Marc Cameron - National Security

“Your only option is to destroy that place.” She shivered as she said the words. “Believe me, it’s the kindest thing you could do for the child.”

“I hear you, Doctor.” Quinn’s voice came across the speaker again, full of composure now. “Jacques, get Palmer on the line. Let him know I’ve got three photographs for him. I’ll send them your way as soon as I get to a pickup point.”

“Roger that,” Thibodaux said, raising a dark eyebrow. “Photographs?”

“Yeah,” Quinn said. “Head shots, like these guys make when they prepare their last will and testament… right before they strap on a vest full of nails and explosives-martyr portraits. There were five of them, but I’ve taken care of two of the problems since I came to the lab…”

“You have names?” Thibodaux asked

“Afraid not,” Quinn said. “Just photos. But I also have a small case, about the size of a box of rifle ammo. Looks like it’s supposed to hold twenty glass vials about two inches long each. There are only seventeen left in the case and they’re all empty. Don’t know about the other three…”

Guttmann’s mouth fell open. “You think the three people in your martyr photos are bringing that virus to the U.S. in those vials?”

Mahoney ignored the young sergeant. “Can you give me a better description of the vials?” she said.

“Glass… maybe a hard plastic… clear… about the size of a tube of lipstick. Each vial has an inner glass container, slightly smaller, that fits inside the larger. Both have screw-on tops with rubber seals.”

“You could get a hell of a lot of virus in a vial that size,” Thibodaux mused. “Couldn’t you, Doc?”

Mahoney nodded slowly, making some notes as she spoke. “Depending on the culture medium you’d need to keep it viable, enough to infect thousands-maybe more.”

“That settles it,” Thibodaux said, smacking his huge hand on the table. “Jericho, get the hell out of there and let us blow that place to kingdom come.”

Guttmann stepped in front of his control panel, guarding it. “I can’t… I mean… I couldn’t fire the Tomahawks without permission,” he stammered. “I’d need authorization for that from way higher up than you. This is only supposed to be a surveillance op….”

“He’s right,” Quinn said. “A missile would destroy the place but start a war with the Saudis at the same time. If we destroy the evidence they’ll have a hard time buying off on our claims of a deadly virus. Besides, I still haven’t found Farooq. Give me an hour. That’ll give you time to get your permission. In the meantime, I have an idea that might solve our problem. If you don’t hear from me in an hour and five minutes, bring your little buddy out of orbit and zap us to Hell.”

“Okay, l’ami,” Thibodaux sighed. “An hour and five it is, but be sure to give yourself plenty of time to scoot out of there. I’m afraid Mrs. Miyagi will take away my new toys if you get yourself killed. I’m getting’ sorta attached to that Beemer.” His words were frivolous, but his face was creased in worry. He leaned forward against the counter, resting his face in his big hands. “No shit, Jericho. Be careful.”

“I’ll talk to you again in an hour.”

“Roger that,” Thibodaux said, straightening up with a groan. “I’ll call Palmer.”

Mahoney paced to the map as the line went dead. She put her finger on the small dot over the oasis city of Al-Hofuf.

“Here there be dragons,” she whispered to herself.

Quinn stuffed the photographs inside his dishdasha, outside his T-shirt and facing away from his skin so he wouldn’t ruin the images with sweat. He’d need them preserved as well as possible if they hoped to get any sort of ID on the terrorists that remained alive.

As he walked past the second observation window, he noticed a black intercom box on the wall between him and the three soldiers. He almost passed it by, but one of the men stirred on a filthy cot. In his early twenties, the boy was soaked in sweat, blinded by the ravages of his disease. His name tag read MEEKS-the missing Air Force TACP from Fallujah.

Jericho pushed the button, swallowed hard before he could speak. “Sergeant Trey Meeks… we’re here to take you home.”

Meeks tried to rise, but, too weak, made do with tipping his head toward the noise. “Who’s there?” His pitiful croak ripped at Quinn’s heart.

“Another American… OSI,” Quinn said, resting his head against the wall. “Hang on for a few minutes more and I’ll take care of everything.

“Air Force?”

“You bet,” Quinn said.

“An American,” the boy sighed. Exhausted from the effort of just a few words, he fell back against his sodden cot, wracked with spasmodic coughs. When he finally calmed, he turned back toward the window and blinked serenely. Though blind and covered with unimaginable gore, the corners of his cracked lips turned up in the slightest hint of a smile. “I knew you’d come.”

Thirty-five minutes later, Jericho stacked the last fifty-pound bag of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on top of a pile as high as his chest. The barn’s cramped storage room was thirty feet from the lab’s outer wall, but he didn’t want to risk moving explosives back and forth across the open ground. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony of it all-an American, smack in the hotbed of Middle Eastern terrorism, manufacturing an IED-an improvised explosive device-much like the sort insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan used to kill U.S. troops almost every day. Like the bombs they used to kill thousands in a Colorado shopping mall.

Jericho’s device was far more crude. He only hoped it would be as effective.

Given time, enough foolish bravado, and the right materials, virtually anyone with access to the Internet could build a bomb. For Jericho, time was at a premium and he had to make do with the materials he had on hand.

Like Timothy McVeigh’s Ryder truck that had demolished the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma, the main component in Quinn’s explosive was ammonium nitrate. It was powerful stuff, capable of inflicting incredible damage. It was also relatively stable, needing an initial concussive blast and a fairly sizable booster to provide detonation. For that, Quinn had to bet on a little old fashioned ingenuity and a whole lot of luck.

He had roughly a ton of fertilizer-less than half of that used by McVeigh-but he hoped the dusty grain and hay loft would add to the explosion. Rummaging behind the old Farmall tractor, he was able to scrounge up three ten-gallon cans of diesel fuel. These he poured into holes he cut in three bags of fertilizer. Into the top bag, he nestled the two pony bottles from the portable oxygen-acetylene cutting torch. Detonating a bomb was a little more problematic if you wanted to live through it. For that, Jericho needed a trigger he could activate remotely.

The first thing he’d done on his arrival to the Saudi Kingdom was purchase a cell phone with a local number. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he switched this phone to vibrate before lashing it to the neck of the oxygen tank with a short length of hay twine he found on the floor.

A search of the barn’s cleaning cabinet provided the necessary ingredients to mix with the precious iodine crystals he’d swiped from the horseshoeing box. This mixture would provide his blasting cap.

Preparations for his crude bomb complete, Jericho took a deep breath and opened the bottle of purple crystals. They began to evaporate as soon as he removed the lid. Pouring the entire bottle of metallic flakes into a plastic cup, he carefully mixed in the liquids from the cleaning closet to form a slurry of purple mud the consistency of thick pancake batter. He said a little prayer of thanks that he’d had a high school chemistry teacher with enough foresight to use The Anarchist’s Cookbook as a text. The finished product brought a smile to his face.