Threat Level

by William Christie

  “The Koran says pork is unclean and forbidden,” said Troy. “But it also says that whoever is compelled through necessity, intending neither to sin nor transgress, will find that Allah is forgiving and merciful.”

  A snort in response to that.

  “You should read it some time,” said Troy. “The nine-eleven hijackers drank alcohol and got lap dances. And since they were doing Allah’s work they figured he’d forgive them.”

  Another contemptuous snort. Storey had already moved off.

  “Excuse me,” said Troy, and hurried to catch up.

  “You through?” said Storey.

  “Thanks for helping me out.”

  “Don’t look at me. You were the one who let him start humping your leg.”

  “Man, if that’s the way we know our enemy, it’s a wonder anything’s still standing around here.”

  “Don’t speak too soon,” said Storey. “In a few days it may not be.”

  “If he’s the one who’s going to be interviewing Muslims.”

  They came up behind her. Storey said, “Hello, Beth.”

  Beth whirled around, and her face opened up into a brilliant smile. “Ed! Lee! It’s so great to see you two. You’re going to be with us.”

  “Pull some strings?” said Storey.

  Troy just loved to watch Storey around her. He became as bashful as a three-year-old.

  “As long as it’s nothing important, they give me what I want to shut me up,” said Beth. “Guys, this is my partner, Paul Moody. Paul, Ed Storey and Lee Troy.”

  They all shook hands. Troy wondered how she’d drawn such a weenie. Then he reminded himself to be cool on the first impressions and snap judgments.

  Beth said, “Ed, what’s the real chance of any military support?”

  “Slim,” Storey replied. “Everybody’s out of town except the Bowstring Squadron.”

  “You just lost me,” said Moody.

  “Delta has three combat squadrons,” Storey explained. “A, B, and C. One squadron is always ready to move out in two hours. That’s Bowstring. SEAL DevGroup has three assault teams: Red, Gold, and Blue. They call their alert the Standby Team. Only the Bowstring Squadron is home right now. Other two are deployed overseas. Same with DevGroup, and their Standby Team is in the Far East getting ready to shadow the president’s trip. Except for us, our unit is all overseas too. So we’re really thin on the ground right now.”

  “Why do I think that’s an intentional part of their plan?” said Beth.

  “Because you’re smart,” said Troy.

  Storey thought he ought to start off by clearing the air. “Beth, our orientation is overseas. So as far as we’re concerned, you’re in charge of this one.”

  “You don’t have any problem with that?” said Beth.

  “Hell, you outrank us anyway,” said Troy, smiling.

  “I’ll try not to pull it on you,” said Beth, smiling back at them. “Of course we’re going to have to play it by ear. But if we do interviews, we don’t want to have four people pounding into someone’s house. No one will talk to us if we do that. Maybe you guys could back us up from outside, be ready and cover the exits.”

  “Fine with me,” said Storey.

  “Interviewing’s really not our thing anyway,” said Troy. He didn’t think the FBI would be down with shooting anyone’s kneecaps off. “We speak Arabic if you need it.”

  “Both of you?” said Beth.

  They nodded.

  “I did not know that,” said Beth, grinning slightly as she saw them in a new light. “I’m assuming you guys are armed to the teeth, as usual.”

  Storey wasn’t quite sure how to reply to that. “We’ve got a few things in the car. But we’re not planning on laying waste to any neighborhoods, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That’s not what I mean at all,” said Beth. “It’s why I wanted you two with me instead of a couple of postal inspectors. If anything happens, I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need all your stuff. And we’ll need it fast, so keep it handy.”

  Storey and Troy both looked at each other. A little surprised, but pleased to hear it.

  “Okay,” said Beth. “We’ve got radios for you both, so you’ll be on our system. Let’s pick up our assignments and go to work.”

  22

  Nimri handed Joseph Oan the cordless telephone. “Call your work. Tell them you are sick today. But you will definitely be at work tomorrow. Do you understand? Promise them you will return tomorrow.”

