Even the phone had an irritated ring to it when the Big Man called. Lt. Commander Ramshawe picked it up, and the rasping tones of Admiral Morgan snapped down the line. “JIMMY! Just give me one straight, no-bullshit assessment of our actions this morning.”
“Sorry, sir. What’s that you need?”
“I want to know your degree of certainty on the correctness of our actions.”
“One hundred percent.”
“REASON?”
“Sir, the CIA picked up a one-way transmission to Damascus that started off by correctly revealing the bomb at Logan International, time and place, plus operatives. Secondly, it confirmed that some kind of terror operation was happening with a Flight 62.
“Next thing we know, some fucking nutcase is driving a bloody great Boeing passenger jet straight at the city of Washington, D.C. Diving low, directly at the buildings, in defiance of our air traffic orders. What was its flight number? Sixty-two. As forecast. That’s game, set, and match, old mate. Game, set, and match.”
“Thank you, Jimmy,” replied the admiral. “Just wanted to hear the reason again. I must be getting old.”
“Not you, Arnie…” replied the lieutenant commander. But he was too late. The admiral had already rung off and was staring into the log fire in his study at the big house in Chevy Chase. He was staring at the flames, and thinking of the bomb, and the Boeing, and the endless evil these Middle Eastern fanatics were capable of visiting upon the United States of America.
“Fucking towelheads,” he grunted. “But today belonged to us. We blew out their kamikaze airliner, and we screwed up their airport plan, captured the lead man. And the quicker we get him into Guantánamo Bay, the better I’m going to like it.”
The Sikorsky Sea King, a Navy search-and-rescue helicopter from New London, Connecticut, came clattering north up the Charles River. It came in a hundred feet above the Longfellow Bridge, banked right over the impressive edifice of Mass General, and landed with polished dexterity on the great hospital’s sixteenth-floor rooftop helipad, atop the Ellison Building.
Commander John Fallon stared out at the assembled crowd that awaited him-six orderlies, six Boston cops, one white-coated doctor, two nurses, and three very obvious CIA men, big tough characters dressed in dark overcoats, narrow-brimmed hats, and thick scarves.
They all surrounded one medical gurney upon which was a tightly strapped hospital patient, lashed to the safety rails with the kind of wide security belts normally associated with the criminally insane, psychopaths like Hannibal Lecter. King Kong would have been hard-pressed to break free.
“Who the hell’s that, the guy on the gurney?” Commander Fallon asked his loadmaster.
“Search me, just so long as he doesn’t get loose with us.”
“No chance of that,” replied Fallon. “Those three CIA guys over there are coming with us.”
The loadmaster opened the door and jumped down onto the roof. The gurney was wheeled over, and the stretcher that rested between the rails was lifted up by the orderlies and the patient carried into the helicopter.
The CIA agents climbed in, the doors were slammed tight, seatbelts buckled, and the Sea King lifted off from the roof. Not a word was spoken, especially by the patient, who had, incidentally, remained totally mute since five minutes past eight that morning, since Pete and Danny had hauled him out of the burning limo.
The helicopter immediately turned southwest, but within minutes came thirty-five degrees left, banking around onto a more southerly course, heading straight for the clear skies above the icy waters of Narragansett Bay and Rhode Island Sound.
The CIA guys sat stone-faced next to the patient as the Navy pilot and his navigator headed out to sea, clattering down the East Coast, exchanging friendly information with the control tower at Groton while they crossed the submarine roads off Block Island.
Commander Fallon again swung the Sea King south, heading out into the Atlantic, leaving Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island to starboard, and staying out to sea all the way down the long New Jersey coastline.
The Sea King made its westerly turn as it reached the wide waters of Delaware Bay and flew swiftly over the eastern shore, making a beeline for Annapolis and then the northern suburbs of Washington, D.C. It flew low directly toward Bethesda, Maryland, and circled the extensive grounds of the National Naval Medical Center.
Commander Fallon could see that the wide concrete helipad below was surrounded by the type of guard strength you might expect for the arrival of a stricken U.S. president, for this place would be his first stop. Indeed, the body of the slain John F. Kennedy had been brought here immediately after Air Force One returned from Dallas.
The great tower of the hospital was Fallon’s landmark, as it had been to generations of Navy pilots ever since its completion a little more than a year after President Roosevelt had laid its cornerstone on Armistice Day, November 11, 1941.
Commander Fallon made his approach into the midst of Navy staff vehicles and police cruisers. He had no idea of the identity of his wounded passenger, but he understood one thing: someone believed this guy was of serious importance. If he’d recognized the big black Humvee parked in a strictly no-go area right at the hospital entrance, he’d have understood better just how important.
Admiral Arnold Morgan was already in residence, sipping black coffee in the private office of the hospital commander, Rear Admiral Adam Roberts. Also in attendance were Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe and Professor Alan Brett. That was the measure of importance concerning Mr. Reza Aghani, currently under arrest, shot, burned, strapped down, and interrogated after a busy morning at Logan.
Aghani entered the hospital on the double, six orderlies running the wheeled gurney through the automatic doors. They were surrounded by three Secret Service agents from the White House, four armed Navy guards, four Washington cops, two nurses, and two doctors.
Once inside, they headed directly toward the section reserved for the President of the United States: five darkened rooms, quivering with ultrasensitive pressure plates on the floor all along the approach. At the entrance to the suite stood two White House agents, direct from the Secret Service Command Post immediately below the Oval Office. They alone knew the numbers that would open the industrial-strength cipher locks which guarded the gateway to the presidential quarters.
And here, in this rarefied interrogation center, as designated by Paul Bedford and Arnold Morgan this very morning, the first-ever non-president of the USA would become a resident. Only briefly. But nonetheless a resident. Mind you, if President Bedford as much as complained of a head cold, Reza Aghani would have been outta there in about one minute, dispatched immediately to some kind of basement lockup. Right now, however, he was in the relative comfort, but high security, of the Presidential Rooms.
As Arnold Morgan had stated earlier today, “I can put up with damn near anything except someone silences this guy with a bullet or a bomb. He’s all we got, and this is a day which someone planned to be another 9/11.”
The orderlies placed Aghani in a bedroom normally reserved for Secret Service agents who might be guarding a sick president. Two armed Navy guards were posted in the room, with two more outside. The terrorist’s first visitor was Admiral Morgan himself, who was immediately followed by Lt. Commander Ramshawe. Instantly, Aghani closed his eyes and sank back into the pillow, as if aware that no one had yet told him this was going to be unpleasant.
“Reza Aghani,” said the admiral, “you are being detained by the United States government as an illegal combatant, more specifically for heading up a terrorist team that tried to blow up a passenger terminal in Logan International Airport. You of course were transporting the bomb.
“You are no longer in the custody of civilians. You are under tight arrest by the United States military. And we have fewer restrictions. The good news for you is that we may stop short of beheading you.
“However, you should not rule out other methods of persuasion. I will be back here twenty-four hours from now, and if you have not told us truthfully what we want to know, I will have you immediately transferred to a military prison and interrogation center. And there you will be subject to more stringent questioning and may be executed.”
Admiral Morgan did not wait for a reply. Nor even to check whether the man understood what had been said. The admiral merely turned sharply on his heel and jerked his head at Jimmy Ramshawe, signaling that he too should depart.
Once outside the room, Admiral Morgan headed immediately to the exquisitely furnished presidential drawing room, slung his overcoat over the back of an eighteenth-century Chippendale chair, and sat down, somewhat luxuriously, in a softly upholstered dark green chaise longue probably worth a hundred thousand dollars.
