by David Archer
They all thought he was cute. Soon they would know that he was the mighty hand of Allah, when he caused more destruction and despair with one bomb than they had sought to cause with twelve! Their plans were nothing in comparison to the glory that Allah would give to him when he caused the deaths and despair of millions!
Yes, it was a small bomb, but it wasn't the destructive force that should be used. Rather, Allah had shown him through the internet how to use it in such a way that just the one bomb that he had would literally cause millions of Americans to lose everything, including, for many of them, their very lives!
Let the American go to Las Vegas. Yes, that city was going to suffer from Allah's wrath, but so would most of Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California. There would be no stopping Zayan, Mr. American. Allah wills it so!
He smiled as he thought of how well he had acted his part when the man came to him the night before. There were no words to describe his delight at his own acting. He had wept when the man threatened to kill him, even though he had no fear of death. Did not the Koran say that all who died in the cause of Allah would go immediately to Paradise?
The Q'uran, Sura 47, p.5 And those who are slain in Allah's cause, their works shall not go wrong; He will guide them and set right their mind; and will make them enter into Paradise which He has told them of.
Yes, Zayan wept, but it was because Allah gave him the wits to do so! He begged for his life, not for fear of losing it, but to use the American's pride against him, to make him yearn in his breast for the poor boy who was forced to commit unspeakable acts against the country that he loved!
It had worked, and it had worked better than ever! The arrogant American had swallowed it all, better than the American girls that Zayan used and abused, giving them to his uncles to sell into slavery. Once again he gave thanks for the wisdom Allah had given him, the discernment that allowed him to see just how to manipulate these unfaithful dogs!
The Q'uran, Sura 47, p.4 And when ye meet those who misbelieve - then striking off heads until ye have massacred them, and bind fast the bonds!
Zayan would strike off many heads for Allah, and would enter immediately into Paradise to receive his rewards. His name would shine like the stars of heaven for a thousand years, for the glory that he would bring to himself and to Allahu Akbar!
15
Mile after mile, Sam had watched for any sign of Jamal, but seen nothing to indicate that he was getting anywhere closer to finding his elusive prey. The boy had seemingly vanished after tossing his phone, and the only thing Sam could think of was getting to Vegas. Since he hadn't seen Jamal on the interstate, he figured the kid must have gotten off and stopped for a while, or else he was taking a different route. Either way, Sam thought, he must have gotten ahead of the boy with the bomb.
It was nearly two in the afternoon by the time he reached his destination, and Sam was tired. He stopped just outside of the city to get something to eat; a couple of burgers would get him revved up again, he figured, especially if he washed them down with about a gallon of coffee, and then he could try to figure out a way to locate Jamal. He got his food and sat at one of the outside tables the restaurant offered, then took out his phone to call Indie.
“Sam!” she squealed when she answered, “I've been trying to call you for an hour! Oh, god, I've been so worried!”
Sam looked at his phone, but it showed no missed calls. “Babe, I don't know, it hasn't rung once. Maybe there's a cell tower down, I hadn't even tried it for a couple of hours.”
She sighed. “As long as you're okay, that's all that matters! Listen, Sam, I've been thinking about what you said that kid told you, about delivering punishment, right? But he's only got one of the bombs, and Harry said they aren't all that big or powerful.”
“Right,” Sam said around a mouthful of burger.
“Well, I've been digging, and I found something. Zayan Jamal has a Facebook page like everyone else, and I've been going over and over it, looking for anything that might give us an idea of where he'd go. Well, he posts stuff several times a day, so there's been a lot to go through, but about an hour ago I found where he did a research project on nuclear weapons and their threats to the United States about a month ago. He got an A on the paper, and he was so proud of it that he posted it to his Facebook. I read it, and Sam, this boy's been planning this for a while now, I'm telling you! So, anyway, in his paper, he came to the conclusion that the most devastating way to use a small nuclear bomb would be to detonate it just under the surface of a major water supply, like Lake Mead! The initial radiation surge would be minimal, wouldn't affect many people directly, and the fallout would only affect a few thousand—but the contaminated water would mean that almost a quarter of the country wouldn't have water for drinking, or crop irrigation or anything else for at least five years! Sam, almost sixty-five million people are dependent on that water, not to mention who knows how many farms and small towns that get their water from the Colorado River! It goes all the way to Mexico!”
