MindWar

The operation was designed as a direct hit to one of the most vulnerable institutions in the United States: the public school systems. In the age of terrorism, the thunderous clap of explosives, scenes of airplanes crashing into buildings, and suicide bombers were epidemic, but such events had become increasingly hard to bring to the North American continent. Explosives could be traced. Commercial aircraft were well guarded. Lone gunmen or car bombers simply couldn't cause enough casualties at one time to make a major impact on the psyche of the United States of America as 9/11 had achieved. Something better and easier to deliver was needed. Something that would make an even bigger impact.

Jamail Akmuhd thought he had the answer. He had studied the history of the precursor to the weapon he planned to use. It was developed a hundred years before in World War I when mustard gas and chlorine gas were first used on the battlefield-chemical warfare. Such weapons were refined further and became much more lethal during the long cold war between communism and democracy in the latter part of the previous century. Hideous biological and chemical weapons such as mutated smallpox, lethal viruses, and nerve gases so deadly a small amount might suffice to kill millions were developed but never used.

Jamail was well aware that the problem with most of those agents was in the delivery. Gases dissipate. Viruses mutate and die out, and vaccines may be created to negate their effect. Nerve agents were nice, Jamail had found, if only they didn't have to vaporize and be inhaled, or skin contact wasn't necessary. Fortunately, for his purposes, there was a renegade Muslim chemist from Russia on the loose who had previously worked in the development of the nerve agents for the defunct USSR. He had managed to make his way to the Middle East where his path had fortuitously crossed with Jamail's.

Jamail had more than adequate financing and the means to get into the United States. Boris Androvsky had a burning hatred of the West and was in desperate need of money in his old age. He also had knowledge of a perfect agent for terrorist warfare, one which would strike fear into the very soul of The Great Satan. The two men seemed to be made for each other.