The Red Cell. André Le Gallo
little girl clung to her mother in fear.
“Afterward, Imam Hussein’s stallion, Lahik, dipped his head in the Imam’s blood and went back to the camp where he hit his head on the ground and shed tears.”
The mourning women beat their breasts and wailed. Another of them took up the story through her tears. “At the same time, two doves dipped their wings in Hussein’s blood and flew to Medina and then to Mecca where everyone understood the signs and cried.”
“And Hussein’s daughter Sukeyna, poor child, searched the battlefield for the body of her father,” a third woman said. “Hussein’s struggle, May Allah protect him, was a struggle against injustice, tyranny, and oppression, a fight that will only end when revenge…”
An explosion overwhelmed and shut out all other sounds, interrupting her. The walls of the house shook and rumbled. Before anyone could react, another blast, louder and closer, broke the momentary silence that followed the first and shattered the window sending shards of glass flying like arrows through the shadors into soft flesh. The girl felt her mother’s blood on her face as both were knocked to the floor.
Outside, men ran toward side streets. Others, veterans of the Iraq-Iran war, had hit the ground immediately. In front of a public building blood and body parts were still flying through the air together with pieces of the car that had concealed the bomb. Many of those lying face down were killed by mortar rounds flying in over the roof tops.
AL JAZEERAH—Karbala, Iraq. Insufficient security measures by occupying American troops allowed a car bomb, several suicide bombers and a mortar attack to kill over 200 and wound 1000 more during the traditional Shiite holiday of Ashura. An American spokesman in Baghdad denied the security lapse had been planned.
BBC—A coordinated attack allegedly designed to fuel a religious war between Iraqi Sunnis and Shias killed over one hundred and fifty and wounded five hundred Shia pilgrims in the holy city of Karbala in Iraq today. Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is believed to be responsible for the carnage.
1. Old Executive Office Building, Washington
When Steve Church drove out of his office’s underground parking onto 17th Street, Northwest, the sudden eruption of white fumes from a motorcycle in his rearview mirror awakened his operational awareness, which had been dulled by a year heading the White House’s Intelligence staff. As he headed south toward Constitution Avenue, he kept an eye on the two bikers, both in black leather, who were sharing a midsize Japanese motorcycle now two cars behind him. With a threatening roar, the bike moved up a car closer, straddling the white lane divider. At the same time, the driver lowered the black visor of his helmet like a knight preparing for battle, while his rider removed something from the bike’s saddle bag.
Feeling a growing sense of paranoia, Steve transferred his gun from the glove compartment to the map slot in the driver’s door. Having narrowly escaped from Iran a year before, carrying that country’s top-secret plans for a devastating cyber attack on the United States, Steve immediately assumed the bikers to be an Iranian hit team, unless of course they were peaceful commuters on their way home.
He turned right on Constitution and then made an immediate half-right onto Virginia Avenue, before a red light forced him to stop. The motorcycle pulled up next to him on the passenger side, just as the light turned green. Steve thought he heard a metallic clunk, but it was quickly overwhelmed by the bike’s roaring takeoff. He managed to keep close enough behind to see them turn right at the end of Virginia onto the Rock Creek Parkway, before he pulled into the gas station just beyond the Watergate West condominium tower.
As he rounded the car toward the gas pumps, he discovered the source of the sound he had heard a few minutes before. It was a round black box attached to his passenger door. He recognized it instantly as a limpet mine, an IED used by the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, the MEK, to assassinate their targets, most recently Iranian nuclear scientists. His first thought was to pull it off and hurl it across the street into a vacant lot. But just then a utility truck pulled up to the other side of the pump. Steve raced toward the vehicle and pulled the emerging driver, a ruddy-faced, forty-something man in white overalls, to the pavement, yelling, “Get down, get down!”
Although Steve’s heart was pounding and the adrenaline was flowing, his mind was on automatic; his instincts were in charge.
Before Steve could finish his warning, the device exploded.
The sound was deafening, but fortunately the mine was small enough its force projected mostly sideways into his car and did not ignite the gas pumps—though the interior was engulfed in flames, and the passenger door looked like it had been penetrated by a rocket-propelled grenade.
His ears ringing, Steve took a breath and checked that his new friend was okay. He quickly stood up and ran to the driver’s side of his car to retrieve the Glock. He managed to yank the door open and retrieve the gun before the fire could ignite its ammunition. Then, surrounded by stunned onlookers, he ran back to the other driver, who was now sitting up and shaking his head.
“I need to borrow your truck,” Steve said in a rush. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”
He opened the door, which was labeled “Hansen Glass,” and jumped in. “Tell the police I’m going after those guys,” he called out, starting the engine and roaring away from his still-burning vehicle, just as the first sounds of sirens could be heard.
Steve had to think fast. He had seen the motorcycle heading up the parkway, but where to? Were they trying to get to the Pakistan Embassy on Connecticut Avenue? The Pakistanis handled Iranian affairs in the United States. Possibly, but the longer they stayed on the streets of the capital, the more likely they’d be picked up by surveillance video. The police would know where they were trying to hide.
No, he decided. They had probably looped up the ramp to the elevated Whitehurst Freeway and were going to try to thread the rush-hour traffic on Key Bridge to the George Washington Parkway, on the Virginia side of the Potomac. From there, they could reach the Beltway and make their escape on one of its many exits around the city—or even roll out of town completely, maybe seeking to end up at the Iranian Legation in New York.
He had another problem: His would-be assassins could snake through the rush-hour traffic on a two-wheeled motorcycle, while he was driving, he discovered, a truck carrying a six-by-nine-foot pane of glass, which was still in one piece, perhaps because it was on the side away from the explosion.
In a flash he cancelled his first plan of pursuing the bike by taking the ramp to the Whitehurst. Instead, he suddenly veered across the parkway onto the narrow ramp to K Street under the freeway. As he did, the truck’s GPS monotone voice warned, “You have made an incorrect turn. You have made an incorrect turn.” Steve grinned, shutting off the device and pushing the truck toward Wisconsin Avenue, turning right up the hill into the heart of Georgetown.
When he and Kella had been trying to reach the Iranian Gulf while on the run from Iranian security, he was the rabbit. Now, he was the hunter, but he didn’t equate his action—stealing Iranian plans to attack the United States—with this attempt on his life. He laid on his horn, doing his own bit of clumsy threading, trying to get down M Street to the point where the freeway ended and the men on the bike would be circling around the feeder lane to Key Bridge.
He was almost there, having resorted to confronting oncoming traffic, narrowly missing pedestrians, and at one point swerving onto the sidewalk, when … there they were! By the barest stroke of luck, the combination of crawling traffic and their misjudgment that they had nailed Steve had kept them within reach.
Not for long, however. They must have guessed it was Steve doing the daredevil maneuvers in the truck, because as soon as the rear rider spotted him, he whacked the driver on the helmet; they took off across the bridge and zipped down the ramp to the G.W. Parkway.
By now, Steve’s adrenaline was pumping full bore. He risked some hairbreadth misses, as he floored the truck down the middle of the bridge, nearly sideswiping two cars on the far side, slicing across lanes to get to the parkway entrance.
Another thought: