by Lee Jackson
“I know. I think it’s him too.” Sofia took a moment to compose her thoughts. “What I’m seeing is that Klaus is connected to Al-Qaeda through Yousef. Kadir is just a messenger. He moves things under orders or as part of his regular business, but he’s not connected as an active participant of Al-Qaeda.
“The reporter saw Klaus and Yousef together in the hotel. That’s probably why Klaus killed him. After Klaus met up with Yousef, his ‘career’ accelerated. He suddenly had Al-Qaeda backing his moves. But I don’t think he’s been around long enough to be fully trusted at the highest levels. He’s still a maverick.”
“I’m intrigued.” Horton grinned. “Did ya see how I used that word— ‘intrigued?’ So, where are you headed with this?”
“If we’re going to stop Klaus for good—get his bombs and stop him from coming after Atcho and my family—we’ve got to isolate him. Cut him off from his support. We need to find out where he’s keeping his personal money and close down his access to it, and we have to separate him from Al-Qaeda.”
Horton pulled back and whistled, looking at the sky in disbelief. “Lady, you sure don’t dream small. Just how are you fixin’ to pull all that off?”
“I’ll need your help and Burly’s, and we have to go to Saudi Arabia.”
“Ain’t you forgettin’ one thing?”
“No,” Sofia replied. “We still have to recover three nuclear bombs.”
15
Lima, Peru
One day later: July 16, 1992
“Were you able to help those guys with the explosives?” Danilo asked.
“No. I had to maneuver fast to keep my credibility,” Atcho replied. “I taught them some street tactics. Nothing fancy, just things they weren’t doing, like using rendezvous points and maneuvering at night without losing anyone.” He shook his head. “I worry about the good guys who will die because of what I showed the bad guys.”
“You can’t think about that. Did you get a good look at the bomb?”
“Two. Big trucks. Big bombs.”
“We’ll get word back through our contact in the Tri-Border Region,” Jaime interjected. “Did you get an idea when or where they’ll detonate?”
Atcho shook his head. “They’ve got the technical issue with the bombs and they’re waiting for Klaus to get here, hoping he’ll resolve it. Meanwhile, they’re happy to keep up the gunfights in the streets. I tried to get close enough to do some damage, but once I convinced them of my limited knowledge on explosives, they wouldn’t let me near them again.”
“And they don’t know when Klaus will arrive?”
Atcho shook his head. “He was held up by weather and missed his flight connections.”
“So, we don’t know when to watch out for him.”
“We do,” Atcho countered. “All the time.”
Jaime raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips, then nodded. “We’re going to have to destroy those bombs.”
“I’ll go in again this afternoon,” Atcho said. “I promised to teach some techniques in hand-to-hand combat.”
“We’ll come along for the camaraderie.” Jaime laughed at the irony. “Maybe we can damage it.” They put their heads together over the kitchen table to brainstorm.
Two hours later, the three returned to the house at the edge of Lima. On entering, they noticed an air of expectancy, an energy not previously present. The guards exuded enthusiasm.
“Why the excitement?” Danilo asked one of them.
“The Al-Qaeda man,” he replied. “He arrived last night and fixed the bombs.”
Instinctively, Atcho reached up, touched his darkened wire-rimmed glasses, and pulled his service cap as low as possible on his forehead. His hair had grown below his ears and his beard hid most of his face. He slumped and walked with a lumbering gait.
“Marka wants to watch your hand-to-hand combat class,” the guard said, leading the way. “He said he might stop in to observe. Right now, he’s working with the bombs.”
When Atcho started the class, Jaime and Danilo hung around until the guards returned to the front and then ducked out. They moved quickly through the house and grounds, not concerned about being seen—they had been around enough to be recognized as friends of the Senderos’ cause. They noticed that the headquarters, usually teeming with people, was almost empty.
Atcho had given them directions to the garage where he had seen trucks loaded with bombs, but when they entered, it was empty. They quickly retraced their steps and headed off in a different direction.