The cost of refurbishing this room had been some kind of White House joke, ever since thieves had somehow gained entry and stolen around $600,000 worth of antiques, Sheraton furniture, crystal chandeliers, paintings, and god knows what else. It had happened on the watch of Jimmy Carter, the no-frills, no-alcohol, cost-cutting president, and, understandably, it embarrassed the hell out of him.
It did not, however, embarrass the hell out of Admiral Morgan, who slipped into the high life as if to the manor born. “Coffee, James,” he commanded. “And see if they can rustle up a few cookies, while we attempt to frighten the truth out of that goddamned little fuckhead with his eyes closed next door.”
“Right away, sir,” snapped Jimmy, adopting the subservient tone of a lieutenant commander to an admiral. “Be right back.”
Jimmy left. The admiral mused. A log fire crackled in the grate. Absently, he reached for the television remote and flicked on Fox News. The entire channel was devoted to the events at Logan that morning, the reporters complaining of a news blackout but revealing that the president would address the nation at 7 P.M.
In the principal part of the newscast, no mention was made of the downed airliner currently resting on the bed of the Potomac estuary. At least not until a small segment on the rest of the day’s news was précised by the female anchor. It was based on a short press release issued by the National Air Traffic Control Center, Herndon. This had stated merely that an unknown, lightly loaded Canadian-based Boeing 737, carrying no U.S. citizens, had vanished from their screens, somewhere out over the Atlantic off the Virginia coast.
Admiral Morgan, who had written the release himself and had the president’s press office transmit it to Herndon, was somewhat smugly pleased. As he had intended, there was no suggestion of what fate had befallen it, no accurate location.
The spectacular-looking young redhead who delivered the broadcast may not have been employed by the television station solely for her vast experience of journalism and international events. But she was very beautiful and confirmed that no details had yet been released.
She then interviewed, on a link, a member of the International Air Transport Association and wondered what the mood was like in their office with a large passenger jet missing. “Is there a sense of failure?” she suggested.
The exec from IATA blinked and said, “I’m sorry. Would you rephrase that?”
“No, well, I mean, it’s kind of your responsibility, right?” she added. “I guess you guys somehow let us down?”
“Ma’am, we do not actually fly the aircraft.”
“No. But they’re your pilot members, right?”
“Fuck me,” said Arnold and hit the OFF button, astounded as ever by the blissful manner in which modern “journalists” are prepared to get something completely wrong, broadcast it to millions, and not appear to care one way or another.
Jimmy returned, followed by a waiter with cookies and coffee. The waiter poured from a priceless-looking engraved Georgian silver coffeepot, which had presumably been standard issue during the elegant age of the Georgian peanut farmer.
“You know, Arnie, I’ve been thinking,” said Jimmy. “This really would have been another 9/11, and that means there must be a very active al Qaeda cell working right here on the East Coast. Because 9/11 was not just one jet aircraft, and they did not intend just one hit on one target: there were four attacks aimed at four different targets, all on one day.”
“And I guess that’s got you thinking there could be another this evening?”
“Darned right it has,” replied Jimmy. “Do you think they could break that little sonofabitch next door in the next hour?”
“Probably not, kid. Our best chance might be in Houston, if they can locate the missing Ramon Salman. But even that’s a long shot.”
At that moment the door opened and the tall, angular figure of the president’s national security adviser, Alan Brett, came into the room. “You ready for the CIA guys, Arnie? I have them outside right now.”
“Gimme five, would you?” replied the admiral. “Have a cup of coffee and tell me your views. We haven’t had much time for a chat.”
“Tell you the truth,” replied the professor, “I’m real nervous they might try to hit us again. This guy next door is an obvious hard man, not scared of us, accustomed to being put under pressure, and full of hatred and defiance. You can tell a lot about a character who simply does not react.”
“He’s pretty small to be an obvious hard man,” muttered Jimmy Ramshawe in his deep Australian drawl. “Doesn’t look to me like he could hold down a baby kangaroo.”
“Guess you could say the same about the diminutive Julius Caesar,” replied Alan Brett with a grin. “And he managed to conquer most of the known world.”
“Well, this bastard had a serious shot at conquering the Boston airport,” interjected Arnold Morgan. “And he must be interrogated as if he’s some kind of a monster.”
“I think the CIA guys know that,” said Alan Brett. “How long have they got?”
“I’m going to tell the president to ship this guy out directly to Guantánamo Bay at noon tomorrow,” said Arnold.
“Then the interrogators right here have around eighteen hours.”
“No more than that,” said the admiral. “But they really should operate as if they’ve got about two hours. Any news on the 737?”
“Just before I left, the president was talking to the CNO. Sounded like the Navy was about to take over the salvage and investigation.”
“And Houston? No sign of Ramon Salman?”
“Not a thing.”
“Okay, Alan. I don’t need to brief the CIA guys. Just tell ’em to get going.”
“Nice speech, Paul,” said Admiral Morgan. “Let’s keep the focus on the heroism of the Boston cops, because that’ll shut the media up for a few days-keep ’em prancing around trying to speak to their goddamned relatives and schoolmasters, while we quietly turn the screws on the terrorists.”
“You mean ‘terrorist,’ old buddy. Right now we’ve only got one.”
Arnold Morgan surveyed the interior of the Oval Office and then muttered, “With all the great resources of the American empire at our disposal, we have to be able to find the missing Ramon Salman, and that’s what I’m counting on.”
The president nodded and then added, “By the way, Arnie, you probably could get a job as a press officer if you really tried. You sure as hell threw ’em off the scent of the missing airliner.”
“I was actually thinking of taking out an ad,” replied the admiral. “Lies, evasions, subterfuge a specialty. Expert at vanishing tricks. Morgan the Magician.”
Paul Bedford chuckled. Then he looked up, much more seriously. “Will anyone ever find that aircraft and discover what really happened?”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
The night was clear, freezing but cloudless, over the world’s largest naval station. A hard frost was already forming all along the 8,000-acre waterfront sprawl, home to the breathtaking oceanic muscle of the United States.
Lights gleamed from the massive nuclear-powered aircraft carriers berthed along the piers, the USS John C. Stennis, George Washington, and Theodore Roosevelt. All of them glowered in the bright moonlight, great bruising veterans of the world’s most troubled regions, frontline keepers of the honor of the United States of America.
There was hardly a sound in the vast naval complex, which in its way is just about landlocked, save for the narrow throughway out of the Hampton Roads, past Old Point Comfort and Fort Monroe to port and Fort Wool to starboard. But tonight the thin freezing air magnified the sounds. The very occasional helicopter landing echoed on the night air; mobilized guard patrols drove slowly to and from the long, frosty jetties. Footsteps sometimes accompanied the watch changes. But none of the forty warships in residence was moving.
At 0200, the incoming tide was rising all the way down the long “inland” coastline, which joins the naval station to the shipyard thirteen miles to the south. And out to the northeast, beyond the protective land, lies Chesapeake Bay, its waters ebbing and flowing with the tides of the Atlantic Ocean.
But the tide rises silently along the Navy piers, and the sudden throb of four powerful Caterpillar diesels driving a 4,200-hp ship north in the dark caught the attention of anyone who happened to be out in this cold night, either on deck or onshore.
