Director Hall removed his glasses, stood up and stormed out the room like a bear with a sore paw. Lopez immediately followed. The teams in the operations room didn’t know it yet, but they were about to have their immediate plans cancelled. Homeland Security was winding up the intensity.
Inside the meeting room Lilburn could hear the two directors barking out commands to their respective subordinates. He’d seen the wheels of the intelligence service grinding over before; commanders demanding every stone be turned, every piece of the huge puzzle be studied, documented and peer reviewed. The information could take years to collate, and they didn’t have years. But it was the only way — intelligence from the field, no matter how seemingly insignificant, ultimately pieced together to make a picture. It had taken ten frustrating years to finally be able to pin down Osama bin Laden — this time they’d be lucky to have ten hours. Like a needle in a haystack, he thought.
“Matt,” Evangeline broke in on Lilburn’s thoughts. “Mossad said the virus was posted to Syria?”
“Correct.”
“Cheap, easy and if the postage service is working, efficient. So why not use the same method to get it to the States… It would seem logical. Just post it.”
“Surely border controls would pick up the infected material? The scanners… and those dogs pick up damn near everything that even looks like organic matter.”
She nodded. “Right, but we’re talking about possibly a tiny amount. You could wipe a handkerchief on an infected animal’s nose then take that handkerchief, neatly folded, through customs and wipe it on the nose of a non-infected animal. That’s all it takes.”
Lilburn didn’t waste any time. Swiftly rising from his chair, he left the meeting room.
Chapter Five
The two men rose from their prayer mat, their prayer completed, their fate in the hands of Allah. So far the plan had been carried out with perfection. The parcel from Al-Zabadani, northwest of Damascus, had arrived on time in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York. Yusuf al-Nasseri was anxious to complete the next part of their assignment. The recent intrusion of the two New York police officers to their apartment had shown just how susceptible they were to the hands of fate. But as his companion Bashir Zuabi told him, Allah was on their side. They had been told, many times.
Both men were twenty-four years old and American citizens, raised from birth in New York. Their parents were proud, hardworking Syrians who had immigrated to the United States, hoping for a better life. The parents had kept their Muslim faith and did their best to instill the peaceful doctrines of Allah. Both couples, whose friendship started on American soil, felt immense pride when they heard George W. Bush proclaim Islam was a religion of peace. Their boys, Yusuf and Bashir, running together, found a darker, sinister path — one their parents had no idea they had taken.
Three years earlier, full of youthful enthusiasm and exuberance, the young friends followed their hearts and made a pilgrimage back to Syria. With the blessing of their parents they spent a week traveling the country, immersing themselves in tradition and religion. While in the capital city, Damascus, they were introduced to Karam Azrak — and a totally new concept of Islam. Their lives were transformed. At first they thought Azrak was amusing — highly independent and attractively rebellious. Initially they were skeptical, and hesitated when he talked about what he saw as the right and proper path to religious freedom. But little by little the charismatic Azrak brought them around to his way of thinking and before they knew it, the two impressionable Americans had been smuggled into Afghanistan, and a Takfir wal-Hijra training camp. The young men were returned to Syria then back to the United States, their bodies strengthened and their minds galvanized into taking up the armed fight to restore the unity of the Islamic world order. Takfir wal-Hijra sleepers in the streets of Brooklyn, they longed to be awoken.
While they waited, Yusuf and Bashir had involved themselves in the everyday life of typical young New Yorkers, nurturing as many friends as they could, preferably men or women with Christian backgrounds. They even attended Christian churches. They drank at the local bars, then drove the streets at night looking for one-night-stands, all the while reverting back to being good traditional Muslims when it came to visiting their parents. Karam Azrak and the training camp in Afghanistan had taught them well. When the package arrived from Al-Zabadani, with a traditional red and white checkered headscarf, they knew it had come from Azrak, and what they were required to do. Martyrdom was not far away.
“Come on, time to finish our preparation.” Bashir followed Yusuf into the kitchen. The second layer of the brown wrapping paper had been stripped of the packing tape with the virus-infected scabs attached. Border control had missed the highly potent animal tissue, which had passed undetected into the domestic postal service. The live virus, a virtual time bomb, was now on American soil.
The men had previously scraped off every small piece of scab they could find, then placed the tape into a jug of buffer solution with a pH between six and nine. Their training had told them anything outside this range would kill the virus.
Bashir took the petri dishes from the kitchen windowsill and looked at the contents. He was pleased with the way the culture had grown in the agar solution he had bought at the local chemist shop. It had been so simple. Purchase the sterile liquid agar, heat it in the microwave and place it in the dishes to set. After the agar was ready, he and Yusuf had rubbed the scabs over the agar, placed on it on the petri dishes and waited until nature had grown the culture. Two days later they scraped off the culture and placed it into a dissolving solution to prepare it for transfer to the next stage. Now, it was time for the final stage — mixing the solution of infected liquid and buffer solution, minus the tape, into the empty deodorant cans. Initially they had thought it would be a problem, but the internet provided the answer. No problem at all.
Yusuf al-Nasseri and Bashir Zuabi looked at the cans of foot-and-mouth virus, primed and ready to spray. Bashir placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, grinned widely and said, “Boom! Allahu akbar.”
Chapter Six
Officer Ben Maitland had completed his eight-to-four shift for the day, tired and footsore. Preoccupied, he drove his 1969 Ford Fairlane to his brother’s house, where as usual Marcie, his sister-in-law, would have prepared a good wholesome meal to compensate for his bachelor lifestyle. His brother Joe could be counted on to supply the liquid refreshment and their eight-year-old son was sure to ask his Uncle Ben if he had killed any ‘baddies’ that day.
Maitland pushed the accelerator down as the lights turned green. The red Fairlane with its raised bonnet air-intake spluttered across the busy intersection. The car might have been a classic but it was producing the classic signs of a vehicle needing some tender loving care; much like its owner. A vehicle immediately behind, its driver unimpressed with the Fairlane’s slow transition through the intersection, honked its horn loudly. “Alright already!” Maitland yelled abuse while looking in the rear-vision mirror. “Asshole.”
Thirty minutes later, having negotiated increasingly heavy rush-hour traffic, Maitland pulled into his brother’s driveway. Along with staircases, the other thing he hated with a passion was traffic — especially other drivers who raised his blood pressure. One day, he swore to himself, he would leave New York. The red car came to a stop. Placing the shift lever in park and then applying the handbrake, he reached forward to turn off the ignition. His unruly beast had other ideas and stalled itself. “Jesus, you piece of shit!”