Waleed said, “Don’t tell me you actually have the truck.”
Hassan smiled and said, “I do. Full of ‘soda canisters’ for the café.”
“You made it through the checkpoints with the accelerant? I can’t believe it.”
“Neither can I. You’d think they’d know that your uncle’s café hasn’t served anything for close to a year, but they let me through. Come out and see.”
Waleed followed Hassan to the back alley, seeing it filled with a panel truck large enough to make him move sideways to get to the back. Hassan unlocked the clasp and raised the rear door, revealing bags of coffee, tea, and canned goods.
Waleed said, “Where is the accelerant? Is it fertilizer or what?”
Hassan clambered up, saying, “Follow me.”
Waleed did, stepping over various goods until he reached the back near the cab, where he saw what looked like six canisters used for soda fountains, complete with commercial labels and valves. Hassan pointed at them and said, “That’s the accelerant. I was told you don’t have to do anything special. Build the bomb however you like, just make it large enough to ignite the accelerant, and we should have an explosion twice as big.”
Waleed tried to move one of the canisters, surprised at the weight. He said, “Heavy. What’s in it?”
Hassan shook his head, saying, “I have no idea. Some special sauce the Pasdaran invented.”
Waleed looked around the space, mentally measuring with his eyes. He said, “I have enough explosives for a hidden system, but that’s not necessary here. I’m going to need more. Do you still have that cache of old artillery rounds?”
“I do. I was saving it for IED ambushes, though.”
Waleed said, “Let’s use it here.World War Zstyle.”
Hassan grinned at the inside joke, saying, “You finally get to do it.”
When the IDF began rolling into Jenin more than a year ago, Hassan had remarked that any suspicious activity brought the IDF running like zombies to noise in the movieWorld War Z. Waleed had joked, “If only we could get them all to run into a stadium and then blow them up, like in the movie.”
From that germ of an idea, Waleed’s plan had bloomed. The Pasdaran had insisted on no militant activity for the last six months to lure the IDF into a false sense of complacency, and Waleed and his men had complied. When given the word, he would unleash his men, allowing them to simultaneously attack every checkpoint and IDF position within reach, then retreat into the ruins of the Jenin refugee camp. When the IDF responded with overwhelming force, as they inevitably would, he would wait until they flooded into the camp.
Then he would detonate this device.
Hassan said, “What is the attack timeline? Do you know yet?”
“No. It’s close, though. We need to be ready within two days, but we might have to wait after that. Make sure the men are ready at a moment’s notice.”
“What are we waiting for? Why does the timing matter? Anything can change at any time. The longer we sit here, the more likely they’ll find out our plan.”
“You are the only one who knows the entire plan. It will hold.”
“But what if another group conducts an attack? The PIJ or Hamas? They’ll bring the IDF in no matter how much we want them not to, and they might find the truck.”
“I know, I know, but I’m told that we’re part of a larger plan. We don’t attack until we get the word from the Pasdaran. I have a special cell phone solely for that. We wait for the phone to ring, and then we go. Not before.”
Hassan shook his head, but said nothing.
Waleed said, “Park this in the garage and let’s get to work on incorporating the extra explosives.”
Chapter 51
I grew tired of walking and pointed at an indoor-outdoor café called Las Petunias, saying, “Can we just pick one? I’m starving.”
Our hotel was located in a multicultural area of Buenos Aires called Palermo, comprised of blocks and blocks of shopping and quaint eateries. I’d let the team go grab an early lunch while I conducted a live SITREP with Wolffe, and now it was my turn to eat. Of course, I didn’t want to eat alone, so I’d forced Jennifer to wait with me while I talked with Wolffe.
Jennifer went to the hostess stand, then returned, saying, “Inside or out?”
I pointed at a table in the rear of the outdoor patio, against the wall and said, “Outside, so we can talk.”
