‘Much will depend on finding the right part of the system to dump the contents of the barrels into,’ Abbud said.
‘You’re the engineer.’
‘I am. But these facilities are complex. One mistake, we could end up pouring the whole lot into a sludge tank, or any number of useless places, and it would never even make it to the public water supply.’
‘Then we find someone there who can tell us where to put it. A senior manager, a chief technical officer, someone like that.’
‘What if they refuse to play ball?’
Nazim shrugged. ‘Who refuses?’
‘Someone who wants to play the hero. They’ll have a pretty good idea of what we’re about to do. Few infidels would want to be responsible for helping to kill thousands of their own kind. Unless we ran into a Hitler, but that would be too much to hope for.’
Ah, Hitler. What a champion. If only he’d been one of theirs.
Nazim pondered the problem and saw an easy solution. ‘This senior manager or chief technical officer is most likely to be a man, yes?’
‘I’d say so. The infidels like to pretend they strive for gender equality, but theirs is still a man’s world, mashallah. One of the few things we have in common with them. Why do you ask?’
‘Because if it’s a choice between facilitating the deaths of a thousand strangers or being directly responsible for a pretty young woman’s brains being blown out right in front of his eyes, no kafir will play the hero for long.’
‘I understand what you’re saying, brother. But how do we know there’ll be any pretty young women at the facility?’
‘We don’t,’ Nazim replied. ‘So we’ll find one en route and take her hostage. That won’t be a problem. There’s always some slut around for the picking.’
Abbud thought about it and slowly nodded, warming to the plan. ‘I think it can work.’
‘Of course it can work. Allah’s knowledge has no beginning or end, and He is with us. We can’t lose, brother.’
The terrorists changed course and sped southwards. Soon, very soon, the final phase of their plan would kick into action.
Chapter 60
The facility was owned by Keres Holdings International, one of the oldest and most established multinational corporations in Europe, with fingers in every pie from public utilities to media and telecommunications. The industrial giant’s interests in water, electricity and natural gas supply and waste management had been spun off into a separate company, K.H.I. Environmental, in 2008, which had invested over three billion euros into the development of its state-of-the-art water treatment plant in the scenic hills of the Alpes Mancelles near Saint-Léonard-des-Bois, a few kilometres west of the commune of Alençon.
Discreetly blended into the landscape of a pretty river valley, from the air the hundred-acre site looked like a NASA space centre. The plant’s management prided themselves on being able to comfortably handle over half a million cubic metres of water a day, using the latest eco-friendly technology to remove nitrogen, carbon and phosphate, neutralise odours and eliminate organic matter. The result was beautiful, crystal-clear and sparkling bright water that rivalled the finest mountain spring for purity. K.H.I. even had its own patented thermal treatment process that enabled six hundred metric tons of sludge a day to be converted into renewable energy. The green revolution had arrived.
Two hours after setting out from their landing point on the coast, Nazim al-Kassar and his terrorist gang were about to arrive, too.
As intended, they had paused en route to switch vehicles, in case the two pickups had been reported stolen to the police who must now be swarming all over Vaucottes. Nazim found the perfect replacement transportation at a quiet little truck stop soon after leaving the motorway. The articulated haulage lorry with some generic company name emblazoned along its trailer was sitting on its own in a weedy layby. While Nazim and his men descended quietly from the pickups and stalked up to the lorry with their weapons in their hands they could see the fleshy, round-shouldered shape of the driver sitting in his cab. He didn’t seem to notice them approaching; the brightening morning sunshine reflecting off the glass made it hard to see what was distracting his attention. Nazim signalled to Zahran to take the passenger door while he strode up to the driver’s side. He quickly hoisted himself up the cab steps, wrenched open the door and jabbed his AK-47 in the face of the shocked and terrified driver. Zahran simultaneously did the same thing on the other side.
