Osama

TWENTY

The White House, 0200 hours EST.

Herb Sagan did not like Mason Delaney. He didn’t like the way he surrounded himself with pretty boys, or the way he so obviously felt superior to everyone. But he had to hand it to him. First bin Laden, now this. The President’s Chief of Staff, Jed Wallace, who was sitting with Sagan and Delaney, clearly felt the same.

Wallace’s face was white. ‘How did you get this information, Mason?’

The glance that Sagan and Delaney shared was only momentary, but filled with meaning.

‘Your predecessor was very fond of that question, Jed,’ Delaney sighed.

‘Mason, the President’s going to—’

‘The President, Jed, does not want to know where this information came from, believe me. It’s a lot easier for him to deny all knowledge when he has no knowledge, wouldn’t you say? And in approximately…’ he looked at his watch ‘… eight hours’ time, he’ll be able to tell the nation that he has just foiled a plot to blow up five domestic and international flights in mid-air, and that on top of his recent PR success in Pakistan. I don’t think right-minded people will be asking too many questions about where the information came from. Am I wrong?’

Wallace looked uncertain. ‘You know what his manifesto was, Mason. An end to torture… extraordinary rendition…’

Delaney started to stand up. There was a new edge to his voice. ‘Well, Jed, if the President would rather have a 9/11 of his very own…’

‘For God’s sake sit down, Mason,’ Wallace snapped. Delaney gave a look of mild surprise at this display of authority, before settling back once more. Wallace turned to Sagan. ‘Herb, run it past me one more time. If I’m going to wake him, I want to have my ducks in a row.’

Sagan nodded. He had notes in the bag by his feet, but having worked on this since breakfast time he didn’t need them. ‘We have evidence of a coordinated mid-air strike over American soil. Five flights in total. Projected death toll, just over 1000 people. Thanks to Mason’s source, however, we have the precise flight numbers. We know which aircraft the terrorists are targeting. Tampa to JFK, Boston to LAX, Orlando to Montreal, Philadelphia to Seattle, Cincinnati to Newark. They all depart between 0500 and 0505 hours, so they’ll be in the air simultaneously.’

‘And in time for the whole eastern seaboard to wake up to the news,’ Mason murmured.

Sagan continued: ‘There’s a shampoo factory in Delaware. At midday yesterday we apprehended a US national who admitted receiving money from an unknown source in return for filling certain bottles of certain batches with the chemicals necessary to create binary explosives. The batches in question were earmarked for drugstores beyond the security gates at Tampa, Boston, Orlando, Philly and Cincinnati. They left the factory two weeks ago and there’s no way to trace them.’

Wallace’s face was still pale. ‘I’m assuming we need to ground all flights in and out of the US?’

Sagan and Delaney exchanged another glance.

‘That won’t be necessary, Jed,’ said Sagan. ‘We have the situation under control…’

‘How?’ Wallace breathed.

‘We’re going to isolate the terrorists before they get on the planes. We’re already coordinating with the Transportation Security Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And of course the Feds. We’ve planted air marshals among the passengers on each flight. We’ll load them onto buses from the gates, but none of them will get within sniffing distance of an actual aircraft. Once we’ve quarantined the passengers, we’ll search them. In a few hours’ time we’ll have a bunch of Al-Qaeda brains to pick. Without anything approaching coercion, naturally.’ He gave Wallace a flat look.

There was a silence in the room.

‘The President will need to give the final go-ahead for the strategy,’ Sagan said.

‘He’ll want to know the potential risk to the other passengers.’

‘I’m not going to sit here and tell you it’s risk-free, Jed.’

Wallace nodded. ‘Tampa, Boston, Orlando, Philadelphia, Cincinnati.’ He repeated Sagan’s list. ‘You’re sure that these five flights are the only ones that are being targeted?’ He had directed the question towards Delaney, who affected a look of surprise at having been consulted.

