Khan also had a fourth bomb attached to his clothing. The FBI believes that Khan had intended to wait until refinery workers were entering the facility on Tuesday morning, and then he would have gotten as close to the refinery’s main gate as possible and exploded all four bombs simultaneously, including the one on his person. By doing this he not only would have released the hydrofluoric acid to the atmospherebut would also have killed or injured numerous refinery workers and made it more difficult for the refinery to deal with the catastrophe. It is unclear how many people would have died if the bombs had been deton ated, but experts said that if the acid had been released, it could have affected people as far as ten miles away from the refinery.
Two security guards, Edward Kolowski and William Horton, were making a routine patrol of the refinery’s perimeter when they saw Khan crawling under the secur ity fence. He had already planted his explosives and was attempting to leave the facility. When Khan was captured, the remote control for detonating the bombs was in his jacket pocket, but because Kolowski and Horton seized the terrorist as he was crawling under the fence, Khan was unable to reach the remote. Had he been able to reach it, the FBI believes that he would have exploded the bombs at that time, killing the guards and himself and releasing the acid to the atmosphere. The FBI spokesperson stated that Khan had an accomplice, a man driving a pale green Chevrolet El Camino; all law enforcement agencies in the area are looking for the vehicle.
Mr Hickson noted that the possibility of terrorists attacking refineries has been a concern for some time and that Congress has held hearings on the subject. John Tolliver, plant operations manager for the refinery, stated that such concerns have been overstated and last night’s events showedthat refinery security procedures were effective. Tolliver said, ‘We have state-of-the-art security equipment at our refineries, but our primary line of defense is highly trained, alert security personnel like Ed Kolowski and Bill Horton.’
The Cleveland Plain Dealer discovered that Javed Khan’s late father, Ishaq Khan, had been detained by the FBI approximately a year ago for possible links to al-Qaeda and speculated that Khan may have been carrying on his father’s work. Attempts to contact Khan’s mother …
Wow, DeMarco thought. He wondered if he and Ellie had been in any danger. Damn good thing those security guys had been on their toes. Yep, he was a lucky man, he said to himself again, and turned to the sports page to see how the Nationals were doing.