The piercing woman’s scream that sounded from the cab solved the mystery of what had been preoccupying the driver before he was interrupted. Not that Nazim or any of his gang would ever know or care, but the lorry driver’s name was Henri Boudin, he was forty-seven years of age, still lived with his mother and had never had a girlfriend. He was kind of hoping that the nineteen-year-old hitch-hiker named Roxane, whom he’d picked up eighty kilometres ago and had spent every moment since trying to impress with his scintillating personality, might consent to becoming the first. He’d pulled into the layby as a last-ditch attempt to work his seductive charms on the poor girl, who had been on the verge of giving him the finger, jumping out of the cab and making her escape when the doors were unexpectedly yanked open and Roxane and Henri each found themselves staring into the barrel of an automatic weapon.
Nazim was pleased. Not only had they just procured themselves the ideal form of transport to carry them and their cargo the last few kilometres to their destination, they’d also acquired the hostage he’d been looking for. Such serendipity was a sure sign that Allah was indeed looking over them.
By contrast, Nazim had no interest in the lorry driver, who was dragged screaming from his cab, beaten to the ground and had his throat swiftly and bloodily cut. After they’d transferred the fourteen drums of fentanyl from the pickups to the artic trailer they hefted his body into the back of the Toyota.
The lorry had been empty, presumably on its way back to base from making a drop-off. The hostage, now bound and gagged and too petrified to even try to resist, was bundled into the trailer where twelve armed terrorists drooled over her with hungry eyes and strict orders from Nazim not to rape her. It would not be appropriate to enter Paradise sullied by contact with a Western kafir whore; she could be useful to them in other ways.
Then Nazim, Abbud and Zahran clambered up into the tall cab and rumbled away on the final leg of their journey, leaving the abandoned pickup trucks in the layby. After getting off to a shaky start the operation was now back in full swing. They skirted the edge of Alençon and headed west into the pleasant green Alpine countryside with the blue sky above them and their hearts full of blissful thoughts of hatred and destruction. Some time afterwards, they reached their final objective.
A smooth private road wound its way into the scenic river valley to the water treatment plant. The terrorists halted the lorry a hundred metres from the gated entrance, sat in silence and observed. Beyond the gates the main office building looked like a slick modern airport terminal in miniature, with signs for reception and staff and visitor car parks. A small fleet of industrial utility vehicles, modified golf carts with load beds attached, stood parked outside. Visible in the background were the Olympic-pool-sized circular reservoirs and elevated bridges and gantries, giant ducts and pipes and pumps and all kinds of other installations and equipment whose purpose even Abbud, the engineer, could only guess at. Everything was sparkling clean and state-of-the-art. Somewhere among all that high-technology layout, they supposed, was the crucial spot in which they needed to dump their toxic cargo in order to inflict maximum damage on the population.
But they had to get there first. Blocking their way was more mesh fencing than in a medium-security prison. The perimeter stretched for ever and stood twelve feet high, topped with coiled razor wire. A glossy billboard reading K. H. I. ENVIRONMENTAL gleamed in the sunshine, and below it the wire was festooned with PROPRIÉTÉ PRIVÉE and ACCÈS INTERDIT AU PUBLIC warning signs. Despite the obviously high security concerns, the only gua
rd they could see for the moment was a solitary uniformed attendant working the barrier from his hut at the main gate. As they watched, a car approached the barrier, its occupant flashed an ID pass and the barrier glided open and shut to let it through.
‘Looks like you need authorisation to get inside,’ Abbud said.
‘Our authorisation comes from God,’ Nazim replied. ‘Let us prepare.’
Everyone descended from the lorry, leaving the hostage helplessly bound and gagged in the trailer alone. The fourteen men gathered on the vehicle’s blind side, where they were blocked from view of the office building and security hut. They faced east towards Mecca and prostrated themselves on the ground to utter their final heartfelt prayers. There was no turning back now. They had no expectations of leaving this place alive, and they didn’t care. Their faces were filled with pride at the prospect of being chosen for this glorious moment.
