by Terry Toler
“Let’s move,” I said.
Going down the stairway, we didn’t encounter any smoke until the fourth floor. Rather than turn back, we kept forging our way down along with a number of guests. So far, everyone seemed to have the same idea as us and kept plodding downward. The pace was slow. Women were clutching children. Some elderly were struggling with the stairs. Jamie winced with each step and let out an occasional cry of pain, but matched my pace as I went around everyone I could, taking two or three steps at time when possible.
As we neared the bottom, a familiar smell stung my nose and the chemicals from the bomb burned my eyes. Obviously made with the same materials as the one before. This time, though, it went off in the lobby of a hotel. I could only hope and pray it wasn’t crowded. I wondered about the manager and the sweet young girl at the desk. I hoped they were off today or in one of the back offices.
When we reached the first floor, I decided to head for the parking garage. That meant we had to go by the lobby, but it seemed like the best idea. Weaver might be down there, but Jamie and I were both armed, and he knew that. My guess was that he’d call for backup and then tend to the injured. That would buy us some time.
I wasn’t prepared for what we saw.
The lobby was unrecognizable. Hard to believe it was ever a five-star hotel. The huge chandelier that graced the entrance, now laid in a heap on the floor. Several people were crushed underneath it. Bodies were strewn everywhere. Some missing arms and legs. Most of the survivors standing or walking around had noticeable injuries. Cuts. Burns. Ripping of skin where steel ball bearings and nails had penetrated and left their heinous marks.
In a situation like that, called the fog of war, most everyone was in a daze. Moving in slow motion. Like zombies. In a state of shock. Dozens were clearly dead or dying. Many more injured. Some critically. First responders hadn’t yet arrived. I desperately wanted to help them, but there was nothing we could do. Jamie and I had to get out of there.
We had two more days of this. Finding the car bombs and the dirty bombs were our top priority. If we weren’t successful, then what we were seeing in the hotel lobby would pale in comparison to the destruction Pok could unleash on the city.
A quick glance around, and I didn’t see Weaver and wasn’t going to waste time looking any further. We quickly got away from the carnage to the parking garage. When we exited into the fresh air, I let out a violent cough to clear my lungs. The stench of bomb making residue and burning flesh would take longer to get out of my nostrils.
The valet workers had left their posts. Thankfully. I planned to steal a car but hoped not to do it at gunpoint. The box with the keys was locked so I busted it open using the butt of the gun. Various sets of keys hung on hooks inside the box. I rifled through and looked for a set from a rental car company. Meaning, it didn’t have a ring of house or office keys. I’d take any car but preferred a rental. Adding grand theft auto to my list of crimes was the least of my worries, but I didn’t want a family or couple to be left stranded without their car, considering what had happened. A rental car company could bring a replacement car in a few hours.
A black SUV with tinted windows was near the exit. Perfect for a getaway. There wasn’t time to search through all the keys to find that one, though. When I hit the fob from the one chosen, a two-door compact car beeped. One of the many “green” cars people drove in London. It’d have to do. At least it was a vehicle, and we were out of time. If traffic were bad before, I could imagine it being worse a few minutes from now, when news of the bombing hit the airwaves. Weaver might even set a roadblock for us.
We sped out of the garage. No doubt the garage security cameras captured our faces as we left. Nothing I could do about that, so we didn’t even try to hide from them. I’m sure we were already on camera breaking into the box.
“What’s your plan?” Jamie asked in her calm and steady operational voice. She could’ve been asking when we were going to the grocery store.
“I need a place to work. I have to find where the car bombs are going off tomorrow. Then find the dirty bomb. Then I have to find Pok’s location in Iran so Brad can send a cruise missile his way.”
“That’s all?” Jamie said sarcastically.
“Get my laptop out of my backpack, please. Pull up the security cameras and find me a route out of here. We need to get out of London and away from the bloody cameras.”
I don’t know why I used an English slang term like bloody. It just came out of my mouth like a burp.
Jamie was amazing. She found our location on the laptop right away and directed me around the traffic that was starting to pile up.
“I know of a safehouse,” Jamie said. “I used it when I was on the mission to London. I needed to hide out for a few days. You can do your work there.”
“Are we allowed to use CIA assets?”
“I don’t see why not. Brad didn’t say we couldn’t. He wants us to find the bombs. That’s the best place to do it. When I was there, it wasn’t manned. Hopefully, no one’s there, and we can hunker down.”
A safehouse was much better than a sleazy hotel. It’d have supplies. Guns. A secure internet and phone connection. Weaver would have no way of knowing about it. It was called a safehouse for a reason. Generally, that’s the safest place we could be in a crisis.
“Do you remember how to get there?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“You have a great memory.”
“That, and it was in the CIA briefing file I read on the plane. I memorized the directions.”
“I sure do love you.”
This was what we trained for. Things were working out better than expected. I wouldn’t breathe easy until we were out of London. So many security cameras made it next to impossible to hide. Even then, we’d have to come back to London at some point. It occurred to me that we couldn’t even go to the airport and get on a plane now. That’s how compromised we were. Hopefully, Weaver wouldn’t plaster our images on television, totally blowing our cover.
