Reprisal!- The Eagle's Sorrow

by Cliff Roberts

  “If you want to keep what you have, you’re going to have to fight for it. You have to decide if you’re just going to go along to get along, hoping that you’ll get to keep what’s yours, or if you’ll stand up for your convictions as you’ve stated them and be counted,” Chip curtly lectured.

  Senator Bains started to say something and then thought better of it as she stared at the tabletop. The men remained silent, increasing the pressure upon her by not changing the subject. Finally, she spoke. “So what is our first step?” she asked

  “So you’re in with us?” Steven asked.

  “Yes, I’m in with you. If someone is bribing anyone in the government in an effort to undermine it, then we need to know who it is, and we need to remove them from their position. It doesn’t matter if it’s the president or the janitor at the Smithsonian. In this country, we used to shoot traitors,” she stated firmly. “Maybe we should start doing that again. So, what can I do to help?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  At a second floor walkup in the Warehouse Quarter, Yousef met with the members of the Hamburg cell. The cell consisted of twelve men, all of whom had found work at the oil and gas terminals after immigrating to Germany three years ago. Most of the men were simple laborers, but one had managed to work his way onto the discharge crew.

  In that job, he was in a perfect position to provide the needed information about the docking and discharge procedures, plus the scheduling of the ships’ arrivals and departures. The same man had also managed to become good friends with many of the security guards, which helped to confirm the lack of security. That would prove to be a fatal flaw for such a strategic and important location.

  The building housing the apartment in the Warehouse Quarter was only a half-kilometer from the Elbe River. It had good access to public transportation, as well as having a canal for an alleyway. The boat the men would use for the fishing ruse at the gas terminal was already tied to the dock there.

  The box van that would be used to transport the terminal team would be stolen tomorrow, and the boat the second tanker crew would use was already waiting at the public dock, three kilometers north on the Elbe River. That way they avoided any suspicion about two boats suddenly being parked where there were normally none. Yousef commended them for having thought for themselves and not having blindly followed the orders of the planners.

  The members continued to impress Yousef with their knowledge of the mission and their preparations for it. During their time in Germany, all of the cell members had completed Merchant Marine school, so they had a fundamental understanding of navigation and how to pilot a large ship. Three members had even received their pilot’s licenses to ensure that they wouldn’t have to abort the mission should one of them be killed or incapacitated.

  Despite the cell’s obvious state of readiness, Yousef was concerned by the number of minders that were still watching the men after almost three years. It had been hoped that the German authorities would have suspended surveillance by this time. Throughout the Muslim world, it was common knowledge that Germany was very suspicious of them. Of course, the German government had a good reason to fear Muslims. After all, they have had several major terrorist attacks within their borders. The most famous attack was at the ’72 Olympics where Islamic terrorists killed eleven Israeli athletes. There have also been several plane hijackings, a cruise ship hijacking, and dozens of small civil disturbances in a dozen different cities over the last forty years. Germany had spent millions of Deutche Marks and later, Euros, watching anyone who was a Muslim and appeared to have any radical tendencies or met any of the profiling criteria.

  Those who seemed to be adjusting well to German society received less and less official attention, until finally, after three years, the surveillance stopped. The detail watching the twelve men in the Warehouse Quarter were almost at the end of the mandatory observation period. It had been almost three years, and these men appeared to be settled in as productive members of society. The watchers had become quite lax as the days had become more and more routine. They had little concern about the twelve men who formed Yousef’s cell. They all had good jobs, and rarely attended prayers at the local mosque.

  Just last week, when all the men did happen to go to prayers at the local mosque, the security minders had breached their apartment. They found nothing to suggest that they were anything more than men looking for a better life. They gave every indication they were model citizens.

  The rest of that evening, they discussed the mission and its timing over and over before getting a good night’s sleep. In the morning, the cell members who were scheduled that day went to work; and the other men began staging the weapons and explosives they would use on the boats. Yousef and Aijaz, the youngest member of the cell, took full advantage of the lax surveillance at the gas plant by taking a tour of the facilities and the surrounding industrial complex.

  They crossed the Elbe River to the Wilhelmsburg District using the same bridge Yousef had driven over the day before—the Autobahn #255 bridge. Yousef once again had a panoramic view of the whole industrial complex on the south side of the river. As they drove along, Aijaz pointed out the different plants and staging areas that lined the river to the west, as far as you could see. Aijaz pointed out the two natural gas terminals, the six oil refineries, the huge shipyard for Blohm + Voss, the Airbus factory, the factories for BMX and Volkswagen, and the massive number of oil tanks that had been built over top of the underground gas and oil storage facilities. Mixed in with the factories were hundreds of large oil tanks and pumping stations. Huge gas transmission lines leaving the dock facilities snaked their way through the industrial complex passing through several pumping stations and discharge facilities where gas tanker trucks were loaded for distribution throughout Europe. It was the perfect place to attack them.

