First Strike

by Jeremy Rumfitt

  Willowby reached into his pocket and pulled out a diamond encrusted, Patek Philippe chronometer in 18ct gold.

  “Here, Ben. I have a little something for you.”

  “Gee, sir,” said Ambrose. “What’s this?”

  He was beaming. Back in the ghetto people killed for watches like this.

  “But, sir…really…I can’t…it wouldn’t be….”

  “Forget it Ben. You did good work. You deserve it. My people are very grateful.”

  “Your people? Sir?”

  “I’ll explain it to you later, Ben. Meantime let’s take a walk, I’d like to see the Medina while I’m here, see if there’s anything you’d like. I hear they do a great line in gold jewellery.”

  ***

  14

  Secretary of Defence Karl Herzfeld gazed across the vast open courtyard at the gaping hole on the far side of the wounded building where Al Qaeda had devastated on wing of the Pentagon on 9/11.

  “Did you see this morning’s New York Times, Arthur? One thousand anti-war protesters on the streets of Manhattan. Can you believe that? Just a few blocks from Ground Zero. What do those lily-livered sons of bitches want? More of the same? What does it take to convince these people? Another three thousand dead and wounded?”

  He went to the drinks cabinet and helped himself to a chilled Bud.

  “The press coverage we’re getting is outrageous. The article by that English bitch was a complete fucking disaster. She should be taught a lesson. What the hell is Santos up to, schmoozing with all these Goddamn peaceniks?”

  Colonel Preston fingered the scar on his right cheek.

  “Goddamn liberals deserve everything they get. Nuking’s too good for the bastards.”

  “Fact is we’re losing momentum, Colonel. Protest is on the rise, a thousand this week, twenty thousand next. We need to get this war started. Goddamn CIA still can’t come up with the fucking goods.”

  “The Brits have gotten hold of something new,” Preston beamed. “Could be just the evidence we need. They have a source who claims Iraq can launch a chemical attack within forty-five minutes of Saddam’s order.”

  Herzfeld turned to face into the room. He was grinning.

  “Forty-five minutes? You gotta be kidding, right? That bunch of Bedouins couldn’t fix breakfast in forty-five minutes, let alone ship the munitions, select a target and calibrate the ordnance.”

  He checked his appearance in the long mirror and centred his tie.

  “Besides, what we need Saddam to have is long range capability. If all he has is battlefield chemical weapons why would we move our troops from safe out-of-range positions to exposed in-range positions?”

  “The Brits claim they’re not just talking about battlefield artillery. They say they’re strategic weapons. That puts the Brit bases on Cyprus within range. Not to mention Israel and Iran. It’s made headline news right across the UK.”

  “So who’s their source? Some save-my-ass defector?”

  “They didn’t say. But MI6 maintains he’s a reliable informer with an established track record. A senior officer inside the regime.”

  “Then the Brits are just plain crazy. All those guys are trying to do is ingratiate themselves so they can get on board with us once we’ve gotten control of their country. Meantime we all know Saddam may have the chemicals but he sure as hell doesn’t have the delivery systems. The Brits know that as well as we do.”

  He took another peek in the mirror and seemed satisfied with what he saw.

  "There’s just the one source, right? No corroboration?”

  “That’s right, sir. But the Brits insist their guy’s reliable.”

  “I don’t think we can use it, Arthur, it’s just too Goddamn dramatic. It lacks... what’s the word I’m looking for… verisimilitude? That’s it. It lacks verisimilitude. If they had more than one verifiable source I might run with it, it’s so fucking crazy it might work. But if it goes pear shaped we’d end up with egg all over our face. We can’t risk the trust of the American people. Once we lose credibility it’s gone for ever.”

  Preston persisted. “The Brits are going to chance it anyway, so they must be pretty sure of their source. It’s already been cleared by their Joint Intelligence Committee. The PM is going to publish the claim in an intelligence dossier, along with some other stuff they’ve gotten off the Internet. Then he plans to alert the House of Commons. There’s no higher accolade than that, on either side of the pond.”

