Fear City

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Stop it!” Yousef said, pinching her nose. “Lie still or I shall squeeze this until you stop moving—forever!”

  She couldn’t breathe through her mouth and now her nose was cut off. Her face reddened and her eyes widened with panic as she began to suffocate. Death was the best solution to her meddling, but she was his sister. He was about to tell Yousef to cease when she stopped her struggles.

  He released her nose and air whistled through her nostrils as she struggled to regain her breath.

  “There,” Yousef said. “Now cooperate or next time I will not let go.”

  Hadya lay still as Kadir finished binding her arms and legs. By the time he ran out of tape she was virtually mummified. She half sat, half lay against the wall, mute and immobile. All she could do was glare up at him.

  “You are a very foolish girl, Hadya. You should have minded your own business and not tried to interfere with Allah’s will.”

  She shook her head and mumbled something incomprehensible behind the tape.

  “Today we strike a blow for jihad that will shake the world to its roots. All Islam shall praise us and the world will stand in awe of what we have done in the name of Allah. The world will recognize the greatness that is Allah.”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head again as tears spilled down her cheeks.

  “You worry now. You have doubts. That is because you lack true faith in Allah. But consider: Why do you think you fell as you were sneaking around out there? It was Allah. He foiled your treachery. He guides us, and later today all your doubts will vanish when you learn what we have done.”

  “She is in the way here,” Yousef said. “We need to move her.”

  “What about the kitchen?”

  Ayyad waved his hands. “No-no! The nitroglycerin is in there. Use the bathroom.”

  Perfect. It had no window and they could close the door on her. He and Salameh dragged her in and left her on the floor. Once the door was closed, Kadir turned to the others.

  “Let’s finish loading so we can find something to eat before sunrise.”

  The four of them bent to the task of moving the boxes. The urea nitrate in many of them was still a stinky paste, but it didn’t need to be dry to explode. The loading was hard work, considering that the weight of the nitrate alone totaled a ton and a half. Since the Econoline vans were each designed to transport a ton of cargo, this was no problem. With the nitrate divided evenly between them, they were burdened with fifteen hundred pounds each.

  Next came the nitroglycerin. The handling of that was left to Yousef. He carried the eight bottles one at a time from the refrigerator to the front room.

  “I still don’t know why we need so many,” Salameh said.

  Kadir noticed Yousef roll his eyes and understood: How many times had he explained this?

  “In theory, we need only one. When one bottle of nitroglycerin detonates, it will explode the other three. And they in turn will set off the urea compound and the hydrogen. All within the blink of an eye.”

  Salameh frowned. “So, by your own admission we need but one—”

  “Things can go wrong, even with Allah’s guidance. We will set four fuses in each truck, each leading to a different bottle. All we need is for one to reach its detonator. We can be sure that, with four fuses, no matter how bad our luck, one of them will succeed. Think of it as a race. The fuse that wins has a glorious victory because it renders the existence of the other three unnecessary.”

  Yousef had fashioned lead-nitrate detonators which he was now attaching to the nitroglycerin bottles. When he was finished he carried the bottles—again, one at a time—to the trucks, where he securely positioned them among the nitrate boxes, four to a truck.

  “Now the fuses,” Yousef said when he was done. “Make sure they are the right length.”

  3

  As soon as Kadir closed the bathroom door, leaving her in the musty dark, Hadya began working at the tape that bound her. He’d tied her wrists in front of her and, although her arms were bound to her sides, by flexing her spine to the limit she was able to force her hands to her lips. She hooked two fingers onto the edge of the tape binding her head and wriggled them beneath. When she had enough purchase, she worked the edge of the tape down over her upper lip.

  She gulped air, greedy for oxygen. Her nose had clogged from walking through the cold and she’d barely been able to breathe through it. Once she had her wind again, she worked the tape down to her chin. Straining against the bonds encircling her torso, she forced her wrists to her teeth and began gnawing at the tape. Soon she’d chewed a small tear.

  She clenched the edge of the tear between her front teeth and pulled. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, the tape began to part. Her neck muscles were cramping but she kept at it until she’d torn through that strip. She flopped back, prone, letting her muscles recoup, but only for a moment. Then she was hunched up again, using her teeth to unravel the tape from her wrists. Slow work because she could raise her wrists only so far.

  Finally her wrists came free and she flopped back again, momentarily exhausted. Her muscles weren’t used to such prolonged straining contractions.

  Her wrists might be free but were of little value with her arms still pinned to her sides. She forced her right arm up until her fingers found the nearest loop of tape. She began picking and pulling at it. She kept her nails short for her work in the bakery; if only they were just a little bit longer …

  As she worked she could hear them talking. She had approached the garage in a state of fear. Now, after listening to them talk of their plans, she became terrified.

  She had to get away … had to stop them.

  4

  “I wish we had remote detonators,” Kadir said as he remeasured a length of fuse.

  “I have used garage-door openers for bombs in Israel,” Yousef said. “But those were smaller. With bombs this size, the blast radius is wider than the range of the remote—especially with all the interference in a crowded city like New York. If you are close enough to set it off, you will die. You might as well stay behind the wheel and press the button. I am willing to be a martyr for jihad, but not yet. Is anyone here anxious for martyrdom?”

