Full Force and Effect

56

Adel Zarif woke at first light, rolled out his prayer rug, and knelt facing Mecca. He said his prayers and then sat around waiting for Emilio to wake up. When the young Mexican finally did stir, it was another twenty minutes before he rose and knocked on the door to Zarif’s room.

They ate breakfast in silence, and then watched some television. By ten a.m. a local news station was already covering the impending arrival of Jack Ryan. Zarif could not understand the reporter, but he watched the pictures of the National Palace and the airport, and Emilio did his best to provide running translations. From the reporter Zarif learned several things he already knew, like the time the President would arrive and his planned agenda for the official visit. Zarif also heard talk of a lot of things that he knew were never going to happen.

No matter how much the reporter gushed about the spread of the meal that would be served tonight, there would not be a dinner thrown in Jack Ryan’s honor. And no matter how big and beautiful the Plaza de la Constitución was, Ryan was not going to go on a walking tour with the Mexican president there, because he would die before he got there.

But the Iranian did pick up one interesting tidbit. This was the first Zarif had heard that the First Lady of the United States was not accompanying her husband today, but would instead fly down the next afternoon. The woman was apparently some sort of a doctor, Emilio didn’t hear what sort, and according to the pieces Emilio translated into English that Zarif understood, she had important work to do in Maryland and would come down when she was finished.

Zarif told himself this woman would not be working all day today and tomorrow as she had planned. When she learned that her husband had been blown to a thousand pieces, she would probably never work again.

At eleven a.m. the two men were picked up by two more Maldonado operators from Guerrero who didn’t know the city as well as they should, and they made a few wrong turns on their way to their destination. Emilio yelled at them from the back and the men yelled at him. Zarif was unnerved by the two men’s disheveled appearance and their utter lack of knowledge of the city, and he worried his entire plan to make a new life for himself in the safety of North Korea could be derailed by these uncouth cowboys getting pulled over by a cop on the way to the assassination.

Zarif had nothing on his person that would incriminate him. He just carried his mobile phone, the long-range cordless phone he’d use to trigger the bomb, and the rechargeable batteries that went into it, which he kept outside the unit so that it did not accidentally send a signal and detonate the bomb too early. But he knew he might get questioned by the police if these fools drew attention to themselves, and the police would quickly find he was foreign and detain him.

Despite Zarif’s concern, they made it to their destination without incident. At the scene, crowd-control barriers had already been erected, and at the street market on José J. Herrera, enough of a crowd had formed close to the barricades that Zarif decided he didn’t want to get any closer. The police were already in place at the barricades, and although the Iranian didn’t think he looked much different from the Mexicans around here — he was dark-complexioned and he wore a dark beard and mustache — he did not want to put this belief to the test and ruin his chance at a comfortable retirement on a beach full of beautiful Asian girls.

So Adel Zarif and Emilio stayed back and out of sight, but this was no threat to their plan, because they did not have to get any closer to detonate the bomb.

Another Maldonado man, Emilio said his name was Gordo, was already positioned across the street, close to the barricades at the other side of the intersection. He had a near-perfect position and line of sight on several blocks of Vidal Alcocer because there was a large parking lot to the north that gave him unobstructed views. He also had an iPad with which he would film the arrival of the presidential motorcade, and transmit it instantly to Emilio’s iPhone.

Once the two presidential limousines were in front of the stone façade of the parking garage, Zarif would call the phone attached to the IED.

Gordo was going to die in the blast; Zarif had calculated this fact the second he saw the image on Emilio’s phone, but he said nothing to Emilio.

While they were strolling around the market killing time, Emilio said, “The others will wait for the explosion to attack.”

Zarif did not understand. He cocked his head to the side. “What others?”

“Twelve men from Guerrero are taking part in the attack. They are waiting in the area. They all have cuernos de chivo.”

“What is that?”

Emilio thought for a moment. “Goat horns.”

The Iranian still had no idea what the Mexican was talking about.

“You know… AK-47s. A couple of guys have RPGs, too. Once the bomb goes off they will come out of the crowd and start shooting.” Emilio grinned. “It’s gonna be crazy.”

Zarif was furious. “No one told me about this.”

“Relax. It is good. They will make sure Ryan is dead.”

“No, they won’t. They will be seen in the crowd before the President comes, and someone will warn the Americans.”

Emilio tried to wave away the comment, but Zarif demanded to speak to the Maldonado cell leader. After a few minutes more trying to allay Zarif’s fears, Emilio finally dialed a number on his mobile phone and spoke to the man on the other end for a minute. Finally, after a conversation translated by Emilio, Zarif persuaded the cell leader to have the Maldonado men back out of the crowd and move one block east of the motorcade route. He explained that once the explosion rocked the street, they could run one block and shoot up the scene to their hearts’ content.

The cell leader put his men in four pickup trucks and parked them on Nicolas Bravo, with orders to wait for the big bang and then race to the scene. Two trucks would hit the motorcade from the southeast on José J. Herrera, and two more from the northeast on Nacional.

Zarif felt like these men were going to race up to the site where Jack Ryan already lay dead, and then do nothing more than get themselves massacred by the hundred or so cops and Secret Service agents who were still alive. But that wasn’t his problem. He felt better now that there would be no tip-offs to the coming event, so he and Emilio stepped into a Starbucks, ordered iced coffees, and sat down to watch the video feed on his phone.

The Iranian had command-detonated devices by watching video cameras, but he was pretty sure this was the first time anyone had assassinated a world leader via iPhone.