Fire Hawk

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Sam?’ Duncan Waddell’s voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m in west Ealing. I want you to get your skates on and come over here.’

  ‘What’s up?’ Sam asked groggily.

  ‘Something for you to look at. A body.’

  ‘Shit.’ Sam was instantly wide awake. ‘Anyone we know?’

  ‘No. But connected. Very much connected.’

  ‘I’ll call a cab. Give me the address.’

  When he’d written it down and rung off, he grabbed an apple to eat in the car.

  Thirty minutes later the black taxi dropped him in a narrow lane of two-up-two-downs in an Asian quarter of west London. Outside the pebble-dashed house a police car was parked. He murmured who he was to a constable standing guard at the red-painted front door and was let inside. Waddell was waiting for him in the tiny hallway which had a decades-old smell of curry.

  ‘Forensic are in there at the moment,’ he said, pointing to a half-open door behind him. Sam saw a camera flash go off beyond it. ‘When they let us in, I want you to see if you recognise the bloke.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘He’s an Iraqi national, name of Sadiq Abbas – mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not a thing.’

  ‘Anyway, he was an ex-pat, settled in Jordan. Must’ve had good connections back home because he was still allowed in and out, from what I gather. For about a year he’d been driving one of those big GMC things between Amman and Baghdad as a taxi. I imagine he smuggled stuff for high-ups in the regime. Then something went wrong. His brother was killed in Baghdad and he seemed to think that whoever did it was after him too.’

  ‘When?’ Sam prodded, sensing the connection. ‘When was this brother killed?’

  ‘Middle of September.’

  ‘Ah.’ The pieces were beginning to fit.

  ‘That was about a week before Sadiq Abbas arrived here. He entered UK on a tourist visa, lodged a claim for asylum and made contact with a support group for refugees. It was they who found him this place to stay. The woman who runs the group has filled us in on the little she knows about him. Anyway – here’s the nub of it. Three days ago he gave her a letter. Told her it should only be opened if something happened to him.’

  ‘And now it has.’

  ‘Exactly. Abbas missed an appointment with her and she got worried. So she opened the letter, nearly had a heart attack when she read it, and gave it to the police. When they saw what was in it, Special Branch contacted us and then broke into his room. Here.’

  Waddell handed Sam two lined pages torn from an exercise book. They were covered with a spidery script.

  ‘His English wasn’t great . . . and the handwriting’s crap.’

  Dear Freda, Sam read.

  ‘Freda’s the woman at the support group,’ Waddell explained unnecessarily.

  If you reading this letter it becouse something bad happen me. I see him on Sunday so I think I will be kill. He very clever very shure of what he do. He was here in London. I see in his eye he want to kill me but I run away.

  ‘The first part’s confusing,’ Waddell prompted.

  ‘Who’s the him?’ Sam queried.

  ‘Read on.’

  I must to tell about this man call Colonel Naif Hamdan . . .

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘Yes. You see now?’

  I very afraid him becouse he very danger man. He is reason I come England. Already he kill my brother Haji. He try kill me in Amman becouse he afraid I know some thing about his plan. Now he follow me here.

  Sam shuddered, remembering how close Hamdan’s knife had come to ending his own life.

  Colonel Hamdan want Saddam dead. But he know it impoussible for Iraqi soldier kill him. Many try already and are kill by Saddam. Hamdan say only America can do it. They have army can invade Iraq and destroy Saddam. In 1991 they do not do it becouse they say they have no reason. So Colonel Hamdan decide this time he will give America very big reason for to kill Saddam Hussein.

  ‘Shit! It’s America? Not Israel?’ Sam growled. ‘He’s trying to bomb Washington into another war?’

  ‘Apparently,’ Waddell answered, cautioning him with his eyes not to be specific in front of two police officers emerging from the back room.

  ‘He’s fucking mad.’

  ‘Or extremely clever,’ Waddell added.

  Sam skimmed forward, searching for the clue they so badly needed – the precise where and when of the attack. But it wasn’t there.

  He re-read from near the beginning.

