Love Thy Neighbor

by Mark Gilleo

  “Why would she need a remote control?”

  “The better question is why would she have that ribbon if she wasn’t going to use a remote control?”

  “D.C. is a big city. Lots of high profile targets. Your guess is a shot in the dark.”

  “Maybe, but so far the CIA, the FBI, and the cops have all been playing catch-up. If I were a betting man, and had money, I would bet on myself this hand.”

  Clark tried 9-1-1 again and then gave directions. “Take the next right.”

  “We’re still north of the airport.”

  “She’s not going to the terminals.”

  Chapter 63

  The long black car was parked, rear-end first, in the row of spaces nearest the park entrance. Across the parking lot, the Potomac River, in mid-winter murkiness, chugged downstream towards the Chesapeake. The large brown sign near the riverside park entrance posted the name, Gravelly Point, and the hours of operation.

  The white minivan Ariana had driven into the gravel lot minutes earlier was parked over a hundred yards away, in a direct line between the river and her location in the black car. The alignment of the vehicles was perfect, the result of myriad trial runs and hours of trigonometry and calculus.

  The gravel lot with the paved entrance held over two hundred cars when it was full, but on a chilly February morning two dozen vehicles sprinkled the lot. Every car had a row of spaces to themselves, each vehicle isolated by choice, like men in a public bathroom with a wall of urinals to choose from. Body heat steamed up the windows on a small import parked at the far end of the lot, the car rocking intermittently.

  “What’s the target?” Karim asked from the driver’s seat of the long black car.

  “Flight 1956. Delta Shuttle from LaGuardia. Arrives at 8:53. Passengers include thirty members of the United Nations Terrorism Security Council and a team from Interpol. Some of the best and brightest anti-terrorist minds on the planet.”

  “Where did you get your intelligence?” Karim asked.

  “The price of intelligence isn’t what it once was. I obtained the information through more traditional channels — CNN. The summer before last there was a disturbance on a flight from New York to Washington. Some young men who had been up all night partying in New York continued right through to the morning, with Bloody Marys, on the plane. They got a little raucous, grabbed a flight attendant inappropriately, and verbally assaulted the crew. The news reported the incident and also divulged that the passenger list included the UN Security Council on Terrorism.”

  “You based this plan on one incident on one aircraft?”

  “The original idea. But the United Nations website lists ongoing Security Council initiatives. One of those initiatives is a monthly meeting here in Washington. The second Wednesday of the month at 10:00 am.”

  “They don’t fly on a UN-sponsored private plane?”

  “Not since the UN adopted an environmentally-friendly protocol requiring members to fly on commercial flights when possible. They are trying to set an example by reducing pollution from private aircraft. I have followed their routine a dozen times over the last year. Right now there are at least eight UN limousines waiting at the terminal’s ground transportation exit.”

  “And that is why today was chosen?”

  “I’ve been planning for a while. Your arrival, and the ricin, was a last minute complication to my plan. Not the other way around. This is my original plan. This is what I have been working on.”

  Ariana picked up her binoculars and looked through the thick bullet-proof glass of the vehicle. A plane was approaching down the designated flight path over the Potomac between the high rises of Rosslyn and the flight-restricted skies over D.C.

  “I was concerned that the Metro incident might cancel flights into the airport. So far, so good. According to plan.”

  “There has been nothing on the news yet,” Karim said, gesturing towards the radio.

  “Not yet, but any moment. Security has probably already been notified and will increase patrols. I expect the police to check this area as well. Protocol is predictable. First they will secure the terminal and increase security at check-in. We are 16 minutes after detonation at Metro Center. For now, we can count on bureaucracy to give us another 30 minutes. And that assumes they make a connection between Metro and the airport. There is no one on Earth who can draw that conclusion. That will provide additional time.”

  “And after this??”

  Ariana spoke without taking her eyes off the sky. “Then I want to go home. I want to see my father again. I want to bring my daughter home. I want my daughter to meet her grandfather. I want my father to know that his daughter did not let him down. That his faith from those years ago paid off.”

  Karim looked out at the minivan in the parking lot. Joggers with winter gear appeared sporadically, popping out from the running paths near the river’s edge and disappearing again near the large fence that ran between the lot and the airport terminal in the distance.

  “Where did you get the van?”

  “Bought it used in Baltimore. Paid cash.”

  “It seems rather obvious. A white minivan.”

  “It seems obvious now, sitting there in the parking lot. But you may recall there was a sniper in the D.C. area a few years ago. The news media latched on to the initial report that the first victim was killed from a shot fired out the back of a white truck or van. For weeks the entire region was on high alert … on the lookout for a white vehicle. As it turns out, white is a very popular color for trucks and vans. Drive through south Arlington alone and you will see hundreds of white vans. They line the residential streets between Shirlington, Bailey’s Crossroads, and Seven Corners.”

  Ariana watched as a Southwest plane touched down safely on the runway. Karim picked up the red remote control off the seat. “How does it work?”

  “The van is parked directly beneath the flight path. The Delta Shuttle uses only MD-88s.”

