It wouldn’t be the first time that one large scale terrorist event was used to trigger a cavalcade of similar actions.
She shoved her way into the DCI’s office without knocking, mostly because she couldn’t with her arms full, and caught him as he was hanging up the phone.
“Carl.”
“Way ahead of you, Natalie,” He held up his hand, “I’ve been on the line with the Foreign Affairs people and the Aussies aren’t budging. They’re claiming that it’s their internal security, and their responsibility to handle it.”
“Damn it, Sir, we can’t take chances with this one.”
“I’m aware of that,” He told her, “But they’ve got a point here. The event is happening on their sovereign territory, and I can understand them not wanting to start inviting a foreign military force in on it. Even if we are allies.”
She grimaced, but she understood the Australian’s point of view. To be sure, if the event were occurring in Texas, the odds of the American government allowing a Soviet, or even British, air attack unit to enter and deal with the situation was almost exactly zero. So she just nodded as she dumped the files on the DCI’s desk and slumped into one of his visitor’s chairs.
“I still have the team scrambling.” She said after a moment, while he looked at her with some amusement.
“Good,” He told her with a wry smile, “In the meantime.what’s all this”
“The hard copy results of Agent Gunnar’s database check of the locals against Interpol and our databases.” She told him grimly, “It’s not good.”
He looked at the thick sheaf of papers and grimaced, “I can see that. You’d better send the Digital copies over to the Aussies, though.”
“Just did.” She said with a tired smile, “right before I got the call.”
He nodded, “Alright then.”
“I also directed a full copy to Agent Gunnar via the Consulate Portable Comp.” She told him before hesitating, “and finally.I unlocked the consulate computer for him.”
Carl Severson’s eyes widened and his lips pursed in a low whistle, “Damn. You’re not into the half measures, are you Natalie”
“Didn’t seem like the time,” She admitted tiredly.
“No.probably not, but.damn.”
The two Intelligence Agents nodded in tired agreement to the statement as both of them considered the events evolving half a world away and wondered if even full measures were going to be enough.
“Alright, that’s it.” Malcolm said wearily, “We’re to hold on and wait for reinforcements.”
Anselm Gunnar grimaced, but nodded. Realistically it was their only solution of the moment. They had sketched out a containment plan to use the fire sprinklers in the tower, and had also worked out a two pronged hostage rescue plan that had the potential to at least get some of the several thousand hostages clear of the facility, but the fact was they were entirely too underpowered and undermanned to open serious operations.
The one thing that they could do, and Anselm wanted to do, was try to infiltrate a team to capture or, if necessary, kill Abdallah Amir. Cutting the head off the serpent might not end the threat, but it would at least throw some confusion into the body and buy them some time, perhaps.
The problem was that any preemptive move at this point would alert the terrorists and place them on a higher alert. An alert that could kill a lot of the incoming soldiers if Abdallah and his men had purchased Surface to Air Missiles as part of their terrorist grab bag.
“Colonel Pierson will be coming with a contingent of regular army in five Black Hawks within the hour.” Malcolm informed them, “With Chinooks to deliver light armor and command vehicles, we should have a striking force setup here in an hour and a half.”
“Once they come in, we can’t hesitate,” Anselm said, speaking from the experience of too many dead faces lost to bombings throughout Europe. “He’ll deploy the virus fast then, if he hasn’t already.”
The men nodded grimly.
“We know.” Malcolm said quietly. “They’re also bringing full biohazard gear for us and the strike team.”
Gwen looked around, “What about the people in there”
No one really wanted to answer her.
“Be careful with that you damned fool!”
The man winced as Amir snapped, holding the metal canister carefully in both hands as he set it on the rolling tray. “Yes, Amir.”
“Those canisters are more valuable than you!” Amir growled, his normal calm beginning to fray around the edges as the stress and tensions continued to ratchet upward without hint of release.
“Yes Amir.”
The terrorist leader waved the cowering man out, letting him push the tray along with its lethal cargo out of the room while he oversaw the next one being set up. The gas containing the virus had to be released within the crowded parts of the tower to have maximum effect because there was no real central air within the entire facility, and if it was wasted in the wrong place then the Tower would whisk the virus up and into the thermal plume where it would be dispersed uselessly in the atmosphere.
Certainly, a few people across the world might come down with the illness, but there simply wasn’t a high enough concentration in the canisters themselves to achieve a truly worthwhile effect. The beauty of the tower delivery system was that it could pump the virus in a constant stream, for as long as the human factories continued to survive and pump the little nasties out.
Simply removing each canister from storage was a complicated task because each one had to be checked for potency in case the seal had failed since he’d placed them there and exposed the virus to the open air. Once in the air, the carbon nanotubes used to slow the virus down would automatically begin to break down as they’d been designed, leaving the virus to starve to death in the absence of suitable hosts.
So far they’d been luck, Amir supposed, and only lost two of the canisters. Handling the things was slow, even afterwards however, due to the superstitious fear that his men held for the deadly payload in each.
He had already developed and administered an appropriate vaccine for the disease, of course, however the fear of the disease still remained, and rightly so. Even if the disease didn’t kill them, the radiated carbon nanotubes would if they breathed them in. So time was of the essence, but things moved frustratingly slowly even so.
“Amir!”
The terrorist grimaced, clenching his fists as he pulled them away from one of the canisters before turning around.
“What!”
The messenger fell back a step from the glare, but met Amir’s gaze with a pasty expression.
“The spotters on the tower, Amir, they’ve seen movement on the horizon.”
Abdallah Amir nodded grimly.
“So they’re coming.” He said finally, “Very well. You! Take over here!”
“Y.yes Amir.” Another man said shakily.
“And you,” He pointed to the messenger, “Help them.”
The man looked stricken, but nodded. “Y.yes Amir.”
Then Abdallah Amir strode out of the converted freezer room and headed for the makeshift Combat Command and Control Center they had wired into the subterranean facility below them.
He walked into the room a few minutes later, noting immediately that the men had finished setting up the rough command post, linking the computers into the wall screens that adorned the room. Overall it looked like something out of the Hollywood movies he’d stopped watching when he left the United States, sleek and sophisticated, though he knew that the equipment he could control from this room was neither.
That was fine, though. Sophistication was one way to solve a problem, perhaps even the ideal way, but it wasn’t the only way. Sometimes hard and direct was the best way, and he could do hard and direct with the equipment he’d purchased from the Chinese.