The house, though narrow, was three stories high. Senderos had taken over several adjacent buildings, including the garages. Jaime and Danilo pressed through the buildings, searching unobtrusively, but found nothing. The backyards were tiny but opened into a wide field that stretched far into the distance and was used for training. It too was empty.
After an hour of searching, as Danilo and Jaime returned to the training room, they saw Marka walking with another man. Before he noticed them, they turned into an adjoining hall and pressed into the shadows. After Marka and his companion had passed, they entered the training room.
“Come at me,” Atcho urged a volunteer from among the Senderos fighters. “What’s your name?”
“Basilio.”
“Use your knife and come at me, Basilio. Don’t pretend. Attack to kill me.”
Basilio looked dumbfounded, but then he grinned and turned for his comrades’ approval.
“I never liked Cubans,” he said. “They think they know everything.” He turned back to face Atcho, knife in hand, eyes gleaming, and half-crouched, ready to pounce. Slowly, he circled, maintaining eye contact with Atcho, watching for an opening.
He lunged.
Atcho blocked with crossed wrists against Basilio’s forearm. He slid one palm behind the knife-wielding hand and pressed a nerve. Basilio yelped and opened his fingers. Atcho seized the knife handle while simultaneously jamming a foot behind Basilio’s ankle and throwing his shoulder into the man’s chest.
Basilio fell to the floor on his back. Atcho straddled his chest, pinning his arms, and held the knife at Basilio’s throat.
The other fighters were silent in astonishment, and then roared their approval. Atcho patted the downed man on the shoulder, released him, and stood up.
Basilio took his defeat good-humoredly and climbed to his feet, grinning. “Next time,” he said.
Atcho turned to address the group. Just then, Marka appeared in the door with a companion whose muscles bulged under loose clothing.
Atcho sucked in his breath. Klaus.
Atcho cleared his throat and proceeded to fake a coughing fit. He stooped slightly, dropped his hands onto his knees, lowered his head, and continued to cough. Then, raising his head, he called in a hoarse voice, “Dust in the throat. Pair off while I drink some water.”
He walked into the shadows on the opposite side of the room, lifted a clay jug over his head, and poured water into his mouth.
“I liked your demonstration,” a voice behind him called. “I saw the end of it.”
Atcho turned to find Marka and Klaus facing him. He fought down his shock, silently thanked Jaime for the dark glasses, and acknowledged the comment with a nod. “Please excuse the dust in my throat,” he replied, keeping his voice hoarse.
“Teach my soldiers well,” Marka said with only a touch of irony, “and you’ll be forgiven. I want you to meet Sahab Kadyrov. He’s here to observe our next bombing operation. He fixed our technical problem. His English is as bad as yours, but at least you two can say hello.”
Marka turned to Klaus and made introductions in broken English. “This is Capitan Domingo Suarez. Fidel Castro sent him to train our fighters.”
Klaus shook Atcho’s hand perfunctorily. “Castro is a good man.”
Atcho hoped the rapid beat of his heart did not show through his shirt and that his forced breathing was not too apparent. He thanked Klaus, generated another coughing fit, and drank again from the water jug.
&
nbsp; Marka and Klaus moved away. Atcho watched them until they disappeared through the door, noting an urgency about them. Then he reassembled the class. A few minutes later, Jaime and Danilo appeared. They made eye contact with Atcho and shook their heads.
The three men discussed what they had seen and heard as Jaime maneuvered the little Volkswagen through Lima’s crowded streets to the safe house. The sun slid to the western horizon.
“They moved the trucks carrying the bombs,” Danilo said. “We looked all over for them. Nothing.”
“Marka said that Klaus had fixed the problem with the bombs,” Atcho said. “They’re probably staging the trucks now.”
A strange expression crossed Jaime’s face. “Atcho, what were they trying to fix?”
Atcho reflected momentarily. “I know the fundamentals of demolitions, but not much beyond that. In addition to their concern about its stability—getting it from here to there without blowing it in the wrong place—they were concerned about shaping it.” He suddenly looked stricken. “Oh my God, that’s it. I should have seen it before.”
