RESONANCE (12 page)

Clue

Although Tupac-II
was still an enigma, Siddhartha did not have much time to weigh it without further leads. For many months, he was deeply involved in unraveling the Mumbai attacks, thread-by-thread, trying to uncover Pakistan's role in it.

Many breakthroughs were achieved during the year 2009. The Indian government furnished evidence and testimony to Pakistan: call records, GPS data tracking records, the details of DNA samples of the terrorists, the items found in the fish trawler Kuber, and several other corroborative evidence. One of the disturbing facts was about the explosives signature of the grenades used by the terrorists. The manufacturer was China's state-owned company Norinco.

The Pakistani plan of passing the buck on to al Qaeda or the Bangladeshi Islamic jihadist group and to hide the role of Pakistani State Actors in hatching Project Karachi fell flat on its face when India provided Pakistan with the intelligence inputs gathered by western countries. In January 2009, the Pakistani Information Minister accepted the nationality of Ajmal Kasāb as Pakistani. A few days later, the Interior Minister confirmed that the Mumbai attack was indeed planned in Pakistan. The pressure of USA, UNO and western countries started to mount on Pakistan to arrest the key players of the conspiracy.

Some information was received by global intelligence that Pakistan's terrorist outfits were planning to attack other important coastal cities from the seaside, this time using underwater explosives and small submarines.

"Underwater explosives and submarines? Something big must definitely be on their mind."Siddhartha concluded after pondering for a long time.

Missoula Flood

Somashekhar Rao clicked
on the simulation, but in a flash pressed the pause button. "Gentlemen, I'll first show you a video of an unprecedented destruction caused by a megaflood before running the scientific simulation of dam failure."

The simulation began. After a brief introduction of megaflood in the western part of North America, the movie started.

The massive Cordilleran ice sheet blocked the mouth of the Clark Fork River and caused the water to backup and submerge the city of Missoula.

The scene cut and the camera pointed to a highlander, running atop the highest peak of a mountain. With bated breath, he watched the breaking of the ice dam, unleashing a megaflood of biblical proportions. The flood plowed ahead and created havoc in the Columbia River Gorge in no time.

The highlander, who watched massive waves, towering thousands of feet high moving at great speeds with a deafening noise and approaching him, he stood thunderstruck. The giant wave scoured and stripped the topsoil, cut deep canyons and coulees in no time, randomly depositing hulking boulders at different places. The gargantuan water then turned into a colossal vortex, spiraling with tremendous velocity. It drilled the hard rock and sunk into the belly of the earth. One vortex followed another. The water poured in from three-mile high cliffs into deep gorges.

With the last scene of the biggest waterfall in human history, the movie ended.

"How big is our lake?"asked al-Masri.

"Big enough to bring doomsday to the entire plain."

"Upload this file to our remote server too."

Hafiz Saeed

Aban started to
post in blogs, detailing the atrocities inflicted on him during his custodial interrogation and the torture meted out to him by Indian agencies. He began to contribute to Jihadist literature. A Karachi-based literary agent got in touch with him to write his story in book form. Private FM channels broadcast his interviews. Aban told the radio-jockey about his future as a Jihadist, willing to work tirelessly for the liberation of his Muslim brothers all over the world and do everything to alleviate their suffering. Television crew lined up in front of his home to interview him and he obliged each one of them. These television channels projected Aban as a warrior against Israel, aiming to liberate Palestine from the clutches of Zionist rule. Aban was getting famous day by day, hour by hour and minute by minute on his way to becoming a living legend.

Slowly, a few Islamic ideologues started to make contact with Aban and he would invite them home to talk of strategies to free Kashmir from
Hindustān
and Afghanistan from the American led armies.

In one of the mornings, Aban declared before a famous newspaper reporter that he would not mind picking up the gun to serve the greater cause of Jihad. On the same day, a man from LeT asked Aban to meet him at Jamia al-Qadsia mosque in Chowburji, Lahore.

On Friday afternoon, Aban drove to the university road and parked his car in front of the mosque, situated in the heart of the city. He spread out his mat and waited for the person, who had promised to see him.

