Cassiel was of course not an original member of their team. He spoke fluent Spanish, among several other languages, including English, so that, at least, helped him fit in.
The members of Rafael’s team had grown up together since childhood. They were all like brothers. Their having lived together, schooled together, trained together, and prayed together in such a closed group since childhood made infiltration by informants or spies impossible. There was simply no way for an outsider to get into their midst, and no way for any of the team members to talk with an outsider. That was one of the foundational principles for making this portion of the attack undetectable beforehand.
While they all spoke Spanish and some English, most of them didn’t speak Farsi. Rafael and several of his team spoke Farsi fluently so that they could communicate and coordinate with commanders. It was also necessary for much of the technical training that they’d needed.
This was a mission they had been practicing and training for their entire lives.
Cassiel, though, had not been part of that. Rafael did not like having such a stranger along on the mission. As far as Rafael was concerned, he might be a gifted assassin, but he was not one of them and so he did not belong with them.
Hasan had told Rafael that Cassiel had been saved from execution because he was such an expert at lethal skills.
Hasan had been impressed with how quickly and efficiently Cassiel had killed the Israeli snake with strange vision that could recognize men who were killers. That would allow the men they would send in to kill Israelis and tourists to be successful without being detected the way Wahib had been. The assassination of the man responsible for Wahib’s capture only added to Hasan’s apparent awe of Cassiel’s kill history. Hasan thought that a man of his ability was invaluable.
In return for being allowed to live, Cassiel had been assigned to go on the mission with Rafael’s team to help them in any way he could. Hasan might have considered him valuable, but Rafael considered him nothing more than hired muscle.
Cassiel didn’t talk much, although he did follow Rafael’s orders. He knew the consequences if he didn’t. He seemed perpetually in a sour mood. It probably grated on Cassiel’s nature to be indentured to his Iranian masters.
Rafael wondered how dedicated he was to their mission. He wondered if the man was prepared to die, as were the rest of them. Somehow, Rafael didn’t think so.
Some of them, in fact, were going to die this very day. Rafael was a bit disturbed that some of his lifelong brothers were going to give their lives to their cause this day, but Allah would richly reward them for their martyrdom.
One of the phones beeped. It was Javier, one of those who was to become a martyr this day.
The message asked how close Rafael was to the gamma detector.
Rafael told him he was several trucks back. Javier said that he was in the perfect place, then. Rafael could see Esteban’s truck, so he knew that he, too, was in position and ready for the go command.
Rafael put the phone back in the tray with the others, each with a piece of tape on the back with a name or a function.
Rafael smiled at the collection of iPhones. Apple was a valuable, unwitting partner, providing the very best encryption, which made successful attacks with high death tolls possible. They even refused to give the FBI and other intelligence agencies any help stopping or identifying terrorists.
The team also used a messaging app that had end-to-end encryption, which prevented even the technicians who developed it from reading messages. No Western spy agency would be able to know anything they communicated.
It was amazing that here they were, at a high-security checkpoint, and they could communicate without fear of being detected because American companies provided the means and protected their secrecy. None of the border agents running around all over the place and checking everything for the slightest hint of a problem had any idea of what was about to happen, any idea that they were about to die, and they could not intercept any of the messages coordinating it all.
Rafael thought that Silicon Valley was probably the only place in the world completely safe from an attack, because it provided the tools that were so necessary for killing as many Americans, Jews, and other infidels as possible. No jihadist would harm such a valuable resource—the people and companies that made the secrecy and security of jihadist operations possible.
The truck ahead moved up to the neutron and gamma detector.
Rafael picked up the phone in his lap.
THIRTY-FOUR
Rafael pressed the send button of the message to the team overseeing the operation back in Iran. It was a single, simple word.
NOW.
He watched and waited. A moment later he saw the computer screens in the string of booths go dark. Border agents leaned closer, peering at monitors, then looked around at the rest of their equipment, looking for the cause of the problem. Some of them typed in commands on their keyboards, trying to bring them back to life. Others checked connections, all to no avail. There was nothing for them to find and nothing they could fix.
On the command from Rafael, hackers had initiated preloaded routines to shut down every piece of electronic equipment at every border crossing with Mexico and Canada. Shutting them all down prevented the authorities from realizing there was an attack at any one specific spot. They might assume that the hack of the border crossings was in and of itself the attack. Every part of the attack was designed to keep them from knowing what was eventually to come.
It wasn’t just the computers that went dead. All the handheld devices they depended on for everything from logging data to taking readings also went dead. Every reader and scanner linked to their system went dead.
The computers that ran the X-ray scanners, neutron detectors, and gamma detectors and logged the data also went dead.
The electricity to the entire facility simultaneously went down. The lighted message boards with lane numbers and other information that changed throughout the day went dark. Every bit of equipment went quiet.
Rafael smiled as he watched the confused faces of the border agents. Some leaned out of their booths to ask others if their systems were down as well, or if it was only them. They yelled their frustration from one booth to another. Other people were busy attempting to reboot systems to try to fix the problem. Of course, their systems would not reboot. The roving agents who checked paperwork and looked over equipment and loads returned to the booths to see why their handheld devices weren’t working.
Many of the agents in the booths picked up phones to call in, but the landline phone systems that connected them to the operations center had gone dead as well. Finding the phones not working, they turned to their cell phones, but those phones weren’t linked directly into the centers, so it would take them time to get through to the right individuals, and those people would be swamped with calls not only from this border crossing, but from them all. To make matters worse, their computer screens showed only ransom demands. Those ransom demands were of course fake, but it would be quite a while, possibly days, before they came to realize that it wasn’t really ransomware.
Even if the people Rafael was watching did get through on their cell phones, there was nothing the center would be able to do. It would take time to uncover the hack and then to regain control of their systems.
And their time had just run out.
Rafael picked up the phone with Javier’s name written on the tape on the back. It was time to begin their part of the mission. Javier would be waiting for his encrypted orders.
Rafael set the message that said GO WITH GOD.