Vengeance and Reckonings

by Todd Turner

  VENGEANCE

  AND

  RECKONINGS

  Todd Turner

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  © Copyright 2013 & 2018 by Todd L Turner.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Edition

  Library of Congress Number: TXu 2-101-193

  For Mom and Dad,

  the two people who will always have the most

  powerful influence on my life.

  I miss you every day.

  PROLOGUE

  A blinding flash followed by a vacuum in space that seemed to stop time, silence, then an expansion of air, with a percussive force so massive it signaled the end of everything. For the people in this moment in this place in the universe, it was the end of everything. A force so strong and powerful, it seemed it could only have come from God Himself.

  He had been envisioning this scene for years. His drive—no, his obsession—was to bring an epic devastation upon the United States. He is Mohammad Omar Kundi, and he vehemently hated America. He hated everything it stood for, especially secularism. In his mind, no country should exist that isn’t guided by a specific religious faith in its laws and institutions, and any such nation should be destroyed.

  The phone call from his daughter made him smile. An instrument to be played, she was playing her part to his immense satisfaction. This operation was now in its final stage, his dream becoming reality.

  This plan had consumed him, every hour day and night. He alone was the mastermind that managed to convince North Korea’s unpredictable leader to pull resources from developing an ICBM capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the United States. Kundi explained to Kim Jong-un how improbable it was such a missile would ever reach American territory, even if North Korea could obtain the necessary material to build such a bomb. Kundi had a better plan: Iran would supply enriched plutonium and technical expertise to build the bombs, and North Korea would get those bombs installed in factory-fresh cars destined for the United States. While Kim despised the idea of sharing the glory with Iran, the prospect of causing such terror and devastation proved irresistible.

  Brilliantly—and Kundi certainly thought so—his plan even had contingencies to thwart an investigation and stymie efforts of U.S. authorities to interfere were the plot somehow discovered. That contingency had cost millions, but Kundi viewed it simply as an expensive insurance policy.

  Mohammad Kundi thought back to the time he had taken his daughter Rezeya, and left his wife for dead. He certainly had no idea then what an asset she would become. Her indoctrination began as a child, and at age twelve she had been relocated to a suburb of Detroit. Her identity as an immigrant from Pakistan would be carefully cultivated. Rezeya would get a PhD in mathematics, a marriage of convenience and a position at General Motors—where she would be instrumental in the final phase of the plan. Even so, Rezeya was near to fulfilling her destiny, and her father would determine that her purpose on this earth would come to a conclusion soon.

  June 25, 09:42 PDT

  Port of Benicia, California

  The onetime capital for the State of California, Benicia was founded by three men. Comandante General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, one of those three, wished to name the city after his wife, Francisca, but his choice was rejected when the nearby Yerba Buena coincidentally changed its name to San Francisco. So, the city along the north bank of the murky Carquinez Straight, which connects the Sacramento River to the pristine San Francisco Bay, became known as Benicia: a place where even on a sunny day feels lazy, gray, and somewhat gloomy. The tiny Port of Benicia is so small that it gets barely a mention in any of the city’s promotional literature, and to find it by car you need precise directions. Some streets leading to the port area are now blocked off with a fence, changes implemented for the appearance of security—the theater of post-9/11 “safety.”

  The Benicia deep-water pier, primarily used as a vehicle processing facility for both Toyota and General Motors, allows the berthing of up to three vessels simultaneously, though no one there can remember such an occasion. Currently owned by the international company AMPORTS, the Benicia port is but one of eleven ports the company operates for the purpose of auto importing and processing for distribution.

  General Motors uses this facility for the importation of cars built at the Korean factories it acquired when they picked the carcass of the bankrupt Korean automobile manufacturer Daewoo Motors.

  On this damp, cold and gray morning, the Norwegian-flagged Trinidad, a massive specialty vehicle transport ship of the Wallenius Wilhelmsen Line, was docked at the port. One by one, brand-new cars were coming out of the bowels of the ship, down a ramp, driven by longshoremen, and parked neatly in a paved area, along the water’s edge, called the first place of rest. From here, each car is processed for inland transportation, either by rail or truck, to a franchised Chevrolet dealer somewhere in the United States.

