damage assessment.
The picture now on television came from the roof of a nearby office building. From above, the destroyed overpass looked like nothing more than a giant, blackened hourglass filled with rubble and twisted metal. Emergency vehicles surrounded the crater.
The reporter now on camera, stunned by the carnage and rattled by the lack of hard information, kept repeating the single, inadequate word: “tragedy.” It had been a tragic accident, there had been a tragic loss of life, and so on. Area hospitals were jammed and some of those with less critical injuries had been farmed out to smaller clinics. At the moment, the death toll stood at twenty-five, but that was expected to climb rapidly as searchers pulled apart the rubble. Sixty-three had been seriously hurt. Seattle’s burn wards were full.
The National Transportation Safety Board had already dispatched an investigative team to the area. They would land at Boeing Field at 2:10 P.M. Algar, Chemelovic, and Ibrahim all relaxed slightly. At least initially, the Americans were treating the tanker blast as an accident. They would find no immediate clues that this was a terrorist attack. When the NTSB’s investigators discovered the truth later, their trail would be days old, and it would be a very faint, very cold trail.
They nodded to each other. Tehran would be pleased.
Chemelovic, a Bosnian, had actually made the bomb. His gift for electronics had earned him special training in demolitions at Masegarh, and now both of his teammates praised his work. Algar told him several times exactly how he had placed the device. By the time the Syrian finished retelling the story, Chemelovic had a grin covering half his face. His skills had won a great victory in the war against the godless West.
Jabra Ibrahim rose from the couch and snapped the television off.
“Come on, both of you. Help me pack.”
Ibrahim, a Lebanese, had provided security and cover for the three-man cell. He’d rented the apartment, done the shopping, and organised all the logistics during their short, one week stay in the Seattle area. He was the conscientious one, the one who’d worked on their laptop computer while the others watched television.
Their personal gear went into one duffel bag, and their tools and weapons into another two. While Algar and Chemelovic cleaned up, Ibrahim meticulously went through each room, each closet, and each cupboard looking for anything that belonged to them or came from them. A scrap of paper, a button, anything that might provide a link to them.
When Chemelovic and Algar returned from loading their gear into the Nova, they helped in the search. A few small items were found, a tool under a piece of furniture and a sock, one of Algar’s, under another. Shamefacedly, he took possession of the offending article and stood next to Chemelovic as Ibrahim, the team leader, berated them both for sloppy security.
Finally, he handed each of them a rag and a bottle of cleaning solution. Systematically, they wiped down every smooth surface, every wall and every object capable of holding a fingerprint. While none of them had ever been fingerprinted by the American government, a print here might link them to some past act or location, or some future one.
Just after noon, they were finished. The three piled into the blue Nova and pulled out of the lot. Ibrahim drove, and he stopped in front of the apartment complex’s rental office. Grabbing an envelope, he jumped out of the car and ran in.
The day manager, a stout, middle-aged woman, glanced up from her crossword puzzle. “Oh, Mr. Rashid. You here to check out?”
Ibrahim nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Hume. We all finished the program this morning.” He’d rented the three-bedroom apartment on a weekly basis with the story that he and the others were reps from a Silicon Valley data processing company who had come to the Seattle area to attend courses at Microsoft University. It was a common and believable cover one which no one felt compelled to check.
“And how did you do?” the manager asked, busy counting the money in the envelope he’d handed to her.
Ibrahim smiled. “We received top marks, Mrs. Hume. Straight As.”
LYNX Prime via MAGI Link to MAGI Prime:
1. Attack successful. Preliminary damage assessment attached.
2. LYNX Bravo confirms cell in movement to Portland, Oregon.
Security unbleached. Standing by for further orders.
General Amir Taleh finished reading through the latest status reports from his widely scattered forces and nodded in satisfaction. The first two of his planned attacks had been carried out with perfect attention to detail. A third, set for the Houston area, had been scrapped at the last moment to avoid tighter security at the intended target a railroad crossing near a poor, predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhood. He shrugged. His field commanders had acted intelligently there. It was too soon to risk compromising the whole operation to press home an attack against higher odds.
He looked up at Captain Kazemi. “You understand I wish to see the latest videotapes as soon as they arrive?”
His aide nodded crisply. “Of course, sir. I’ve left explicit orders at the communications center.”
Besides the trained agents in embassies and elsewhere who made up his official intelligence network, Taleh found himself relying increasingly on news reports from the United States to monitor the progress of his covert war. Curiously and foolishly left uncensored by their government, the networks were a unique and useful source of information. They mirrored, and often led, American public and political opinion.
And from what Taleh had seen so far, the right notes of hysteria were beginning to be sounded over the American airwaves. He picked up the phone on his desk and punched in the internal code for the head of the operations planning section. “Colonel Kaya? Come to my office immediately. Bring the next set of strike orders with you.”
He hung up and rocked back in his chair, envisioning the havoc his next set of signals would wreak on the United States.
Every attack against America sprang from his mind from his will. When he saw the results, it was a personal satisfaction. It was partly revenge for all the evils the Americans had inflicted on his beloved country over the years, but he knew revenge by itself was pointless. That was where his predecessors had failed. His terror operations only had merit if they were part of a larger campaign.
Taleh smiled fiercely. The initial stages of SCIMITAR had gone well. It was time to increase the tempo.
CHAPTER 13
ABOMINATIONS
Bundled up against the cold, Nikola Tomcic stood on the sidewalk beside an idling green Dodge minivan. He wanted a cigarette, but the short, stocky Bosnian Muslim suppressed the urge. They’d already cleaned out the cheap basement apartment that had sheltered them for the past several weeks, and his tobacco was packed away with the rest of his personal gear. He would simply have to wait. As his instructors had said so often, patience was one of the qualities of a good soldier.
Bassam Khalizad, his team leader, sprinted back from the mailbox and clapped him on the shoulder. “They’ll get the keys in a few days,” the Iranian remarked, his smooth face oddly boyish without its customary beard and mustache. “Not that the fools will care.”
Tomcic nodded sourly. Although the lackadaisical management at the old brownstone apartment house had
