The man posing as Canadian structural engineer Faoud S. Mubajii, from Montreal, Quebec, was really a Saudi Arabian scientist named Said al Kabbibi.
Morris scanned the man’s file. Kabbibi’s list of known terrorist affiliations was as long as the degrees after his name. According to the database, Kabbibi was a doctor of medicine, Harvard; a doctor of pharmacological sciences, MIT; a doctor of biochemistry, Berlin University, who hung out with members of the PLO, the Taliban, and the Republican Guard in Iraq.
Back in the 1980s, Kabbibi was so well known inside the intelligence community that he had an official handle:
“Biohazard Bob.”
As it turned out, Kabbibi had dropped out of sight for more than a decade. The last time anyone saw him—
anyone being agents of Britain’s MI–5—Biohazard Bob Kabbibi had been a guest of Saddam Hussein, the current dictator of Iraq. The scientist apparently resided in some opulence, inside a villa near an Iraqi army base on the out-skirts of Baghdad.
Not coincidentally, that villa was less than a kilometer away from a state-of-the-art biological warfare facility.
Luddie Kuzma rolled his vehicle into a remote spot on the edge of the sprawling truck stop parking lot. He powered down the window and cut the engine. The night was more comfortable than the afternoon, but it was warm and becoming humid. Still, Luddie welcomed the fresh air streaming through the window after hours spent with a rattling air conditioner.
Massaging his neck, Lud savored the silence — at least he did until a trailer truck rumbled past his van and rolled to a halt, air brakes hissing in protest.
He watched as the man in the passenger seat jumped out and helped guide the big truck into a parking spot between a moving van and an Ethan Allen furniture truck.
He noted with interest that the newcomer lacked backup alarms — as annoying as those beepers were, they were also a requirement in most states. The vehicle had a small logo that Lud strained to read.
Dreizehn Trucking
The license was local, too. The vehicle was based in New Jersey.
Yawning, Lud forgot about the truck and glanced at the illuminated dial of his plastic sports watch.
Lud tilted his seat back, stretched out his legs. At five foot three, and nearly two hundred pounds, he was built like a sandy-haired fireplug. But nine hours behind the wheel would wear out anyone’s knees, even a midget’s.
At fifty, Luddie was the oldest livery driver in the Allegheny — Lehigh Valley Medical Alliance.
Today he hauled a kidney from Allegheny County Hospital to Easton Medical Center. He hadn’t a clue where the organ came from, or who the lucky recipient would be.
But that was par for the course. Luddie was only a driver.
It was none of his business. He’d delivered the organ to Easton General on time, earned his three hundred bucks plus gas, and now he was on his way back to his dinky apartment on Pittsburgh’s South Side, home since the wife divorced him two years ago.
Lud balled up the empty bag of Bon Ton pork rinds and tossed it into the trash bag on the floor. With a contented sigh, he released his seatbelt and shoulder strap, pulled his Pittsburgh Pirates cap over his eyes, and settled back. In seconds he was snoring…
The loud bang of a metal door shocked him back to consciousness.
Startled, Lud bolted upright, momentarily disoriented.
He glanced at his watch and realized he’d been sleeping for about twenty minutes. Then he looked around for the source of the sound.
It was the vehicle from Dreizehn Trucking. The double cargo doors were wide open, and several men were crawling around inside.
“What the hell are yo’uns doing?” he muttered suspiciously.
For a moment, Lud thought he was witnessing a robbery in progress. But when he discerned the deadly nature of the hauler’s cargo, he realized the truth was even more nefarious.
In the dim light of the trailer’s cavernous interior, Lud saw a wall lined with fully stocked weapon racks — machine guns, assault rifles, shotguns, boxes of grenades—
the kind of stuff Luddie Kuzma had handled in Vietnam.
There was more. A black youth aboard the truck started handing down bricks of plastic explosives wired to timers.
Lud ducked lower in his seat, scanned the parking area around him. Fifty yards away, he spied another man on his knees, using duct tape to connect one of the bombs to a tanker truck full of gasoline.
Heart racing, Lud pondered his next move. If he started his engine, or even made a move, they would spot him—
and he realized with mounting panic that all the men were wearing sidearms, too.
Before he could decide on a course of action, Lud saw a figure loom in his rearview mirror, heard the click of a bullet sliding into its chamber.
He turned, looked up—
Vernon Greene strode across the parking lot, toward the cargo bay of the Dreizehn truck, the gunmetal-gray USP
Tactical still smoking in his right hand.
“I found some cracker sleeping inside that van. Didn’t you scope the place first?” he demanded.
The man in the truck shrugged, handed down another bomb to a youth, who clutched it to his chest as he raced away.
“My boys clipped two guys sleeping in their trucks and some bitch in a Caddy. So what if they missed that one.
You got him, right?”
Greene unscrewed the silencer and tossed it inside the trailer.
“Tell your boys to step it up. We’re leaving in five minutes.”
Three minutes later, the last of the men returned to the truck and piled inside. Vernon Greene closed the door behind them, then hopped into the cab.
“You ready to hit the big target?” he asked.
The driver nodded, nervous sweat beading his leathery skin. “I can get us to the U.S. Tactical Training School in twenty minutes.”
“Go,” Greene commanded. “Let’s get scarce before this place blows sky-high.”
The diesel engine roared, belching smoke. One minute later, the Dreizehn truck rumbled down the exit ramp and away from the sprawling truck stop. The driver ignored a red light and swung onto the main road. In the process he clipped a Pennsylvania State Police car and turned the vehicle completely around.
The trooper behind the wheel couldn’t give chase — the front of his car was shattered, and he had an injured partner to deal with — but he immediately used the radio to report the Dreizehn truck, and its plate numbers, to the State Police barracks less than a mile away. He also requested an ambulance.
While the driver tried to revive his partner, the world exploded around him. Ears battered by the noise, bathed in an eerie orange glow, he watched as a dozen explosions rocked the truck stop, one after the other. The diesel pumps blew in a stupendous blast, sending a roiling, burning mushroom cloud into the darkening sky.
Then the gasoline pumps erupted, spewing burning liquid upward like a blazing fountain. Diners and staff hurried to the windows to view the commotion — just in time to die as bombs placed at each of the food court’s four corners brought the entire structure down on top of hundreds of customers and employees of a dozen different
