Weapons of Mass Deception

CHAPTER 58

The car he’d stolen from the Mall of America parking lot was a 2007 Ford Taurus, silver, with 98,173 miles on it. The previous owner had been a smoker and a slob.

Rafiq headed south on Route 77 until it hooked up to I-35. He rolled down the windows to let the wind clear away the smell of cigarette smoke from the car interior. The weather was one of those perfect Minnesota days: eighty degrees, low humidity, and not a cloud in the sky. Everywhere he looked, the trees, the buildings, everything looked etched against the perfect blue of the sky.

These were the Minnesota afternoons when he and Chas would go to the lake… what was the name of it? A passing road sign reminded him: Prior Lake. Chas would rent them the fastest motorboat he could find and they’d race across the water, the spray and the wind whipping their faces.

The exit for Northfield appeared and he took it. County Road 19 was a rolling two-lane country road that wound east. He passed St. Olaf College, and then picked up the distinctive smell of the Malt-O-Meal factory on the breeze that blew in the window. He crossed the Cannon River, turning left onto Division Street, and drove slowly by Hogan Brothers’ Acoustic Café, a favorite haunt for he and Chas.

He parked his car off campus and walked toward Skinner Chapel carrying only a knapsack containing money, two more fake passports, binoculars, and a smartphone. Anything else he needed, he could buy.

The critical phone, the one that would trigger the bomb, was in his hip pocket.

Rafiq took a seat on a shaded park bench outside the chapel. From here he could see the dorm room where he and Chas had spent their first year together. So many memories, good ones. Chas had been his first recruit. He alone had identified him and groomed him for the day when he would be needed.

But it was more than that. Chas had been his friend, too, and they’d had some good times. His nostalgic mood softened when he thought of his friend’s bloated body lying in his bed with his brains painting the wall. What a waste; Rafiq had done his friend a favor.

He dozed in the warm afternoon sunshine.

Since classes at Carleton wouldn’t start for another week, the campus was deserted. Anyone else was probably indoors watching the Vikings game. He smiled to himself; he hoped they were all watching. Rafiq rose slowly, stiff from the hard surface of the bench. He was too old for this. After this one last job for Hashem, he was finished with the Iranian side of his family. Nadine, Consie, and Javi were his family now — the rest of them could go to hell.

Nadine. He closed his eyes, trying to picture what she and the children would be doing right now. They’d be at dinner. Rafiq could almost taste the wine on his palate, a bite of steak on his tongue. Javi would be holding court with mother and little sister about his latest riding adventure. Rafiq fished the smartphone out of his knapsack. A short call, just enough to hear Nadine’s voice, that’s all he wanted.

No. It was little moments of weakness that destroyed great operations. He would not allow an instant of homesickness to compromise nine years of waiting and planning. His family was safe. He would be with them soon.

The sun, a beautiful globe of yellow-orange, was just touching the horizon. Rafiq checked his watch: 1915. The game had started. He opened the NFL Live smartphone app. The Vikings were already ahead by a score of 7—0. The commentators gushed about the new stadium, and nearly every commercial break featured a shot of the stadium exterior soaring into the flawless blue sky like the prow of some long-ago warship.

Perfect.

The parking lot was mostly empty on this holiday weekend. He walked slowly, as if he had forgotten where he’d parked his car. Rafiq selected a late model Toyota Corolla, dark gray, with good tires. He had some driving to do after this job.

Brendan cinched the seat belt tight across his waist as the helo lifted off.

Liz faced him from the opposite jump seat. They both wore black bulletproof vests emblazoned with FBI in yellow block letters, but only Liz was carrying a sidearm. Trask was firm on that point. She gave him a tight smile.

The crew chief passed them both heavy headsets. Liz keyed her mike. “Thanks, Chief. I’m Liz Soroush, and this is Commander Brendan McHugh. What’s the plan?” Brendan turned down the volume on his headset.

The helo reached altitude and the floor tilted forward as the pilot sped toward the Minneapolis skyline.

“You need to ask Simon, ma’am. We just go where he tells us.” The crew chief nodded at their other passenger, a thin man in T-shirt and jeans with a ragged haircut and the scruff of a beard on his chin.

The young man adjusted his round wire-rimmed glasses and rested his hand on the console lashed to the deck in front of him. “This is MINDS, stands for Miniature Integrated Nuclear Detection System.” He pointed out the window to a meter-long tube fixed to the wing stubs where the military version of the Black Hawk normally carried exterior cargo, such as Hellfire missiles or extra fuel tanks.

“That’s the detector. It can sense radionuclides and tell us what we’ve got down there. Radioactive elements emit a nuclear signature, so if we know what’s in the bomb, we can search for those specific energy spectra—”

“What’s the range?” Liz interrupted him. “How close do we need to be to the source for this to pick up a signal?”

Simon pushed his glasses up his nose. “Well, we’re not a hundred percent sure. This is a beta unit for airborne platforms.”

“Best guess, Simon.”

“If we can do a spiral search pattern around the stadium at less than five hundred feet, MINDS should see something, then we can zoom in. We need to go slow, the photomultiplier needs about a second to process the incoming signal.”