  Oan dialed the number while Nimri watched to make sure it was not 911. “Mike? This is Joe. I can’t come in this morning. Terrible diarrhea. I guess it was something I ate last night. No, no way I can drive—I’m in the bathroom all the time. No, I’ll be fine by tomorrow. Positive. I’ll be in first thing. Thanks, Mike. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.” He handed the phone back to Nimri.

  Nimri put down the one he’d been listening in on. “Very good.” Then he was shaking his head.

  “What?” Oan asked.

  “Joe,” said Nimri. “Joe. At least that is not your true name, but you have given your son a Christian name. You deny your blood, Youssif. You deny your people. What would your father say?”

  Oan never would have thought that anything this gunman could say would embarrass him, but it did. Perhaps because he himself often thought about what his father would have said.

  “You will all go upstairs now,” said Nimri.

  Oan was alarmed. “Why?”

  “Because I must talk with my people,” said Nimri. “I have given you my promise that if you do what I ask, you and your family will not be harmed. If you hear our plans, I will not be able to keep my promise.”

  For the first time Joseph Oan held out some hope that they wouldn’t be killed. Then he told himself that was his American nature. His Lebanese nature told him that was exactly what the gunman wanted him to think.

  The three Oans were tied to chairs in the parents’ bedroom. The windows had been nailed shut the previous night. Dawood shifted the chairs and turned on the television.

  “What are you doing?” said Omar.

  “The TV’ll help them pass the time,” said Dawood. “I’ll turn on The Today Show.”

  Omar shook his head, though he didn’t make Dawood turn off the TV.

  When they came back downstairs Nimri had the dining room table spread with maps and diagrams. “Sit, brothers. Make yourselves comfortable.”

  They obeyed him with an air of excitement and anticipation.

  “I thank you, brothers,” Nimri began. “I thank you for your patience. And I thank you for your discipline in not questioning me about our mission. You have risked your lives without knowing. You are true mujahideen.”

  He watched them swell up at being given the title of Holy Warriors. It was as important to motivate men as it was to command them.

  “Now I will tell you why I have activated you,” said Nimri. “This is our mission. We will kill the arch-criminal Donald Rumsfeld. The American secretary of defense. The man who has killed thousands, nay, tens of thousands of our brothers.”

  “God be praised!” exclaimed al-Sharif. Omar and Dawood beamed at each other.

  “This will be our first strike in America since the Blessed Tuesday,” said Nimri. “The eyes of all the Faithful will be upon us.”

  “I only wish to God it was Bush,” Omar muttered.

  “Bush is too well guarded,” said Nimri. “God willing, his time will come. But he does us service. While he travels in Asia, all eyes are turned away from us here.”

  “I’m starting to see,” said al-Sharif.

  “As I knew you would,” said Nimri. “Now, Rumsfeld. The Pentagon is too well guarded. He cannot be touched there. His home is less well guarded, but enough to make any attack require too many men for a low probability of success. And vehicles cannot approach either place. Aircraft? The Americans expect aircraft after the Blessed Tuesday. When Rumsfeld travels between these places, he travels inside a limousine w
ith armor. And the limousine travels in convoy with security vehicles, filled with bodyguards, traveling in front and behind. The guards are from the American Army Criminal Investigative Division. Military police. Not the best, perhaps, but well armed enough to hold off an attack until police reinforcements arrive.”

  Without needing to see it, Nimri knew their eyes were all on him. “And so you ask yourselves, what can four men do, brother Abdallah? The answer, my brothers, is that four men can do nothing if they attack this Rumsfeld the way he expects to be attacked. But we will not attack him in any of these ways. Brother Muhammad knows the things I have asked him to assemble. Brother Muhammad, what did these things tell you?”

  “A bomb,” said al-Sharif. “A bomb to open that nice black limo up like a tin can.”

  “Exactly,” said Nimri.

  “But no explosive,” said al-Sharif. “We’ll be making it? It’ll take time.”

  “No,” said Nimri.

  “Another group will be joining us?” said al-Sharif.

  “No again,” said Nimri. “The explosive we need will be provided by our host al-Oan, upstairs.”

  “Him?” said Omar. “Then why is he tied up?”

  “He is not willing,” said Nimri. “But he will help us. He drives a truck. A gasoline truck.”

  “Aaaah,” the others said in unison.

