Thank you for downloading this Touchstone eBook. Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Touchstone and Simon & Schuster. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP or visit us online to sign up at eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com INSIDE THE NYPD’S SECRET SPYING UNIT AND BIN LADEN’S FINAL PLOT AGAINST AMERICA CONTENTS Epigraph Prologue ONE The Marriage Is Ready TWO A Spy in New York THREE Heading East FOUR Demographics FIVE The Accidental Tourists SIX Zone Defense SEVEN Ostermann EIGHT Mosques NINE The American Who Brings Good News TEN In the Wind ELEVEN Flight TWELVE People Die to Come Here Epilogue Acknowledgments About Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman Notes Index To our wives. Without you, nothing is possible. Beware of the words internal security, for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor. —VOLTAIRE PROLOGUE AURORA, COLORADO Sunday, September 6, 2009 The bomber handled the chemicals carefully, just as they’d taught him. No need to rush anything and blow off his hand, or worse. A few years earlier, a curious college student in Texas had tried the same thing in his kitchen. A 911 dispatcher listened to him die howling, begging for help as flames engulfed his body. Mix hydrogen peroxide and acetone, and nothing happens. The chemicals swirl around next to each other. In the presence of acid, though, they form the basis for a powerful explosion. The bomber’s acid of choice was muriatic acid, which he bought at a Lowe’s. Muriatic acid is used to treat swimming pools and clean concrete. But when it’s poured slowly into a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and acetone, clumps of white crystals appear. It looks like sugar, but it is as explosive as it is unstable. The bomber used the Homestead Studio Suites kitchenette as his lab. He’d tried working in his aunt’s garage, but when she saw all the chemicals, she and her husband got suspicious and made him pour them down the drain. Nobody would bother him here. Unable to pay their rent, many residents had recently been kicked out of their apartments. Cats slept in windows. Children played in the parking lot alongside cars packed with furniture and clothes. Forty dollars cash for a night in room 207. The bedspread was rough, and only the whir of the refrigerator drowned out the pulse of the highway. But he was not there to rest. He chose the motel because of its kitchen. It was a simple setup: builder-grade cabinets, a dingy white laminate countertop, and, most importantly, a stainless-steel, two-burner electric stove. He had everything he needed. For weeks he’d been visiting beauty supply stores, filling his carts with hydrogen peroxide and nail polish remover. At the Beauty Supply Warehouse, among the rows of wigs, braids, and extensions, the manager knew him as Jerry. He said his girlfriend owned hair salons. There was no reason to doubt him. On pharmacy shelves, in the little brown plastic bottles, hydrogen peroxide is a disinfectant, a sting-free way to clean scrapes. Beauty salons use a more