‘Will you need to buy them individually?’ Saadi asked.
‘No. It should be possible to purchase a basic kit, and then add any extras we require.’
‘Is there anything we’ve forgotten?’
Massood studied the list he’d prepared, then shook his head. ‘I think that’s everything, but I’ll go through it again this evening to make absolutely sure.’
Saadi looked at his two comrades and smiled. ‘We’ll make our purchases in the morning. Tomorrow night we’ll enter Nad Al-Sheba and complete the final preparations for our jihad. And the day after tomorrow will see a new dawn, and a new beginning, in Saudi Arabia. In’shallah.’
‘In’shallah,’ echoed Bashar and Massood.
Jackson swung the BMW round and accelerated hard. ‘I think it’s in Al-Mutanabi,’ she announced.
Moments later she braked hard, spun the wheel and accelerated, but then almost immediately stopped. They stepped out of the vehicle and were greeted, predictably enough, by a scene of total chaos.
Above Al-Mutanabi, a huge cloud of dust was hanging, grey and brown and almost stationary in the still air, an ugly assault on the cobalt-blue sky. But Jackson and Richter barely gave it a second glance. Their eyes were instantly drawn to the carnage in front of them.
The road was covered with debris, mostly of a mechanical origin — bits of a car or several cars — but some clearly derived from a different source. Tattered scraps of cloth, stained deep red; unrecognizable fragments of tissue; body parts — a hand and arm, a foot in a ripped sandal — and, most upsetting of all, a severed head that had rolled across the road to come to rest against the front wheel of a parked car.
Small fires burned on the road surface, the smoke adding to the pall that already hung over the whole area. Further away, the blackened and twisted remains of the floor pan of a car sat next to the kerb, tortured metal shapes surrounding it. Richter had seen the effect of high-explosive detonations often enough to recognize immediately that this had been the bomb vehicle itself. When the device exploded, the force of the blast had ripped off the doors, roof and panels, twisting the thin steel into surreal shapes, blown the engine and transmission out of the chassis, and shredded pretty much everything else. But the floor pan had nowhere to go — the detonation had simply slammed it down onto the unyielding surface of the road beneath.
The cars that had been parked close to the IED had been blown away from the epicentre of the explosion, but at least they were still recognizable as cars. All the windows and doors in the closest buildings had vanished, the glass and wood offering almost no resistance to the blast wave. Right beside the twisted floor pan, the adjacent building had lost most of its façade, and it looked as if the whole front section could collapse at any moment.
What they could see was bad enough, but what they were hearing was worse. From somewhere beyond the wrecked cars they could hear a high and almost continuous wailing, a sound that seemed barely human in origin, but there was no mistaking the agony it conveyed. Almost drowning that out were the shouts and screams of Bahraini pedestrians and drivers and people who’d been inside the buildings when the bomb detonated, now running to and fro without clear purpose, wringing their hands and in deep shock.
Even worse than the noise was the smelclass="underline" the acrid and unmistakable stench generated by the detonation itself, overlaid by an unholy amalgam of petrol, oil, burnt rubber, smoke, dust and charred human flesh.
‘Get the rescue services mobile, if they aren’t already, and tell Caxton,’ Richter instructed, conscious that Carole-Anne Jackson was looking somewhat green. ‘I’ll check out the rest of the street.’
As Jackson began dialling, Richter reached the epicentre of the explosion and stopped to look around. The source of the wailing — now markedly weaker and more intermittent — was immediately obvious, for some thirty yards beyond the remains of the bomb vehicle a middle-aged Bahraini businessman lay sprawled on the pavement, clutching at his right thigh. There was nothing left of his leg below the knee, just a shattered bone poking out of a sodden mess of flayed and bloody flesh.
Richter’s medical expertise was virtually non-existent, but he immediately did what he could. He pulled off his tie, stepped across to the victim, and fashioned a makeshift tourniquet around his thigh. Richter wasn’t even sure if the injured man realized what he was doing, the incredible pain and massive shock probably rendering him incapable of coherent thought or any real awareness of his immediate surroundings. He patted him on the shoulder and stepped away, hoping that an ambulance would arrive before the loss of blood killed him.
There were four other people sprawled on the pavement, but it took Richter only seconds to confirm that they were beyond anyone’s help. Further away from the site of the explosion, men and women sat or lay on the pavement and the street, some leaning against the sides of parked cars or adjacent buildings, all in shock and most of them injured, but none too seriously, as far as he could see. It looked as if the death toll was going to be fairly modest relative to the size of the IED, which had obviously been substantial.
There was nothing else he could do to assist the victims, and he could now hear the sound of approaching sirens, so he knew the ambulances and paramedics were almost there. Richter’s training had prepared him for this kind of situation. His two highest priorities now were security — was there another device in the area? — followed by observation and surveillance.
He doubted there was a second IED. The first blast had been so devastating that its detonation could have disrupted the firing mechanism of another nearby device. When terrorists doubled-up explosive charges, they usually detonated a fairly small IED first, designed to cause only limited damage. Once the rescue and medical services were on the scene, they would trigger a second and much more powerful weapon, so as to maximize the loss of life. It was a cowardly — and fortunately not very common — technique, and Richter wasn’t aware of any Middle Eastern terrorist groups known to employ it.
That left surveillance. He was still checking the street when Jackson stopped beside him.
‘Caxton’s on his way: he should be leaving the embassy right now. Tariq and Bill will be here any minute,’ she said briskly, then looked around. ‘Christ, what a mess.’
Richter nodded. ‘There’s one guy seriously injured over there behind that car — he’s lost most of one leg — and there are at least four dead.’
At that moment the first ambulance swung into Al-Mutanabi, the noise of its siren fading to silence as the driver stopped the vehicle. Doors opened and paramedics clambered out, bags in hand, and ran across the street.
Jackson noticed that Richter was no longer looking at the destruction that surrounded them, but was staring down the street, his eyes focused on something about halfway up the side of one of the buildings.
‘What is it?’ she demanded.
‘There,’ Richter replied. ‘That’s a surveillance camera, and it’s pointing this way. We need to get access to the tapes — assuming the camera isn’t on the wall just for show.’
‘We can’t request it ourselves, but the police can get it. Tariq shouldn’t have any trouble.’
‘I won’t have any trouble doing what?’ Mazen asked, jogging up beside them, Bill Evans a few feet behind him. ‘May Allah forgive them,’ Mazen muttered, eyes widening as he took in the scene in front of him.
‘Paul’s spotted a video camera up there,’ Jackson said, pointing down the street. ‘It may have recorded whoever planted the car.’
‘And we’ll need the tapes quickly,’ Richter added.
Mazen peered at the building. ‘I see it,’ he said. ‘Leave it to me.’