Kumar held his breath. His engineers had told him that this was the most dangerous aspect of the mission. If the Ark were lowered too quickly, it would create too great a downward force on the Pequod, which could be crushed. Would it be such a bad thing if it were? he wondered. His reservations about the mission were becoming stronger and stronger, and for a moment he paused, thinking about how his actions right now could change the events to follow. But he maintained his composure, and kept the Ark’s descent slow and steady. The sub sank as the weight of the Ark was lowered onto her roof. There were audible creaks and groans of metal bulkheads becoming stressed. Kumar winced at the sound and nervously bit his lip. At the instant that the roof of the Pequod was level with the waterline, the hydraulic clamps clicked into place. The match was perfect, and the now-united combination of Ark and Pequod dropped slowly from view. Kumar’s hands eased a bit on the controls of the crane; it had worked. Yousseff motioned to Izzy to open the outer doors of the facility, which were at water level.
For a few seconds, they could see the outline of the Pequod in the early dawn light. But as it pulled away, and descended, it disappeared from view. It was 6AM, local time.
Yousseff and Izzy quickly walked to one of the walls of the facility and picked up the containers of gasoline that had been lined up there. Yousseff directed Izzy to splash gasoline about the facility. He himself opened four barrels of the diesel used for the Gensets, and poured the contents out onto the floor. He then poured a trail of gasoline from the interior of the test facility to Izzy and Ba’al’s cube van. He ordered Izzy to pull the van ahead a few hundred feet, then told Ray and Jimmy to do the same with their vehicles. He walked behind the two trucks and the van, spilling gasoline on the ground as he did so. Kumar climbed out of the crane and joined him.
“Kumar, get in. Iz, you’re driving. Hustle now. Time to move, here,” Yousseff shouted. He ordered the two larger trucks to follow the cube van.
As Yousseff reached the van, he flipped open a matchbox, struck a match, and tossed it into the gas trail. They watched the flame jump forward to enter the facility, then sped out of the driveway. The building exploded just as the three trucks pulled out of sight.
It was 7AM. The Pequod had been in the water for an hour. Massoud and Javeed talked little. Occasionally they spoke of their boyhood in Khandahar, of their dreams, and sometimes even of their dead parents, brothers, or sisters. Navigation was easy. The underwater route had been mapped years earlier by a joint venture between PWS, the Federal government, and a number of universities. The undersurface contours had been fed into the Pequod’s HUD, and following those contours was easy. The same contours had been programmed into the simulator back at the Long Beach PWS manufacturing center.
With the heavy weight of the Ark riding on the sub’s shoulders, their maximum speed was ten knots. Most of the engine’s power was diverted to two vertical propellers mounted beneath the Pequod, to prevent the craft from sinking into the reservoir’s floor. Occasionally a solitary fish, or a small school of them, darted across their field of vision. The Pequod was following a course along the reservoir bottom, and was as deep as she could be without actually scraping the lakebed itself. “Stay low, boys. Stay low,” Yousseff had said. The minutes slid by in the silent subsurface wonderland.
Five miles south of the facility, Yousseff, Kumar, and Izzy came across Ba’al and his lightless truck. He was still looking for the woman.
“Where is she, Ba’al?” asked Yousseff, leaning out of the passenger side window of the cube van.
Ba’al looked harried and tired. “She is out there someplace,” he said, pointing toward the woods. “She took out my lights, and we’ve been playing cat and mouse ever since.”
Yousseff thought for a moment. He shook his head, dismissing her as unimportant. “We need to get rid of the van here. It can be traced. We’ll push it off the edge, into the river. It’s important that it be discovered by the American police forces. It’s important for the cover-up.”
Yousseff got out of the van and walked toward Ray’s large truck. “We’re going to drop the van into the water here. My associates and I are going directly to the airport. You and your assistant here need to get yourselves back onto the 15, and get back to the Los Angeles warehouse immediately. You drop the truck off there, and get back to your normal lives.”
“That’s it?” asked Ray.
“That is all the Emir requires. Stay here until we dump the van.” Yousseff walked back toward the second truck, operated by Sam.
“As soon as we’re done here, I want you to follow the Ford and stay at the directed spot near the main access road, understood?”
“Yes sir,” said Sam.
“Sam,” Yousseff continued, “remember the timing. It has to be 8:45AM exactly. After the explosion, you must stay for at least ten minutes, to ensure that the images are being transmitted. Is the equipment in order? Is the video working? And the satellite uplink?”
“Yes, it’s all in order. We spent the past half hour checking and testing everything one last time. Everything is perfect.” The smaller of the two trucks, which had carried the Ark, also carried with it state-of-the-art television and satellite uplink equipment.
“Good,” said Yousseff. “When it’s set up, come to the airport. We’ll be waiting for you there. Make sure that the camera catches the explosion. The destruction must be captured on camera.”
“Yes sir,” said Sam, giving Yousseff a nod.
Yousseff did not tell him that he had no intention of waiting. He didn’t say that within 15 minutes the Lear would be winging its way back to California, where the faster Gulfstream was now ready and waiting in the Long Beach hangar. Nor did he tell Sam or his swamper that by 9:05AM they would both be dead. That might have complicated things.
Yousseff walked back toward the crew-cab and Ba’al.
“What about the woman?” asked Ba’al.
“Can she identify you?” responded Yousseff.
“Possibly,” responded Ba’al. “She was probably watching us reload the explosives at Devil’s Anvil. If she’s with the RCMP, or the FBI, or the American police, she will have been trained in making ID’s. Yes, she may well be able to ID both Izzy and myself. Maybe you too, and Kumar and the rest of the crew, depending on how much she saw back there.” He motioned back to the burning facility they had just come from.
“We don’t have time to chase her down,” responded Yousseff. “Besides, you’ll be back in Jalalabad before the Americans know what hit them. We’re more than 30 miles from the airport. By the time she gets to a phone, we’ll be long gone. And with the false trails we’ve planted, they’ll never sort it out. We’ll just have to leave her.”
They turned to walk back to the cube van, where Izzy and Kumar were waiting for further instructions. Yousseff handed Ba’al the large chunk of rock he’d just picked up. “Put the vehicle in drive, and toss this rock on the gas pedal. Get ready to jump back, Ba’al, or you may lose a set of toes, or worse.”
Ba’al peered over the cliff edge, and, in the gathering daylight, saw the black waters 100 feet below him. No, he didn’t want to go in that direction.
“Hold on for one minute,” said Yousseff. He opened a small briefcase that he had brought with him. Within the case was a sealed plastic bag. He put on a pair of gloves, also hidden in the briefcase, and opened the bag. Inside was a copy of the Koran and a poorly forged passport in the name of Raymond Hillel, listing the man’s Los Angeles address. He flipped open the van’s glove compartment and dropped the book and passport in.