Levels of Power

by Mike Gilmore

  Shir turned from the window and walked to the small mirror hanging on the wall near the doorway that led to the main upstairs hallway. He was holding an ice pack against his right temple to help reduce the swelling from the hard blow delivered by the senator from the United States. When he removed the ice pack, the mirror showed the dark, angry bruise on his face. The swelling was very noticeable. He touched the bruised area with his right hand. The skin was still very sensitive. Despite the swelling, he felt a depression below the skin. He was certain the senator had broken the bone beneath his right eye. He had tried to cover up the spot by wearing sunglasses, but the bruised area was too large.

  Shir had been in England for almost a month, helping to prepare for the operation. He was one of five men who would be involved in the attack to destroy vital infrastructure within London and, with much planning, kill thousands of British people. With any luck, they would kill hundreds more staying at the hotels within the city. Their ultimate plan was to cripple the city by destroying one of its most precious lifelines. Before Shir could continue, he would have to endure another temper tantrum from the group’s leader.

  He left his bedroom, entered the hallway, and walked to the staircase leading to the first floor. The house was very large, with six rooms on the first floor. Two rooms were set aside for the showroom rugs that nobody would visit. The only room visible from the showroom was the office.

  The rug company had not seen a customer for months. The telephone on the line assigned to the rug company had rung only twice since Shir had arrived. One call was an incorrect number, and the other had been someone trying to sell them a new credit card system. However, from a local citizen’s viewpoint, the rug business was thriving. The two panel trucks leaving the property and returning several times each day indicated lots of business activity. With the church across the street only occupied several times each week, the few people living in the neighborhood accepted the comings and goings as normal business.

  Shir reached the bottom of the stairway and turned toward the back of the house. He could hear music coming from the front showroom. Iraj Malek-Mohammadi would be in the office, watching the showroom for any intrusive customers. He reached the kitchen area and walked to the back door. He could see the storage building through the glass windows. Hossein, Ali, and Gholam would be working in the building, expecting him to help prepare for the attack.

  Leaving the house, he crossed the fifteen feet separating the two structures and entered the side door, passing into the corrugated steel storage structure. The building had no windows, and the two overhead doors on the north end of the building stayed closed unless the trucks were leaving or entering the building. All the lighting inside was provided by fluorescent overhead fixtures.

  The two old white panel trucks were parked in their normal spots inside the building, awaiting their lethal loads. The sides of the truck still displayed the fading lettering and logo of the rug company. Both trucks showed scratches and small dents along the sides and on the bumpers. One truck had a long crack in the front windshield that started down near the dash in front of the passenger’s seat and continued across the windshield. The crack rose up toward the middle of the window near the halfway mark but dropped back to the lower edge before it reached the driver’s side. The tires on both trucks were old and worn and would normally need to be replaced soon.

  Three sets of eyes turned toward the sound as Shir opened and closed the side entrance door to the storage building. The sounds within the building vibrated off the bare steel walls. Normally a paper-lined blanket of fiberglass, installed between the joists of the walls, would act as a sound-deadening and insulation layer, but only bare steel separated them from the outside. They took no risk of discovery and always spoke in low voices. Shir hoped the risk of excessive noise would keep Hossein from berating him for having to come to his rescue from an older man on the Jubilee Bridges.

  He walked past stacks of rolled carpets, most about five or six feet wide. They lay inside the same wooden bins used to ship the rugs from France. Each wooden crate, encased with a fine steel-wire mesh to hold the wood together, supported the weight of the rugs within.

  For months, their dummy company had been receiving crates of rugs. Each rug was rolled and tightly wrapped with a thin plastic ribbon that required a sharp knife to cut. The rolled rugs were laid on their sides inside the wooden bins and neatly stacked. Each layer consisted of eight rolled carpets about twelve inches in diameter; each bin had four layers, making up thirty-two rugs per bin.

  Shir had not bothered to count the number of wooden bins stacked inside the thirty-two-by-forty-eight-foot building that was twelve feet high. He would guess the number was well over one hundred and fifty shipping crates. The top layer of rolled carpets was completely normal. Should anyone bother to check the rugs during the transits from France, the rugs would agree with the shipping manifest. All the paperwork was perfect, and there was nothing detectable by security equipment or specially trained dogs within the rugs.

  Nevertheless, the other three layers of carpets concealed long flexible plastic tubes of material. Each tube was four feet long and only about two inches thick. The tubes were heat sealed on each end; a knife was required to slit open the plastic lining. Inside the tubes was a fine white powder they would carefully transfer to large yellow fifty-five gallon plastic drums sitting on heavy wooden pallets. Once the powder filled the drums, they would be loaded into one of the panel trucks with the old forklift sitting behind the trucks.

  Chapter 18

  London

  Sunday, November 29, 2015

  3:15 p.m.

