Many who were closest to the burning effigies simply dropped to the ground, the life gone from their eyes before their heads hit the cobblestone. One reporter, unaware of what was happening, ordered his camera man to turn to the crowds who were surely dropping and praying. It took a moment for reality to sink in, and the reporter began yelling into his microphone that they were dying. They watched in horror as people began scrambling to get away from the unseen specter of death that swept through the streets of Karachi.
16
Karachi, Pakistan
* * *
THE STRIKE TEAM was in and out in record time.
People on site were neutralized, samples taken for the white coats to study and charges were set and ready. As the men entered the black helicopters, their team leader turned and pressed the remote detonator. A series of muffled explosions echoed across the industrial area as he turned and hopped into the craft.
The helicopters rose in unison and banked to the east, their flight plan keeping them low and well below radar.
The team leader looked to his wrist and checked his watch. The timing was perfect. He glanced out the side of the craft and saw the ugly black plume working its way to the city center. Sucks to be you. He chuckled as he considered the idiocy of creating a biowarfare lab in an old blood bank on the edge of the most populated city in Pakistan. From saving lives to taking them. Serves you right.
He watched the rooftops zip by as the craft continued east then suddenly banked and headed north toward Torkham. He leaned back and closed his eyes for the trip, his hand resting on the pouch that held the vials stolen from the lab.
Karachi, Pakistan
* * *
“BRIDGER!” STEVE SHOUTED from across the building. He waved the man over and pointed to the computer screen. “This is live.”
Bobby watched as the cameras panned from scene to scene, bodies strewn across the ground haphazardly, blood, bile and vomit soaking the clothes and puddling onto the ground. He couldn’t understand the reporter who now held a scarf over her mouth and shouted into her microphone.
“What the hell is going on? Where is this?”
Steve pointed to the signs littering the area. “I’d bet that’s the demonstration that he was supposed to be at today.”
Bridger snatched the laptop from the small table and took it to where al-Abadi still sat zip tied in his chair. “This! This is what they had in mind for you.” He thrust the computer toward the man and watched as he leaned back, his eyes trying to focus on the carnage.
“I-I have no idea what…where is this?” He leaned forward and Bobby watched the man suddenly pale. “No…no, these are my people.”
“Were your people.” Bobby pulled the laptop back and handed it to Jay. “This is what they intended for you.” He pulled the man closer and clenched his teeth. “I want to know why!”
Muhammed al-Abadi shook his head nervously. “I swear to you. I have no idea why they would target me. I have done nothing against the Americans. I arm insurgents who fight for control of their regions. That is all.”
Bobby yelled and kicked the man’s chair back. “You’re withholding something! I want to know what it is!”
Jay grabbed the larger man by the shoulder and pulled him back. “If he’s not willing to share, then maybe he doesn’t know.” He pulled Bobby further back and lowered his voice. “He may have no idea about any of this. Look at him. He’s scared to death and doesn’t know what to believe.”
“He knows something,” Bobby growled. “He has to!”
Jay shook his head. “Not if they were using him like they were using you.” Bobby turned and gave him a surprised look. “If you hadn’t got mixed up in that deal with Roger, you’d have no idea they were planning to pin this on you. He may well be a patsy too.”
Bobby visibly slumped. “Then what do we have?” He turned slowly, his eyes staring past the four walls of the abandoned warehouse. “Nothing. That’s what we have.”
Gregg shouted from his computer station, “We have activity on his cell phone.”
Jay spun. “Who?”
Gregg shook his head as he typed. “Almost got it…the widow!”
All eyes turned to al-Abadi; Jay walked over and cut the man’s ties. “You ain’t going nowhere. Not now that you know you were the target.” He half pushed, half dragged the man to Gregg’s station. “Pipe it through.”
“Rerouting. Wait one.” Gregg tapped the commands then pointed to the speaker on the table. “Go.” He punched the command key and the phone came alive.
