining the lock. She tried the merc’s 5 Pin Kwikset KW1 lock bump key, but it didn’t catch the cylinders. The merc had been using the wrong tool. She could feel Boric’s breath hot on her neck as she reached for the next one in the set. The 6 Pin Kwikset KW10 didn’t do the job either. Each attempt took just under a minute but her hands shook as she tried another, the 5 Pin Schlage SC1, without success. Damn. There were many more: the 6 Pin Schlage SC4, 5 Pin Arrow AR1, 6 Pin Arrow AR4, 5 Pin Yale Y1, 5 Pin Dexter DE6, 5 Pin Weiser WR5, 4 Pin Master M1, and the 5 Pin Master M10. She examined the lock to see if she could eliminate one of the bump keys to save time. No good, she couldn’t tell who’d manufactured the lock; its brass plate had been worn with use and the ID was gone.
Cassie took a deep breath. “Please stop crowding me. Give me just another minute.” Boric moved back and scowled. Cassie tried the next to last one, the 4 Pin Master M1, and heard the lock click, sounding its release. The door sprang open. Cassie smiled and stood back, making way for the mercs to enter.
Boric turned on a fan to clear the gas, forcing open one of the windows of the viewing chamber. While the fans spun, three mercs hung aluminum blankets on the wall to prevent radio transmissions from exploding the device in case another terrorist with a cell phone was nearby and there was a cell phone detonator within the bomb. Boric tested the air with a small meter. She said, “Gas levels nominal. We can remove our masks.”
Cassie scanned her wristwatch: 10:57 a.m.
Corporal Cheryl Swartz stepped forward to examine the bomb. The device was four feet long and two feet in diameter, and round so it could fit snugly into the warhead space of an ICBM. Its metallic gray paint had labels pasted to it, including a ludicrous “This Way Up” in red on white.
Although Swartz was a specialist in poisons and hypnotics, Cassie knew the merc had disarmed bombs for over twenty years, first for the Israeli army and then for Mossad. Swartz was their only merc with this experience in her dossier, and Shimmel had told Cassie he was happy to have her since none of his other mercs had even laid eyes on a nuclear device. Neither had Cassie. Just seeing it there frightened her and, foolish though she knew it was, she took a step farther away from it within the monument’s viewing chamber.
Swartz said, “There’s a timer wired to the device, counting down. Just over one hour remains to blast time.”
Swartz read from a written checklist. “Task one, general examination. Two, detailed examination of wire connections and identification of wire pathways. Three, booby-trap examination. Four, disarm final checkout. Five, dismantle connection between detonator and explosive device. And six, dismantle and pack bomb parts for transport. Okay, we start now.”
Swartz looked at her wristwatch. “Time at start is eleven hundred hours.” Five mercs moved in on the bomb and began systematically reviewing each task Swartz named.
Swartz donned a jeweler’s lens and scanned the bomb’s wiring for booby traps. She took off the lens and took a more careful look at the entire device. “It’s a small, primitive trigger. Homemade connections between the device and the detonation mechanism.” She licked her lips.
As she watched, the voice in Cassie’s head warned her that death was closing on her, and her fear felt like something heavy weighing down her arms.
Swartz looked up from the detonator. “We may get lucky on this if it’s not heavily booby-trapped.”
The lead-lined container holding the fissionable material hinged into two large pieces. Swartz spoke to the bomb. “Baby, it looks like you might be able to produce a twenty-megaton blast.” She turned to Boric: “The container is attached by wires to a detonator. Farther down the line is the timer, made from an alarm clock probably bought at a local drug store.” Then to the bomb. “My, you are primitive,” whispered Swartz, talking as if it might respond in some way other than an explosion. “Too big to move in daylight, so they must have moved you here under cover of the night.”
Swartz looked at her wristwatch. In a normal voice, she continued speaking. “11:09. No mistakes, people. First, check to ensure there is no wireless connection to this bomb for cell-phone detonation. Then make damn well sure you doublecheck every step. See if there’s a backup detonator or a booby-trap mechanism to blow the device if anyone tries to disarm it.”
Private Harry Tonsis replied, “Checking now.” He ran a network search program on his cell phone. “No wireless or Bluetooth connection detected.”
“Any other wires connecting this bomb to something under it? Any gravity trigger?” asked Swartz.
One of the other bomb disarmers held a scope near the bomb and then near the timer and the detonator. “No. We’re clear for disarming.”
Cassie felt a great weight lift off her. In the back of the viewing chamber, she watched, out of the way.