  Kadir shook his head and noticed Salameh and Ayyad doing the same.

  “Good,” Yousef said. “We shall all survive to dance on the rubble of the United Nations, on the smoking graves of Rabin and D’Amato and Boutros-Ghali.”

  The fuses were housed in clear plastic surgical tubing to reduce the smoke of their burning. Kadir and Ayyad had measured them and were remeasuring them to make sure that each was twenty feet long. They burned at a rate of an inch every two and a half seconds. A twenty-foot fuse gave them ten minutes to put themselves far enough away to escape the blast. Kadir had been raised in the metric system and, despite years in the U.S., he still had trouble thinking in terms of inches and feet.

  “You will have the hardest part, Kadir,” said Ayyad.

  Kadir nodded but did not look up.

  He needed no reminder. He felt his palms grow sweaty at the thought of what lay ahead at eleven thirty … stopping the van in the underpass … lighting the fuses … running as he’d never run before to put himself out of harm’s way …

  He could do it. He would do it.

  As he refocused on the present, Kadir realized that the fuse he held was short. He measured again.

  “This one is only nineteen feet,” he said. “Someone has been careless.”

  “Cut another,” Yousef said. “We have plenty.”

  Kadir tied the short fuse in knots and uncoiled a fresh length from the roll. He used the yardstick to measure out twenty feet exactly.

  “Where is the knife?”

  Salameh looked around, then handed him the large carving knife they had been using. As Kadir began cutting the fuse, the bathroom door burst open. Screaming at the top of her lungs, with her blue cloth coat flapping like wings, Hadya charged out on a direct path for the front door. Kadir leaped up
to block her way.

  “Stop!”

  Still clutching the knife he thrust his hands out and she ran into the blade. Both he and Hadya gasped in shock. Kadir released the knife and backed away a step. Hadya stood frozen, her stunned eyes staring at him, then down at the handle protruding from the left side of her chest. She turned, staggered in a small circle, then dropped to her knees. For a second or two she looked as if she might be praying, then she collapsed backward to face the ceiling.

  After a few heartbeats of stunned silence, the room broke into a bedlam of alarmed cries around Kadir, but he found himself without voice as he stared at his sister’s semi-supine form. He watched the wet red stain spreading from the blade as her blood soaked through the fabric of the abaya she wore under her coat.

  What have I done? The question echoed through his numb brain. What have I done?

  He dropped to Hadya’s side and shook her shoulder. “Hadya? Hadya?”

  But she made no response. Her eyes remained closed, her chest still.

  “She’s dead!” he cried. “Allah forgive me, I’ve killed her.”

  “It was an accident,” Yousef said. “We all saw that.”

  “But—”

  “This was God’s will,” Yousef said, pulling him to his feet. “You must not let this turn you from our holy course. Come outside with me. You need air.”

  Kadir stumbled out the door and the two of them stood in the frigid, snow-laced air—Kadir leaning against the wall, Yousef pacing back and forth before him. Neither said anything. All Kadir could think of was Hadya’s shocked expression after the knife plunged into her chest.

  “It is a terrible thing that has just happened to you,” Yousef said after a minute or so of pacing. “But it is a good thing for jihad.”

  The meaning filtered through slowly. “What?”

  “Your sister was a threat to jihad. She allowed herself to become tainted by America and its infidel ways.”

  Kadir could not argue with that. Hadn’t he seen her baring her head in public, putting herself on display as an object of lust for any man who passed?

  “She had treachery in her heart,” Yousef added. “Else why would she creep up on us like a thief in the night? Had she supported our cause she would have come forward like a proud woman of Islam and offered to help. Instead she plied you with sweets last night to gain your trust and then followed you.”

  “Followed?”

  “How else could she know you were here? Unless you told her.”

  Kadir shook his head. “No. Last night was the first I have spoken to her in … in years.”

  Had it been that long?

  He could not deny the truth in what Yousef was saying. Hadya’s behavior was proof that she had only treachery in her heart. And her treachery was like a dagger in his own heart. He supposed he should be glad it had ended in hers.

  Still … his sister …

  He saw the appalled faces of his parents, his brothers and other sisters, heard their silent question: What have you done, Kadir? What have you DONE?

  They must never know—

  Yousef startled him by gripping his shoulder. “Come. We must finish loading and take the vans to a safe place where we wait until it is time to move.”

  He allowed Yousef to lead him back inside. Kadir knew that, despite his superficial sympathy, Yousef was relieved, even glad that Hadya was dead. Knowing what she knew, she jeopardized the entire plan. Had Allah propelled her onto that carving knife? Kadir prayed so.

  Inside, Hadya’s body was gone, but a red smear led from the front room to the dark kitchen. He averted his gaze and went to help Yousef attach the fuses to the detonators. When that was done they moved the hydrogen canisters to the vans. In each vehicle they placed one on the left side and one on the right, midway along the bay, and secured a third before the rear doors.

  Once the doors were closed and locked, Yousef nodded and said, “Now we are done. Now we are ready to make history.”

