Levels of Power

by Mike Gilmore

  Asking every person in the Senate Chamber to bow their head, Chip Saunders offered an eloquent soliloquy to express his heartfelt sorrow for the victims in London.

  He took almost a minute after finishing the prayer to return to the original list of reasons.

  Again, Doaks spoke to the Senate. “Will the senator yield to another question?”

  Saunders turned a small and tired smile to the Senate minority leader. “Yes. I yield for a question only.”

  “Do you, Senator Saunders, believe it is proper to continue to hold this floor in light of the tragedy in London?”

  Saunders gave the minority leader a hard stare. “No. I do not think this or any filibuster is the proper way to conduct business on the floor of the United States Senate, but until I have your word, Senator Doaks, that you will kill this outrageous tax bill, you give me no choice. Therefore, I ask you right this moment to give me your word on the floor of the Senate. Will you kill this bill right here and now? You have forty-five seconds to answer, Senator.”

  Doaks was furious. His play to damage Saunders’s image had not worked as he planned. “I didn’t start this filibuster, Senator Saunders. I will allow the voters of our state and the American people to determine if you should be returned to office or perhaps be recalled by our state to explain your conduct.”

  Saunders turned to the president pro tem of the Senate. “Mr. President. I believe Senator Doaks is out of order. He is not asking a question but attempting to take the floor away from me. I ask the president to order Senator Doaks to sit down.”

  In addition to the two senators raising their voices, the people in the gallery had begun to talk. Senator Cynthia Woodside from Maine, the current president pro tem of the Senate, gave the gavel a hard thump against its heavy wooden base to restore order in the chamber.

  “The Senate will come back to order.” She raised and dropped the gavel once again. “This chamber will come to order.” After a count of ten, she admonished the gallery. “Let me remind the people sitting in the gallery that you are here as guests of the Senate. There is no question as to how you will conduct yourselves. If there is another disturbance, I will clear the gallery.”

  She looked down at Saunders and then over to Doaks. “Senator Doaks, the rules allow you to ask a question or respond to a question asked by Senator Saunders. Nothing else. Please be seated.”

  She looked back at Senator Saunders. “Reluctantly, Senator Saunders, I must give the floor back to you.”

  Chapter 53

  Honor Oak

  Thursday, December 3, 2015

  8:15 p.m.

  Lifting the barrels up the concrete steps one step at a time was backbreaking, time-consuming work that sucked energy from both men.

  Each barrel was four feet tall and almost thirty inches around. The heavy molded plastic barrels were solid, one-piece construction with an open end where a heavy plastic lid threaded into grooves until the lid was flush with the sides of the barrels. There were two recessed handle grips in the lid for unthreading the lid out of the recessed ledge. A person could wrapped their fingers around the grips but they did not have the strength for moving or picking up the barrel.

  They had backed the van up to the wide concrete steps and carefully turned the barrels on their sides inside the van before lifting each in turn onto the first concrete step. They had found no forklift or wheeled dolly to move the barrels. They each took one end of the barrel and lifted it, one step at a time, up the four steps to the stairway and then onto the concrete floor. They were able to get the first four barrels into the building and roll them far enough away from the door to allow room for the next five barrels. However, on the sixth barrel, Shir lost his grip on the lip edge; the barrel broke free, rolled back down the steps, and bounced off the end of the van. It hit the right back door, forcing it back on its hinges to the stops. The barrel lodged between the doorframe and the bottom step. Pulling for all they were worth did not break it loose. They had no choice but to move the truck forward far enough to allow them to free the barrel and start the process over again. This time they had to lift the barrel the full five steps.

  When the sixth barrel was finally inside the building, Shir released his grip. Hossein rolled the barrel next to the other five barrels. He turned to see his partner leaning against the doorframe wiping sweat from his face with the back of his uniform sleeve. Hossein wanted to yell at him to move back to the van, but he was just as tired. He simply told him they had to keep working to get all the barrels inside the building.

  They continued the arduous process until they finally had the twelfth barrel inside the building. They were exhausted but satisfied. It seemed the hardest part of their scheme was behind them. Now they simply had to roll the barrels down the concrete floor and start to work on opening the hatch.

  Rolling the barrels was fairly easy for the two men. They stood side by side and manually moved and directed the barrels about forty-five feet to the steel walkway across the wide pit. It required another twenty minutes to set six barrels upright and remove the lids from the two closest to the catwalk. Shir found a two-gallon plastic bucket with a wire handle to use to dip the powder from the barrels and haul it to the hatchway after they had removed the access cover.

  Consumed in their work, they did not realize anyone had arrived at the building until a voice spoke from behind them.

  “Hello there chaps. Everything all right here?”

  Hossein and Shir spun around to see two constables standing inside the walk-in door. The men were dressed in standard uniforms under winter coats and billed caps with black-and-white checkerboard hatbands. Both officers seemed to accept their uniforms and the van’s markings, assuming they were employees of Thames Water Utility.

  Shir gave Hossein a quick look and saw his head bob. Quickly turning toward the two officers, he slowly moved in their direction, blocking their view of Hossein with his own body.

