Dead or Alive - Tom Clancy [254]
Sunday. 8:50 a.m.
Open Heart Congregational Church
A Christian church, Kaseke thought. Much better than a library or even a school. He knew where the church was located and suspected that like almost every church in Waterloo, this one conducted several services throughout the morning. Eight-fifty would be about the time people were leaving the first service and arriving for the second. Give the members a few minutes to collect their things and head for the door … In his earlier reconnaissance, he’d studied the comings and goings of the church’s members. They loved to congregate outside between services and shake hands and laugh and talk about whatever they talked about. Such frivolity. What passed for worship here was a disgrace.
8:50. Yes, it was perfect. There would be a hundred or more people standing on the steps and sidewalk. There would likely be children present, though, and Kaseke didn’t especially like the idea of that, but Allah would forgive him. To sacrifice a few for a larger good was acceptable.
It was Friday night. He would use most of Saturday to scout the locations, then Saturday evening to make sure the device was in order. That wouldn’t take long, he knew. His job would be simple: Plant the device, set the timer, walk away, and find a vantage point to watch the results.
76
THE FIRE WAS MAGNIFICENT, Shasif Hadi thought. Even from three miles away, the sky over the treetops was almost as bright as the sun. And then had come the explosions, great mushrooms of flame and roiling black smoke rising silently into the dark sky, followed a few seconds later by a rumble so strong Hadi could feel it rise up through the road, through the tires of his car, and shake his seat. Through the four of us, Hadi thought, the hand of Allah has struck that refinery dead.
After setting their charges, they had done as Ibrahim instructed and walked one by one back along the pipeline to the grove of trees in which they’d changed their coveralls. Offering no explanation, Ibrahim ordered, “Run!” then took off in a sprint. They were two hundred yards away from the cattle gate when the first charge went off.
Staring out the car’s rear window, Hadi had watched the syncopated valve charges go off, followed by the larger main charge, then nothing for the next one minute and fifty seconds except for the refinery’s alarm Klaxon. Emergency response crews had probably just reached the shattered pipeline when the final charge ignited the ethanol spreading like a tidal wave into the complex. Those men had probably died almost instantly. A largely painless end, Hadi hoped. Brazil was a mostly Christian country, which made them enemies of Islam, but that didn’t mean they were undeserving of mercy. If they suffered, it was Allah’s will; if they’d perished quickly, Allah’s will also. Either way, he and the others had succeeded in their mission.
Once at the gate, they drove the truck into the trees, then got back into the Volkswagen and pulled through, locking the gate behind them. Ninety seconds later, they were back at Hadi’s car. As per the plan, Hadi followed Ibrahim and the others to where Fa’ad had left his car on a dirt road a few miles away. When they pulled over, Ibrahim got out and waved for Hadi to walk up.
“We forgot to account for a significant detail,” Ibrahim told them. “The weather.”
“I don’t understand,” Ahmed said.
Ibrahim pointed west, back toward the refinery. The flames were hundreds of feet high now, and topped by a ceiling of thick, black smoke. As they watched, they could see the smoke drifting southwest.
“It’s heading toward São Paulo. They’ll close the airport soon, if they haven