Nazim reached into a little backpack he’d brought from Paris, and took out a tattered ISIL battle flag. It was the very same one he had carried with him all through the war, back in the day. It had seen a lot of action. He hung the black banner from the side of the lorry behind the praying men, set up his phone to video record and propped it on the ground a few metres away to film them.
When the prayers were over, making sure he was in the camera shot, he addressed them. ‘Brothers, the moment you have all prepared for all your lives has now come. I know that you will fight bravely for glory against our enemies. This is likely to be our last stand, as the police will soon send an army to surround us and there will be no escape. Be assured that if we are slain in the Way of Allah, He will never let our deeds be lost.’
One of the younger men began to cry as lip-trembling pride gave way to emotion. They clapped his back and hugged and comforted him and said, ‘Jafar, my brother, don’t be afraid. When you are scared, think of Allah.’ Jafar wiped his tears and replied, ‘I’m only scared that I won’t succeed in doing my part in our victory.’
Nazim then picked up the phone and pointed it towards himself, with the black flag of Jihad nicely framed in the background. He jutted out his chin and said fiercely into the camera, ‘I am a soldier of the Islamic State, a slave of Allah, and these are my last words.’
For the next minute or so, he calmly described what they were about to do. On behalf of the Islamic Ummah worldwide he took responsibility for the imminent deaths of all the infidels soon to be slaughtered. ‘This is our sacred duty and the wish of Allah. For He is all-wise and most merciful. Allahu Akbar!’
Nazim saved the video and emailed it to his contacts who would know how to plaster it all over the internet after the glorious attack was over, perfectly timed to set the world media on fire. Then the West would know exactly who had done this to them, and be afraid.
They all took their places back inside the lorry. The three men in the cab nodded to one another. Abbud slammed the stick into gear, veered towards the gates and accelerated hard.
The security guy in the little hut by the gate was a man close to retirement age, with a white moustache. He looked round, then stared open-mouthed as he began to realise that the eighteen-wheeler roaring towards him wasn’t going to slow down.
Less than two seconds later, the security guy became the first official casualty of the water treatment plant attack. The lorry hit the barrier and went tearing through with a crash of rending steel and wire. It flattened the security hut with the man inside it and rolled on through the debris, trailing bits of crumpled wreckage that scraped and sparked on the concrete.
Nazim yelled at Abbud to keep going, which Abbud did, aiming straight at the reception building. A woman dressed in a trouser suit, maybe an administrator, was running out of the building in shock at what was happening outside, joined by a couple of other personnel. She froze in the doorway, unable to move, paralysed by disbelief. Abbud did not steer away from her or take his foot off the accelerator. Slaughter him with your knife, or smash his head with a rock, or run him down with your car.
She was still standing directly in their path and seemed to lock eyes with Nazim half an instant before the lorry ploughed into the building and mowed her down under its wheels. The glass doors and windows caved violently inwards and forty tons of eighteen-wheeler forced deep inside, crushing and pulverising everything in its path before it came to a grinding halt. Then Abbud crunched the gears into reverse and backed out. The windscreen was opaque with cracks and blood spatter. Nazim grabbed his weapon and said, ‘Let’s go.’
The three of them kicked open the dented cab doors and jumped out into the carnage. Nazim shot one of the screaming employees who’d been crushed only half to death. Not out of mercy, but because the screaming grated on his ear. The terrorists inside the trailer rolled open the shutter and a few leaped out, the rest staying inside with the cargo and the hostage.
More security personnel, who had been enjoying a mid-morning coffee break when the attack began, now came running. They took one bewildered look at the crashed lorry and the armed terrorists and flew into disarray. One of them gamely stood his ground and even managed to snap off a round or two with his pistol, but his shots were wildly off target. Dariush pinned him in his sights and gunned him down like scything weeds.
