THIRTY-THREE
Rafael sat quietly as the cab of the truck rattled and rocked in concert with the idling engine. He’d been in the commercial-vehicle line at the border checkpoint for a little over three hours. That was about what it normally took to cross into the United States from Mexico at the Oeste Mesa border checkpoint. He idly scanned the details of the crisscrossed girder elements under the catwalk connecting all the booths just ahead. He was close. It wouldn’t be long.
When the truck ahead of him moved up a space, he released the air brake and put his truck into gear to inch ahead. The cab sprang up and down a little as his rig lugged into the load he was pulling and began moving forward. Once the gap was closed, he set the brake and put the transmission in neutral, letting the diesel engine idle again.
The sprawling facility at the Oeste Mesa border crossing was crowded with lines of trucks of every kind. The vehicles were backed up for miles behind the broad delta of lanes spreading out for the booths staffed with border agents. Any suspicious trucks, or trucks the agents wanted to inspect as a precaution, or even random trucks, were guided to the Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Facility down a short side road beyond the booths. There, they would receive more intensive scrutiny.
Rafael had been through that extra facility twice. Of course, nothing had ever been found on those practice runs. If they only knew what he was carrying this trip, the place would not be at all so calm with the monotony of a routine day.
Rafael rested his arm out the open window as he looked out over the massive numbers of trucks waiting in lines. In the big rearview mirrors he could see hundreds of trucks waiting in the sweltering sun for their turn to cross over into California. Farther back, vendors had tried to sell him everything from ice cream, to food cooked on small carts, to puppies, to Christian religious goods on tall displays the vendors wheeled in wagons among the waiting trucks.
There were no Islamic religious goods for sale. This was the land of the nonbelievers. For now. He gripped the wheel tighter in anger at being among so many Christians. Someday all nonbelievers would be slain and the world would be united under Islamic rule and Sharia law.
He watched border agents in dark uniforms up ahead going about their work of checking loads, looking over, under, around, and inside vehicles for drugs and other contraband. They also inspected the trucks for safety violations and looked through paperwork.
Infidels.
Years of surveillance and research had finally brought them to choose the Oeste Mesa facility. Part of the reason behind that decision was that it was a large commercial border crossing into Southern California. California was a sanctuary state. When advance team members had been caught after crossing into California they had been routinely released to go on their way. Although even in Texas it wasn’t much of a problem if you were determined to get into the States, you spoke only Spanish, and you looked Hispanic.
The Americans expected to see Mexicans coming into the United States, both legally and illegally. Rafael and his team worked very hard on every detail to make sure the Americans saw what they expected to see: just some more Mexicans.
That was the reasoning behind the entire team having been raised from very early childhood speaking Spanish almost exclusively. While some of them spoke Farsi and English, most spoke only Spanish. That was central to their mission. Perfect language, proper hair, appropriate clothes and they melted right into the teeming masses from south of the border. Even though they were Iranian, they were easily taken for Mexican as long as all the details fit. No one had any reason to take a second look at them.
After almost three decades being raised solely for this mission, it seemed surreal for the final phase to be under way.
Rafael and the rest of the team had spent the last month working as drivers taking cheap office furniture from a factory in Mexico to a warehouse distribution point in San Diego. The factory was owned through a series of Iranian shell companies. Their jobs, like all the other details of their mission, had been prearranged.
Those jobs as truck crews had given Rafael and his team the opportunity to run through practice missions dozens of times as they took loads across the border, all the while checking on how everything worked. They even got to recognize some of the border staff by name. All those trips gave them the opportunity to refine their timing, which was critical. Everyone on the team knew exactly where to be, and when. In such a complex mission, it was critical that they get it right.
Those practice runs with furniture loads also gave Rafael and his team ample time to assess the methods of the customs and border agents as well as the way the California Highway Patrol worked. Sitting in line for hours allowed him to closely study the surveillance and detection equipment, and to take note of the numbers and placement of personnel, booths, computer monitors, cameras, the X-ray machines that scanned every load, and most importantly the neutron and gamma detectors.
Until today they’d never had anything to detect.
Today, his truck had no office furniture. Today, the real mission began.
When the truck ahead inched forward, Rafael put his truck in gear and started slowly rolling forward to take up the gap.
Cassiel, in the passenger seat, stuck his head out the window, checking ahead, trying to have a look around the truck they were following. He had an AK-47 resting across his lap, as did Rafael. Both men had long banana magazines taped together in opposite directions so that when one ran empty they could be turned around to use the second, fully loaded magazine. It had been Cassiel’s idea to carry the guns, not Rafael’s.
They had never dared to carry weapons in the past, of course, but today it was the real thing, so Cassiel had insisted they carry the guns. The mission had been planned for years in every detail. If anything went wrong, decades of work would be for nothing. If that happened, a couple of AK-47s would not save the operation.