There’s a bush telegraph in Norfolk, and most people knew when any warship was scheduled to clear the station in the small hours and make an exit to the open ocean. But right now, no one had the slightest idea what kind of vessel was steaming straight up the exit channel. Equally, no one much cared. It was just a bit unexpected, even though she was showing all the correct navigation lights and had plainly come up from the repair berths down in the shipyard.
The reason for her late, or early, departure was mainly due to an intense evening of painting that had eliminated every marking that showed this was a Navy vessel.
But now she was “clean,” the 2,880-ton Safeguard-class salvage ship USS Grabber, fully disguised as a civilian, smelling of fresh paint, and moving as fast as her engines would allow. That was twelve knots, and she was being closely followed in line astern by a couple of flatbed Navy barges, self-propelled and in a similar state of newly painted self-denial.
There was no insignia, and in the dawn there would be no Navy pennants flying. This had become, in a few hours, just a tiny fleet from a private salvage company, heading through the night, toward the hottest political hot potato in the entire country; orders of the commander in chief, acting personally on the advice of the Big Man, Admiral Morgan.
On board the lead ship was an extremely unusual cast. There was the normal team on the bridge: helmsman, navigator, watchkeepers, and in this case bosun. But they were all under the command of Bob Wallace, a newly promoted commander, ex-submariner, qualified Navy diver, who’d never been on a salvage ship in his life.
There were also sixteen more divers waiting below, led by Chief Petty Officer Mark Coulson, a U.S. Navy SEAL who had been flown to the Norfolk Shipyard from the SEAL base at Virginia Beach just before midnight. He brought with him an LPO, Ray Flamini, mini-submarine driver, SEAL underwater specialist. There was also a special team of Navy salvagemen and crane operators, men who would handle expertly the steel cables attached to the two big rigs, positioned fore and aft, each capable of a 65-ton dead lift.
Most of them were sleeping now, and would do so throughout the fourteen-hour, 160-mile run out into the Chesapeake and then onward up the dark and silent Potomac River toward Washington, D.C. There would not be much sleep after that. This was an urgent mission, and it needed to be accomplished fast and secretly. No mistakes.
Slowly they chugged across the west-facing naval station, coming eighteen degrees to starboard as they approached the gateway to Chesapeake Bay. The stark outline of Fort Monroe was dark in the moonlight to port as they began their left turn northward. The water was rougher here, and there was a slap-and-swish to the freighter’s bow wave as she cut through the incoming tide.
The big heavy barges directly astern rose up laboriously before wallowing back into the troughs as their helmsmen swung the wheels left, expertly allowing these cumbersome floating freight platforms to find their shallow lines.
Grabber led them out to the north-running channel, and within two hours they had crossed the bay and run past Cape Charles on Virginia’s eastern shore. A little over four hours later, they crossed the unseen frontier where all north-going ships steam into the waters of the state of Maryland. Eight bells chimed on the salvage ship’s bridge, signaling the start of the forenoon watch: 0800 on this bright midwinter morning. But the sun was still low off her starboard quarter as they swung forty-five degrees left, up through the wide tidal waters of the Potomac estuary.
Point Lookout was silhouetted clear in the morning light, lancing out from the long Maryland peninsula like a black snake on a silver carpet. The estuary was calmer here, and all along the portside of the three ships, the long, shallow, bay-strewn shore of Virginia stretched to the north, for forty miles, up toward the big S-bend where the river narrows and in places becomes deeper.
This is a mighty waterway. From its icy, gushing source way up in the Allegheny Mountains beyond the Shenandoah Valley, the Potomac runs 160 miles along the South Fork alone before reaching Harper’s Ferry and turning east toward Washington, on its final 160-mile journey to the sea.
Grabber and her consorts still had a hundred miles to run in broad daylight, and all along the route she kept strict radio silence. Occasionally they passed a freighter running south but made no signal of greeting, friendship, or recognition. The watch changed at noon. Lunch was served to all personnel on board the salvage ship, but the men on the barges settled for beef sandwiches and chocolate with mugs of hot coffee.
The afternoon wore on, and a deep chill set in long before the sun began to set. By 1500, they had cut their speed to eight knots and the navigator was studying the GPS intently, calling out the numbers. As they passed Quantico, Commander Bob Wallace made contact with the United States Marine Corps airbase at Turner Field.
They came slowly past Chicamuxen Creek on the starboard side and, almost drifting now, came alongside the low-lying peninsula of the Navy’s surface warfare center at Stump Neck. Right here, Commander Wallace ordered a course change, and USS Grabber came thirty-eight degrees left into the middle of the stream, onto a 360-degree bearing, due north.
Sonars active.
The navigation officer was calling the GPS numbers now, and he did so for three more miles. It was almost dark now, and in the failing light, with the sun disappearing behind the long, low shoreline of Charles County, Commander Wallace called for the helmsman to hold course, but for engines to reverse, and for the barges to do the same. The firm voice of the navigator could plainly be heard:
Thirty-eight spot thirty-eight north, seventy-seven spot zero-two west.
“Thank you, Tommy,” said Commander Wallace quietly. “All stop. Drop anchors fore and aft. Diving Team One prepare to go. Check marker buoys, load sea anchors, and lower the Zodiacs away. Ops area teams prepare to leave.”
Grabber was suddenly a fast-moving U.S. Navy warship. There was no enemy, of course, in the middle of the Potomac a few miles south of Washington, D.C. But there had been, and right now it was hard to tell the difference between battle stations and peacetime action stations. No one was standing still. Or sleeping. Or sipping coffee.
The shouts and commands of the petty officers, chiefs, and lieutenants crackled in the gloom of the early evening. Lines were made fast, anchor chains howled, heavy metal hit the riverbed sixty feet below, underwater lights were tested, scubas checked, ropes, lines, and marker buoys prepared. Away to starboard, four miles through the fast-encroaching darkness, the powerful night scopes of the watchmen at the U.S. Navy surface warfare center peered out from Indian Head. Tonight and until this mission was completed, they were watchdogs.
Two patrol craft, engines running, were moored on the jetty. The slightest suggestion of an intruder would have them racing at flank speed for the Grabber, armed to the gunwales. That small ops area in the middle of the Potomac River was no place to be. Not tonight.
Commander Wallace and his men were acting under orders direct from the Pentagon. And right now their mission was one-dimensional. Everything else was Phase Two. Before dawn, they must locate, and mark with floating buoys, the shattered wreckage of TBA 62.
They had the last known GPS numbers the airliner had shown on the screen before everything went fizzy. However, those numbers may have been her final position when the missiles hit, or they may have been her final position when the 737 hit the water.
The operators at Herndon were of the opinion the air control radars would have continued “painting” her until she plunged beneath the surface. The missiles were known to have severed her engines and blown off the wings, but the general opinion was that the fuselage had stayed intact until the moment of impact with the Potomac.
Thus, Commander Wallace had positioned his little flotilla exactly at Flight 62’s last known position. In his opinion, that wreck would be dead beneath the ships. If the divers failed to find anything, it meant the blasted aircraft had vanished from the screens maybe twenty seconds before she hit the water. Twenty seconds at 220 mph is equal to two thousand yards.
Essentially, Grabber was positioned at the near end of Flight 62’s range of descent. If the divers found nothing, the fuselage of the aircraft was lying on the riverbed up to two thousand yards closer to the city. Commander Wallace believed, from all his reports, that the fuselage had been in one piece when it hit the water, and the numbers 38.38N 77.02W signified the precise position of impact on the water, not the position 1,500 feet above the water where the missiles struck home.
