by Rachel Lee
However, he had in the process learned many skills that were essential to his current mission. Along with other members of the cell he was infiltrating at the time, Lezeta had traveled to a training camp in Syria, where he had learned the theory and practice of preparing shaped charges and remote detonation.
During his time in Syria, he had also met the two Lebanese men whom he had recruited six months ago to join him on this mission. They were, he knew, unafraid to die as martyrs in their twisted world of jihad. And Lezeta was more than willing to help them meet their god. It was vital that their fingerprints and their faces—not his—be linked to the destruction that would happen this night.
Lezeta did not think of his role in their deaths, any more than he thought of his role in the deaths of the men in Spain and France. They were nothing more than misguided missiles destined for self-destruction, if not tonight at his hands, then surely on some other night and at some other’s hands. Blinded by their messianic vision of a utopian world under Islamic law, they were already among the casualties in this war of civilizations. It was only a matter of time until their deaths moved from foregone conclusion to established fact, and this night was as good a time as any.
Thus, while he was supposed to be waiting in a Zodiac on the bank of the Köhlbrand River, ready to gather the two men and spirit them across to the safety of a waiting van, in fact he already had slit open the boat’s pontoon sides and driven back to the safe house, leaving them stranded in the deadly inferno they were about to create. At this moment, they were at the port’s huge chemical storage facility, attaching shaped demolition charges to two underground tanks, each of which was filled with two hundred thousand tons of liquid nitric acid.
An ordinary explosion might dent or even puncture the Teflon-coated, stainless steel roofs of these tanks. But most of the explosion would be dissipated upward and wasted. Thus, Lezeta had used shaped charges, with hollow, trumpet-bell bottoms that would fit snugly to the surface of each tank. These would not only puncture the tanks, but also concentrate the explosive energy into thin streams of superheated plasma, igniting the highly volatile acid into fireballs that would spew clouds of caustic gas.
Lezeta had chosen his targets carefully. Nitric acid, while extremely corrosive at liquid concentrations, was, in gaseous form, rarely more than a severe irritant. It would give the people of Hamburg—and the people of Germany—a well-deserved shock, as hundreds or thousands would stream into hospitals with ragged coughs, only to be told that the symptoms would pass in a few days.
Public health officials would then breathe a hearty sigh of relief, while knowing in the pits of their bellies that they had been lucky, that the casualty toll could have been much higher if the terrorists had chosen to attack other tanks holding more deadly chemicals. The media would then take up the call, first wondering how terrorists had slipped past the Hamburg River Police who handled security at the chemical storage facilities, and then issuing dire warnings that Europeans could not dare hope that the next such attack—and there would surely be more, expert after expert would declare with somber conviction—would cause so few casualties.
Lezeta’s reverie was interrupted by the ringing of his cell phone. “Yes,” he said in accented English.
“All is ready,” Mahir Abood said. “We are at the river. Where are you?”
But Lezeta was already dialing a second cell phone. “I am not there,” he said as he pushed the send button.
Less than a second later, Lezeta saw the flash through his apartment window, and moments after that the shockwave rattled the glass and shook the walls of the building. He watched only long enough to see the twin fireballs rising into the night sky, then nodded and picked up the suitcase he had packed a half hour before.
“Vaya con su dios,” he said as he closed the apartment door for the last time. Go with your god.
He climbed into his small rented sedan and headed south on the E45 Autobahn. In six hours, he would cross the Dutch border and would be sitting in the lobby of the Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. There a contact from Vasquez would meet him with a package of information for his next assignment.
Lezeta was going to Berlin.
Rome, Italy
Ahmed Ahsami watched the television news reports, biting his lip until blood flowed. It was all he could do not to slam his hand down on the table, which would have done nothing except attract unwanted attention in the small café where he was sipping coffee. Instead, he rose from his chair and walked toward the rear of the room, as if he were going to the restroom, then ascended the stairs to the deceptively ramshackle room above.
A pair of televisions and three laptop computers on a creaky wooden table gave no clue to the true importance of this room. It was, in fact, the European headquarters of Saif Alsharaawi. It was also Ahmed’s new home base.
“How did we not know this was being planned?” he demanded angrily.
“It was Hezbollah,” said Abdul al-Nasser, an Egyptian who was station chief here. “The identities of the bombers have not yet been released, but their fingerprints were uplinked to Interpol twenty minutes ago. I ran them through our own database. Both were Lebanese.”
“Why would Hezbollah attack in Germany?” Ahmed asked, quickly scanning the data screen. “Such an attack does not fit their profile.”
Hezbollah had begun as a collection of local Shi’a militias in southern Lebanon, crystallizing during the twenty-year Israeli occupation. Its aims and operations had always been local, preserving Shi’a dominance against Sunni and Druze Christian militias, resisting the Israeli occupiers, and carrying the battle into Israel itself after the formal occupation ended and southern Lebanon was left a desiccated and mine-strewn wasteland. A strike in Germany would do nothing to advance their interests in Lebanon. It made no sense.
“Hezbollah work for Iran,” al-Nasser said, as if that were answer enough. “They are Shi’a.”
Ahmed shook his head. He had opposed recruiting al-Nasser from the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, and had also opposed al-Nasser’s appointment as European station chief. The Muslim Brotherhood, with its virulent Wahhabist-Salafist message, was in Ahmed’s view emblematic of the problem in Islam, rather than the solution.
“People still act for reasons,” Ahmed said. “I cannot see what either Hezbollah or Iran could gain from this.”
“Attention,” al-Nasser said. “Remember that with all that is happening in Europe, the world is once again seeing the plight of true Muslims.”
“I have bad news for you, my friend,” Ahmed said. “The world does not distinguish between Persian and Arab, Shi’a and Sunni. To them, we are all the same, the same enemy. When Iran seeks to develop a nuclear program, the West asks how long it will be before Iran gives nuclear weapons to al-Qaeda, as if the Shi’a in Iran would consider giving such power to fundamentalist Sunni terrorists.”
“Yes,” al-Nasser agreed. “And Westerners ignore the fact that your country and mine fear a nuclear-armed Iran more than the West does. We know what the Iranians would do with such weapons, and it would not be to attack Israel. No, they would first blackmail Sunni nations into accepting Shi’a rule. Only then—once they had an oil monopoly and the political leverage that goes with it—would they turn their sights on Israel.”
Ahmed thought al-Nasser’s nightmare scenario unlikely, but this was not the time to argue the issue. “What do we know about the travel of these two Hezbollah operatives?”
“I am checking now,” al-Nasser said, his fingers flying over the keyboard. “Here. They flew from Beirut to Hamburg a week ago.”
“So who were they working with?” Ahmed asked.
This was not the kind of operation that could be mounted in a single week. Someone must have been in Germany ahead of them to perform the reconnaissance on the target and work out detailed plans.
“Like I said, they work for Iran,” al-Nasser said. “I will check on the known activities of Iranian nationals in Germany. My guess is that we will find a port employee or an Ir
anian student attending university there. Or someone in the Iranian intelligence service. Someone who was too valuable to waste on a suicide mission.”
“Perhaps,” Ahmed said, remembering how his erstwhile allies in Europe had betrayed Black Christmas and funded the attack in Strasbourg. “But don’t limit your search. It would not be the first time Islamic strings were pulled by others.”
And regardless of al-Nasser’s protestations to the contrary, Ahmed did not think this was an Iranian mission. No, this had a rancid smell that he knew all too well. He made a mental note to double-check all of al-Nasser’s work on this project. If the Egyptian would not turn over the right rocks, Ahmed would do it himself.
Thebes, Egypt
c. 1300 B.C.E.
Benjamin watched his nephews run around the edge of the Nile, where a pool had been formed near the Pharaoh’s palace. He was an old man now, enjoying the heat of the sun for the way it eased his aching joints, enjoying the day because he had so few left.
