Warn Me When It's Time

by Cheryl A Head

  “I don’t see how people can sit around all day doing this social media shit. I’d rather do a stakeout in an ice storm,” Don said, getting the two agents to laugh.

  His mood was better after eating spaghetti smothered in cheese from the aluminum containers delivered by a nearby deli. It wasn’t very good, but it was hot and there was a lot of it. Riley had also sprung for Cokes and chocolate chip cookies.

  “Okay, Don,” Agent K said. “Let’s spend the next few hours doing a review. Are you done eating?”

  “I can eat, think, and talk at the same time, K.”

  Don was on a roll, quickly identifying four different IEDs, the difficulty in their assembly, their effectiveness, and the most recent times they’d been used in terrorist attacks. He identified the plastic explosives easily, and could describe the properties of Semtex and C4.

  “The orange brick is Semtex, and C4 is white; they’re both considered putty explosives because they’re moldable,” Don explained. “Both require detonators. They’re often used for construction and demolition. Semtex was used at the mosque.”

  “Yes. But way too much of it. If it had been detonated two hours before there would have been great loss of life,” K said. “Okay, let’s look at the IEDs.”

  The explosives tutorial went on until five o’clock when they stopped for the day. The training would pick up tomorrow. Don would watch videos of explosives being constructed, and practice putting a few bombs together himself.

  # # #

  Rush hour in Detroit was always serious business. But driving was a habit in this city and while volume was clearly a factor, the dance of cars on the freeways and streets was as smooth as Isiah Thomas, in his prime, moving from a rebound on one side of the hardwood to a finger roll layup on the other.

  Don arrived at the neighborhood park a few minutes early. He eyed the White Castle, and for appearances, he bought four cheeseburgers. He moved to a bench at the edge of the park and scanned the block, but didn’t see Charlie or her car. He waited. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a homeless man shuffling up the block. The guy stopped and leaned over the trash receptacle at the corner, then wiped at his face with the back of his glove. Don knew he’d been spotted when the man continued his shuffle heading Don’s way.

  Geesh. Just what I need.

  “I don’t have any money,” Don shouted.

  The man stopped and peeled off one glove. He held out his hand. Don waved him away.

  “What about some food? You got enough to buy a sister a couple of burgers?”

  “Charlie?” Don growled. “Dammit, why didn’t you tell me about the dress-up?”

  “Shake your head like you’re telling me no,” Charlie said.

  Don executed the pantomime.

  “You okay?”

  “So far. I have a meeting in a little while with someone from the Turks. They responded to me in the chat room.”

  “I know. The FBI will have someone near the bar in case it’s not what it appears to be. Okay, now wave your hand like you’re shooing me away,” Charlie said.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” Don said. He began searching his pockets for change. “Let everybody know I’m okay, will you? Tell Rita I miss her like the dickens.”

  “Judy spoke with her this afternoon. They’re gonna talk every day.”

  “Tell Novak I really appreciate it,” Don said dropping a handful of coins in Charlie’s hand. “And make sure she tells Rita I send my love.”

  Don turned away.

  “See you in a couple of days,” Charlie said to his back.

  # # #

  Happy hour at the pub was not what Don remembered from ten years ago. A lot of young people were milling around the bar, and the place had been redecorated, perhaps to appeal to the new clientele. Don sat at a side table as far away from the noisy bar as possible. A waitress came to the table right away, and Don ordered a beer.

  “Are you here to meet Chuck?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah I am.”

  “He’s waiting for you at the back bar where it’s a bit quieter. You can still order your beer there,” she said.

  Don unbuttoned his jacket to make access to his gun easier and walked to the back room. Half a dozen people were sitting at the tables, and a bartender and waitress were hovering at the bar. Don looked over the tables, then spotted the man sitting solo against the wall. He gave Don a wave.

  “Chuck?” Don asked.