The commander left the bridge and walked down to the lower deck, where SEAL Chief Coulson and LPO Flamini were preparing to go over the side. Seamen were making last-second checks on all the equipment. For the initial search, two more Navy divers were going with the SEALs.
The lights from the patrolling Zodiacs cast a brightness upon the water, but the depths looked black, and Commander Wallace wore a look of admiration as the four black-suited figures rolled backward, down into the water, kicking hard into the depths, their flashlights casting strong beams out in front of them.
The dive control operators began communications almost immediately as the SEAL leaders, using their regular attack boards, kicked along the bottom, the GPS figures stark before them, keeping them straight, warning them when they strayed too far from the direct line of flight of the Canadian bolter.
Twenty minutes went by. Then five more. And the SEAL leader had specified that since this work was likely to go on more or less indefinitely, it should be conducted in thirty-minute takes. Four more Navy divers were preparing to go overboard when one of the controllers called, “Sir, they got something.”
Every eye swiveled around toward the men with the headpieces, standing on the deck talking to the men below the surface.
Chief Coulson’s saying there’s something there, maybe a hundred yards off our bow.
Another three minutes passed, close to the limit of the SEALs’ time underwater. And then the controller called again…
He’s telling us to watch for the buoy, coming directly up from the smashed window of the cockpit.
The big light on the roof of the bridge suddenly blazed into life, ripping a beam through the dark and onto the surface of the river. Seconds passed, but they seemed like minutes. Then a scarlet Navy marker buoy bounced out of the water and settled.
Two minutes later, Chief Coulson surfaced next to the Grabber’s portside hull and called up, “We got her, sir. Those numbers were right on the money. Haven’t found the wings yet, and the fuselage is split almost in half. If we lift her, she’ll break. But if the cranes get two cables on her, she’ll come up one section at a time.”
“Will she take one around the tailplane and one through the cabin?” asked the commander.
“Not a chance,” said Chief Coulson, hauling himself up the ladder. “Tailplane broke off on impact. I never even saw it.”
“Can we get cables underneath the main fuselage?”
“I don’t think so, sir. She hit the riverbed pretty good and then skidded some. I’d say she’s embedded maybe three feet.”
“What’s the bottom like?”
“Kinda high-class mud. Doesn’t look dirty, more like silt, light-colored, and more holding than plain sand.”
Commander Wallace held out his hand and gave the chief a pull over the gunwale. “Great job, Mark. What next?”
“Get the diving engineers down there right away. Let’s get some decisions made. But one thing’s definite: she’ll come to the surface. No doubt in my mind.”
“How about the bodies?”
“Didn’t see too many of them, sir. I took a quick look, and everyone was still strapped in.”
“Do we move them now, or bring ’em up with the wreckage?”
“I’d bring the whole lot up together. Mostly because it’ll be a darn sight easier to get ’em in body bags up here than it will underwater.”
“Okay. Now you go and get some food and hot coffee. We’ll talk again in an hour… and Mark, thanks a million.”
Five hours later, the decisions were made jointly by the engineers, the SEALs, and the commanding officer. It was plainly too difficult to get cables right under the fuselage of Flight 62-at least, it was without very sophisticated equipment, the kind of hydraulic air pumping used for dock piles, driving out the seabed and hammering them in through soft disturbed sand. But that’s conducted from the surface. And it’s a whole lot more difficult to transfer this technology to operate sixty feet below the waterline. And a lot too slow.
Far better to thrust the lifting cables straight through the cabin, heave her out of the silt, and haul her in. As Chief Coulson had observed, the hull of the aircraft was split. She’d break as soon as the cranes moved her, and she’d come up cleanly in two parts. Meanwhile, a separate team of divers would begin the search for the tailplane and whatever fragments of the obliterated wings were still recognizable.
The Big Man had apparently stressed that no part of that aircraft must be left on the riverbed, since he didn’t want some smart-ass television monkeys groping around down there and coming up with Mystery Air Crash Baffles Government.
There was not, of course, an imminent danger of that, since the only information available about TBA Flight 62 was she had disappeared fifty miles offshore, out over the Atlantic Ocean, east of North Carolina, 180 miles away.
It was almost midnight now, and the temperature had plummeted to twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit. An icy wind whipped across the surface of the water, and there was no moon. Commander Wallace decided to have the cables attached to the hull of the airliner through the night, but not to attempt to lift the wreckage aboard the barges until after dark the following day.
It was slow going working underwater, and the engineers estimated it would take up to ten hours to fix cables to both ends of the fuselage. Meanwhile, the Navy divers would work in shifts through the night, using underwater metal detectors, trying to locate the smaller sections of wreckage that had broken off during the downing of Flight 62. Especially hardware from the engines.
To the northern end of the ops area, a four-foot-high floating notice board, anchored to the bottom, read: PROHIBITED AREA-U.S. NAVY EXERCISE IN PROGRESS. STAY RIGHT OF THE BUOYS.
To the south, an identical sign ordered northbound shipping also to keep right of the area. A line of flashing buoys now provided guidance, forcing any vessel to give the Grabber an extremely wide berth. The proximity of the Navy’s Surface Warfare Center on nearby Indian Head fortuitously gave the operation complete credence.
This was plainly a legitimate naval operation. It was very public; at least it was to passing captains and seamen. It most certainly did not give the appearance of a clandestine mission, designed to carry out one of the biggest, most diabolically deceptive tasks ever undertaken by the United States military.
In peacetime it was almost unprecedented. Politicians were shy of indulging in such adventures because most people still did not recognize the War on Terror as a true war. Still, it had taken the Flat Earth Society more than a century to disband.
Right now, it was hell on earth out on the freezing decks of the Grabber, colder than it was sixty feet below on the riverbed. The blue-twisted steel cables had to be hooked onto the lifting cranes and then lowered away over the side, down to the divers, who were anxiously awaiting the engineers’ clearance to begin running them through the cabin. Everything was heavy, everything was freezing. Commander Wallace changed shifts all the time, allowing no one to work out there for longer than one hour at a stretch.
By the time dawn broke over the Potomac, there were eight scarlet marker buoys in place, bobbing brightly on the surface, identifying accurately the positions of various hunks of wreckage. The SEAL leading petty officer, Ray Flamini, had personally found the tailplane, lying forlornly on its side half-buried, snapped off on impact, around a hundred yards short of the main hull, directly under Grabber’s bow.
And all through the morning, the underwater men worked at securing the cables, in order to avoid breakage and facilitate a neat, clean lift from the riverbed. In the opinion of Chief Coulson, the critical moment would come when the aft section of the fuselage was lifted and, hopefully, snapped off from the for’ard part.
If the metallic outer skin did not break, they would probably have to blow it apart with explosive, and that was never easy underwater. It was easily achievable but inclined to make one hell of a mess. However, Grabber’s cranes would not lift the whole fuselage, and time was not on their side.
By 1530, they were ready for the lift. But there was traffic on the river, and Commander Wallace was not about to begin lifting what he called “darned great hunks of civilian jetliner” out of the river, in broad daylight, in full view of anyone who might be looking.
Their journey from the shipyard had been conducted in the utmost secrecy, with nothing to announce they were Navy ships. And once on station, even with periodic visits from the patrol vessels out of Indian Head, they appeared just like a regular Navy exercise from the Surface Warfare Center. Strictly routine.