Corporal Swartz looked at her wristwatch again. Then she ran her fingertips over the detonator, searching. “Nothing here unusual.”
She carefully lifted the detonator about two inches and used a dentist’s magnifying mirror to look under it. “Wait. Here’s something unexpected. Either they do have a booby trap or they don’t know how to build a bomb.”
Swartz tugged at two black wires. “There should only be one of these. Shit. It is a booby trap. Tonsis, get me the needlenose wire cutter, a piece of wire and a soldering iron. Hurry!” Tonsis handed her the tools she needed.
Swartz took a loud, deep breath. “If I route another wire to replace the path of this one going to the resistor, it might work. Or,” she gulped, “we all might die.” She lifted the hot iron and made two connections circumventing the original pathway. “Now I have to simultaneously cut both wires to the booby-trapped resistor.”
Boric said, “Do it. We’re running out of time.”
She nodded in acceptance. “Okay. Here goes.” She placed the wire cutter against the wires and said a brief prayer aloud in Hebrew. She snipped the two wires and caught the pieces as they fell. “That worked. We can proceed.” Listening from the lobby of the monument building, General Shimmel said a prayer of thanks.
* * *
Khali Al-Jambar, a reporter for Al Jazeera, watched as a technician posted the photos of the two naked, crucified bodies on the news organization’s website. Then he returned to the task of keying the story Abu Ghazi Al-Khiel had told him, including Al-Jambar’s own vision of the relevance of his story and the photos. He titled the editorial “Proof that the United States is an Evil Juggernaut.” The piece called for the Muslim world to render the United States to dust. He began typing:
This morning, Abu Ghazi Al-Khiel discovered the two mutilated corpses of his employers, Pesi and Tariq Houmaz, at the home where Pesi lived on the outskirts of Riyadh. The Houmaz brothers lived a quiet life, but had come to the attention of one of the intelligence agencies in Washington, and they were tortured to death and mounted naked on the wall of the living room of their home, facing toward Mecca.
American intelligence agents might not know that having the dead turned to face Mecca is an abomination in Islam. The flesh of one brother was inscribed with acknowledgement that US spies did this: Such is the fate of all who fuck with intelligence agencies of the United States. No one in the United States has denied their involvement.
The Houmaz brothers are survived by their father, an oil company president, and a third brother, who works as a Director in the Saudi Oil Ministry. No one in the Saudi government has commented yet on the torture and deaths of these very private brothers of a prominent Saudi family.
A devout Muslim, Al-Jambar became visibly agitated as he keyed his story. He muttered, “How could any US intelligence agency dare do such a thing to Saudi nationals on Saudi soil, especially to people so powerful and influential?” He posted the story, and within minutes responses came in via the Internet from all over the Middle East. At the rate they arrived, they’d have over a quarter million within two hours.
He smiled, putting his feet up on his desk. “I wonder if o
ur web server is adequate to handle the volume?” He chuckled, and began keying the outlines for several follow-on stories. He’d get a wide audience of Muslims hating the United States from this editorial.
* * *
It took the mercs forty-six minutes before they were ready to pull the plug. Every one of them now said a private prayer for their own souls as well as for everyone else’s within a twenty-mile radius.
Cassie’s wristwatch showed the time as 11:57 a.m. She flinched every time anyone moved.
Corporal Cheryl Swartz placed her fingers on the wires and then looked over at Private Harry Tonsis’s hands, holding the manual for the disarmament procedure. He nodded his head.
Tonsis said, “It’s now or never, sweetie. Pull the plug so we can go home.”
She cast him an angry look. “Yeah, well, just leave me to do my job.” Then she pulled on one of the wires. It came loose and she removed it. Nothing happened. The alarm clock attached to the bomb began ticking much faster and Swartz took a deep breath and gripped another wire.
Once again, Tonsis nodded to her. “Go! Do!” and once more she pulled at the wire, but this one didn’t disengage.
She reread the procedure. “I need the wire clipper,” she said in a breathy, nervous voice. Tonsis slapped a wire cutter into her outstretched hand and she leaned back over the wire. “Time,” she yelled.
Tonsis said, “Sweetie, you have less than a minute.”
Swartz took another deep breath she hoped wouldn’t be her last. She clipped the target wire. The alarm clock kept ticking, going even faster now. She gripped another set of wires and pulled on both. They both gradually loosened and she tugged first one off.
Nothing happened to slow the timer.
Swartz frowned concern; she’d run out of time. And why hadn’t the timer stopped when she disconnected the first wire?