Bloodbath

by David Alexander

  Then it began ticking. Clicking the knob back would not stop the sounds. The stereo receiver was presumed to contain a bomb.

  Sonntag filled Ettinger in on the rest as the two grabbed their coats and went out the door of their office. The delivery boy arrived to an empty room. He shrugged, left the paper bag on top of a pockmarked steel work table and went back to the restaurant.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  The Kevlar suits were designed to protect them against the effects of premature detonation of up to three tons of force per square inch. But Sonntag and Ettinger knew that nothing could guarantee their safety against the range of explosive devices that it was possible to manufacture, even using off the shelf components. They stood in the cinderblock-walled room and looked at the problem.

  "Well, Siggie, what have we here?" Ettinger opined, "a bomb maybe?"

  "Could be, Fritzl," Sonntag replied. "At least it makes a ticking noise like a bomb, jah?"

  The stereo receiver lay in the middle of a steel table that was bolted to the cement floor. It was clearly, though faintly ticking, which meant that the bomb, whatever it was made of, was connected to a simple mechanical clock timer.

  Sonntag and Ettinger pulled down the tempered Plexiglas face shields on their helmets and got to work. Throat mikes and armored videocams mounted on two corners of the walls recorded what they did and allowed other technicians in an adjoining room to feed back their comments.

  "Have you ever wondered, Siggie," Ettinger said as he began to work on the screws holding the L-shaped top of the cabinet in place along the rear and sides of the receiver, "why anybody in their right minds would want to do our jobs?"

  Hansl watched his partner intently as he unthreaded two, three, then four black carbide steel screws and set them on the tabletop, then set down the screwdriver and prepared to lift up the top section.

  "Nobody in their right minds would want to do this work," Sonntag answered. "This is obvious, jah?"

  "I guess we should have our heads examined, eh Siggie?"

  "You are right about that, Fritzl," replied Sonntag. "We are both certifiable lunatics."

  "But we enjoy it, don't we?"

  "Jah, but not as much as a good piece of ass," Siggie told Hansl. "We are not that crazy."

  "Nobody is that crazy," Siggie, Fritzl answered with a laugh.

  The banter stopped as the job started getting hairier. Not finding a motion sensor the bomb disposal experts determined that it was safe to open the case. Ettinger gingerly held the metal cover about a half inch above the base of the receiver unit.

  The ticking was audibly louder now and the two cops could see colored wires that had no place in a stereo set around the edges. Sonntag already was in position with a fiber optic probe attached to a video monitor, and he now moved the glowing tip of the probe along the interstices of the receiver.

  The swing-mounted monitor on the wall showed them a magnified view of the guts of the set. On it they could clearly discern the main components of the bomb.

  They could see the main charge, a four hundred gram cylinder of rolled Semtex plastique. The Semtex had been covered with foil and festooned with a bar-coded label to make it look like a legitimate part of the set. Colored wires trailed beneath a nearby circuit board to an "ice cube" timing device linked to a chemical initiator, all of which bore phony bar-code labels like the Semtex.

  The components were connected to a travel alarm clock, hence the ticking, and a cluster of nine-volt batteries. It was a classic two-step bomb lash-up. Once the clock timer closed an electrical circuit, a pulse of power would heat the ice-cube -- actually a cube of solid incendiary component -- which would combine with another chemical to initiate a thermite flash hot enough to detonate the Semtex.

  Apart from this, they found nothing -- such as a mercury tilt switch or other motion-sensing device -- to indicate that the bomb was booby-trapped against tampering, apart from the on-off button that had been rigged to start the bomb ticking if depressed. Ettinger breathed a sigh of relief. He now lifted the top of the bomb completely clear of the base and set it down on the work table beside it.

  Suddenly the ticking stopped.

  Ettinger and Sonntag had only a moment to look at each other before the approximate pound of Semtex went off with a tremendous bang. In the enclosed space of the room, the force of the explosion was magnified as it bounced off the cinderblock walls and the reinforced concrete floor and ceiling, blowing the steel-plate blast door clean off its hinges and out into the hallway. The blast ripped the two cops limb from limb, flinging pieces of their bodies against the walls, ceiling and floor despite their protective clothing.