“Muhammed!” a woman’s voice echoed in the darkness. “Are you there? What is going on?”
Abadi swallowed hard and leaned toward the speaker. “I am here.” He turned wistful eyes to the men surrounding him. “I-I do not know what is happening, Asma. Things have…things have gotten out of hand.”
“Out of hand! How can you say this? People are dropping like flies in the streets at a protest that you were supposed to be at. Remember that you couldn’t be at the sale because you had to deal with this?” The anger and unstated accusations in her voice made his knees tremble. He knew the power she held.
“Yes, but…something came up. I couldn’t make it and…I am just now seeing this, Asma. I had no idea. Believe me! If I had, I would have canceled the demonstration and—”
“You are a marked man already. Have you not heard the news? They know that you organized this event and never showed. Fingers are being pointed at you!” The phone muffled and they could hear undistinguished voices speaking rapidly in Arabic.
Muhammed swallowed hard and looked to the men around him. “I do not know what to…” he trailed off, his eyes filling with unshed tears. “She is right. I am ruined.”
“There are more important things going on here,” Jay whispered.
When the telephone cleared, Asma didn’t sound nearly as confident. “Things have occurred. Things that…”
“What? Asma, tell me.”
Her voice cracked as she spoke. “A research facility of mine was destroyed. As our people were dying in the streets, somebody destroyed a very important…” She inhaled sharply and when she spoke again, her tone changed. “I must go. I need to make preparations.”
“Preparations? For what, Asma? Tell me what is happening, please!”
The phone line went dead with a click and al-Abadi’s legs went out from under him. He sobbed on the floor as Gregg continued working on his computer. “Oh shit.”
“That doesn’t sound good.” Bridger stepped around the prone form on the floor and pulled Gregg’s screen around where he could see it. “Oh…”
“Somebody speak to me!” Jay barked.
Gregg stood from his station and the look in his eyes told Jay he didn’t really want to know. “There’s a huge wall of smoke headed to the city center. Reports now are saying that it’s some form of weapons lab. They’re shifting the blame from him to this.”
“Bioweapons lab? Chemical weapons? Which? You’re sure it’s here? In Karachi?” Jay walked slowly toward his station. “How?”
Gregg shook his head. “I have no idea and the translation program I’m running concurrent with the reports isn’t the best.”
Jim slid into Gregg’s seat and picked up a set of headphones. “Give me a minute to catch the gist of what’s going on here.”
“Where’s this smoke coming from?” Jay asked, turning to glance at the dirt encrusted windows.
Gregg swallowed hard. “From somewhere here in the Sindh Industrial District.”
Bridger’s head snapped up. “You mean to tell me that we’re at ground zero? There’s a bioweapons lab here?”
“Well, somewhere near here. Look, the winds are blowing this crap toward the city. If we were in the path, we’d already know it.” Gregg turned to Jay. “I’d still feel better if we put some distance between us and the shit storm out there.”
“Agreed.” Jay turned and yelled to Jim. “Load up. We’re on the move.”
&nbs
p; Langley, VA
* * *
“BUT CAN YOU find him?” Chesterfield chewed at the inside of his cheek as the operator on the other end of the phone spoke. “Yes, of course, whatever the bill is, you know we’ll take care of it. Just find al-Abadi. He has to be found by his own people, dead from the same shit you sprayed on the flags.”
Chesterfield shook his head at the phone. “No, it has to be the same cocktail you sprayed on the flags. If they do an autopsy, it has to look like he was the mastermind. Otherwise, we’ll never be able to spin it that him and his terrorist pals were behind this.” He pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Just…please, time is of the essence here. His time of death has to correlate to the others.”
He nodded as the man on the other end hung up.
Chesterfield fell into his chair and sighed heavily. It wasn’t over yet, but at least the pieces were in play to salvage this monkey shit fight.
“Running damage control sucks, doesn’t it?”
