semis, their drivers taking time for a quick breakfast before pulling back on Interstate 5 and heading north. Located between Tacoma to the south and Seattle to the north, the truck stop provided food and showers, even beds, besides diesel fuel.
The Syrian moved deeper into the parking lot, paying careful attention to each vehicle. Glowing overhead lights highlighted the moisture that coated every surface. He was looking for a specific kind of truck driven by a certain kind of company. Nothing local. He needed someone heading on through the city, which was why he was here at this misbegotten truck stop at this accursed hour in this unholy rain. For the second morning in a row.
Nobody noticed the small, dark man. He wore jeans and running shoes and a dark brown leather jacket. Like everyone else, his head and shoulders were hunched down against the rain as he attended to his business as quickly as possible.
Algar’s hair was cut short, and he was clean-shaven. From his appearance, he could have been Hispanic, Arab, Italian, or even Polynesian. His driver’s license carried the name Lopez and certified that he was American- born.
He moved through the wet, floodlit darkness, reading license plates, looking at the lettering on the cabs. All of the trucks on this side of the stop were, just by being on this side, northbound. The question was, how far were they going?
Finally, the Syrian found the rig he was looking for. It had Canadian plates and it was parked right in the center of a long row of darkly gleaming trucks. Better still, it was hauling a massive tanker load. He took the time to circle the vehicle, alert for anything that might make it less than the perfect choice.
Nothing. The tanker truck was perfect for his purpose. He swung around, scanning the lot for anyone who might be watching him or who might note his presence. Nobody was in view, and he quickly ducked under the trailer, up in front where it joined the tractor.
Pulling a small cloth-wrapped bundle from under his jacket, Algar unwrapped a rectangular, mottled brown- black metal box. Then he swiped at the underside of the trailer with the cloth, making sure no water or grease would interfere with the magnets attached to one side.
As he’d been taught by his Iranian instructors at Masegarh, Algar placed his burden exactly in the center, just ahead of the attachment point with the tractor unit. The magnets took hold with a strong clack, almost jerking the box out of his hands. As a test, he tried to shift it, and found it nearly impossible.
Half hidden in a cluster of cables and wires, the box blended nicely with its surroundings. Just to be sure, he splashed muddy water from a puddle over it, completing the camouflage.
He flipped a switch, arming the device. The box beeped once, indicating it was armed and ready. The switch also enabled an antitamper circuit, so that any attempt to remove it would fail catastrophically.
Satisfied, the Syrian quickly stood up and looked around again as he wiped his muddy hands clean on the cloth. Still nobody in sight.
Algar gratefully went back to his old blue Chevy Nova and ducked in out of the hated rain. He’d parked the car so he could watch the only exit out of the parking lot. Now, he thought, the only hard part was to stay awake while he waited.
About thirty minutes later, the Syrian spotted “his” truck lumbering out of line and turning toward the exit. He started his own engine, pulled out, and fell in behind the tanker. Its size made it easy to follow, and he took up position a few car lengths back. He checked his watch. It was almost 6:00 A.M. Even better. The truck driver was probably a little behind schedule. They were heading into the first wave of the morning rush hour.
Jane Kelly cursed her luck that rainy morning. The darkness and wet streets had slowed traffic, and that, combined with a five-minute delay in getting out the door, had completely screwed up her timing. If she wasn’t pulling into the garage at work by 6:45, backups and traffic jams slowed her down and then she didn’t get in until 7:30. Her boss was going to raise merry hell again.
Right now, at 7:10, the thirty-three-year-old CPA maneuvered her three-year-old Nissan through the clogged traffic, heading north on 1–5. She sighed. At least it was moving this morning. She didn’t notice Hamid Algar’s car behind her, any more than she noted the tanker truck one car ahead. Cars behind her weren’t a problem, and those in front were merely obstructions. The tractor-trailer ahead was a large one, and it blocked her view of the lane forward, but what would she see? Just more wet cars.