  Only the bolted steel table remained in one piece, though its top, which had reflected the blast wave upward, now bore a deep bowl-shaped crater in its center.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  The lorry was marked with the name and lightning bolt logo of Zeus, a Bonn firm specializing in overseas freight shipment. Arrangements for the truck to pick up a standard rectangular cargo container for airfreighting to Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, had been made the previous day.

  The shipping firm had made all the arrangements and filed all the necessary paperwork, including the shipping manifests which stated that the eight-foot square module contained agricultural equipment manufactured in Germany.

  The company had sent two men out on the job, who now sat at either end of the truck, one in the cab listening to a news station on the radio. The other loitered at the rear, directly above the pneumatically actuated step-hoist that had been lowered to the ground, awaiting the appearance of the cargo container.

  The shippers in the small brown-brick factory building had told them to wait until they had completed loading and sealing the container, which would require another few minutes. The two truckers were now doing just that. Waiting.

  Inside the dark recesses behind the loading dock, Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni sat inside the climate-controlled and specially padded freight container into which he had just lowered himself to the accompaniment of prayers for his safety and a swift journey to the sanctuary of his Arab brethren. The small factory was owned by a MISIRI agent-in-place; its staff had been dismissed early, and only trusted cadre remained behind. Dalkimoni's trip would not be all that long or that difficult, and it beat a stay in a Berlin jail cell any day of the week.

  In minutes the bomb-maker saw hands lowering the airtight steel lid of the crate overhead and heard the thuds and snaps of heavy latches being pulled down and secured into place. Then, with a sudden lurch, he was picked up by a forklift and rolled out to the loading dock, where, with another series of juddering lurches the container was pneumatically hoisted to the level of the truck's floor, eased onto a pallet, and wrestled inside by its crew.

  Minutes later the terrorist heard the clank of the truck's rear doors slamming shut and the motor start up; the monotony of the ride to the airport was broken by the entertainment of the fuck-video-loaded iPad that Dalkimoni been provided.

  The cargo container passed through customs without incident. Its waybill was in order and the shipping firm was an old and respected concern which transported hundreds of tons of freight per week in and out of Germany for its various clients.

  In a matter of hours, Abu Jihad was heading south by southeast at four hundred fifty miles per hour at a thirty thousand foot altitude on a flight trajectory that would land him at Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport at eleven A.M., local time.

  Once the plane landed, his glory and influence would be assured. The container would be commandeered by a special contingent from MISIRI whose honcho reported directly to the office of Iranian President Faramoosh Mozafferreddin, whose contempt for the United States decades of rule had left unchanged. The agents of MISIRI would load the huge steel box on a military flatbed truck and whisk him to the agency's vast complex in Tehran's Piroozi district nicknamed the "the Hole of the Despoilers" by knowledgeable locals, a covert adjunct to the high-profile police and go
vernment complex at Toopkhaneh Square in central Tehran.

  There, in one of the many soundproof, surveillance-proof floors sunk below ground level, the module would be opened and Dalkimoni would be accorded a hero's welcome which would culminate in the honor of a special audience with the president himself in his office at what had once been the US Embassy in Tehran and which had become the first of many presidential palaces built under the regime.

  Dalkimoni only had to endure the cramping of this enclosed space for a little while longer. He patted the specially made vest he wore beneath his loose clothing, its six pouches containing as many hard cylindrical objects. Yes, he thought, these precious gifts would insure that his welcome would be as glorious as he surmised.

  Chapter Five

  Breaux studied the road in front of him from behind the wheel of the rented Mercedes sedan. The road he traveled was picturesque, winding its way through high Alpine meadows dotted with quaint cottages, steepled churches and fruit tree orchards awaiting the first thaws of early spring.

