Mick O’Gara was one of the last hires in the electrical department at Sydney’s newest harbor-side luxury hotel. It overlooked both the famed Harbor Bridge and the stunning Opera House. As a result, the slim, 41-year-old man with a bushy moustache and long sideburns pulled the dreaded graveyard shift. He had been poking around the basement, tracing a conduit containing fiber optic wires. Guests on the thirty-third floor complained that their high-speed Internet connection was out. It wasn’t his specialty, but no one else was around, and he had the time to troubleshoot until his shift change.
Unfortunately and for no good reason, the conduit continued above the ceiling in the small room, but the schematic dead-ended. Another damned design flaw. “Why can’t they ever get it right?” Following it was going to be exhausting. After nearly an hour, O’Gara decided to leave the problem where he found it. That’s when he noticed the red flash.
He trained his flashlight on the area in the far end of the room. The crawl space was a good three feet higher than his head. O’Gara, only 5′7″, looked around the room and spotted a wooden cable spool, large enough to stand on. He dragged it over to the wall, stepped up, and peered into total darkness. O’Gara hit the void with the beam.
There, sandwiched deep into the opening, was a rectangular box, at first hard to see because it was either painted black or completely covered with black duct tape. He aimed the light at the top and then to the sides. It was wedged into an area no taller than eighteen inches. He figured it to be about two-and-half-feet long.
O’Gara tapped it lightly with his finger. “Tape, not paint on metal,” he said aloud. Curiosity was definitely getting the better of him now. The LED flashed again, illuminating the crawl space on each side for a fraction of a second.
The box wasn’t connected to any outside wires. “Okay, you’re not part of the phone system. And you’re not connected to the electrical plant. But you’ve got something making you tick. So what in bloody hell are you?” He reached his right hand in about two feet, aiming his light at the back of the box. O’Gara searched for openings or identifying marks. There were none.
Just as his hand was tiring from stretching so far, the beam reflected back. He saw what looked like a small wire antenna, no more than three inches long, protruding from the back of the box. His arm ached, and he pulled it back. Once again, the LED flickered. “You’re talking to someone, aren’t you? A transmitter?”
O’Gara heard the sound of one of the elevator’s pulleys engage directly above him. He looked up, then back to the box just as it emitted another red flash. “You’re not talking. You’re listening. Son of a bitch.” His pulse quickened. The elevator moved again. He was amazed how loud it now sounded — right on top of him. Then he caught the sound of the gears working on another elevator to the left. A moment later, another to his right. He closed his eyes and remembered that in total there were eight banks, four on each side of a central artery inside the hotel.
He pointed his flashlight into the crawl space one more time. Now the details of it became more apparent. The box looked crudely homemade. The antennae was stuck out of the back but bent toward the front. The light blinked every thirty seconds. Exactly. The regular frequency of the flashes told him it was either self-charging or scanning. He heard an elevator start above and across from him. It became more evident that he was under a critical focal point, a hollow shaft — the most vulnerable part of a large building. “Holy mother of God!” he exclaimed.
Mick O’Gara stepped down slowly. Very slowly. His green work clothes were dusty and drenched with sweat. He unholstered his Boost Mobile walkie-talkie cell phone from his belt. He was about to key the microphone when he suddenly stopped. “No, wait. The signal!” He didn’t want to make a call, for the same reason passengers are instructed not to use cell phones on airplanes. The radio could interfere or interact with other electronics. In this case, it could set off the device.
The electrician slowly backed away and snapped the telephone onto his belt. He left the room, closing the door gently. It wasn’t until he was upstairs that he punched in a number.
“Security,” the voice answered.
“O’Gara. Listen carefully.” He slowly explained what he had found.
The security officer swallowed hard and called the hotel manager, who didn’t really know what to do. He phoned the CEO of the consortium that owned the Ville St. George, waking him from his sleep in the hotel penthouse. The CEO bolted upright in his bed as he followed the account.
“Are you sure?”
“Here, I’ll conference in O’Gara.” The security officer on duty connected him to O’Gara’s cell. He heard the electrician’s story firsthand.
Not knowing O’Gara but not wanting to take any blame, the CEO phoned his regular Wednesday night poker partner, who happened to be the Sydney chief of police.
This is when it got more serious. The chief didn’t hesitate waking the Australian Federal Police Commissioner. His must-attend seminars on terrorist threats had heightened his senses. The federal officer ordered the immediate evacuation of the hotel while he cradled the phone on his shoulder and pulled on his boxers.
All of this within eighteen minutes of Mick O’Gara’s find.
The Sydney police and national authorities had trained for such a contingency after concerns about terrorist attacks during the 2000 Summer Olympics. The country’s defense command realized Australia could be an easy target for al-Qaeda and even easy pickings for insurgent groups operating out of Indonesia and Malaysia. As a result, they developed an operational plan code-named Exercise New Deal.
In years past, terrorists struck symbolic targets, causing indiscriminate deaths. Al-Qaeda changed the rules of engagement. 9/11 demonstrated their willingness to inflict heavy casualties on civilians and register greater fear and uncertainly as a strategic end.
Western nations now had a true understanding of the terrorists’ objectives, even if they couldn’t identify the enemy. Their ultimate goals were to devalue democratic institutions, weaken infrastructure, and supplant existing governments with moderate or fundamental Islamic rule. They attacked people, and they targeted buildings. They couldn’t win conventional wars but took their holy fight to the new unconventional battlegrounds — civilian centers. Among the various landmarks identified as potential targets in Australia were the Sydney Opera House and the lavish hotels along the bay, including the towering cement, brick, and steel St. George.
An elite tactical unit was dispatched to the hotel.
Thirty-three minutes out.
They were backed up by the SASR — Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment — which arrived by helicopter atop the St. George.
Fifty minutes.
By then, the night assignment editor at Sydney’s Sky Television News had detected the surge of emergency chatter on the police frequencies.
Sixty-one minutes. The first of many microwave broadcast vans arrived at the hastily set-up police barricade a long block away.
Seventy-four minutes. Sky went live with a report carried cross-country.
“This is Sky Television News, approximately 200 meters from the recently completed Ville St. George Hotel, where a mandatory evacuation is now underway,” the young reporter began. “Though we can’t see it from our vantage point, our bureau, monitoring the police frequencies, reports an emergency of undetermined origin.”