Hamid Algar watched the Canadian tanker truck with satisfaction. The driver had driven straight north in the thickening traffic until Seattle’s skyline appeared out of the low clouds and mist.
He had no trouble staying behind the tanker as it followed Interstate 5’s winding curves. He had driven the route many times, and even taken some of the possible alternates each time with the sensing device in place. It had functioned as advertised. In a job like this, one hundred percent reliability was the only acceptable performance.
Algar had already moved over to the right lane when the truck passed the Madison Street exit. There was only one path it could follow now, and with a sense of farewell, he took the exit and drove off into the city center. He’d take Highway 99 south back to Burien. The interstate was much too crowded.
Jane Kelly didn’t see the Syrian leave. And even if she had spotted his battered blue Nova behind her, it would only have been one of a dozen cars turning off at Madison. She was nearing her own exit, Denny Way, less than a quarter mile away.
Traffic was still moving, thank goodness, although her speedometer now hovered at the fifteen-mile-an-hour mark. Up ahead, the highway curved a little to the left as it went under Olive Way.
The Olive Way-Boren Street underpass was especially wide, almost a tunnel. Above the highway, the two arterials intersected less than a block away, and the entire area had been roofed over.
The tanker truck passed beneath the intersection and out of the rain. The street surface was dry and lit by bright lamps on the ceiling of the underpass.
Hamid Algar’s box sensed the change in the surrounding light. Although small, the increase was enough to register on a sensitive photocell. A microchip brain attached to the photocell noted the change and began tracking the time. Unlike the bright beam of a passing headlight, this light lasted a tenth of a second, two-tenths, three, four. Five-tenths was enough. The microchip triggered a tiny electric pulse.
Inside the box, a firing squib detonated a shaped-charge warhead. The squid also ignited a magnesium flare. Designed to punch through inches of armor, the warhead penetrated the tanker truck’s milled steel shell easily, pushing a superheated jet of gas and metal into the liquid propane tank through a jagged, glowing hole.
The explosion died.
In its place, liquid propane began boiling out of the three-inch hole with a sound like a steam calliope jammed on high, changing to a gas as it hit the air. But when the streaming gas hit the box’s hissing magnesium flare, it ignited into a roaring jet of flame. The heat of the jet, hotter than a blowtorch, opened the hole larger and larger in a chain reaction until the entire front of the steel tank disintegrated. Propane gas mixed freely with the air. At that point, only milliseconds after the bomb went off, the rest of the tanker’s cargo disappeared in a devastating explosion.
The near-dawn darkness was overpowered by a searing orange-white fireball. Trapped by the ceiling of the underpass, the leading edge of the fireball spread out horizontally ahead and behind, but a final, titanic blast split the overhead structure and peeled it back. Slabs of concrete and steel weighing hundreds of pounds landed half a mile away, smashing through roofs and flattening cars and pedestrians crowding Seattle’s busy streets.
One car length behind the explosion, Jane Kelly had only a single, anguished second to understand what was happening before the roaring mindless wall of flame engulfed her Nissan.
She and all the others trapped in the four-lane underpass were incinerated. More than a dozen other cars and trucks on either side of the explosion were also scorched and burned. The vehicles on Olive and Boren streets above were either flipped over or fell through into the inferno below.
Half a minute after the echoes of the enormous blast faded away, stunned motorists left their cars on the highway and stood staring in shock and terror at the burning mass of twisted steel and concrete clogging the gap where the overpass had once been. Buildings on either side of the highway were burning, and the agonized screams and shrieks of those who were trapped and on fire tore through the sudden silence.
Burien, Washington Hamid Algar and his two comrades, Anton Chemelovic and Jabra Ibrahim, watched the television in rapt fascination. Coverage of the disaster had started only moments after Hamid had returned to their apartment, and now, like the rest of Seattle and America, they viewed the live television feed. But while the rest of the country watched in horror and fascination, the three Iranian-trained commandos were performing battle
