Guerra Eterna

Now, let me try my hand as a mediocre pulp fiction writer. (Published by R.Apaolaza in the Diario Vasco Forum)You (are in Madrid and) have that bunch of Islamic terrorists trying to get hold of some 500 pounds of dynamite to carry out an attack- Most of them are small time drug dealers and petty thugs from Morocco. They finance their operation thanks to the generosity of their distributor, a street wise guy known as ?The Chinese?, who trades snitching for the Spanish Secret Service in exchange of immunity for importing not so big loads of hashish from Morocco. Then, there comes this guy, Rafah ?who is a paid informant for the special information unit of the paramilitary police- and tells them that he knows about some guy he was in jail with, who?d be able and willing to sell the 500 pounds of dynamite for a reasonable price: some US$ 7,000 and 14 pounds of hashish. They just have to go and pick up the goods some 300 miles away, in a mining district? The terrorist cell?s boss and spiritual guide, nicknamed ?The Tunisian?, is all excited. He and another terrorist will make the journey with Rafah to meet the sellers. They don?t know it, but they are lucky. Since as early as 2002 they had been monitored by the cops, many of them shadowed, their phones listened to. But then, for some reason, the surveillance is halted one week before their trip to fix up the deal to the mining region. The sellers of the dynamite are four, three men and a woman, all of them paid informants of the local anti-drug squad. Buyers and sellers strike the deal and iron out the details. The sellers will travel to the capital in order to make sure that the hashish is there all right and that the 7,000 dollars aren?t Mickey mouse; they do as agreed and a week or so later, everything is ready: The Tunisian sends a couple of underlings with a suitable vehicle to pick up the dynamite and some 200 detonators given by the sellers as a bonus. At this point, not less than two police forces and the Secret Service know about the operation. The informants are all over the place, at a given moment, the terrorists and the people selling the dynamite have a meeting in a MacDonalds; out of seven people, five are snitching for some law enforcement agency. The sellers who came to the capital to check the payment are driven to an isolated cabin where the dynamite is later to be stocked. That cabin would also be the place where the terrorists will make their 15 or so bombs, with a detonation system handcrafted with cell phones. Now, if you find the whole thing too far-fetched, ya ain?t seen nothin?man. Once you like pulp second-rate stuff, it?s like a drug. You go on begging for more. So, now, let?s go back to Rafah, the first informant, and make his controller a really dirty run-amok cop. He?s a colonel ?remember, it?s a paramilitary police force- who under the previous government used to run a special unit who would kidnap suspected separatist guerrillas and torture them to death or, when that wasn?t possible, put contracts on their heads. There was that scandal, some of the cop?s friends had to face the music and he was caught barehanded in Switzerland while paying off 1,5 M US$ to buy the silence of the wives of two of them? so the man was there, waiting to appear in court? But, well, thanks to the country?s particular bureaucratic customs, the unsavory colonel was still there and could have his Arabic informant to pave the way for those terrorists to buy their 500 pounds of dynamite. No, come on, it?s still too realistic. We need some really mind-boggling stuff. Well, I?ll make the other cop, the boss of the anti-drug squad in the mining region, the one who controls the informants selling the dynamite, an old hand form the anti-terrorist units, a loyal and sympathetic former subordinate to the run-amok colonel? OK, now, the Islamic terrorists go on with their plan and put the bombs in full packed commuter trains at rush hour. They kill 200 and hurt 2,500. We make that three days before the election and the government in place is accused of having called upon the massacre because of his sending 1,500 troops to Iraq and having supported the American lead coalition there. Demonstrations take place. The opposition press whips up a hysteria and there are lots of people blaming the government for the deaths. They lose the elections. A new government is elected, the pals of the run-amok colonel. They immediately say that they?ll pull back the troops from Iraq one of these days. But then there is another frustrated attack against a railroad. And then, nobody really knows how, the cops get a tip (Rafah?) on where the terrorists are, in a suburban condo, plotting new attacks. Special police forces go to arrest them but then, well, after a little fighting between the SWAT unit and the terrorists, a phone rings in the apartment and there is that enormous explosion that blows all the walls off and kills all the seven terrorists and one cop. A couple of nights after the cop has his burial as a hero, someone opens the grave, tears the body apart and burns the remains? Now, the run-amok colonel and his pal haven?t been suspended, although the informants are all behind bars. And Rafah has gone public saying that his former employers have menaced him to send a hit man to shut him up if he talks too much to the investigators. That?s the known and documented facts of the terrorist attacks in March 11th in Madrid. Now, let?s get on with the fiction?