Darren spun in his chair to see the Assistant Director of the NSA standing in his doorway.
“Mr. Ingram. I didn’t hear you come—”
“That’s because I was never here.” Ingram slowly shut the door and shook his head at the over-reaching young agent before him. “I was afraid something like this might happen.”
“Sir?” Chesterfield swallowed hard and stared at the man.
“That you’d blow it.” Ingram crossed his hands in front of his belt buckle. “There were too many variables in this operation.” He walked to the window and glanced out. When he turned back he spoke slowly. “Still, we held out hope that you could pull this off.”
“We might still be able to pull it off. The team that tainted the flag fabric is still in country. They’re en route as we speak to find al-Abadi and ensure that he dies the same way as the demonstrators.”
Ingram shook his head. “They’ll never find him. By now, he’s so deep in hiding, his own asshole doesn’t know where it’s taking a dump.” He sat on the corner of Darren’s desk. “No, he’s in the wind. And we saw to that, didn’t we?”
Darren shook his head in confusion. “I don’t…I don’t understand what you—”
“The people you have at the TV and radio stations had his name out as being responsible before they even knew what was happening in the streets.” Ingram gave him a tight lipped smile. “Sort of jumped the gun there, didn’t you, Agent Chesterfield?”
Darren nodded slightly. “Yes, but like I said, we can have him taken care of in short order and then—”
“And then nothing.” Ingram stood and straightened his jacket. “The man is a ghost and hiding in his own back yard right now. The best you can do is hope that the moderates will still blame the deaths at the demonstration on the lab.” He turned and opened the door. Pausing with his back turned to the man, Ingram added, “I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes right now. Keeping the priority goal from the wrong people in the initial meetings was a big no-no.”
Darren heard the door shut behind him and he spun. “But…it was your idea to keep that to…” he trailed off, realizing he was speaking to himself.
Karachi, Pakistan
* * *
SAMEER STARED AT the scenes broadcast on his television set and hadn’t realized his mouth was hanging open. He slowly shut it and moved closer, turning up the volume as he sat on the corner of the coffee table.
Reports that hundreds, if not thousands, were lying dead in the streets, killed by some unseen cause. One reporter was pointing out the black cloud that hung like a curtain over the city and correlated the reports from every hospital and emergency clinic of the flood of people hitting them as the black smoke settled on the area.
A different reporter broke in with a special news report. An investigative journalist with Al-Jazeera began speaking rapidly about how it had just come to their attention that the protestors were each killed just moments after the flag effigies were set aflame, sparking the question, were the two related?
Sameer fell off the coffee table, his ass landing hard upon the floor, his head shaking in nervous disagreement. “No…it cannot be,” his voice croaked as the reporter droned on.
He reached for his phone just as it rang in his hand. “Are you hearing this? They are trying to blame us for this!” Mamoon’s voice rattled the speakers of his cell phone.
“I just heard. But…I cannot believe that…we did no such thing! We would never!”
“Of course not!” Mamoon’s voice trailed off. “Unless one of our suppliers would sell us poisoned goods. Surely not.”
“I have never heard of such a thing, Mamoon.” Sameer continued to stare at the screen, his mind only partially listening to his boss on the other end. When one camera panned across a scene of destruction, Sameer choked. He dropped his phone and grabbed his remote. He quickly hit the rewind button, then advanced the show frame by frame.
Mamoon yelled into the phone to get his attention then heard his oldest employee scream. “No!”
Mamoon waited until Sameer picked up the phone again. “Mamoon…it is Tariq. I see him on the television. He was at the demonstration.”
Mamoon felt his chest tighten and his voice was barely a whisper. “Is he…”
“He is no more,” Sameer whispered then clicked his phone off.
Mamoon fell to the floor, clutching his phone and sobbing.
17
Karachi, Pakistan
* * *
ROGER PULLED THE Range Rover up to the coffeehouse hiding Jeff Green’s office. He threw the Rover into park and was through the door before the engine could finish revving.
