The Russian Affair

by Adrian D'hage

  ‘Hafiz, I have them. There!’ Khan exclaimed excitedly. ‘You can see them both . . . on the edge of the clearing near the riverbank.’

  Sayem followed Khan’s indication and then nodded. ‘Got them,’ he said, focusing on the corroded metal cylinders. He lowered his binoculars, formulating a plan to get in without disturbing either the villagers or the Taliban who he knew were operating in the area.

  ‘The problem is, Rustam, we have to get across the Kunar River, and right now, it’s in flood,’ said Sayem, once again scanning the green pastures in the valley far below. In stark contrast to the steep cliffs of the surrounding mountains, the fields and occasional tall trees were lush and green beside the Landai Sin River foaming over a rocky bed. From there, the river surged toward its confluence with the Kunar, before raging south to join the Kabul River near the city of Jalalabad.

  ‘The bridge on the Jalalabad Road?’ suggested Khan.

  ‘Probably the only way across,’ agreed Sayem. ‘There’s a ravine down there close to the road where we can hole up for the night, and we’ll move just before dawn.’ Sayem gave a low whistle, signalling to the rest of his squad that it was time to move. It would, he knew, be well past sunset by the time they reached the road.

  Unseen by either Sayem or Khan, a Taliban patrol was also in the area, moving toward them from Arandu, on the Pakistan side of the border.

  A faint tinge of purple heralded the dawn, and Sayem led his men quietly out of their hide. He stopped at the edge of the road and waited. Satisfied, he moved on and then stopped again, motioning for Khan to come forward. ‘Tell them to fucking spread out,’ he hissed. ‘They’re right up each other’s ass. One mortar round and it will wipe out the lot of them!’ Sayem shook his head. Many of them were new recruits, but Khan should have known better. Chastened, Khan went back, motioning with his arms for more distance between his men.

  Sayem pressed on toward the narrow bridge that crossed the Kunar. He stopped 50 metres from it and again he motioned to Khan.

  ‘Put two men up there on that small ridge overlooking the bridge,’ he whispered. ‘Tell them they are to cover our crossing. When we get to the other side, put two more men on that rocky projection on the far side, and they are to cover the last two.’

  Once the covering team was in position, Sayem led the way toward the bridge. Pausing again, he surveyed the mountains on the far side and then pressed forward onto the flimsy structure. He had barely gone ten paces when a burst of AK-47 fire ricocheted off the metal guard rails. Sayem hit the wooden planks, rolled and fired instinctively. His two cover men, observing where the shots had come from, took aim and raked the area on the other side of the river. The Taliban’s screams echoed around the mountains. Sayem rose and doubled across the bridge, firing as he went.

  ‘Take cover!’ Sayem yelled and he rolled into a ditch beside the road. The early morning peace was shattered with continual bursts of AK-47 fire. ‘It’s coming from near the generators!’ he shouted as more 7.62-millimetre bullets ricocheted off the rocks. Sayem fired again and the area near the generators fell silent. He crept forward, motioning his men to cover him, when suddenly two figures appeared, hands above their heads. Even at a distance, Sayem could see their blood-stained body shirts and one of them was staggering. Neither was carrying a weapon, but wary that this might constitute a trap, with more Taliban concealed in the foothills, Sayem yelled to his number two. ‘Rustam! Get them all on this side and then clear that ridge!’ he yelled as first one, and then the second Taliban fighter collapsed, barely 100 metres in front of his position.

  ‘There was just the two of them, Hafiz.’ Khan was breathing heavily from his clearing patrol on the ridge.

  ‘Good. We will leave a lesson that will make any more of them think twice.’ Sayem made his way to where the two Taliban fighters were lying in pools of blood, writhing in agony, both with multiple gunshot wounds. ‘These are also Infidel!’ he shouted to his young followers, ‘and Allah has commanded they will die!’ Sayem drew a long knife from underneath his tunic, reached down and pulled the first of the terrified Taliban fighters into a sitting position.

  ‘Allahu Akbar! God is great!’ Sayem’s bloodcurdling cry echoed around the foothills of the Hindu Kush, only to be replaced by the Taliban fighter’s screams as Sayem slit his throat. Sayem turned and hauled the remaining fighter up by his hair.

