John Weisman - Direct Action

They’d discussed the plan on the way over. Tom would help carry the barrels upstairs. Then he’d leave, drive Hamzi’s car away, stash it close by but out of sight, and return to the safe house by clambering up the damnable water pipe. Only this time Reuven would have dropped a climbing rope to make the ascent easier.

Reuven slammed the driver’s-side door. The Israeli had all of Hamzi’s pocket litter-including his fist-size clump of keys. He followed Tom to the trunk, picked up one of the barrels and his black satchel, then slammed the trunk shut and hit the remote. The Mercedes’s lights blinked twice. With his head, Reuven signaled Tom to follow him. The Israeli cradled the barrel in his left arm. In his right was Hamzi’s key chain.

There were two dozen keys on the big ring. But Reuven had decided that only three could be the safe-house front-door key. Because the building was being renovated, the original wood door had been removed. In its place was a utilitarian steel slab with sprung hinges, wide enough for wheelbar-rows to move through, and a big, industrial-strength latch-bolt lock.

Since Ben Said would have the safe house under surveillance, everything Reuven did had to be self-assured. No fumbling, no awkwardness. He’d rearranged the keys so that the three prime candidates were right on top of the pile.

With Tom in tow, Reuven went up the two steps to the door and inserted a key. It didn’t fit. He cursed in Arabic, hefted the barrel, shook the key ring in obvious frustration, selected a second key, and slid it into the lock.

The cylinder ratcheted as it turned, making more noise than Tom would have liked. Reuven scowled, pulled the door open, held it while Tom went through into the entryway, then followed, pulling the metal-reinforced wood shut firmly behind him. “Mahmoud, you wait,” Reuven said in Moroccan-accented Arabic. “I’ll get the minuterie .” He fumbled slightly, then found the button and pressed it. “Come,” he growled. “Follow me.”

The building was a wreck. The ground-floor walls had been demolished. There was plaster and dust everywhere. Bare bulbs hanging from exposed wires provided the illumination. The hallway smelled of stale cigarette smoke and old cooking oil. “The French,” Reuven said, continuing his Arabic monologue. “They live like dogs.”

He led the way to a narrow stairway, the marble treads concave with age and thick with plaster and wood shavings. “Up,” he said, reverting into French, “deuxième étage.”

12:13. Tom’s shoulders were burning by the time they reached the third floor, but happy to be past the construction that clogged the ground and first floors. At the landing, Reuven stopped long enough to let the lights go out. Then he pressed the minuterie.

Reuven peered down the hallway. It was deserted. He scanned the black-and-white tile flooring, saw something, tapped Tom’s arm, and pointed. There were footprints in the fine dust.

Reuven’s hand instructed Tom to stay where he was. The Israeli crept forward. Then he straightened up and signaled for Tom to follow.

12:14. They stood in front of the safe-house door. Tom leaned against the wall, eased into a squatting position, and let the olive barrels slide down gently onto the corridor’s tiled surface. “Heavy, Yahia,” he said, wiping at his face with the patterned handkerchief that Salah had pre-positioned in his right-hand trouser pocket.

Reuven grunted. He’d placed the blue barrel on the floor next to his leg, although the black satchel still hung over his shoulder.

Now he produced a tiny LED flashlight in his left hand. Where it had come from Tom had no idea. The Israeli cast his eye down at the keys in his hand, looked at the single lock on the door, and selected the one he hoped would fit.

Tom watched as the Israeli shone the red light on the door lock. The door itself was nothing special-solid wood, with a brass escutcheon and a single-cylinder dead-bolt lock of the most common type. He glanced up and down the door frame. There was no keypad for the security device. And then he took a quick glimpse up and down the hallway and understood Ben Said’s thinking. Every door had only one lock. And there were no burglar alarms visible anywhere.

So the security device would be inside. The question was, where had Ben Said put it-and if they didn’t get to the damn thing in time, where would the alarm go off?

Well, they’d find out soon enough.

12:14:41. Reuven turned the key. Tom heard the dead bolt click three times. That was unusual. Most dead bolts opened on two turns of the key.

Reuven pressed the handle down and pushed the door inward.

Tom heard a muted but unmistakable electronic squeal from inside the safe house-as if an infrared beam had tripped an alarm box.

12:14:50. Reuven stepped across the threshold. Tom followed. The Israeli closed the door behind them and panned the light, moving it quickly but evenly left to right, right to left.

Tom followed the light as it played back and forth. In the corners of the foyer, he glimpsed an infrared beam projector. The receiver base would be just opposite. If the door was even cracked, the beam would be interrupted.

They were in a narrow foyer perhaps eight feet square. To Tom’s left was a short corridor. Straight ahead was a long, narrow room, the entrance to which was blocked by a sheet of clear plastic attached to the wall by wide, dark tape. It didn’t take Tom more than a millisecond to get his bearings. The drainpipe he’d climbed was straight ahead and to his right. Beyond the plastic sheeting were the tables with the backpacks, detonators, and the pasta machine that Ben Said used to roll out his explosives.

12:14:53. Reuven hissed, breaking Tom’s concentration. The Israeli was shining his light on the floor molding to their right. Taped to it was a four-inch block of plastic explosive. Wires from the explosive led to what looked like a cell phone.

The beam from Reuven’s light played on the left-hand floor molding, revealing a second, identical IED.

12:14:55. Reuven shifted the light. Straight ahead, on a small wood table-the kind that flanks sofas and holds a lamp-sat a rectangular dark box about the size and thickness of a paperback book. There was a calculator keypad embedded into the top of the box.

12:14:57. Reuven went to the box, picked it up, and punched the five-number code onto the keypad. The wailing, which was coming from somewhere beyond the plastic sheeting, stopped, and Tom reveled in the sudden silence. He inhaled deeply-realizing at that instant that he hadn’t taken a breath since they’d crossed the threshold.

12:15:02. Reuven flipped Tom the keys to Hamzi’s Mercedes. Using his hands, the Israeli signaled Tom to go back downstairs, get the last of the olive containers, and bring them all into the safe house, but not to close the door until he’d finished.

12:15:44. Reuven examined the box. The keypad indeed belonged to a cheap calculator-the kind you could find at any office-supply store for less than five euros. The box itself weighed about half a pound. It was made of some sort of injection-molded carbon fiber or preformed Kydex-like material. The seams were bonded-invisible. Reuven guessed that there was either a self-destruct or a doomsday device inside, which would go off if any attempt was made to get inside.

He dropped the box into the pocket of Hamzi’s suit coat and went to the explosive charge, dropped to one knee, checked it, and removed the detonator, rendering the IED safe.

Next, Reuven took a look at the safe-house door. He focused his light on the bolt hole and peered inside. The hole had been chiseled out much deeper than usual. At its rearmost point, Reuven could see a metal contact plate to which a pair of black wires had been soldered.