Grave Games: A Collection Of Riveting Suspense Thrillers

by James Hunt

  Fewer Border Patrol agents were gathered outside the holding area as she passed, but she didn’t linger. She went straight for the locker room to grab her gear and take one last look in the mirror before facing unknown and threatening circumstances.

  She arrived at the empty helicopter pad behind the Border Patrol building to find the assistant director waiting with her team, backpacks over their shoulders. The sun was setting in a tangerine glow. Daytime was quickly fading, and she worried that hadn’t even left yet, but perhaps that was exactly what the FBI had in mind.

  “Just in time,” Sutherland said as Angela approached them, carrying a helmet and a backpack over her shoulder.

  “Welcome,” Thaxton said. “Did you bring a vest?”

  Angela stopped and set her bag on the ground. “A vest, ma’am?”

  “A bulletproof vest,” Thaxton repeated slowly. On closer inspection, Angela could see that Lynch, Sutherland, Hopper, and the assistant director each wore vests under their dark-blue windbreakers.

  Angela looked around as a few loose strands of her brown hair fluttered in the wind. “No, I didn’t bring one.”

  Hopper, wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses, tapped his vest with a smile. “Well, you’re probably gonna need one.”

  Angela stared at him blankly and then zeroed in on the assistant director. “What exactly are we going to be doing out there, ma’am?”

  “These are just precautionary measures,” Thaxton replied, touching her vest.

  “Think of it as a sort of reconnaissance mission,” Sutherland added while putting on a black helmet with a headset microphone built into it.

  Angela didn’t understand the FBI’s own reluctance toward backup. They had even fewer agents than they had for their earlier raid, which had been less risky.

  “Shouldn’t there be more of us?” she asked. “A SWAT team? I mean, these are terrorists, right?”

  “Relax,” Hopper said. “We may not even have to get out of the helicopter.”

  Not convinced, she asked the group how they planned to find Martinez and bring him back, especially considering that he didn’t seem to want to be found.

  “This is how it’s going to go,” Sutherland said, stepping forward. A slight rumbling came from the sky. Angela looked up and saw a helicopter in the distant purple sky flying toward them, with its main and tail rotors beating through the air.

  “As we fly over the coordinates, we’ll examine the scene using an onboard thermal video camera,” Sutherland continued. “We should be able to pick up whoever is in or around this location easy. From there, we make our decision.”

  Thaxton zipped up her jacket and then looked up at Angela. “We want you to try to get in contact with Martinez again once we get close.”

  Their assumptions about Martinez stunned Angela. “Ma’am, can I ask you a question?” she asked, moving closer to the assistant director. “Why hasn’t he contacted you yet? You are friends, right?

  Thaxton smiled, but her wide eyes showed irritation at the question. “As you know, he’s grown quite paranoid. Perhaps you’re the only one he trusts.”

  Not wanting to push the issue, Angela let it go as their helicopter got closer and closer. The agents began backing up, clearing the way, as Hopper spoke into his headset mike, directing the pilot. The more Angela thought about it, the more she could see why there were so few of them. There was only so much space in the helicopter.

  As she walked back to the cement partition and pulled out her cell phone to try Martinez again. If anything, she hoped to give him a heads up.

  But there was no answer. Once again, an automated message told her that the recipient’s mail box was full. The helicopter closed in and hovered over the platform at about five hundred feet.

  Massive gusts of wind swirled as Angela put her helmet to keep her hair from flying in her face. She was glad they had moved away. The helicopter dipped lower and then gently landed in the center of the large slab of concrete, directly over a painted circle.

  Sutherland shouted over the engine for the team to move, but Angela wasn’t ready. She hadn’t grabbed a vest yet, but there was little time to react. The FBI team, led by Sutherland, had already begun to file toward the helicopter with their helmets on and backpacks in place. She slung her backpack over her shoulder and ran after them across the pavement. The wind grew even stronger as she approached the side where Sutherland had opened a door.

  Hopper, Lynch, and Thaxton climbed in and sat in one row in the back as Sutherland held the door.