As easily as the first line of security had collapsed, the second was unable to offer much resistance. After a few moments of sporadic gunfire the security men fell back and took to their heels. Not one of them made it more than a few steps before they were taken down by full-automatic fire. Dariush was yelling ALLAHU AKBAR! ALLAHU AKBAR! over and over, his eyes wild with glee and blood lust.
The young female hostage had come to her senses after the initial paralysing shock of fear, and was screaming and struggling like a wild animal. There was blood running from a cut on her brow where the crash impact had sent her flying. Nazim pounced up into the trailer, grabbed her and knocked her cold with a punch to the jaw. Jumping back down to the ground with the unconscious girl hanging limply in his arms like a rolled-up rug, he delegated his orders to his men.
‘Abbud, Zahran, Dariush, Jafar, with me. The rest of you, take the barrels from the lorry and load them onto those things.’ He pointed at the fleet of utility golf carts. ‘Make for the water reservoirs on the other side of the building. We’ll meet you there. Move, move!’
Fire had broken out inside the wreckage of the entrance foyer, which was filling with acrid black smoke. Alarms began to jangle. Nazim strode inside the building with the hostage slung unconscious over his left shoulder and his gun in his right hand.
His men followed. Their boots crunched on broken glass and left prints in the blood of the dead. At the far side of the smoke-filled reception area was a corridor with open-plan offices either side. Those employees who hadn’t already fled in panic were making their desperate escape. The terrorists shot a couple of them and stepped over their bodies without a second glance. Nazim told Abbud, ‘Your idea was a good one. If we see someone who looks like a senior manager or chief technician, don’t shoot them. We need them alive.’
Nazim seemed icy cool, but inwardly he was flushed with the thrill of battle. So much had changed since their near-disastrous start that morning. Then, he had felt the looming presence of failure so close that he could smell it. Now, victory was just inches from their grasp. It seemed that nobody had the force to oppose them.
But that, too, was about to change.
As Nazim was leading the way deeper into the building he paused and cocked an ear, listening past the shrilling of the fire alarm to the unexpected thud of a helicopter outside.
The very loud, very close thud of a helicopter.
Nazim looked up. ‘What’s that?’
Chapter 61
At times of pressing need, it sometimes pays to call on a friend for help. And that was exactly what Ben had done. Not just one friend, but specifically three.
The moment Ben had realised what Nazim was planning, he’d called Jeff Dekker at Le Val and outlined the urgent sit
uation. Jeff’s instant response: ‘Are you kidding, mate? We’re on our way.’
And wherever Jeff went, the irrepressible Tuesday Fletcher was sure to follow. But Le Val was more than a two-hour drive from where they needed to be, and there wasn’t time for that. Which was Ben’s reason for appealing to help from the third friend. Someone who could make things happen much more quickly.
Not so very long ago, Ben had rescued Auguste Kaprisky’s beloved great-niece Valentina and her father from some bad men in Russia. The octogenarian billionaire would do anything for Ben. And Ben didn’t know too many other people who possessed a private collection of some of the world’s fastest civil aircraft, kept on permanent standby with a team of pilots. Within minutes of his call to Kaprisky at his estate near Le Mans, the old man’s Learjet was in the sky and whooshing northwards at 858 kilometres an hour towards Cherbourg, the nearest airport to Le Val.
Meanwhile, Jeff and Tuesday were piling towards Cherbourg in Jeff’s souped-up Ford Ranger, a journey of just twenty-odd kilometres that Jeff broke every rule in the book to cover in record time. They met the jet at a private terminal and were immediately back in the air heading south for Le Mans, where an Airbus H155 helicopter capable of over 320 kilometres an hour was waiting to fly them to their destination. Total time in the air: just under forty-seven minutes, plus the short while it had taken Jeff to drive like a bat out of hell to Cherbourg. The ever-resourceful Kaprisky had even supplied an arsenal of weapons from his personal bodyguard retinue, to save Jeff and Tuesday having to tote the hardware from the Le Val armoury into a public airport. The old man was thoughtful like that.
House of War Page 31