Intercept Page 37

  Ibrahim had no idea how intense the police dragnet was right now. Indeed, he had no idea whether they even had a description of the truck he was driving. Nor if they even knew he existed. But his suspicions were those of an international terrorist, of a professional killer who was being groomed to become one of bin Laden’s right-hand men.

  He needed to get centered. To develop a plan. To him, there was nowhere south where he could reasonably seek refuge. Or escape. Airports were out of the question. So were major seaports. Which ruled out almost everywhere. The only border he’d ever heard was possible to cross illegally was Canada, mostly because it was nearly four thousand miles long. No one could patrol all of it.

  Ibrahim needed to make contact with someone from the organization. He got off the highway at the next exit, and headed to a rest stop near the town of Blandford, a ski-resort located in the Berkshire Hills. It was high, spectacular country, and he considered it likely that reception would be excellent on his cell.

  Ibrahim dialed the number of Faisal al-Assad on Sixty-Ninth Street, the apartment that had been his home for several days. The phone had plainly been disconnected, but Ibrahim’s call was a big mistake. The New York police were wire-tapping that apartment, given Assad’s connection to the farm. Ibrahim’s call went straight through to the police, who could actually answer. When one of them asked who was speaking, Ibrahim did not respond, just stated that he wished to speak to Mr. Assad. Again they asked for identity, trying to keep him on the line, but Ibrahim sensed an intervention, and clicked off his phone.

  The NYPD raced through the procedures to trace a call, but it took too long, and they came up only with a wide stretch of country in the Berkshire Hills, probably off Interstate 90. They logged the beacon but nothing else.

  But they did not need anything else, because that beacon was precisely twenty-three miles from Canaan Academy, where there had been a bombing less than a hour ago. The coincidence was undeniable. Ten minutes later, in the collective minds of the both the Connecticut and Massachusetts state police, there was no doubt that the two known terrorists, photographed getting out of Mountainside Farm, were heading for Boston.

  Ibrahim, too, experienced a sudden heightening of the senses. That phone call, he guessed, had betrayed him, to an extent. He had no idea how the U.S. police could possibly know his identity, or his role in the blast that blew the bus. But these were Americans, and they were not like other people. They knew everything.

  Ibrahim was growing more scared by the minute. Yousaf had gone into a total decline, and he sat staring at the Berkshire Hills as they rushed past the old Dodge truck. But Yousaf did not see the golden autumn slopes before the snows. All he could he see was the hot, dry wasteland of eastern Cuba, and the brown, neglected grassland and vegetation around the Guantanamo Bay prison.

  He wasn’t saying anything, but he was trying to think of ways to help Ibrahim. However, the sudden appearance of two state police cruisers coming the other way at high speed, blue lights flashing, sirens blaring, jolted them both into the reality of their situation.

  Yousaf sat upright, and muttered, “They’re not looking for us, are they?”

  Ibrahim replied, “I don’t think so. Not yet. But I’m getting off this highway right now.”

  He swung off the turnpike at Exit 3, before Springfield, and headed north, driving through the Berkshires on minor roads where his truck looked more at home than on a major highway. He kept heading north and east, aiming for the coast, way above Boston.

  He was uncertain about this particular compulsion, but during his two semesters at Harvard he’d often traveled with other students up to coastal Maine for long weekends, sometimes fishing, sometimes hiking.

  And like so many generations of Boston students, he’d loved that wild country, its loneliness and its permanent atmosphere of a lost time, of living in a bygone age. Maine was a throwback of a state, and in the opinion of many, it was a throwback to better and more kindly times. So Ibrahim was headed for Maine, where he could not only think, but there was also that 490-mile border that Maine shares with Canada, where only a couple of roads actually cross from one side to the other.

  Ibrahim was clueless about the loneliness of that horseshoe-shaped frontier line, the paucity of highways or even roads, the hostile weather, and the impossibility of traveling across those mountains and into Canada. Also he was not sure why he thought Canada would be a much easier proposition for a wanted man than the United States. For the moment, he was concentrating on finding the correct roads to take him north of Boston, and he continually left the principal north- and east-running throughways, ducking and diving onto country lanes, adding many hours to his journey.