  ‘Please! Please! I will join you!’ the second fighter begged. Sayem spat in his face and drove his knife deep into the Taliban fighter’s chest, twisting it to the rhythm of his screaming struggle until he fell to the ground.

  ‘String them up from those trees! Allahu Akbar! God is great!’

  The Taliban fighters dealt with, Sayem led the way forward again, toward the corroded Soviet generators on the riverbank.

  ‘Post four sentries,’ Sayem ordered Khan. ‘Two covering the village, one covering the bridge behind us, and the other covering the foothills to the north.’ Once his men were in position, Sayem and Khan and the two remaining fighters moved forward to inspect the rusted generators. Sayem pulled the rough diagram he’d been given from beneath his tunic and lined it up with the first corroded cylinder.

  ‘That’s the pressure relief device,’ he said, pointing toward a protruding valve at one end. ‘So . . . the heat source . . . the strontium-90 stretches from the middle to the other end. Cut it here,’ he ordered, indicating a point a third of the way from the valve.

  The young ISIS recruit attacked the crusted aluminium outer casing with youthful enthusiasm, and within minutes, one end of the generator fell to the ground, exposing the strontium-90 heat core.

  ‘Let’s get it out,’ Sayem ordered. Suddenly the still of the early morning was broken by the unmistakable, albeit distant sound of approaching helicopters.

  ‘Hurry! Cut the other one. The Infidel! He is coming!’

  The young ISIS fighter attacked the second rusted generator with a frenzy, jerking the hacksaw free each time it jammed in the aluminium.

  ‘Hurry!’ Sayem urged the young fighter to cut faster, but over the years the aluminium had corroded and the hacksaw kept jamming in the aluminium oxide; but at last, the casing succumbed, leaving the strontium-90 exposed.

  Sayem prised the radioactive heat source from the multi-foil insulation and as he had done with the source from the other generator, he wrapped it in the lead blanket, unaware that the whole time the strontium-90 had been emitting deadly beta rays.

  ‘We move. Now!’ Sayem ordered. The sound of the approaching helicopters was growing louder. As the dawn broke, Sayem and his men doubled toward the border with Pakistan, barely 500 metres away. Sticking with the tree line above the cultivated fields near the river, Sayem stayed well clear of the road, wary of the Infidel’s aircraft. A further 500 metres over the border, they reached the village of Arandu and Sayem held up his hand for his men to go to ground. ‘Rustam, the rendezvous is that house up ahead,’ he said, indicating a stone hut on the side of the ridge. ‘Tell the two with the cargo to come with me. Wait here and stay under cover.’

  Sayem crept forward with the two fighters behind him carrying the radioactive packages. There was no sign of life around the flat-roofed stone hut but suddenly Sayem froze.

  ‘Don’t move!’ The gravelly order was given in Sayem’s native Pashto. ‘Place your weapons on the ground. Now move away from them, slowly!’

  A young bearded fighter armed with an AK-47 appeared from behind a large cedar tree. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

  Dressed in the traditional loose trousers and body shirt, there was nothing to indicate the fighter’s allegiance, but given his proximity to the rendezvous, Sayem chanced his arm.

  ‘We are here for the wedding.’ It was code for the attacks on the Infidel in their major cities. ‘We have brought the gifts.’

  The fighter relaxed. ‘Bring the rest of your men,’ he said. ‘The Infidel is not far away.’

  Down the ridge and across the border to the west, Chief Petty O
fficer Rudy Kennedy and his men had roped into their landing zone and Kennedy deployed his SEAL team to cover the clearing on the edge of the river. He was joined by his number two, Petty Officer Martinez, and together they scanned the area with their binoculars.

  ‘Shit! Do you see what I’m seeing, Diego?’ Kennedy kept his voice low, but his anger was palpable. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, those generators have been cut in two. They’ve beaten us to it!’

  Kennedy reached for his handset. After roping in Kennedy’s SEAL team, the Black Hawk and Apache had gained height and stood off, but they remained on station, just in case.

  ‘Alley Cat Five, Gangster Two, this is Hopi One Five. I’ll confirm shortly, but it looks as if the bearded ones have beaten us to it. Gangster Two, cover us, we’re moving in on the target now.’