At the end of the evening prayer, the Qazi of the mosque announced that Hafiz Muhammad Saeed was going to deliver a sermon to the devotees.

While his followers listened to Hafiz Muhammad Saeed in rapt silence inside the mosque, outside policemen with machine guns stood guard and bearded security men frisked all those, who entered the prayer meeting place. Hafiz Saeed's voice echoed not only inside the mosque, but also blared through the loudspeakers, spreading out to a radius of several miles. A few techno savvy people recorded his speech, word for word, in their digital voice recorders.

Hafiz Saeed spoke with complete conviction. "God has promised to make us Muslims a superpower if we follow the right path. Our rulers are the slaves of America and have sold their conscience for a few dollars…"With his calm and serene demeanor, he continued, occasionally coughing in between and taking deep breaths.

A man came and whispered into Aban's ear. Aban stood up and followed him. On the first floor, they entered an air-conditioned room, with majestic marble floorings and a gorgeous floral ceiling. A plush divan was placed on an Iranian carpet, slightly away from a deep leather settee. The escort asked Aban to make himself comfortable and wait.

After a while, Aban heard several footsteps. Hafiz Saeed entered, but stopped his followers at the door. He asked one of his men to bring dry fruits and
sherbet
for the guest.

The door was shut. Aban stood and bowed before the bearded man.

"Please be seated, my son,"Hafiz Saeed said in his deep, profound voice.

"Was it you who called me?"

"Yes."

"What holy service can I offer?"

"First let me explain why I called you. I'm aggrieved about your father's death. I sent my condolences to your family."

"Unfortunately, I was not in Lahore. I could not visit my
Ammi
, as the FBI would not grant me permission to leave America."

"I know everything. Let me continue, son. You may not be aware that your father always stood for the just cause of Pakistan. He is a martyr."

Aban could not resist, "But it was our men who killed him without showing any mercy."

"I'm still not sure who killed him."

"Why was his body never found?"

"We sought the help of the Pakistani army to retrieve his body. However, before we could reach the place, the Pakistani Army ditched us. The Americans pressurized them to intensify army operations against the Taliban in the Swat valley."

Aban clutched his hands together "Where?"

"Nemogram."

"Nemogram,"Aban said under his breath. "I've heard this name. I don't remember exactly, but
Abba
used to mention it."Aban racked his brains to find the connection between Nemogram and his
Abba
, but in vain.

"Because of America, the bully, Pakistan has banned our organization. So, we had to withdraw our men from Swat Valley and concentrate on other assignments. Now we have to be very discreet in our modus operandi. For this, we have restructured our organization LeT and renamed it JuD, the
Jama'at-ud-Da'wah
. During the day, our men carry out charitable work and after sundown they carry out the divine work."

"What divine work?"

"Jihad, my son, Jihad!"

Aban nodded and Hafiz Saeed continued, "I also want to know what happened to your father. So, get to the bottom of it and come back to me with the truth. Serve your motherland, my son."

Aban bowed one more time. "Tell me what else I will have to do."

"Join us."

"Anything for you."

"If I ask you to kill
Kafirs?"

"I'll not blink."

"What if Kafirs are your family members?"

"Kafirs are Kafirs!"

Hafiz Saeed expressed amusement, "I will tell you when the time comes. You will certainly know who the Kafirs are. Till then write whatever I say. Post them to western media. And carry out the unfinished work of your
Abba
."

"What work?"

"Tupac-II."

"What's that?"

"Time will tell you everything. For the time being, I have a very small request for you. You are trained as a civil engineer. You've submitted your papers on the environmental impact of big dams. Your simulation model of Lake Mead is a unique presentation."

"How do you know about my simulation model?"

"Don't be in a rush, my son. Right now, we want you to do only a few calculations for us."

"What kind of calculation?"

"Calculations regarding the contours and resonance of a dam."

"Dam!"

"Yes."Hafiz Saeed's eyes twinkled.

