‘T he boatshed is upriver,’ Jamal said, as he and al-Falid left the warehouse near the airport and headed towards the city, ‘but I thought you might like to see the target at close range.’ Jamal turned onto the road that led to the tunnel under the harbour. He headed north up the gradually rising exit and negotiated a route through the satellite city on the northern shore, turning off to a fashionable harbourside suburb.
Jamal parked near a small ferry wharf and they both got out of the Pajero and walked down to the harbour’s edge. al-Falid stared up at the underside of the massive bridge that connected the northern and southern shores.
‘The area on this side of the harbour together with that one over there are two of the most populated suburbs in the city,’ Jamal said, pointing across the harbour past a naval base to the high-rise apartments on the southern shore. A distant rumble grew louder and louder. A train was going across the bridge and al-Falid looked back at the massive pins securing the steel arch to their stone pylons.
‘You were right, Jamal. The infidel’s design is good, but if Allah, the Most Kind, the Most Merciful is willing, we will still succeed.’
Thirty minutes later Jamal unlocked a wire gate that opened onto a path covered with oyster shell leading down the side of a big wooden boatshed upriver from the main harbour.
‘We’ve rented the boatshed from a deceased estate,’ Jamal explained, unlocking a big padlock that secured a small door beside a wooden ramp. A river cat sped past, its wake rippling against the concrete pylons supporting the ramp and the two rusting rails that led from the boatshed into the water.
Jamal switched on the lights hanging from the roof of the shed to reveal a huge ocean-going fishing trawler supported by old and scarred wooden blocks on top of a rusty but well-greased slipway trolley. Two gleaming silver shafts protruded from the trawler’s hull, connecting with twin bronze propellers either side of a recently refurbished rudder. The hull had been freshly painted with salmon-coloured anti-fouling paint, and ‘LFB 15011’ was painted prominently either side of the bow and on the stern. al-Falid nodded approvingly at the name Destiny that was painted beside the wheelhouse, but it was the inside of the trawler that interested him most. He followed Jamal up the paint-spattered wooden ladder that was leaning against the transom.
‘We’ve remodelled the deck and the bow to accommodate the change of plans,’ Jamal said, leading al-Falid down a narrow steel ladder into the hold. Steel sheets had been fastened to the sides and the keel and welded together into a cone at the bow. ‘We will begin filling the hold tonight. When it’s detonated all of the force of the explosive will be directed through the cone in the bow.’
‘And the anti-tank rockets?’ al-Falid asked.
‘We’ve engineered the mountings for the rockets just aft of the bow,’ Jamal explained, leading the way back up to the deck, ‘and we’re using the infidel’s own rockets,’ he said, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction at the irony of it all. The disappearance of Army M72 anti-tank rockets had caused a huge storm in the media, but he had assured al-Falid that the police would never trace them to the boatshed. His brilliant young pupil was truly deserving of his place in heaven, al-Falid thought.
‘On the day of the attack two of the infidel’s anti-tank rockets will be secured in the mountings and covered with old tarpaulins until the last minute,’ Jamal said. The wheelhouse was crammed with sophisticated equipment that included radar, depth sounders and a plethora of electronics.
‘What’s that?’ al-Falid asked, pointing to a black laser screen mounted on the marine ply.
‘A screen for showing the position of the laser beams,’ Jamal explained. ‘I will be at the helm in the final attack, but before we detonate the fishing boat I want to make sure I’ve breached the hulls of the tanker. Because it’s a double hull the missiles must arrive at the same point a split second apart; that way, the first missile will breach the outer skin, and the second will breach the inner hull that protects the crude oil. The camera mounted on the roof is wired into the aiming systems of the missiles,’ he said, ‘and the first missile will be fired when the laser dots come together on the screen. The second will be fired a fraction of a second later; and tonight, we will position the last of the canisters on the harbour bed.’
Later that night al-Falid returned and he watched as Jamal’s divers suited up and assisted one another with their state-of-the-art rebreathing units. The LAR-V units were used by US Navy Seals and Drager, the German manufacturer, had steadfastly refused to sell them on the open market. It had been a relatively simple matter to obtain them from a less than scrupulous dealer; money always talked. al-Falid didn’t understand all the technical details, but he knew that the fully enclosed system of the Drager meant there would be no telltale bubbles, which was critical for where the divers would be working.
The cigar-shaped canisters filled with ANFO were designed with neutral buoyancy but the divers needed time to manoeuvre them into position, and the LAR-V units gave up to four hours endurance on each dive. So far, al-Falid thought, that had been more than enough time. Over a period of six weeks, eleven canisters had been locked into position on the harbour bed, and tonight the divers would connect the final canister. al-Falid and his al-Qaeda explosives experts had calculated this might be enough to achieve the ‘cork-in-a-bottle’ that Khalid Kadeer had wanted.
The canisters were equipped with recoverable mini-propulsion systems and the four divers swam easily beneath the inky waters of the darkened harbour. Without lights, visibility below the surface was almost zero, forcing the lead diver to check his compass. He made a small correction to bring his divers onto a heading for the first of the long-life pinger beacons they’d pre-positioned along the route to the target. The small ULB-364 ‘Extended Life’ was a commercially available underwater location beacon with a pulse rate of one pulse per second and it was powered by simple 9 volt lithium batteries. Using GPS satellite navigation the divers had positioned enough of them to guide them unerringly along the bottom of the harbour.
The volume, sensitivity and frequency controls were already set and the lead diver moved forward with his small DPR-275 handheld receiver. It locked on to the first pinger almost immediately and the lead diver again made a slight adjustment to his heading as he zeroed in on the direction of the strongest signal being picked up in his headphones. On the surface, the harbour traffic continued uninterrupted, oblivious to Allah’s superbly trained frogmen moving stealthily and silently towards the target.