Abrams nodded her head and picked up her own handset, Olsen connecting her to Ike Treyborne. ‘Commander,’ she said in as calm a voice as she could manage, ‘what do you have for me?’
Richards watched with rising interest as Abrams’ eyes twitched slightly; he could tell that something had excited her. Good news?
A part of him hoped that Quraishi hadn’t been found and brought in alive; if that was the case, and the man started talking, then his own escape plan might have to be back on the cards.
‘Put him on,’ Abrams said, nodding at Olsen as she spoke, a message passed between the two of them that Richards could only guess at.
‘Mark,’ Abrams said with relief, ‘what’s going on?’
So, Richards, thought, it was Mark Cole. The Asset was still alive.
He was a resilient son of a bitch, Richards would give him that. Richards had warned Quraishi about the man back in Riyadh, but obviously it had been to no avail.
He watched as Abrams listened, fear writ plain across her face. She listened in silence for a long time before speaking again. ‘Stay on the line,’ she said to Cole, before turning to the men and women gathered around the table.
‘The suicide bombers have been injected and are already on their way here,’ she said stonily, and the message was received by gasps from around the huge table.
‘Do we know where?’ Catalina dos Santos asked.
Abrams nodded her head, fear replaced by what Richards could only describe as hope. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Our asset has details on every one of them — which flights they’re on, their identities, when they’re due to land and where.’
There were cheers from around the table, silenced as Abrams held up her hands. ‘But we’re not out of the woods yet,’ she said. ‘We know who they are and where they are, but we still need to stop them.’ She turned to General Olsen. ‘Get in touch with your people at those airports,’ she ordered. ‘Liaise with the FBI and airport security services. Initiate containment plan Alpha.’
‘Yes ma’am,’ Olsen responded with a smile as he reached for his telephone, and Richards started to breathe just a little bit more easily.
Now all he needed was the very quick death of his old friend Abd al-Aziz Quraishi, and he was home free.
He was already starting to feel better; and he was sure another opportunity would be right around the corner.
8
Cole stayed on the line as President Abrams and the NSC went to work on their plans to intercept the terrorists.
From what he could make out from the information on the computers and the paperwork strewn around the laboratory, they might have a chance; although the weapon developed by the North Koreans was truly horrific, the timing for this attack seemed to indicate that the spores wouldn’t be released until sometime after the terrorists had landed, which provided the US authorities with a window of opportunity. If they could take the men and women at the airports when they landed, then Quraishi’s incredible plan would fail entirely.
But Cole didn’t know if there was a way for the terrorists to release the spores manually, in the same way that an explosive might have a timer, but could still be blown manually if necessary.
If confronted upon landing, would the terrorists initiate the biological reaction in a last ditch attempt to infect everyone in the airport?
He spoke again on the phone to Abrams.
‘Ma’am,’ he said cautiously, ‘it might be an idea to evacuate the airports in question, just in case this biological weapon has some sort of failsafe that we don’t know about.’
‘Understood,’ the president’s voice came back to him. ‘We’ll assess the situation, thanks for the input.’
Cole relaxed back into the chair, only now noticing the pain in his ear. He had already bandaged his arm, but as he ran his finger up the side of his face and found the top of his ear missing completely, he grimaced.
But then his mind switched tacks, and the ear was forgotten once again.
It had been a stroke of good fortune that al-Hazmi had been directing the operation from this safe house — there were details of everything he needed on the computers and files around him, including copies of the terrorists’ passports. Real ones too, it seemed — they had presumably never been in trouble before, and Cole wondered what had possessed them to become involved in something so extreme.
There had also been the scientists’ notes — who was injected when, where, and with what. A lot of it was indecipherable to Cole, but he was able to match up the list of injections to the names on the passports.
But there was something about those notes that troubled him, something he couldn’t put his finger on, and he began scouring through them once more, mind working furiously.
And then it hit him, and he was amazed that he had missed it previously.
According to all the information he could find, there were twenty suicide bombers en route to America; and yet the medical personnel had noted twenty-one injections.
Why hadn’t he seen it before?
It meant that there might still be one suicide bomber out there, unidentified and free to do whatever they wanted, go wherever they wanted.
And with a virus this dangerous, even one biological suicide bomber was enough to kill thousands, perhaps even more.
There was no name next to the notations of the injection, no way of finding out who it was.
Had Quraishi himself wished to become a martyr? Had The Lion been injected, was he now the twenty-first bomber?
‘There’s another one,’ Cole said urgently over the open line to the White House.
‘What do you mean?’ Abrams replied instantly.
‘We have details of twenty terrorists on their way to America, but it looks like there were twenty-one injections made.’
Abrams breathed out slowly. ‘Damn. Maybe one went wrong, the person’s already dead?’ Cole imagined her shaking her head at the thought. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘that’s just wishful thinking. Okay Mark, thank you. We’ll discuss the matter. If anything turns up, let us know immediately.’
‘I will,’ Cole said, his mind already racing at a thousand miles an hour.
Who the hell could it be?
9
Abd al-Aziz Quraishi sipped at his hot tea as he watched the various television monitors which filled the small room.
He had finally managed to escape from Saudi Arabia, and was now ensconced in a place he deemed to be far safer; he knew nobody would ever find him.
The televisions were all tuned to different news channels, so he could watch the unfolding drama in real time.
He could feel the excitement deep in the pit of his stomach; he was so close to achieving his dream, it seemed incredible.
But here he was, a free man, waiting for the final extermination of the Great Satan, her expulsion — along with the House of Saud — from the holy land, and the ascent of the Arabian people to govern themselves in a new, perfect Islamic caliphate which would soon spread from the Arabian peninsula throughout the rest of the Middle East, and then — well, who truly knew where it would end?
He’d been watching the news for several hours already, but there had been nothing of interest so far. This wasn’t surprising, as the first of his martyrs was yet to even land, but it still grated on him nevertheless; normally an incredibly patient man, he now felt a deep desire for time to be sped up, to carry him to the moment when the world would be changed forever.
It was the footage on CNN from outside Dulles International which first alerted him; amateur film of what looked to be an emergency evacuation of the airport.