Free The Fifth Horseman by Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre Page B

DATA, TEST. There was also a locked cassette player. Fixed into it was a thirtyminute BASF tape, a small red crescent in its upperright-hand corner. Programmed in Tripoli, it contained instructions for the case’s minicomputer.
    Two connecting cords were neatly coiled inside the cover. One was designed to be hooked up to Whalid’s bomb, the other to the cable running pp to the antenna Kamal had installed on the roof. Each was equipped with a “dead man control.” If any effort was made to disengage them once they had been hooked up they would automatically activate the firing system. Hidden below the panel’s blue surface was a radio receiver, a microprocessor, the minicomputer and a brace of powerful, long-lasting lithium batteries.
    As the two brothers watched, the cathodetube screen lit up with a green glow. The words “STAND BY” formed on the screen. Whalid glanced at them, then punched the key marked nrIT. The word “IDENTIFICATION” appeared on the screen.
    Carefully, Whalid punched the code OIC2 onto the keyboard. The word “CORRECT” appeared on the screen. Had his code been wrong, “INCORRECT” would have appeared there and Whalid would have had exactly thirty seconds to correct his mistake or the case would have autodestructed.
    On the screen, the words “STORAGE DATA” appeared. Whalid looked at the checklist in his sister’s hands, then punched F19A onto his keyboard.
    Through the tape player’s window he could see the BASF cassette begin to spin. It turned for just under a minute, transmitting its program to the minicomputer’s memory bank. The tape stopped and the words “STORAGE DATA: OK” arose on the screen.
    Whalid methodically punched three successive code numbers onto the keyboard, following each by tapping the key TEST. There was a pause after each code, then a phrase appeared on the screen: “COMPUTER CONTROL: OK”; “MICROPROCESSOR OK”; “RADIO FREQUENCY SIMULATION: OK.”
    “All right,” Whalid said, “everything’s working properly. Now we’ll test the manual firing system.”
    Fundamentally, the case had been designed to fire the bomb in response to a radio signal. It contained, however, a manually operated backup firing capability which any one of the three could operate if something went wrong. Whalid carefully formed the number 0636 on the keyboard. Those numbers had been chosen for their firing code because none of the Dajanis would ever forget them. They represented the date of the Battle of Yarmuk when the Arab warriors of Omar, the successor to the Prophet, defeated the Byzantines by the Sea of Galilee and established Arab domain over their lost homeland. As Whalid’s finger tapped the second “6,” the green light on the screen blinked off. For two seconds, it was replaced by a bright-red glow.
    “It works.” Whalid shuddered. “We can detonate from here if we have to.” He glanced at his watch, then up at the ceiling. “We’ve got seventeen minutes to go.”
* * *
    In Washington, D.C.‘s, National Airport, a tight police cordon screened off several dozen late-evening travelers stretching and straining to follow the progress of the FBI’s capital Bomb Squad. Cautiously, the agents scanned the bank of gray metal luggage lockers with Geiger counters, looking for radioactivity. They found none. Then three German shepherds trained to detect the scent of high explosives were led along the locker ranks. Finally, a pair of agents employing a touch as delicate, as precise as that of Japanese women assembling the circuitry of a computer chip unscrewed the door to locker K602 and gently eased it from its hinges.
    To their relief, the only thing the agents found in the locker was an envelope leaning against the back of the compartment. Typed on it were the words “For the President of the United States.”
    The message it contained was brief. It said that at midnight Washington time, 6 A.M. Libyan time, at a spot 153 miles due east of the junction of the