‘I’m ninety-three per cent sure,’ he said. He smiled at Sagan. ‘Herb does love his statistics.’

Wallace ignored the barb. ‘I’ll wake the President now,’ he said. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back with an answer.’

He left the room. Sagan and Delaney sat silently, two enemies, joined by a common purpose.

‘Ninety-three per cent, Mason?’ Sagan asked.

Delaney raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe ninety-two.’

The two men went back to their wordless waiting.

Pembrokeshire, 0715 hours.

Under normal circumstances it would have taken no more than fifteen minutes for Joe to get from the beach to Ashkani’s safe house. Carrying a traumatized Conor, and with Eva limping along beside him, it took nearly an hour. By the time they approached the front door, which Joe had left unlocked, he had given up offering Eva words of encouragement to help her push through the barrier of pain and exhaustion. He could feel her body convulsing. She badly needed medical attention. So did Conor.

The hallway stank of the rotting corpse of the old woman. Eva showed no sign that she even knew what she was stepping over – her glazed eyes were as desensitized as Conor’s. With difficulty, Joe manoeuvred the two of them up the stairs. It was with an overwhelming sense of relief that he turned left at the top, into the room where he had found Ashkani’s passport. He didn’t know why he wanted them to stay in this room – it was just a vague sense that Ashkani, whoever he was, had been a pro, and that there was a chance of finding medical supplies in here. Plus, of course, he wanted to strip the place down for information.

He helped Eva and Conor over to the bed on the far side of the room. Eva collapsed heavily onto its edge. Her lips had a bluish tinge. Her shaking hands clutched the wound on the side of her abdomen. Joe gently lowered Conor from his shoulder and sat his son next to her.

‘You OK, champ?’

Conor’s blank face looked around the room. For a few seconds he appeared not to know where he was, but then his eyes widened. He slipped off the bed, his head in his hands, and curled up into a little ball on the floor. No words escaped his throat, just a pathetic mixture of frightened sounds.

Joe knelt down and put his hands awkwardly on his son’s shoulders. ‘Hey champ,’ he whispered. ‘It’s all right… he’s gone… I’m here now…’ His words had no effect. The boy remained huddled on the thin carpet.

Joe turned his attention to Eva. Her face was racked with pain and she winced as he removed the hooded top to look at the wound. It was a mess, no doubt about it. The skin where the bullet had clipped her was torn and the tissue beneath it was a bloody pulp. The heavy bleeding seemed to have stopped, but Eva was very weak and in great pain. He couldn’t risk moving her any further.

‘Ashkani?’ she breathed. Her voice was fragile and cracked.

Joe looked around the room. ‘You needn’t worry about him.’

A pause. Speech was clearly a huge effort for Eva. ‘Is he dead?’

‘I shot him in the back of the head. That normally does the trick.’

Joe strode into the hallway and started checking out the other rooms on the first floor. The old lady’s bedroom – a riot of floral wallpaper, floral bedding and a violet carpet – revealed nothing but clothes, photographs and a handful of old jewellery. The spare bedroom, with its two single beds, was similarly empty. His search of the bathroom, which didn’t give the impression of having been used very often, despite the limescale stains around the edge of the roll-top bath and inside the sink, was more productive. In the mirrored cabinet above the sink he found a pile of large swabs, still in their sterile packaging, and a roll of bandage. He rushed back to Eva, ripped open the swabs and pressed them against her wound, before tying them into position with the bandage. Eva winced, but didn’t cry out. Joe was grateful for that. ‘You’ll be OK,’ he told her, and she nodded as though she believed him.

The cupboard in the corner was filled with grey suits – nothing in the pockets – as well as a couple of old coats that he assumed belonged to the dead woman at the bottom of the stairs. He pulled out the coats and took them over to Conor and Eva. Eva accepted the coat over the shoulders of her trembling frame. Conor was still on the floor. Joe lifted him up again and laid him on the bed where once more he curled foetus-like. He lay the coat over him to keep him warm.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, and hurried downstairs, stopping only to pull the old lady’s body out of the hallway and into the front room. Conor was traumatized, that much was clear. The last thing he needed to see was dead bodies on the floor.

