The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 62

T he sinister signal emitted from the last of the pingers embedded in the rocks covering the cross-city tunnels on the bottom of the harbour echoed quietly and relentlessly in the lead diver’s headphones. He swung the receiver through an arc of 20 degrees to confirm the direction of the last pinger’s signal. He checked the bearing with his compass, but as he reached for the communication cord to signal to those behind he was moving on, something knocked the receiver from his hand.

The diver froze and waited, forcing himself to keep calm, and mouthing a silent prayer to Allah for protection of the mission. Whatever it was didn’t return. Probably a small shark, the diver thought, and he reeled the receiver’s safety line in and re-established his bearings. He gave a short tug on the communication cord, signalling again that it was time to move forward.

The long and painstaking journey along the bottom of the harbour had taken over an hour and a half. The lead diver signalled that he’d reached the final pinger and the team gently descended to the rocks that marked the top of the western cross-city tunnel. Getting the negative buoyancy of the canisters right and working in the dark had not been easy, but the team had practised for weeks, perfecting their deadly art off a deserted beach on the south coast. The team leader felt his way to the last of the cylinders and the team unhurriedly manoeuvred their cargo into position. A Port Jackson shark scurried out from the rocks while above the divers, the deep throb of twin outboard motors could be heard as one of the rich and powerful infidels brought a large boat back to its berth. Leaving his team to connect the last container to the others, the lead diver checked his depth gauge and compass and swam off on a predetermined bearing to the north, slowly paying out a long line of detonation cord from a lightweight reel. Each cylinder was shaped to direct the blast upwards, and each contained 50 kilograms of ammonium nitrate. 2.5 kilograms of plastic explosive were embedded in the centre of the ANFO and the detonators were all connected to the detonation cord. The lead diver knew that explosives behaved differently under water and the deeper the cord was laid down, the faster it would burn. He had learned his trade in Iraq, near the headwaters of the Persian Gulf, and he’d calculated the timing of the blast down to the last second.

The al-Qaeda frogman felt for the pylons underneath the Jeffrey Street wharf, in the shadow of the harbour bridge. He surfaced beneath the wharf and reached for the bag on his belt that contained a mobile phone with special circuitry that would set off the detonation cord as soon as the phone was rung. He located a steel strut beneath the centre of the wharf, connected the detonation cord to the phone and hid it among the barnacles just above the high water mark on the strut. He looked out across the dark surface of the harbour where he could see the Destiny passing beneath the massive bridge and heading towards Clarke Island. The harbour island was uninhabited at night and the shallow waters around it provided a perfect rendezvous to collect the team. He gave the phone on the strut a final check and slipped beneath the water.