Intercept Read online

  He took a couple of shots of the woodland, and put in a call on his cell to Mack to find out if anything had shaken loose. But there was nothing yet. The electronics under the bus were all still active, but nothing had moved. And Strauss told Mack he had not seen anyone, either on foot or in a vehicle. There was not much to do except wait.

  AT 9:45 IBRAHIM ordered his team to start moving the straw bales that formed the front wall of the “shoebox.” Most put down their rifles to begin the heavy lifting. In teams of two they hauled the bales down and dropped them on the floor, where four more guys stacked them on a cart and dragged them to the end of the barn, eight at a time.

  It was hard to accept how heavy straw bales could be. Every time Ben al-Turabi hoisted one up onto the stack, he swore to God someone had filled it with cement. It took fifteen minutes to remove the wall.

  Ibrahim now spoke for the first time this morning about the getaway plan. “All of our explosive will be detonated simultaneously, by me,” he said. “Each box has a timed detonator, which has been adapted to receive an electronic impulse. The device was made by one of our Boston Sleeper Cells.

  “The detonators have been extensively tested, and a sensor on each box is individually programmed to receive the signal. I will not detonate until every last one of you is out of the building. When the last box is in place inside the academy, you are to make a very fast exit. Do not draw your weapons unless you have to.”

  Ibrahim’s instructions were to use the first door, because he would be outside in the pick-up truck they’d been using all week. “By now the bus will have moved, up to the East gate, and you will pile into the rear of the truck.

  “We will all drive together to the east gate. Abu will take the wheel, and I will detonate the bombs as soon as we are a hundred and fifty yards beyond the school walls. By then we will be traveling at sixty miles per hour, or thirty yards per second. Take into account the five-second delay on the remote control and that puts us three hundred yards clear when the bombs explode. We reach the bus thirty seconds later; everyone boards it and hits the deck.”

  “How long before the police arrive at the school in force?”

  “Probably fifteen minutes. They have to come from Torrington.”

  “Where will we be at that point?”

  “Probably approaching a little town called Sheffield to our north, over the border in Massachusetts. It’s the only town around there with a fast stretch of highway, about five miles long. Get us some distance. And get us out of Connecticut.”

  “Who’ll be driving?”

  “I will,” replied Ibrahim.

  The men now began to move toward the bus, and Ibrahim spoke to them one last time. “You are all highly trained. Most of you have attended the camps in Pakistan, masterminded by the Glorious Osama. So make him proud of you, my brothers. And remember, your destiny is controlled by Allah alone. And Allah is great.”

  Abu Hassan Akbar put on his bus driver’s cap and climbed into the driver’s seat. The rest followed in single file, sitting mostly on the floor. Ben al-Turabi sat on a seat next to Abu, who now started the engine and drove through the barn doors and into the farmyard. He hit the button to close the doors and revved the engine.

  MACK SAW THE TRACKER dot move for the first time on the screen. It was only about an eighth of an inch, but Mack was watching. He leapt to his feet, and exclaimed, “That’s it, Benny. That bus just left the barn.”

  They unhooked the computer, closed the lid, and headed out to the parking lot. Everything they needed was in the Nissan, and they were on their way within seconds, Mack at the wheel.

  Benny sat in the back seat with the open computer, and before they reached the car-park exit, he said, “The bus is moving, down the drive toward the road. They’re about three miles behind us right now. Hit it, Mack.”

  The Nissan swerved right at the road, and Mack drove along toward the school. But a half-mile before he got there, he turned hard right, and then took a long left sweep through the woods, and came out on the northeast side of the school fields. They were looking straight across flat, mown grass, about two hundred yards to the main building.

  JOHNNY STRAUSS HEARD the school bus rumbling down the drive long before he saw it. Thirty yards before it reached the road, he started shooting, and in the bright morning light, he caught a set of brilliant photo portraits of both Abu Hassan Akbar and Ben al-Turabi.

