By the time the Tunisian reached the exit for Route 123, the second Freightliner was directly behind him, exactly where it was supposed to be. He checked the clock. It was five minutes past eight. They were a minute ahead of schedule, better than the alternative but not ideal. The clock was Saladin’s trademark. He believed that in terror, as in life, timing was everything.
Six times the Tunisian had performed dry runs, and six times the traffic signal at Lewinsville Road had temporarily halted his advance, as it did now. When the light changed to green he meandered up the suburban lane at a leisurely pace, followed by the second Freightliner. Directly ahead was the intersection of Tysons McLean Drive. Again, the Tunisian checked the clock. They were back on schedule. He turned to the left and the overloaded truck labored up the slope of the gentle hill.
This was the portion of the approach the Tunisian had never driven, though he and the Jordanian had practiced it on a sophisticated computer simulator. The road bent gradually to the left, then, at the top of a hill, sharply to the right, where it led to an elaborate security checkpoint. By now, the highly trained and heavily armed guards were already aware of his presence. The Americans had been attacked by vehicle-borne bombs before—at the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996—and they were no doubt prepared for just such an attack on this critical facility, the nerve center of their counterterrorism apparatus. But unfortunately for the Americans, Saladin had prepared, too. The engine blocks of the trucks were encased in pig iron, the windshields and tires were bulletproof. Short of a direct hit by an antitank missile, the trucks were unstoppable.
The Tunisian waited until he had made the first slight left turn before slamming the accelerator to the floor. On the right a line of neon-orange pylons funneled inbound traffic into one lane. The Tunisian made no effort to avoid them, thus signaling to the Americans that his intentions were far from innocent.
He rounded the sharp right turn without slowing, and for an instant he feared the top-heavy truck would overturn. Before him several American security guards were gesturing wildly for him to stop. Several others already had their weapons trained on him. All at once he was blinded by a searing white light—arc lights, perhaps a laser. Then came the first gunshots. They bounced off the windshield like hail. The Tunisian gripped the wheel with his left hand and the detonator switch with his right.
“In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful . . .”
The men and women on the Operations Floor of the National Counterterrorism Center were unaware of the situation at the facility’s front gate. They had eyes only for the giant video screen at the front of the room, where two women—one blond, the other dark-haired: subjects one and two, as they were known—had just boarded a hotel elevator in nearby Arlington. The shot was from above and at a slight angle. The blond woman, subject two, appeared catatonic with fear, but the dark-haired woman seemed curiously serene. She was staring directly into the lens of the camera, as though posing for a final portrait. Gabriel stared back at her. He was on his feet, a hand pressed to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side. Adrian Carter stood next to him, a phone to each ear. Fareed Barakat was twirling an unlit cigarette nervously between his manicured fingers, his onyx-black eyes fastened to the video screen. Only Paul Rousseau, who had no taste for blood, could not watch. He was staring at the carpet as if searching for lost valuables.
Outside the hotel, the bright red Impala was parked in the surface lot, watched over clandestinely by the agents of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group. The blue light of the beacon winked on the NCTC’s screens like a channel marker. The car’s hidden microphones captured the faint drone of traffic moving along North Fort Myer Drive.
Two undercover SWAT agents were chatting amiably just outside the hotel’s entrance. Two more waited near the taxi stand. In addition, there were SWAT agents inside the hotel, two in the chrome-and-laminate lobby lounge, and two at the concierge stand. Each SWAT agent carried a concealed Springfield .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol with an eight-round magazine and an additional round in the chamber. One of the agents at the concierge stand, a veteran of the Iraq surge, was the designated shooter. He planned to approach the target, subject number two, from behind. If ordered by the president—and if no innocent lives would be lost—he would employ lethal force.
All eight members of the SWAT team tensed as the elevator doors opened and the two women, subjects one and two, stepped out. A new camera followed them across the foyer to the edge of the lobby. There the blond woman stopped abruptly and placed a restraining hand on the arm of the dark-haired woman. Words were exchanged, inaudible inside the NCTC, and the blond woman pondered her mobile phone. Then something happened that no one was expecting—not the FBI teams inside and outside the hotel, not the president and his closest aides in the Situation Room, and surely not the four spymasters watching from the Operations Floor at the NCTC. Without warning, the two women turned away from the lobby and set out along a ground-floor corridor, toward the back of the hotel.
“They’re going the wrong way,” said Carter.
“No, they’re not,” replied Gabriel. “They’re going the way Saladin told them to go.”
Carter was silent.
“Tell the SWAT teams to follow them. Tell them to take the shot.”
“They can’t,” snapped Carter. “Not inside the hotel.”
“Take it now, Adrian, because we’re not going to get another chance.”
Just then, the Operations Floor flashed with an intense burst of white light. An instant later there came a sound like a sonic boom that shook the building violently. Carter and Paul Rousseau were momentarily confused; Gabriel and Fareed Barakat, men of the Middle East, were not. Gabriel rushed to the window as a mushroom cloud of fire rose over the facility’s main security checkpoint. A few seconds later he saw a large cargo truck careening at high speed into the forecourt separating the NCTC from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Gabriel whirled around and shouted like a madman at those closest to the windows to move to safety. He glanced briefly at the giant video screen and saw the two women, subjects one and two, entering the parking garage of the Key Bridge Marriott. Then there was a second explosion, and the video screen, like everything else, turned to black.
In the Situation Room of the White House, the screens went black, too. So did the videoconference link with the director of the NCTC.
“What just happened?” asked the president.
It was the secretary of homeland security who answered.