There was a long pause while Donny digested and processed the question. Then he said, ‘He talks to people all the time – pretty much every day.’
‘By phone?’
‘Yes. He has many. He keeps them in a box. He uses them once and throws them away.’
‘So how do these people contact him in return?’
‘They don’t. He calls them – although sometimes he allows them to text him, but only once. Then he disposes of the cell. He says it’s a fool-proof system so the CIA and NSA can’t find him.’
‘Do you know who these people are?’
He lifted his shoulders. ‘No idea. And I never heard what he said to them. I’ve never seen him with anybody, but he kept disappearing during the day while Bilal and I slept, and never seemed to stay in the same motel as us. I assumed he was meeting up with people to discuss his plan. But about a week ago I saw him checking his laptop and he was furious about the lack of a signal because he couldn’t contact anybody. He said a meeting would have to be postponed and the bid would fail.’
‘A bid for what?’
‘I don’t know. A bid – that’s all I heard.’
Ruth’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen. It was Brasher. She was tempted to ignore it, but figured it must be important. She excused herself and said, ‘Yes?’
‘I think I know what he means by that,’ Brasher murmured softly. ‘Get out here. We need to talk.’
‘I have one more question,’ she insisted. ‘The main one. It’s critical.’
Brasher didn’t reply immediately, but she heard Special Agent Wright talking angrily in the background. Eventually Brasher said, ‘Go ahead but make it quick.’
Ruth disconnected and turned back to Donny. ‘Let’s go back to the plan. Malak’s going to use the drone to spray a chemical agent over the target, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you don’t know what that is. Presumably it will be a toxic substance.’
‘Yes. He says he had another chemist put it together. But I don’t know what it is.’
‘How does he plan to do that – to release it, I mean?’
‘There are set coordinates fed into the flight controls. Once there, a signal will activate the trigger and… and the spray begins to operate.’
‘Tell me about the delivery system. How will the drone get to the target? Is that what Chadwick is there for, now you’re no longer around?’
‘I suppose. I think he decided to use Chadwick in the end anyway, because of the complexity of flying the drones. I wasn’t able to keep even one in the air, let alone four.’
Ruth felt a chill down her back. After knowing what had happened to the construction crew it was easy to guess what Chadwick’s fate would be once the deed was done. Then something else hit her. ‘Four? What do you mean?’
Donny shrugged. ‘Malak had me show him how to feed the numbers into the controller for all four drones. Thirty-four degrees seventy north,’ he recited automatically, ‘ninety-nine-twenty-five west.’
She didn’t need to ask what the numbers referred to; instinct told her they were the map coordinates for the Altus Air Force base.
‘Four drones.’
‘Yes. It should have been six but I crashed two and that really made him pissed.’ He flushed. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s OK.’
‘They start off in different places but they’ll converge as they get closer to the target area. That way Malak said there will be a chance of at least one of them getting through. He said it was for a military target, not civilian.’
‘And you believed him?’
He shrugged. ‘That’s all I know.’
Ruth didn’t want to ask, but had to. She knew from what Vaslik had said earlier when looking at the possible target bases that Altus had anything from upwards of four thousand personnel there at any one time. And that wasn’t counting families, visitors and the surrounding population. Her lips were dry, but she didn’t dare lick them. ‘And then what?’
‘Death. He said many people would die. Hundreds, possibly more.’
40
Ruth left Donny in the care of a guard and stepped out into the corridor. She found the atmosphere electric, with Special Agent Wright stalking away towards the front of the building and Tom Brasher calling her back.
Wright ignored him and slammed through the door, her shoulders stiff with anger.
Vaslik was standing inside the adjacent room looking nonplussed. Ruth said to him, ‘What’s going on?’
‘She’s going over Brasher’s head to her supervisor to get him to alert Homeland Security and the Department of Defence. She heard what you got out of Donny and told Brasher he had to call it in now and launch a general alert and a major search of the area. Brasher said not yet and she flipped.’
‘What set it off?’
He winced. ‘Brasher told her they were the questions she should have been asking.’
‘He’s right; she totally missed the point. And we’d be crazy to sound a general alert – we have to find these people first. If the authorities flood the area with personnel, they’ll go underground and try again somewhere else.’
‘I agree.’
Brasher turned back towards them and sighed in resignation. ‘I’ll have to let her go. I can’t stop her without locking her in a cell. She might come to her senses once she calms down. I guess I could have handled it better.’
Ruth wasn’t so certain. Under the clean-cut exterior, Karina Wright struck her as one angry and ambitious lady who had already made up her mind and wasn’t about to back down. Maybe being the first to break the news was her way of enhancing a career agenda.
‘What was it you wanted to tell me about bids?’ she reminded him.
‘Well, first off, that was a classy approach in there; you were right on point and got him talking about what he thought he didn’t know. I guess I have to own up to missing that, too.’ He composed his thoughts for a moment, then continued, ‘About six month ago the National Security Agency picked up some chatter about planned operations against Coalition force members. The sources were in the Middle East, but some of the servers being used were in the US and Europe. Some of it was the usual high-minded guff about hitting us where it hurt and teaching us a lesson, but there were some other exchanges that sounded different – kind of off the wall. For that reason they were noted but set to one side because the subject matter made no real sense.’