A lot of people had spent an enormous amount of time on planning to make sure nothing would go wrong. They’d run through every scenario. There were hundreds of people involved in the operation. Everyone from workers in the enrichment facility in the ancient city of Qom running the thousands of centrifuges, to the brave reactor crews, to the software engineers, to their allies in North Korea and Pakistan who helped provide the technical expertise they needed. They even had computer-operations personnel embedded in Russia.
But Cassiel wanted to bring along a fucking gun, as if that could bring down America.
While not tall, the man was thick-boned and powerfully built. His head looked like it had been carved from a block of stone. Deep wrinkles and creases gave the impression that his head had been pressed into a cube shape. It almost looked like he had no neck, as if his head had been placed directly on his shoulders. At least his complexion and close-cropped black hair and beard made it easy enough for him to pass as Mexican.
From what Rafael knew about him, the man was skilled with every kind of weapon. Even if you saw him without a weapon, he was a man who looked dangerous. People tended to look away and become busy with their own business when Cassiel looked in their direction.
Cassiel was of course not an original member of their team. He spoke fluent Spanish, among several other languages, including English, so that, at least, helped him fit in.
The members of Rafael’s team had grown up together since childhood. They were all like brothers. Their having lived together, schooled together, trained together, and prayed together in such a closed group since childhood made infiltration by informants or spies impossible. There was simply no way for an outsider to get into their midst, and no way for any of the team members to talk with an outsider. That was one of the foundational principles for making this portion of the attack undetectable beforehand.
While they all spoke Spanish and some English, most of them didn’t speak Farsi. Rafael and several of his team spoke Farsi fluently so that they could communicate and coordinate with commanders. It was also necessary for much of the technical training that they’d needed.
This was a mission they had been practicing and training for their entire lives.
Cassiel, though, had not been part of that. Rafael did not like having such a stranger along on the mission. As far as Rafael was concerned, he might be a gifted assassin, but he was not one of them and so he did not belong with them.
Hasan had told Rafael that Cassiel had been saved from execution because he was such an expert at lethal skills.
Hasan had been impressed with how quickly and efficiently Cassiel had killed the Israeli snake with strange vision that could recognize men who were killers. That would allow the men they would send in to kill Israelis and tourists to be successful without being detected the way Wahib had been. The assassination of the man responsible for Wahib’s capture only added to Hasan’s apparent awe of Cassiel’s kill history. Hasan thought that a man of his ability was invaluable.
In return for being allowed to live, Cassiel had been assigned to go on the mission with Rafael’s team to help them in any way he could. Hasan might have considered him valuable, but Rafael considered him nothing more than hired muscle.
Cassiel didn’t talk much, although he did follow Rafael’s orders. He knew the consequences if he didn’t. He seemed perpetually in a sour mood. It probably grated on Cassiel’s nature to be indentured to his Iranian masters.
Rafael wondered how dedicated he was to their mission. He wondered if the man was prepared to die, as were the rest of them. Somehow, Rafael didn’t think so.
Some of them, in fact, were going to die this very day. Rafael was a bit disturbed that some of his lifelong brothers were going to give their lives to their cause this day, but Allah would richly reward them for their martyrdom.
One of the phones beeped. It was Javier, one of those who was to become a martyr this day.
The message asked how close Rafael was to the gamma detector.
Rafael told him he was several trucks back. Javier said that he was in the perfect place, then. Rafael could see Esteban’s truck, so he knew that he, too, was in position and ready for the go command.
Rafael put the phone back in the tray with the others, each with a piece of tape on the back with a name or a function.
Rafael smiled at the collection of iPhones. Apple was a valuable, unwitting partner, providing the very best encryption, which made successful attacks with high death tolls possible. They even refused to give the FBI and other intelligence agencies any help stopping or identifying terrorists.
The team also used a messaging app that had end-to-end encryption, which prevented even the technicians who developed it from reading messages. No Western spy agency would be able to know anything they communicated.
It was amazing that here they were, at a high-security checkpoint, and they could communicate without fear of being detected because American companies provided the means and protected their secrecy. None of the border agents running around all over the place and checking everything for the slightest hint of a problem had any idea of what was about to happen, any idea that they were about to die, and they could not intercept any of the messages coordinating it all.
Rafael thought that Silicon Valley was probably the only place in the world completely safe from an attack, because it provided the tools that were so necessary for killing as many Americans, Jews, and other infidels as possible. No jihadist would harm such a valuable resource—the people and companies that made the secrecy and security of jihadist operations possible.
The truck ahead moved up to the neutron and gamma detector.
Rafael picked up the phone in his lap.