Only the bolted steel table remained in one piece, though its top, which had reflected the blast wave upward, now bore a deep bowl-shaped crater in its center.
The lorry was marked with the name and lightning bolt logo of Zeus, a Bonn firm specializing in overseas freight shipment. Arrangements for the truck to pick up a standard rectangular cargo container for airfreighting to Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, had been made the previous day.
The shipping firm had made all the arrangements and filed all the necessary paperwork, including the shipping manifests which stated that the eight-foot square module contained agricultural equipment manufactured in Germany.
The company had sent two men out on the job, who now sat at either end of the truck, one in the cab listening to a news station on the radio. The other loitered at the rear, directly above the pneumatically actuated step-hoist that had been lowered to the ground, awaiting the appearance of the cargo container.
The shippers in the small brown-brick factory building had told them to wait until they had completed loading and sealing the container, which would require another few minutes. The two truckers were now doing just that. Waiting.
Inside the dark recesses behind the loading dock, Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni sat inside the climate-controlled and specially padded freight container into which he had just lowered himself to the accompaniment of prayers for his safety and a swift journey to the sanctuary of his Arab brethren. The small factory was owned by a MISIRI agent-in-place; its staff had been dismissed early, and only trusted cadre remained behind. Dalkimoni's trip would not be all that long or that difficult, and it beat a stay in a Berlin jail cell any day of the week.
In minutes the bomb-maker saw hands lowering the airtight steel lid of the crate overhead and heard the thuds and snaps of heavy latches being pulled down and secured into place. Then, with a sudden lurch, he was picked up by a forklift and rolled out to the loading dock, where, with another series of juddering lurches the container was pneumatically hoisted to the level of the truck's floor, eased onto a pallet, and wrestled inside by its crew.
Minutes later the terrorist heard the clank of the truck's rear doors slamming shut and the motor start up; the monotony of the ride to the airport was broken by the entertainment of the fuck-video-loaded iPad that Dalkimoni been provided.
The cargo container passed through customs without incident. Its waybill was in order and the shipping firm was an old and respected concern which transported hundreds of tons of freight per week in and out of Germany for its various clients.
In a matter of hours, Abu Jihad was heading south by southeast at four hundred fifty miles per hour at a thirty thousand foot altitude on a flight trajectory that would land him at Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport at eleven A.M., local time.
Once the plane landed, his glory and influence would be assured. The container would be commandeered by a special contingent from MISIRI whose honcho reported directly to the office of Iranian President Faramoosh Mozafferreddin, whose contempt for the United States decades of rule had left unchanged. The agents of MISIRI would load the huge steel box on a military flatbed truck and whisk him to the agency's vast complex in Tehran's Piroozi district nicknamed the "the Hole of the Despoilers" by knowledgeable locals, a covert adjunct to the high-profile police and government complex at Toopkhaneh Square in central Tehran.
There, in one of the many soundproof, surveillance-proof floors sunk below ground level, the module would be opened and Dalkimoni would be accorded a hero's welcome which would culminate in the honor of a special audience with the president himself in his office at what had once been the US Embassy in Tehran and which had become the first of many presidential palaces built under the regime.
Dalkimoni only had to endure the cramping of this enclosed space for a little while longer. He patted the specially made vest he wore beneath his loose clothing, its six pouches containing as many hard cylindrical objects. Yes, he thought, these precious gifts would insure that his welcome would be as glorious as he surmised.
Chapter Five
Breaux studied the road in front of him from behind the wheel of the rented Mercedes sedan. The road he traveled was picturesque, winding its way through high Alpine meadows dotted with quaint cottages, steepled churches and fruit tree orchards awaiting the first thaws of early spring.
Beyond everything, shrouded in dense mists, loomed the snowcapped peaks of the Alps. Breaux knew they were mere foothills, called the Glarner Alpen by natives, that the true Alps began farther north. Then again, this was Tyrolean Switzerland, and to the Tyrols a mountain was the Matterhorn; anything less was merely a hill.
The road was more than a picturesque route through photogenic Swiss countryside, though. It was part of the body of a snake. The snake was long, with its fanged head in Germany and its rattled tail thousands of miles and half a world away in Pakistan.
The Bonn-Karachi truck route used this stretch of road through the high Alpine passes, just as it used dusty mountain roads in Afghanistan, and other roads in yet more remote places. Here, in the land of bread and chocolate, the snake's scales sparkled in the noonday sun. But there were other parts of the reptile that were far less pleasant to the eye.
The snake was a survivor. Nothing could break its back. Not wars, not famines, not madness, not death. Down it plunged, through the chaos in the Balkans. Not even the fierce ethnic warfare that divided Croats from Serbs, Kosovars from Albanians, Slavs from Turks, and that had in 2018 again drawn in the US and NATO to police it, not even this fierce conflict could stop it.
On it slithered, through Greece and into Turkey, and along the northern tiers of Syria and Iraq. Into Iran it weaved its serpentine track, and then down, down it burrowed, all the way to its final destination, Pakistan.
Day in, day out, year in, year out, convoys of trucks passed along this multinational trade artery between East and West that was the 21st century's version of the caravans of bygone eras. Only a global war might shut it down. Nothing less ever would. The truck route was too vital, too efficient, too useful to the constellation of nations which it serviced.
The overland route was easily a fifth as long as the comparable sea route — one that would need to cross the Mediterranean, pass down the length of the Suez canal, reemerge into the Red Sea, and then hook around into the Persian Gulf — and only a fraction of its cost. No other commercial artery existed in the world that was as direct, as economical and as beneficial to the trade of as many nations. The truck corridor would be kept open, come what may. Too many global customers depended on continued access to it in order to move their industrial output to customers around the world.
But the snake's continued existence came at a price. Refrigerators, televisions and computers, hothouse-grown produce, new cars, and other commodity items and durable goods flowed along its back. Yet hidden beneath its underbelly there moved a considerably different type of traffic.
Here passed heroin, and the raw opium base needed to manufacture the drug, and virtually any and all forms of embargoed goods and contraband. Along this same route Iran was now receiving components for its ongoing clandestine nuclear chemical and biological weapons programs.
The snake was deadly. Its fangs dripped poison. But it had many powerful friends and allies, and no one had ever dared to undermine it. All this was about to change.