Once in the US, their preparations began in earnest. Their goal was to carry out the attack within six months, ideally as close to the 9/11 anniversary as possible. Khalid and his compatriots screened several possible candidates referred to them by the local imam. They settled on two first-generation Pakistani immigrants whom the imam had successfully radicalized. Both had been arrested for their involvement in a car-theft ring that specialized in stealing luxury automobiles in the New York area and shipping them to Latin America in containers for resale on the black market. While serving time in the New York State prison system, they had become devout Muslims. A prison chaplain suggested that after they were released, they should reach out to a friend of his who was the imam of a mosque in northern Massachusetts. He said his friend would be happy to help them find jobs and a place to live. The chaplain was right; the imam found them an apartment and lined them up with jobs in nearby Nashua, New Hampshire. Meanwhile, he took them under his wing, taking a very personal interest in their religious education.
The reason Khalid needed additional recruits was that he had determined it would take a minimum of two Zodiacs to carry out the attack on the LNG ship. First, there was always a chance that the Coast Guard would get lucky and intercept or succeed at firing at and hitting one of the boats before it reached the target. Second, according to reports he had read, there was some debate among experts as to whether the rupture of a single six-million-gallon double-walled cargo tank would be sufficient to ignite the entire vessel and its load of 30 million gallons. A safer bet would be to breach two of the ships’ five tanks.
Because LNG is stored at such low temperatures in liquid form, it does not explode. However, it does burn at extremely high temperatures. Once started, a gas fire cannot be extinguished; it has to burn itself out. In a report released by Sandia National Laboratory in December 2004, scientists determined that should a large LNG spill on water be ignited, it would burn at 3000 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes to an hour, throwing off enough heat to incinerate everything within four-tenths of a mile of the vessel. This includes steel, which melts at 2300 degrees Fahrenheit and has no strength left if it is exposed to a temperature of 1200 degrees for 10 minutes. Beyond that range, the threat to most buildings would be from secondary explosions of hazardous materials within the area of the original fire or the result of failed efforts by firefighters to contain it. Even in protective clothing, firefighters could get no nearer than 1.3 miles away from the fire until it started to burn itself out. Those people outside this range but within the second-mile radius of the fire would suffer second-degree burns on unprotected skin within about 30 seconds. However, most would likely be able to get to shelter and avoid this exposure.
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