So they watched, and they recorded. Both women were positively identified when their captors temporarily released them to let them use the toilet or to allow them to eat. The warrant didn't come through until late Thursday, however. The government was still stinging from allegations of abridged citizens' rights and illegal surveillance issues, and magistrates were being a lot more cautious now to safeguard citizens' rights to privacy.
And so MI5, the SAS HRT, and the two American liaisons had watched and listened as, early Thursday morning, one of the men photographed the women in the bed with a folded newspaper, then downloaded the image onto a laptop computer and sent it off. They watched in helpless and steadily building fury as the captors talked among themselves or described to the two helpless women in gruesome detail just what they were going to do with them when they were no longer needed.
Captain Burns, in charge of the HRT, was ready to go in without a warrant on the assumption that the women were in imminent danger. He was convinced to wait by Ronald Harriman, the senior MI5 officer on the scene. If the HRT went through that wall and things went badly, if the tangos on the other side of that wall were able to get word to the terrorists at sea, Mohamed Ghailiani might become a liability and die… and that might mean repercussions that would result in SAS casualties on the Atlantis Queen as well. In the wake of the abortive helicopter attack on Tuesday, everyone was being super-cautious and playing it strictly by the book.
And so they waited.
The warrant and final approval for the assault came through by mid-afternoon on Thursday. Burns and Harriman both agreed that they would wait a few hours more. The tangos seemed to have established a routine; each evening, one of their number would leave the flat and buy take-out food. On Wednesday night, they had watched the terrorists gather in a group, all three of them standing together around a table on the far side of the bedroom from the captives. If they followed the same pattern on Thursday, that was when the hostage rescue team would go in.
At around six-thirty, one of the tangos left to get dinner. By this time, the SAS troopers had placed a large loop of yellow det cord against the interior of the lath and plaster wall, with extra lumps of C-4 placed as cutting charges against the exposed studs. Detonators were placed at several points along the det cord and in every C-4 charge, with all of them carefully woven together by wires to the firing box in the middle of the room. The HRT unit prepared for the assault, each man wearing black battle dress, combat harness, balaclava, and gas mask and carrying H&K MP5 submachine guns.
Lia DeFrancesca sat with the MI5 technical people, watching the screen. Harriman signaled that spotters outside were watching the man who'd left to get food and was returning, and four SAS troopers took their place at the jump-off, facing the old plaster wall and detcord-woven studs. Two more stood to either side of the detcord loop, well back from the blast zone but ready to move in support of the four-man unit. A military doctor and a pair of medical specialists waited in the rear, as seconds dragged by and the Imperial HRT waited for the final signal.
A moment later, clearly visible on the monitor, the man who'd gone for food entered the bedroom with a brown paper bag, which he took to the table. The other two tangos had been sitting beside the bed teasing their prisoners. Both of the men stood and walked to the table, still laughing. They had pistols tucked into their belts; three AK-47s had previously been spotted leaning against a wall beside the window overlooking the street, as though the tangos were ready for a police siege.
As they began removing cartons of Lebanese takeout from the bag, DeFrancesca gave Burns a thumbs-up and Burns pointed at the trooper manning the firing box. The man pressed a button, and the det cord exploded, a dazzling, lopsided circle of fierce white light accompanied by a startlingly loud blast as the wall disintegrated in plaster dust, smoke, and splinters.
On the monitor, all three men were swatted back from the blast; the four troopers on point rushed through the sudden opening while plaster and chunks of wood were still falling, their H&Ks tucked up against their shoulders, already firing as they moved.
Two of the terrorists, the two with pistols, were hit and killed instantly. The third, sprawled on the debris-covered floor, groped blindly for one of the AKs. One of the troopers brought his boot down on the man's arm and shoved the muzzle of his weapon against the man's skull. The other troopers moved to different corners of the room, then positioned themselves to cover the door leading to the hallway and stairs outside.
"Clear!" one of the HRT troopers yelled.
The entire assault had taken less than three seconds.
Howorth read the last message from Ghailiani: how cani truist you?
The answer, of course, was that he couldn't… any more than she could trust him, no matter how badly spelled his e-mail reply was. She wondered if he'd composed that last while actually talking with one of the terrorists, pretending to work, perhaps, while typing quickly and blindly before hitting the send key.
But she'd moments before received confirmation from GCHQ that the Imperial assault had gone down without a hitch, and that the proof Ghailiani needed before committing himself was already being transmitted.
Take a look at the next mail from home, she typed. Open it as an HTML document and click on the link. She hit send.
Ghailiani sat at his workstation, staring at his in-box folder for his e-mail. Haqqani was with him, seated at another console. He couldn't see Ghailiani's screen.
This latest e-mail was from an unknown sender, someone ashore. The woman, Janet Carroll, had told him it would be coming, however, hinting that it would have the proof he needed.
He held his breath as he clicked on the mail icon.
A photograph opened in front of him, a somewhat grainy image of the sort taken by a cell-phone camera, but still in full color and with a level of detail that left his arms and knees weak, left him trembling, had his heart pounding in his chest.
It was yet another digital photograph of Nouzha and his beloved Zahra, but this time, instead of being another in a sickening series of photos depicting a slow, ongoing nightmare of a striptease, Zahra and Nouzha were free, free
The bedroom in which they'd been held was utterly trashed, with pieces of wood scattered everywhere and a layer of plaster dust over everything and everyone, including both of the two women. His wife and daughter were standing up, blankets over their shoulders and wrapped close around them as British military personnel helped them walk. Several of their rescuers were visible in the photo, anonymous in black military jumpsuits and bulletproof vests, knit balaclavas, and full-face gas masks.
Both women were crying, the tears streaking the film of plaster dust on their faces like makeup. Underneath the photo, someone had typed: They're okay. On way to hospital for checkup. Both safe. Following that line were two blue-highlighted words: Click here.
They were safe!…
"What's wrong?" Haqqani asked, his voice sharp.
Ghailiani realized that tears were running down his own face, that his hands were shaking. Somehow, he managed to reach out and hit the key that closed the image. "I… I'm thinking about my family," he said. "How I might not see them again… "