His strident tone caused Jaime and Danilo to turn toward him abruptly. “What?” Jaime asked tersely while keeping his eye on the road.
Atcho spoke slowly, pulling his thoughts forward. “If the two trucks contain an equal distribution of explosives and all they’ve done is load them into the vehicles with no other preparation, the detonation will be immense, but the shock wave will spread evenly in all directions. The damage will be massive, but they must have been looking to cause even greater damage.”
He put his hand to his chin while he reflected. “They want damping on the same side of both trucks, and they want the main shock of the explosion to hit high, well above the trucks’ height. The force has to hit along a vertical band.”
“A skyscraper,” Jaime muttered. He jammed the little car into a lower gear and shoved the gas pedal to the floor. “That’s what they’re going for. With so much destructive power shaped that way, they could bring down almost any of Lima’s tall buildings.” He glanced at Atcho. “The US and Israel are organizing a joint op with Fujimori’s troops to raid Senderos and seize the trucks. They’ll get here too late.”
“Did you notice that hardly anyone was at the headquarters?” Danilo cut in, his voice anxious. “We didn’t expect to be confronted, but there was no one to challenge us.”
“Even the group I had to work with was small,” Atcho observed.
On arrival at the safe house, Jaime hurried into the operations room to radio his contact in the Tri-Border Region.
“Those are garbage-size trucks,” Atcho called after him. “We’re talking two tons of explosives. President Fujimori needs to mobilize everything he’s got to stop them.”
Danilo turned on a television in the living room and stood watching news reports. The screen repeatedly flicked from scene to scene of running gunfights all over the city.
“You need to see this,” he called. The warning tone in his voice brought Atcho and Jaime to his side. “They’ve had constant shootouts since the June 5 bombing,” he said. “But this is different. Today they executed nonstop simultaneous attacks all over Lima. The police are spread out, trying to keep up.”
“They’re keeping the police busy,” Danilo said. “The cops can’t respond effectively to any specific attack.”
Atcho took a deep breath. “Senderos is going to blow those bombs tonight.”
16
Esteban, the driver of the lead truck, looked about nervously. Traffic was relatively light at this time of night, but still moved slowly. He looked in his side mirror for the umpteenth time. The second truck was following a few cars back.
Esteban had already made his final turn onto Avenida Larco in Lima’s Miraflores district. His target was a few blocks ahead. He reflected on the fact that he was not far from the location of the June 5 bombing and grinned. No one’s seen anything like this.
He honked at a car blocking his path and cursed at the driver. While he waited for traffic to clear, he listened absently to radio news reports of the gun battles that had plagued the city all day, but he was not worried. He knew no shootings would take place within many blocks of him.
The driver of the car in front of him gestured obscenely and drove away. Esteban took his foot off the brake and pressed the accelerator. As the truck struggled forward under its heavy load, he checked his mirror again for the second truck. Satisfied that it was still following, he proceeded along Avenida Larco.
Three blocks later, Esteban pulled to a stop next to the Central Bank of Peru at the intersection with Calle Schell. He punched on his emergency blinkers and climbed down from the cab.
Behind him, cars honked and drivers yelled. Esteban stood in traffic to hold open the next lane until the second truck lumbered in behind his.
A security guard hurried out from the bank. “You can’t park here,” he yelled, face red with aggravation.
“It’s only for a few minutes,” Esteban called back. “We have to make a delivery.”
“Deliveries are on the other side of the building,” the guard insisted. “Calle Schell is a one-way street, so you can’t turn there. You’ll have to cross over, turn right at the next intersection, and take another right on Calle Alcanfores, which will bring you to Calle Tarata. You can park there.”
Esteban sighed. “Come on,” he implored. “That’s a lot of maneuvering for trucks this big, and it’s a small delivery. This will take only a minute.”
Although he could still hear horns and shouts behind him, Esteban ignored them.
“I can’t let you park here,” the guard said. “Look, a policeman is coming this way. He’ll tell you the same thing.”