  Hossein Rahim Bonab stopped his work on the plastic sleeve of fine powder. He had been carefully slitting open the tubes with his Browning Titanium Gray Red Acid Quick Open knife and slowly pouring the powder into the large plastic barrel next to his workbench. He kept his dust mask and plastic latex gloves in place; the fine powder lingered in the air, and he did not want to breathe any of the powder into his lungs.

  In another part of the building, Mohammad Javen Nik Khah and Gholam Reza Rasoulian were slowly and carefully unrolling the carpets from the last three crates and removing the plastic tubes. They carried them over to Hossein’s workbench and laid them carefully on the tabletop. The plastic was eight millimeters thick, much heavier than a normal trash bag. Nobody wanted to break the plastic, have the contents spill out, and get on their skin or into their lungs. While the contents would not burn or immediately kill them, they knew they could become very sick without proper medical treatment.

  Hossein watched Shir put on his latex gloves and dust mask. This was not the proper time to scold the man again; they needed to get their work done and then plan the actual attack. Because of Shir’s near capture and doubtless being recognized by the American, they needed to complete their preparations and reschedule the operation. The planned attack was to begin this coming weekend, starting on Friday night. They would have had the entire weekend to contaminate the London water system with the powder. Now they would have only one night to complete their work.

  The fine white powder was odorless and looked like baking flour. To help with the deception, the yellow heavy-duty plastic barrels they were using carried labels with the name of a well-known commercial brand of baking flour.

  The others could not see the smile on his face as his thought about the contents of the powder. A scientist in his beloved Iran had developed the powder from the dried dropping of animals infested with cryptosporidium. The droppings had been specially treated to remove odor and color, leaving behind the protozoa that caused gastrointestinal illness.

  Each bowel movement of an infected animal could contain millions of crypto parasites. The human host would begin to feel the effects of the organism very soon after consuming infected food or water. The symptoms could last for weeks and had proven fatal in the young and elderly or people with compromised immune systems, such a
s AIDS patients. That alone would be enough reason for Hossein and his men to wear the masks and gloves. However, the scientists had improved the concentration levels of the cryptosporidium and predicted a much higher fatality rate. They claimed any person with a common cold would become very sick and, if not treated quickly, die from the illness.

  A number of cryptosporidium species infect mammals. In humans, the main causes of disease were C. parvum and C. hominis. Environmentally hardy cysts, or oocysts, transmitted the parasites. Once ingested, they harbored in the small intestine and infected the intestinal epithelial tissue. The cryptosporidium oocysts could survive for lengthy periods outside the host and resisted many common disinfectants, notably chlorine-based disinfectants. Cryptosporidiosis was typically an acute, short-term infection, but it could become severe, chronic, or deadly. In humans, it might remain for up to five weeks in the lower intestines.

  Most modern water-treatment plants took their raw public drinking water from rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. They used conventional filtration technology to safeguard the public. Direct filtration, slow sand filters, diatomaceous earth filters, and membranes removed 99 percent of cryptosporidium. One of the largest challenges in identifying outbreaks was verifying the results in a laboratory. The oocytes might appear under microscopic examination of a stool sample, but they could be confused with other similar organisms. If drinking water were potentially contaminated by cryptosporidium, the safest option was to boil all drinking water.

  Hossein had consulted with the scientist on the best method to contaminate the water system in London for the longest possible time. The goal was to infect as many people in London as possible with the concentrated levels of cryptosporidium. Many, if not all, Londoners would get sick, and many would die. The secret was to infect the water and keep the authorities from finding out and broadcasting the alarm.

  Their original plan had called for them to strike this coming Thursday afternoon and early Friday morning. They would create several diversions with small explosive devises planted at popular tourist attractions. The threat of further terrorist attacks would pull security personnel into the city, away from the outer areas where the water-treatment plants were located. Shortly thereafter, during the confusion from the attacks, they would enter several water-treatment plants that supplied water to Central London. They would kill all the plant personnel and dump their fine white powder into the water.

  Now their original plan had been jeopardized by Shir’s recklessness. Shir was to have photographed the tourist spots so they could decide the best locations to place explosion devices. Hossein was to have picked Shir up in one of the panel trucks when he left Trafalgar Square. He had arrived in time to see him running from the square with the stranger in pursuit.

  Finding a parking spot close to the pedestrian bridges had been pure luck. Hossein had arrived in time to knock the man down and pull Shir out of the area. Later he had gone back to get the van, and they had returned to the house on Newby Place.

  Later today, he would devise a new plan. It was certain they needed to move the date of the attack up.

  Chapter 19

  Washington, DC

  Monday, November 30, 2015

  10:00 a.m.