In the kitchen he looked for provisions. He found a cupboard full of cat food, a bottle of Ribena, the remains of a loaf of Hovis that was covered in a dusting of mould and, in the fridge, an unopened carton of milk. He filled two glasses with water, as both Eva and Conor needed rehydration, even if there was no food to give them. Back in the bedroom he managed to get some fluid into Eva, but Conor would not, or could not, move. Joe stood over him, and for the briefest moment he was back in JJ’s house, lying next to Caitlin, shortly before their life had been ripped apart.

I’ll be a dad, he was telling himself. I’ve had enough of being a soldier…

He snapped back to the present and looked around. This had been Ashkani’s room. His safe house. It had all the hallmarks – remote, unexpected, easy to leave. He had no doubt that the bastard had been paying the old lady a fair whack to keep this room available for him whenever he needed it. Who did she think he was? A travelling salesman, maybe? Someone who just wanted a place to get away to? And why had she ended up dead at the bottom of the stairs? Had she started to suspect something?

His thoughts turned to Ashkani himself. He remembered the man’s American passport. What did that mean? Whatever it meant, Joe needed to search this room. Find out everything he could about Mahmood Ashkani, if that really was his name. Find out who he was working for. And try to locate anything that might prove Joe’s own innocence.

Underneath the wardrobe he found four shoe boxes. They contained nothing but shoes. On top of the wardrobe was an old leather suitcase. Empty. He swiped the pile of books off the table – all in Arabic, they were meaningless to him, but he held each one upside down anyway, in case anything had been secreted between the pages. Nothing. And so he turned his attention to the cardboard boxes.

The room was littered with them – Joe counted fifteen in all. Three stood against the wall opposite the bed and window. He ripped them open. In the first he found nothing of interest – just old clothes, musty-smelling and crumpled. The second was more revealing. It contained a handgun – on examination he recognized it as a Glock 22 – along with a box of .40 S&W rounds. There was also money – not sterling, but a thick wad of Eritrean nakfa, bound together with a rubber band. Why did Ashkani have this currency? What were his links with Eritrea, that lawless land in East Africa that Joe knew was a sanctuary for AQ?

The third box contained the treasure.

The box itself was the smallest in the room – a 50cm cube. Its flaps were well sealed with packing tape, which meant that Joe had to rip through the cardboard to get inside. The first thing he pulled out was a newspaper: The Times. It took only a glance at the front page for Joe to see that it was the one that had his name, photo and crime plastered over the interior. He had no desire, or need, to read it again. In any case, he had already pulled out two DVDs in clear plastic cases. Each disc had been written on in black marker pen: the lettering was Arabic and Joe couldn’t understand it. And at the bottom of the box was a single sheet of A4 paper, on which was written, in a neat hand, a column of ten alphanumeric strings, followed by a three-letter code, followed by four digits. Joe only had to cast his eyes down the column once before realizing what they were.

Flight numbers. Airport codes. Take-off times.

‘Joe?’

Eva’s voice was weaker than ever.

‘Joe, I think we need to get to a hospital… Conor too…’

Joe nodded. She was right. He looked across the room at her, then back to the contents of the box. ‘Give me two minutes,’ he said.

Clutching the two DVDs, he hurried downstairs again, barely glancing at the old lady as he ran into her front room. The red standby light of her television was on. He opened the white-painted cabinet beneath it to find an ancient VHS machine and a DVD player, both covered in dust and clearly seldom used. He switched on the DVD player and inserted the first of the two discs. Moments later he was staring at a black and white image on the screen with a sick, knotted feeling in his stomach.