Esteban looked up sharply and spotted a nearby police car flashing its lights. Esteban signaled to the other driver to follow, then hurried back to the cab. He looked at his watch. Five minutes after nine o’clock.
Ten minutes later, both trucks lumbered onto Tarata. Esteban and the other driver left their trucks in gear, allowing them to drift into the intersection with Avenida Larco. Then they jumped from their cabs and fled.
Three hundred meters down the avenue, a young couple was kissing goodnight when the blast shockwave hit them, hurling them against an apartment building. They slid to the pavement, arms interlocked in an eternal embrace, never hearing the thunderous explosion that rocked the city. The concussion tossed cars into the air, ripped the faces off nearby high-rises, and sliced a vertical gash many stories high in the Central Bank before its entire glass front crashed to the ground, sending dagger-like shards flying in all directions. The floors at its base lay demolished, reduced to heaps of dust and rubble.
Miles away at the safe house, Atcho, Jaime, and Danilo heard the explosion.
“We got here too late,” Jaime murmured.
“We should have known,” Danilo whispered. “When they told us that Klaus was on his way, we should have known that the bombing was imminent.”
Atcho sat on a kitchen chair and buried his face in his hands. “I could have stopped it. Klaus was right there in front of me. I shook his hand.”
“Don’t do that,” Jaime warned. “We were there too. We saw them both in the hall. Think about the timing. The trucks weren’t there. They must have been on the way.”
“Besides,” Danilo said, “stopping that bomb wasn’t our mission. We were here to locate Klaus and learn what we could about cooperation between Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Senderos, and the local Muslim community.”
“And get Klaus’ nukes and track him back to wherever he hangs out these days,” Atcho interjected. “Got it—but understanding that doesn’t make me feel better. We should have been able to stop it.”
Danilo regarded him thoughtfully. “Time to move on. Let’s walk back through each step we’ve taken. If we find something we could have done differently, we’ll learn from it and then let it go. If we find we would have done things just the same, then we’ll have to accept that nothing else could ha
ve changed what happened. Does that make sense?”
Atcho looked at him through haunted eyes and nodded.
“That includes not being heroic inside the Senderos HQ today,” Jaime added. “With that many fighters, including Klaus, you’d have been overwhelmed. You’d be dead, the bombing would still have happened, and Klaus would still have his nukes.”
Horrified, Sofia watched the news of the explosion with Horton in his Berlin office. “My God,” she said, “a hundred and eighty-three homes demolished, sixty-three cars destroyed, four hundred businesses ruined, twenty-five people killed, and a hundred and fifty-five wounded.” She stared at the screen. “It looks like Berlin at the end of World War II.”
“Those guys are serious,” Horton said without a hint of humor, “and they don’t care who they hurt.”
The phone on Horton’s secure line rang. He answered it and then held the receiver out to Sofia. “It’s Burly, returning your call.”
Sofia grabbed the phone. “Have you heard from Atcho? Is he all right?”
“We heard from the case officer in Lima. Atcho is safe. He was miles from the explosion. The CIA was on alert to extract him. They weren’t needed.”
Sofia closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. “What’s his plan now?”
Burly hesitated. “Uncertain. He saw Klaus. He intends to go after him.”
Sofia squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. She felt her gut tighten and steeled herself to remain calm and clear-headed.
“Did you understand the proposal Horton relayed from me? I’m putting you on speakerphone so he can join the conversation.” She flipped a switch on the base instrument.
“I heard it. I won’t claim to understand it yet.”
“I’m taking Horton with me to Saudi Arabia. His boss has already approved his travel. We turned Kadir, the hawaladar here in Berlin. He identified Klaus’ contacts in Libya and Riyadh and confirmed that Yousef is Klaus’ conduit to Osama bin Laden. I want heavy surveillance on Yousef without Saudi knowledge. If we’re going to put Klaus out of business permanently, we have to isolate him from his own money and his Al-Qaeda support. We need something on Yousef to make him work for us.”