  ‘Gangster Two, acknowledged out.’

  Kennedy led half his team across the clearing and then signalled for the other four to cross. As soon as they were on the ground, he and Martinez inspected the looted generators.

  ‘Don’t touch them,’ said Kennedy. ‘There might be traces of fuel.’ He whistled softly for his men to move in closer. ‘Listen up. They’ve beaten us to it, but they can’t be far away. There are something like 30 huts between here and the border, and we’ll need to search them one by one. Let’s move it.’

  The snow on the mountains above the village of Mangwal was getting heavier. General Waheeb knew it would soon be time to relocate, but he fired up his satellite laptop for any news of his fighters. Logging into the ISIS Dark Web portal, Waheeb nodded with satisfaction. The Arandu team had reported capture of the radioactive sources. He quickly scanned through the report, ignoring the concerns over a number of the men who were vomiting. The strontium-90 sources had been delivered to Waheeb’s contact in Arandu across the border in Pakistan, and they were now on their way to Orangi Town, one of the poorest slums in the world, in the north-west quadrant of Pakistan’s port city of Karachi. In an instant though, Waheeb’s satisfaction turned to anger. The Arandu team had received a transmission from the Nangamal team, who reported that they had been pinned down under heavy attack from a 150-strong Taliban force. The Infidel’s helicopters were reported approaching from the east when the transmission ceased and all attempts to contact the patrol had since proved fruitless. Insha’Allah, they were still alive, but Waheeb knew that was very unlikely.

  If just two strontium-90 sources had been retrieved, it was likely he would only be able to strike two of his original targets. Waheeb considered his options.

  Out of New York, London, Paris and Sydney, New York was the most important, and America had to be hit, so on that basis alone, and regardless of security, port movements would have to be risked because New York was priority one. Of the other three, Paris was already under siege and on an almost continuous heightened state of alert with the airfields, ports and even the streets under constant surveillance. Therefore, Waheeb reasoned, it might be a more difficult area to operate in. In addition, the Parisians had remained stoic in the face of the several attacks he had coordinated and they were therefore likely to be a harder target in which to create hysteria. Waheeb had applauded the 130 deaths from the shooting and grenade attacks at the concert in the Bataclan and the 86 deaths on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, but those attacks appeared to have made little difference to the French resolve.

  London, he thought, was similarly on edge. The 7 July bombings on underground trains near Edgware Road, Kings Cross and Liverpool Street stations and the murder of Lee Rigby near the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich might be old news, but since then there had been a string of attacks: on Westminster Bridge where a car had mown down defenceless civilians; at the Borough Markets and London Bridge when a van had ploughed into a crowd; and at the Manchester Arena where ISIS had claimed responsibility for a deadly explosion after the American star, Ariana Grande, had finished performing. If that city was chosen, Waheeb had planned to consign the shipping container with the radioactive material to the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk. Felixstowe, his research had revealed, was the busiest port in the United Kingdom, handling over 40 per cent of the nation’s shipping containers. The busier the port, he reasoned, the less chance of detection, and with Felixstowe handling over four million containers in a year, the strontium-90 package might well get through. Against that was the heightened alert around the city of London where heavily armed police patrolled the airports, stations and streets, and that left Sydney.

  Waheeb pondered the target. The Australians had a reputation for being laid back, but he knew from bitter experience that when they were on operations, their soldiers were amongst the most professional in the world, and the same could be said for their police forces. In favour of Sydney was Port Botany. It handled over two million containers a year, and although not as big as Felixstowe, given the percentage of containers inspected, Sydney still rated well. In addition, the city had the largest economy in Australia and housed the country’s stock exchange and the Reserve Bank. The CBD, he knew, was concentrated in a tight area around the harbour, and if he could render the city even partially radioactive, it would result in severe disruption to the country’s economy. Tourism alone would be decimated for a very long time. In addition, the Australians had a reputation of being involved in every war the Great Infidel of the United States had prosecuted. Waheeb mentally ticked them off. World War One, the Russian Civil War of 1918–19, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq, and current operations against the Caliphate. North of a largely Christian Australia, in the Philippines, where Waheeb knew ISIS was making gains, a video had been released from the southern city of Marawi. Emanating from the Islamic State’s Al-Hayat Media Centre, it featured wonderful battle footage and sequences of Islamic fighters demonstrating against the hated Christianity. They had successfully set fire to a church and were pictured smashing a crucifix and statues of Mary and ripping up pictures of Pope Francis. More importantly, the video had taken aim at the Taghut – the Infidel government of the Philippines president Duterte – and Australia: ‘After the soldiers of the Taghut were left embarrassed and demoralised, Duterte ran to his masters, the defenders of the cross – America – along with their regional guard dog, Australia, and begged them for help.’ It was a video of which Waheeb thoroughly approved. His mind made up, Waheeb listed Sydney as the next priority.