He recognized Lancing Way at once, and the black Discovery that had pulled up in front of his own house. And, of course, he recognized himself stepping out of the car on the day he had returned from Bagram, his scruffy black beard still intact, his North Face bag slung over his shoulder. He stared in shock at the screen, trying to work out where the image had been shot from. From the angle he deduced that a camera must have been hidden on the first floor of the house directly opposite his, where old Mr Thompson lived by himself. He watched himself knock on his own front door before disappearing inside.

The screen went black.

His hands were trembling as he ejected the disc, proof positive that he’d been under surveillance and that Ashkani had at least had access to it, even if he hadn’t organized it. What would the second DVD show? He barely dared look. JJ’s house? Caitlin? Was his murdered, brutalized partner about to appear before his eyes?

He started the disc and, with his heart thumping, stepped back to watch it.

He did not see himself. He did not see Caitlin.

He saw a dead man talking.

Thin, Middle Eastern, with a grey-streaked beard and wearing a simple, plain dishdash and a white headdress.

The nose was pronounced. The lips were slightly apart. The forefinger of his right hand was held aloft, but he was looking down, as if reading from some text that was out of shot.

The last time Joe had seen this man, he’d been shrouded in a body bag, carried by two SEALs through a compound in Pakistan towards a waiting Black Hawk. Now he lived again on this television screen.

The footage was grainy and shaky – clearly taken on a handheld camera, or even a mobile phone – but Osama bin Laden’s voice was clear enough. He spoke in Arabic, calm and measured, but whoever had made this video had intended it for English-speakers, because at the bottom of the screen were some amateurish subtitles in gaudy white letters. Rage rising in his gut, Joe read the words as the voice of bin Laden filled that quiet, dark room:

‘People of America and Britain, I address my words to you all. I begin by telling you that, although your governments spend more money on wars against the people of Allah, who built the heavens and the earth in justice, than…’

The screen crackled and blurred for a moment, then grew sharp again.

‘…once more we have shown that it is not within your power to stop the brave ones whose purpose is holy Jihad. It was on September 11 that nineteen young men were able to bring fire and death to America. And on May 11 we will have done it once more…’

The sick feeling in Joe’s stomach intensified. Suddenly only half his mind was on the screen. The other half was calculating today’s date.

‘…the infidels will be brought from the skies in balls of flame… None of you are safe…’

He’d got it wrong. Surely he’d got it wrong…

‘…know that His law is retaliation in kind. The killers will be killed… whoever obeys Him will enter the Garden, whoever disobeys Him will be refused… by the will of the Prophet my people can strike you down with ease…’

The screen went blank. Joe continued to stare at it for a handful of seconds.

He hadn’t got it wrong. The eleventh of May was today.

Joe was on his feet and hurtling up the stairs three at a time. As he burst into the bedroom he startled Eva. Conor was still motionless on the bed. Joe strode over to the cardboard box that had contained the DVDs and grabbed the A4 sheet again. He scanned down it: the first five flight numbers were adjacent to airport codes that he recognized: Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Edinburgh, Belfast. The following five were American: Portland, San Diego, Minnesota, Detroit, Chicago.

He checked the flight times. All the UK flights were scheduled to leave at or around 1000 hours, the US flights any time between five and seven hours earlier local time, because of the time differences.

Ten planes. All in the air at the same time.

A video of bin Laden, clearly recorded before the raid in Pakistan, gloating about a fucking spectacular to take place today.

‘What time is it?’ Joe breathed still staring at the piece of paper in his shaking fist.

Eva didn’t answer.

‘What’s the fucking time?’ he yelled. He spun round, to see Eva’s pale face looking warily at him. Conor had started to cry. Joe rushed over to the other side of the room, grabbed Eva’s wrist and looked at her watch: 0744 hours. Two hours and sixteen minutes. Could he get to one of the airports on the list in that time? Not a fucking chance.

‘Joe, what’s wrong?’

He didn’t answer. Not immediately. His mind was turning over. ‘Where’s your phone?’ he said.