  My brother Haji was army major in same corps as Colonel Hamdan. He retire on pension in 1992 but stay close friend Naif Hamdan. In July he tell me secret thing about Colonel Hamdan. He say Hamdan was one of army officer who try to make coup against Saddam in summer this year with help from CIA. In June Saddam find out and kill many them. Hamdan very lucky to still alive. Soon he make new plan. He decide to keep it just very small group this time because safer. Have few people very close to him in inner consil. Few others to helping, who not so close. Friends like my brother. It was group like egg. If you are in yellow part you know everything. In white part only know what yellow part tell you. Haji was in white part. He tell me Hamdan want to attack US President with anthrax bomb.

  ‘Fucking mad,’ Sam repeated. ‘Washington knows about this?’

  ‘We’ve just told them. But it’s six in the morning over there. They haven’t had time to panic yet.’

  Sam continued to read.

  Naif Hamdan says Americans will belief it is Saddam who do this and send soldiers to destroy him. Haji think it is bad plan. Many Americans be kill. But he is loyal to Hamdan and he agree to take bomb to Jordan for him. Him and me we take it in my car. There was big place in gas tank for hiding such thing. But when Haji return to Baghdad, Hamdan kill him to stop him say what he do.

  Not quite, thought Sam. The man had been killed because he’d already talked.

  I do not know how Hamdan make his attack or when he do it. But Haji think the weapon go to Cyprus from Jordan.

  ‘Shit! Cyprus. Why?’ Sam mouthed.

  He’d reached the final paragraphs.

  Dear Freda. You are good friend to me. These things I was afraid to tell to anyone while I am alive becouse of Hamdan, but if you read this letter it is becouse Hamdan has found me and killed me. He is very danger man. He think what he do is for good of Iraqi people. But he is like Saddam. He does not understand ordinary people. I feel very guilt that I knew this bad secret and not tell anyone. But if Naif Hamdan will kill me, I feel better when I meet my God and my brother if I have told it to someone. Your faithful, Sadiq Abbas.

  ‘Incredible,’ Sam breathed.

  A uniformed policeman of senior rank emerged from the back room.

  ‘All done, gents,’ he told them. ‘You can come in now. But I should cover your noses if I were you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Waddell moved first. ‘Abbas was stabbed,’ he warned.

  ‘I guessed.’

  ‘Done with a kitchen knife bought at Harrods. Hamdan left the bag behind.’

  Inside the room the stench of decaying flesh had combined with something equally vile. The dead man’s bowels had evacuated at some point during his last minutes of life. With a hand to his face, Sam looked down at the thin, not very tall man lying on a floor rug that was caked with blood and excreta. The earnest, sallow face bore a strong family likeness to the man who’d whispered the anthrax warning to him in the Rashid Hotel lobby nearly three weeks ago.

  ‘Yes,’ he confirmed, gagging on the stench. ‘He’s a dead ringer for his brother.’

  Two siblings dead. One beaten to pulp with clubs while suspended from a ceiling hook, the other slashed by a kitchen knife. Both lives terminated to conceal the terrible secret of a man Sam had dignified with the nickname Saladin.

  Waddell’s mobile phone trilled.

  ‘Seen enough?’ he asked, before answering it, backing from the room.

  ‘P
lenty,’ breathed Sam, following him out into the hall.

  Waddell hovered just inside the closed front door, listening intently to what was being told to him on the phone. He said ‘I see’ a number of times and ended with a ‘Keep me posted’.

  He beckoned to Sam. ‘Let’s go sit in my car. Things are moving fast.’

  The small blue Rover was parked under a lamp post a little way down the road. Next to it a gaggle of Asian men watched their approach with curiosity. They’d been standing there for a while by the look of them, idly observing the comings and goings of the police.

  ‘Get in,’ Waddell mouthed to Sam. ‘We’ll drive round the corner and find somewhere less conspicuous.’

  A couple of minutes later they were parked up in a quiet side street.