  These port processing centers have extensive capabilities: their full-service body shop can repair almost any damage the cars may have suffered on the journey across the ocean, and they install accessories from radios to spoilers to optional wheels and tires. The most important service, though, is the quality/predelivery inspection (PDI) each car goes through before being sent to the dealer. GM employs seventeen inspectors at the Benicia Terminal to perform this service.

  Twenty-three-year-old Carl Johnson, one such inspector, was frustrated. As a fully trained and certified ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) and GM-certified mechanic, he was always pissing and moaning about not having any real mechanic’s work to do. Just once he’d like to overhaul an engine or rebuild a transmission. Yet working on cars fresh from the factory, the chances of this happening were next to none. It was with such an attitude that carried him through the PDI for the new Chevy Spark now before him.

  A simple thing like discovering a defective fuel gauge wouldn’t present a difficult challenge, but at least it was something more than the usual check-off-the-boxes routine. There are three possibilities for a faulty fuel gauge reading on all cars, modern and old: the sending unit in the gas tank isn’t sending a signal; the gauge is not capable of receiving and displaying the signal; or there is a lost connection in the wiring somewhere between the two devices.

  Once Carl verified the fuel gauge in the dash was working and the wired connection was in working order, he went on to the more time-consuming process of inspecting the sending unit located in the gas tank.

  As is common practice, the access point is under the rear seat cushion, which is removed simply by removing two small bolts, then pulling up on the back of the cushion to release two clips holding it in place. With the seat removed, a small plate secured to the “floor” of the car is visible.

  Once the plate is removed, you can see the wires and tubes coming from the gas tank. They’re attached to a circular plate mounted to the tank with four screws. A rubber gasket is visible around the edges of the plate.

  Ordinarily, this is one of the easier parts replacements to accomplish: unplug the wire connectors, remove the screws, pull out the defective part, remove it from the retainer and reverse the process. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to go.

  When Carl pulled out the de
vice, however, he was confused. It just didn’t look at all like what he expected. While the part was the same one he had pulled off the shelf to install, something was attached to it that shouldn’t have been there.

  Initially, he hardly noticed the small extra wire coming off the lead from the nylon plug on the outside of the gas tank. Now, seeing a thick vinyl-coated wire leading down from the fuel pump into the gas tank, he backed up and looked again at the connector on the outside of the tank—where he saw a flexible rubberized antenna. He thought out loud, “Why would the gas tank need an antenna?”

  Carl sat staring at the additional wiring, but no matter how long he stared at it he was no closer to figuring it out. He went back to the wire attached to the fuel pump that led into the gas tank. As he gently pulled on the wire, it became taut. He pulled a little harder and something felt as though it slipped out of a friction connector. He slackened the wire . . . and something clanged in the bottom of the tank and he felt the wire tense. Curious now, he resumed pulling on the wire, estimating that whatever it was attached to was at least fifteen pounds.

  Then he saw under the vinyl coating a braided wire—braided to offer enough strength to support the weight of the device attached to it.

  Seeing something shiny through the access hole, Carl turned on the small LED lamp on his safety glasses to look into the tank. What he saw was the wire leading down to a perfectly machined cylinder made of some type of very shiny metal. It wasn’t aluminum or steel. It didn’t even look like titanium.

  At this point Carl was no longer curious, he was just confused. He very carefully pulled the cylinder out and laid it down on a shop towel. It was nearly the same diameter as the access hole, about five and a half inches, and about ten inches long. Then it all came together for Carl: the antenna, the cylinder, the thick wire; and Carl whispered, “Is this a bomb?”

  He had no clue what kind of bomb, or even if it was a bomb; it could be something made to look like a bomb by someone to cause a scare. One thing Carl was damn good at, though, was not jumping to conclusions when he didn’t have all the answers.

  Pacing around the car now, Carl kept repeating to no one, “What do I freaking do?” Other mechanics were around, working on similar tasks; and, as always when confronted with a problem, it’s comforting to bring someone in on it.

  Carl approached Jim and genially asked, “Hey, Jim, ah . . . will you take a look at this?”

  They all helped one another out from time to time and Jim was appreciative of the break in routine. “Whatcha got, man?”

  “Not sure. I found this attached to the fuel gauge sender. It felt like it was seated to a clip or something in the bottom of the gas tank.”

  Jim climbed in the car for a closer look. He first suggested just cutting the wire and getting rid of it, but as he got a closer look he exclaimed, “Damn! Looks like a bomb or something, man.”

