by David DeLee
“Not her. Not specifically.”
She didn’t say it, so neither did Bannon, but he knew. It was NSEDC they had on their radar. “Let’s talk to her. Get some answers.”
“We will, but there’s a lot of moving parts, Brice, and a rapidly closing window to act on. The Naeem is due to dock in Boston shortly. When it does, Captain Amar is under orders to bring Zayd to an undisclosed location. Deliver her to a meeting place.”
“To meet with whom?”
“We don’t know. Our hope is it’s with members of the Boston terrorist cell. The one Yusufi Nawab was part of before his unfortunate demise.”
“How can the FBI know so little about these groups after all this time? The Javits bombing was over a year ago.”
“Because they’re careful, Brice. More secretive than any group we’ve encountered before. That we know as much as we do is a minor miracle in itself.” She leaned forward. “Brice, whatever work Zayd did at NSEDC, we fear it’s something she’s weaponized.”
Bannon leaned back heavily in his seat. “According to Pierce, she worked on airplanes or spaceships. What could she possibly have weaponized? We searched the Naeem. There’s absolutely no contraband onboard at all, except for her. Maybe we’re making too much out of this. She could just want to do her part, strike at the Infidels in their own backyard.”
“Let’s hope you’re right,” Grayson said. But he could see in her expression she had her doubts. “What I do know is we haven’t heard this much reliable chatter since the Yazidi Bombings that killed nearly eight hundred people in Qahtaniyah and Jazeera.”
She took a sip of coffee. “I hope you’re right, Brice, but whatever is going on, Tara’s our best chance of finding out for sure. We have no other choice.”
Bannon looked up at Zayd’s image still on the smart board. There was no denying the resemblance between the two women. It was striking, almost uncanny. “How do we know arranging this meeting is really what Amar’s supposed to be doing?”
“He told us. That’s where I’ve been since the Bowman docked—interviewing him—and arranging his immunity deal with the U. S. Attorney General’s office. It was the only way he would agree to cooperate with us.”
“Of course.”
“Which is why we have to act fast. We can only delay the Naeem’s arrival in Boston for so long before we risk raising suspicions. Too long, and whoever Amar and Zayd are to meet might get scared off. We’ll lose our opportunity.”
Bannon grasped the urgency. “I don’t like it. Tara’s the most capable woman I’ve ever met, but she’s not trained for this. Going undercover takes a certain skill.” He knew, he’d worked several UC operations. Never much liked them. “It’s not something you learn by leaping willy nilly into the deep end.”
“And you’re too overprotective of your people.”
“Damn right, I am,” he shot back. “It’s how I’ve kept them alive all these years. How they’ve kept me alive, too.”
“Tara wants to do this.”
Frustrated, he said, “Of course, she does. That’s who she is. She doesn’t weigh the risks against the consequences like I do, and when she does, she ignores them.”
Grayson smiled. “Like you do.”
“Surely the cell knows Zayd.”
“Old photographs. Like us.” Grayson pointed at the headshot. “That’s from her access card and work ID from the Grandville National Laboratory. She’s not been back to the states since she left Ohio years ago. Amar assures us none of the parties have met. He doesn’t even know any of them. His contact in Alexandria gave him a burner phone. When he arrives in Boston, he’s to turn it on and make a single call. He will be told what to do and where to go at that point.”
“How can you know they’ve never met? How do we know we can trust his word? Who would trust someone they don’t know?”
“It’s how these cells operate, Brice. With travel bans the way they are, increased border security, and the xenophobic positions so many countries are taking, these people can’t travel as freely as they used to. Communication is all done through text and email, dark web comment boards, and social media chatrooms, all of it in code. As far as we know, everyone involved on this end is homegrown.”
“What do you mean ‘homegrown’?”
Grayson sighed. “The war on terror’s been waged for so long we’re dealing with a second generation of terrorists. American born Muslims and sympathizers who’ve never set foot outside the United States are being radicalized, recruited to the cause through the Internet, brainwashed by zealot propaganda and radical fundamentalism.”