  As darkness began to settle over New England, he pulled up at a rest stop and told Yousaf to fill up the truck with gas, paying for it with cash. He then walked over to a quiet area outside the restaurant and made a phone call to his old master, Sheikh Abdullah Bazir, in Muslim Bradford.

  It was 11 p.m. in England. The Sheikh had left the mosque and was back in his basement office. Ibrahim quickly explained that his U.S. mission had failed, and that almost everyone involved had been killed in the blast.

  Sheikh Abdullah himself was a highly skilled bombmaker, and he actually winced when he was told the size of the device, and the volume of enhanced ammonium nitrate Ibrahim had used. “They must never have had a chance,” he said of the men on the bus. He expressed deep regret about the deaths of Ben al-Turabi and Abu Hassan, and assured Ibrahim that tonight he would pray for them. To beg Allah to accept them as Martyrs to his cause, and to welcome them now into Paradise.

  And then he told Ibrahim what he needed to hear most: That he would get both Ibrahim and Yousaf out of the United States. He would immediately alert Shakir Khan in Islamabad, who would contact the Sleeper Cells in the American Northeast. If more funds were necessary, they would be arranged through the holy men in Riyadh and through a labyrinth of law firms in London and the United States.

  Now Sheikh Abdullah ordered Ibrahim to drive on into lonely country, to stay out of cities and off highways. He advised him it was safer to travel in the dark, but to stay well clear of the U.S. police. He was to call in whenever possible on this land line at this time, 11 p.m. Bradford. Then he asked for Ibrahim’s cell phone number, which would only be used in an emergency. Meanwhile he would endeavor to plan a route for them, out of the United States.

  Ibrahim felt better now. He went inside the restaurant and purchased a box of cheeseburgers and fries, which he and Yousaf consumed in the parking lot. Once again they headed north, crossing the New Hampshire border south of Nashua, and heading up to the White Mountains.

  They stopped at a small motel and checked in for the night, again paying in cash. They rose early and made their way back toward the Atlantic coast, crossing mountainous country as they drove along Route 2, up toward the city of Bangor.

  They reached the downtown area without incident, and headed for a parking lot. They took their bags, left the Kalashnikovs clipped under the fuselage, and headed into a big supermarket, with an attached restaurant. Yousaf walked to the counter and purchased coffee and sweet pastries; Ibrahim went to the magazine area and bought a road atlas, which provided a complete state-by-state tourist guide to the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

  Ibrahim almost choked on his coffee when he saw how impossible it looked to cross into Canada via Maine. He already knew that one of the roads in was I-95, which had customs officials, Canadian immigration, and major police security at the border. Too many terrorists had tried. Too many had been caught.

  Ibrahim poured over the map. There was a ferry to Nova Scotia from Portland, Maine, but they were already a hundred miles north of Maine’s largest city, and neither of them wanted to head back south. Ibrahim finally deduced that their only chance was the fast ferry to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, which left from Bar Harbor every morning.

  Ibrahim was relieved. He helped himself to a second pastry and asked Yousaf to fetch
another two cups of coffee. Half an hour later they decided to make the final leg of their long journey to the coast of Maine. They picked up their bags and were about to leave the supermarket when Ibrahim froze. Out in the parking lot, precisely where the Dodge was stationed, were two state police cruisers, blue lights flashing. Standing at the rear of their parked truck were two troopers, both with notebooks, both writing.

  Ibrahim dragged Yousaf back inside, grabbed a cart, and placed both leather traveling bags at the bottom. He then began filling the cart with cabbage, lettuce, bags of potatoes, and mixed salad, piling it all on top of the bags.

  He then headed to one of the check-out lanes and began bagging up the vegetables. It took ten minutes before they were ready to push the loaded cart outside; when they reached the door, the two troopers were still there, the only difference being that one of them was speaking on his cell phone. Now one thing was very clear to Ibrahim: he and Yousaf were the very definite targets of a police manhunt.