  “McDonnell Douglas?”

  “Yes. The MD-88 is forty-five meters from nose to tail with a thirty-two meter wingspan. Its approach speed is 130 knots or 150 mph. The vehicle is parked four hundred feet from the end of the main runway, runway 19. At that distance, the plane’s altitude will be less than one hundred and fifty feet when it passes over.”

  “Amazing.”

  “What?”

  “That they allow the public here.”

  “It’s Washington. Allowing the public to move freely is a show of strength. In any other city this airport would have been closed after 9/11. But not in Washington. Reagan National is only ten minutes from the Capitol, and Congress is not about to drive forty minutes out to Dulles to catch a plane.”

  Ariana once again looked through her binoculars at the next plane on approach. The aircraft was still a dot in the distance, even through the 8x32 magnification of the Pentax binoculars.

  “Tell me about the projectile system,” Karim said.

  “It is a borrowed design, of sorts, with some homemade modifications. The firing mechanism is compressed acetylene gas. The same component used in welding torches. Highly volatile. Very forceful. Not the optimal substance … but it is easy to obtain, and purchasing it doesn’t arouse suspicion. Especially when it’s purchased by a legitimate business with a legitimate machine shop.”

  “The acetylene is compressed in a combustion chamber which is attached through a steel plate to the van by eight bolts. The gas in the combustion chamber is ignited via a remote control trigger — a modified servo — compliments of a deceased neighbor.”

  “You have a few of them.”

  “This neighbor was the first,” Ariana answered before continuing. “Five vertical barrels are attached to the combustion chamber. Each barrel is four inches in diameter and holds a homemade titanium shell consisting of four smaller individual rounds. Each round is composed of a quarter pound of Tannerite.”

  “Tannerite?”

  “A binary explosive that detonates on impact.
Tannerite consists of two components. Individually, each component is non-lethal and perfectly legal to purchase. Together, the components will rip through most metals on impact. The aluminum skin of the airplane will offer little resistance.”

  “So, you have five tubes, four rounds per tube…”

  Ariana finished the math with her eyes behind the binoculars. “At less than one hundred fifty feet, with twenty shots traveling over a thousand feet per second, I estimate more than a fifty percent hit rate. As high as perhaps eighty percent. The time between detonation and impact will be less than a third of a second. I only need one round to hit any number of vital targets. The wings, the ailerons, the elevators, and, obviously, the fuel tanks. Planes on approach are vulnerable.”

  “You seem sure.”

  “At this distance and altitude, with this explosive, it’s like shooting a paper airplane with a shotgun. Ideally, I’m going for an explosion, but in reality I only need to create a roll of a few degrees. Gravity and the hard surface of the runway will handle the rest.”

  Ariana peered through her binoculars. She read the words Delta Connection written along the side of the plane and announced. “The plane is approaching.”

  “Do we know it’s the right one?”

  “Yes. It took off from New York fifty-two minutes ago. The next one is not due for an hour.”

  She grabbed the remote control from her lap and moved the control stick on the right-hand side. The sunroof on the van rose by an inch, and then slid back.

  “Nice,” Karim said.

  “Original equipment modified to open remotely.” Ariana positioned her thumbs on the controls. “Less than a minute to impact.”

  From the opposite direction, Detective Wallace steered the yellow cab across two lanes of traffic, narrowly missing an oncoming bus. The cab accelerated down the service road and then slid hard onto the gravel lot as it screamed past the entrance into the park.

  “What’s the maximum distance on that thing?” Detective Wallace asked.

  “Two miles. Maybe farther. The limit, as a practical matter, is your vision. You can technically control a model airplane long after you can no longer see it.”

  “And you’re not going to accidentally bring down a real plane with that controller? You know, they don’t allow cell phones on airplanes for a reason.”

  “Impossible,” Clark answered as the car came to a halt in the middle of the parking lot. “Different frequency.”

  Clark fully extended the antenna on his remote control. The approaching plane banked one final time as the pilot leveled the wings towards a direct descent to the runway. Clark flipped the bright red button on the master control as his father had done a hundred times.

  And then he froze.

  “What’s the problem?” Detective Wallace asked.

  “I can’t move.”

  “What?”

  “Well, the usual convention of the buddy system remote control is that the master controller takes over control for the slave controller. Usually to avoid a crash.”

  “And… ?”

  “In this case, I don’t want to do anything. I want control so Ariana can’t do anything. Which means I can’t move. Any movement of these controls could be the wrong one.”

  “Then don’t move,” Detective Wallace said matter-of-factly. “I’m going to check on these vehicles.”

  Clark nodded as he stared at the black controller in his hands. “According to the CIA guy, we should start with those that have sliding doors.”

  “Heads up,” Karim said. “We have a police officer getting out of a cab at three o’clock.”

  Ariana reaffixed the binoculars to her eyes. She focused on the badge attached to the detective’s waist and then back to his face.

  “And there’s a second person in the car.”

  Ariana moved her eyes again and a close-up profile view of Clark filled her vision. “Impossible,” she hissed.

  “Who is it?”

  “My neighbor.”

