Natalie held up her hand, “For WORST effect, they need to hold it a week. Remember, a few hours will still sow a lot of panic across a great many countries, Carl. Plus, I’m not so confident that anyone will roll right over them.”
“Please, Natalie.” The DCI scoffed, “The Australian armed forces aren’t amateurs, and no terrorist force can stand up to a straight out fight with regular forces.”
“No, but this is a potential hostage situation with almost a hundred thousand hostages.” She reminded him, “Unless you think that the President, or the Australian government will authorize an air strike”
Severson winced, holding up his hand. “Point. Alright.peace. You have a plan”
“Right now it depends on Raymond Gorra, I’m afraid.” She told him grimly, “The ball is in his court. If he holds off on his plans, then we can cut him off and do this relatively cleanly. If he moves before we’re in place.It’s going to get ugly, Carl. And you can tell the President I said so.”
Carl Severson raised his eyebrows, then smiled without humor at her. “I’ll do that.”
He turned to leave, then stopped and looked back. “SecNav has been informed of your operation, and he’ll have the Reagan complement of Masters at Arms standing by to assist.”
“Thank you,” She told him, honestly grateful. “We’re already running the files of the people around the Tower.so hopefully we’ll know how large the opposition is by the time we’re ready to launch the operation.”
“Keep me posted.” He told her, heading out the door. “And for God sake’s Natalie, get some sleep. There’s nothing you can do dead tired.”
Waiting is the worst part of any high stress job.
Police work always came down to the drudgery, like most any other job. In the past it was often called `pounding the pavement’, the basic component of police work being getting out and simply talking to everyone possible. In the post Digital age it was more often than not a matter of waiting for computer searches to come through.
Normally those were fast, coming back in fractions of a second, but when they were long, they took forever.
Tonight was going to be one of those nights, Anselm knew, and the army of faces marching past the screen at electronic speeds certainly held up his thoughts on the matter. Gwen had dozed off in her chair some time ago, and he had found himself doing the same from time to time.
In fact, the only thing that was keeping him awake was the occasional ping from the computer that announced one more potential gunman to the army he was beginning to imagine around him.
Fifty three and counting.
Anselm closed his eyes, his head nodding down into his chest before snapping back up.
Abdallah must have been planning this for years, over a decade perhaps.
And that being the case, Anselm was really starting to wonder what his contingency plans were in case of official involvement.
He had to have them, the Interpol agent realized, his mind working tiredly. The involvement of Law Enforcement Agencies was inevitable, so he had to have plans to deal with them.
What kind of plans though
Hostages seemed to be a given, but that alone wouldn’t work unless he’d managed to maintain operational security on the biological factor. Security on something like that wasn’t easy either, and with it known, Abdallah had to know that the government would likely be forced to assault the tower, hostages or no.
The terrorist had certainly had the time to make those preparations, additionally it was obvious he had the money and backing, and now Anselm was watching the number of men Abdallah had increase by the minute.
So what had he worked out to ensure that his plan went through
What was Abdallah’s ace in the hole
“Begin distributing the weapons to the men, Coreem.”
“Yes, Amir.” The small man nodded his head, looking toward a series of pallets of munitions marked with the Chinese Star. “Shall we roll out the heavy pieces as well”
Amir glanced away from the pallets of QW-9 shoulder fired Anti-Aircraft missiles toward the vehicle towed Type 105 35mm cannons. Based on the updated Swiss Orlikon Skyguard system, the Chinese weapons were an improvement over the Type 90’s that preceded them. Capable of computer assisted targeting, the heavy weapons were more than capable of creating a zone of low altitude interdiction against anything they were likely to face in the short term.
“Not yet,” he told the small man, “but have them moved to the garage in preparation for deployment. We don’t want to alarm anyone unduly, not yet anyway.”
Coreem laughed, nodding. “Yes, Amir. I’ll have everything prepared as you order.”
“Good man.”
The small man nodded again, grateful for the compliment, then ran over to a waiting forklift and turned its engine over. Amir watched for a while as he began to move pallets of anti-aircraft missiles out of their storage locations to where they could be broken up and delivered to the men.
The interference in his lab had forced him to move his plan up much faster than he’d hoped, and it was becoming obvious that even under the best possible outcome he wasn’t going to hit his optimal time frame. There was no way he could hold the tower for a week, not even if the Americans weren’t the ones who had broken into his lab.
However, a week wasn’t necessary.
A few days, a single day even, if he could get the concentrations up to a critical level, would serve. The panic and despair would still reach truly awesome levels, and that was all that he really asked.
Abdallah just wished that it had been the Chinese or the Indians who had chosen to build the tower. Using it to strike directly at the American mainland, at the `good old US of A’, would have made the entire plan.sheer perfection.
The light was pouring in on his face when the insistent ring tone brought Anselm out of a restless sleep and the Interpol Agent grimaced as he felt the knotted muscles in his neck and back. He reached out, his hand flopping against the desk until he found the portable and tiredly flicked it open.
“Gunnar here,” He groaned quietly, rubbing his neck with his free hand.
“Agent Gunnar,” The Director said, bringing him more awake.
“Ma’am,” He said, straightening in the chair and wiping his face and eyes, pushing his mussed hair back.
“It wasn’t easy, Agent, but I got you your warrants.” The Director scowled, “The Australians are not amused, so you’d better not be wrong about this.”
“I’m not,” Anselm replied, not mentioning that he’d already started the background checks. He knew that the Director had to realize what he’d done, and if she chose to ignore it, he wasn’t going to argue. The Computer geeks at headquarters would be screaming about the CPU cycles he was using, so she could hardly have missed it.
“If you are, Agent,” The Director’s face was tight, and her voice cold, “it’s your ass.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“The STARTer unit I dispatched will be there today, but I’m already leaning on the Australian government to allow the dispatch of our full response unit to your location within forty eight hours.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
“Don’t thank me, Anselm,” She said, voice softening slightly. “We should have moved faster than this.”
“Didn’t have the evidence, Ma’am,” He told her flatly, “couldn’t do anything different.”
“Perhaps,” She replied, her voice noncommittal. “Good luck.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.” Anselm said again, nodding as the connection closed.
He stood up, stretching out and tried to work some of the knots from his muscles, and looked around to find that the office was empty.