With obvious pain, Eva pushed herself to her feet and pulled her phone from her pocket. Joe grabbed it.

No service.

‘Fuck!’ he hissed.

‘What is it?’ Eva groaned. She’d collapsed back down onto the bed and was holding her wound. Joe found himself clutching his hair. Everything was spinning. He didn’t know what to do… ‘Joe, what is it?’

Words started to spill out of him. ‘There’s a terrorist plot. Ten planes, flight times 1000 hours UK time. They’ll all be in the air at once. Ashkani’s behind it.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know!’ Joe roared.

Eva looked stricken. ‘What about security? I mean, it’s impossible, isn’t it, to get explosives on-board a plane nowadays? All the checks… How are they doing it?’

Joe put a lid on his exploding temper. ‘Could be anything,’ he hissed. ‘Maybe the fucking pilots are involved… or the baggage handlers. I don’t know. If some fucker wants to blow themselves up…’ He was pacing up and down, feeling like he was being ripped apart. He had to do something, warn someone. But who would listen to him? The whole fucking world thought he was unhinged and dangerous. An anonymous call would be ignored. He didn’t know how the strike was going to happen, and he couldn’t reach any of the airports in time.

And – he looked over his shoulder at Conor and Eva – he needed to be here.

‘You have to go,’ Eva said.

He blinked at her.

‘I mean it, Joe. You have to go now.’ She winced as she spoke, and clutched her side again. ‘I’ll be fine. I can look after Conor…’

‘You’re too weak.’

She stood up again. It was clearly an immense effort.

‘Ten planes, Joe,’ she whispered. ‘How many lives is that? Hundreds? Thousands? How many more people are you going to let him kill?’

The question hung in the air between them. And Joe knew she was right. He nodded and crossed to the other side of the room. The Glock was still in its box. Almost as a reflex, he clicked out the magazine, then loaded and locked it. ‘You know how to use this thing?’ he asked.

Eva nodded, but when she took the weapon from him, she held it tentatively, like an amateur.

‘You won’t need it,’ Joe said. ‘We’re in a safe house. I don’t think anybody except Ashkani knows about this place.’ He looked over at Conor. ‘Take care of him,’ he said.

‘What are you going to do?’

Joe narrowed his eyes. The answer to that question wasn’t even clear in his own mind.

‘Anonymous tip-offs are no good,’ he said. ‘They get hundreds a day, and without knowing how they’re getting their explosives on-board…’ He closed his eyes. ‘I can’t turn myself in – nobody will listen to me. And I can’t get to any of those airports, which means I can’t get anywhere near the target flights.’

Eva couldn’t stop the panic rising in her face. ‘But if you can’t persuade anyone to ground these ten flights…’ she breathed, ‘what can you do?’

Joe opened his eyes again. A sudden calm had descended on him. Like in the old days, before an op. Everything was clear. He knew what he had to do.

‘Joe?’

‘Give me your watch.’

She obliged and he looked at it: 0746 hours. Two hours and fourteen minutes to go. Joe put the watch on his wrist and opened his shoulder bag. The Galil .308 was there, separated into its component parts. Lurking at the bottom was the ammo he had confiscated from the scene: the match-grade rounds that had been loaded into the weapon, but also a small box of HE incendiary rounds. Overkill – literally – for taking out an individual, but for what Joe had in mind…

‘Joe?’

If he couldn’t ground the planes in danger, there was only one other option open to him. To ground every plane – both sides of the Atlantic. Full stop.

‘Don’t let go of the gun. Keep an eye on Conor. I’ll be back.’

Without another word, Joe raced from the room, down the stairs and out of the house. The motorbike was back with the Range Rover. They were parked two klicks away. If he pushed himself, he could cover the distance in five or six minutes. He sprinted, spurred on by the certain knowledge that if he failed, bin Laden’s curtain call would be complete.

Hundreds of people would die.

Time was not on his side.