“You’re right,” Justin replied, “I’m not at liberty.”
“Oh, don’t give me that. We’re on the same team.”
“We are? Do you give me everything you have?”
“I tell you what you
need
to know.”
“Yeah, and so do I.”
An awkward silence followed for about a minute. Nour’s eyes were glued to Abdul’s car. Justin fiddled with his BlackBerry.
“Look,” Nour said at some point, “we both want the same thing. It will be easier to get it if we worked together, rather than each following our own leads.”
“Agreed.”
“So?” Nour invited Justin to speak with a gesture of his hand.
“There may be more at stake here than meets the eye. Carrie, she’s my partner, has learned that another player has a horse in the Alliance’s dirty game.”
“Who?”
“That’s classified. CIS agents only.”
“Fair enough. What does this player want?”
“We’re not sure, but anything we may discover in the explosives and during this investigation may be crucial to uncovering his plans.”
“It may be the Israelis,” Nour wondered, “they often seem to be pulling the proverbial strings.”
“So I’ve heard,” Justin replied with a straight face, “sometimes it’s true, and then, sometimes it isn’t.”
Chapter Sixteen
Tripoli, Libya
May 15, 10:00 a.m. local time
“You’re sure this is it?” Justin asked, as Nour pulled into an almost empty lot, the size of a city block, surrounded by a large space of wasteland. A grayish, two-story warehouse stood to the north, the only building probably within a mile radius. Two apartment buildings towered in the south.
“Of course,” Nour replied. “See where Abdul parked?”
Justin glanced to his left. Abdul opened the driver’s door and stepped outside, talking on his cellphone.
“This used to be a training facility for police recruits before they moved to their new complex, about ten blocks that way.” Nour pointed to the south, beyond the apartment towers. “I wish Abdul would have said we were coming here,” he added, reaching for the black folder in the back seat. “Let’s go.”
“Give me a second to phone Carrie our location.”
“OK.”
Nour browsed through the report’s pages, while Justin placed his call. A minute later, as Justin was pocketing his smartphone, Nour produced an embassy personnel badge, similar to the one he had slipped Justin earlier. “For your partner.”
Justin picked up the badge. Underneath the bald eagle, the engraved name spelled Carrie O’Connor.
“Since we’ve started to level with each other.” Nour stared at the cloud of disbelief veiling Justin’s face. “I thought she may need this.”
“How did you know she was coming here when you had this made?”
“Sorry, buddy, but that’s classified. Embassy personnel only.”
Justin rolled his eyes and shook his head.
A smart guess,
he thought. “Just Security Consultant?” he pointed at the badge.
“She doesn’t have the same rank as you in the CIS, does she?”
“No, but it’s almost the same.”
“Let’s go now.”
They jumped outside into the morning heat, the dry, hot air assaulting their exposed faces.
“You were struggling to keep up there at one point,” Abdul said to Nour after flipping shut his cellphone. A curtain of sweat draped his forehead.
Justin wondered if Abdul’s car had no air conditioning but refrained from embarrassing him by asking the question. The outside temperature had risen to eighty-seven degrees, according to the GMC’s thermometer; however, the asphalt mirrored the simmering sunbeams bombarding the parking lot.
“Didn’t want to run a red light or flatten any pedestrians,” Nour replied.
“I just got our clearance from the lab security.” Abdul headed toward a small side door of the warehouse. “Ismail, the ballistics expert, will assist us.”
“I don’t think that would be necessary,” Nour replied.
“Colonel’s orders.” Abdul shrugged at Nour’s objection and gave Justin a sneaky wink. “Ismail is very good at his job and will be very helpful to you.”
Justin understood Abdul’s cue. Ismail was someone Abdul trusted.
“We have a new man, I mean woman, joining our team,” Justin said.
“Has the colonel authorized her presence here?” Abdul asked.
Justin noticed an ounce of mischief in his voice. Abdul’s sweaty face showed plain annoyance, rather than a true concern about procedures.
“Yes, he has,” Nour replied quickly.
“Fine then,” Abdul conceded.
