by Mike Gilmore
Randy Fisher felt his own helplessness and wanted to rush to the scene to provide what little comfort might be possible. He felt worthless in his safe position inside the War Room. He looked around at the others in the room. Constance Langhorne stood quietly off to the side of the open center section, her face a mask of confusion and shock. He took a few steps to reach her side. Softly he placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Constance, are you all right?”
She looked up into his face. There were tears at the corners of her eyes, and she took the handkerchief Randy offered to dry the moisture.
She nodded and used the cloth to dry her nose. She offered the cloth back to Randy, but he gave a little wave of his hand, indicating she keep it.
“Constance, I need your help. I need to get a photograph of the two terrorists from the van. We have to know if they were the two I fought with on the bridge or if those two men are still out there.” He looked into her eyes. He could see her mind start to focus on his words. “Constance, if those men in the van are not the two we’ve been looking for, this whole mess might not be over with. These three dead terrorist might be just a diversion from their main target. We’ve got to see their faces, and we must hurry.”
Constance nodded in understanding. “Of course, Senator. You are perfectly correct. Let me see if I can contact someone at the scene to snap their pictures and e-mail them to us here in the War Room.”
Randy watched her walked to where one of her people was still working the communications system. He walked over to Marion. The CIA DDO was just ending a call to Langley.
“The president is on a bus to Chesapeake, Virginia, to give another speech against the filibuster. The Secret Service is considering cancelling the event and taking the president off the bus and back to Washington or some other place. They haven’t decided.”
Randy asked the first question that entered his mind. “Do they think this event is part of something larger?”
Marion shook his head. “We don’t know at this time, but we’ve issued a higher-level warning. The network news agencies back home have already shifted their attention from the president and his fight with those three senators to this event.”
Marion pointed to the center screen, still showing the devastation on Trafalgar Square. Already ambulances with flashing lights were on scene, as well as emergency workers and many more uniformed and armed members of the Metropolitan Police department. Portable lights and generators brought to the scene mixed their brilliant lights with the revolving lights from the emergency vehicles. All were contributing to the surreal image showing on the center screen.
DC Shepard walked toward them. As he got closer, Randy could see the pain in his eyes. When the deputy commander of Scotland Yard paused next to them, Randy spoke softly to the older man. “Please accept our condolences for your loss, DC Shepard. Any word on the number of people killed or wounded?”
Shepard had the requested information on a small slip of paper in his front shirt pocket. He did not need to reach for the answer to Randy’s question. It would always be in his memory.
“Twelve dead … eighteen wounded. Three of my officers are among the dead. Four were wounded in the explosion as they tried to approach the bomber.” He started to move off but stopped. “Thank you for your help, Senator Fisher. If you had not provided an early warning, this would have been much worse. Now if you will excuse me, I’m on my way to the square.”
He walked away before Randy could mention that maybe this mess was not over.
Chapter 49
London
Thursday, December 3, 2015
6:15 p.m.
Hossein fumed with anger. Shir Mohammad was driving the second van loaded with the cryptosporidium powder inside the twelve fifty-five-gallon yellow plastic barrels.
They had left the rug business buildings directly after Mohammad Javan and the others. At the intersection of Aspen Way they had watched the first van turn right toward Central London and their mission. Shir turned left, drove a short way to Preston Road, and followed it into the old Graving Dock area, strangely enough by way of a street named Trafalgar Way. When they reached the old Canary Wharf, he turned right and drove over the little-used road system through the old docks, too small for the huge tankers and container vessels bringing imported goods into England from China and Europe.
Once through the docks and old wharfs, they crossed the River Thames into the outer boroughs of southern London. There, the traffic had become jammed due to the weather and time of day. Hundreds of thousands of Londoners were trying to get home before the weather turned worse.
As the crow flies, the distance to the Honor Oak Reservoir was only about three and one-half miles. Hossein had allocated only twenty minutes to drive from the rug company building on Newby Street to their target. However, by six fifteen they were not yet at the small village. He had no one to blame for this but himself and thousands of cars and small trucks.
By seven, they finally arrived at Hichisson Road, which allowed them to drive into the Aquarias Golf Club. The sky was fully dark, as was natural for that time of year. The rain had stopped during their drive southwest from their starting point, but raindrops were again falling. With the overcast blocking out any moonlight, the area around the clubhouse was completely dark except for a few security lamps in the parking lot.
Shir brought the van slowly to a halt on the white pea gravel parking lot; they both rolled down the side windows to listen to the night noises. Only the splattering of the heavy raindrops on the roof of the van broke the silence.
Hossein pulled from an inside pocket the local paper map he had used to plan the mission. He opened it in his lap, with Shir holding the edge. He used a small flashlight to look at the details of the golf course and located the reservoir building that would grant them access to the pipeline system.
