Foreign dignitaries often stayed at this prestigious hotel, to meet and discuss international matters in the privacy of their suites. This meeting was extraordinary though; six leading international figures gathered in the room, and they were planning the final stages of their attack on the 2012 Olympics.
Room 236 had been booked only minutes previously, by one of the men, at random from a list of twenty hotels.
The usual bug sweep detected stray Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals, they were weak and coming from rooms nearby, which was expected and gave no cause for alarm. The other five men arrived minutes later; all travelled independently and went directly to the room. None of them men constituted a security risk in any country; they were the thinkers and planners, not the cell leaders.
Following the successful raid on the Nima Maru, untraceable funds were available to finance the Al Qaida force. Any one of the wealthy men in the room could have provided the finance themselves, but such transactions were easily monitored and traced. Also, they saw no reason to use their own money, when they could use someone else’s. The cash was needed to pay for equipment, materials and day-to-day living expenses for the terrorist cells.
Usually, terrorists could mount a single attack unexpectedly and security forces could not predict the timing or event. The UK Olympics was a known target, and a fixed date. Every security effort focused on predicting the method of attack and preventing it.
Traditional methods of attack, using explosives or firing missiles would certainly fail. Not only was it difficult to do these things under the noses of security staff, it would not have the major impact they needed. It had to be politically devastating, portraying the government and security organizations as ineffectual, powerless and incompetent to the mourning public.
The terrorists had built up a devastating arsenal of chemical and biological weapons; crude they may be, but because of their sheer capacity, their combined effect would decimate the immediate population. The resulting fear and terror in the populace would result in civil unrest, as the people panicked and fled the city.
Terror would prevail, and victory would at last be theirs.
Specially adapted vehicles would converge from outlying cells. The vehicles would launch an array of small firework type rockets containing the biological and chemical agents, as well as chaff to confuse defense systems.
The tried and tested delivery system was ingenious. To prevent the heat of the exploding rocket at the top of its trajectory from damaging the payload, the glass test tube containers would shatter away from the heat.
As the tubes started to fall from the sky, a small parachute would deploy and tug out a release a pin, causing a metal striker powered by elastic, to break the glass.
Very simple, very cheap and very reliable, like a spring type mousetrap.
Based on tests carefully conducted since the beginning of the year, wind speed, turbulence caused by buildings and weather factors that affect the propagation of this cloud of death, had been carefully measured. No one ever noticed or cared about the colored balloons that frequently passed high in the sky, over the Olympics site.
On the day of attack, whatever the weather, whichever direction the breeze might blow, even if there were no breeze at all, each vehicle would travel to the specific coordinates on their sat nav systems, and launch.
The calculated cloud of chemicals and biological agents would drift in unstoppable, and wipe out millions of lives at this prestigious event. The international shame and humiliation would greatly exceed the death toll.
The beauty of the system lay in its simplicity and redundancy. Simple firework type rockets with aerodynamic cases and stabilizing fins for accuracy, releasing their payload like a starburst of death. Redundancy by the massive number launched from each of the hundreds of vehicles involved; with so much overkill, a few failures or arrests would make no difference to the outcome.