He knocked twice on the steel panel door of the thick wall. Justin noticed a white electronic keypad to the left of the door knob and a black dome-shaped camera overhead. They waited in silence until the door opened with a loud rattle. A bespectacled young man, with a chin strap beard, looked bemused at them, as if they had the wrong place.
“Ismail, this is Nour and Jack. And this is Ismail.” Abdul used Justin’s cover name, Jack Schmitt.
The ballistic expert let them inside the police laboratory. With cement floors and steel panel walls, the place looked more suitable for servicing cars than serving as a forensic unit. A large IVECO truck, partially disassembled, took almost a third of the space of the large entrance hall. Two men were examining its engine and its cabin; a third was jotting down notes on a clipboard. Two Nissan SUV bodies, stripped of their tires and wheels, stood on the other side, along the walls. All kinds of tools and instruments filled a few tables at the end of the hall.
“Our offices are in the back. This area is for analysis of large objects, trucks and the like.” Ismail gestured toward the IVECO.
They followed him through another door, which led to a narrow hall. It was painted gray and smelled of a strong chemical stench that stirred up in Justin the uncomfortable feeling of walking into a hospital. Doors were assigned sequential numbers and names of employees, but no titles.
“Here, this way,” Ismail said, pointing at one of the doors.
He tapped a series of numbers in a keypad by the door’s handle and pushed open the door. They stepped inside an oval-shaped office. Gray metallic tables, covered with all types of laboratory gadgets stood along the red brick walls.
“This is my office,” Ismail explained. “Well, I share it with three other guys, my colleagues, but they’re out today, working in the field.”
He took them toward his work station. Next to a computer monitor, Justin noticed a picture of Ismail and another older man taken at the Martyrs’ Square.
Is that his dad? An uncle?
“Show them the bomb that didn’t go off,” Abdul said.
“Oh, yeah, sure. That one, oh, that one was quite an interesting device,” Ismail began enthusiastically, but then held his tongue. “I don’t mean to offend any of the victims,” he added somberly, “even though this one did not explode.”
Justin’s BlackBerry chirped. “My partner just arrived,” he said, after glancing at the phone.
“I’ll let her in.” Abdul turned around, heading for the door.
“Wait a second. Here’s her badge.” Justin handed Abdul the embassy badge.
“So, what’s so special about this bomb?” Nour followed Ismail to one of the tables.
“Nothing, it’s nothing special, apart from the fact that it didn’t explode,” Ismail replied. “The Alliance never makes mistakes. They’ve placed over fifty bombs, suicide bomber belts or car and truck bombs over the last year and no mistakes. Not even one.”
Justin stared at the table. It was covered with trays of wires, cables, fragments of electronic circuits and a few tools. A large porcelain sink stood to the left. In the middle of the table, there was a square-shaped package the size of a backpack, wrapped in black tarpaulin. The three men huddled around the centerpiece.
“These are the explosives.” Ismail pointed at the package. “Thirty pounds of military-grade, high-order Semtex. From what we can tell, they’re from the pre-nineties stock, the odorless type. Extremely difficult to detect.”
Justin frowned. “Like the bomb that tore apart Pan Am 103?”
“I can’t confirm they came from the same box, but they were manufactured about the same time, probably at the same place. Czechoslovakia. Shaped like bricks, the explosives were concealed inside the backseat of the truck, right behind the driver.”
Ismail took a pair of rubber gloves from a desk nearby. He lifted one of the sliced corners of the tarpaulin with a pair of pliers. They saw the orange colored blocks of explosives, stacked and wired.
“Was Semtex used in the other four car bombs?” Nour asked.
“Yes. We’re not sure whether the loads were placed in the trunks or under the seats, like in this case, because those explosives actually did explode. However, from the blast wave, around two hundred yards, there was probably between twenty and forty pounds of explosives in each vehicle.”
“How was the bomb rigged?” Justin asked.
“Standard Alliance style. A cellphone was attached to the package, connected to the detonating caps by copper wires. All the suicide bomber had to do to trigger it was to dial the cellphone’s number.”
“Why didn’t he dial the number?”
Ismail shrugged. “No idea. I heard the police got to him before he could do that.”
“Do you have the cellphone?”
“It’s in the electronics section. I can have someone bring it.”
“Please do,” Nour said.