His niece Tiye’s sons, Joseph’s grandchildren, scampered around in loincloths, full of the vigor of youth, chasing one another in and out of the pool. The elder of them would be pharaoh soon, for often sons ruled beside their fathers even before they were men full grown. The younger, Moses, would serve his brother for the rest of his days.
Perhaps. Of late Benjamin had been troubled by dreams, a failing or a blessing, depending on one’s point of view. It certainly seemed to run in the family of Israel. Joseph’s dreams, often seeming to mock his brothers, had caused the brothers to sell him into slavery. Benjamin, who had barely been born at the time, had no part in the treachery, but he had certainly heard of it.
How many times had Jacob said, “El works in mysterious ways.” For was it not true that Joseph had risen from slavery to become the Pharaoh’s most trusted right hand? Had not Joseph saved the sons of Jacob and their families from starvation? And had not Joseph’s beloved, beautiful daughter married a Pharaoh?
Matters were not going as well for the sons of Israel as once they had, but hope played before him in the pool near the reeds of the Nile. Those boys were their hope.
But the dreams…the dreams. Benjamin closed his eyes, ignoring the giggling laugh of Miriam as she dashed by her brothers, and the wail of Aaron from his reed cradle.
The dreams. With his eyes closed, Benjamin could feel the darkness that hovered over the two playing boys. Their future would be troubled, of that he was certain. Another part of El’s plan would play out with those two at the center of it.
But all Benjamin could do was teach them all he could of the Kabbalah and what it meant to guard the Light. The boys received the wisdom with eagerness, even if they did not fully understand it. Amenhotep, the elder, seemed particularly enthralled by the idea of a single god. Moses, on the other hand, seemed to think it could be no other way. But Amenhotep had always been a deeper philosopher than Moses, who seemed more ready to simply accept. Amenhotep took each idea the way a bird receives a seed, as something to be carefully pecked open for the meat within.
Yet despite their differences, Benjamin’s dreams told him that both had pivotal roles to play in the plan of the One God. And that neither would achieve joy because of it.
“Uncle?”
He opened his eyes and found Amenhotep standing beside him.
“Are you all right?” the heir to the throne asked him.
“I’m an old man,” Benjamin said with mock stern-ness. “I need my sleep.”
Amenhotep grinned. “You were not asleep. You were talking under your breath.”
“Merely the voices of my dreams.”
The boy, already showing signs of an unusual face and build, laughed. “I want another lesson.”
“Then tell Moses to come while I get my scroll.”
“I’ll run and get it,” Miriam chirped. “Then I must take Aaron back to Mother, for he is growing hungry.”
Amenhotep watched his young sister run toward Benjamin’s house, a modest dwelling nearby. “I should marry her.”
Benjamin shook his head. Pharaohs married their sisters often, but Benjamin was certain that Amenhotep’s father had other ideas. “I think you are meant for an other, my nephew. Later you will choose others, but by then Miriam will be wed within the family of Israel.”
Amenhotep nodded. Whatever he might dream and wish, he had long since adjusted to the fact that few decisions were yet within his power. Moses, still dripping from the pool, joined them. Powerfully built, he was more inclined to action than study.
“A lesson?” he asked, correctly intuiting Amenhotep’s presence beside Benjamin.
Amenhotep nodded, expecting no disagreement and receiving none. They both knew their positions.
Miriam returned rapidly, carrying the proper scroll, then scampered away with her baby brother. The boys sat at Benjamin’s feet.
For a few seconds he closed his eyes, feeling the slithering foreboding of his dreams slip over the beautiful day. To be in a position of destiny decreed by God offered little solace to those who must endure the difficulties.
But these boys had no idea their paths had already been set, and Benjamin would not be the one to tell them.
Let God tell them. It would be His doing after all.
