In another case, an entire row of seats from the economy class cabin plunged through the roof of a ski chalet to crush two men and a woman engaged in three-way sex, flattening the trio and fusing their mashed corpses together, making it extremely difficult to separate them for autopsy later on.
For the next several weeks, morgue details were pulling arms, legs and various other assorted body parts out of the snow around Chur, and it would not be until spring came and the edelweiss again bloomed that the entire mess could be finally cleaned up and Chur return to normal as a magnet for the international jet-set and the globe-trotting rich.
After having had time to mull over his master's performance at the Niavaran Palace earlier that day, the chief bomb-maker had absorbed the full meaning of Bashar's lecture about fish and balls.
The point was not lost on Dr. Jubaird Dalkimoni — he needed a success. Failure would not be tolerated.
The operation had been technically successful — the Columbine Heads had been assembled in Berlin from stolen Israeli weapons plans and brought intact to Tehran. But the operation in Germany had needed to be closed down due to the carelessness of Dalkimoni's accomplices.
Nevertheless, Dalkimoni knew that Berlin was still the optimum place in Europe to assemble bombs. Much of the municipal police force was corrupt there, and the government had no stomach for risking the ire of rogue Arab states — there was far too much money invested in defense and construction contracts with Middle Eastern despots both officially and privately. There were also plenty of ex-nazis still alive and well in the Arab world, and they were powerful middlemen who had to be appeased as well.
For now, though, Berlin was too hot. It would still be months before operations could resume. But resume they would. Dr. Dalkimoni decided that if he wanted a place in the coming action, he had better not fuck up in his present assignment. But he would not. He was on the beam and would stay that way.
Suddenly Dalkimoni's attention snapped back to the present. The imported Swedish talent with a set of perfect, creamy 38D's was playing a stimulating pizzicato on his violin neck, getting him ready for a broadside across her tonsils. Right around when he thought he'd solo, the reporter cut away to CNN headquarters where coverage of the breaking story of the bomb that had blown up a 747 jumbo-jet over Switzerland was in progress.
Dalkimoni laughed out loud, something he always enjoyed doing while getting good head from a talented whore. He laughed now for a good reason: he had succeeded, and Farouk, the little mahmoon of a traitor, had paid in full measure for his cowardice and treachery.
The bomb-maker now also realized that Bashar had been absolutely correct concerning his little Aesop's fable too. He now understood that it was with men exactly as it was with Siamese fighting fish. This was completely true. Dr. Dalkimoni knew this for a certainty, for in the space of a split-second, his balls had surely grown to twice their former size and girth.
Now he pulled the giggling girl's head underwater, and felt her do what she did best. The bomb-maker orgasmed violently, pushing the Swede's head onto him as video footage of the fireball erupting over the Swiss Alps caught by a tourist with a camcorder filled the large, flat-panel screen. He held her head down for quite a long time as the girl struggled for air, releasing her finally just before she went completely limp.
Among those witnessing the fiery bolide in the Swiss skies were five men. Two of them were in a waiting Mercedes, the other three moving quickly and silently across the deserted grounds of the Deutsche Wehrteknik munitions plant.
The team had found what they were looking for at DWT. Within a secure, vaulted room of the plant, Breaux and two of his men had discovered a cache of Columbine Heads. These were rapid initiation devices, something like the Kryton switches for nuclear detonation secured by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein years before.
Columbine Heads were used for conventional explosives. But not just any kind of conventional explosives.
You needed Columbine Heads to trigger the ignition of air-dispersed effluents. You needed Columbine Heads, in short, for use with chemical, nuclear and biological agents or even fuel-air explosives.
Breaux and his team had left a calling card. The skull-and-crossbones Ace of Spades would be discovered later on by one of the guards, or before, if the one they'd tied up managed to free himself of the gag and handcuffs that now secured his arms and legs. Actually, they had left two calling cards — the first one and something else besides.
Breaux and the other two SFOD-O personnel hustled into the Mercedes, which gained the road from the nearby grove of fruit trees in which it was hidden and drove off in the direction of Italy. The team would not be returning to the leased chalet, nor would the car be returned to the Swiss rental office. It would be picked up by someone else, on the other side of the Italian border near Ticino.
Behind them, a few minutes on the road, there was a sudden explosion. In just a little while, the local fire department had its hands full dealing with yet another five-alarm blaze in a morning that had been nothing short of a pyromaniac's dream. This particular one happened to have taken place at the Swiss headquarters of Deutsche Wehrteknik.
It apparently had nothing to do with the downing of Brussels Airlines flight 787, for the site of the explosion was far from any of the falling aircraft debris. Months would pass before the details were fully known, because at the moment the Swiss authorities had enough on their plate just sorting out the aftermath of the airline bombing.
In the meantime, Deutsche Wehrtechnik would find itself facing some very disgruntled customers from the Islamic Republic of Iran, causing the company president, Heinrich Alois Schmetterer, to leave for a protracted stay in the Canary Islands, where the sea breezes were said to be exceptionally healthful at that time of year. Certainly more healthful than facing a MISIRI hit squad dispatched from the Old Presidential Palace or even, at his age, pussy from the Niavaran pleasure dome in Shemiranat.
But no one would ever figure out why a body bag full of melted ice and crushed beer cans was found in one of the chalets in a picturesque valley near the trendy jet-set ski town of Chur.
Chapter Six
Secretary of Defense Lyle Dalhousie — dubbed by a heartless media "Lyle the Lousy" after allegations of post-Strike Day reluctance to sanction military reprisals against the Mahdi's terror bases in Indonesia — sat in the rear of the black Lincoln town car that rolled along Pennsylvania Avenue through backed-up midmorning traffic and cold, relentless rain. Dalhousie's destination was the West Wing entrance of the White House building complex where the president and members of the National Security Council were awaiting his impending arrival.
To the SecDef's chagrin he realized that most of the morning was already gone and that it was approaching noon. Dalhousie had not eaten except for the vanilla ice cream sandwich he'd had for breakfast, bought at the Pick 'N Pay at the Pentagon Mall. Mountains of ice cream and seas of black coffee kept the Pentagon going; the Building thrived on caffeine and sugar. At least, Dalhousie knew, there would be sandwiches and soft drinks served at the White House.
Dalhousie did not find it at all strange to be preoccupied with his stomach in the midst of a regional war and a deepening international crisis, but this too went with the territory. As SecDef, he weathered whatever storms the Department of Defense weathered, and these were always legion.