The Enemy Within

Hamid Algar’s box sensed the change in the surrounding light. Although small, the increase was enough to register on a sensitive photocell. A microchip brain attached to the photocell noted the change and began tracking the time. Unlike the bright beam of a passing headlight, this light lasted a tenth of a second, two-tenths, three, four. Five-tenths was enough. The microchip triggered a tiny electric pulse.

Inside the box, a firing squib detonated a shaped-charge warhead. The squid also ignited a magnesium flare. Designed to punch through inches of armor, the warhead penetrated the tanker truck’s milled steel shell easily, pushing a superheated jet of gas and metal into the liquid propane tank through a jagged, glowing hole.

The explosion died.

In its place, liquid propane began boiling out of the three-inch hole with a sound like a steam calliope jammed on high, changing to a gas as it hit the air. But when the streaming gas hit the box’s hissing magnesium flare, it ignited into a roaring jet of flame. The heat of the jet, hotter than a blowtorch, opened the hole larger and larger in a chain reaction until the entire front of the steel tank disintegrated. Propane gas mixed freely with the air. At that point, only milliseconds after the bomb went off, the rest of the tanker’s cargo disappeared in a devastating explosion.

The near-dawn darkness was overpowered by a searing orange-white fireball. Trapped by the ceiling of the underpass, the leading edge of the fireball spread out horizontally ahead and behind, but a final, titanic blast split the overhead structure and peeled it back. Slabs of concrete and steel weighing hundreds of pounds landed half a mile away, smashing through roofs and flattening cars and pedestrians crowding Seattle’s busy streets.

One car length behind the explosion, Jane Kelly had only a single, anguished second to understand what was happening before the roaring? mindless wall of flame engulfed her Nissan.

She and all the others trapped in the four-lane underpass were incinerated. More than a dozen other cars and trucks on either side of the explosion were also scorched and burned. The vehicles on Olive and Boren streets above were either flipped over or fell through into the inferno below.

Half a minute after the echoes of the enormous blast faded away, stunned motorists left their cars on the highway and stood staring in shock and terror at the burning mass of twisted steel and concrete clogging the gap where the overpass had once been. Buildings on either side of the highway were burning, and the agonized screams and shrieks of those who were trapped and on fire tore through the sudden silence.

Burien, Washington Hamid Algar and his two comrades, Anton Chemelovic and Jabra Ibrahim, watched the television in rapt fascination. Coverage of the disaster had started only moments after Hamid had returned to their apartment, and now, like the rest of Seattle and America, they viewed the live television feed. But while the rest of the country watched in horror and fascination, the three Iranian-trained commandos were performing battle damage assessment.

The picture now on television came from the roof of a nearby office building. From above, the destroyed overpass looked like nothing more than a giant, blackened hourglass filled with rubble and twisted metal. Emergency vehicles surrounded the crater.

The reporter now on camera, stunned by the carnage and rattled by the lack of hard information, kept repeating the single, inadequate word: “tragedy.” It had been a tragic accident, there had been a tragic loss of life, and so on. Area hospitals were jammed and some of those with less critical injuries had been farmed out to smaller clinics. At the moment, the death toll stood at twenty-five, but that was expected to climb rapidly as searchers pulled apart the rubble. Sixty-three had been seriously hurt. Seattle’s burn wards were full.

The National Transportation Safety Board had already dispatched an investigative team to the area. They would land at Boeing Field at 2:10 P.M. Algar, Chemelovic, and Ibrahim all relaxed slightly. At least initially, the Americans were treating the tanker blast as an accident. They would find no immediate clues that this was a terrorist attack. When the NTSB’s investigators discovered the truth later, their trail would be days old, and it would be a very faint, very cold trail.

They nodded to each other. Tehran would be pleased.

Chemelovic, a Bosnian, had actually made the bomb. His gift for electronics had earned him special training in demolitions at Masegarh, and now both of his teammates praised his work. Algar told him several times exactly how he had placed the device. By the time the Syrian finished retelling the story, Chemelovic had a grin covering half his face. His skills had won a great victory in the war against the godless West.

Jabra Ibrahim rose from the couch and snapped the television off.

“Come on, both of you. Help me pack.”