Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [105]
What’s more, reverse engineering a network was very delicate work. Members were taught distress codes and could easily relay to their controllers that the cell had been compromised. They didn’t even need to send the message themselves. Often they could trick their captors into doing it for them. It could be as simple as a chalk mark in the wrong place, a window shade at the wrong height, or the wrong color or style of font in a chat room.
Knowing full well the pitfalls, Harvath decided it best to force the controller out into the open. But to do it, Robert Ashford and Rita Marx had to call in nearly every favor they had ever accrued. For the first time in Britain’s modern history, its entire electronic surveillance apparatus was focused on one objective and one objective only—locating a single phone somewhere within the United Kingdom.
When everyone was in place, Marx radioed for the tactical teams to move in on the mosque, whose morning worshippers had already departed.
High above, television helicopters were broadcasting the entire thing. All the rest of the team could do was wait and hope that the cell’s controller would expose himself.
The gas company trucks converged on the mosque from opposite ends of the street. When the officers poured out, they were all heavily armed, armored, and wearing gas masks.
Rounds and rounds of tear gas were fired through windows as the officers rapidly advanced on the mosque. Across the country, viewers were undoubtedly glued to their sets. If the cell’s controller was watching, which Harvath prayed he was, all he would be able to surmise was that the mosque his men had been using for their headquarters was compromised and was now under a full-scale assault.
The fact that he hadn’t been able to reach any of his cell members would only heighten his anxiety. Very likely, the only question greater in his mind than how the cell had been discovered, was why his men hadn’t yet detonated their explosives. That was what their training would have dictated.
The only thing the controller would have been able to attribute the delay to was that the cell members were trying to draw more police officers into the mosque before blowing it up.
That sort of deviation definitely would have been against protocol. Their job would have been to detonate, not fight it out or try to take as many officers with them as possible.
There was one other option that the controller would have had to consider. He would have to entertain the possibility that the men had lost their nerve.
Either scenario was unacceptable. The controller would have been left with no other option than to engage the fail-safe.
When the tactical team hit the mosque’s front doors, Marx’s voice came over Harvath’s headset. “The cell phone detonators have begun lighting up.”
“Give me a location.”
“We’re working on it,” she replied. “Stand by.”
Precious seconds ticked down as the tac team flooded into the mosque. Harvath studied the faces of the Athena Team members sitting next to him. To the untrained eye, they would have appeared cold and even expressionless, but Harvath knew the look of operators about to go into battle. The women were the picture of professionalism.
He could also sense their impatience. He was feeling it too. This was their one shot and the window was narrower than almost any other he had ever dealt with. If the Brits couldn’t get a lock on the controller, they were going to be dead in the water.
“We need that location,” Harvath repeated.
“Stand by.”
“Come on. Come on.”
Finally, Marx’s voice came back over his headset, “Got it.”
The woman from Scotland Yard rattled off a set of coordinates.
“Roger,” replied the helicopter pilot, who then announced to Harvath and his passengers, “Hold on.”
The pilot banked the AgustaWestland Lynx and sped toward the center of London. It was the fastest helicopter in the world and speed was exactly what they needed