Every twenty minutes, two divers returned to the riverbed to check that all was well, and the rest of the salvage crew just hung around, glad to be warm, hoping to hell the fuselage of Flight 62 would not fall off the goddamned crane or some other unforeseen bullshit.
Winter darkness descended over the river before 1700. The flashing lights of the buoys went active; the big deck lights, fore and aft, illuminated the lifting tackle. Chief Coulson and LPO Flamini were over the side in company with six other divers, tending the huge cables. Signals were given, the controllers snapped out commands, and at 1724 Grabber’s foredeck crane began to lift.
Swimming slowly through the water, thirty yards off the starboard beam of the aircraft wreckage, Chief Coulson watched the cable take the strain. Slowly the rear section lifted out of the silt, dragging with it the still-attached front section.
For a split second, the chief thought the whole fuselage was going up together. But then there was a crunching thud, like a POP! played in slow motion. And the for’ard cabin vibrated, then snapped off, dropping back into its hole and sending a massive cloud of silt and sand billowing into the calm water. It would take two hours to clear. But, fortunately, the second set of cables was already attached.
Chief Coulson moved slowly upward, through the water, with the smashed hull in front of him. He could see a barge being moved into position for the crane to deposit its load onto the deck. By the time the chief had surfaced and once more climbed aboard Grabber, the aircraft hull was on board, with a team of twenty seamen swarming all over it, covering the huge cargo with tarpaulin and lashing it down in preparation for the journey back to Norfolk.
During the next three hours, many of the other remnants were brought up and loaded, until all the pieces of Flight 62, save for the tailplane and the front section of the cabin, were on board and covered. At 2300, the barge pulled out between the buoys and turned south for Norfolk.
To both port and starboard were escort patrol boats from Indian Head. Leading the way was a Navy frigate, which had materialized from nowhere. Just like the Big Man had specified. No chances. Take no chances whatsoever. The Navy escorts would stay close to the barge for the first hundred miles until dawn, and would then peel away, permitting the big unmarked vessel to continue her journey alone in broad daylight. The barge, however, with her highly classified load, would never be out of sight of the escorts.
On board Grabber, the teams took a break for an hour; shortly after midnight, the divers returned to the riverbed and hooked up the cables on the final, smaller section of the main fuselage, the part that contained the cockpit and first-class kitchen.
Having already been hauled off the bottom, this time it came away easily, moved slowly up through the water, and swung onto the second barge. The tailplane was easiest of all, comparatively light and manageable. The crane lowered it onto the stern part of the deck, and immediately the engineers set about cutting off the jutting, perpendicular part. They used oxyacetylene cutters and sledgehammers. The exercise took almost an hour. Finally the second barge was ready, its load covered, unobtrusive.
In company with Grabber, it turned south, back along the Potomac. Every last piece of the aircraft, every piece that could be located, had been gathered up and brought to the surface. No one would ever know her fate. A subsequent search, out in the deep Atlantic, of course, yielded nothing. Flight 62 was officially deemed “lost over the ocean, no trace, no evidence.”
Her passengers and crew would never be found. Only the barest details of their existence were discovered when the Navy searched the bodies before placing them in coffins. Passports yielded names, but the fire on board in the moments before the crash had incinerated all paperwork in the forward section before the waters of the Potomac extinguished it. Only fifteen coffins were required. No one else was left; the swift-running tidal waters through the aircraft had carried the ashes away.
They had not, however, carried away the big metal boxes in the hold which contained a quarter of a ton of TNT, hidden under papers and books. The explosive was wired but not activated. Detonation devices were identifiable in the forward section where the fire had obviously been most ferocious.
The Navy investigators came to the conclusion that the Sidewinders had hit with such sudden and devastating force that the terrorists on board were taken entirely by surprise. And all of them were in the forward section. There had been no time to arm their somewhat crude bomb to explode on impact.
Had they done so, however, and managed to hit the Capitol as planned, that much high explosive coming in from the southwest would have blown the Capitol building straight into the Reflecting Pool, and with it all the hundreds of government workers who served there. In his tenure as President of the United States, this was most certainly Paul Bedford’s finest hour. And no one would ever know. Well, not many people.
All fifteen of the recovered bodies carried Canadian passports. None of them had Middle Eastern names, and all of them were from either Montreal or Toronto. It was plain that the terrorists had effectively been cremated during Flight 62’s long, burning fall from five thousand feet. They left no trace behind.
Inquiries made at Palm Beach airport yielded little. Yes, the 737 had requested a refueling stop, and yes, permission had been granted. Further inquiries in Barbados revealed that no, the airport had not run out of fuel, and Flight 62 had taken delivery of all the jet fuel it required.
This particular piece of information caused Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe almost to have a seizure. And his thoughts were clear:
This means there’s some kind of terrorist agent operating right there in Palm Beach airport. They did not have to stop there; they chose to. And if they don’t discover that the explosive was loaded right there in Palm Beach, I’m a fucking wallaby… GET ME ADMIRAL MORGAN RIGHT NOW.
Meanwhile, there was the somewhat vexing problem of getting rid of the fifteen Canadian bodies. Thus it was that a three-engined Sikorsky Super Stallion helicopter was making its way across the Allegheny Mountains on a 700-mile journey to the enormous military base of Fort Campbell, which lies fifty miles northwest of Nashville, right on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.
They were flying through the last of the light, even at this height. In place of the standard cargo of fifty combat Marines, the Super Stallion now carried fifteen coffins.
In a remote corner of the military base, down to the southwest, near the banks of the wide Cumberland River, there was a small graveyard, unused for decades. Tonight it would be used for a mass burial, the grave would be unmarked, and the huge mechanical diggers, already waiting, would accomplish their task very quickly.
The country around the little graveyard was soft, picturesque, and wooded. It was a fitting place, perhaps, for those who had died violently, unknowing victims of Muslim terror, and silent guardians of a very deadly secret.
The big Navy helo would be refueled and back in Norfolk before midnight. Less than a dozen people would ever know the purpose of its mission.
Lt. Commander Ramshawe raised a very loud alarm. His call to Admiral Morgan took mere moments, and the sudden realization that Palm Beach International Airport housed a treacherous jihadist who had assisted in a plot to kill hundreds of Americans caused an electronic vibration of anxiety to shudder through CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As an operation, the CIA prided itself on staying at least two steps in front of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, and several more in front of the FBI and all of its branches.
Ramshawe’s call caught them on the hop. An unnamed terrorist working in a U.S. airport represented a five-alarmer, and there were a thousand questions to answer. These included: Precisely who gave Flight 62 permission to land? Were the security operators informed? Who designated the stand she should occupy during refueling? Was there an opportunity for five metal trunks to be loaded into her hold? Was anyone paying attention?
The answers to the latter questions were most disturbing. Yes, there had been an opportunity for those trunks to be loaded on board. No, no one was paying the slightest attention to this Canadian 737 that apparently wanted extra fuel. No problem.
Florida’s state police, keen to assist in any way, joined forces with the CIA and the local branch of the FBI, and they swooped down upon that airport like a 21st-century Gestapo. They confiscated miles of closed-circuit television film, and one by one they interviewed employees.
In the end, it transpired that the five metal trunks with the illicit cargo had been wheeled into the near-empty baggage room at 0300 on the morning of Friday, January 14.
Around 0930, they had been quietly attached to a line of baggage trucks being towed out to an aircraft. However, a new baggage tractor then came out into the area and unhooked the last cart from the main line of six being loaded onto a United Airlines passenger jet. No one took the slightest notice.
