Seth’s war would be won a kill at a time. And where he and others like him had it over the rest of the world could be found in their values. Westerners didn’t have the will to kill innocents. To Seth, all Americans were fair game.
Seth got to the safe house ten minutes after Ana. “You look the same,” she said, tugging on his beard as they embraced.
“And you…still beautiful, my sister.” After they made small talk for a minute Seth looked at his watch and turned to the business at hand.
“What is next for you?”
“I may be free for only a short while. I’ll get a new trial and—”
“—and they will find a way to keep you in prison. You are among the enemy, Ana. They would not negotiate with your son and husband’s captors to save them. You were born to Iranian parents and can never be accepted here. And our people will never give up our fight. We cannot beat America in a great war such as might have occurred between Russia and the United States but we can keep their people off balance, take a few at a time. They will come to wish for a decisive battle but there will never be one. We will choose the battlefields in America as we have done in the rest of the world. They will never know where the next one will be. Or when. We will choose our implements of war and we have loyalists who will be the vehicles of delivery. The imbeciles of the United States can never compete with an enemy who believes as fervently as we do, who are willing to die for our beliefs. They can never be prepared for us or find us for retaliation. We are nowhere and we are everywhere.”
Seth went on. “To kill us would be to kill the women and children who harbor us. The Americans will allow their own to be killed rather than do that. We are a perfect war machine, Ana, because we have a perfect enemy. Someday the Great Satan will bow to us.”
Seth paused. The veins in his muscular arms bulged as he looked at Ana. “The name Seth will be revered or feared the world around. Our parents would be proud of both of us.”
Ana wiped a tear from her eye.
“I have heard of your Warfield. Is he a concern?”
“Warfield feels somewhat responsible for my conviction. He got me out of jail.”
“You have a way with men.”
“I don’t wish to talk about that. Tell me what you need me to do.”
“You can acquire the materials I will need without raising suspicion. And you may wish to suggest a target. I will consider your suggestion but it must have the potential for great destruction of life, disruption of orderly process and psychological impact. It will be better if it is part of the government.”
Seth didn’t want to spend any more time at the safe house. He gave Ana cash for the materials he needed, including a box-truck with a hydraulic lift that lowered from the back of the truck to the ground. She would use the truck to haul the supplies and Seth would use it later in his operation. Ana agreed to come up with a list of targets. They arranged for their next phone contact and left the safe house separately.
Three days later they met at a new place. Ana left the materials she had acquired for Seth in the truck, which she had parked in a remote area of a shopping center far from any structures where it might invite suspicion. When Seth asked for her suggested targets she named several. At the top of the list was the Justice Department, whom she told Seth was most responsible for her wrong conviction. Seth wanted to know the number of workers at each potential target, their level of importance in the government, the probable effect of their loss on the operations of government and on the psyche of the citizenry. Those were the criteria he’d use in selecting his target.
Seth found the truck. When he drove onto the street a gray Chevrolet Suburban was following him but it soon turned off. A black sedan took its place but it also went another direction. Paranoia, Seth thought. I have been lucky too long and now I am getting paranoid. He drove a circuitous route and an hour later ended up at his motel, an extended-stay type that provided maid service only on request. He drove the truck around to the rear of the building and backed it up to his ground-floor room. Over the next three hours he moved the supplies into the room, waiting between trips until no one was in the parking lot to see him.
Enabled by the credentials Ana had secured for him in the name of Ahmed Ahmed with the assistance of Tot Templeton, Seth landed a full-time job with D.C. Private Select Services, the firm that provided maintenance and repair for several federal facilities, including the Department of Justice building. The personal interview that preceded hiring wasn’t easy. Seth’s very presence created anxiety if not fear in anyone near him. That persona was legendary and he had never done anything to soften the impact. But he had to work up a non-threatening act so he would be hired by a prospective employer.
Ana had helped him with the employment application and told him to name Templeton at State as a reference. He received the security clearance DCPSS required within a week and they put him to work the next day. Every night when he returned to his motel he worked on the bomb until two in the morning and got up at six to go to work. It took him thirty-three days to complete his masterpiece, working in his off-duty hours.
It was a Sunday night and the area at the rear of the motel was deserted and dark. He removed the door and plate glass window from his room and rigged a series of pulleys and rope. This mechanical assist made it possible for him to inch the bomb across the floor to the lift gate. He then raised the lift gate to the level of the truck floor and slid the explosive into the truck using the pulley system again. He leaned against the inside wall of the box truck for a moment while he caught his breath. He imagined the carnage, and wished for a moment he could share it with someone.
His plan wasn’t original. The same thing had been done in the United States more than once. And this wouldn’t come close to the eleventh of September achievement. But none of the previous operations were carried out by one man working alone. Fumio Yoshida, the Japanese he’d made arrangements for, worked only with Petrevich and his two underlings but failed. This time the credit would go to Seth. Unlike others, he would escape to strike again. He would be the force dominating the news now, the object of endless, exhausting, futile searches worldwide. The mention of his name would from this day forward create a quickening of the pulse. He would be the new symbol of justice in the Middle East, the icon of fear in America. The replacement symbol for bin Laden, who had lost his life because of complacency and carelessness.
Seth had studied structural design at the German university he attended and knew how and where to place explosives for greatest results. During his DCPSS service trips to the Justice building, he surreptitiously took photos and made sketches of the visible structural components in the basement. Soon he had enough data to determine where to park the box truck for maximum effectiveness. Partial devastation of the building was his minimum expectation but total collapse was not impossible. He’d observed and memorized the security procedures and the names of the guards who inspected the vehicles entering the Justice compound. He involved Ana as little as possible and never told her he had selected the Justice building, or when the attack would take place, consistent with the extreme caution that had kept him alive for so long.