  They turned left at the gateposts, and Johnny shot them again, now from quite close range. There was no doubt in his mind who was in charge of that bus—they were the two serial killers of the Netanya Hotel and the Be’er Sheba bar mitzvah.

  Right behind the bus came another vehicle, a kind of ramshackle farm truck, covered in mud with a lot of dents. He was almost certain it was the same one Mack had noted a few days previously. But he shot a good one of its registration, just to check.

  He also shot excellent pictures of both men in the front seats, front and side-on. The driver was Ibrahim Sharif and the passenger Yousaf Mohammed, although neither man was known to him personally. But again, Johnny had been looking at that set of prison prints from Guantanamo for so long, he felt like he knew them. This time, however, there was a problem. The driver was fully bearded, and despite sensing it was the once clean-shaven Ibrahim from the photographs, Johnny could not be a hundred percent certain it was him.

  Still, he believed these were the guys Mack Bedford was after—Ibrahim and Yousaf. And he called the former SEAL commander right away, just to let him know the line-up; to let him know the two men he wanted most were not on the bus. And that one of them had grown a full beard since the Guantanamo pictures.

  Mack was not pleased. And Johnny Strauss, the King Terrorist Hunter, felt obliged to remind him, “In my game, you just gotta tell it like it is.”

  “Bullshit,” replied Mack ungraciously. “When you’re talking to me, tell it like I want to hear it!”

  And they both laughed, despite everything.

  MEANWHILE, Benny had the radar positioned on a low tree branch, hooked up to a power-pack, and sweeping the grounds of Canaan Academy like a beached Navy destroyer. Traffic had virtually ceased since the first concert was about to begin, and the school orchestra was tuning up.

  There was no else on the road, which meant there were no “paints” whatsoever on the screen, just that familiar “ping” as the arm swept around. Mack and Benny were laying low, literally hunkered down against the tree, waiting for the action to begin.

  Across the field, Mack could see the three yellow school buses he’d spotted on his visit with the headmaster. As he stared at them through his binoculars, he wondered if they had been out this morning.

  Benny was holding onto the remote control as if it contained his own heart. Like Johnny, he wanted Ben al-Turabi and Abu Hassan Akbar a lot more than he wanted the other two ex-prisoners. And he knew his prime targets, the scum who had massacred Israeli women and children, were on that school bus. Which, in his opinion, could not survive the next ten minutes.

  ABU CHANGED GEAR and aimed the bus over the Blackberry River. Four minutes later he came roaring past the hotel, headed for the front gates of the academy, where Officer Tony Marinello was still on duty.

  Inside the bus, everyone except Abu was crouched down on the floor as low as possible, under the seats if necessary. Anywhere to stay out of the sight of any guards or police officers who might be at the gates to the school.

  Abu Hassan was giving a running commentary of their position. “Okay, we are about one mile from the main gates now. There is hardly any traffic, but I’m going to slow down at the school road signs and make our approach at twenty miles an hour.”

  Moments went by before Abu spoke again: “I can see a police cruiser ahead at the gates. But I don’t see a policeman. I intend to drive straight in, so you’ll feel a lurch as we swing right when we get there. If the officer signals me to stop, I will pretend not to see him, and carry on, straight up the drive.

  “Like I
brahim says, this bus has a Canaan sign above my seat, and it looks very official. I’m trying to look as if I’m just going home. And you will be the same, just regular delivery men going about your ordinary work.”

  NOW SITTING in his cruiser just outside the entrance of the school, Tony Marinello could see a fourth school bus of the day driving toward him along Route 44. He didn’t pay it much mind, though, until he noticed its turn signal flashing. Seconds before the bus made a right turn onto the school grounds, the driver raised his right hand in a brief wave of recognition. Tony nodded and raised his left, returning the gesture.

  But something wasn’t quite right here. He reached up to his checklist that he’d jammed into the visor above the steering wheel. Three buses, not four.

  Tony thought maybe there was a screw-up—that Ms. Calvert had written three but meant four. He decided to call it in.