Bannon pushed his empty coffee cup away. “So, let me get this straight. Based on the word of a sea captain who’ll say anything to stay out of prison, we’re going to introduce Tara as Zayd to a bunch of people who we have no idea who they are, and hope no one has ever met this woman before.”
“Yes.”
“And Tara’s supposed to impersonate an engineering genius. Pretend to be this woman to a group of terrorists who’ve been so careful that after a full year, the FBI still has little idea of who they are. In the hopes they’ll reveal their evil plan to her like a super villain in a bad action flick. So we can come in, scoop them up, and save the day.”
“In very simplistic terms, yes.”
“I don’t think I’m the one being simplistic here,” Bannon shot back. “UC operations take time to put together. They can’t be slapped together in a day. It’s too risky.”
“We don’t have time, Brice. And we do risky every day. You do risky all the time,” Grayson argued. “Why’s this any different?”
“Because we’re completely in the dark. We have no Intel. We know none of the players. We have zero idea what they’re planning.” He leaned forward. “And let’s say you’re right and Zayd has developed some super-secret space weapon or something. What then? How’s Tara supposed to deliver that?”
The conference room door opened and Tarakesh Sardana stepped inside.
“I’ll improvise.” She smiled and went straight to the back. “Coffee, anyone?”
CHAPTER SIX
MCMURPHY AND PIERCE STOOD in the hallway outside the conference room door after getting kicked out. They were alone with a row of unoccupied cubicles. The floor had been cleared of personnel to keep information about the operation contained to need-to-know. McMurphy leaned casually against a filing cabinet, the top of which was covered with leafy green potted plants.
“I got a call from my director at home last night,” Pierce said.
McMurphy gave him a look. It was one of those silent, why are you talking to me looks. He sipped his coffee. Pierce kept talking.
“He told me to expect a call from Grayson. Told me to fill her in on everything we knew about al-Kalil and the cells we’d connected him to.”
“Must’ve been a short conversation.”
Pierce’s face got red. “Ha. Ha. He told me to cooperate fully. Give her anything she needed. Support, intel, assets.”
“Let me get this right. You needed to be specifically told to cooperate with one of your own government agencies?”
“What’s your problem with the Bureau, man?”
“I don’t have a problem with the Bureau, specifically. My problem’s with bureaucrats and, by extension, the agencies and the field agents that work for them. The ones who play games with people’s lives by needlessly holding on to secrets like they’re a stack of Atlantic City blackjack chips. Information is power, right? Whoever holds the information controls the board, right? Meanwhile good people end up dead because of it. I’ve been through it too many times. Buried too many friends because of it, but hey, don’t take it personal.”
Pierce cleared his throat, looking a little shell shocked. “She told me I’d be working with the two of you. You and Bannon.”
“Why are you telling me this?” McMurphy asked.
“Because she told me all about you two.”
“Oh, I doubt that.” McMurphy sipped his
cup, looking bored because he was.
“Told me Bannon had fifteen years in the Coast Guard. That you’d been in even longer. She said you both spent a good amount of that time in the sandbox.” The Middle East. “Tell you the truth I didn’t even know the Guard was there.”
“We were. They still are.”
“What’s the Coast Guard doing in the desert?”
“There’s a gulf.”
“The Persian Gulf?”
“You get a gold geography star, Pierce.” McMurphy sucked down the last of his coffee, wishing he’d had a chance to doctor it up with some whiskey. “Did you get a chance to enjoy the hospitalities offered us by our Middle Eastern friends?”
“No. I joined the FBI straight out of college. Mostly I’ve been in anti-terrorism, but stateside the whole time.”
“You’re not missing anything.”
“Sounds like you two saw a lot of action, with that Deployable Operations Group you were part of.”
“We did our jobs.” McMurphy wondered if this was going somewhere, but more importantly, he hoped Pierce would just shut up.