Sam's eyes shot open. “Holy Mother—that's it, that's gotta be it!”
“I think so, yeah,” Indie said, “but there's more! Jamal has a Twitter account, and he's been tweeting since early this morning. His last three tweets say, 'On the way to the most important day of my life,' then, 'Allah has given me greater glory than I deserve,' and finally, just a half hour ago, he tweeted, 'Allah grant that I be remembered as a hero of Islam forever!' Sam, do you know anything about Islam?”
“Yeah, we had to take a course on it when I was on the force. This kid's on a suicide mission! He plans to be with the bomb when it blows.”
“I think it's worse than that, Sam. According to something he posted on Facebook last week—wait, let me find it again—okay, here it is. He posted last week that he had been accepted into a special brotherhood, and given the mystery of the atom. Sam, I think he knows how to program that bomb to go off whenever he wants it to!”
Sam thought furiously, and talked through his thoughts. “Okay, then, he's headed for Lake Mead, Hoover Dam. That bomb won't blow the dam, I don't think, but it might do some damage, but from what you're saying, he doesn't want to blow the dam itself, he wants to contaminate the water. What would be the effect of contaminating the water? Couldn't they just shut it down and get water from somewhere else?”
“Not enough, no. I've been researching it, and if Lake Mead were to go dry or become unusable as a water source it would mean an end to water in the southwest, according to every source I can find. There are seven states that will pretty much dry up. Southern California, Nevada and Arizona would be the worst hit, and it's actually possible that if Lake Mead and the Colorado River can't supply water, as much as ninety percent of the people in those states would have no choice but to leave. If they stayed, there'd be no way to provide enough water, and they'd die. If we look at people below poverty level who couldn't afford to move, Sam, this boy could actually be killing as many as twenty million people!”
Sam sat at his table in shock at the sheer magnitude of the crime he was trying to prevent, and the weight of it almost overwhelmed him. He caught himself rocking back and forth, and shook his head to snap himself out of it.
“Dear God,” he said. “What would happen to the country if thirty or forty million people had to leave the southwest and go to other parts to live? Not enough jobs, nowhere near enough food—we're talking famines, riots, probably martial law and civil wars!” He paused and a thought hit him. “Indie—you said he's tweeting? How can he do that without a phone?”
“Well, obviously he's gotten hold of another one somewhere. I thought of that, but there's nothing that ties a cell number to a tweet, so I can't hack into it.”
“I'll call you back,” Sam said and hung up, then immediately dialed Harry's number. The old man answered instantly. “Harry, I need to know—is there any way your people can get a cell number from a tweet?”
Harry asked the question of Ron and Jeff, but when he came back on the
line, he sounded downhearted. “They say it can be done, but that Twitter fights cooperating with the government, so it might take a few days. What have you got, Sam?”
“I'll have Indie call and fill you in, but I know where he's going, and I'm close! Harry, Jamal plans to blow the bomb in Lake Mead, to contaminate the water supply. If he manages it, he'll destroy almost all of the southwest in a single blow!”
Harry's voice failed him. “Oh, my God,” he managed to whisper. “Sam, we can't let this happen...”
“I know, Harry, I know, believe me! That's why I asked about the Twitter thing. Indie found where he's still putting stuff on there, and he must have a cell to do it. If we could get the number, we might be able to find him!”
“I'll get DOJ on it now, and pray we can get a warrant fast enough. Tell Indie to call me ASAP, get me all the info she's found. And, Sam? If you believe in God, son, start praying!”
“Already am, Harry, I already am! Now, Lake Mead is behind Hoover Dam, so I'm guessing he'll do it from there. Can you get the area evacuated?”
