Liberation Day

Chapter 9

Navigation lights flashing in the gloom, an American Airways jet thundered down the runway and took off, quickly disappearing into dense low cloud. I turned back from the window and looked at George. His finger was jabbing a copy of the The Boston Globe so I could see the front-page pictures of dead Taliban scattered across Afghanistan.

“A wounded animal is the most dangerous of all, Nick. There will be another strike; it’s just a matter of where and when.” He gave me a look of such intensity that I began to realize I was going to be going sooner rather than later. “We’ve received grade-A int in the last few days that they’re putting something together for Christmas. But we have no idea of the target — and that’s where you come in.”

We’d come straight to the Hilton at Logan Airport, and it had already been getting dark when we arrived. He had booked the room well in advance. The asshole had known precisely how Carrie would react when she heard the truth, and had still been in the kitchen, waiting for me, when I got back to the house. He didn’t exactly have to twist my arm to get me working for him again. I’d already made up my mind on the walk back to Gregory Street — or, rather, it had been made up for me. The fact was, I had nowhere else to go. What was I going to do? Check into a motel down the road and try to patch things up with her over the next few months, between serving beers at the yacht club? Go back to the U.K.? There was nothing for me there except trouble; George would make sure of that. No, if I wanted to stay in the U.S. to see Kelly and perhaps really get a life, I had to play by his rules. My immediate objective had to be to earn a real passport, and when the job was over, just see which way the wind was blowing. Well, that was where my half hour of thinking had taken me, and it had seemed to make some kind of sense at the time.

“You have to ask yourself, Nick, which is scarier, the noise or the silence? Even before nine-eleven, we knew that there were al-Qaeda active service units — ASUs — out there, and they haven’t gone away.” He was sitting at the desk to the left of the TV and minibar; the chair had been turned to face the bed, where I was lying against the headboard.

“You got anything on them?”

“I wish…” He jabbed at the newspaper again. “The word is they’ll all have mad eyes and beards — not so. This side of the Atlantic they’re just ordinary, respectable people. Computer technicians, accountants, realtors; sometimes even born and raised here.” He looked around the room. “Even hotel receptionists, some of them married with two-point-four children, a minivan, and a mortgage.

“They don’t have to hide themselves in ethnic ghettos, Nick. They live in our neighborhoods, shop in our malls, wear Gap, hey, even drink Coke.” He took a can from the minibar and lifted the pull tab. “These folks are well-spoken, intelligent pillars of the community. They come here as kids, lie low, blend in, bide their time — classic sleepers. But they don’t even have to be foreigners. Guys are converting to Islam by the hundreds in our own prisons and, believe me, they’re not turning into Allah’s answer to Billy Graham….”

He sat back, the can resting on his knee. “We don’t know who, or how many, are in the ASUs. All we know is these sons of bitches are ready and waiting to press the button on December twenty-fourth.”

He pulled some papers from his alloy briefcase, along with a fistful of airline tickets for Nick Scott.

“These are copies of stuff found by Special Forces in Afghanistan, transcripts from tactical interrogations of prisoners, and more in-depth material from al-Qaeda, rendered in Pakistan.” He sat back in the chair while I scanned the first few pages. “It confirms three things. One, al-Qaeda has the know-how to build radiological bombs. Two, they’ve gotten their hands on substantial quantities of radioactive material in the U.S. And three, they plan to use it December twenty-fourth. Dirty bombs — you know what I’m saying, don’t you?”

I knew what he was saying. These things had radioactive material packed around conventional explosives. When detonated, the immediate explosion would cause just as much damage as a conventional weapon, but it would also blast radiation into the surrounding atmosphere. An area the size of Manhattan — or bigger, if the wind blew — would have to be cordoned off while they sandblasted buildings, replaced pavement, bulldozed contaminated earth — and for years after, the lines of cancer victims would grow outside every hospital. Dirty bombs are a perfect terrorist weapon; they don’t just blow you up, they rip out the nation’s heart.

George was reading my thoughts. “We’re talking Chernobyl, Nick. Chernobyl, in our own backyard…” He paused, holding up his hands, fighting back the words. “And if that happens, they’ve won. No matter what happens after. Just imagine what will happen if a truck with maybe four thousand pounds of HE — homemade explosive — and radioactive waste drives at ninety miles an hour into the White House fence, right onto the lawn, maybe into the house itself. Now, imagine another heading into Rockefeller Plaza, when you can’t move for Christmas shoppers, and another, say, on Wall Street. Or maybe not trucks, maybe twenty people on foot, in malls across Boston, carrying two, three, four pounds of contaminated HE in a shopping bag or strapped under their winter coats. Imagine them detonating all at the same time. Imagine that, Nick. I do, and haven’t slept for weeks.”