  “How… ?”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s too late.”

  Karim nodded towards a short line of police cars heading towards the park entrance. “So much for your response time estimate. I think it is time to go.”

  “A few more seconds,” Ariana said, her thumbs on the control pad as she slipped into her operational zone. The approaching MD-88’s landing gear was fully down, its wing flaps extended to increase the drag on the aircraft, slowing its speed.

  Ariana’s lips moved as she watched the plane continue to descend. She started her countdown from ten as the plane passed the far end of the rugby field. Her lips still silently counting, she smiled as the plane passed over the line of Don’s Johns at the near-end of the park. With one swift motion, she pushed both thumbs up on the control pads as the plane passed directly over the van. She repeated the movement, jamming her thumbs forward with more force each time, as the plane roared past on approach,

  “Now,” Karim yelled. “Now!”

  She replied with a tirade in Urdu.

  Ariana and Karim, curses flowing, watched helplessly as the target landed safely, the tires touching down on the runway in a small cloud of burned rubber. Ariana let out a guttural animal scream and threw the remote control into the dashboard of the car, breaking off the antenna. She grabbed the binoculars from the seat and looked back at Clark, still in the taxi cab. Then she noticed the metal of the antenna pointing upwards toward the windshield.

  The two police cars at the end of the police convoy blocked the entrance to Gravelly Point as the leading cars ripped into the lot. Karim took a deep breath as he drove the long black car slowly forward, approaching the impromptu barricade. “Relax,” he said. “And put that controller out of site.”

  Ariana pushed the remote controller under the seat with the heel of her shoe and threw the binoculars on the backseat. The black car approached and an airport police officer stepped from his car, the lights on the vehicle still flashing in intermittent red, white, and blue.

  Karim held the button on the armrest of the driver’s side and the thick glass retracted halfway down.

  “Identification, please,” the officer said, his reddish hair appearing at the doorframe of the black car.

  Karim reached into the breast pocket of his suit jacket and removed two diplomatic passports. Smiling broadly, he handed the official documents to the officer. “As you can see, we’re diplomats with the Pakistani Embassy. My name is Nazim Shinwari and this is my wife Safia Hafeez.”

  The officer opened the pages of each passport and examined the photographs on the inside cover. “Enjoying your morning?”

  “We were just taking in the sights. Unfortunately, we were called back to the embassy as part of a security alert. Embassy protocol demands that we return immediately. Our progress cannot be impeded.”

  “Just a moment,” the officer said, keeping the passports in his hand as he walked to the front of the car and noted the diplomat license plates. He walked back to the open window and handed the passports back to Karim. “Have a good day.”

  “Thank you,” Karim said.

  Ariana leaned across the front seat towards the open window. “Officer, it may be none of my business, but there is a young man in the passenger seat of that parked cab. He is acting suspiciously. I think he has a gun.”

  The officer looked over at the car as Ariana pointed for guidance. “We’ll take care of it. For safety’s sake you may want to get moving.” As Karim raised the window on the car, the officer reached for his radio.

  Clark watched as a second plane passed over, the corners of the remote controller firmly in his hands. Across the parking lot Detective Wallace placed his nose to the window of an empty SUV before moving in the direction of the white minivan.

  Concentrating on the remote control in his hands, Clark shook as the yell reached his ears. “Let me see your hands. Hands up. Hands up! Do not fucking move!” Clark followed the last command and looked into the side-view mirror
of the cab to locate the voice. Above the warning that Objects in the Mirror are Closer than they Appear, Clark saw the business end of a police-issued nine millimeter pointed at the rear flank of his head.

  Karim drove slowly down the service road to the entrance of the GW Parkway. Ariana stared out the window as the police surrounded the yellow cab and Detective Wallace raced across the parking lot to intervene. The detective, badge in his raised hand, arrived on the scene and slowly the officers surrounding the cab lowered their weapons. “Nine lives,” she muttered under her breath.

  Karim turned on the radio and the report of an explosion in Metro Center was followed by several beeps and an emergency broadcast message. “The day was not in vain,” he said proudly, looking over at Ariana.

  Ariana sneered. “Easy to say when you did not waste years of planning. Living as a housewife to a man you despised. Being submissive. Hiding your intelligence.”

  “It is over now. And your mission was a success.”

  The long black car merged into traffic heading towards the Memorial Bridge. Ariana coughed and looked up at the next plane on approach to Reagan. She gazed skyward and then followed the plane as it flew over the field in the distance, over the swarm of police now in the parking lot of Gravelly Point. She started to speak, coughed again, and cleared her throat. She noticed the taste of iron thick in her mouth and swallowed hard. She pulled down the sun visor on the passenger side of the front seat and looked into the mirror as the heavy flow of blood from her nose ran over her lips.

  Chapter 64

  Clark sat down at the small kitchen table and Mr. Stanley delivered a cup of coffee, no cream, no sugar.

  “You read the paper today?” Clark asked.

  “No, I just moved it around on the table.”

  Clark smiled. “And… ?”

  “Not watching the news?”

  “Haven’t turned on the TV in days.”