Part II: TARHL
(Arabic: Removal)
10
Freudenstadt, Germany
H ans Neufel was almost asleep as his Leopard II tank pulled into the platoon’s protective laager for motion. Road marches were always grueling, and a march through the Schwarzwald—with its steep hills, twisting roads and oppressively thick forest—was ever more so. There was a reason this was called the Black Forest. In the summertime, the sun seemed unable to penetrate the dense foliage, even at the height of noon. The rugged terrain and the carpet of dead leaves combined to warp and deaden sound to the point that one could barely hear something close by and yet could clearly discern a sound from a distant hillside. Small wonder that this place was ripe with legends of monsters.
More than once in the past twelve hours, Hans had been forced to drop down into his turret to avoid low-hanging branches. In the past hour, with the forest gloom growing truly black in the waning light and exhaustion overtaking him, he’d given up trying. Goggles and his crew helmet protected most of his face, and the few scratches he’d taken were, he thought, the closest thing to battle wounds he was ever likely to suffer.
Neufel had served in the Bundeswehr for nineteen months of his two-year commitment. Most of his classmates had elected to do their requisite national service in the public sector, working for charitable or civic groups. He had decided to follow in his father’s footsteps, for in his father’s day army service was mandatory for able-bodied young men. Hans hadn’t minded his time in the army. The food was palatable, his officers reasonable, and while the German military was no longer as culturally respected as it had once been, there was no shortage of young women who still flushed at the sight of a uniform.
Moreover, he had discovered an aptitude for army life. Where others chafed under the regulations and discipline, he found a logical sense of order. He could rely on his tank crew to respond to his commands, and they could rely on him not to issue pointless orders simply for the sake of asserting his authority.
His father had begun to warn him about his looming transition to civilian life. He would be aghast at the lack of respect his university classmates showed for professors and office colleagues would show for their managers. Hans had listened to his father’s words with a mix of bemusement and impatience. He had, after all, been a civilian for most of his twenty years. Surely he had not changed so much that he wouldn’t fit in anymore.
These thoughts usually occupied his mind during the maintenance chores that accompanied the end of a road march. Even in the twenty-first century, the old ways of the cavalry still applied in armored units: first the horse, then the saddle, then the man. Their panzer was their home as well as their weapon, and their first priority was to make
certain that its engine was in working order, fluids replenished, tracks clear and undamaged, crew compartment emptied of the day’s detritus. Only then could they turn to the tasks of feeding themselves and setting out bedrolls for much-needed sleep.
But on this night, he could not wander his usual mental paths. Otto Schulingen, his loader, was suffering from severe heat rash. If that were not enough to make Schulingen cranky, there was the news out of Berlin that the Bundestag had joined the European Union in enacting the Muslimschutzgesetze—the Muslim Protection Laws—in the wake of the terrorist bombing in Hamburg.
Schulingen was from Hamburg; he had talked about little apart from the poison gas attack for the past two days. It had shaken all of Germany, but with his parents and his sister having gone to the hospital, it had shaken him deeply and personally. Perhaps that was why he’d been lax in bathing and applying the antifungal powder to combat the heat rash.
“You must see the medic for that,” Neufel said as Schulingen stripped out of his tanker’s coveralls with a pained wince.
“Ja, Stuffz,” Schulingen said, trying to scrub away the inflamed skin with a damp towel.
Yes, Sarge. There was no disrespect in Schulingen’s use of the colloquial, and Neufel took none from it. He scrubbed his loader with an intensity that made Neufel wince, and finally he put his hand on Schulingen’s shoulder.
“I mean it,” he said. “Go see the medic, Private. There is no need for you to suffer this way. It will not make your parents or sister better. Only time will do that, the doctors say.”
“Damn Muslims,” Schulingen said softly. “What did my ten-year-old sister ever do to them?”
“Nothing,” Neufel said. “Nothing at all.”
“They deserve to be in pens like animals,” Schulingen said. “I cannot believe the government is going to pay them compensation for relocating them.”
“That is only just,” Neufel said. “Most of them are good citizens, fellow Germans who want nothing at all to do with these terrorists.”