  There were probably two or three hundred other vehicles in this supermarket parking lot and the troopers were interested in only one, the one driven by two known terrorists, ex-Guantanamo, and plainly now wanted by Connecticut state police in connection with a bomb and the attempted murder of fifteen hundred U.S. citizens.

  The vehicle’s registration number had obviously been circulated and any minute the police were going to find two AK-47s clipped under the fuselage.

  “Walk,” said Ibrahim. “Walk slowly with the cart, like everyone else. Head in the opposite direction of the truck and those two cops. Act like you’re going directly to your own car.”

  Yousaf looked doubtful, but he did as he was told. They reached the far end of the lot, and were now as geographically far away from the cruisers as they could be without leaving the parking lot.

  At this point there were a lot of options, all of them flawed. Grab the bags and get a taxi. Hopeless. Grab the bags and find a bus station. Worse. Find the road to the coast and try to hitch-hike. Ridiculous. Grab the bags and find a car-hire. Lunacy. Steal a car. Better. But only with the driver. The difference might be hours of safe driving before he was missed; the other method, just to take a car and vanish, might have the police on their tail within ten minutes.

  “Keep pushing,” said Ibrahim. He now walked beside the cart, which allowed him to plunge into his own leather bag to search for the pistol he’d been given by Mike and the Sleeper Cell guys when they arrived with the fertilizer. Because it was farthest away from the main doors, this area of the parking lot was the least busy. There was a line of eight parking spaces and only two of them were occupied. A four-foot high concrete wall separated the lot from the busy downtown street running past.

  Ibrahim slipped the pistol into his jacket and helped push the cart toward one of the parked vehicles. And there they waited, never even glancing way across the lines of cars to the spot where the cops were still standing by the old Dodge.

  After five minutes a new cruiser pulled in and joined the other two. The troopers had decided to seal off the supermarket and question everyone still shopping. No need to bother with people out in the lot. If this Ibrahim and his buddy Yousaf had come out already, they’d have headed for their truck. And if they’d tried to make a break, we’d have seen them.

  Ibrahim was on the verge of becoming desperate when Mr. Jed Ridley, a sixty-eight-year-old local bank manager and lifelong resident of Bangor, came walking slowly toward them. He stopped at one of the two parked cars, unlocked the doors, and packed his shopping bags into the trunk.

  Ibrahim watched him settle himself behind the wheel of his dark red Chevrolet. He started the car and tapped on the driver’s side window.

  “Sir,” he said, “I think your back tire . . . ”

  Mr. Ridley opened the window and Ibrahim shot him dead, straight between the eyes. “Pull him out of the seat, and we’ll load him into the back,” he said. “Come on Yousaf, pull and lift.”

  Yousaf was stunned. He was surprised the shot had made so little noise, and amazed at the cold-blooded daring of his leader. He was also thrilled there were no other shoppers anywhere near.

  They hauled the late Mr. Ridley to his feet, as if he were merely feeling faint, and walked him the two steps to the rear door. They shoved the body into the back seat, rolled it forward on to the floor, and began to pile the contents of the trunk on top of it.

  Mr. Ridley thus disappeared, under the salad and off the map. Ibrahim got behind the wheel and headed for the nearest exit. Mr. Ridley’s Chevrolet headed out toward Main Street and then south down the road to the coast. It was, by now, afternoon, and soon it would grow dark. The Chevy needed gas and the roads, off season, up here in sparsely populated Maine were lonely.

  BACK IN THE SUPERMARKET, the police had the area sealed off. No one could come in. More importantly, no one could get out. There was a duty officer at each of the rear doors and the automatic main doors were all locked. The police spent the first half hour separating the women and children and releasing them right away, since none of them fitted the descriptions of Ibrahim and Yousaf.

  There were then obviously innocent men, guys the police knew by name or even by sight. They were released immediately. The officers then proceeded to march each person individually to his vehicle, watch him unlock it, and then drive away.

  But at the end of it all, the muddy old Dodge was still out in the parking lot, alone, and basically without an owner.