What a mess.
Our skills in tradecraft would be tested to their limits.
A gnawing feeling consumed me. Things were going to get worse before they got better.
25
Day Four
Iran
If Alex Halee were as good a hacker as he claimed, he’d walk into Pok’s cyber trap. Probably already had. While Pok had no way to verify it, he was counting on Halee hacking into the London security camera system and following the breadcrumbs he left for him all the way to the cyber lab in Iran. All Halee had to do was follow the camera feed through the maze of cyber space until he found Pok’s cyber lab. Then he’d have to go through the complicated work of accessing Pok’s cameras on his computers.
Something difficult to do. Halee was the only other person alive who could do it, and Pok was certain he would try. So, he made it easier for him. Left off safeguards and firewalls that would’ve prevented it. Didn’t send Halee on too many wild goose chases looking for his location. Left little subtle clues along the way.
Would Halee be suspicious that he could find Pok that easily? Perhaps. But Alex Halee had always been overconfident in his own abilities and underestimated Pok’s. Halee’s ego wouldn’t let him think the success was anything short of his own brilliance. Or at least that was what he was counting on.
Pok adjusted the whiteboard on the wall behind his desk so it would be right in the line of the camera on his computer. An eerie feeling came over him as he wondered if his arch enemy was watching his every move. Pok could only hope he was.
He turned his attention to the information on the whiteboard. In clear display were the time, date, and location of today’s car bombing. Like a piece of cheese in a mousetrap. Halee wouldn’t resist taking the bait.
Day Four. Saturday.
Car bombing.
4:05 London time.
London Bridge.
All Halee had to do was act on it. Then Pok would know Halee was watching him. When the bombe
r arrived at London Bridge at that exact time, Halee would be ecstatic. Another bombing had been averted. Halee would think he’d won. That his intelligence was correct. Tomorrow, he’d be looking for the same thing. Information on the time and place of the dirty bomb.
Pok regretted the fact that he had to double cross Niazi to make his plan work. Something he did with tremendous trepidation. Niazi would be furious if Halee was somehow able to stop the car bombing. If Niazi found out Pok had fed him the information, he was as good as dead. Which was why his assistant, Heo Jin Su, was the only other person in Pok’s office. One of only a handful of men he brought with him from North Korea—the only one he trusted with such sensitive information.
Heo and Pok grew up together in the upper caste of North Korean influence. The privilege gave them access to their parent’s computers in their high school years. At first, they dabbled in hacking and learned how to infiltrate email systems just for fun. Back when very few people even had emails, and the systems weren’t sophisticated at all. In college, they taught themselves how to write code from information they stole off the internet. Their mischievous pranks turned into petty crimes like changing grades and pilfering North Korean currency.
As their abilities became more refined, they became more brazen. When they were caught in the more serious crime of hacking into government accounts, the only thing that saved them from a life of hard labor in a prison camp was an investigator who took an interest in how they pulled off such a computer attack. When they showed him their vast skills and how they could be used for cyberwarfare, they were offered a job for leniency. They both took the offer, and North Korea’s cyber warfare organization was formed.
Pok rose higher through the ranks more quickly than Heo, and his skills were more sophisticated. However, Pok managed to bring Heo with him every step of the way. Now they were in Iran together about to pull off the most ambitious plan to date. The launching of a dirty bomb at a London Royal wedding. If everything went as planned, Halee would get the blame and no one would ever know they were involved.
That all depended on one thing. Was Halee watching them?
Pok could only assume he was.
He adjusted his hair and began going over today’s car bombing with Heo. They had to make the presentation seem believable. This exercise was nothing more than an acting job for Halee’s benefit. If Halee showed up at the site of the car bombing at the time on the whiteboard, Pok would know he succeeded in hacking into his lab and was indeed watching him.
If confirmed, then the trap for tomorrow was set.
***
CIA safehouse
Twickenham England
9:09 a.m.
The safehouse had been a good call on Jamie’s part. The location was secluded, and the house was full of food, clothing of all colors and sizes, weapons from small handguns to shoulder fired missiles, a hot shower, a king-sized bed, and most importantly, high-speed, secure internet.
From the kitchen table, I was able to monitor Pok and his cyber lab the entire night. A few minutes before, Pok and another man had gone over the plans for today’s car bombings. I was never able to secure audio, but what I could see was chilling enough.
Pok intended to explode a car bomb on London bridge at five after four that afternoon, London time.
Before all the attacks had targeted me. Obviously, Pok had given up on that plan. Which made sense. How could he maneuver a car through London streets to a location and get close enough to me? Further complicated by the fact that I had disappeared and was no longer staying at the hotel.
Of course, Pok already knew that. No one would be able to stay there after the bomb ripped through the lobby.
There were a lot of things I assumed Pok knew. He had to know that I figured out he was watching me. Then I set the trap for his vest bomber in the industrial park complex. That much was obvious, and Pok had likely seen the entire thing on camera. That’s why he sent the second bomber into the hotel. The ultimate retaliation. He knew there would be nothing I could do to stop it, and he never even gave me the chance.