  “That’s me. Sit down, Don. Nice to see you,” he said, shaking Don’s hand. “You look pretty much like you do on Facebook. Maybe a little older.”

  “I’m definitely getting older. By the minute. I need a beer. Can I get you another one?” Don asked.

  “No, no, I’m good. I’ve been here since about six. I don’t think I’ve ever been to this place.”

  “It’s changed. More fancy than it used to be.”

  “You used to frequent it often?”

  “No, just a beer now and then back when the stadium was open,” Don said.

  “Those were the days,” Chuck said. “After I messaged you, I found out that our chapter president already has his eye on you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “One of our members had seen your posts on some of the other sites and noticed your background in explosives.”

  “Oh, I see. I hear your other guy didn’t do such a great job for you. It’s all over the chat rooms,” Don said lowering his voice. “Overkill at the mosque job.”

  “You stay on the message boards a lot?”

  “Where else am I going to get accurate news? The media is too liberal to tell the truth about what’s going on in America.”

  “I sure do agree with you there, Don. So, tell me about yourself. Where’d you get your demo experience?”

  Don told a lengthy story about his military service. All true except for the actual work he’d done. “When I got out, I was fucked up, but I got some counseling and after a few years I was able to get on the force. By that time I had a kid and one on the way,” Don said, now digging into his false background.

  “I have a couple of kids myself. A boy and a girl. The boy will be graduating from high school soon, and I don’t know if I can afford college tuition. My plant is downsizing.”

  “Tell me about it,” Don said.

  The two men spoke for another half hour and another beer each. The noise from the front was beginning to thin out, and in the back room a few neighborhood old-timers had arrived for a quick bar-food dinner.

  “I think I’m going to order some corned beef and cabbage. I don’t get to have that very often at home,” Chuck said. “My wife tends to cook a lot of casseroles.”

  “I’ll order the same,” Don said.

  # # #

  By eight fifteen, the two men had gone their separate ways. Don had to remind himself that he shouldn’t like Chuck Caserta, but he did. Although Caserta wasn’t a card-carrying racist, he had expressed his resentment about illegal immigrants coming to this country to work for lower wages, at a time when the bad economy was forcing some plants to shutter their doors. While still at the table, Chuck got a call from another Turks member—a man in charge of the strike force for the upcoming action. From the one-sided conversation Don could overhear they were planning an attack on a Catholic church with a predominantly Hispanic congregation.

  “The chat room members were talking about a Black church,” Don said when Chuck hung up.

  “That’s a red herring. Most of the members aren’t privy to the details of this attack. We’re not trying to kill people,” Chuck said. “We’re just trying to make a statement everyone will pay attention to. This country belongs to the people who have fought for it, like me and you.”

  Don had impressed Chuck enough to be invited to their meeting tomorrow at a warehouse in Garden City. He had to get word to James.

  He resisted the instinct to drive by his house in Hamtramck to look at the lights in his living room, and imagine Rita and Rudy in front of the TV.
They’d be watching a rerun of Andy Griffith or a movie on the Disney Channel. The baby would already be asleep. At nine o’clock Rita would put Rudy to bed.

  Instead, he turned north on Trumbull headed to I-96. For a few blocks he thought he noticed the headlights of a car following him, but by the time he got to the freeway there were no other vehicles behind him. He pushed the sluggish truck into fourth gear, resigned to the idea of another night of website surfing and sleeping alone.

  # # #

  Charlie was on her way home. She knew Mandy was growing tired of keeping dinner warm, and she’d borrowed Mandy’s car, but Charlie couldn’t just leave Don after he mentioned the meeting with a Turks leader. She’d discreetly followed him to the Irish pub and loitered across the street for two hours waiting for him to leave. When he did, he exited with a man who looked a lot like him. Same height and build, wearing the same slouchy pants and black shoes. They shook hands and walked in opposite directions to their trucks.