“Which brings me to what I really want to ask.”
McMurphy didn’t respond, but that didn’t deter Pierce.
“According to what I could dig up, you both retired from active duty. Bannon runs a hole-in-the-wall bar in Hampton Beach. And you, you’re…”
“Between employment opportunities.”
“Okay, good way to put it. So, what are the two of you doing here, a part of this?”
“Drew the short straw, I guess.”
“Seriously.”
McMurphy sighed. “We’re active reserve.” He gave Pierce the standard weekend warrior pitch made by the reserves and National Guard. “We get to go have fun on weekends and two weeks during the summer.”
But the truth was much more than that.
Bannon and McMurphy had worked for years together as part of the DOG command. They’d spent many a day carrying out operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, as Pierce had said, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. They’d also carried out covert missions in places around the world, and stateside, too. The Coast Guard was the only military organization, other than the National Guard, authorized to operate on American soil. Drug cartels, pirates and smugglers, white supremacist groups, and even human traffickers kept them busy.
But all that came to an end when the Commandant of the Coast Guard decommissioned the program and disbanded the Deployable Operations Group. McMurphy, Bannon, and the others in the group were offered their choice of posts anywhere in the Pacific or Atlantic commands, and given the thanks of a grateful nation for their service.
Many of the men and women in the unit made the decision to stay in the Guard. They took posts in California, Alaska, Florida, the Mid-Atlantic region, and some in the Northeast. A few even returned to the Persian Gulf where the Guard continued to maintain a presence.
Bannon resigned his commission and McMurphy gave up his Chief Warrant Officer bars.
That was until Elizabeth Grayson approached Bannon with a deal he couldn’t refuse.
The former senator from Louisiana and retired four-star General had come up with a hare brained scheme a few years ago that she had actually managed to sell the President on. She wanted to create a small team of specially trained, highly skilled operatives for unique, sensitive, and if necessary, secret missions outside the normal channels of either Homeland Security or the Department of Defense.
“Black ops,” Bannon had said when she approached him about it, asking him to lead it.
“Secret, but not black ops,” she said. “Rather a small, efficient, and qualified team able to respond and investigate specific, targeted threats to the homeland, threats that can’t be effectively handled by standard operating means or normal military response.”
“Sounds a lot like black ops to me,” Bannon said, wanting no part of it.
“No,” she insisted. “I’m talking about a single unit that’s small enough and nimble enough to get the job done. Maybe actually make a real difference in this scary world of ours.”
Lizzy continued her pitch, laying out her plan, and after a lot of negotiating, including Bannon’s demands that he be allowed to choose his own people without interference or influence, that any and all Homeland Security and DOD assets be made immediately available to him whenever necessary, and finally, he wanted a direct reporting line to her and no one else.
She agreed to his terms.
Then, operating from a position of strength, Bannon pressed for one more demand. He’d do it only if he and his team operated on an on-call, as-needed basis. He’d had enough of sitting around bases and on ships twiddling his thumbs with nothing to do, waiting to be called into action. He’d spent too much down time playing cards and endlessly training, not for the purpose of staying sharp, which he believed in, but to fill up the monotonous hours between assignments when command had nothing better for his team to do.
“What did you have in mind?” Grayson asked.
Thus the Keel Haul, a dream of his since he was a kid, became a reality. To own and run a little seaside bar in his off time. To his surprise, Grayson not only agreed, but she endorsed the idea wholeheartedly. And they had a deal.
The existence of Bannon’s little group of Homeland Security troubleshooters would be known to only a few. Besides Grayson in her role of Secretary of Homeland Security, the Secretary of Defense was on board and the President of the United States. Others would be brought in or learn of their existence on an as-needed basis.
The first person Bannon talked to after coming to terms with Grayson had been McMurphy. He asked his old friend of nearly fifteen years if he wanted in.
“Fulltime pay and military benefits for a part-time gig kicking ass and taking names,” McMurphy said. “Where do I sign up?”