  “I don’t have a vest,” Angela said to him before getting in.

  Confused, he leaned closer to her. “You don’t have a mess?” His breath smelled like coffee.

  “A vest!” Angela repeated. “Bullet proof vest!”

  Sutherland nodded in understanding. “Don’t worry! We should have a spare on board!”

  She thanked him and climbed inside, hunched down and moving toward the row across from where the agents where sitting. There was no denying the lack of room.

  As Angela sat down, she already felt constricted and nearly out of breath before Sutherland climbed in and shut the door. The agents buckled up, placing their backpacks at their feet. Angela followed suit and strapped herself in just as the helicopter lifted up in the air, rising high above the border patrol station.

  She watched as the top of the building got smaller and smaller. Gravity pushed against her, and she could feel a sinking sensation in her stomach, reminding her again of Panama.

  Rolling desert hills and sporadic patches of forest came into view as they ascended. She could hear little except the thick reverberation of the engine that kneaded the back of her seat like a massage chair. Her disposable earplugs were pressed tightly inside, and she could hear nothing of what the agents were saying to each other through their headset mikes.

  For Angela, the mission ahead was unclear. And as they flew west, with El Paso an hour away, she hoped they would be able to bring her partner back quickly and that she would see her family by the end of the night.

  ***

  Salah Asgar sat at a desk in a small, dimly lit underground room with his personal confidants, Bosra and Nabil, standing by, weapons at the ready. With their beards and bulky builds, the two men looked remarkably similar, but they weren’t related.

  The small room and its concrete floor and walls was nearly empty aside from Salah’s table desk, a military-style cot, and a fully-loaded AK47 machine guns against the wall behind him. The sound of Salah’s fingers flittering across the keyboard of his laptop was the only thing to be heard.

  The light from his MacBook glowed on his thin, bearded face. His dark eyes scanned the screen, carefully looking over a set of blueprints from an encrypted file sent to him just hours prior. He studied the floor plan with great interest, scanning the various floors of the Dallas Nuclear Power Plant, one of the two plants located in the state of Texas.

  He scribbled on a pad, noting the specific locations of the plant’s reactors. The rush of excitement he felt was immeasurable. They were very close to launching a major attack, years in the making.

  “This is wonderful…” he said to himself.

  Bosra and Nabil kept their eyes forward, paying Salah little mind. They rarely said anything, and when they did, it was generally to shout orders at one of the men under them. Bosra pulled a USA Today from his jacket pocket and unfolded it, reading the day’s latest.

  There were other rooms within the underground facility stocked with weapons, food, and supplies. As the primary leader and strategist of Texas ISIS cells, Salah spent most of his time twenty feet below ground. Several of his lieutenants were positioned throughout the state along with recruits who, unlike Salah, lived in homes or apartments, blending in with their neighborhoods the best they could.

  When called, lieutenants, advisors, and other ranking fighters would meet up in the desert, far from potential spies or the authorities. At one time, such a meeting house and resupply point was their hi
deout in El Paso, Texas, one of three clandestine locations throughout South Texas. Salah now operated out of this main hub, completely underground, its location known only to a few.

  For three years he had been building his network, constructing the hideouts, establishing their perimeters and means of communications. Many of the tunnels and underground rooms had already been hollowed out and constructed decades ago by various cartels. But all of that had changed with the arrival of Salah Asgar.

  As his terror network gradually embedded themselves throughout Texas and along the southern border, the message to the cartels was clear enough: territory claimed by the Islamic State belongs to the Islamic State.

  A lieutenant of the Mexican Knights of Templar cartel named Juan Manuel Marquez had once been dispatched by his bosses to kill whoever had taken over their smuggling tunnels. But Salah was ready. A dozen suicide bombers had descended upon Marquez’s house and on many others belonging to Knights of Templar cartel members in the city of Juarez. It was over before the cartel even had time to assemble against the ISIS invaders. There was a new army in town.