But right now there was a quarter-ton of TNT being towed around the loading area of Palm Beach International Airport, by an employee, wearing the right uniform, on a properly qualified vehicle. Again, no one noticed. Why should they have noticed?
At 0945, Flight 62 from Barbados came in to land and was directed to a stand in the refueling area. She took on board her jet fuel, and, while she was doing so, one single employee brought out a luggage cart on which were five identical boxes. The pilot ordered his engineer to unlock the door to the hold, and the boxes were loaded. Everything looked absolutely normal. And no one batted an eyelash. The al Qaeda hitmen were in business. Before Flight 62 took off again at 1040, she had been converted into a massive flying bomb, and she was headed directly to Washington, D.C.
The question for the CIA to answer was, plainly, who was the mysterious truck driver who delivered the explosive to the aircraft? The answer was not long in coming.
The man had avoided the CCTV cameras, but everyone knew who he was. A youngish guy, aged around thirty-four, named Mo Dixon. He was in bed in his apartment when the CIA men burst in at four o’clock in the morning in West Palm Beach. The place was clean, but that was not Mo as in Maurice; it was Mo as in Mohammed. The police found two passports, one of them Syrian. One American. Both of them featuring Mo, unsmiling, innocent-looking.
Under questioning, he revealed he had worked at the Syrian embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. Then he’d conned his way into the USA on a false passport back in the year 2001. He’d had a variety of jobs, with long periods of doing nothing. Well, nothing useful to the USA. Mohammed Rahman was a Syrian agent with close ties to the Middle Eastern terror organization Hamas.
In the opinion of Lt. Commander Ramshawe, he must be subjected to the most rigorous military questioning-mostly to see if he could be connected to the missing Saudi, Ramon Salman. Admiral Morgan arranged for the obvious illegal combatant, Mohammed Rahman, to be transported forthwith to Guantánamo Bay.
The New York City Police Department is mildly jumpy about two main subjects, drugs and street crime, mostly because the first infuriates the government and the second infuriates the mayor. But there is one subject, above all others, which makes them really nervous. That’s terrorism. That infuriates everybody.
And all through the city, there were small mom-and-pop stores that had literally had the “frighteners” put upon them by New York’s finest. Mostly they sold electronics, batteries, timing devices, plugs, wires, light-bulbs, and electrical fittings. But some sell industrial fertilizer, various chemicals, small electric motors. The kind of stuff that might be needed by someone planning to blow something up.
The New York Police Department stayed in touch with these store-owners on a regular and consistent basis. They asked very little, except to be informed of any suspicious-looking characters who might be purchasing any commodity that could possibly be used in the construction of a bomb.
At 9 P.M. the previous evening, Mr. Sam Goldblum of downtown West Broadway had called his two pals at the precinct and informed them he was preparing a timing device for a couple of guys who stated they were fitting a homemade alarm system into their warehouse in the Bowery.
Sam did not believe them. He had family in Tel Aviv, and in his opinion his two customers were either Palestinian or Iranian. Either way, he did not trust them one inch, and suggested that Officers Mike Carman and Joe Pallizi might like to pay him a visit in the morning and take a look at the device Sam was building for them.
Mike and Joe turned up at 9:30 sharp. The electronic timer was being attached behind a small clock face, geared to go active any time in a 24-hour cycle. The two cops were not world-class experts on live detonation gear, but they disliked what they saw, and they decided to wait it out until noon and then apprehend the two suspects and find out what the hell was going on.
They took up their positions on Prince Street, south of Washington Square, just east of West Broadway, and watched. At 11:02 A.M., two young men hurried across the street and entered the shop. Officer Carman’s cell phone bleeped.
Mike-they’re here.
Got ’em, Sam. Thanks a lot.
Ten minutes later, the two men emerged from the shop, both of them wearing black sneakers, heavy jackets, and scarves. One of them carried a large white plastic bag marked Goldblum Electrics. Sam was right. Both of them were distinctly Middle Eastern in appearance.
The two cops broke cover and walked quickly toward the two men, coming from behind. Mike Carman overtook them and motioned for them to stop. Joe Pallizi, standing right behind them, drew his service revolver and ordered them against the wall. Mike grabbed the package and demanded to be shown what it contained.
“It’s just a burglar alarm, man,” said one of them.
“Then I guess you won’t mind us coming home with you, to check out what kind of device it is and where it’s going?”
This was not greeted with absolute joy by either man, and one of them attempted to run for it. Mike grabbed him by the neck and Joe snapped the bracelets on the other man. They were marched at gunpoint to the home address printed on a New York driver’s license found in the pocket of the man who had tried to escape.
The result was an outstanding arrest and a spectacular discovery of a bomb-making factory just around the corner, in a fourth-floor apartment. It contained bags of chemicals, enough bundles of dynamite to knock down the George Washington Bridge, a large sealed container of white powder that would later be identified as anthrax, and enough electrical wires and batteries to light up Yankee Stadium.
The two cops made their report instantly by telephone, and before they even left the premises, before even the forensic guys were in, the main security agencies had been informed of the police coup.
Jimmy Ramshawe, firing questions at the precinct chief in downtown Manhattan, demanded, on behalf of the National Security Agency, to know the address of the premises where the arrest was happening.
“Wait a minute, sir… okay, right away… it’s 75 West Houston, corner of Broadway.”
“Mother of God,” breathed Jimmy. “Don’t let any of them leave. No one leaves. Everyone stays right in that apartment. Don’t let anyone make a phone call, ’cept for your own guys, right? Just wait.”
“You got it, sir.”
One hour and ten minutes later, the Boston terrorist mastermind, Ramon Salman, formerly of Commonwealth Avenue, walked into the al Qaeda headquarters, straight through the door of Apartment 4D, 75 West Houston, New York. Mike Carman and Joe Pallizi, who had bound and gagged their original captives, instantly grabbed the startled Ramon in a headlock and an armlock, and he offered no resistance.
Twenty-four hours later, Salman was with his highly lethal buddies, Reza Aghani and Mohammed the baggage man, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, special courtesy of Arnold Morgan and the President of the United States.
Lt. Commander Ramshawe slightly sheepishly informed the CIA that the intense police search for Salman, currently in progress in Houston, Texas, could now be called off.
“That bloody Ramon,” he muttered, as he rang off. “That’s one cunning little Arabian bastard, and no error.”
Almost fifteen hundred miles to the south, lost in the gigantic sprawl of the oldest overseas base ever occupied by U.S. forces, Salman, Aghani, and Mohammed Rahman faced up to the rigors of military interrogation in the chilling regime of Guantánamo Bay.
Here on the 45-square-mile compound there are still close to ten thousand U.S. troops, training and working, right on the southeastern edge of Cuba, on the only U.S. base in the world located on Communist soil.
No interrogation center in the free world has a more feared reputation. Outside of the more barbaric nations, no interrogation center has ever been more successful at prying information out of known terrorist hard men, at mentally breaking down illegal combatants, at making them reveal to the U.S. military precisely what their cutthroat brothers-in-arms are planning.
Almost all the West’s major hits against terrorist organizations come as the result of “information received.” Guantánamo Bay, and its interrogation teams, are entitled to a massive share of the credit for that. They are not, of course, ever going to get it, since, in their trade, credit is an almost unheard-of commodity.