The Aquarias Golf Course roughly formed a large rectangle. The clubhouse and maintenance buildings were on the north end of the course. Residential homes lined the east and west sides of the fairways. Due to the water reservoir, the course was not laid out with trees and ponds mixed among the normal sand traps found on all golf courses. The fairway grounds were completely bare of trees to avoid their root systems from growing into the water reservoir or the pumping equipment.
Hossein found the club house building on the map and then the reservoir building. After turning the map to align it with their location, he pointed to a cluster of buildings and a dirt road. “Those must be the maintenance sheds for their lawn equipment. Take that road, and drive between the buildings. It will lead us onto the golf course.”
Shir carefully fed gasoline to the idling motor, and slowly the van moved toward the buildings. They could hear the tires crunch as the wheels rolled across the gravel. As they neared the buildings, the coating of gravel thinned out, and soon they were driving on hard-packed dirt and grass.
The equipment storage buildings were white-painted wood structures. Once they had maneuvered the van between the buildings, they came to a hard grass road used by the course groundkeepers and the maintenance people for the Thames Water Ring Authority.
Hossein anger faded away. Off in the distance they could make out the aboveground building for the water reservoir. The only source of illumination was a single security light attached to the building.
Shir needed no orders from Hossein; he applied pressure to the gas pedal and drove the van down the road in the center of the golf course. Thick stands of oaks trees lined the outer edge of the course. Lights from the homes built around both sides of the fairway and Honor Oak Street lamps twinkled through the trees devoid of their leaves.
As they slowly drove down the hard-packed road, they passed small raised concrete platforms at regular intervals. Off to the side, their wide headlight beams briefly highlighted more platforms. Each was roughly five foot square; Hossein thought they might be other access pl
aces to the reservoir, but he was not sure how the complicated system was laid out underground.
Finally, they reach the center of the open fairways and the large access building. Shir brought the van to a stop once again and waited for more instructions. Hossein turned off his flashlight and started to fold the map he no longer needed. In the dark interior of the van, he had trouble determining the proper way to return it to the original neat, folded condition. After wasting precious seconds, he simply crushed it into a loose ball and tossed the map to the floor of the van.
“Drive around back to the loading dock. We will force open the overhead door at the dock and take the barrels into the building that way.”
Shir again fed gasoline to the engine and slowly steered the van around to the back of the building. They found the dock area. A single incandescent light bulb screwed into a porcelain fixture mounted to the overhead roof extending from the building provided a small measure of light. There was no deck area in front of the overhead door. The outer edge of the concrete floor of the building and the overhead door both met together. The floor must have been four feet above ground level. Off to the side of the dock was a set of concrete steps leading up to a steel walk-in door.
Shir turned the van around to align the rear doors with the loading dock. He shifted the transmission into reverse and eased the van back toward the dock. When he was about five feet away, he stopped the van. Hossein quickly hopped out and hurried back to open the rear doors of the panel van. Shir carefully backed the van until the open doors were almost touching the outer wall of the dock and building.
From his vantage point, Hossein could not see the problem, but Shir knew they would have to find a different way to unload the heavy barrels. When Shir did not turn off the motor, Hossein walked back to the passenger door and stuck his head inside the open window.
“What is the problem? We are hours behind schedule.”
Shir simply pointed over the barrels toward the open doors in the back of the van. The level of the building floor and the floor of the van did not meet. The building floor rose at least a full two and one-half feet higher than the bed of the van, leaving only about eighteen inches of open space in the van doorway to slide the barrels into the building. There was no way the wide barrels would pass through the narrow opening.
Hossein swore again as his anger returned. “Pull the van out far enough to allow room for us to lift the barrels up to the floor of the building.”
A minute later, both men were standing on the ground between the rear of the van and the closed overhead building door. The building floor was more than four feet above the ground. In addition, landscaping engineers included a trench drain system in the ground at the base of the dock to assist with groundwater drainage. It lowered their elevation another six inches. They would have to lift the heavy barrels from the van up to the building floor once they opened the door. With each barrel containing over three hundred pounds of the densely packed powder, this unforeseen problem was going to cause another change in their plan.
“We had the forklift in the building to load the barrels,” Shir said. “What do we do now?”
Hossein allows his anger to spill out. “How the hell do I know? Give me time to think.” He stepped out from between the van and the building to have a better view of the problem, but nothing was coming to him. He turned to look at the concrete steps. They were planning to force the walk-in door open and then open the overhead door from inside the building.
“Let’s force the door open. Maybe we can find some equipment inside the building to help lift the barrels up from the van.”
Forcing the old steel door open was relativity easy. Two swipes with their twenty-pound sledgehammer broke the deadbolt lock. The door flew open on its hinges and slammed loudly against the inside wall of the building.
Hossein used his flashlight to locate the light switch next to the doorframe. He flipped the small toggle lever, and overhead fluorescent light fixtures came to life to bathe the open dock area.
