0230: Sit tight. No lights. No TV. Sleep in turns.
0930: Bodies stir on schedule within five minutes of each other. Timing test: perfect. Top up tranquiliser doses. Use same dosage again, enough to dope up for eight more hours and be undetectable by the time the bodies are checked. Sleep in turns.
1650: Dwayne confirms all 230 packages dispatched.
1705: Prepare for exit. Set all weapons at allocated positions next to bodies. Plant “Shockwave” two-pager half under floor rug. Extract gin bottle and collapsed white stick out of microfibre bags. Roll up and shove empty bags down front of coveralls. Daniel to slip on mirrored wraparounds and extend white stick. Diana to carry gin bottle. Synchronise computer and watches. Set computer’s timer for 17:25. Check countdown sequence commences correctly. Check New York banner (with background music) to open up on laptop screen. (Nice touch.) Daniel to check street for passersby from upstairs window and get down fast.
1707: On signal, trigger remote to detonate explosive under abandoned car one block north. Check street again for witnesses—everyone is either running toward explosion or rushing into homes and slamming doors. Cover surgical gloves with woollen mittens.
1708: Exit building. Daniel taps stick as he walks away. Diana, the drunk, remains on street nearby. Work still to do. Slumps in gutter.
Perfect. She brushed a dab of blue on her toenail. Diana had a good life… And now, Isis was trusting her to set up the “what if the unthinkable really does happen?” scenario.
This secretive band was not the quitting kind and Diana savoured their next moves, in awe at Isis’s fastidious precautions. The terrorist attack on the subway, specifically designed to fail in the last few seconds, was already working magnificently in stampeding the public to go back to voting “1” for security, and thus for Hank. But as Isis warned, stampedes can peter out as quickly as they start, and they can shift direction. She dwelt for a moment on the girl who died, as she brushed the final coat of lacquer over her toenails. Every war has collateral damage, she justified, and she slipped the nailbrush back into the bottle and screwed it tight.
Isis called. Diana had more crucial work to do and it was thousands of miles away.
40
THE NEXT DAY, President Biden’s helicopter Marine One hovered over the Twin Towers memorial where people had stayed in vigil all night. It was a subdued crowd. After police cleared a space in the midst of the throng, the Sikorsky VH-3D Sea King dropped the President down to address them, and the nation.
Head bowed over heavy shoulders, President Biden waited till the clock struck noon before he stepped up to the microphone. He raised his head and cast his eyes in a wide curve across the crowd. “Despite what they do, we’re still here,” he said to heartfelt but restrained applause. “We will always be here, no matter how hard they try.” The applause grew. “Once again, a President comes to this city at a tough time. But this is a tough city… and we are a tough nation. We will never cower before terror, nor be defeated by it.” The applause was tumultuous. “And last night we were not…”
He praised the city’s courage and preparedness, and thanked the emergency and security agencies in New York and Pennsylvania, and continued. “What we unearthed,” he said, swallowing audibly, “was the unspeakable attempting the unthinkable,” and, his hand unsteady, he sent a shiver through the crowd even though they were already aware of the horror that might have been.
What he didn’t say was that despite all the last few years’ efforts to upgrade security, including stationing federal and city employees at entrances to New York’s bridges, tunnels, subways, airports, ports and major monuments, and equipping them with body scanners and radiation and explosive detection devices, these five dead terrorists were armed with none of the nuclear, biological or chemical weapons the pricey high-tech equipment was designed to detect. The C-4 they used was a new sniffer-proof variety that had only been available to the military.
“The evil plan of these men,” continued the President, “was to wreak true mass destruction on this, the world’s greatest city, by using conventional weapons but in a most unconventional way… And yet, what stopped them was conventional law enforcement.”
Hardly.
TOPPING off Hank’s brief but impressive performance that night, a susceptible public and media had finally started hailing him as a leader, and more amazingly, a hero. At last, Hank could crow about something important, and over the next few days it staggered even Isabel to hear him so coherent and passionate—her moments of toe-curling embarrassment were no more.
Hank’s time had come.