Harry hesitated. “Sam—protocols for this sort of thing are not always the way we think they should be. If he gets that bomb into the reservoir there, it'll be the biggest disaster we've ever faced as a nation. Now, I'm with you, I think he'll go to the dam, but if he gets there and finds it's being evacuated, then he's likely to choose somewhere else. There's hundreds of miles of shore on that lake, and thousands of places to get access to it. He could put the bomb in a small boat and take it out to the middle and blow it, and do just as much harm.”
Sam scowled. “So we can't evacuate the dam? Harry, if he sets it off anywhere around there, everyone on or near it is gonna die.”
Harry sighed. “The greater good, Sam. The greater good.”
Sam didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. He cut the call and dialed Indie again. “Babe, I'm going to Hoover Dam, I'm only a few miles from it; it's the most likely place for Jamal to do this, and maybe I can spot him when he gets there! Call Harry and give him everything you've just told me, he's gonna try to track the phone those tweets are coming from. Between us all, we might just have a chance. I love you, Indie, and if...”
“Don't even say it,” she cut in, sobbing. “I love you, too, and I need you! No matter what happens, you come back to me, Sam Prichard! We'll survive this, we can survive any disaster, as long as we're together, but I can't make it without you, not now! You come back to me!”
Sam fought back the tears that wanted to come, and forced himself to smile for her. “I will, babe, I will. But first I gotta stop a madman!” He hung up and hurriedly finished his lunch, then started to rush back to the truck and hit the road, but a thought hit him. There was a store attached to the restaurant, and he went inside.
Fifteen minutes passed, and Sam came out wearing a tourist-like western shirt, a leather vest that concealed his holster and the gun in his waistband, a cowboy hat and a pair of mirrored sunglasses. He was confident that Jamal wouldn't recognize him in this getup, and that could be very important. He got into the truck and headed for Hoover Dam.
His GPS directed him further into Vegas, and took him off of I-15 onto Highway 95. Hoover Dam was almost forty miles away, but Sam clung to his belief that he was ahead of Jamal, and pushed the speed limit as much as he could. The winding road took him through Henderson and out of the metroplex, and soon he was on Highway 93, the road that went across the Bypass Bridge.
Fifteen minutes later, he turned onto the Hoover Dam Access Road, the one that allowed cars to drive over the top of the dam itself, to get to parking areas. If he had any chance of spotting Jamal, that's where he figured it would be. He followed the road right up to the dam, and drove into an area that was marked “No Entrance” and was for employees of the dam. A security guard asked him why he was there.
Sam showed his ID. “Sam Prichard, Homeland Security,” he said, and the guard nodded.
“Yes, sir, we got a call that you were coming, and to cooperate with you in any way. Just let us know what you need.”
“Right now, I just need to park this thing and get onto the dam.”
“Yes, sir, if you'll follow this lane about fifty feet, you'll come to staff parking, and you can put it there.”
Sam drove to the parking lot and got out, then walked painfully toward the top of the dam. His hip always gave him trouble after he'd been sitting for too long, and he'd been in the truck for most of the past twelve hours. The walk was about three hundred yards, and he was limping heavily and missing his cane by the time he got to the middle of the dam.
Just as he got there and perched himself atop one of the low safety walls, his phone rang. He looked at it, and answered, “Hello, Harry.”
“Sam, I've got a four man team on the way to you out of Vegas. They should be there any time, and they've studied numerous photos of Jamal. Station them wherever you need them, they're under your orders. We've also got a rad-spotter on the way, and the fire department will loan us their rescue chopper for it. As soon as it gets there, we'll set them to them scanning all the roads he might be coming in on, looking for the bomb itself, but since we don't know his timetable, it may not do any good.”
“Okay,” Sam said, “and thanks for the help. Do these guys know to shoot on sight?”
“That's your call, Sam. As I said, they're under your orders.”
Sam sighed. “Then that's how it's gotta be. I want the bomb, but I want him down before he can do anything with it. If Indie's right, he's been taught how to arm them and reset the timers; for all I know, it could go off as soon as he gets here.”