  ‘Bloody Cyprus!’ Waddell snapped. ‘That sweaty little tax haven’s got a lot to answer for.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Okay. The first development is that the Israelis have got two cast-iron witnesses who swear blind that when the container from Ukraine was unstuffed at a warehouse on the outskirts of Tel Aviv last Monday, it contained packs of rotting vegetable juice and nothing else. They’re totally certain. No Hawk drone. No anthrax.

  ‘Second. They’ve also discovered that the container from Ukraine did not come direct from Ilychevsk to Haifa but was transshipped. Not once, but twice. First at Piraeus where it went straight from one vessel to another, then at Limassol where – and get this – it spent three days in a sodding bonded warehouse!’

  ‘God . . . Just at the time when Grimov, Rybkin and Hamdan were all there!’

  ‘Correct. The buggers did a switch. That VR-6 drone arrived in the container from Ukraine. They took it out, mated it with the anthrax warhead they’d smuggled in from Jordan, then refilled the box with rotting fruit juice which they’d managed to dig up from somewhere and sent it on its way to Israel. A bluff, Sam, a mime show which tied in precisely with what that arsehole Viktor Rybkin confessed to you in Odessa.’

  ‘I should have killed the bastard,’ Sam spat.

  ‘And now, that drone and its horribly lethal warhead are in some other damned container, which we know nothing whatsoever about – except that it’s heading for America.’

  41

  19.30 hrs EST

  Chesapeake Bay, USA

  THE MV KAREN STAR was a giant of the seas. The length of three football pitches and as wide as a major highway, she tramped the Atlantic in the furtherance of international trade. In her hold and stacked high on her deck were 3,274 shipping containers – below her capacity, but she’d already made three port calls to offload cargo this side of the pond.

  The thirty-four-year-old Danish First Officer stood on the starboard bridge wing, studying the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay through gimbals-mounted binoculars. One half of his family had migrated to America a century ago and he had a second-cousin living near to the very shore they were passing. In Easton, Maryland.

  They were abeam of Tilghman Island now, about a mile and a half to starboard, but despite the power of the lenses and the clarity of the air, the unspoilt waterman’s village that he’d visited a year ago was just so much white clapboard. He remembered the anchorage on the far side of the island, home to a small fleet of heavy timber-masted skipjacks. Working boats. When he’d been there last summer they’d been moored up, waiting for the oyster season to start, but they’d be busy this time of year. He looked in vain for their big white sails, then remembered that the beds they worked were on the other side of the island, along the mainland shore.

  The Karen Star had slowed to twelve knots, just half the maximum she clocked up on the regular run from Algeciras. The wide waters of the bay were broken by flecks of foam, flicked up by the brisk easterly. A sailing breeze, and a few miles ahead the Dane saw a speckle of sails where a class race was under way.

  In a couple of hours the Karen Star would pass beneath the high US-50 bridge and point her bow to Baltimore, in order to be alongside the Seagirt Terminal at 23.00 hours. The First Officer did a quick check of the chart to assure himself they’d be on time – the Karen Line prided itself on punctuality. Once alongside, there’d be an hour or so of berthing formalities, then he’d get his head down while the longshoremen lugged at the 450 boxes due off at this stop.

  He stepped back inside the bridge, a tranquil haven after the breeziness of the wing. A hundred feet below, the ship’s twelve-cylinder diesel rumbled its monotonous but comforting rhythm. The only other sound was the hiss of ventilation and the faint whistle from the tubes of the radar sets.

  He walked forward to the front windows and looked down onto the neat lines of brightly coloured containers stacked on the deck. He wondered sometimes what was really inside these boxes. They could have anything in them. Anything at all. If the paperwork was done right and the authorities had received no tip-off that prompted a spot check, even a nuclear bomb could be smuggled into the USA without much problem. Ports like Baltimore were hungry for business. Speed and throughput were what mattered to them, not the verification of manifests.

  He moved away from the windows to check the radar. It was a fact, he’d decided long ago, that with so many voyages like this every year, so many thousands of containers being transported, one day, unwittingly, he could be party to some great evil. But it didn’t concern him greatly, because there was nothing to be done about it.