  Beyond everything, shrouded in dense mists, loomed the snowcapped peaks of the Alps. Breaux knew they were mere foothills, called the Glarner Alpen by natives, that the true Alps began farther north. Then again, this was Tyrolean Switzerland, and to the Tyrols a mountain was the Matterhorn; anything less was merely a hill.

  The road was more than a picturesque route through photogenic Swiss countryside, though. It was part of the body of a snake. The snake was long, with its fanged head in Germany and its rattled tail thousands of miles and half a world away in Pakistan.

  The Bonn-Karachi truck route used this stretch of road through the high Alpine passes, just as it used dusty mountain roads in Afghanistan, and other roads in yet more remote places. Here, in the land of bread and chocolate, the snake's scales sparkled in the noonday sun. But there were other parts of the reptile that were far less pleasant to the eye.

  The snake was a survivor. Nothing could break its back. Not wars, not famines, not madness, not death. Down it plunged, through the chaos in the Balkans. Not even the fierce ethnic warfare that divided Croats from Serbs, Kosovars from Albanians, Slavs from Turks, and that had in 2018 again drawn in the US and NATO to police it, not even this fierce conflict could stop it.

  On it slithered, through Greece and into Turkey, and along the northern tiers of Syria and Iraq. Into Iran it weaved its serpentine track, and then down, down it burrowed, all the way to its final destination, Pakistan.

  Day in, day out, year in, year out, convoys of trucks passed along this multinational trade artery between East and West that was the 21st century's version of the caravans of bygone eras. Only a global war might shut it down. Nothing less ever would. The truck route was too vital, too efficient, too useful to the constellation of nations which it serviced.

  The overland route was easily a fifth as long as the comparable sea route -- one that would need to cross the Mediterranean, pass down the length of the Suez canal, reemerge into the Red Sea, and then hook around into the Persian Gulf -- and only a fraction of its cost. No other commercial artery existed in the world that was as direct, as economical and as beneficial to the trade of as many nations. The truck corridor would be kept open, come what may. Too many global customers depended on continued access to it in order to move their industrial output to customers around the world.

  But the snake's continued existence came at a price. Refrigerators, televisions and computers, hothouse-grown produce, new cars, and other commodity items and durable goods flowed along its back. Yet hidden beneath its underbelly there moved a considerably different type of traffic.

  Here passed heroin, and the raw opium base needed to manufacture the drug, and virtually any and all forms of embargoed goods and contraband. Along this same route Iran was now receiving components for its ongoing clandestine nuclear chemical and biological weapons programs.

  The snake was deadly. Its fangs dripped poison. But it had many powerful friends and allies, and no one had ever dared to undermine it. All this was about to change.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Breaux turned the Mercedes off the road and swung the silver luxury sedan onto a narrow dirt track that ran straight across the meadow toward the small adzed-beam cottage a quarter mile ahead. A few minutes later the car had reached its destination.

  Breaux parked on the gravel drive and the team emerged from the Mercedes, the five men stretching their legs, hauling luggage from the trunk and unfastening pairs of skis from the rack at the top of the roof. To any observer the men, dressed in après ski gear, would have appeared to be tourists out to catch the last shusses of the fast-waning winter season.

  Anyone interested in, and capable of, checking further, would learn that the group had come from Eastlake, Ohio, a municipal subdivision of greater Cleveland, and that they were all local real estaters working for Century 21 on a week-long European ski junket.

  The only discrepancy noted would have been a black vinyl body bag that two of the men carried inside. The body bag contained roughly a hundred pounds of aluminum beer cans and crushed ice. But it was an Eagle Patcher tradition to drink your hydraulic sandwiches out of a body bag, and that was that.

  The chalet, which was short-stay rental property leased to visitors by a local landowner, had been paid for in advance through a well-known travel agency. The Mercedes was also a rental, also booked in advance through an internationally reputed firm, which had also arranged for international drivers licenses for two members of the ski party.

  That would have ended scrutiny of the five men, and so none would have been made suspicious by one of the five who, shortly after the other four had entered the chalet and drawn the blinds, stepped outside to have a smoke and admire the scenery.