  Within a few years, those trucks would be eliminated due to the extension of feeder gas lines to homes and businesses across the northern part of Europe, just like those in America. Yousef smiled, knowing that their mission, with Allah’s blessing, would set back those plans by decades.

  To the east, including the area under the bridge, were the container docks. It was the largest facility of its type in Europe, with over seven million containers passing through the port each year. At any given time, there were at least ten container ships loading and unloading at the docks manned by fifteen hundred dock workers.

  At the bottom of the bridge they turned onto Moorsburger Strasse, then right on Fürstenmoordamm Strasse, then right again on Vollhöfner Weiden, finally crossing Finkenwerder Strasse to the front gates of the gas terminal.

  The entire terminal area was protected only by an eight-foot high chain link fence. At the main gate, the only obvious security besides the gate itself and the guard manning it was a camera attached to the side of the office building, some fifty meters or so inside the fence line.

  The office was a one-story brick building, with a large in-ground scale right in front, where the incoming and exiting trucks were weighed. The security people had a small office trailer off to the left of the entrance, where they parked their cars in favor of electric golf carts to drive around the terminal. Although the gas was inert in its liquefied state, no one wanted to take any chances. The vented gas from the ships was flammable if the mixture of gas and air were right, and once the gas was boiled, making it shippable to the consumer, it was both flammable and explosive. So it was verboten to have open flames or any source of ignition around the gas plant.

  The guard at the gate was friendly when Aijaz pulled up, even though it was Aijaz’s day off. After a few minutes of small talk, the man agreed to let Aijaz take his ‘cousin,’ Hafiz, for a quick tour of the terminal. So they left Yousef’s Beemer parked at the security office and headed off into the plant in a golf cart. Yousef was amazed at how easily Aijaz had talked his way in.

  With security’s approval, they were able to go to every corner of the terminal and right up next to a ship that was unloading
, providing Yousef with extremely valuable insight and understanding of the workings of the terminal.

  Aijaz explained it takes approximately ten hours for the pumps to empty a tanker and that the terminal received only one or two ships a day. It had something to do with pumping capacity rather than space, since there were six berths available. He went on to explain where the hard lines went as they snaked away from the pier towards the pumping station and processing plant, a kilometer away.

  Aijaz also explained that the pumping station pumped the gas into the storage field, where it sat until it was pumped into trucks or train cars to be delivered to other terminals or individual homes. He showed Yousef where the tanker trucks were parked, plus where and how they were loaded.

  Yousef made a mental note to have several additional bombs planted among the tanker trucks. By planting bombs at the pumping station and also among the trucks outside waiting to load, it ensured that the trucks would add fuel to the fire, and no one would be able to close any valves on the pipelines.

  Like the oil refinery in Houston, all refining processes were done outside in the open air, except some minor testing which took place in the main office building. Mechanical repairs for either the tanker trucks or the security carts took place a kilometer away, back towards the Autobahn, in an effort to eliminate any possible accidental ignition of the gas fumes that hung in the air at the facility.

  In every direction Yousef looked, he saw piping, oil refineries, tanker trucks, tank farms, and ships off-loading their potentially flammable liquid cargo. He marveled at the destruction that could be had here. After the tour, he had a much clearer understanding of each phase of the mission. A flat paper map and briefing document could never provide such valuable information.

  He now knew exactly where the small boat would be sitting, pretending to fish tomorrow prior to the attack, and where they would move when the ship arrived. He knew where the men who planted the bombs in the pipe maze would place each bomb and how well the bombs would be hidden. He knew where those men would be hiding until the ship arrived and exactly how far they had run to have access to the gangway of the ship.

  Next, Yousef turned his attention to the guards. He wanted to know exactly where their rounds took them and the timing of those rounds. He found it very interesting that they were unarmed…well, at least they didn’t carry firearms. That was likely due to possibility of an explosion with a weapon discharge. Instead, they carried a wooden club and pepper spray. That would prove to be another fatal mistake the next day. The cell members would be carrying compressed air rifles that delivered hard plastic bullets and handguns that fired live rounds as a last resort.

  During the tour, Aijaz once again explained the planned steps of the attack and the different actions each of the cell members was to take, along with the timing of each step. He explained how the five men on the terminal crew would sneak into the terminal tomorrow night by walking through a large hole in the fence which had somehow been left unrepaired, despite being knocked down several months ago. He explained where they would plant each of the bombs to do maximum damage in the pipe maze and at the pumping stations. Then he explained how they would hide until noon in the construction trailer across from the dock where the LNG tanker would be berthed.