  Charlie darted to her car parked on a side street and caught sight of Don’s truck turning up Trumbull. She followed for a few blocks, then worried he might spot her headlights. He was good at that sort of thing so she eased up and turned.

  Her phone rang, and she was sure it was Mandy.

  “Sorry, honey, I’m heading home now.”

  “That’s great Charlie,” James said.

  “Oh. Sorry. I thought . . .”

  “Charlie. Listen. You can’t follow Don. That wasn’t part of the deal. You’re only to briefly make contact with him to receive or pass on messages.”

  “How did you know? Oh, I guess your guys saw me, huh?”

  “They did. And if anybody else is trailing Don, they saw you too.”

  “I thought maybe I could get away with it. I’m worried about him,” Charlie said. “I didn’t want him walking into a trap tonight.”

  “You didn’t have to worry. The bartender in the pub is one of our guys.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, come to DPD tomorrow morning to meet with me and Coleman. Don’s meeting with the guys planning the church attack tomorrow night.”

  “How do you know that? Did he already get word to you?”

  “Our guy put a bug at their table. The Turks are planning an attack on a Catholic congregation, not a Black church.”

  Chapter 18

  Robbie was at his desk on the ground floor of Guardpost Insurance. The job wasn’t difficult. He didn’t do the customer service work and didn’t have to deal with the assholes on the upper floors. And, since he started work at seven, he got off early enough to do a training ride before the peak of rush hour.

  The Turks had invited him to a meeting tonight with the team planning the church attack. He’d already informed his FBI handler, but it meant he had to cut his evening ride short to change and grab a bite before the warehouse meeting at six. Robbie would get to meet the guy he’d introduced to the Turks’ inner circle. The bomb guy using the handle “SEMPERDON.” Robbie had helped build the profile and posting history that had impressed the Turks.

  His FBI handler called on his lunch hour warning him, again, not to give away his knowledge of Don when he attended the meeting.

  “You have to be professional about this, Robbie. Don knows you’ll be there and he’ll be playing it cool. You have to as well. Just follow his lead. He’s got the experience.”

  Yeah, but I’m the one who put in the good word for him that got him the job.

  Robbie was enjoying the work with the FBI. It was exciting. He was in regular communication with FBI techs who had already penetrated the Turks’ membership database and were monitoring their private chats using some of the programs he’d originated. He was particularly proud of his work in developing a chat space for the Turks within an online gaming platform. It was the latest tactic in keeping the Feds eyes off the organizing work of private groups. The good ones and the bad ones.

  At two o’clock Robbie’s desk phone began to blow up. The actuary database was down, and every agent in the office and in the field was unable to write policies. That meant he would have to skip the bike ride and hunt for the cause of the crash to that part of the network.

  I bet some idiot on the executive level clicked on a link from the outside. How many times do I have to tell those jerks not to do that?

  At four thirty Robbie was still working at getting the database back up. He was smart enough to have a copy of the actuary program on a hard drive, and that allowed him to set up a temporary clone site that the agents could access for the policy estimates. But he still had to find the point of the breach and clean up any other virus that might have been introduced to the network.

  Damn. I’ll be late for the meeting. I hope this doesn’t mean I can’t be on the team. That’s where the action is, and I want to be part of the action.

  # # #

  For two hours straight Don watched videos on the assembly of a variety of improvised explosive devices.

  “I can’t believe you can just find this shit on YouTube.”

  “You feel my pain,” Agent K said.

  “The most sophisticated of the terrorist groups make their own videos and embed them on their websites, sometimes behind password-protected portals. It makes it very difficult to find and delete them,” Agent Riley said.

  “Are you ready to practice building your own, Don?”

  “Sure. I’ll give it a go. We’re not using real explosives, are we?”

  “How else will we know you’re doing it right unless we have something we can take out back and blow up?” Riley answered.

  Don stared at the two men, not knowing what to say. He had no intention of building a real bomb. Finally, Agent Riley started to snicker.

