The weapons arrived in the trailer, then al-Matari and his two men personally inspected and separated the equipment right there in a warehouse next to the airfield in Guyana.
Now as al-Matari walked through the cargo section of the An-32, he could look at each crate and know what was inside. There were twenty-five Uzi nine-millimeter submachine guns and twenty-five AK-103 rifles. The Avtomat Kalashnikova model 103 fired a much more powerful round than the Uzi, but the weapon was twice the length and therefore much harder to conceal. The Kaibiles from Guatemala had brought similar versions of both guns to the Language School, so all the students were capable operators of both.
There was a crate of hand grenades for each cell, along with C-4 explosives, military-grade detonators, and other bomb-making equipment.
The Saudi had also purchased four AT4s, American-made antitank rocket launchers, and eight RPG-7 rocket launchers with thirty-six rockets, along with four Russian-made Igla-S man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS. These were shoulder-fired antiair missiles, capable of downing a jumbo jet.
Unfortunately for al-Matari and his students, the Kaibiles had never used an Igla-S and there wasn’t even a mockup at the school to train on, but fortunately for the Islamic State operatives’ plans, there were YouTube videos instructing one how to properly prepare, aim, and fire the weapons.
It wasn’t as good as real training, but the YouTube vids would be a treasure trove for the terrorists employing MANPADS for the first time.
Instead of separating his four shoulder-fired missiles among four different teams, al-Matari had decided to keep them all with him, and distribute them when the time was right. Tripoli and Algiers would fire the weapons, or even al-Matari himself.
There was a Glock 17 pistol on board the aircraft for each and every language student. It was the principal sidearm of the Venezuelan military, and while large for a handgun, it was still very concealable and could fire eighteen rounds of nine-millimeter ammo before the operator needed to reload. This meant to al-Matari that a five-man cell could, if operating together and in unison, dump ninety bullets at a single target in ten seconds or so — at a guard shack, a table full of Navy pilots, a stage where an American intelligence official was making a speech.
Ninety bullets! His operators did not need to be snipers; they just had to be brave and committed.
He knew the Glocks and Uzis would be the principal weapons of close-in assassinations, while the rifles would be more for distance work and large clusters of targets, and the explosives, rockets, and missiles used more to take out vehicles or other large targets.
There were thirty Kevlar vests on the aircraft, too. These could stop handgun rounds, but would be useless against anyone shooting a rifle at one of his cell members.
There were another thirty vests in the cases. These had not come from Venezuela, but had been flown into Guyana directly. These were suicide vests. They could be detonated via remote signal, or via a pressure switch on the end of a cable that could be slid down the sleeve of a shirt and held in the hand.
He would send his men and women out with the Kevlar under their S-vests. He would do what he could to protect them, until that moment he would do what he needed to do to martyr them to achieve his objectives.
Al-Matari had arranged for each team’s full complement of equipment to fit into a single van or large SUV and still provide room for the driver and a passenger. Of course the cells would not travel with all their equipment at all times, but he wanted to minimize the chance they would be detected by hauling around large amounts of ordnance in multiple vehicles.
Finally, Abu Musa al-Matari returned to his seat and looked over at Algiers and Tripoli. Both men were brimming with excitement but aware that this journey of theirs would be a one-way trip. They would stay in America until they were martyred. They prayed their martyrdom happened at the moment they fired the last bullet, threw the last grenade, or launched the last missile now stowed in the cargo hold behind them.
17
As one aircraft approached the United States from the south, another flew across the country, then landed at Van Nuys airport near L.A. for a quick refueling stop. A half-hour later it was back in the air, this time for the longest leg of the journey. The men of The Campus had worked on the trip across the U.S., and they’d work some more on the last leg, but from California to Seoul, Korea, the men tried to get some sleep. The three men and one woman on board did deplane in Seoul during their fifty-minute refueling stop there, but they weren’t going through customs here in Korea so they didn’t walk more than fifty feet from the aircraft. They did stretches, ran in place, but mostly they just wandered around bleary-eyed and bored, just like they’d been on the aircraft.
After taking back to the skies the three operators used the last segment of their flight to come up with a specific plan on arrival. They had more intelligence from CIA and FBI about what they’d encounter at the scene, which was a damn good thing, considering they’d arrive close to five a.m. and have to race off the aircraft into a waiting rental car, then proceed directly to a hotel for a final comms and gear check before the nine a.m. meeting between the North Korean agents and the unknown U.S. Department of State employee.
They landed in Jakarta on schedule and went through customs, where they had their luggage checked thoroughly. Helen and Country taxied into a hangar, taking their time to do so, because the three operatives were busy revealing hidden access compartments in the galley, pulling out their Smith & Wesson M&P Shield nine-millimeter pistols, inside-the-waistband appendix holsters, extra magazines, state-of-the-art covert earpieces, emergency medical equipment, and other items they would need on their operation.
Domingo, Dominic, and Jack took their hand luggage and hurried down to the waiting rental car, while Country and Helen headed to the fixed-base operator’s office to fill out some paperwork. They would immediately refuel and restock the aircraft for the flight out of here, and then they would both find a comfortable cabin chair or sofa in the back of the aircraft and try to get some sleep, while remaining at the ready for a quick getaway.
They didn’t expect to be leaving for at least five hours, but they knew when the call came that the team was en route to the airport, they would very likely have to preflight and clear customs quickly, so a little sleep in the meantime would be helpful.
At six a.m. the three American men drove their rental to a twenty-four-hour pharmacy and loaded a handbasket up with items. Water, snacks, and other odds and ends, mostly, and Ding bought a box of fifty paper surgical masks, worn regularly here because of the potential for disease transmission and the high pollution in the air.
Back in the car, Ding passed out a fistful of masks to the other two.
Dom quipped, “We’re gonna be here for a week?”
“You start sweating, running, breathing hard, these things will get soggy fast and melt off your face.”
“Right,” he said. “Maybe I’ll wear two at a time.”
“Not if you want to breathe freely.”
Jack said, “The location of the meet is a pedestrian zone that allows bicycles and motorized scooters but not cars. Do we want to get a scooter just to have at the ready?”
Chavez pulled back onto the road, heading in the direction of downtown, where they had secured a hotel just a few blocks from the location of the North Koreans’ meeting with the unknown American State Department worker. “I think we want to get two scooters. That, and this car. It will give us more options. Like we talked about on the plane, we’re going to be winging it on this one. The more flexibility we have, the better.”