Very helpful, sir. Bury your head in the sand. Ignore the facts. There must be a way to fix something if you insist there is.
“Why don’t we move on,” Lynch said. “We’ve got some relevant pieces of information to report on.” He glanced at McNamara. “Richard, the prisoner. Your people get anything of use?”
McNamara cocked his head. “That’d be Esmail Ghazal. He’s given us a few things, most notably a planned dirty bomb attack on New York City, as we discussed last night in our—”
“Yes, yes,” Nunn said. “Do you believe him?”
McNamara turned to DeSantos, who answered.
“Mr. President, I was in charge of the interrogation. I believe what we got was reliable. But it was too short on details to be worth much.”
Nunn hesitated, made quick eye contact with Tasset, then Knox.
“What about that informant in Turkey?” Nunn asked.
Tasset nodded. “A lot of the info he gave us seems to have panned out. But we’ve gotten everything from him that we could.”
“We’re analyzing data every day,” Lynch said. “Every hour. Something’s bound to break.”
Oh, great. We’ve been reduced to hoping and praying?
Nunn leaned to his left, seemed to be straining to read one of the name placards, then sat back in his chair. “Mr. Shepard, can you add anything?”
Shepard pulled open a manila folder with his thick hands. “Yes. Yes sir. Forensics are in for the four crime scenes: the site of the original explosion on Irving Street; the bomb-making factory and storage site; their safe house that we raided; and the Metro Center station.
“At crime scene two — the bomb factory — we found vests laden with explosives in various stages of completion. One of the engineers, or bomb makers, was shot by Agent Vail and DEA Agent Roberto Hernandez. Their rounds struck the explosives and set them off. Obviously killed the engineer. But based on what our forensics team found there, it appears that four men were living in that safe house.”
“Overall, three tangos escaped,” Uzi said, in case the president did not do the math.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Did the explosives tell us anything?” Bolten asked.
“They did,” Knox said. “I suggest we let Mahmoud El-Fahad report on that.”
Nunn sat forward, squinted to read Fahad’s nameplate. “You work for?”
“CIA, sir. I’m an operations officer, born in the West Bank. I’ve been stationed there on and off for nine years.”
Nunn shot a glance at Tasset and said, “Continue.”
“Generally speaking, in terms of delivery method, Hamas uses belts for suicide attacks while al Humat uses vests. As to the explosives themselves, Palestinian engineers use primarily two kinds. They’re both effective in accomplishing their goal — death. They’re also inexpensive, impossible to track, and relatively easy to obtain. I’m talking about triacetone triperoxide, known as TATP, and TNT. TNT is repurposed from old land mines or smuggled in through the tunnels Hamas has built. These tunnels crisscross most of Gaza and are very sophisticated. Last year Israel destroyed the ones that led into its territory but left a lot of the remaining ones intact when the cease-fire took effect. Hamas and al Humat have since reopened some of the tunnels that were closed off and they remain effective conduits for obtaining bomb supplies, rockets, and other armaments.
“Acetone peroxide is another explosive they use. The chemical may sound familiar because it is — women use it for removing nail polish and bleaching their hair. But using it as an explosive is dangerous. One way of identifying a Palestinian engineer is by injuries from peroxide — burns and missing fingers and hands are common.
“To partially answer your question from before — how can they have assembled all this stuff right under our noses — not only do they use the peroxide because it’s cheap and easy to get, but because it can’t be detected by bomb-sniffing dogs.”
“What about ammonal?” Uzi asked.
Fahad nodded. “It’s easier to work with and safer — and it minimizes the amount of peroxide that has to be used.”
“We didn’t find any ammonal at their factory,” Shepard said.
Uzi removed a toothpick from his pocket but did not open it. “They use lightbulbs as detonators, right?”
Fahad’s brow rose. “Right.”
Lightbulbs? “Uh, can you explain that?”
“The wire is coated with a flammable chemical,” Uzi said. “When the bulb is lit, the wire heats and the bomb detonates. Cheap, low-tech, reliable, and undetectable. Is that what they used at Metro Center?”
“No,” Fahad said. “That entire attack was different. It packed a much stronger explosive punch, which means it was likely carried onto the train in a large backpack and/or duffel bag, maybe a suitcase. We’re still sorting through the wreckage looking for it. To cause that kind of damage, ATF told me it had to be C4, maybe even a combination of different types of explosives and methods — suitcase, vest, and backpack.”
“Palestinian bombers typically use shrapnel in their bombs,” Uzi said. “Any sign of that?”
“Yes.”
Uzi faced the president. “Most of the deaths from suicide attacks come from the shrapnel thrown off during the blast. A favorite method these bomb makers use is to fill the explosives with ball bearings up to seven millimeters in diameter. When these steel balls are used as projectiles, they travel at roughly the same speed as bullets fired from a gun. So it’s like being hit by automatic rounds of a submachine gun — several hundred rounds in a split second.”
“To sum all this up,” Fahad said, “the materials we found in the bomb-making factory that Agents Vail and Hernandez stumbled on had all of these ingredients, confirming our belief that this cell is very likely of Hamas and/or al Humat origin — or they’ve been trained by these groups.”
Uzi waited for the president to ask a question. When he did not, Uzi said, “Since we intercepted communication between the planner in Gaza and the engineer here in DC and the guy in Gaza was the voice of Kadir Abu Sahmoud, and Sahmoud is the co-founder of al Humat, I think it’s safe for us to operate under the assumption that al Humat is behind this operation.”
“But we don’t have positive confirmation that voice was Sahmoud,” Lynch said. “Making an assum—”
“We do have positive confirmation.”
Knox sat forward. “We do?”
“We do, sir. I gave the recording to Mossad and they did a biometric automatic voice analysis and ran phonetic and acoustic analyses with samples they had of Sahmoud on file. It was a match.”
“How come this is the first I’m hearing of this?” Tasset said.
“We also had a conversation with Sahmoud,” Vail said. “He and Agent Uziel — posing as ASAC Shepard — spoke yesterday.”
“Posing as me?” Shepard asked.
“I couldn’t take a chance he’d know my name,” Uzi said. “I meant to give you a heads-up in case he called again, but the Metro bombing hit. Things have been moving very quickly.”
“Why would he know your name?” Fahad asked.
Uzi squirmed in his seat. “Not important. But I felt it wasn’t worth the risk.”
Fahad hesitated but apparently decided not to press the point. Instead, he asked, “Did Sahmoud take responsibility for the bombings?”
“We spoke before Metro Center. It was a pretty frank discussion. He launched into the typical Islamic extremist rant.” Uzi turned to Vail. “Based on what he said, did you have any doubt that Sahmoud was involved?”
“None.”
A red light on the phone in front of the president lit up and blinked. He lifted the receiver and listened a second. “Fine. Send him in.” As he hung up, he said, “Richard Prati, Special Agent in Charge of the DEA’s Special Operations Division, is going to brief us. This is on your request, Agent Vail?”