‘Like what?’
‘The exchanges were talking about bids, just like Donny said. The difference was, they talked about bidding for ‘strikes’. It was thought they were using code words but we couldn’t figure out what they meant. The word ‘strikes’ is clear enough in plain language, but we were thrown by ‘bids’. It didn’t fit, no matter which way we threw it in the air.’
‘Couldn’t they have been groups bidding to take on a job?’ Vaslik suggested.
‘That was our initial thought. There’s certainly no shortage of them out there wanting to do something radical. It’s long been known that most of the extremist groups are in competition with each other to hit the headlines and gain a name for themselves. But they appear to be subservient to some of the more powerful groups if something high-concept is being planned, and they back off fast when told to avoid conflicting operations. What threw us – and still does – was that the so-called bids had financial figures attached to them.’
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘Well, I think Donny just gave us a possible answer. What if the words he overheard alluded to the fact that this Asim Malak has come up with a uniquely modern method of funding his operation?’
‘Go on.’
‘He sets up the idea to make a major hit on the US, to the point where it looks viable. Then he hawks it around to a number of the wealthier extremist groups and their backers to see who wants a share of the action – in exchange for finance.’
‘Like crowd-funding,’ said Vaslik.
‘Exactly.’
They stood and considered the idea. It sounded crazy and unlikely… yet in the modern world, almost to be expected. If, like Malak, a group lacked the funds to complete an operation, why not go out and sell shares to interested bidders? That way everybody was happy; the attacking group and any others with parallel interests.
‘It’s not so stupid,’ Ruth said into the silence. ‘The highest bidder gets to claim the credit for the strike while Malak and his men do the work and remain unknown. It’s insane… but clever.’
‘Of course it is,’ Brasher agreed. ‘It’s a win-win for the bidders, too; they don’t have to risk their own people carrying out the operation, but if Malak needs some expendable muscle, they can send in anybody they choose at minimum cost.’
Vaslik nodded. ‘It makes sense to—’ He stopped as a popping sound came from the front of the building, followed by a lot of shouting and the sound of breaking glass.
‘Jesus, that’s gunfire!’ Brasher cried, and turned towards the door just as a whooshing noise came closer, over-riding the sound of the gunshots.
A split second later the whole building shook with the force of an explosion, and ceiling tiles rained down on their heads. All the lights went out, and a loud groaning sound came from the walls around them as part of the structure began to give way.
In the distance, somebody began screaming.
41
‘Open fire!’ Salem screamed, and tossed the used rocket launcher out through the open side door. They were once-only use weapons, and he was going to need the other one if they stayed here much longer. The scene not eighty yards away was now one of carnage, with a gaping hole in the front of the jail where the entrance had been, and part of the roof structure was caving in with the groaning sounds of a dying animal.
He had waited until the passenger had slapped the fascia and shouted, ‘It’s her!’ before throwing back the sliding side doors on both sides to reduce pressure damage inside the van and bringing the launcher up to his shoulder. He caught a glimpse through the sights of a woman with dark hair standing just inside the front entrance of the building with a cell phone clamped to her ear. He had just enough time to think how angry she looked, and actually not that much like her photo, before he calmly squeezed the trigger.
The woman had disappeared in the explosion.
He coughed and spat out the taste of propellant which now filled the van, and reached for the second launcher. On the face of it he’d used one rocket to take out one person, but he was experienced enough to know that there would be other casualties inside the structure. Those that had survived would be stunned and blinded by concussion and dust, and mounting any kind of pursuit would take a long time.
Especially if he fired the second rocket in through the hole.
As he took hold of the launcher, something bounced off the inside of the roof and struck him on the cheek. It was an ejected carbine case. The front seat passenger was spraying the area around the jail through his side window, screaming unintelligibly over the clatter of casings hitting the metalwork and windows like maddened insects, their bright brassy colour flickering in the light.
The driver went to push past the passenger to join him in hosing down the crippled building, but the Salem saw him and shouted, ‘What, are you crazy? Get us out of here now, you idiot!’ He reached up and slapped the back of the driver’s head to gain his attention, then spun round as the bodywork close by his head blew apart under the impact of a heavy bullet. He swore and turned. An officer in police uniform was kneeling off to one side aiming shots at the van with a sidearm. He had blood on his face and his shirt was torn and covered in brick dust, but he was standing steady and the soldier knew he was the main target and had only seconds left before the gun zeroed in on him.
He grabbed the carbine instead and fired three shots in quick succession. But his timing was thrown off as the driver took the van forward away from the kerb just as he pulled the trigger. The shots went wide, one clipping the officer’s shoulder and spinning him round. He dropped his gun but scooped it up with his other hand and resumed firing, letting off four shots that slammed into the rear door panels as the van tore away up the street.
