bomb’s ignition source. The detonator was the key because the FBI would trace it from the manufacturer in Germany to a purchaser in the Middle East. At that point the government would start looking at all the usual suspects. And in all the wrong places.
They would see the whole thing, the distraction in New York, and the real attack in D.C., as inspired by Middle Eastern terrorists, but this time they were using professional mercenaries to carry out the attacks. It all fit. Frustrated by the increasing security and unable to get their own people into position in the United States, the Islamic radicals now would be seen as hiring Western mercenaries who would have less difficulty gaining access and traveling in America.
It was the cover that the Old Weatherman needed, not for himself, but for the president, who knew nothing, but who would now have a free hand to fill all nine positions on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Decapitate the executive branch and the effect would be short term, if at all-but only until the next election. This was true of Congress as well. The present corrupt system of money and politics, of a Washington aristocracy utterly out of touch with the people they ruled-the fiction of a representative republic that no longer existed was far too resilient to bring down in this way, and the Old Weatherman knew it.
But there was one institution of the federal government for which this was not true-the Supreme Court. Because of the lifetime tenure conferred on members of the high court, and the fact that these nine justices held the final word on most if not all of the social and economic controversies confronting the country, it was the one controlling pressure point that could alter the long-term direction of America.
Franklin Roosevelt had realized this during the dark days of the Depression when he contemplated packing the court with additional members all of his own choosing. But politics conspired against him and he dropped the idea.
The court had been badly divided now for years. Most of the controversial decisions depended for their legitimacy on razor-thin five-to-four votes with too many of the decisions going the wrong way. In the eyes of the Old Weatherman, the national economy was dictated by five members of the Federal Reserve Board, none of whom were elected by anyone, with political and social policy determined not by the rule of nine, but by a tyranny of one, a single deciding swing vote on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The court was divided along partisan lines in the same way the nation was. Aging liberal members of the court had been required to survive and to defer their retirement until a like-minded president was in the White House in order to preserve their numbers on the court. Conservative members would now be required to do the same, waiting for the next conservative president to retake the White House.
But most of the conservative members of the court were young and would be in place for decades. And while liberals now had their chance to retire, this would not change the balance of power on the court. The only exception to this waiting game was death, and for the Old Weatherman this happened all too infrequently to alter the formula of justice. He was tired of waiting.
He realized that the opportunity for real change was at hand. A well-timed precision attack on the court, taking out all nine members in a single stroke, would transform the course of history in ways that even the most wide- eyed radical of the sixties could never have dreamed of.
The incumbent president would be able to fill all nine seats on the court at a single stroke, and conservatives in the Senate would be powerless to stop him. The time to strike was now.
The Old Weatherman started coughing, covered his mouth, then looked at his hand and saw blood. It was getting worse. When he’d declined the radiation and the chemotherapy, the doctors had warned him that he wouldn’t have long. And for that he was grateful.
As he glanced at the dark screen on the television, the mirrored image was haggard and old. He had been weaning himself from his other medications now for almost three months. It was a cocktail of psychotropic drugs that gave Root the upper hand over the Old Weatherman. Without them the Old Weatherman was the master. Unshaven, and unkempt, wearing a tank top T-shirt, with hair sprouting from under his arms, he saw the image of a traitor and a coward. He saw in that moment of clarity the face of Senator Joshua Root.
FORTY-NINE
Ahmed was back in the rear of the 727, huddled up against the raised ramp over the bomb on its custom-built carriage. Using a ratchet and a set of sockets, he first unbolted the three metal straps holding the bomb in place.
Thorn had trained him thoroughly on all of the preattack procedures and had provided a checklist.
As soon as Ahmed removed the last strap, he went to work on the four long bolts holding the rolling carriage in place. Before he removed that last bolt, he replaced the third one with a soft piece of pine doweling the same length as the missing bolt.
When he was finished the only thing keeping the rolling carriage and the bomb that was on it from moving was the single wooden dowel. When the ramp was lowered, the shifting weight of the carriage, and the two-thousand- pound bomb resting on it, would snap the dowel like a twig. Their fearless leader, the Australian who ran the show, had tested it on the ground using simulated weights, not once, but several times, and each time the dowel snapped as if on cue.
The only difference this time was that the carriage and the bomb would roll down the rails and sail into the open sky from the lowered airstairs of the plane. The carriage would fall away, free, as the large rear fins and the front canard on the bomb slowed its descent and the laser sensor in the nose cone began searching for the signal.
Ahmed put the ratchet and sockets back in the toolbox and placed the box, along with loose bolts and metal straps, into a storage bin in the plane’s cargo area. He made sure the lid on the bin was latched and locked. Then he checked all of the other equipment in the cargo bay to make sure that it was all lashed down tight.
When the airstairs opened at their current speed and altitude, the plane would experience a sudden loss of pressure. This would suck anything and everything that wasn’t secured or tied down out through the open door. One loose piece of equipment colliding with the bomb in midair could destroy the entire mission.
Ahmed took one final look and then headed back to the flight deck. He wasn’t a minute too early. Just as he settled into the left-hand seat and started to buckle up, two jet fighters screamed past the nose of the plane.
Ahmed nearly got whiplash trying to turn his head to follow the path of their flight. He saw one of them start to take a wide, arcing turn to come around behind the 727, then lost sight of him.
Ahmed took over the controls. A few seconds later one of the F-16s pulled up alongside the nose of the larger plane, about forty feet off the port-side window of the cockpit. The fighter pilot turned his head and looked directly at Ahmed.
“Take the controls,” said Ahmed.
Masud did as instructed.
Ahmed reached down and picked up his radio headset, held it up to the side window, and then signaled thumbs-down, a sign that their radio was out. As far as Ahmed was concerned, he would now use anything just to buy another minute of flight time.
The fighter pilot looked at him, stern eyes from over the top of his oxygen mask, nodded, then maneuvered to wave his wings, the sign that Ahmed was being instructed to follow him. Both of the Saudi pilots knew they were on a suicide mission. But the goal was worth it. What they had been told was that the bomb was destined for downtown Washington, and the destruction of the United States Capitol Building.
Thorn sat on one of the concrete benches along East Capitol Plaza just above the ramp to the Capitol Visitor Center. The subterranean monstrosity was a disaster. Its construction was nearly 1,000 percent over budget and three years late, but it did have a consistent theme.
Forcing taxpayers in a hole to see their government in action couldn’t help but remind them of the bottomless pit Congress kept digging with their galactic budget deficits.
As far as Thorn was concerned, the last building any reputable terrorist would want to blow up would be the Capitol. Why kill your most potent ally? Congress had done more damage to the country in the last twenty years than a legion of suicide bombers. And they were still hammering away.