Tarakesh Sardana became Bannon’s second recruit. An ad hoc member of their DOG operation, though she wasn’t Coast Guard or even an American citizen, she came stateside after that unit was decommissioned. This, of course, was tailor made for her particular skill set. She readily joined in.
When not working to save the world, or at least the homeland, she tended bar at the Keel Haul. The best thing about the whole arrangement for McMurphy was he got to hang out with the two of them at the Keel Haul and he got to drink for free.
Of course, McMurphy told Pierce none of this.
“You’re weekend warriors,” Pierce said. “That’s all you’re going to say?”
McMurphy shrugged and dropped his empty cup into an empty wastepaper basket. It hit the bottom with a hollow metal thunk.
Tara strolled down the corridor. She’d changed into a pair of low cut black boots, tight fitting blue jeans, and a blousy deep purple top. She wore her black hair loose and bouncy around her shoulders. Her dusky skin was flawless and, McMurphy thought, she had the greatest cheekbones in the world. Her haladie was strapped to her left hip where it rode perfectly balancing the Sig P229 9mm holstered on her right side.
“John,” she said, closing the distance to the two men.
“This is Agent Pierce, FBI,” McMurphy told her.
“Daniel.” The agent offered her his hand. “My friends call me Dan.”
She shook his hand. “Agent.”
McMurphy grinned.
“Um, speaking of names,” Pierce said, which of course nobody was. He glanced at McMurphy. “How come they call you Skyjack?”
“Tell him,” Tara said.
“No.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “He never admits it, but years ago, stationed in Hawaii, he hijacked Marine One.”
“The President’s helicopter?”
“He wasn’t on it at the time,” McMurphy said.
Pierce blinked. “Hardly the point. My God, man, why?”
McMurphy didn’t answer so Tara did. “He’d been tossed in the brig, sleeping off a drunken and disorderly from the night before. When they let him out that
evening, he was late.”
Pierce asked, “Late for what?”
“A date,” McMurphy admitted. “She was waiting for me on the big island.”
“A date? You risked arrest, a court martial, your entire military career, for a date?”
“If you’d ever seen Arielle Dubois you’d never ask that question.” He pursed his lips and kissed his fingertips the way the French do. “Perfection.”
Tara rolled her eyes. “They inside?”
“Yeah. Mom and Dad kicked us out so they could fight,” McMurphy said.
“Screw that, we don’t have time.” Tara crossed the space and listened for a minute. Without knocking, she opened the door and went inside.
With the door left open, McMurphy shrugged and followed her lead, hearing her say, “I’ll improvise. Coffee, anyone?”
Pierce fell in step beside him. He leaned in close to McMurphy and whispered, “Someday you’ve got to tell me her story.”
“Her story?” McMurphy said. “Danny-boy, Blades doesn’t have a story. She’s the whole damn library.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
NIGHT. SIX HOURS LATER.
Bannon, McMurphy, and Peirce were on the rooftop of a new warehouse facility being built overlooking a low building across an empty parking lot. Lying prone in the roof gravel behind the low parapet, they were once again in tactical gear. This time their jumpsuits were urban black. The gear had been provided by the FBI. McMurphy had a black wool cap pulled low over his red hair. Each man had their sidearm strapped low on their thigh. For Bannon it was his .45, McMurphy carried a Sig P229, while Pierce favored a Springfield Armory Professional Model 1911 .45. He’d also brought along a Colt M4 carbine.
All three men were looking through binoculars. The building across the way was a single story, strip mall style structure subdivided into several storefronts. Two were unoccupied. The others were a marine parts store, a construction rental place, and a liquor store. They were closed and the lights were out. One car was parked out front.
As soon as they’d taken up their positions, Pierce called in the license plate. The car belonged to the liquor store owner. He’d owned the business for the last seven years and was a Marine Corp vet with a spotless record. A few minutes later, they watched an older man exit the liquor store. He locked up the store and got into his car. He drove away.
