WEST OF RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
The thoughts invading her mind were as unpredictable as the events that had unfolded this past week.
Salma sat on the heavy trunk secured to the rear of the delivery truck surrounded by an assortment of solar energy hardware destined for the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C.
The Bluetooth detonator in her hands, she tried to visualize the destruction it would inflict for miles around, the moment she activated it.
Of all things she could contemplate at the moment, the layout of the city—which she had memorized back in Karachi to a level of detail rivaling the most veteran of D.C. taxi drivers—filled her mind.
Her twelve-kiloton device, detonated the moment the truck pulled up to the rear dock of the hotel, would unleash a fireball engulfing several city blocks, evaporating them in the initial milliseconds. The ensuing twenty-psi overpressure would level every structure within a quarter of a mile, including the White House, the Washington Monument, the Federal Triangle, and the National Archives. As the wave gradually receded to the five-psi contour, it would severely damage all Smithsonian museums and the National Mall. It would also collapse all residential buildings from Dupont Circle to Independence Avenue. A radiation dose of five hundred rem would reach as far as the U.S. Capitol and West Potomac Park.
Thermal energy powerful enough to inflict third-degree burns would reach a full mile from the hotel, encompassing the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the Watergate Center, George Washington University, and its adjacent medical center.
And that’s not even the best part, Salma thought, a grin forming at the edge of her lips as she remembered the weather forecast. Winds were predicted to be light and variable over the entire D.C. area. Unlike in New York, radioactive debris would rain across the capital like an apocalyptic plague. It could even touch nearby Baltimore, turning the area into a nuclear wasteland for the foreseeable future.
The thoughts filled her with hope, reaffirming her discipline to stay the course, to control the desire to detonate the device at any of the cities she had already visited. And that included the one she was now approaching: Richmond, with its quarter of a million infidels.
She stared at the GPS device connected to the truck’s rooftop antenna. It tracked her progress, counting the miles separating her from making history.
At her current speed, she should reach the I-495 outer loop in two hours, and the start of her acceptable detonation perimeter, the north end of the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, thirty minutes later.
Once she’d reached this point, it wouldn’t matter where she detonated. The blast would devastate the heart of the American capital in a fraction of a second.
She was covered in sweat, tired from the long journey yet energized by the prospect of completing her mission and joining Malik in the afterlife. Salma forced her mind to remain sharp, frosty, reviewing every aspect of the final hours of her carefully crafted plan.
She couldn’t afford to fail this close to her objective.
Though if it came right down to it, she was prepared to detonate the device the instant she smelled trouble.
One way or another, the bomb would go off today.