Just after noon, they were finished. The three piled into the blue Nova and pulled out of the lot. Ibrahim drove, and he stopped in front of the apartment complex’s rental office. Grabbing an envelope, he jumped out of the car and ran in.
The day manager, a stout, middle-aged woman, glanced up from her crossword puzzle. “Oh, Mr. Rashid. You here to check out?”
Ibrahim nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Hume. We all finished the program this morning.” He’d rented the three-bedroom apartment on a weekly basis with the story that he and the others were reps from a Silicon Valley data processing company who had come to the Seattle area to attend courses at Microsoft University. It was a common and believable cover one which no one felt compelled to check.
“And how did you do?” the manager asked, busy counting the money in the envelope he’d handed to her.
Ibrahim smiled. “We received top marks, Mrs. Hume. Straight As.”
LYNX Prime via MAGI Link to MAGI Prime:
1. Attack successful. Preliminary damage assessment attached.
2. LYNX Bravo confirms cell in movement to Portland, Oregon.
Security unbleached. Standing by for further orders.
General Amir Taleh finished reading through the latest status reports from his widely scattered forces and nodded in satisfaction. The first two of his planned attacks had been carried out with perfect attention to detail. A third, set for the Houston area, had been scrapped at the last moment to avoid tighter security at the intended target a railroad crossing near a poor, predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhood. He shrugged. His field commanders had acted intelligently there. It was too soon to risk compromising the whole operation to press home an attack against higher odds.
He looked up at Captain Kazemi. “You understand I wish to see the latest videotapes as soon as they arrive?”
His aide nodded crisply. “Of course, sir. I’ve left explicit orders at the communications center.”
Besides the trained agents in embassies and elsewhere who made up his official intelligence network, Taleh found himself relying increasingly on news reports from the United States to monitor the progress of his covert war. Curiously and foolishly left uncensored by their government, the networks were a unique and useful source of information. They mirrored, and often led, American public and political opinion.
And from what Taleh had seen so far, the right notes of hysteria were beginning to be sounded over the American airwaves. He picked up the phone on his desk and punched in the internal code for the head of the operations planning section. “Colonel Kaya? Come to my office immediately. Bring the next set of strike orders with you.”
He hung up and rocked back in his chair, envisioning the havoc his next set of signals would wreak on the United States.
Every attack against America sprang from his mind from his will. When he saw the results, it was a personal satisfaction. It was partly revenge for all the evils the Americans had inflicted on his beloved country over the years, but he knew revenge by itself was pointless. That was where his predecessors had failed. His terror operations only had merit if they were part of a larger campaign.
Taleh smiled fiercely. The initial stages of SCIMITAR had gone well. It was time to increase the tempo.
CHAPTER 13
ABOMINATIONS
Bundled up against the cold, Nikola Tomcic stood on the sidewalk beside an idling green Dodge minivan. He wanted a cigarette, but the short, stocky Bosnian Muslim suppressed the urge. They’d already cleaned out the cheap basement apartment that had sheltered them for the past several weeks, and his tobacco was packed away with the rest of his personal gear. He would simply have to wait. As his instructors had said so often, patience was one of the qualities of a good soldier.
Bassam Khalizad, his team leader, sprinted back from the mailbox and clapped him on the shoulder. “They’ll get the keys in a few days,” the Iranian remarked, his smooth face oddly boyish without its customary beard and mustache. “Not that the fools will care.”
Tomcic nodded sourly. Although the lackadaisical management at the old brownstone apartment house had made it attractive to Khalizad’s team, he still thought the landlords were sloppy even decadent. The wizened old man and woman who owned the building were clearly used to renting out their property to all manner of deviants drug users, alcoholics, boy-lovers, and the rest. So long as they were paid in cash, the landlords paid no attention to their tenants.
Khalizad motioned the young Bosnian into the back of the minivan and slid onto the seat beside Halim Barakat, their driver. “We’re set. Let’s go.”
The sallow-faced Egyptian grunted and pulled out into the light, midday traffic. He threaded the van through the streets with ease. Tomcic had once heard him say that navigating through Chicago was nothing to one used to driving a taxi through Cairo’s teeming alleys. Since the team had slipped across the border with Canada, it had been his job to study the terrain, to know this American city as well as a skilled general knows his chosen battlefield.
Once a member of the Muslim Brotherhood Egypt’s violent Islamic faction Barakat had fled to Iran and into the hands of General Taleh’s recruiters following a government crackdown on dissent. For him and for millions of Egyptians like him, the murdered Anwar Sadat and his moderate successors were nothing more than American and Israeli puppets. The chance the Iranians offered Barakat to lash out against Islam’s enemies had been irresistible.
Barakat kept to the larger streets, but he included one or two random turns, paying close attention to his side view mirrors each time. It didn’t appear that they were being followed. Good enough. He turned his attention to the road ahead, driving with extra precision and care. There were so many things to worry about: the chance of an accident, a random police stop, a carjacking. While the odds of any of them happening were low, and a carjacking would certainly not succeed, anything out of the ordinary could compromise their mission. That worried him most. It worried them all.
Their orders from Tehran were clear: Security was paramount. They could not risk discovery. They must not be captured.
Barakat gripped the steering wheel tighter, focusing on his job as they bounced and jolted over the potholes that dotted this city’s streets. It was important that they all concentrate on their jobs. He drove, Khalizad planned, and the others, well, the others had their own special tasks.
This part of Chicago was a checkerboard of middle-class neighborhoods and rundown public housing. The racial lines were almost as clearly drawn, with white on one side, blacks and Hispanics on the other. And all of the poverty-stricken public housing projects were overrun with crime, with drugs, and with gangs.
Barakat eyed the passing cityscape grimly. A product of the Cairo slums himself, he knew only too well how easy it was to set such places ablaze with hatred.
“Pull in here.” Khalizad nudged him gently and pointed to a deserted block of mostly boarded-up houses and businesses. Fair-haired Emil Hodjic, another Bosnian, was waiting for them behind the wheel of another van, this one dark blue, parked in front of a small abandoned grocery store. He had rented the vehicle that morning, using a forged Illinois driver’s license and a credit card issued in the same false name.
Barakat pulled in behind Hodiic’s vehicle. Led by Khalizad, he and Tomcic scrambled outside lugging duffel bags containing their weapons and other gear. The Egyptian took pains to lock the Dodge behind him. They would need it again soon enough, and the iron bars protecting the empty store’s windows and doors spoke volumes about the kind of neighborhood they were in.