Clean Kill

4

SCOTLAND

AS HE TRUDGED UP the stony hill, Ibrahim Bilal remembered going on hikes as a child with his father when the family lived in High Wycombe in England. He had become an engineer, but a bored young man with no enthusiasm for life until he found Islam. Along with discovering inner change and comfort, he became aware that a smart and brave young believer could earn a good living as a fighter and a maker of explosives. After his conversion, less than a year ago, he had abandoned the family name for a new identity, then departed from the family itself, for they were infidels and impure.

This climb had been rigorous, but not really hard, other than carrying the extra weight. Within ten minutes, Bilal reached the crest and could see the glow from the big house, a bubble of blue and white light in the gathering darkness. “Now!” he commanded to those who followed him. “Set it up!”

While the men dumped their burdens and packs, Ibrahim examined the perimeter road as a slow-moving vehicle passed by and a small spotlight illuminated clumps of bushes along both sides. When the car moved on, he removed a laser rangefinder from his pack and measured the distance between the hilltop on which he was crouched and the castle across the water. The digital readout told him they were 3,800 meters away from the big wall, and 600 meters outside of the two-mile security perimeter.

By the time he checked his team, the tripod had been pulled from its container and the legs were unfolded, fanned out and locked in place. The men were forcing the stabilizing prongs into the hard ground. Then they heaved the fifty-two pound launch system into position and locked it atop the tripod.

Bilal heard the low hum of another vehicle engine and snapped his attention back to the road where headlights and another spotlight gleamed, but were pointed down toward the edges of the road and not up the hill. Another patrol, only two minutes behind the first one. The loch road was a busy place.

The team unhooked the day-night sight package from one of the backpacks and affixed it to the angular device they had already built, plugged in the connections and activated it. Another narrow cylinder was opened and a long object was withdrawn and was smoothly slid into the thick tube atop of the weapon. The tube-launched, optically- tracked, wire-guided missile, known worldwide as a TOW, was ready to work.

This one had been removed from a U.S. Army Humvee in Iraq the previous year after an ambush, smuggled into England, and stored away to await a suitable target. Ibrahim looked at his stopwatch: More minutes had flown away and the big hand kept sweeping over the numbers. He was still on time and he crouched beside the TOW, a loader standing by with another missile, and the others taking overwatch positions to keep track of the patrols.

Bilal adjusted the thermal optic sight until the crosshairs rested on the bright, glowing castle wall. He took a deep breath and pressed the firing mechanism. The missile, more than four feet in length, tore out of its tube with a deafening, thumping roar and a flash of fire which violently jarred them all, but Ibrahim had expected it, recovered and brought the crosshairs back onto the target. The roar was replaced by the hissing whisper of a thin wire unreeling behind the TOW that would relay the built-in computer commands to adjust the small fins on the flying missile. Ibrahim Bilal was sweating, counting off the twenty seconds until impact and holding the thermal sight steady on his target.

The loader was readying the second rocket. The team would do both shots in less than a minute, and then be gone.

SOLDIERS ON THE ROVING patrols-in vehicles, on foot, and on the lake-heard the distinctive, muffled pop-boom of the TOW launch and came to a slight halt as their brains began issuing threat signals. Eight seconds had elapsed before any of them spotted the brilliant red streak tearing through the night sky, and three seconds more ticked off before the first man could understand what was going on. He hit the TRANSMIT button on his throat mike and yelled, “INCOMING MISSILE!”

An anti-missile team stationed in the woods had no chance. The TOW had come and gone before they realized it was even there, and relentlessly plunged over the top of its slight arc and sped toward the castle.

The security apparatus was big, but had miles to cover, which made it comparatively slow. It was hampered in the struggle to adapt to the instant threat because the multiple nations represented in the dining hall used different radio frequencies.

In her office, Delara Tabrizi heard the panicked warning being broadcast in several languages as guards tried to cut through the established procedure and reach their own people. She stood rooted in place, unable to mentally process the information. An attack? Here?

The bodyguard stationed near each dignitary also had to mentally process the alert call that was shouted in their earpieces and a few managed to lurch forward to protect their people, but were out of time.

The powerful TOW, pushed by its tight tail of fire, slammed into the castle wall with a 12.4-kilogram warhead that was capable of blowing through the armor of a tank. It obliterated the ancient fortification with an explosion that sent chunks of concrete scything through the air, followed by bolts of flame and waves of debris.

FROM THE HILL ACROSS the loch, Ibrahim Balil watched a giant fireball rise above his target but did not remove his eye from the sighting scope. Sweat poured down his face and he could feel the vibrations through the reusable launcher as the loader fed the second missile into place. Forcing himself to remain steady, Balil pressed the trigger mechanism again and the new TOW thundered away.

Thirty seconds after the first missile strike, the follow-up shot plunged down and the old stone wall was no longer there to impede its progress. The missile hit the conference building with another spectacular explosion.

5

THE CONCUSSION BLAST OF the first missile threw Delara Tabrizi over her desk and all the way across her office, and cracked her head against the cement wall. She crumpled to the floor, stunned, and then the second missile tore the place apart. Walls began to sag and fall.

She dreamed she was struggling against a riptide current as she swam back to reality and found herself in a corner beneath the heavy weight of her desk. Her head felt as if was breaking, breath came hard into her aching ribcage and her ears rang. She shook her head. What just happened? One moment she had been watching the security cameras, getting ready to go back upstairs, and then the world had ended with the thunder of doom, and…? That was all. A horrendous crash, flying through the air, and bright flashes of red and orange. Oh, and something about a missile.

The castle’s emergency generators kicked on and the remaining light fixtures bloomed, dropping pools of dim illumination through the darkness and piercing swirling clouds of settling dust. Her digital wristwatch lit up when she pressed a button: ten minutes after eight o’clock. They had entered the great hall only six minutes ago, so she had been immobile for too long, but she was covered with debris and junk. Although the office was destroyed, the scattered material provided some inanimate reassurance, for it was familiar and she could recognize individual items. The small desk tilted against her had become a protective shield that diverted much of the blast force. The bottom half of the chair was still on its wheels nearby but the back had been snapped off by a large chunk of falling concrete. She wanted to get up and run, but remembered Kyle’s motto for times of danger: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Delara took several breaths, counted her hands and feet, stretching her fingers and toes and determined that no serious damage had been done. The air was so thick with dust that breathing made her cough, and jabbed sharp pains through her side, where perhaps a rib had been cracked. When she raised a hand to her scalp, there was a patch of wet blood, but no gaping wound. Her legs worked. She could move.

Using the desk as a prop, she rose, and then pulled open a drawer in which she kept her jogging gear, found