He squeezed the empty can of Coke like he was throttling the life out of it, and this time it wasn’t part of the act. “According to these documents, their guys have been stealing and storing isotopes for two years, the stuff used in hospitals and industry. We’re talking a big enough stockpile to make either a lot of small devices or maybe five or six Oklahomas — we could be talking about both truck and pedestrian attacks.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “We have one straw to grasp at. These guys are on a suicide mission. But,” he raised his right index finger, “but — they’re not going to do a damned thing until they know family business is taken care of.”

“You mean, the ASUs won’t commit until they get confirmation that Dad has a new Land Cruiser with all the extras?”

“Exactly. They may be crazy, but they’re not stupid. So, here’s my thinking. The setup funds for these attacks have been coming into the U.S. for nearly three years, and they’d have had everything in place before hitting the World Trade Center because they’d know the shutters would come down straight afterward.

“We know from the Zeralda connection that al-Qaeda channeled the cash to their ASUs in the U.S. via three hawalladas based in the South of France. These guys would also get the compensation money to the ASUs’ families, via their counterparts in Algeria.” He smiled for the first time since we’d entered the room. “But that isn’t going to happen now, since you did your John the Baptist trick with Zeralda. All hawallada activity has come to a halt in Algeria, and other al-Q money-movers have followed suit.

“So, the way it looks is that these French hawalladas have a mass of cash — around three million U.S. — which they still have to get to the families. If not, no attack.

“We know from our source in France that an al-Qaeda team is on its way there — they’re going to physically package up the money and take it back to Algeria.” He paused, to make sure I got the message. “Your job, Nick, is to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

In George’s language, we had to “render” them. In mine, once we had identified the three hawalladas with the help of information from the source, whom I’d be contacting once I got into France, we were to lift them, drug them, and leave them at a DOP (drop off point). From there, they’d be picked up and taken aboard an American warship that would be anchored near Nice on a goodwill visit. Once on board, a team of interrogators would get to work on them right away, to find out who their U.S. counterparts were. There’d be no time to bring them back to the States, it had to be done in-theater. They wouldn’t enjoy coming around in the belly of that warship; the inquisitors would be doing their stuff to protect their own flesh and blood back home, not some far-off bit of desert or jungle. It makes quite a difference. Once the hawalladas had been sucked dry, maybe they’d have their heads chopped off, too. I didn’t want to know, and I didn’t much care.

“The FBI and CIA are doing everything they can to locate these ASUs,” George said. “But as far as I’m concerned, these hawalladas are the quickest route to fingering the guys sitting at home in New Jersey or wherever with a truckload of cesium wrapped around some homemade explosive.”

“What if the source doesn’t come up with the goods?”

George waved this aside. “Everything’s in a state of flux. Just get down there, meet up with the two guys who’ll be on your team, and wait for my word on the source meet.”

He looked me directly in the eye. “So much depends on you, Nick. If you succeed, none of these guys gets to see December fourteenth, let alone the twenty-fourth. But whatever happens, that money must not make it to Algeria.”

He sat back in his chair once more and spread his hands. “And it goes without saying, this has to be done without the French knowing. It takes time to go through all that human rights and due process bureaucratic crap — that’s time we don’t have.”

“And we have to make sure the rendered hawalladas still have their heads on, so they can chat to you people, right?”

George helped himself to another Coke. I didn’t notice him offering me one. “I don’t have to tell you this, Nick. If someone hits you and then threatens to hit you some more, you’ve got to stop them. Period.”

The can went into the garbage and he started collecting together the stuff on the bed and put it back into his briefcase. The briefing was over. “You leave in the morning. Enjoy the flight — I hear Air France has some great wines.”

He stood up, tightened his tie, and buttoned up his jacket. “We have a lot of catching up to do if we’re to win this war, Nick, and you’re now part of that catch-up.”

He turned back halfway to the door. “Until they kill you, of course, or I find someone better.”

He gave me a big smile, but I wasn’t sure he meant it as a joke.