  Top kick Death did indeed admire the Alps, which reminded him of the Catskills, in a funny way, except that none of the hotels served brisket of beef or prune juice. Sgt. Death also kept his eyes peeled for anybody on their way to the chalet while the team unpacked and checked the gear.

  Breaux's checklist of weapons, explosives, timing devices, NVGs and other equipment had been precise and calculated down to the last battery and bullet.

  With the blinds drawn, Breaux and the other members of the squad took everything out of the luggage in which an employee of the car rental company -- a longtime CIA proprietary -- had packed the stuff. It took the better part of an hour for all the gear to be checked out, put together, then broken down again and stowed away, but when it was finished Breaux was pleased to note that everything he'd ordered was there and ready.

  For the greater part of the rest of the week, the team would play the role of dumb, drunk, horny, loud but good-natured and fun-loving Americans on vacation. Some of that would be real, since it would be a vacation from military life and the special warfare battlefield. Other parts of it would be the application of hard tactical lessons.

  Their objective was the Deutsche Wehrteknik plant situated just outside the nearby ski town of Chur. By the end of the week the team would have secretly entered the factory and destroyed weapons components that DWT was thought to be manufacturing and secretly shipping to Iran along the Bonn-Karachi truck pipeline.

  ▪▪▪▪▪▪

  Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni relaxed in a Jacuzzi hot tub with nubile whores catering to his every whim. The wide screen HDTV was above the whirlpool bath, tuned to CNN. Dalkimoni fondled the large breasts and protuberant nipples of the blonde Swedish girl while admiring the swaying ass on the black English girl who licked the blond's snatch while he watched TV.

  The girls, the champagne, and the beautiful villa -- it was as if he had awakened to a living dream of paradise promised in the Q'uran. It was rumored to have been the same villa in which Carlos had lived before his capture and imprisonment by French agents. Once a promising operator, and a rising star after his brilliant work at the Munich Olympics of 1972, he'd gotten too full of himself to remain effective. Besides, he had not been an Arab. How could an infidel nonbeliever e
ver truly support the cause? Absurd. And besides all that, ancient history by now, and thus a subject unworthy of the doctor's continued musings.

  Earlier, Dalkimoni had met with the presidential heir-apparent, Bashar Mozafferreddin, at the former Saabgheranieh Palace, in what had once been the summer harem of the Shah.

  The palace, now renamed the Niavaran Presidential Palace of the People's Islamic Revolution -- but still sumptuously decorated to please the bevy of beautiful harem girls whose talents at belly dancing and sucking cock had earned them apartments there -- stood within the Niavaran Palace Complex in Tehran's Shemiranat district in the northeast quarter of the city, cooled in summer by vagrant breezes from the Elburz mountains and warmed in winter by the the body heat of its horny female inmates.

  Bashar was in his fifth floor office feeding his prize Siamese fighting fish, which he kept in a large tank that had been specially built into one of the office's imported hardwood walls -- with the fabled cedars of Lebanon long gone, the wood for the walls had come from the Brazilian rainforest.

  Bashar bred the fighting fish himself, and they had won him renown throughout the Middle East and the jet-set capitals of Europe. Bashar beckoned Dalkimoni to join him by the tank as he admired his finny warriors.

  "It has been scientifically demonstrated that fish grow balls when successful in warfare and lose them when disgraced or defeated," Bashar declaimed, staring into the tank and ignoring his visitor. "In defeat, the fish also shrink in size."

  "This is most interesting, Excellency," replied Dalkimoni, standing at a respectful distance from his benefactor. "Most interesting, indeed."

  Bashar continued to ignore the bomb-maker while he carefully sprinkled live, wriggling mealworms, beetle larvae and other small insects onto the surface of the water in the tank. Their struggling movements quickly attracted the predators below.

  Bashar had a team of insect farmers in the basement on his payroll. The team did nothing except breed insects as food for Bashar's prize fish. At each morning's feeding, the choicest bugs were gathered by his breeders and delivered to Bashar's office in a medium-sized jar.