  He explained each step in the process of hooking up the ship to the transfer lines, how the liquefied gas was pumped, and how long it would take for the gas to make it to the pumping station and then the processing plant. Aijaz then explained how, after the men boarded the ship, they would remove the top portion of the vent stack and then lower the bombs into the containment vessel. Then they would seal off the top of the stack with a rubberized gasket to prevent any gas venting from that point. While the men were planting the bombs, other men would be stopping the off-loading process, ensuring that the ship remained heavily laden with liquid gas for maximum effect.

  The ship was due in at noon, so the unloading process would be just starting when the men stormed the ship. At the same time, the three men who had been ‘fishing’ in the canal would climb aboard the ship from the waterside, and they would be the ones to actually plant the bombs in all of the vent stacks.

  Once the ship was secured and hostages taken, the cell would wait for the police to arrive, making them wait an hour before they answered their calls, then have the captain of the ship read them their demands. They would be in Arabic in order to slow the negotiations.

  Once this had happened, all communication was to end and they were to repel boarders until the bombs detonated. If they were lucky, there would be a large number of police and perhaps military surrounding the ship at the time of the explosion.

  While this was all happening, Yousef and the rest of the cell—four men not including Aijaz—would drive an outboard motorboat upriver to the harbor master’s dock at Brunsbuttel, where they would kill the men on duty, steal their boat, and commandeer an LNG tanker waiting off the coast northeast of Cuxhaven.

  After gaining control of that ship, they would sail it up the Elbe to a point just south of the city center. There they would anchor the ship and, if possible, disable the engines. The explosives would have been placed prior to the ship reaching the city and would be set to detonate at the same time as the other ship’s bombs were set to explode—an hour after they had passed the gas terminal, and a half-hour after they left the ship. That should give them enough time to escape.

  All of the men in the cell had agreed to become martyrs for the cause, but only the eight on the LNG tanker at the terminal would be given the honor of remaining with the ship as it exploded. The blast from the two ships, the terminal, and the storage facilities was expected to completely vaporize a full five kilometers in every direction and cause damage as far away as twenty kilometers. The attack had been so carefully planned and so well-rehearsed that Yousef felt confident that they would escape easily, just like in San Antonio. If everyone did their job, Allah was sure to be with them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The day before the attack had been spent in final preparation. The cell members placed the getaway van and Yousef’s BMW at the public boat launch located under the Autobahn Bridge #255. They then parked a large van one road west of their cul-de-sac that would be used to take Yousef and the remaining cell members north to the public boat launch. It was located three kilometers north of the Warehouse Quarter. They already had stationed a twenty-four foot aluminum boat there with a huge outboard motor for the trip downriver to Brunsbuttel.

  Another vehicle would be stolen from a local shipping company late that afternoon and parked near the apartment. It would be used to take the five man assault team to the terminal. As for the three ‘fishermen,’ they would be using a boat they had moored behind the building to simply sail across the river into the canal leading to the LNG terminal at first light. There they would pretend to fish while they waited for the ship to arrive.

  That evening, the twelve men and Yousef attended a local mosque for the Maghreb prayers, said after sunset. Each man asked Allah for the strength and the courage to complete their mission, in addition to praying for the families they would be leaving behind.

  After prayers, the men assaulting the gas terminal cleaned their weapons one last time and loaded extra magazines, in case they became embroiled in a fire fight.

  They had compressed air rifles, and their extra ammunition consisted of three additional tanks of compressed air, each weighing fifteen pounds and good for firing up to eight hundred rounds. Plus, in a backpack, they would carry two thousand extra plastic rounds packed into forty magazines that held fifty rounds each.

  All of this was in addition to the four magazines they would each carry in an ammo belt for quick access. They had chosen the air rifles over firearms because of the danger of setting off the gas fumes that would be hanging stagnantly over the berthed ship.

  If those fumes were ignited, they might damage the rubber gaskets that they would install on the vent stacks, which would, in turn, reduce
the pressure in the containment vessels and eliminate the explosive power of the concentrated gas.

  The men who would accompany Yousef in hijacking the other ship, cleaned and loaded their AK47s, along with loading a dozen extra ammo clips each. They had chosen to go with real firearms because they weren’t concerned with the gases building up around a moving ship.

  Together, all of the men double-checked the explosives. They were ensuring that the shaped charges were still shaped properly after having been moved from the maker’s garage in Frankfurt to the flat in Hamburg.