  “To be specific,” said Nimri, “a Heil low-center-of-gravity, double-taper petroleum tanker. Aluminum. Four compartments. That holds a maximum of ninety-two hundred gallons of gasoline.”

  “Beautiful,” said al-Sharif. “It would take us a month, a warehouse, and truckloads of fertilizer and chemicals to build a bomb like that. What’s the explosive force? And no metric system please, brother.”

  “One gallon of gasoline is the equivalent of twenty sticks of dynamite,” said Nimri. “Under ideal conditions.”

  “Almost a two-hundred-thousand-pound bomb,” breathed al-Sharif. “The only military bomb that big is nuclear.”

  “Let us say nearer to ten thousand pounds,” said Nimri. “The aluminum tank will add to the blast. The fireball will be . . .” He did the conversion calculation in his head. “Fifteen thousand degrees Fahrenheit.”

  Al-Sharif whistled.

  “We could never keep the construction of such a bomb hidden,” said Nimri. “But this one will be delivered to us, the keys to it handed over. This Heil trailer is towed by a Peterbuilt truck. And our brother Dawood has been to a school to learn to drive a Peterbuilt truck, has he not?”

  “First in my class,” Dawood said proudly.

  “This truck will be in the breakdown lane of the highway when Rumsfeld’s convoy passes,” said Nimri. “As he is a servant of Satan, it is only right and proper that he should be speeded to hell by fire.”

  “The brothers have done a lot of surveillance and research,” said al-Sharif.

  “They have,” said Nimri. “Many of them. They have observed Rumsfeld. They have learned everything there is to know about al-Oan upstairs. Much painstaking work. We will not fail them.”

  “When will we do this?” said al-Sharif.

  “Tomorrow,” Nimri replied.

  “Tomorrow?” they all echoed.

  “Tomorrow,” said Nimri. “It is the only possible date. Rumsfeld has been traveling to Colorado and California. He left Washington on the sixth and returned on the thirteenth. On Saturday he flies to North Carolina. Tomorrow, the sixteenth, the Americans’ Afghan puppet Vice President Hedyat Amin Arsala visits the Pentagon at three-fifteen. There will be ceremonies and meetings. Then they will both go to Rumsfeld’s home in Bethesda, Maryland, for a dinner party. Rumsfeld’s security detail takes many different routes to and from his home. But they always leave the Pentagon the same way. They will pass by our truck here.” Nimri pressed his finger on a road map of Washington. “Not too close to the Pentagon that the security will notice it. Not too far that they take a different turn and we miss him. With ninety-two hundred gallons of gasoline, we do not have to be close.”

  “The lethal area of the blast?” said al-Sharif.

  Nimri took a pen and drew a circle on the map. It encompassed over ten square blocks of tightly packed streets in Arlington, Virginia. “At the chosen spot the height of the trailer will be above the concrete highway barrier, so the blast will be unimpeded. And the highway is level with the surrounding area, neither above nor below. The highway will be crowded with vehicles, also.”

  “We could exceed the number of the Blessed Tuesday,” said Omar.

  “That is in God’s hands,” said Nimri. “What is important is that we destroy Rumsfeld. The Afghan puppet is an extra bird with the same stone. They will have nothing to bury but ashes.”

  “Beautiful,” said al-Sharif. “A beautiful plan.”

  Nimri wanted to tell them it was all his, but did not. The Faithful loved to boast, but it tempted God. There would be time enough for boasting if God granted them success. “At first it was thought to take him when he drove to the Pentagon in the morning. But the logistics were wrong. The truck would have to be exposed for a day and a night. This way, it leaves the depot in the morning, full of gasoline, and everything is done that same day.”

  “This Rumsfeld is a Jew, is he not?” said Dawood.

  “Many of them pretend not to be, but they are,” Omar confided knowingly.

  “Even those who are not are under the control of the Jews,” said Nimri. “This is why it is important to target these leaders, one by one.”

  Later that morning, after rush hour but before lunch, Nimri and al-Sharif left the house for a drive. Nimri drove Joseph Oan’s Lincoln Continental. Al-Sharif drove the Toyota Camry they’d stolen in Lexington, Virginia. They abandoned the Camry at a Manassas shopping center. Al-Sharif went inside the supermarket while Nimri read a newspaper that covered his face.