That thought sent a flood of guilt through me like a lightning strike. The images from the carnage in the lobby were still playing in my mind like a movie and made me cringe every time I thought of them.
Jamie told me I shouldn’t feel guilty. Curly had tried to prepare us for the fact that innocent people were going to die, and we couldn’t prevent it.
Blame is lame, he used to say. In other words, it’ll debilitate you. Blame would keep me from acting effectively and rationally the next time. If it got a stronghold, blame would make me wash out of the CIA altogether. Many a career had been short circuited because an officer was unable to handle the emotional turmoil caused from killing people and seeing innocent people killed.
“The only person to blame is the person who exploded the bomb,” Jamie had reminded me before she went to bed the night before.
“And Pok, who planned it,” I added.
So, overnight, I fought back the urge to feel sorry for myself and kept reminding myself it wasn’t my fault.
Curly addressed that in our training as well. Feeling sorry for yourself makes you a sorry person. Of no use to anyone.
He was right. I had to snap out of it. We were in the middle of a war. There were casualties. I was still standing. So was Jamie. Many people had already been saved because of my actions. Many more would be saved if I could figure out a way to stop the car bombing today.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t think of a way to do that. Which was probably why I was feeling such a range of emotions. What good did it do to have the information if I couldn’t do anything about it?
When the sun began to rise, so did my emotional outlook. When Jamie woke up, my spirits improved twofold. She made both of us a much-needed cup of coffee.
“Are you feeling better?” I asked her as she sat down at the kitchen table across from me.
“Much better,” she said.
The bandages were off her hands, and she was actually holding the coffee cup fairly easily in one hand with the other resting against the side of it. The redness in her hands and fingers was almost gone. One layer of gauze was still wrapped around her knee, but she propped her foot up on the chair without grimacing, so it appeared that even her knee was feeling better.
“I need to talk to you about the plan of action for today,” I said.
“I’m ready.”
I knew what she meant. Not just ready to hear the plan, but ready to go execute it. I’d thought about that all night. I didn’t want to put her in harm’s way again until she was fully healed of her injuries.
“No, Jamie,” I said matter-of-factly. “You need to stay here. Get completely one-hundred percent for tomorrow.”
“Not going to happen. I’m going with you. I’ll be fine.”
Now was not the time to have that argument, so I didn’t respond. I didn’t even have a plan yet. If I didn’t know what I was going to do, I certainly didn’t know whether she would be able to help or not. She certainly could drive a getaway car. Shoot a gun. Or provide moral support.
Jamie took her foot off the chair and set it back down on the floor and then propped her elbows on the table and leaned toward me. I could see in her eyes that she was mentally ready for a fight. Even though she wasn’t a morning person, she was ready to go kill some bad guys. I was sure the bomber at the hotel had a big impact on her emotionally as well, and she wanted revenge as much as I did.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she said.
“This is day four.”
“Right. If I remember correctly, day four is car bombings.”
“That’s correct. I know where and at what time the car bombing is going to take place today.”
Her eyes widened and her mouth contorted to the side in confusion, so I explained.
“As you know, I hacked into the London security camera system yesterday. Just like Pok did. I followed the link back to his cyber lab. That’s h
ow I tracked the vest bomber.”
Jamie already knew all this, but for some reason I felt the need to remind her. If only for my benefit. So, my train of thought was sequential. I liked sharing the plan from the beginning, even if it wasn’t fully formed.
“I’m following you.”
“Overnight, I saw Pok in his office going over the plan with one of his men.”
“Really? Right in front of the cameras?”
“I know! It was almost too easy.”
“Maybe it was.”
“No. Pok’s always underestimated me. He thinks he’s better than me and that I don’t have the skills he has. Pok probably thinks I would try to find him by tracing the feed, but I doubt he thinks I would be successful. In reality, I’m probably the only person in the world who could actually do it.”
“So, what’s his plan?”
“He’s going to strike London Bridge just after four o’clock, today.”
“If you show up on London Bridge at four o’clock, isn’t he going to know you’ve hacked into the cameras?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. I was too busy trying to figure out how to stop the bombing.”
That thought gave me pause. The information on the car bombing was a gold mine of intelligence. I still didn’t know when and where they were going to explode the dirty bomb. If the car bomb information was correct, then I might be able to get the same information tomorrow. I needed to make sure Pok didn’t know that I knew his plans ahead of time. We had to make it look like we happened upon the attack.
“That’s a whole other problem in and of itself. How will we stop the car bomb? It’s not like a person with a knife or even a vest bomber. A car is mobile.”
“I’ve been thinking about that too. There’s a shoulder missile in there.”
It sounded as stupid when I said it as when I thought of it in the middle of the night.
“You’re going to shoot a missile on a crowded bridge in downtown London?”
“No. I’m just spitballing here. I told you I don’t have a plan. That’s why I’m talking to you about it.”
Jamie looked past me like she was deep in thought.