  The clock mounted above the rostrum in the United State Senate showed it was a few minutes before ten. Senate Majority Leader Tom Evans was reviewing the schedule for the day’s session in preparation for leading the members into the day’s main event.

  The Senate had been in recess for the extended Thanksgiving holiday, and many members had used their time at home to meet with politicians, business leaders, and voters to gauge their reactions to the upcoming debate on the president’s Fair Share Bill.

  Tom Evans wanted to get through the day and back onto the campaign trail. He had declared his candidacy for the presidency just thirty days before. His campaign manager, Cheryl Williams, had suggested he make his campaign announcement on the steps of the Capitol. The setting would provide a dignified backdrop for the kickoff speech for his run for the White House. Tom and his wife Betty had overruled Williams and selected a different venue for his first speech as a Democratic candidate for president.

  The Pico-Union section in Central Los Angles, considered by many to be the poorest neighborhood in the city, offered a diverse population. Almost 85 percent Latino, mostly immigrants, and the fourth most-crowded neighborhood in the City of Angles was home to more than 42,000 residences in the 1.67-square-mile area. Tom and Betty chose one of the daycare centers for children of working parents for the kickoff speech. Tom wanted to show that his presidency would be about the people in America. He wanted to show that the government needed to focus on basic building blocks, to improve society with better schools and educational programs.

  He had stressed in his speech that America’s educational system was falling behind other countries. Without the best possible schools for its children’s future, the United States could slip back into a country dependent on engineers, architects, and highly skilled workers from other countries. He wanted to use the renewal programs in Pico-Union as an example to the country. It would show how the same spirit duplicated throughout American would rebuild other inner cities and keep America the greatest country on Earth.

  The huge crowd of supporters cheered their candidate, and the press reported the campaign was off to a powerful start. Tom had hit the campaign trail every day, crisscrossing the country, but now felt he needed to be back in Washington for the introduction of the president’s Corporate American Fair Share Tax Bill.

  Tom glanced at his wristwatch and up at the clock above the rostrum. They were within a minute of each other. He looked around the Senate Chamber. His bench was near the front of the chamber one level up from the main floor of the multi-tiered semicircular platform.

  The carpet throughout the eighty-by-one hundred-thirteen-foot area of the chamber floor was a royal blue with a pale gray fleur-de-lis imprint woven into the polyester wool. The three-sided marble rostrum, large enough for four people to work at the built-in desktops, was in the front of the chamber. The president of the Senate had a large desk on an elevated platform behind the rostrum.

  Surrounding the second level of the Senate Chamber was the gallery for visitors and guests of Senate members. The portion behind and above the rostrum was reserved for members of the press, American and foreign; Tom noticed the area was already filled. The Senate would receive full coverage today as they begin to wrestle with the Fair Share Bill.

  Avery Doaks, the Republican minority leader from Virginia, approached Tom and gave him a friendly light slap on the shoulder. The sixty-two-year-old senator had been a member of the Senate for eleven years and was up for reelection in 2016. “You’re pulling a lot of people to your campaign rallies, Tom. I not sure about the president, but I would think your other Democratic rivals for the nomination would be ready to concede.”

  Tom smiled back at his Senate rival. Avery’s comment was true. The number of people attending his campaign events had been large, and he drew energy from the crowd’s enthusiasm. A slight decrease in the size of the crowds since the president’s Fair Share Bill had passed the House was also true.

  “I’ve been very encouraged by the initial turnouts, Avery, but there’re still almost eleven months until the election. Many things can happen between now and then. How is your campaign coming?”

  Avery smiled back. “I wouldn’t want to raise your hopes for a change of colors on the political layout for the Senate in 2017. I’m fairly certain my Senate bench will still be listed on the red side of the map.”

  Tom slowly shook his head as he returned his old friend’s smile. “Well, I’m certain you’re correct, Avery, but the Virginia state representative from Roanoke seems to be drawing a lot of interest from the voters. You had better watch out for her. I hear she is a real up and comer in your state. Plus you have a Republican governor who will be out of a job whe
n his term expires next year. I hear he might want your seat.”

  Tom was referring to Governor Tom Postman, who would be concluding his second and last term at the end of 2016.

  Avery’s smile faded slightly. “Postman has had his eight years in the spotlight. Taking on a fellow Republican will put a bad taste in the party’s mouth. I don’t think he is as smart as others give him credit for.”

  Tom nodded in understanding before offering a last warning. “He’s good-looking and makes a good impression on camera. You had better watch your back, Avery. He could sneak up on you before you’re aware of it.”

  Tom decided to change the subject. It was near time to call this session of the Senate to order, and he had enough work ahead of him without giving election advice to a political rival. Secretly he hoped the young Democratic Virginia representative would pull off an upset and improve the Democratic numbers in the 2017 Senate. “Are you going to introduce the Fair Share Bill for the president?”