Ismail withdrew to another table to use a phone.
“What are you thinking?” Nour whispered to Justin.
“I am thinking of the ‘why.’”
“The suicide-bomber? Why didn’t he set off the bomb?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the report says the police got to him first and neutralized him.”
“I read that, but why didn’t this man press the buttons when he saw the police coming toward him?”
“Maybe he didn’t see them. Or maybe he was waiting for them to come closer, so he could kill them too. Maybe he forgot the phone number. His hand trembled. This man was hardly a terrorist; the report notes this was his first mission. Maybe he received little training. There are endless possibilities here.”
“Yes, but what’s the most likely?” Justin saw Ismail walking back to them. Ismail said, “We’ll have the cellphone in a couple of minutes.”
“Thanks,” Nour said.
“Was the package damaged when they brought it here?” Justin asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Police reports said the suicide bomber crashed into a police truck.”
“OK, and…”
“I’m trying to figure out whether the bomber could have still detonated the package after he crashed.”
“Well… I guess he could have,” Ismail replied. “I didn’t notice any problems with the bomb. It wasn’t damaged in the crash.”
“But you sound unsure,” Nour said.
“I am unsure because I just can’t see this man, part of a suicide mission team, failing to carry out a simple act of punching a few keys. I mean, I’m glad he didn’t do it, but I was scratching my head as to how it happened this way.”
Justin gave Nour a meaningful glance and Nour nodded, both at Justin’s glance and at Ismail’s words. A second later, they heard footsteps and saw Abdul and Carrie.
“Hey, Carrie, good to see you,” Justin said. “This is Nour and Ismail.”
She shook their hands and Ismail brought her up to speed on the explosive device. “I was asked earlier if the bomb was damaged during the crash,” Ismail said. “Now that I think about it, I remember seeing that one of the wires connected to the blasting caps was sliced off. I paid no attention to it, assuming one of the police officers had cut it, to avoid the bomb from blowing up. The cellphone was also detached and turned off, its SIM card and batteries removed, so that another terrorist could not dial in the code and detonate the bomb.”
“Do you still have the sliced wire?” Carrie asked.
Nour gave her a disapproving frown, but she ignored him, pretending to be consumed by Ismail’s explanation.
“Yes, the wires are here somewhere,” Ismail sifted through the pile of debris with his pliers. He rummaged through a dozen or so cables and wires, packed in two small boxes. Finding what he was looking for, he held up a six inch wire. The evidence was in a sealed plastic bag.
“I need to take a closer look,” Carrie said.
“There’s a box of gloves in the first drawer to the left.” Ismail pointed at a desk to his right.
Carrie tossed a pair of gloves to Justin, another pair to Nour, and wore a pair herself. She opened the evidence bag, took out the wire and analyzed the cut.
“Magnifying glass,” she said.
Ismail, not used to taking orders from a female, hesitated for a second, before handing it to her. Carrie noticed the wire had a precise cut, which had stripped the thin insulation clear from the copper conductor.
“Check this out.” She lifted up the piece of evidence. “It’s a perfect cut. No ripped insulation, no pressured ends and no incision to the conductor.”
“What does this mean?” Abdul asked.
“When you slice a cable or a wire, in a rush, with a knife, there’s no way you can get a perfect cut like this. The police didn’t do this. It was done by a professional blade, die blade most likely. An auto repair shop would have some machine that can do this. Maybe that’s where they cooked the bomb.”
“Wait a second,” Nour said. “You’re telling us the terrorists screwed up when they prepared this IED?”
“No, I’m telling you
this,
” Carrie placed the wire back in the evidence bag, “
this
was done intentionally. I don’t know if an Alliance member was working for the police or he felt some kind of remorse and wanted at least this part of the bombing to fail. But I know
this cut
was done on purpose.”
“Makes sense and would explain the ‘why,’” Justin said.
“What ‘why’?” Abdul blinked in confusion.
“The reason why the suicide bomber didn’t detonate his bomb before the police got to him. He couldn’t. If this wire was damaged on purpose, sabotaged that is, there was no way for the suicide bomber, or anyone else for that matter, to cause the blast. Right?” Justin said, looking at Ismail.