They raced out of town heading east on the US 64, leaving behind the noise of fire alarms and a pall of smoke as part of the jail began to burn. There were no signs of pursuit and Salem wondered how long that would last. By now phone calls and radio alerts would be going out all over the State, and armed response teams would be converging on the area and setting up road blocks.
‘Five miles from here,’ he said to the driver, ‘you will see a cross-section with three trees on the right. You can let me off there.’
‘You’re a fool, you know that?’ the driver said, fighting to get the maximum possible speed out of the van. ‘They will catch you before you have gone ten miles. Stay with us and we stand a better chance of getting away on the major highways. Once we get to Oklahoma City we can lose ourselves and the brotherhood will provide sanctuary.’
Salem ignored him. It was an argument he’d heard before when he’d first met up with these two men for the trip to Alva. He’d brought his own vehicle, an old pickup he’d acquired in a cheap car lot just outside Oklahoma City. It blended into this area like sand on a rock, and he’d left it parked in a turn-off along the US 64 where nobody would notice it. He planned on taking the network of back roads all the way south, and for the bales of straw he’d picked up along the way to be his cover. He had documents that would stand any scrutiny, and after months of attending night classes at the American School in Sana’a, in Yemen, he could talk American English with sufficient ease to convince any cop in a hurry that he was an innocent seasonal farm worker doing his job.
These two, however, seemed to think that this van carried some kind of magic cloak that would take them all the way to Oklahoma City and beyond without being noticed. More fools them.
He checked the rear windows. Nothing yet. But it wouldn’t be long in coming. The one thing the Americans had going for them was organisation and response.
‘Slow down,’ he said to the driver, as the nearside front wheel slammed into a small pothole in the blacktop. ‘You’re driving too fast for this part of the country; you’ll end up getting us noticed or killing us.’
‘Screw you,’ the driver muttered, and pushed his foot down even harder. ‘My job is to get us out of here. Yours is to sit there and shut up!’
Salem waited. The driver was too pepped up on adrenalin to register what he was doing, but he wouldn’t have to stay in this death trap much longer. He peered through the windscreen at the road ahead. The turning was coming up fast. Too fast – and the driver showed no signs of slowing down.
‘Here!’ Salem said. ‘This is where you drop me.’
‘We don’t have time,’ the driver replied, and swept a hand off the wheel to gesture at the road behind. ‘For all we know they could be marshalling their forces to hunt us down. You’ll have to sit there and watch our backs.’
Salem sighed and put the tip of the Colt’s barrel against the driver’s neck. ‘Actually, you stupid pig, I don’t have to do anything. But I will blow your idiot head off if you don’t stop right now!’
The driver yelled in alarm and slammed on the brakes, sending the van into a snaking skid across the road before wrestling it back under control. Seconds later he was bumping along the grass verge and pulling to a stop at an intersection. The road left was little more than a track, but the one to the right was metal all the way. A clutch of trees stood nearby, just as Salem had said.
Salem jumped out, still holding the Colt carbine pointed at the driver’s head. The passenger was staying very still, eyes glued to the front, but he didn’t trust either of them to try and stop him the moment he turned his back. But he wasn’t going to allow them the pleasure.
‘Drive,’ he commanded them. ‘And don’t stop until you are far away from here.’
The driver swore, then stamped on the gas and swung the
wheel hard. But instead of continuing along the highway, he turned right and took the back road Salem had planned on using.
There was little he could do about it now, and on reflection it could play to his advantage. The van would be far more obvious out in the open country while he could lose himself pottering along at a steady pace, minding his own business.
He watched as it disappeared in the distance, dragging with it a plume of dust that rose in the air and hung there like a giant flag. Once the police got helicopters in the air that dust trail would stand out for miles.
He ran towards the trees and jumped into the pickup, and started the engine. He would take the 64 instead, then work his way south further along. After all, what cop would suspect a farm hand in a fifteen-year-old, rusting pickup carrying a load of straw and time on his hands to be part of an attack on a county jail?
He was just sorry this junker didn’t have a radio. He’d always had a liking for country and western music.
42
The scene back at the jail was pandemonium. The front of the building crumpled, preventing access for rescue workers, but it was clear that the explosion had taken out the reception and security area and everybody in it. The bodies of three guards and civilian workers were evident among the rubble, along with the bodies of another guard and Karina Wright outside. The policeman who had opened fire on the van was sitting in a state of shock, still clutching his weapon, with blood oozing from the wound in his arm.
People were flooding in from surrounding businesses, stores and local administration buildings, and a harassed officer was shouting orders to get props under the sagging ceiling structure to reach people trapped under the fallen beams and brickwork.
Tom Brasher grabbed Ruth and pushed her towards the rear of the building while Vaslik made his way to the front to see if he could help. He passed two guards carrying an injured woman and saw two men lying unconscious against a wall, covered in dust. The air out here was thick with smoke, and he grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed a lick of flame coming from a demolished section of wall leading to the front lobby.
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