  As Salah continued taking notes, someone knocked at the door. He stopped writing as Bosra and Nabil exchanged glances and came to attention. Bosra folded his newspaper back up and went quietly to the door, as Nabil pointed his rifle pointed ahead. Bosra asked who it was.

  “Mohammed,” the voice outside the door said.

  “Mohammed who?” Bosra asked with a booming voice while peeking through the tiny door slot.

  “Mohammed Abdelslam. The driver,” the man said.

  Bosra turned to Salah for approval. Salah looked up from his notes and nodded. Bosra unlocked several deadbolts set into the thick, metal door and then pulled it open, revealing a man wearing a striped flannel shirt tucked into tight blue jeans and cowboy boots. His jet-black hair was disheveled and the mustache had been trimmed into a perfect arch.

  He was hesitant to walk inside until Salah waved him in. Mohammed thanked Bosra and sheepishly walked toward Salah’s corner workstation to the right. Salah’s eyes went back to the screen as the man stopped ten feet away, arms folded in front of him.

  “Did you get it?” Salah asked, typing.

  Mohammed hesitated while shifting around uneasily with his head lowered. Salah quickly caught on that the news wasn’t good.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  Mohammed raised his head with a deep worry stricken look crossed his face. “I don’t know. We had trouble. American agents. They interfered.”

  Salah’s eyes widened as he slammed his fist onto the table, startling Mohammed in the process. He then stopped and backed away from the desk, scraping the legs of his chair against the concrete floor. He looked past Mohammed and began rubbing his forehead in frustration. “How many times have I told you to stay alert for the Americans? You have to plan your meeting spot days in advance. You have to check it first. Have I not said this?”

  “Yes, my leader. I don’t know where they came from. They—”

  Salah stood up, cutting Bosra off. “Where are you parked?” Salah asked.

  “In the port,” Mohammed answered.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Assad drove me in the Gator.”

  Salah nodded and then signaled to his men, who went to the door. Bosra unlocked the bolts and opened it. Both men stepped out, scanning the area.

  “Let us go,” Salah said.

  Mohammed turned and nervously faced the door. “I am sorry, my leader. We had no control of the situation.”

  “Tell me once we get there.”

  He guided Mohammed to the door with a hand on his shoulder. They stepped outside the room, where a long tunnel, six feet high and ten feet wide, waited them. Several doors were arrayed along both sides of the corridor. There was a gas-powered Gator mini-truck parked to one side with Assad, the driver, at the wheel, staring down the long tunnel, where a single ceiling bulb provided light every twenty feet or so.

  Assad wore a black robe with white Taqiyah cap. He turned around slightly to notice Salah’s approach as Bosra and Nabil sat in the Gator behind him and started the engine. Salah went to the passenger side of the Gator and sat next to Assad. Behind them was a small flat cargo bed that Salah pointed to while looking at Mohammed.

  “Climb in,” he said.

  Mohammed nodded and hoisted himself in back, holding the sides as Assad started the engine and pulled out.

  They reached a double-door entrance at the very end of the tunnel, both doors made of thick steel and only accessible through a concealed combination lock. Assad served as the watchman between entrances. In time, Salah hoped to build a larger security team, but at the moment, he needed his men spread out as far apart from each other as possible. That way, they would be harder for the authorities to find.

  Assad stopped in front of the doors and stepped out of the Gator. Salah patiently waited, satellite phone in hand, eager to get to the bottom of whatever had gone wrong with the pickup in Del Rio. He had yet to grill Mohammed. He wanted to speak with both men and get the full story. Mistakes happened, that much Salah understood, but what he did not have patience for was carelessness. Such lapses were often met with swift and brutal retribution.

  Assad spun the combination wheel back and forth until he heard a gratifying click. He then pulled open the creaking doors and walked inside. The car port had an extremely low ceiling, just high enough to fit a standard vehicle. Crates lay about the room under the low light of a few ceiling bulbs powered by several energy-saving generators, which made the underground dwelling livable.