As he worked his way through past the tables, Jeff opened the door and ushered him into the shadows. “Jay called me.”
Roger had to force himself to calm down as he paced the office. “This thing is going sideways fast. Any news other than what’s being reported?”
Jeff shook his head. “The normal channels are unusually quiet. Normally I might think that the different groups are keeping the chatter low to keep channels clear for whoever is running this op, but…this is a little too quiet.”
Roger shook his head. “What does that mean?”
Jeff crossed his arms and eyed the man warily. “In spook speak, that means one of two things. Either we had no hand in this or we’re in it balls deep.”
Roger gave him an exasperated look. “How do we know which it is?”
“IF, and that’s a big if, we are responsible, then it’s black ops shit and the channels will stay quiet until this blows over.”
“And if we’re not involved?”
Jeff shrugged. “Then the channels will go back to normal sooner rather than later. But for now, nobody is breathing a word.”
Roger collapsed into a chair and held his head in his hands. “I’m so screwed.”
“This isn’t on you, Agent Wallace.” Jeff sat across from him and poured him a double of bourbon. “Unfortunately, your buddy Bobby is the one they’re wanting to hang out to dry.”
Roger sat up and tossed back the bourbon, wincing at the burn. “I’m not even supposed to be here.” He set the glass down hard on the corner of the desk and eyed Jeff. “Jay sent me here so I’d at least be with another government man if things went…”
Jeff reached for the glass and poured another double. “He told me. Here, take your medicine and try to relax. I’ve got people monitoring every source for—”
“We got something!” Both men turned to see another man’s head poking in from the rear office door. “It’s not good.”
“How ‘not good’ are we talking?” Jeff asked as he came to his feet.
“They’re outing Bridger and the rest of them to local authorities and ISI.”
“Wait. Who’s that?” Roger asked, following Jeff to the back room.
“ISI is the Inter-Services Intelligence. Think of them as the Pakistani Secret Service.” Jeff gave him a solemn look. “It’s not good.”
“Holy…I gotta war
n the guys.” Roger sat his bourbon down and walked back to the main office. He picked up the phone and began dialing the number that Jay had given him.
Jeff settled in next to the man with the report and scanned the computer screens. “Oh no…” He exhaled hard and stared at the images of Bobby Bridger and BYI’s personnel. “Whoever is behind this didn’t just out them, they signed their death warrants.”
Jeff pushed away from the desk and walked back out to the main office. He pulled the phone from Roger’s hand and pressed it to his ear. “Who’s this?”
“Viktor,” Teplov’s heavily accented voice echoed through the phone. “Tell Jay to check his mail. I’m faxing over the alert.” Jeff looked to Roger and shook his head. “It’s worse than bad.”
“Understood.” Teplov covered the phone while Gregg yelled at him. “They are saying that Mister Wallace needs to return to the States. The data that he retrieved for them can only be opened on their computers.”
Jeff lowered the phone. “They can only access the rest of the files using their computers. Where did your data originate?”
Roger stammered a moment then muttered, “I got it from a secure Homeland system.” His eyes met Jeff’s and he watched the man pale.
“You boys are gonna have to give it up or break into Langley.”
Teplov cursed and relayed the message. A moment later he came back and told Jeff to send Roger ahead, the team would follow when they could. Teplov hung up the phone and Jeff snapped his fingers at one of the men in the back room. “We need to arrange transport for Agent Wallace here.”
“Wait. What?” Roger’s eyes pleaded with him. “You don’t understand. Somebody has me marked for—”
“You’re safer there than here. At least there you know the language and hopefully have some resources that you can utilize to keep one step ahead of whoever has you targeted until the team can get clear and follow you.” Jeff nodded to the man at the computer station. “Cook up some fake IDs for this guy and get him out of country now.”
Flags of The Forgoten Page 15