  His accent was near perfect as he warmly greeted them with a friendly smile. “Good evening, constables. We are getting ready for a work crew to come here tomorrow. Just a little preventive maintenance on the pump. Nothing serious, as long as we take care and are prepared. You know how it is.”

  One of the constables stepped away from his partner to try to look around Shir at the barrels. “If you’re going to be working on the pumps, what’s in all them barrels?”

  Shir was almost to them when he raised his left hand to distract their attention from his right hand as he slipped it into his uniform pants pocket. “My friend can answer that better than I.”

  He turned around to look at Hossein, who gave him another little head nod. “Yes. I’ve got that answer.”

  As soon as Hossein finished speaking, Shir took two fast steps forward, using his left hand to shove the officer closest to the door against the frame. He removed the titanium Browning quick-opening knife and depressed the release lever in the same motion, allowing the blade to snap out and lock into position. With no hesitation, he shoved the four-inch blade into the officer’s stomach. Before Shir pulled the knife from the body, he felt warm blood pouring from the deep wound.

  As Shir made his move toward his target, Hossein brought his own right hand around. He had removed the Korth automatic handgun from his back pocket and fired two rounds into the chest area of the second constable. The explosions rang loudly inside the building.

  The second constable, who had been looking at his partner, had no time to react. He staggered backward several steps from the impact of the two powerful bullets, and then his legs collapsed. He lay on the concrete floor as his lifeblood flowed from his body and pooled around his chest, soaking into his uniform. Hossein walked over to the officer in time to see life leave his eyes.

  He ignored the lifeless eyes staring up at him and looked over to Shir and the second constable. The officer took almost a minute to die. Shir quickened his death by shovin
g the knife into the officer a second time while holding the man’s body against the doorframe. When he could not feel a heartbeat, he removed the knife for the second time and allowed the body to slide down the doorframe to the building floor.

  Shir Mohammad allowed his right hand, still holding the knife, to drop to his side as he stepped back from his victim. He sucked in deep breaths of air and tried to calm down. This was his first kill.

  Hossein stepped up to his partner and laid his hand on Shir’s shoulder. “Good work. You distracted them long enough for me to get to my weapon.”

  Shir’s breathing was slowing down. He used his left hand to run his fingers through his hair to help release the tension inside his body. In doing so, he knocked off his Thames Water Utility uniform hat.

  “I was concentrating on our work. I never heard their vehicle approach. I certainly was scared, brother.”

  Hossein reassured his partner. “We both performed well. The Elder would have been proud of us.”

  He stepped away from Shir and turned to look for where they could dispose of the bodies. “Let’s move the bodies against the wall past the overhead door. They will be out of our way.”

  Shir nodded in agreement. He wiped the blood off his knife and slowly closed the blade back into the handle. He slipped the knife back into his right front pants pocket.

  Each man grabbed one of the constables under the arms and pulled them roughly away from the doorway and over to the wall. Without any regard for the bodies, they simply released their grips and allowed the bodies to fall to the floor.

  Hossein looked back toward the doorway. There were still six barrels to roll over to the catwalk where the other six now stood. “Let’s get the access cover off and start to transfer the powder into the reservoir. Once we’ve emptied the first six barrels, we can roll the second group over and finish this job.”

  Shir nodded, hurried over to the catwalk, and crossed to the middle where the access cover was located. He opened the door built into the sidewall of the catwalk and swung it around, out of his way.

  The square, heavy steel access plate, roughly twenty-four inches in diameter, was held in place by a series of large machine bolts located every six inches. Along the edge of the access cover, they could see the black gasket that sealed the panel where the two pieces of steel came together.

  The tighten bolts were galvanized to prevent rusting. It would take a large wrench to loosen the bolts and remove the access cover. He walked off the catwalk to his tool bag next to the edge of the pit. He opened the bag and saw the Uzi machine gun and the explosive device placed inside by Iraj Malek-Mohammadi. The tool he was looking for was not inside. He remembered there was another tool bag with the equipment to remove the bolts.

  While Hossein was removing the lids from the first six barrels, Shir hurried outside to the van. He returned a minute later with the second tool bag. After setting it down next to the bag containing the weapon and bomb, he opened the second bag and located his set of combination wrenches. The hand tool received its name because it had an open end and a closed end. The open end allowed the wrench to slip around the bolt head, while the closed end slipped over the bolt head and provided a stronger grip onto the bolt head.

  Shir grabbed the largest wrench in the set that ranged from 6.35 mm, or a quarter inch, to 28.575 mm, or one and a quarter inches. He took the wrench and tried to place the closed end over the bolt head. It would not fit. He reversed the wrench to try to slip the open end around the bolt head. Again no luck. He walked off the catwalk.

  Hossein looked up from his work. “What is the problem?”

  Shir held out the combination wrench. “It’s too small. I will need to use the pipe wrench. I only hope it’s large enough.”