  A pallet of fuel cans sat in the corner of the room with another pallet of MRES, meals-ready-to-eat, cross from it. Salah had been living off the grid for some time. It was necessary for operations and not much different than his conditions in Syria, where he had commanded rebel teams in similar covert surroundings.

  He saw a station wagon parked in the center of the port with Hakeem sitting on the hood in his cowboy outfit, he felt even more simmering rage than when Mohammed had entered his room with a pathetic look of shame across his face.

  Bosra and Nabil approached the station wagon with their rifles slung around their shoulders, staring Hakeem down and then taking positions at the rear of the vehicle. They never left Salah’s side for any reason, it seemed.

  Hakeem jumped off the hood and greeted Salah as Mohammed stood to the side with his eyes down, full of dread. Two large green military-issue generators hummed on both sides of the car port, in rhythmic unison in the otherwise dead silence.

  Salah offered only a deep stare in return to Hakeem’s friendly greeting. The tension was as obvious as it was regrettable, and both Hakeem and Mohammed seemed to feel unjustly blamed and at a loss for words.

  “So, tell me now,” Salah began. “What happened?”

  Both men looked at each other, hesitant to speak up. To this Salah smiled. “Relax, brothers. Whatever it was, Allah will show us the way.”

  “We were ambushed,” Hakeem said. “Two American agents. Maybe more. They came out of nowhere and just started shooting at us. Sayed was hit. Hussein next. They would have killed us. They would have killed us all if we didn’t get out of there.” He spoke fast, running over his own words, eager to shift the blame. “I don’t know what happened. We were exactly where we should have been. I didn’t pick the location. Neither did Mohammed. We did the best we could. We’re sorry, my leader. We’re very sorry.”

  “Relax,” Salah said calmly. “Did you get the material?”

  At that question, Hakeem froze, but the worried look on his eyes told Salah everything he needed to know.

  “You didn’t…” Salah said, answering his own question.

  “Please forgive us,” Mohammed said, speaking out of turn.

  Salah turned to him with a stern, serious expression. “You were both armed, were you not? Why run? Why not stay and fight?”

  “Because… because, we…”

  “You didn’t wa
nt to die,” Salah said.

  “Yes, my leader,” Mohammed said.

  Salah took a step back, examining the dust-covered station wagon. He began to walk in a slow circle around the vehicle, crouching and looking underneath as Hakeem and Mohammed stayed in place.

  “They saw the vehicle, yes?” Salah asked them with his back turned.

  Hakeem looked at Mohammed, urging him to answer.

  “We-we left right when they fired at us. I’m certain they didn’t get the license plate.”

  Salah turned around and approached the men slowly as Bosra and Nabil stared them both down, hands on their rifles. “And you drove it all the way here. Right to our main operations hub?”

  Neither man had an answer. Salah raised one arm and leaned against the passenger side of the car. The sleeve of his white robe swayed in the air. “Too many mistakes. And I’m sure you’ve heard by now that the Americans triggered the explosives in the vehicle.”

  Both men’s eyes widened as Salah smirked in disbelief. “Surely, if I’ve heard the news living twenty feet underground, both of you are aware if this, no?”

  “The car has no radio,” Hakeem said. “And we’ve had little signal on our cell phones out here.”

  Salah nodded. “I appreciate your honesty in coming here empty handed, despite the fear you must have felt for your failure.” He paused and held a finger to his bushy chin. “That is why I will only make an example of one of you. I’ll let you decide who deserves it more.”

  Both men glanced at each other in panicked desperation.

  “I’ll give you a few minutes to decide who that may be,” Salah said. Suddenly the satellite phone affixed to his pistol belt buzzed, its digital screen glowing. “Excuse me,” Salah said to the men, walking away and holding the phone to his ear.

  He answered the phone to an urgent voice, crackling through the static. “What is it?” he said, not prepared for more bad news.

  “We captured an American,” the voice said.

  “What are you talking about?” Salah asked.

  “About a mile from the safe house in El Paso. He was all alone. Maliki thinks he was trying to find our tunnels.”