  “They’re getting their intelligence off the Internet? Jesus those guys really are crazy! Or maybe they’re just desperate. I suppose it’s all part of their old world charm. It’s fine for the Brits, Colonel, long as they can get away with it, but you and me both know it’s just plain foolish. And anyway the American people aren’t that gullible. We need something a lot more concrete. Something we can back up with hard copy documentation. Preferably something with Saddam Hussein’s fingerprints all over it.”

  “That isn’t going to be easy, sir.”

  “There has to be a way, Arthur. There just has to be a way.”

  ***

  At 10 o’clock that evening, Colonel Preston changed into civilian clothes, left his Georgetown apartment and walked the few blocks to the house on Canal Street. There was no sign outside the place, you either knew it was there or you didn’t, but the plain white door was decorated with the stencilled outline of a small black rose. As Preston approached the porticoed entrance he paused to check he wasn’t being followed, pressed the bell and looked up into the CCTV camera. There was a buzzing sound as the door clicked open and Preston stepped into what looked like the parlour of an elegant family home. The room was dimly lit by a fake Tiffany light suspended from the ceiling. The walls were padded. Bach’s B Minor Mass played softly in the background. There was a strong smell of embrocation. A big muscular man built like a bear, with shaven head and rings in his ears, nose and tongue got up from an armchair. He was dressed entirely in black, a studded leather collar round his neck. The livid scars of shrapnel wounds peppered his abdomen. The crest of the 202nd Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company was tattooed on his right forearm.

  “Good evening, Colonel.”

  He had the voice of a castrato.

  Preston reached in his pocket and pulled out a wad of notes. His hands were trembling. “How much?” He knew the answer but he didn’t know what else to say.

  “Same as always, Colonel. Three hundred fifty. Head is extra. Head is five hundred.”

  Preston counted out five hundred dollars in fifties and added an extra twenty.

  “I need a bottle of Bourbon.”

  “We don’t got no Bourbon, Colonel. Alcohol is strictly off limits.”

  The Bear shrugged. Something in his manner suggested he held the Colonel in less than the highest regard.

  “Then send out for some, corporal. Or did you lose your brains in ‘Nam when you lost your balls?”

  Preston was impatient to get on with proceedings but needed the whiskey to give him that extra sharpness he craved.

  The Bear grunted, unlocked a door concealed in the padded wall and led Preston down a long dark corridor with cubicles on either side. Preston could hear the screaming now; smell the blood and the sweat, the faint stench of urine. He could feel his throbbing hard-on. They entered a booth and a large middle-aged man in black trousers but no shirt stood up for Preston to look him over. The once firm body had run to fat. Soft white flesh drooped over his belt. His right nipple was pierced. There were livid bruises on his chest and back. His head was shrouded in a quilted leather mask with slits for his eyes, mouth and nostrils. Preston looked at the man with a vicious thin-lipped smile.

  “You’re a whore,” he hissed. “You’re a great fat whore.” The Bear handcuffed the man and hoisted his arms above his head on a chain suspended from the ceiling. Preston stripped to the waist, rummaged in a basket and found a pair of leather knuckle-dusters embedded with blunt steel studs. The Bear shuffled back along the corridor. C
olonel Preston went to work with his hands.

  ***

  15

  O’Brien accepted Ortega’s offer to fly him back to Palm Beach in the Learjet. Declan picked up the rented convertible he had left at the airport and drove back to Miami where he planned to disappear. Declan was working to a tight, self-imposed timetable and unless he got started on the project right away there was no way he could make it. Tirofijo didn’t give a damn where O’Brien detonated the Dirty Bomb, any big city would do, but Declan was fixated by the date.