  He let the combination wrench slipped from his hand to the floor beside the tool bag. He regretted the loud clanging noise as he reached inside for the other wrench. Being the largest item, it had settled on the bottom of the tool bag. Working his fingers among the other tools, he grabbed the heavier straight pipe wrench and pulled it out into the light.

  Every plumber in the world had a similar tool. Plumbers argued over whether the cast-iron or aluminum bodies were best. Most sided with the cast-iron as the strongest, although the lighter-weight aluminum would remain rust-free. The wrench came in lengths as short as six inches, or eighteen centimeters, and as long as sixty inches, or 152 centimeters.

  Shir’s model was the cast-iron style with an I-beam handle and a full floating forged steel hook jaw with a line of teeth for gripping power. The jaw width would adjust for different sizes by way of a round steel ring enclosed into the back of the I-beam handle, which would thread onto the hook jaw, causing the jaw to open and close.

  Shir looked at the fourteen-inch wrench. It had a maximum jaw opening of two inches, large enough to wrap around the bolt heads. He walked back onto the catwalk to the chest-high access cover. He placed the new wrench on the first bolt head and adjusted the ring to close the jaw tightly around the bolt head. Once satisfied with the wrench, he gave the handle a counterclockwise pull to twist the bolt loose.

  Nothing moved. Shir readjusted his body for better leverage and applied more pressure to the handle. The bolt still would not move.

  He removed the wrench and moved it to a different angle that would allow him to apply his arms and shoulder muscles combined with his body weight to force the bolt to move. For the third time, he applied all of his strength and body weight against the handle. Once again, he was unable to move the bolt.

  Hossein could hear Shir grunting in his efforts to remove the first bolt. Seeing his failure, he walked onto the catwalk and stood next to Shir. “Here, let me try it.”

  The two men changed positions, and Shir handed the wrench to Hossein. The leader placed the wrench on the same bolt, and with all the strength and determination he possessed, he tried to twist the first bolt. Grunting from the strain, his success was the same as Shir’s. The bolt would not move.

  Cursing in his native language, Hossein wanted to throw the wrench across the open floor space but instead calmed himself and tried to determine what they needed to do.

  Shir spoke first. “Alone the wrench is too small. We need to find a length of pipe that will fit over the handle to increase our leverage.”

  Hossein nodded in agreement. “Surely there must be a length of pipe around here that we can use. Let’s look and see what we can find.”

  Chapter 54

  Honor Oak

  Thursday, December 3, 2015

  8:30 p.m.

  Traffic was thinning slightly after the combination of rush-hour congestion and the effects of the attack on Trafalgar Square. Randy Fisher, Marion Bellwood, and Charlie Booker finally broke free of the congested area around Scotland Yard and pointed their rented Ford Focus in the direction suggested by the window-mounted GPS system.

  As they made their way toward the fourteen locations of the Thames Water Ring Main, Phillip Booker kept Marion updated on all the other American security teams.

  Marion’s men were bored waiting at the embassy. Most had been there since arriving on Sunday and forced to stay close to the embassy and their cell phones in case the situation changed. Having to watch helplessly as the attack went down on Trafalgar Square added to their frustration. Phillip Booker argued for the need to send two-man teams to each location. Moreover, the sudden need for more transportation than was available for the extra security agents only made things worse.

  Marion, realizing the need, reached out to the US ambassador and permanent deputy chief of mission, briefly discussed the plan, and request the embassy loan his men additional vehicles and security personnel. With the combination of Marion’s extra men plus security personnel already assigned to the embassy, they were able to mount two-man teams for each location.

  Constance Langhorne and Phillip Booker were ready to assign targets and location
s by the time the American security teams from the embassy were finally ready to move out. Agents quickly programmed the locations into the GPS equipment inside each car.

  The GPS in the car conveying Randy and his friends finally brought them to the outskirts of Honor Oak. Traffic was almost nonexistent. Most of the British population huddled on the sofas in their living rooms watching the reports coming in from Trafalgar Square.

  They arrived at the golf course via the same streets used by the terrorists and entered the parking lot, with the clubhouse on their right and the equipment sheds to their left. Charlie allowed the car to coast to a stop, and they all rolled down their windows to listen for any noises in the damp night air.

  Randy was in the back seat and slid across to the passenger side to look among the buildings toward the reservoir. He thought there was a light coming across the open fairway.

  “Kill your headlights, Charlie.”

  The agent complied. They sat in the dark. Only a few security lights mounted on wood poles some distance away provided any illumination. The light Randy had seen now showed brightly in the distance. It was still too dark to make out the golf course fairways.

  Off to both sides through the stands of trees, they could see more lights from the homes along the edge of the golf course, but only a single light shone from the huge black area in the center of the fairways.

  “That must be the pump house building over the reservoir,” Charlie whispered. “How far away do you estimate it to be? I’m guessing about seven hundred feet.”

  Marion still had his cell phone out. He quietly informed Phillip Booker they were going silent. He would call him back once they determined if the terrorists were at the location. Ending the call, his used his left hand to point toward the outer sheds. “Move the car over to the equipment buildings, where we won’t be seen by anyone inside the pump house.”