Heavily burdened passengers parted before the cart as they glided past the duty-free shops, countless magazine stands, and elegant boutiques that were the pride of Terminal 4. It took just a few minutes for them to reach Khalid’s gate. Vivica Smith jumped from the cart and swung around a wheelchair that had been left by the gate’s entrance. With a minimum of fuss, he was wheeled to the aircraft and led to his first class seat. To get such a seat on this short notice and to have the plane delayed until he was aboard cost nearly ten times the regular ticket price. Privilege wasn’t cheap.
No longer able to remain awake, Khalid fell into the blissful sleep he’d been fighting as the big jet lumbered away from its hard stand.
The delaying fuse of a Czech-manufactured RGD-5 grenade had been altered from its normal four seconds to a full sixty, making it an ingenious terror weapon for crowded areas where more sophisticated devices could be detected if left for too long. Waiting until the second hand of his watch made the final tick of their schedule, Tariq slurped down the remainder of a container of soft drink, pulled the grenade from his coat pocket, and dropped both items into the trash bin he’d been waiting near for fifteen minutes. Calmly, he meandered back out of the airport and headed toward his car stowed in short-term parking. Even if someone recognized him as the man who’d planted the device, this was his first action outside the Middle East and it was improbable his description would lead the authorities to him.
Fifty-nine-point-eight seconds after the grenade’s handle released, the 120 grams of TNT within its rounded body exploded, embedding the lid of the trash container in the terminal’s ceiling. The concussive force also blew outward, the weapon’s fragmentation liner dicing the weapon’s outer casing into hundreds of tiny shrapnel shards. A nineteen-year-old Norwegian au pair returning home caught the brunt of the blast, larger portions of her dismembered body landing yards from the explosion. Eight other people were wounded by the blast. One of them, a Nigerian priest, would later die in the airport’s medical facility.
Even before panic could ripple through the large building, the phone in the airport administrator’s office rang. Already in a foul mood because of the traffic reroutings caused by the El Al emergency landing at Gatwick, Geoff Wilberforce didn’t want to answer his extension.
“What?” he barked, expecting some spineless air traffic controller at Gatwick.
“At the precise moment your phone rang, an explosive was set off in Terminal Four’s main concourse. The blast was small in comparison to what we have planted throughout the airport, including several of the aircraft waiting clearance to take off.
“If any planes attempt to leave Heathrow after two minutes of the termination of this call, I will detonate the rest of the bombs. The blood of the innocents will be on your hands. I will allow aircraft to land for the next hour, but if any planes attempt to do so after that, I will detonate the remaining explosives. Heathrow Airport is shut down on order of Kurdistan United.”
The caller cut the connection, leaving Wilberforce listening to the steady drone of a dial tone, much like the flat-line sound on a heart monitor. He was just getting to his feet when his secretary burst into his office. She was near tears.
“Geoff, there’s been an explosion.”
The big engines of the British Airways Boeing 767 were still idled to a low whine as the huge craft moved across the taxiways behind a New York-bound jumbo. They were fourth in line for takeoff when suddenly the engines were cut to dramatic silence. The cabin lights dimmed and the air-conditioning units switched to their much weaker internal power.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I’m afraid there is a mechanical problem here at Heathrow. The main radar unit just died and took the computers with it. We may be stuck here for a little while until they can sort everything out. On behalf of British Airways, I and the rest of the crew apologize for this slight delay, and I will certainly pass on any information as I receive it. In the meantime, I’ve authorized the flight attendants to start a complimentary beverage service. Thank you.”
Khalid Khuddari slept through the entire announcement.
Fifteen Miles South of Fairbanks, Alaska
At five thousand feet above the low bowl of ground on the banks of the Chena River that is Fairbanks, Alaska’s largest interior city, the swelling fires raging to the southwest of the urban center were easily discernible. They seethed and roiled upward and outward into the night, unaffected by the rain that fell in a wind-driven downpour. The fire was centered near the International Airport at Alyeska’s new equipment depot. Eddie, Mercer, and Mike Collins could see the frantic movement of men and equipment trying to battle the fierce blaze. Revolving lights atop the emergency vehicles winked furiously. From their high vantage, it appeared that the number of fire engines was woefully inadequate for the size of the conflagration. At least a couple of acres were obscured by undulating sheets of flame and black chemical smoke.
“Jesus Christ, what’s going on down there?” asked the fourth man in the helicopter, a young sergeant assigned by Colonel Knoff to handle communications between Eddie Rice and the two Huey gunships about half a mile in front of them.
“One hell of a diversion,” Mercer replied from his place in the back of the JetRanger. “Looks like we’re not going to get any ground support from Fort Wainwright.”
Before leaving Elmendorf, Colonel Knoff had suggested sending a convoy of Military Police from the Fort Wainwright Military Airfield in Fairbanks up the Dalton Highway toward Pump Stations 5 and 6. Mercer had agreed, knowing that the three choppers would reach the pump stations long before the MPs, but if Kerikov had already left, he would run right into the army vehicles.
An emergency as large as the fire burning below would surely take precedence over Mercer’s mission in the eyes of the local government. Any able-bodied soldier from Wainwright would certainly be assisting in crowd control, search and rescue, and medical treatment. The three helicopters thundering north were on their own.
Mike Collins sat next to Mercer and stared out the window, his face pressed tightly to the Plexiglas as he studied the devastation. His lips were compressed and bloodless and his hands flexed nervously in his lap. “Do those lunatics realize that there’re about a thousand tons of seismic charges and other explosives warehoused at that facility?”
“Probably,” Mercer observed mildly.
“This isn’t some joke.” Collins turned and glared at Mercer.
“Mike, I know it’s not, but I guarantee that this is just a sideshow; the main event is still to come. Kerikov knows there would be a response once we lost communications from the pump stations, and he’s trying to sidetrack us.”
“How do you know that? How do you know the fire isn’t what he wanted all along?”
“Because I know how the bastard thinks, and this just isn’t big enough for him.” Mercer was going to continue, but the sergeant interrupted. Colonel Knoff wanted to speak with him. Mercer put on his headset. “Yes, Colonel, what’s up?”
“I just got a priority message from Wainwright. They need our choppers for medical evacs to Anchorage. Facilities in Fairbanks are swamped; they need every available aircraft to get patients south and doctors and supplies north.”
“Negative, we go on.”
“You said yourself this might be a wild-goose chase, and there are people dying down there. They need us.”
“There wouldn’t be a fire down there if one of those pump stations hadn’t been attacked. It’s a distraction, Colonel, nothing more.”
“That distraction has already claimed twenty-three lives, Dr. Mercer,” Knoff said acidly.