  As he headed for the freeway O’Brien pulled into a shopping plaza for cigarettes and coffee. That was when he saw the headline. IRA Trio Held in Bogotá. He bought the Miami Herald and a carton of Luckies and went into the coffee shop next door to read the article. The story played very big in Florida where the large Latino population followed South American developments closely. It was all over the front page. For this edition at least it even displaced Saddam. Washington was outraged at the idea the IRA might be exporting its skills to the Western Hemisphere. Colombia was only a few hours flight from some of America’s most populous cities. A committee of Congress had been formed to investigate the situation. Senior figures in Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing, had been subpoenaed but refused to appear before it, disclaiming all knowledge of the men.

  “Holy shit. This is bad,” said O’Brien. “The politicals will go ape.”

  Declan O’Brien was a natural loner. Had been all his life. So working on his own was no particular problem. Trouble was, O’Brien was not an engineer. He was an assassin. He had a rudimentary knowledge of car bombs and mortars. That was part of every IRA man’s basic training. But a Dirty Bomb was a much more complex thing. The detonator in particular. Gerry McGuire was the IRA’s chief bomb maker and could build a thing like that in his sleep if he wanted to. But Gerry McGuire was locked up in a Bogotá jail. Declan O’Brien needed help but had no idea where to find it. He got back in the car and headed south towards Miami. Declan planned to disappear and needed the anonymity a big city could provide. He realised now it was a mistake to tell McGuire and the others about the Dirty Bomb. But Declan had not been able to resist. He needed their recognition, not their approval. Declan O’Brien was going to make history.

  He drove through the elegant centre of Miami with its smart shops and stylish boutiques to the commercial docks, away from the yachts and the luxury liners. He bought a bottle of Bushmills from an Irish liquor store and checked in to a seedy back street hotel. An hour later the bottle was half empty. O’Brien stripped and examined his exquisitely toned body in the long mirror. The outline of a small black rose was tattooed on his upper arm. Next he showered, shaved and washed his hair. Then he opened his case and dressed in black trousers, black shirt and black shoes. He checked his appearance in the long mirror, tightened his belt one notch and put on dark glasses, black beret and gloves. He examined his reflection for a full minute, turning this way and that to ensure there were no imperfections. Then he clenched his fist and raised his arm in the Republican salute.

  “And what has Ireland done for you, old son? What has Ireland ever done for you?”

  ***

  Bogotá’s high security La Picota jail squats behind coiled razor wire in the middle of a grim suburban slum. It is the setting for the most vicious crimes in a country long since desensitized to violence. La Picota is completely lawless. The authorities make no attempt to control the brutality of the inmates. The only preoccupation of the guards is to keep out of trouble and make a little money on the side, supplying drugs and facilitating the exchange of sexual partners. Within La Picota left-wing guerrillas fought right-wing paramilitaries. Paramilitaries fought thieves and rapists. Thieves and rapists fought the guerrillas, in an on-going cycle of violence.

  McGuire, O’Rourke and Kelly were at first held in separate cells to facilitate their questioning by members of the 13th Brigade. Under interrogation they stuck to their initial denials but none of them had any idea what the others were saying and chinks soon began to appear in their stories. Their inquisitors were patient but persistent, though the use of certain of the 13th Brigade’s customary array of tools was precluded by the interest of the media and the intervention of the Irish Consulate in Bogotá. The men could not be marked. But sleep and sensory deprivation, isolation, thirst, hunger and the threat of beatings eventually made their mark and the men began to weaken. Kelly was the first to crack. The isolation got to him first, the suggestion the others had come clean and were prepared to sacrifice him. In a matter of days the true purpose of their presence in Colombia was confirmed.

  McGuire O’Rourke and Kelly had no idea how or why they had been caught. A leak from inside the IRA was possible but unlikely; they had formal approval for the trip from the Army Council. Sinn Fein had given them the nod. More probable was satellite interception of their cell-phone conversations. Sensitive communications were usually encrypted, but this wasn’t always possible from deep inside the rain forest, where digital equipment was rare. And anyway the codes weren’t necessarily secure. The CIA monitored the Colombian airwaves constantly, and if they’d picked up any kind of signal linking the IRA to the FARC it would cause untold panic on both sides of the Atlantic.

  The three men had a genuine dilemma. They knew about the Dirty Bomb. And they knew what it could do. Make an entire city uninhabitable for decades. And Declan O’Brien, an unhinged maniac, was out there somewhere trying to put one together. They knew Declan didn’t have the skill to do this on his own. But if he could find the expertise, he could buy it. The FARC reputedly earned two million dollars a day, every day, from trading drugs. A Dirty Bomb could be paid for out of petty cash. And all three could see quite clearly the devastating effect a Dirty Bomb would have on the Republican movement back home. IRA/Sinn Fein would become pariahs overnight. No one would ever deal with them again. America would be outraged. In Ireland it would be a political disaster, delay unification for a generation or more.

  McGuire heard the key turn in the lock of his cell. The armed guard stood to one side and a pleasant looking young man in a business suit walked in and held out his hand.

  “Charles Lachlan, Second Secretary at the Irish Embassy. You wanted to see me?”

  ***

  The Republic of Ireland is a very small country of fewer than four million souls. The social group from which its elites emerge is tiny. Those who achieve prominence in the arts, industry or politics come from the same families, attend the same schools and universities, belong to the same clubs. So it wasn’t surprising Charles Lachlan knew the Taoiseach personally, or that their wives were distantly related. Where luck did play its part was that Lachlan was in temporary charge of the Embassy. The Ambassador and First Secretary were both attending a conference in the Caribbean at the time he interviewed McGuire. So Lachlan didn’t need to go through channels. He could go straight to the top.

  The chauffeur driven Embassy Mercedes flying the Ambassador’s pennant sped through the chaotic city traffic, ignoring the cops controlling the flow and burning every red light. Lachlan was out of the vehicle before it stopped, rushed up the Embassy steps and straight to the communications room in the basement. He bellowed at the duty officer to get lost, picked up the secure Satcom phone and punched in the code he had long since memorised.

  The Taoiseach was away from his desk at the instant the red phone rang and it took a couple of minutes for his Chief of Staff to find him. A breathless Charles Lachlan rapidly related McGuire’s incredible story. Minutes later a stunned and fearful Taoiseach used the same secure instrument to alert Washington DC.

  The President of the United States sat on the floor of the Oval Office playing with his grandson. The boy was about to return to Texas at the end of the school vacation and this was their last few minutes together. The President picked up the Satcom phone without a thought, holding the kid in his arms. He listened for a couple of minutes and uttered the single word “Jesus.” Then he went to the door, passed his gran
dson to the security guard, kissed the tearful child goodbye and returned to the phone.

  “Who else knows about the Dirty Bomb?”

  “O’Brien, obviously,” said the Taoiseach, “and Tirofijo. Then there’s the three men in La Picota, plus Charles Lachlan at our Embassy in Bogotá. Far as I know, that’s it.”

  “That’s it? Not even the Brits?”

  “Not even the Brits.”

  “What about Al Qaeda? This has bin Laden written all over it.”

  “As far as we know there is no Arab involvement. McGuire certainly isn’t aware of any.”

  The President was silent for a while. Then he said,

  “The Brits will have to know, if they don’t already. They’re pretty much on top of things where the IRA is concerned. Wouldn’t surprise me if they knew about this even before you did.”

  The President sucked air through his teeth.

  “Listen, Bert, I need some time to think this through. Decide what our response should be. Do you mind calling Downing Street, put the PM in the picture? I got a feeling we’re going to need help on this one.”

  “No problem. I’ll call him right away.”

  “I’ll get back to you in a couple of hours. After I talk to my people.”

  When Michael Santos put down the phone he felt physically sick. His pulse was racing and he began to sweat. Here was a threat more deadly and more imminent than Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction that imperilled the American people in their own back yard.

  ***

  16

  The Dirty Bomb was the President’s severest test. He understood and feared its implications. If he wasn’t able to avert this threat it was the end of everything. Forget about his legislative programme. Forget about a second term. If this Irishman could detonate his Dirty Bomb, Michael Santos would not complete his first. The President picked up the phone.