  It was already seven o’clock, and Mrs. Barbara Ridley was among several dozen people who had called the police department wondering after their their family members and friends. She, like the others, was told there had been a major police delay at the supermarket, and no one should be overly concerned. It was all a little time-consuming, but routine.

  By 9 p.m., however, eight hours after Ibrahim had shot Mr. Ridley, there was no doubt, the man was missing. He was not even on the police list of people who had been checked out at their vehicles. Two officers drove around to his house and found his wife distraught.

  At 10 p.m. they launched a statewide hunt for the Chevy, which had, by this time, been dumped in a dense pinewood, way out of sight of the road, at the northeast end of Mount Desert Island, three miles from Bar Harbor, and forty-four miles from Bangor. The car would not be found for two days.

  Ibrahim and Yousaf had decided to walk into the dark town and find the ferry port. Luckily for them, the weather this year on the northeast coast had been a real Indian summer, so much so that the ferry company that runs the world-class supership “The CAT” had decided to operate until the end of October. This was a life-saver for Ibrahim and Yousaf, who otherwise would have been stranded in North America.

  But the ferry didn’t leave until morning, and they had nowhere to sleep. And Indian summer or no, it was still damned cold at night on the coast. Still, it wasn’t snowing and it wasn’t blowing, which was excellent news since neither terrorist had anything warmer than a leather jacket.

  They walked down the hill of Main Street and reached the waterfront, where they found the ferry terminal. As far as Ibrahim could tell, their best chance for a place to sleep would be a moored boat they could try and get inside.

  All he could find was a thirty-eight-foot lobster boat, up on blocks outside a small boat workshop. That would do, if its cabin door was open, but it would be a real pain to climb up and find it was all locked, and colder than it was at ground level.

  Also, they’d have to be out at 7 a.m. in case the workshop guys started early. A light but very cold wind was gusting in from the east, and Ibrahim decided they would take their chances, climb up into the lobster boat, and hope to find shelter.

  Luck was still with them. The door to the cabin was open, and inside it was surprisingly less cold than standing on the jetty. There were two comfortable seats and the two men from the Middle East crashed out immediately on Bar Harbor’s dry dock.

  And in a deep and absolutely unknown irony, Mack Bedford was also sleeping in
a chair on the Maine coast. He had reached home eighty-nine miles to the south that afternoon and had now fallen asleep on the sofa, in front of the fire, watching the Red Sox. He’d played baseball with Tommy for almost an hour before dinner, and he was just as tired as Ibrahim and Yousaf. But Mack was warmer than the terrorists. Definitely warmer.

  Anne had gone to bed, leaving her husband snoring gently. For now, Mack was at peace, for there was nothing else he could do except to wait for the two hit-men from the Hindu Kush make another mistake.

  Ibrahim and Yousaf were up and out of the lobster boat before 7 a.m. and made their way to breakfast at a nearby diner right on the jetties ten minutes later. Afterward, Ibrahim purchased tickets, taking their passports and student visas with him. No one asked to see Yousaf separately, and no one recognized that the passports had been the work of skillful forgers.

  They filed in with the substantial morning crowd, boarded the huge dark blue CAT, and took their seats on the ship, which in high summer coped with 775 passengers plus 250 cars. Today it was not full to capacity, but it still had plenty of people among whom Ibrahim and Yousaf could get thoroughly lost.

  The local police had been requested to keep a close eye on the ferry terminal during the day in case the two missing drivers of the Dodge truck showed up. But because this still was not yet considered a murder hunt, the state police sent only one already-busy officer to check out the ferry terminal fifteen minutes before the 9 a.m. departure. Except Ibrahim and Yousaf had left at eight.

  They had boarded separately. On the way to Nova Scotia, they tried not to be too startled by headlines such as those in the local coastal Maine newspaper that read:NEW ENGLAND MANHUNT FOR TERRORIST SUSPECTS

  Or, on an inside page,BOMB BLAST IN SCHOOL GROUNDS —CONNECTICUT POLICE BAFFLED

  And then: BANGOR BANK BOSS GOES MISSING, followed by three paragraphs about the missing Mr. Ridley.