The Wave

It was nighttime
on the yacht. The Chief Steward laid out a sumptuous dinner. However, to his surprise, no one visited the dining room. On request, he asked the maître d' to serve tea and kebabs to the guests inside the conference room.

With every passing hour, Sundaram Iyer's urge to move to his suite and enjoy the company of the gorgeous girls grew stronger, but he was too scared to express his craving in front of the dreaded al Qaeda man. For the time being the best option for him was to limit the discussion to 'Giant Waves'. He turned to Somashekar Rao, "I have a very simple solution to our plan. Why not repeat 9/11 and let the dam crumble down?"

"Please understand that it won't make any difference. Even if we get the biggest passenger aircraft, say for example an Airbus 380 or the heaviest aircraft
Antonov Mriya
and let it hit the dam, it will still not come down."

"How can you say that when much smaller aircrafts caused the two huge towers of World Trade Centre to tumble down like a pack of cards?"

"We all know that the twin towers didn't collapse because of the impact of the aircraft. The truth is that the burning jet fuel of the aircraft melted the weakest structure of the columns. The connections between the floor trusses and the columns of the building broke within minutes of the impact. When the floors detached from the main structure and fell onto each other, it quickly exceeded the load that any one floor was designed to carry. It then initiated a progressive pancake-collapse. But the same thing will never happen in a big dam since the temperature of burning Jet Fuel will not be sufficient to melt steel. Only a gaping hole of a few feet wide on the concrete lining would be exposed and that won't be sufficient enough to cause the structure to collapse. Even if we assume that it collapses, it will only be after several hours, giving sufficient time to the engineers to empty the dam with a regulated flow of water."

"Let's create something like a tsunami then."

"If we bomb the hillside of the lake, huge chunks of earth and rocks will suddenly fall into the water and displace it, creating a massive tsunami. Yet we know that the biggest tsunami, which hit Vajont Dam in Italy, was not sufficient to break it. And Vajont was a more fragile dam than this dam. In the '60s, heavy rains around Vajont Dam triggered a landslide. Millions of cubic metres of earth and rock fell into the lake. The landslide displaced gallons of water, creating a two hundred and fifty meter giant wave. The wave overtopped the dam, and flooded many villages, killing about two thousand people. The village, just beneath the dam, suffered damage from the 'air displacement'. However, except the top masonry, which got washed away, the dam's structure remained intact."

"You mention that our tidal wave will be a few hundred metres only. Then how will that break this dam?"

"You see there is a difference between what happened in Vajont Dam and what will happen in this dam. In case of Vajont Dam, a solitary tidal wave struck the dam. More importantly, the tsunami generated only a surface wave. In our case, the whole lake will move in simple harmonic motion, causing a cascade of tidal waves hammering the wall of the dam with tremendous force, thereby weakening the structure progressively. Here we have an added advantage. The dam is hollow in the midsection. So, at a particular point of time, even the hollow portion of the dam will start resonating with the same frequency as that of the water of the lake. The centre of buoyancy will shift both upward and downward, making the dam more vulnerable to the successive hammering. A very different kind of destructive water-pancake effect will be created."

"What if that won't still be sufficient?"

"Don't forget that an unnoticed oscillation in a big lake can create both a tremor and a quake. It has happened in southern India when the Koyna dam was the reason for a devastating earthquake. Another is Lake Kariba, where more than twenty earthquakes
have occurred."

"I want a sure-shot option."

"You have already planned to place explosives at the toe of the dam. Combine the effect of the seiche, the simple harmonic motion of waves creating giant waves, explosives at the toe and most importantly the resonance of the hollow portion of the dam. I don't think anyone in this world can save the dam.

al-Masri was thinking aloud, "We'll need more explosives."He picked up the phone and connected to Hafiz Saeed, "Tell your friends to arrange for more semtex. Tell him to contact Khalil Deek and ask him to redo his drawing."After a pause, he continued, "Now we want two submarines and two explosives-trained divers."

"Why two? One is sufficient,"asked Shalim Amār.

al Masri chose not to respond.