Those teams confer in secret, they work in secret, they turn the screws in secret, they make their demands on prisoners in secret, and they report in secret. Over the years, thousands of lives have been saved, hundreds of plots have been exposed, thanks to the skill and determination of America ’s unseen maestros in the cages of Guantánamo Bay.
The Cuban government has for years loathed and detested the American presence down there in the remote razor-wired compound which lies nearly five hundred miles from Havana, Cuba’s capital city up on the northwestern shore. But America came by this territory thanks to a treaty signed by Cuba’s first president, Tomas Estrada Palma, in 1903.
To this day there are God knows how many clauses, steel-rimmed, protecting America’s rights-“complete jurisdiction and control,” “perpetual sovereignty over Guantánamo Bay,” “lease termination requiring the consent of both governments.”
Fidel Castro once made a determined attempt to break the lease by citing the 1969 Vienna Convention. And by asserting that any agreement between the U.S. and Cuba had been dependent upon the threat or use of force by the Americans.
But Uncle Sam banged an iron fist on the table and told Comrade Fidel he was talking nonsense, and reminded him he had accepted a substantial lease payment from them at the outset of his rule, thus ratifying the lease agreement. The Americans were not going anywhere.
Unsurprisingly, diplomatic relations could not exist between the two countries, and cooperation was zero. But the great sheltered Bay of Guantánamo is essentially a U.S. naval base, and is easily supplied from the American mainland.
Independent, a law unto itself, secretive, and highly successful, this hot, dusty, subtropical detention center can more or less do what it likes. Hated and feared by the jihadists of the Middle East, Guantánamo has been home to operatives from Hamas, Hezbollah, and just about every Muslim terror group including al Qaeda and the Taliban.
The dread of every terrorist commander in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, or Pakistan is that one of their senior men will end up in the Cuba facility and spill the beans, as many of them have. The seizure and subsequent transportation of Ramon Salman, Reza Aghani, and Mohammed Rahman sent a shiver of dread through clandestine enclaves in Damascus, Gaza, Tehran, Kabul, and the high caves in the Hindu Kush.
Could these three important al Qaeda men withstand the mental onslaught of U.S. interrogation-a process which would not only be relentless, but also conducted in secret? All of the Middle East terror organizations had access to lawyers, and they frequently succeeded in presenting them at civilian proceedings in the U.S., and, more especially, in England. Also they had a thousand hotlines to the Arab television network, al Jazeera, which often cited examples of brutality, bullying, and torture by the West. But none of this applied to Guantánamo.
The procedures there were strictly on American terms, just the way Admiral Arnold Morgan liked it. And this was about as bad as it gets, if you had just attempted to blow up a U.S. airport, or, worse yet, the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
It was not much comfort that things might have been a lot worse. Back in the early days of al Qaeda and Taliban interrogation, in 2002, temporary holding facilities for three hundred detainees were built at Guantánamo Bay right out in the open.
This was the feared Camp X-ray, where satellites occasionally photographed prisoners kneeling, shackled, or squatting under a burning hot sun with no overhead cover, in the presence of armed guards. Many prisoners were also seen to be wearing earmuffs, face masks, and covered goggles.
The more modern Camp Delta was quickly constructed for two thousand detainees, but Middle Eastern propaganda television stations still refer to Camp X-ray, because of its association with harsh treatment for its inmates. Human rights groups have called such measures “sensory deprivation,” citing such levels of restraint as unnecessary and inhumane.
Never mind that most of them had been caught trying to kill, maim, or murder U.S. servicemen or civilians and were meeting a far less onerous fate than prisoners of the jihadists so often do. It might have been tough or even humiliating, but no one had their head cut off. Or worse.
Within a couple of years, there were six separate detention camps at Guantánamo (named 1, 2, 3, 4, Echo, and Iguana), three of them maximum security, capable of holding eight hundred prisoners between them, all living in solitary confinement.
Inside these camps, there were numerous detention blocks, each holding twenty-four units. These oppressive cells are eight feet long by six feet eight inches wide, and eight feet high, constructed of metallic wire mesh on a solid steel frame. A couple of hundred prisoners were released to other governments in 2005, but over five hundred were left.
Ramon Salman landed in Guantánamo after a direct flight from the U.S. Naval Air Station at Boca Chica, near Key West, fifty miles off Florida’s south coast. He was immediately manacled and walked to a reception area, where he was issued the usual prisoner’s gear: two orange boiler-suits, a foam sleeping mat, one blanket, two buckets, a pair of flip-flops, wash-cloth, soap, shampoo, and a copy of the Koran, in case he thought Allah might have abandoned him.
Salman was then walked slowly to a detention block, a separate one from either of his two cohorts, neither of whom did he realize was in captivity less than two hundred yards from where he stood.
And from there he was, for a while, left to his own thoughts. And these were private. Salman had not uttered one word since the New York cops had grabbed him in the Houston Street apartment the previous day. He must clearly have been stunned by the experience, seeing his two colleagues bound and gagged in the presence of Officers Carman and Pallizi.
But he had offered nothing, refused to give even his name, and was identified one hour later only by the police photographs which had been taken outside his apartment on Commonwealth Avenue. Since his arrest: nothing. Not a word on the military aircraft. Not a word to anyone since the flight. His entry card to Guantánamo read simply:
Ramon Salman, last known permanent address 2, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts. Arrested in known terrorist HQ at 75 West Houston Street, New York City, on suspicion of terrorism against the United States. Believed involved in Logan airport bombing, 01/15/12, and other plots to murder and maim involving aircraft. This prisoner is designated ILLEGAL COMBATANT. NON-COOPERATIVE. Possibly Syrian. No passport located.
At 1900, they brought him an evening meal with the rest of the prisoners. It consisted of white rice, red beans, a banana, bread, and a bottle of water. The guards stared at him for a while, noting his unshaven, dark, swarthy Middle Eastern appearance, the pure hatred in his eyes, and the defiant curl to his upper lip.
This was the man, they knew, who had made the phone call from his apartment to Syria, the call that had betrayed so much. This was a critical figure in the al Qaeda system. He was, as yet, undetected as a disciple of bin Laden, and nothing was known about him. But he had been coldly planning to blow apart hundreds of innocent American citizens in the airport. But for the sharpness of the Boston financier Donald Martin in spotting the briefcase, he would have succeeded.
Salman’s current plight may have incensed, or at least drawn sympathy from, the human rights groups. But it did not impress the U.S. guards, one of whom muttered, as they walked away, “For two bits, I’d kick the little fucker’s nuts into his lungs.”
Happily for Salman, there would be the kind of legal restraint common in the United States military, but there would be little mercy when the interrogation began at 0100. Still, they probably would not behead him.
The lights in his holding pen went out at 2100. It would be a long time before he was allowed out of the darkness, since the principal objective of interrogation, in its initial stages, is total disorientation, the prisoner not knowing whether it’s day or night.
They came for him on time at 0100, and immediately placed a hood over his head. He was then manacled, placed in a chair, and the senior interrogator said quietly, “Okay, Ramon. We know you speak English, and we also have in custody your colleagues, Reza Aghani and the Palm Beach baggage man Mohammed Rahman.
“They have both been sensible and told us everything we need to know, including details of your own part in the attempted atrocities against the United States on January 15. However, I would like to clarify your personal details. I believe you are Syrian, like Mohammed?”
That last remark was a wild swing in the dark, based upon Mohammed’s admitted job in the Syrian embassy in Caracas and the almost certain destination of that phone call from Commonwealth Avenue.
