Jack Coughlin: Clean Kill

Abdullah let the helicopter’s spinning blades come to a complete stop before a bodyguard opened the side door. To allow the powerful rotor wash to whip his regal robes like laundry on a line was unacceptable. The British foreign minister, the American secretary of state and Sir Geoffrey Cornwell welcomed him and they all left the gleaming helipad for a reception area in which Israeli Foreign Minister Nathan Simhon stood waiting. The moment of truth, thought Abdullah. Inshallah.

Then Simhon, with a genuine smile, unexpectedly broke protocol and stepped forward to shake hands with the prince and a private photographer recorded the historic moment.

“Mr. Foreign Minister, we shall be great friends!” declared the prince.

“We all look forward to that,” responded Simhon. “I am honored to be signing the letter of intent with you tomorrow.”

LADYPAT WAS INTRODUCEDto the prince as the evening’s hostess, and stepped between the two men to lead the group into the huge banquet hall, a corridor of stone and tapestries and ancient weapons that maintained the castle theme. A massive oak table ran almost the entire length of the room. Sir Jeff escorted the wife of the Israeli ambassador, a gorgeous brunette who had once been an actress.

Delara Tabrizi took her notebook and her PDA and retreated to her basement office, which was serving double duty as a storage area for spare parts for the event’s beefed-up communication center. A bank of color television screens was aligned along the wall and she could watch things unfold while directing the cooks, waiters, and various staff members. Delara allowed herself a smile of sheer joy. It felt like only yesterday that she had barely escaped from Iran with her life and she knew this historic moment would not please the mullahs. However, it pleased her greatly.

The reception was running smoothly and everything was on schedule, so she touched up her makeup before heading back upstairs to retrieve Sir Jeff and get him out to the helipad to greet the Egyptian foreign minister, whose helicopter was making its final approach.

She noticed a member of the prince’s entourage whisper to Sir Jeff, who pointed to a side door, and the man immediately relayed the comment to the prince. Delara suppressed a laugh. All of this hullabaloo, peace treaties and history coming together, and the main guy had to go to the bathroom.

SCOTLAND

AS HE TRUDGED UPthe stony hill, Ibrahim Bilal remembered going on hikes as a child with his father when the family lived in High Wycombe in England. He had become an engineer, but a bored young man with no enthusiasm for life until he found Islam. Along with discovering inner change and comfort, he became aware that a smart and brave young believer could earn a good living as a fighter and a maker of explosives. After his conversion, less than a year ago, he had abandoned the family name for a new identity, then departed from the family itself, for they were infidels and impure.

This climb had been rigorous, but not really hard, other than carrying the extra weight. Within ten minutes, Bilal reached the crest and could see the glow from the big house, a bubble of blue and white light in the gathering darkness. “Now!” he commanded to those who followed him. “Set it up!”

While the men dumped their burdens and packs, Ibrahim examined the perimeter road as a slow-moving vehicle passed by and a small spotlight illuminated clumps of bushes along both sides. When the car moved on, he removed a laser rangefinder from his pack and measured the distance between the hilltop on which he was crouched and the castle across the water. The digital readout told him they were 3,800 meters away from the big wall, and 600 meters outside of the two-mile security perimeter.

By the time he checked his team, the tripod had been pulled from its container and the legs were unfolded, fanned out and locked in place. The men were forcing the stabilizing prongs into the hard ground. Then they heaved the fifty-two pound launch system into position and locked it atop the tripod.

Bilal heard the low hum of another vehicle engine and snapped his attention back to the road where headlights and another spotlight gleamed, but were pointed down toward the edges of the road and not up the hill. Another patrol, only two minutes behind the first one. The loch road was a busy place.

The team unhooked the day-night sight package from one of the backpacks and affixed it to the angular device they had already built, plugged in the connections and activated it. Another narrow cylinder was opened and a long object was withdrawn and was smoothly slid into the thick tube atop of the weapon. The tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided missile, known worldwide as a TOW, was ready to work.

This one had been removed from a U.S. Army Humvee in Iraq the previous year after an ambush, smuggled into England, and stored away to await a suitable target. Ibrahim looked at his stopwatch: More minutes had flown away and the big hand kept sweeping over the numbers. He was still on time and he crouched beside the TOW, a loader standing by with another missile, and the others taking overwatch positions to keep track of the patrols.

Bilal adjusted the thermal optic sight until the crosshairs rested on the bright, glowing castle wall. He took a deep breath and pressed the firing mechanism. The missile, more than four feet in length, tore out of its tube with a deafening, thumping roar and a flash of fire which violently jarred them all, but Ibrahim had expected it, recovered and brought the crosshairs back onto the target. The roar was replaced by the hissing whisper of a thin wire unreeling behind the TOW that would relay the built-in computer commands to adjust the small fins on the flying missile. Ibrahim Bilal was sweating, counting off the twenty seconds until impact and holding the thermal sight steady on his target.

The loader was readying the second rocket. The team would do both shots in less than a minute, and then be gone.

SOLDIERS ON THE ROVINGpatrols-in vehicles, on foot, and on the lake-heard the distinctive, muffled pop-boom of the TOW launch and came to a slight halt as their brains began issuing threat signals. Eight seconds had elapsed before any of them spotted the brilliant red streak tearing through the night sky, and three seconds more ticked off before the first man could understand what was going on. He hit the TRANSMIT button on his throat mike and yelled, “INCOMING MISSILE!”

An anti-missile team stationed in the woods had no chance. The TOW had come and gone before they realized it was even there, and relentlessly plunged over the top of its slight arc and sped toward the castle.

The security apparatus was big, but had miles to cover, which made it comparatively slow. It was hampered in the struggle to adapt to the instant threat because the multiple nations represented in the dining hall used different radio frequencies.

In her office, Delara Tabrizi heard the panicked warning being broadcast in several languages as guards tried to cut through the established procedure and reach their own people. She stood rooted in place, unable to mentally process the information. An attack? Here?

The bodyguard stationed near each dignitary also had to mentally process the alert call that was shouted in their earpieces and a few managed to lurch forward to protect their people, but were out of time.

The powerful TOW, pushed by its tight tail of fire, slammed into the castle wall with a 12.4-kilogram warhead that was capable of blowing through the armor of a tank. It obliterated the ancient fortification with an explosion that sent chunks of concrete scything through the air, followed by bolts of flame and waves of debris.