  The J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington DC

  Dean Burgess picked up a coffee from the machine in the fifth-floor elevator lobby. Since first thing that morning when word had come through that Israel was not the target for the anthrax attack, the Counter-Terrorism Center had been frenetic. Now, at the end of the working day, things had begun to settle.

  He stirred the coffee with a plastic straw then carried it down the drab, cream-walled corridor towards the heavy steel hatches of the FBI’s Strategic Information Operations Center. Known throughout the building as SIOC, this screened and bombproof cell stuffed with monitors and communications panels was like the inside of a submarine according to those in the know. Manned twenty-four hours a day on a stand-by basis, the staff had nearly doubled since the place went fully operational a few hours ago.

  Burgess passed through into the small room at the back of the SIOC, where a briefing had been called to report on the day’s limited progress. Already present were some thirty men and women, each a terrorism specialist. He’d met a dozen or so during the few weeks he’d been in post, but to only a handful of them could he put names. In addition to the Bureau’s own specialists there were representatives here from the CIA, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency.

  He sat down. A few seconds later the shirt-sleeved FBI Director marched in, accompanied by his Assistant Director for National Security and by Burgess’s own giant of a section chief, Ive Stobal. Completing the quartet on the podium was a US Air Force Brigadier.

  The Director began by stressing the weakness of the intelligence that had come their way so far and the difficulty they had in interpreting it. ‘But somewhere out there, gentlemen and ladies, is a most lethal box of tricks and we have to assume it’s coming here,’ he told them sombrely. The mood of the room was alert and tense. Managing a crisis this big was something they’d trained for, but never done for real.

  ‘We’ve given this operation that we’re now engaged in the codename Fire Hawk, ladies and gentlemen. And we have to assume the UAV with its anthrax warhead could already be in the United States some place,’ the Director went on. ‘Boxed up and probably all ready to launch from a standard forty-foot shipping container like you’ll see in any freight yard in any state in the USA. The container’s serial number we don’t have, nor any shipping details. It’s a needle in a haystack, folks.

  ‘The VR-6 Hawk UAV is a battlefield reconnaissance drone that’s standard issue in the forces of the former Soviet Union. Normally it’s launched from a canister on the back of an eight-wheeled vehicle. Converting a shipping container to perform the
same function would pose few problems to military technicians who knew what they were doing. And we have to believe these guys do know what’s what. There’s a stake of five million dollars behind this single act of terrorism.’

  Somebody gave a low whistle.

  ‘Sure. That’s a lot of backing. Now, whether this crazy scheme is the brainchild of Saddam Hussein or of some maverick is more a concern for the NSA and the Joint Chiefs than for us. As lead agency in response to a terrorist attack, the FBI has two fundamental issues to address. How to prevent that attack, and if we can’t, how to deal with it when it happens.

  ‘As I just said, we have to assume the container with the missile could already be in its launch position. Where would that be? Well, just about any place within fifty miles of the target. And where’s the target? We don’t know. The terrorists may be going after the President, but we can’t assume that. Anthrax sprayed from a missile is not the most sensible way to assassinate one extremely well-protected individual.

  ‘Fortunately this weekend the President is staying in the White House most of the time. The exception is on Saturday night when he makes an election appearance at the Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The Eagles have a bye week. The meeting’s being networked live on TV, which the terrorists would see as an advantage, of course. A decision on whether the President goes ahead with that event will be taken nearer the time.

  ‘Our first priority has got to be to find that container before it can be used. The terrorists probably have to work on the missile before it can be fired – it’s come a long way – so they’ll want some place to do that without being disturbed. An old barn or disused warehouse would do just fine. Police in east coast states from New Hampshire to Florida have been tasked to check out all such sites.

  ‘Priority two is for all agencies to be ready if that goddamned missile is fired. The VR-6 has inertial guidance which needs to be programmed and stabilised before launch, a process that takes about twenty minutes, so I’m told. It gets kicked into the air by a solid-fuel rocket booster, then a gas turbine takes over for the cruise. In the brief period between launch and the release of the agent – say ten minutes – there is a chance it can be shot down. The DoD has already set up full airborne radar coverage of the eastern sector of the United States. E-2s and E-3s.’