The Hindu Kush
T he wind howled viciously outside the heavily guarded cave complex, high in a remote area of the Hindu Kush on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The majestic snow-capped peaks soared to 6000 metres and beyond. Today the temperature had dropped to 15 degrees below zero and visibility was down to a few metres. Dr Hussein Tretyakov placed the heavy metal suitcase in the centre of the cave and rubbed his hands vigorously. It was one of several for which his new employer had paid ten million dollars each. Most of the others were already with the sleeper cells in the United States, Britain and Australia.
The small group of Arabs gathered around the bomb. They were led by a man in his mid-fifties dressed in a nondescript but expensive robe and a spotless white turban. Hussein Tretyakov had come to know and like the Egyptian lawyer, Abdul Musa Basheer, and his gentle sense of humour. Both men were now on a similar path and Abdul Basheer was one of bin Laden’s most trusted lieutenants and strategists. The former member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad was a man of extraordinary ability and the West had every reason to be worried. If anything happened to either bin Laden or himself, Basheer had recruited some of the finest engineers, soldiers, lawyers and doctors in Islam to carry on the struggle.
‘The original nuclear bombs were fission bombs where atoms were split, giving off an enormous amount of energy in the form of heat, neutrons and gamma rays,’ Hussein explained, waiting for the interpreter to translate.
‘Neutrons and gamma rays penetrate the body and destroy the body’s cells, resulting in hundreds of thousands more deaths than might be achieved from just the blast and heat of a nuclear explosion,’ he continued. ‘Plutonium has a half-life of about twenty-four thousand years. Together, the heat and force of a nuclear suitcase bomb, coupled with the radiation, will render the Western cities unusable for a very long time.’
The Arabs exchanged glances. Praise be to God, the infidels could now be dealt a blow that would make September 11 look like child’s play.
Tretyakov opened the lid of the deadly nuclear bomb. ‘As you can see, this suitcase contains a heavily shielded cylinder in which the fuel is kept in what is called a sub-critical mass so that it won’t detonate prematurely. On detonation the plutonium inside compresses and when it reaches a critical mass we have our nuclear explosion.’
Dr Tretyakov passed around a sheet of paper with a diagram of the inside of the cylinder and its plutonium core.
‘In the 1950s, despite the carnage in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists found that fission bombs were inefficient,’ he explained. ‘Fusion bombs, which we call thermonuclear bombs, can do a lot more damage.’
Again there was an exchange of glances as the interpreter translated.
‘For the last twenty years Russian scientists have been working to perfect small thermonuclear devices which will destroy any known city. Most of the radiation from a fission bomb is in the form of X-rays,’ the Chechen nuclear physicist said. ‘The X-rays from a fission bomb can be used to produce the very high temperatures and pressures that are required to trigger a fusion reaction. Thermonuclear bombs work with a fission bomb being first imploded inside a casing to compress a fusion fuel of lithium deuterate and a rod of plutonium-239.’
Hussein handed out another sheet of paper with a diagram of the fission bomb and fusion bomb inside a casing of uranium-238 and the sequence of events that produced an ever increasing series of neutron emissions, culminating in the lithium deuterate and plutonium-239 fuel of the fusion bomb producing even more neutrons and heat, and a nuclear explosion that was a hundred times more powerful than Hiroshima.
‘The first three targets are New York, London and Sydney,’ Abdul Basheer said quietly. ‘God willing, we will also be able to attack other cities like Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.’ His eyes were clear and his manner chillingly calm. ‘If the British and Australians continue to support the United States killing innocent Muslim women and children around the world, then we will also attack cities like Manchester and Melbourne. What would be the effect of such a bomb?’
Dr Tretyakov had prior knowledge of the initial targets and he produced simple travel maps of the Western cities. ‘The thermonuclear suitcases will destroy any of your targets,’ he explained to the al-Qaeda command group. ‘In New York, the Brooklyn, Manhattan and other bridges would twist and melt into the East River. The skyscrapers would implode and Wall Street and the financial district would be razed to a smoking ruin. Lower Manhattan would be totally destroyed, as well as the rest of the city including 5th Avenue, Broadway and the area around Central Park. In London, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Bridge, together with everything else around them, would be wiped off the map. Permanently.’
Jerusalem
In a safe house in the Old City, Yusef Sartawi pored over the photos of the Hebrew University and the biochemistry laboratory with its trademark fume cupboard venting on the roof. The safe, he had been assured by the laboratory technician, was rudimentary. It was an old free-standing Chubb and old safes sometimes needed to be repaired. Yusef checked the letterhead on the invoice. Leibzoll Safes and Security, 84 Ben Yehuda Street, Tel-Aviv. The blanks had been stolen from a security company that specialised in safes. He’d lined up one of his most experienced drivers for the job and a sign-writer had almost finished preparing the van. Now the only thing preventing them from putting the plan into action was the final approval for repair, and that had to come from within the bureacracy of the university administration. The delay was frustrating, Yusef mused, but if Allah willed it, the approval would eventually be forthcoming without arousing any suspicion.