  Captain “Buzzy” Hannon came on the line. “Hi, Tony. What’s up?”

  “Sir, I got a slight discrepancy here. I’m at the gates of the academy, and my list shows three school buses scheduled to enter the premises. A fourth just drove in, and I just want to check that’s a list inaccuracy.”

  “Hang on. Let me check mine,” he said, and there was a short pause. Then he spoke again. “Looks like I’m also showing only three school buses. Why don’t you go check it out. Take a drive up to the school office.”

  “What if I find something? What if it’s an illegal bus? Can I demand to search it?”

  “It won’t be, kid. But, if it is, and you have suspicions, call in for back-up. I just don’t want any heroics in the environment of a school, hear me?”

  “Don’t worry, sir. I won’t frighten the kids.”

  Officer Marinello slipped off the handbrake and headed through the gates of and up the long drive to the main buildings.

  THERE WAS A five-miles-an-hour speed limit on the school drive and Abu Hassan did not plan to break it, nor commit any other faux pas, which might draw attention to his bus. Nor did he think much of the police car about a hundred yards behind him.

  This was the first time the hit men had been alone. Ibrahim and Yousaf had swung the old Dodge truck off to the right. They planned to take the scenic route and enter through the east gate, rendezvousing with the bus somewhere along the north wall of the main building later.

  Abu Hassan Akbar checked his watch and tried to gauge time and distance to the target parking spot. He was on the straight part of the drive now and he guessed it was around six hundred yards to the main door. He called out a new bulletin to the nine men cramped down on the floor.

  “We’re about four minutes out,” the veteran Palestinian merchant of death estimated. “Start preparing to get out. Fred and Charlie first. Joe and Skip next. Handcarts in the trunk.”

  And then he took a piece of paper from his pocket and began to read the words Ibrahim had said must be the last words they heard before going into action: “This is from our leader,” he told them, keeping one eye on the road ahead as he read. “We are only moments from staging the World Trade Center all over again,” he began. “That was the greatest of all missions, and it is the one we have waited so many years to repeat. Because that was the mission that terrified the Great Satan.

  “And now the fate of Islam lies in your hands, and I know you will not let anyone down. You have the courage. You have the skills. And you fight under the banner of Allah. You will leave no survivors. Let the will of Allah be done.”

  The bus continued its stately progress along the drive, tracked by Officer Marinello, and now watched by Mack Bedford and Benny Shalit from the other side of the north playing fields.

  Meanwhile the Dodge truck was hurtling along the country lanes that led to the east gate. Yousaf was in command of their remote-control detonator, which would ultimately blow the bomb boxes. He asked Ibrahim to slow down a little while he made one final adjustment to the electronics.

  Abu Hassan still thought nothing of the police cruiser that seemed to be following him, and he stared ahead at the clock tower high above the school. It was one minute before 10:30 a.m. Inside the packed assembly hall, the orchestra and the massed singers of three choirs prepared to launch the proceedings.

  The hall held thirteen hundred spectators, in addition to the forty-five musicians, now quiet in the orchestra pit, and the one hundred fifty singers, now assembled on the stage.

  Mark Jenson, resplendent in his Harvard gown and wide blue academic sash, called the auditorium to silence and welcomed everyone to Abraham’s Day, for the one moment in the year when everyone reflected on the founder of the Israeli nation.

  Canaan Academy, he reminded the audience, was “twinned” with the Hebrew School in the small town of Kiryat Arba, the biblical name for Hebron, which stands below the hill on which the Jewish settlement is built. “And today,” he said, “I would like us to reflect for one silent minute, on the Tomb of the Patriarch, the wondrous building that dominates Hebron, and the last resting place of Abraham in the land where he forged his Covenant with God.”

  A giant photograph of the tomb was then illuminated behind the choirs, and two long notes were blown on the Ram’s Horn, the traditional musical instrument of Judaism, the only musical instrument in the world that has not changed in five thousand years.