  “You should have seen your face, Rutkowski, I mean, you know, Curtis,” Agent K said, folding over in laughter. “We had you going. Believe me, as your trainer let me formally say I don’t want you building bombs. But you do need to look like you can build one. Let’s get started, and we promise you a good lunch in a couple of hours.”

  “How about pizza?” Riley asked.

  “God yes. It’s been three days since I’ve had any.”

  # # #

  By five o’clock, Don had built eight IED models. It was meticulous work. He was sweating and had an ache in his back.

  “This is hard work. Especially the wiring on the detonators. You’d need special equipment, steady hands, and . . .”

  “A death wish?” Agent K said.

  “How’d I do?” Don asked.

  “Not bad at all. You can certainly fake it if anybody asks you for a demonstration.”

  “That’s good because I’m on my way to a meeting with the guys who might ask.”

  “We heard. Don’t let them see you sweat.”

  # # #

  When Don walked in the warehouse door, he didn’t recognize anyone in the meeting. He’d certainly know Robbie from his social media photo, but as far as he could tell, Robbie wasn’t there. Don strode to the center of the room where three six-foot tables had been set up. A few men were in conversation, but the guy at the head of the table stood and extended his hand.

  “Don Curtis?”

  “Yes,” Don answered, grasping the man’s hand.

  “We’re really glad you could join us. I’m the Chapter President, Tom Cortez. You come highly recommended by Chuck and Robbie Barrett.”

  “Well, I’m glad. I haven’t actually met Robbie in person. Is he here tonight?”

  “No. He had an emergency at work. He hopes to join us later.”

  “I don’t see Chuck either.”

  “He’s not a member of this strike force. He doesn’t have the stomach for the work. Have a seat.”

  “I really don’t like sitting with my back to the door.”

  “Oh, well of course. Then sit there,” Cortez said pointing to a side chair.

  Don took off his jacket and put it over the back of his chair. He watched Cortez’s eyes register the sight of his Ruge
r.

  “Before you settle in, there’s pizza on the side table and cold beer in the barrel. Please, help yourself.”

  “I’m always ready to eat pizza,” Don said.

  There were six strike force members, and they were all serious men. They rarely smiled even while eating the pizza and drinking beer. They spoke earnestly about the work that had to be done. There was still some difference of opinion about the attack location. One church had been designated a sanctuary for immigrants. Most of the team thought it should be the target, but one man held out.

  “It’s a small church in a small parish, of no particular significance to the community, the archdiocese, or city hall. If we really want to make a statement, we need a bigger target.”

  The man looked vaguely familiar, though Don couldn’t place him. He had well-cut hair, nice glasses, and appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties. He wore a suit but had discarded his tie, which was stuffed in his pocket. The burgundy tip hung out. He had a bit of the air of an aristocrat unlike the rest of the good old boys around the table. The Chapter President had called him Walt, and he didn’t eat or drink.

  Don didn’t say a word as the men debated the location of the attack, and he recognized the name of every church they mentioned. He’d attended Catholic school from grade school through high school. So had Charlie. He didn’t want any emotion to register in his eyes so he let them wander across the document in front of him—a one-page manifesto.

  “Mr. Curtis, what do you think?”

  Don looked up from his third read of the document. Walt had asked the question.

  “What do I think?”

  “Do you have an opinion on which church we should target?”

  “The only input I can give you is from a technical point of view. Some Catholic churches are large buildings with stone and steel foundations, lots of corridors and columns. Marble floors, large windows—many of them leaded. The kinds of cathedrals you see on television. These buildings symbolize the power, history, and stability of the church, and they’re not easy to destroy. It would take a tremendous payload to cause impressive damage to that kind of building, and it would be very expensive. A smaller building, even one with brick walls and foundations, will be easier to impact with an explosion, or set of explosions. Because many of those churches have wood pews, altars and even paneling, an explosion would cause significant damage.”