When the crew chief switched channels to speak with the pilot, Liz said to Brendan, “If we get a hit on the detector, I’m going to have him put us down. We can’t risk a remote detonation if he sees us hovering over a building.”

Brendan flashed her a thumbs-up.

The Black Hawk shot past the high-rise buildings of downtown Minneapolis and slowed as they approached the new Vikings stadium. The building was half as high as the IDS tower, the tallest building in the city. The rays of the evening sun turned the glass-and-steel structure a shining golden color, its triangular bulk poking out of the city skyline.

The pilot slowed the helo and leveled the craft so that they were about a hundred feet above the tallest point of the stadium, which Brendan knew from the endless newscasts was about three hundred feet. They began a slow circuit around the building. Through the glass top of the stadium, Brendan could see the game in progress. He pulled out his phone and Googled the live feed of the game. Vikings: 14, Packers: 3, with seven minutes left in the second quarter. Prince, a Minnesota hometown favorite, was the halftime show.

The helo crawled along, rounding the side of the stadium. They passed over the archways that stood in the plaza; from this height the thirty-foot structures looked like something out of a toy train set.

Liz reached across the space between them and tapped his arm. She held out her mobile phone. Brendan read the text:

Police search of Whitworth home in Bayfield, WI, found Charles Whitworth dead of self-inflicted GS wound.

“I’ve got something!” Simon’s excited voice was loud in Brendan’s headset.

He and Liz unclipped their seatbelts and crowded next to Simon. He pointed to a graph that showed a sharp peak. “I loaded in the radionuclide signature from the other similar weapons. I’ve been using that as a screening criteria. This spike shows high-energy gammas in the target energy range.”

“Where?” Liz shouted. “Which building?”

Simon looked out the window. “That parking ramp. The one with the white roof.”

Liz’s voice came over the headset. “Chief, we need you to put us down on that parking ramp.” Brendan looked over her shoulder as she typed out a text to Trask.

Possible detection at parking ramp, corner of 6th and Park. Proceeding on foot.

The Black Hawk pilot spun the craft around and descended rapidly toward the H painted on the topmost level of the parking ramp. Brendan swung to the ground, careful to land on his good leg, then reached back in for the portable detector unit. He and Liz kept their heads low as they ran under the whirling rotors. Liz was on the phone with Trask before the helo had even lifted off. “We’re on the ground, sir, doing a search of the parking ramp. We have a handheld detector with us.”

Handheld was a stretch. Brendan held an open laptop in the crook of his arm and a two-foot-long metal tube under his other arm. Simon had explained this model was usually wall-mounted, but they could use it for as long as the laptop battery lasted.

Liz ended the call and joined him. She took the laptop and balanced it on an open palm. “Okay, let’s do a slow walk around the cars and see what we get.”

The readings from the cars on the rooftop were all normal. Liz chewed her lip. “Let’s go down a level.”

Still tethered together by the MINDS gear, they moved as a pair toward the ramp. Brendan walked slightly ahead, holding the detector out in front of his chest like a rifle. At the base of the ramp was an enormous silver Cadillac Escalade wedged into a parking space labeled COMPACT ONLY. He walked slowly around the corner of the vehicle, then pulled back and flattened his body against the car.

“What?” Liz asked, barely holding onto the laptop.

A white Ford Econoline van with blue lettering on the side that said WHITWORTH CONSTRUCTION was parked on the outside row. Liz took a quick look around the side of the Escalde, then hit speed dial and pressed her phone to her ear.

She whispered into the phone, then Brendan heard her say, “Yes, sir.”

“Trask is sending the EOD guys. No one believes this Roshed character is a suicide bomber, so it’s probably on a timer, or maybe some sort of remote trigger. We’re gonna sit tight ’til they get here.”

In the background, Brendan heard the roar of the crowd through the open stadium doors. It didn’t make sense. Roshed had smuggled a nuclear bomb into the United States and he was going to leave the timing of the detonation to chance? No, he would make sure every possible camera was trained on this venue…

“Halftime,” Brendan said. “He’s gonna do it at halftime.” He grabbed Liz’s shoulder. “Think about it: they’ve been advertising the halftime show for weeks. People are calling this an early Super Bowl.”

Brendan fumbled for his phone to check the game clock. The Vikings were managing the clock to try to score again before the half ended. “There’s less than a minute left in the half.”

Liz’s eyes widened. “I’m going to go take a look.” She wrenched a thin strip of metal from the side of the detector. Before he could say another word, she had slipped around the front of the Escalade.

A few seconds later, he saw her head pop up near the van. She walked around the front of the vehicle, her handgun drawn. Then she holstered her weapon and slipped the strip of metal into the door of the driver’s side. She was using the metal strip as a SlimJim to unlock the door, Brendan realized.

He stood up. She had the driver’s side door open now, and Brendan heard the chunk of the power locks disengaging. He gathered up the laptop and MINDS detector and rushed toward the van. Liz, her hand on the back door of the van, called to him. “Bren, bring the detector—”

A boom echoed through the parking ramp. Liz’s body flew away from the back of the van, crashing into the trunk of a sedan before sliding to the ground.

Brendan dropped the MINDS equipment.

“Liz!”