  The auditorium fell silent as the audience reflected on their own roots and the beginnings of their nation. Those who had been to Hebron closed their eyes in prayer, and saw in their mind’s eye the massive structure of the tomb, where the remains of Abraham and his wife Sarah, lie alongside those of his sons and their wives, Jacob and Leah, Isaac, and Rebecca.

  When the minute’s silence was concluded, Mark Jenson stood up and spoke to the audience once more. “With our thoughts now in the Holy Land, we should offer personal prayers for peace to return to our distant land, and pray that it will continue to be, for us, the land of milk and honey promised to Moses by God.”

  The Ram’s Horn sounded twice more, and the school orchestra struck up the overture to the hymn, which begins with the most sacred word in Judaism:Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

  Lift up your voice and sing,

  Hosannah in the highest,

  Hosannah to the King.

  The words, sung with aching beauty, by the high trebles, in harmony with the newly formed tenors and baritones of the senior class, rose in an uplifting swell that drifted out from the high windows and across the lawns and woodlands of Connecticut.

  Mack Bedford and Benny Shalit heard it clearly as they watched the bus moving slowly up the drive, and the man from the Mossad was visibly moved. He stood up, as if for a national anthem, and he held his detonator out in front of him, watching the indicator light flickering on and off, he hoped, synchronized with its twin under the fuselage of the bus.

  Right now they knew only one thing. The tracker device was definitely still working. They stood quietly watching the bus draw nearer, as the voices of the Canaan Academy choirs wafted out over the golden oak trees that lined the drive.

  Jerusalem, Jerusalem,

  Thou city ever blest,

  Within thy portals first I find

  My safety, peace and rest.

  Mack Bedford had his mark mentally on the drive. Two giant oak trees planted quite closely were his halfway point, when he assessed the bus would come within range. The next hundred yards would be the last it ever traveled.

  Staring through his binoculars, he said quietly, “Halfway, Benny. Stand by.”

  And Benny’s right hand moved imperceptibly to the black button on the top of the box, the red light still flickering.

  “We’re in range. I got two hundred fifty yards . . . ”

  “When you’re ready, buddy,”

  “Okay Benny, NOW !”

  “Contact.”

  And the choir still sang the heavenly words of Jerusalem:Where tears and weeping are no more,

  Nor death, nor pain, nor night;

  For former things are passed away,

&nb
sp; And darkness turned to light.

  At which point, Benny’s red light went out. His green light suddenly glowed. And beneath Ibrahim’s yellow school bus the detonator did its work. The eight sets of plastic C-4 high explosive blew upward with a muffled blast, smashing asunder the floor of the bus.

  In the same split-second, the two bundles of dynamite exploded with a dull WHOOOOMPH, and the fizzing det-chord ripped up into the boxes, unleashing the brutal demolition power that is packed into a ton of ammonium nitrate high-explosive—a homemade carpet bomb that would have obliterated Canaan Academy.

  It made short work of the bus. And it caused a blast nothing short of sensational. Flames shot three hundred feet into the air as the bus disintegrated upward, rising fifty feet off the ground in a blazing yellow kaleidoscope, hurling off huge hunks of white-hot metal like the Rings of Saturn gone berserk. It was Nagasaki 1945 in northwest Connecticut.

  Officer Tony Marinello’s cruiser took the full brunt of the outward blast. It catapulted over backwards onto its roof, bounced and made another clean half-somersault and landed on its four wheels. Tony, saved by his seat belt, went into shock, watching the burning, twisted wings, doors, seats, and whole swathes of the roof raining down. Three massive oak trees, four hundred years old, with trunks thirty-five feet around, were lying flat on the ground, two of them on fire.

  The fertilizer bomb had been built to make sure fifteen hundred people died inside the school. Now the ten riders on the bus, Abu and Ben among them, were halfway across the Bridge to Paradise as the incinerated automatic doors of the school bus, glowing red, finally fell to earth.