  General Waheeb left a message in the Dark Web portal for Dawud Sayyaf, the Arandu courier tasked with delivering the packages to Karachi. One of the strontium sources was to be shipped to the Maher Terminal in New York and on to a large warehouse complex close to the port. The second was to be consigned to Port Botany in Australia, and on to a warehouse in the Sydney suburb of Bankstown.

  Waheeb then turned his attention to the delivery of the dirty bombs. Given the two targets, should it be an aerial bomb, delivered from a light plane, or a truck bomb, he wondered. Waheeb pulled up the Visual Flight Rules terminal area chart for Manhattan on the internet. It was clear that much of the southern area of Manhattan was part of the controlled airspace for LaGuardia Airport, a space that rose from the surface to 7000 feet in the air. The class B airspace over downtown Manhattan had attractive possibilities. Once there, his pilot could plot his own course, but a pilot would still need permission from air traffic control to enter. Given 9/11, a light plane without a very valid reason to be in the area would immediately invite investigation. Delivering a bomb by light plane over New York was, Waheeb decided, too risky.

  Looking for inspiration, Waheeb pulled up details of the Timothy McVeigh bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma in 1995. He pondered the photographs of utter devastation and smiled. A third of the nine-storey building had been entirely destroyed and the rest was in ruins. And 168 of the Infidel had been killed by one of their own, and almost 700 had been injured, some critically. Waheeb wondered how much explosive had been used. Over 300 other buildings had been destroyed or damaged along with nearly 100 cars. The bo
mb, Waheeb knew, had been made from fertiliser containing ammonium nitrate. In his previous research, Waheeb had discovered that ammonium nitrate was commonly used to fertilise cornfields, and if purchased with the right credentials, it would not likely raise any suspicions. With an eye for long-range planning, Waheeb had arranged for ISIS members in Illinois to purchase 50 acres of farmland near Dillon Township, to the west of Bloomington. It had been over 20 years since the Oklahoma bombing, and Waheeb had predicted that wholesalers would not be as vigilant as they were immediately after the attack. Waheeb’s chief bombmaker in America, Hasan Atef, had detailed instructions on how to manufacture the fertiliser bomb, and Waheeb knew that nitromethane would also be needed. It was a common fuel in high-performance motor sport, and Waheeb reasoned that a modest purchase of three US 55-gallon drums could be explained by his crew posing as bike racers. Tovex, a form of dynamite that was in very wide use, would also be needed, but Waheeb felt confident that the relatively small amount they required could be stolen and perhaps it might not be missed for days or even weeks.

  Satisfied with his plans for New York, General Waheeb turned his attention to the Australian cell. He knew they had recruited a young, disaffected Muslim pilot, but would it be possible, he wondered, to deliver a radioactive bomb over Australia’s largest city?

  The Australian government had thoughtfully provided OnTrack, which gave specific instructions for flight plans for private aircraft inbound and outbound from Bankstown Airport, the city’s second busiest after Mascot. Waheeb pulled up OnTrack on his computer and selected ‘Bankstown Outbound’, followed by ‘Victor 1 South, Visual Flight Rules Coastal’. The allowable route, Waheeb noted, extended east of the Sydney coast from Jibbon Head in the Royal National Park, north across the entrance to Botany Bay to Cape Banks on the bay’s northern headland. From there, the route continued north to the Long Bay headland, where the Infidel had one of his gaols, past a lighthouse called Macquarie and on to Watsons Bay. The frequency, he noted, was 120.8, and his pilot would need to maintain an altitude of 500 feet above the ocean, which was perfect.