  Al-Sharif returned with soft drinks, boxes of microwave meals, potato chips, pretzels, and ice cream. “They are all halal,” he said.

  Nimri was curious how he could tell that the food conformed to Islamic dietary law. There had been nothing like that the last time he was in the United States. “You know this from the labels?”

  “No,” said al-Sharif, visibly embarrassed. He took out a box and showed Nimri the symbol. “Kosher.”

  Nimri only laughed. “Don’t worry, brother. One day, before God, it will all be halal.”

  “We won’t see the end of that fight, brother.”

  “It is 511 years since the expulsion, my friend, and Europe is now ten percent Muslim. God’s time is his own. His warriors need not worry—he has promised them their reward.”

  “God is great,” said al-Sharif.

  “I must apologize to you,” Nimri said. “You have done such great work, made such sacrifices. It is beneath you to run these errands.”

  “I didn’t complain.”

  “All the more reason for me to apologize.”

  “I have to do it, brother. I know why. Every Arab is a suspect.”

  A Prince William County Sheriff’s cruiser pulled in behind them on the way out of the shopping center. Nimri’s eyes kept moving from the speedometer to the rearview mirror. “If we are stopped, it will not be for a traffic violation. We kill the policeman immediately and leave the area.”

  “There’s malls all over the place. We can get another car easy.”

  Nimri did not even go through the yellow light at the next intersection. The cruiser changed lanes and turned left.

  Nimri took the Jack Herrity Parkway to Springfield, and found the fuel company. From Springfield they circled the entire Beltway, Nimri carefully checking out all the truck stops and al-Sharif taking notes.

  On to the Route 66 exit, and into Arlington. Circling the National Cemetery, avoiding the Pentagon. Making no stops around there, always on the alert for countersurveillance.

  Al-Sharif kept his eyes on the screen of the Global Positioning receiver in his palm. “Fifty yards,” he said.

  Nimri put on the tu
rn signal and glided into the breakdown lane.

  “A little more,” said al-Sharif. “Get ready . . . stop!”

  Nimri halted beside the concrete barrier, and put on his four-way flashers. He grabbed a cell phone off the dash and dialed a number. “Omar? Call the first number.” A moment later the phone in his hand rang. “Good. Call the second.” Another phone on the dash began to ring. “Good.” He wanted to be sure they were not in a cellular dead spot.

  A rattling sound. Al-Sharif was shaking a can of spray paint. He stuck his arm out the window and, masked by the car, sprayed a vertical blue line on the concrete barrier. The can was capped and tossed into the backseat.

  As soon as the road was clear Nimri pulled back into traffic.

  “It looks good,” said al-Sharif. And then, “If Dawood doesn’t screw anything up.”

  “Will he?” Nimri asked. The meaning was clear: you are the one who chose him.

  “He gets excited,” said al-Sharif. “He feels bad about screwing up in Ohio. I’m worried about him trying too hard to make it right with you.”

  “No one else knows how to drive the truck well enough,” said Nimri. “All of us could drive it. But one turn too tight; a blown tire; an accident. I cannot risk it. Dawood is in God’s hands, and we are in God’s—and Dawood’s.”

  They drove back to Manassas. But keeping the conversation in mind, Nimri took Dawood out that afternoon. They drove over every inch of the route they would take Thursday. Twice.

  After dinner the Oan family was again banished to the upstairs bedroom. Al-Sharif opened up his duffel bags and emptied the contents onto the living room carpet. Out came rolls of insulated copper electrical wire. A soldering iron. A tube of superglue. Electrician’s tape. A large can of rubber cement. A box of condoms. And cartons of model rocket engines.

  Nimri put the others to measuring and cutting the lengths of wire he would need. He concentrated on the model rocket engines. They were cardboard cylinders the size of a cigar, to be inserted in the base of a model rocket and fired by battery, the burning solid propellant shooting it into the air. In the base of each engine there was a hole for the igniter, a wire strip coated with pyrotechnic material, trailing two wire leads from its end. This would electrically fire the engine, like a blasting cap.