The Red Cell André Gallo (essential reading .txt) 📖

the Skylark 2 into the wind and away from the two SUVs and Kella’s motorcycle. Al flew the bird up a few hundred feet from his control panel, while Steve and Kella joined him in the back of the SUV. “I can’t see much,” Steve said, looking with Kella over Al’s shoulder at the monitor screen.

“That’s because I’m over the water,” Al said. “I’m now heading west toward the bridge, which we should see in a few seconds. The wind is manageable, about ten miles an hour, north-northwest, much better than yesterday afternoon.”

“Look,” Kella said. “That must be the police patrol car.” She pointed to the screen.

A moment later, McCabe called on the radio. “Okay, we’re back. All quiet on the Western Front.”

 0530

Yosemani immediately had second thoughts about having chosen the camouflaged Hummer, as he parked at the Headlands overlook. Perhaps he should have taken one of the two motorcycles, which would have not stood out as much as this military-style vehicle. But he reassured himself it would not make any difference because it was nighttime. In a few minutes, one of America’s iconic monuments would be destroyed, the Great Satan humiliated, and Aisha revenged. Cutting one of the two suspension cables would not drop the bridge in the water, but it would be closed for months, maybe years. He regretted not being able to cut both cables but was satisfied he was making the most of his limited resources.

He put his binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the night vision before putting them back on his lap, wondering if his finger had been on the wrong setting. He clicked the infrared switch on and tried again. He stepped out of the car and the heat the bridge had accumulated during the previous day provided an outline of the structure in his glasses through the fog. The green outline of commuter cars, most of them heading south toward the city, caught his attention, but he focused on a smaller vehicle that stopped across the span.

Yosemani looked at his watch. The technicians in Vancouver must have cut off the security cameras on the two towers by now, he thought, as well as the camera in back of the administrative building. He also recalled Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery, one of his military models, the victor of the Battle of El Alamein, had gone to sleep as the battle started, confident his plan was as perfect as could be—British arrogance and luck. Yosemani was not one to sleep during a battle.

 0530

“What is that?” Steve asked, sitting in the back of the SUV with Kella and leaning over Al’s shoulder, “That green blob on the water that seems to be moving.”

“Probably a small boat,” Al replied. “I can get closer if you want.”

As he remotely piloted the UAV in closer, the image grew to reveal a motorboat moving slowly to the south.

“It certainly looks like a boat,” Kella said, “But shouldn’t we be able to see its running lights?”

“I don’t see them either,” Al said.

“That’s pretty unusual,” Steve added, “and pretty crazy. Let’s keep an eye on this guy, but go back to the bridge.”

“The wind just shifted. It’s giving me a bad time. Lemme try a different altitude because right now the bird is going backwards.”

“I’m going to turn the Jammer on,” Steve said. “That was a good idea to move all of the equipment into one SUV.”

“It’s all set up, Steve. All you have to do is push the switch forward and a green light will go on.”

“Done. If this thing does its job, all cellular communications within a two-mile radius are now jammed.”

“And all of the Iranians’ favorite IED frequencies are null and void.”

 0530

Two men wearing black leather from their necks to their boots and riding a Kawasaki stopped on the west sidewalk of the bridge. They dismounted about twenty feet past the suspension cable’s lowest point. One wore an Oakland Raiders cap while the other preferred the Oakland A’s. As if from long practice, they took off their backpacks, from which they extracted detonating fuses, Semtex, and explosive pencils. After they molded small amounts of Semtex around the base of six posts holding up the railing that protected pedestrians from the road traffic, they wedded fuses and pencils to each. While A’s rechecked their work, Raiders looped one end of a double Black Diamond rappelling rope to the waterside railing and threw the rest of its two-hundred-seventy-foot length down toward the water. He repeated the task four more times.

Just as the motorcycle pair arrived on the bridge, the two men in the San Francisco caps went through the toll booth on the southern end, turned off Route 101 a few yards farther. They parked their Harley Davidson in back of the administrative building. Leaving the bike running, each took two small limpet mines from their backpacks and decorated two nearby motorcycles and two police cruisers outside each vehicle’s gas tank. The Giants fan then took an IED and wire from one of the saddlebags, ran the wire across the door of the building, and attached the IED to the building itself. As they were leaving, the Forty Niner on the back told the driver to stop. He got off the bike and placed another small limpet against the telephone box on the side of the building.

 0538

Felix Gardiner felt pleased with his performance so far. He had already pedaled nearly to the middle of the bridge—where the pavement was no longer rising in front of him, and the suspension cable was at its lowest. At this rate, he might even get to work early. Luckily, he had encountered little traffic, because his luminous reflector would not have done him much good in the fog. The headlight he had reluctantly fixed to his handlebars—Tour de France riders used no headlights—likewise was of little help.

Gardiner allowed