“Our guys in D.C. took what Indie came up with and extrapolated from it; they think he's gonna want to get the bomb into the water before it goes off. That's how his paper says to get the most contamination, and while he didn't go into specifics, our hunch is that he'll want to shove it right over the reservoir side of the dam. The blast won't hurt all that concrete, but the surge pressure will almost certainly damage the electrical generation turbines, and contamination will get into the outgoing pipes and the river within only seconds afterward. With his scenario, that'll be the most bang for his buck, taking out the water and killing electricity for millions of people at the same time.”
“I thought of that, too, and I'm sitting right in the middle of the dam, now. I'm in a sort of disguise, hopefully good enough to keep Jamal from spotting me too easily. I'm watching for any vehicles that act suspiciously. Incidentally, have you had any luck identifying that cell phone he's using to tweet?”
“Afraid not,” Harry said. “The AG got a special warrant an hour ago, but it seems there's so many tweets per second that identifying any particular one in the server that takes them in and converts them isn't all that easy. It's just data, and when it's been sent out as a tweet, that data is filed away. There's a process for back-tracing, but they say it takes time, and that's one commodity we're getting short on. However, Indie found out a bit ago that he's using a spare phone his uncle had, but the GPS on it is of, so we haven't been able to track it. That girl is sharp, Sam; she's given us quite a few good leads.”
“Yeah, she's something else,” Sam said. “Any new leads on missing vehicles?”
“Nothing, I'm afraid, though Jamal's car turned up an hour ago. It was abandoned in a stand of trees behind a gas station that was closed last night, off of the interstate, but no vehicles went missing around there, so we're still working blind.”
Sam thought for a moment. “He's jacked someone, then. Probably spotted somebody getting gas at the pumps and surprised them.”
“That's our guess, as well, but the place had no security cameras, so we have no clues. If it was someone passing through, he could be driving anything at all.”
“Not quite anything,” Sam said. “That bomb is heavy, and if it's like the one I saw, it's not small. We're looking for something bigger than a Prius, I'm sure. I'd bet on a van or truck, maybe an SUV; something he could slide it into easily.”
“Good point, and I'll pass it along. Let me know if you get anything, and I'll do the same.”
Sam put the phone into his pocket, but it rang again almost immediately. He didn't recognize the number, so he answered, “Prichard.”
“Mr. Prichard, this is Special Agent Dickens with Homeland Security Vegas. I have a team with me, and was told to report to you for orders. I'm just parking at the Hoover Dam Store, now.”
“Dickens, thanks for coming. I'm out on the dam, dressed like a cowboy wannabe. Come on out as soon as you can, you can't miss me.”
“Yes, sir, we'll be right there.”
Sam waited, and ten minutes later he saw four people coming toward him. There were three men and a woman, all of them dressed casually in jeans and shirts, and they were watching around themselves as they followed the walkway.
“Mr. Prichard?” asked one of the men, as the four of them got to Sam.
“That's me,” he said, and they shook hands all around.
“I'm Jimmy Dickens, no relation to the country singer,” the first man said. “This is Sandra Wills, Mark Brennan and Tom Sands. We're here to help however you need us.”
Sam nodded. “I appreciate it, guys. As you can see, this is a big dam, and we're trying to spot a man who intends to detonate a nuclear device in the reservoir. The bomb isn't big, but it's dirty; if he does what he's planning, this reservoir won't be usable for at least five years, and most of the population in the Southwest will either move, or die of thirst or radiation sickness. Food grown here won't be usable, which means that we'll see a nationwide famine, and with millions of people relocating suddenly to other areas where they won't be able to find work, there'll be starvation and food riots and god knows what else. We can't evacuate, because it would warn him we're here and make him go to a different spot, so all we can do is pray we get him before he sees us. I know you've got pictures of the suspect, so what I want you to do is spread out along the dam. If anyone spots Jamal, your orders are to shoot on sight.”