The dock was located on one end of the rectangular building. Inside they could see a tubular steel railing running down the center of the building. As they walked toward the railing, a huge pit dividing the center of the building and running the complete length of the building became visible. Down in the pit was the wide water pipe, nearly twenty-four inches in diameter. Each section of pipe was twenty feet in length and connected to the next section of pipe with large round steel flanges bolted together with eighteen heavy-duty machine bolts. Neoprene gaskets pressed tightly between the flanges kept water from leaking from the pipe joints. The flanges, painted blue, contrasted with the galvanized finish of the steel pipe.
In the middle of the exposed piping system was a huge Apex GC vertical inline centrifugal pump, capable of moving three hundred liters of water per second. The cast-iron pump, painted royal blue, was held in place within the piping system by two large flanges on each end, an inlet and discharge flange, and extended above the main pipe. The pump was in line with the water flow; the motor rested atop the pump. They could hear the pump running, but the perfectly balanced single-stage impeller was vibration free. Beneath the pump was a thick concrete reinforcement pad to support the weight of the pump and eliminate strain to the pipe and flanges.
Down in the pit on each end of the building, they could see where the pipe disappeared into the wall system. On their end near the dock, the pipe left the building to continue on to Brixton and connect into the Thames Water Ring Main system. On the far end of the building, they could see the pipe enter the underground storage tank. They could only see a very small part of the huge underground reservoir, but what was important was the large access hatch above the pipe. It was square, with a flange around the outer edge, and bolted down to the steel casing used for that part of the tank. Beyond the access hatch, the tank reverted to its famous brick construction. A heavy steel walkway with side railing crossed over the wide pit above the water pipe to provide a path to the access hatch. The railing had a built-in door near the access hatch that technicians could swing open on heavy-duty hinges to reach the access hatch cover.
Hossein looked throughout the entire lighted interior of the building. They would need to find a way to bring the barrels into the building and then dump the powder from the barrels into the storage tank through the access hatch. He looked at his watch. They were way behind schedule. Maybe Mohammad and his men would arrive soon to help with the work. Originally, his plan called for an entire weekend to do all of their work. Now they had only this night.
Chapter 50
London
Thursday, December 3, 2015
6:55 p.m.
Randy Fisher was moving around the War Room, trying to watch the operators’ activity and stay out of their way. Marion Bellwood was almost constantly on his cell phone updating his people back at Langley and receiving any new information gathered from their own sources. Occasionally the two men would meet in the center of the room and watch the images on the large center screen. The scene at Trafalgar Square was still organized chaos. Only recently, the number of dead had increased by one.
The screen reflected the rescue efforts; ambulances and other emergency vehicles still clogged the roads around Trafalgar Square. The number of police cars and vans had increased by large numbers in the short time since the explosion and gunfight. Bobbies now blocked off the entire area from pedestrians. The investigation would continue for many more hours tonight and over the next several days.
Constance Langhorne approached Randy and Marion holding several photographs. “Senator Fisher, we have snaps of the two terrorists in the van. No identification yet, but we’re almost certain they are not your two men.”
She handed the pictures to Randy as Marion look over his shoulder. Randy took one quick look and knew these were not either of the men from the Jubilee Bridges. The picture of the man inside the van simply showed him with closed e
yes. The photo of the other man outside the van was worse. His head appeared terribly distorted by the large-caliber bullet that impacted through the top of his skull. “The man killed inside the van is way too big, and the one outside has a mustache and longer hair. They look nothing like the men I tangled with last Saturday.”
He handed the photos of the dead men back to Constance. He looked into her eyes. “You need to tell your people to keep looking. We still have two more terrorists to locate.”
Constance simply nodded her head and turned toward the communication desk to contact DC Shepard, still at the scene. He needed the new information immediately. They were after two more terrorists.
“Damn,” Marion muttered. “I was hoping we were over this part of the mess.”
Randy shook his head. “All this effort to find these bastards and we’re still no closer to finding them or discovering whatever else they are planning.”
He stood, his hands clenched into fists resting on his hips, while he continued to stare at the center screen. What to do next?
A new thought suddenly entered his mind. “Marion, whatever happened to the list you sent to Langley? Were they able to interpret the words?”
Marion reached inside his inner suit coat pocket and removed a folded piece of paper. “I was coming here to give this to you, but I walked into the War Room just as the crap hit the fan in the square. My people translated the words. The list only contains other cities in England. They could not come up with any significance as to the meaning or their relationship.”
Randy took the offered sheet of paper and scanned the two columns. The paper detailed the English translation on the left side. The translators had listed the foreign words in another column across from the English translation.
He held the sheet of paper so Marion could see the words. “Why are some of the Arabic words the same in English?”
Marion flipped his right hand up to indicate he had no clear answer. “I asked that same question of my people. Some English words have no translation into Arabic.”