Salman made no reply. Was he related to Osama bin Laden, whose Saudi-based cousin still owned the Boston apartment? Nothing. Had he worked for Osama? Nothing. Was he an active jihadist? And, if not, why had he delivered the critical phone message back to Syria? Zero. No response. No reply to anything.
They kept it up for four hours, never threatening. Just probing. Then they took him back to his holding cell, still manacled, still hooded, still in the dark. Every half hour, someone came in and shook him awake. He ate his meals in the dark, he drank his water in the dark. Four times a day, and every night, he was questioned. Ramon Salman was never allowed to sleep.
At midnight on Friday, January 21, they turned on the pressure. Salman was by now completely disoriented. He did not know whether it was night or day. He did not know what day of the week it was; he had lost count of the number of days he had been in captivity.
He had not spoken, but he was clearly becoming distressed and was beginning to hallucinate, mumbling incoherently, the guards assumed in Arabic. As Friday turned into Saturday, they suddenly piped deafening music into his cell, cheap rock ’n’ roll, blasting in the confined space. He was not manacled at the time, and the guards watched him clamp his hands over his ears.
At which point, they walked in and grabbed him, replacing the manacles and the handcuffs and the hood, and then left him for one hour with the music still blaring. When they returned, the tone was very different. “SALMAN! GET UP! SIDDOWN! And listen carefully, because our patience just ran out, and if we don’t get some answers we’re going to beat the living shit out of you.”
Right then they pulled off his hood, and Salman’s eyes, accustomed only to the dark, almost exploded as they were hit by viciously bright interrogation lights, aimed right at him.
Simultaneously, from out in the corridor came penetrating screams of pure terror, the sounds of hell, the unmistakable sounds of the torture chamber. There were sounds of men being beaten, of slashing whips, cries and whimpers of appallingly injured people. As fake tapes go, this one often did the trick down there in Guantánamo. The wretched Salman gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and said nothing.
“SALMAN!” roared the interrogator. “Right here I’m holding a U.S. Army officer’s baton, and two minutes from now I’m going to smash it right across your mouth. You got just one way out. Answer this question: are you Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, or al Qaeda?”
Ramon Salman spoke not one word. He just sat there, hunched up, listening to the screams echoing in the corridor. He was shivering now, but something seemed to tell him the Americans were not going to smash his face. Everyone knew the West was soft.
He kept up this defiance for one hour. And the guards began to think he never would give in. They were wrong. The following night, Salman cracked.
Reza Aghani had been kept outside under the hot Caribbean sun all day. He’d been kept in one highly uncomfortable position for more than ten hours. They gave him food and water, but he was not allowed to move, and there he had remained, isolated, disoriented, hallucinating, probably wishing to hell he had never asked Elliott Gardner to look after that briefcase in Logan ’s Terminal C.
They took him back to his cell and fed him his evening meal at 1900, just bread, beans, rice, and an apple. Then they turned up the music, and left him under rock ’n’ roll assault for an hour. When the guards returned, they turned off the music, manacled and handcuffed him, and asked him the questions he had refused to answer maybe a hundred times.
Who is your immediate superior? Who gives your orders? What is his name?
Aghani had had enough. The wound in his upper arm, where he had been shot by Officer Pete Mackay, was throbbing. His resistance had ebbed away. There was nothing he would not do to end this interrogation. And he was very afraid the Americans might just kill him, and no one, including his wife and family in Tehran, would ever know what had become of him.
His hallucinations were very bad now, and he swayed through some kind of a no-man’s-land, not comprehending the difference between reality and fantasy. He looked at the guard who asked the question. And he thought it was his father. The room kept dissolving into a café he frequented on the Vali-ye Asr. He could not even remember the question he had been asked ten seconds ago.
The American officer asked it again, and, as he did so, Aghani caved in. “Salman,” he said. “Ramon Salman. He’s my senior commander.” With his last ounce of defiance, he blurted out, “But you’ll never find him-he’s gone home.”
That’s Hamas, right? asked the interrogating officer, taking yet another wild stab in the dark, but acting on certain knowledge that the new links between al Qaeda and the Iranian/Palestinian terror group were growing stronger with each passing year.
The title al Qaeda had become almost generic, and it had ceased to mean anything, certainly not sufficient to pinpoint a terrorist operation. Al Qaeda was operational all around Baghdad and Basra in Iraq, in Iran, in both the south and northeast of Afghanistan, and in the mountains of Pakistan. It meant nothing to an intelligence agency, whereas Hamas very definitely did. It meant Tehran, or Damascus, the Syrian capital, which Salman had called on his cell phone from Boston the night of January 14. And that mattered.
Reza Aghani elected to answer. He seemed only semiconscious, and he had been deprived of sleep for a long time. He just sighed, and then mumbled, “Yes. Hamas.” Then he slumped forward, and the interrogator shouted for a stretcher to cart the unconscious Iranian terrorist to Guantánamo’s small, twenty-bed hospital.
The seventeen words Reza Aghani had uttered, under stress, bore all the signs of a man who had given up. The interrogators assessed he had been telling the truth. And they returned with new vigor to the cell occupied by Ramon Salman.
They shook him awake and turned up the music, slammed the door, and left him. When they returned an hour later, he was rocking backward and forward, in the manner of the insane, and not in time to the fifth-rate rock ’n’ roll. They ripped off his hood and turned on the arc lights, almost blinding him.
Right now, Ramon Salman did not know if he was in heaven or hell, though he suspected the latter. He could not work out whether he was in a dream or in reality. Like Aghani, he was hallucinating beyond reason, murmuring in Arabic, trying to work out why his children were in the room, why he kept drifting in and out of his favorite underground teahouse in Damascus, the one in Al-Bakry Street, near his home in the Old City.
SALMAN! YOU KNOW WHAT WE WANT. AND YOU’ALL GONNA TELL US RIGHT NOW. The words bore the drawn-out inflection of the Carolinas, and they were being yelled by a former graduate of The Citadel military academy.
GIMME THE NAME OF YOUR HAMAS COMMANDER IN CHIEF!!
Ramon Salman’s head lolled back, and his eyes rolled. He seemed to slide into sleep, and now he was still, his eyes unseeing, facing up to the ceiling.
The southern infantry colonel’s voice was softer now. And he spoke, quietly: “Come on, Ramon. You haven’t got one thing to gain by keeping quiet. Come on, tell me your commander’s name. Was it the Englishman, the SAS major who joined Hamas? Come on, boy, let’s end this shit right now. Just tell me the truth. Who is he? And where does he live?”
Ramon Salman looked up and said softly, “Damascus. He lives in Damascus. Sharia Bab Touma.”
“HE’S RAVI RASHOOD, RIGHT?” The voice from South Carolina was harsher now. “FORMERLY KNOWN AS MAJOR RAY KERMAN OF THE BRITISH SAS. That’s who you work for, RIGHT?”
The yelled final word almost made the Syrian leap out of his skin. He began to tremble as if terrified that one more word would seal his death warrant.
“ANSWER ME, YOU LITTLE BASTARD!!” The American voice was now full of venom, edged with menace, as he went in for the kill.
“WAS THAT WHO YOU CALLED FROM COMMONWEALTH AVENUE LAST WEEK?”
Salman could stand no more. And he closed his eyes against the pitiless glare of the hot arc lights. “Yes, sir,” he murmured in a barely audible whisper. “My commander in chief is General Ravi Rashood.”