  Kadir stepped back into the apartment to look at the blood smear on the floor. He did not know what to do about Hadya. He could not report her death to the police. The ensuing murder investigation would surely lead to him. And yet how could he leave her here to rot or be found by strangers—which would again involve the police and an investigation? He would have to return after his mission was completed and find a way to see to it that she had a proper Muslim burial.

  He turned out the lights and went back outside. Ayyad embraced him as he stepped out the door.

  “I will be praying for Allah to guide you all.”

  Then Ayyad got in his car and drove off. The plan was for him to go to his job at Allied Signal like any other day and stand ready should any of the three of them need assistance after the explosion.

  “It is time to go,” Yousef said. “If we get separated, you both know where to gather?”

  Kadir nodded. They had picked out a spot under an old train trestle in Brooklyn, not far from the Al-Farooq Mosque where they had spent so much time over the years.

  Salameh got in the minivan, Kadir in the Ryder van, and Yousef in the Hertz van. They started their engines and let Yousef lead the way.

  Kadir watched the garage recede in his rearview mirror. He had hoped never to see that building again. Now he was going to have to return and attend to his sister’s remains.

  Hadya … why didn’t you mind your business? You would be alive now.

  Shaking his head, he followed the others toward the city.

  5

  Jack checked his watch as he parked Ralph on Pamrapo, downstream from the vacant lot. Five thirty. He yawned. By all rights he should have the place to himself. He zipped up his jacket and grabbed the flashlight, then headed out through the snow.

  He took his time following one of the ruts because he didn’t want to use his flashlight until the last minute. Falling snow diffused the wan glow from the streetlights and allowed him to make out the garage as he rounded the bend. No lights on inside, which he took to be a good sign.

  Kadir and his friends do not live there. Just work there, Hadya had said.

  Let’s hope she’s right, Jack thought as he approached the front door. No storm door, just a door in the wall. He’d brought his lock-picking kit but tried the knob just in case they’d left it unlocked. No such luck.

  Well, he didn’t need light to pick a lock—everything went by feel. He slipped a tension bar into the keyhole, found a rake that fit on the second try, then went to work. Thirty seconds later he twisted the tension bar to retract the bolt and the door swung open.

  He stepped inside and said, “Hello? Anybody home?”

  Then the smell hit him. Someone had been mixing chemicals here. He’d taken basic chemistry as a required freshman science course in Rutgers but didn’t know an amine from an aldehyde, especially not by smell. All he knew was this didn’t smell good.

  No answer came, so he stepped farther inside and repeated his call. Still no answer. He turned on his flashlight and swept the beam around. The front room was empty but for a ratty couch, some empty cardboard boxes, and three oil drums.

  He checked the drums. Empty, but their inner surfaces were coated with some pasty stuff and the acrid reek rising from within burned his nostrils and made his eyes water.

  What the hell had they been brewing here?

  As he made a slow circuit of the room, his foot struck something: bunched-up clear plastic tubing with some sort of string inside. No idea what that was. But that reddish brown stain on the floor to his left …

  “Uh-oh.”

  He squatted and trained his beam on it. Damn, if that didn’t look like blood. And fairly fresh. It led off to the next room.

  A little falling-out between the jihadists?

  Jack stayed where he was and raised the beam until he spotted a supine figure on the floor at the end of the smear. Something protruded from its chest … and it seemed to be wearing a dress.

  A woman?

  Skirting the smear,
Jack hurried forward in a crouch. Yeah, that was a knife handle protruding from between her ribs. For an instant his vision blurred and he saw Bonita on her back with the arrow jutting from her little chest. Then it cleared and recognized the woman’s face—

  “Aw, shit! Shit!”

  The girl from the bakery, Kadir’s sister … Hadya. Who did this? Not her own broth—

  She moaned. Barely audible. Had there been any other sound louder than falling snow he might have missed it.

  Alive? How could she still be alive with what looked like a carving knife buried damn near to the hilt in her chest? Maybe because it was still there, the pressure of its presence reducing the bleeding?

  “Hadya? Hadya, are you—?” He caught himself. He’d been about to ask her if she was all right. “What happened?”

  Her eyelids parted maybe a quarter of an inch and she said, “Buh.” A tiny sound.

  He knelt beside her and lowered his head until his ear was an inch from her lips.

  “What?”

  “Bum.”

  “Bomb?”

  The tiniest nod.

  Yeah, he could believe that, what with the chemical stink and all.

  “Tuh … tuh bum.”

  “Two bombs?”

  Another nod.

  Jeez.

  “How big?”

  “Trks.”

  “Trucks? Two trucks?”

  Christ. Two trucks of explosive headed for the UN. He flashed the beam onto his watch face. At least he had six hours or so before the eleven thirty Rabin meeting. Time to find help for this gal and then get the word to Burkes.

  “I’m going to go find a phone and call for help,” he told her.

  He didn’t know the address but he’d find one, or tell the EMTs how to get here. But no way could he be here when they arrived.

  He gave her shoulder what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. “You’re gonna be all right. Just hang on until—”