  “Yeah, but why? Who’d put a fucking bomb in a car?”

  Backing away from the car, Jim mumbled, “Fuck me, dude. I don’t have a clue, and I sure as hell don’t wanna get involved with this clusterfuck.”

  Carl decided in that moment, Screw it. If I’m wrong, I’ll be treated like a low-grade idiot. If I’m right, well . . . Who knows? There wasn’t much of a downside. Carl left his work area, found a place he felt sure he could get a clear signal, and dialed 911.

  After being hung up on twice by the 911 operator as a crank caller, he decided to call the FBI directly—which wasn’t exactly a slam dunk either. Who would have thought in the post-9/11 era it would be so hard to report something suspicious? It took a determination of purpose Carl didn’t know he had. The fifth person Carl talked to at last began to take him seriously, at least seriously enough to ask where he was.

  June 25, 11:08 PDT

  Port of Benicia, California

  After Carl carefully described what he’d seen, where he was, and what kind of car the device was in, the agent sat quietly, processing what he’d been told. Derrick Porter was a new agent in the San Francisco field office. With a GS11 pay scale, he wasn’t a grunt, but he wasn’t explicitly in charge of anything, either. Such calls came in seldom but with enough regularity they were not unheard of; yet this one piqued his interest. He decided to head down to the port himself and logged in the call at 11:15 a.m. He also decided to go alone. When Derrick arrived at the port operations it was 12:09 p.m.

  Carl met him at the front gate in his car. The complex was large and lacked signage, almost every building identical in construction and industrial beige color. Derrick followed in his FBI-issued Ford Taurus.

  As they walked into the garage, all hell broke loose. Carl’s boss, Dick—a name everyone thought described the man to a T—was a miserable example of a human being. He was standing by the ripped-apart car, ranting about where was that fucking worthless waste of skin now, throwing tools and having a fit like a four-year-old. Just as he was about to reach in and grab the fuel gauge sending unit, Carl hollered, “Hey, Dick, back off, man! I am working on that. Leave it alone if you know what’s good for you.”

  Carl’s threat pushed Dick over the edge. Dick hated just about everyone, but he especially hated blacks, spics, and homos. He never shied from using epithets long since abandoned by civilized society, and none of those so described would ever dare tell him to back off. He jumped back and spun around—all 5-foot-7 and 240 apoplectic pounds of him—about to tear out Carl’s jugular when he noticed Derrick.

  Derrick came off as a metrosexual to anyone with any degree of worldliness, but to someone like Dick he was a fag, period. Men like Dick always thought they knew, and Derrick wasn’t about to give him any confirmation, either way.

  Dick spat out, “That’s it, you’ve done it. Get your lazy black ass and your nigger ass–loving faggot boyfriend out of here! You’re fucking fired!” Dick fired people daily, but it didn’t mean they were fired; he just loved to intimidate people, and what better intimidation is there? Everyone would just ignore him and show up for work the next day as usual.

  Derrick didn’t know this—nor would it have mattered if he had. He pulled his badge with one hand while sliding his coat to the side to expose his gun with the other, using the voice he’d been taught at Quantico. “FBI. You are on the verge of interfering in a federal investigation. Would you honestly like to try your hand with me, buddy?” Derrick waited for a response. “Yeah, that’s what I thought: all bark. Now slowly step away from the car and turn your back toward me.”

  Dick actually was stupid enough to respond with a full-throated “Fuck off!”

  “You think this is a joke, asshole?” Derrick demanded. He approached Dick and the moment Dick turned, Derrick kicked the back of his left knee, collapsing him to the floor. With Dick down, Derrick hissed, “Now put your hands on the back of your head and hold still.” Derrick cuffed him and helped him stand up.

  Dick grumbled about being read his rights, to which Derrick bluntly informed him, “You’re a suspect in a potential terrorism case, dumb-ass, and if you’re as ignorant as I think you are, you’ve probably never heard of the Patriot Act. Let me summarize it for you: you don’t have any rights!”

  Derrick jerked him over to a hip-high “railing” made of a three-inch red pipe planted in the cement floor at both ends to protect the shop’s equipment from an errant car. Using a zip tie from the shop, Derrick secured the chain on the handcuffs to the pipe barricade.

  Satisfied that Dick would no longer offer an opinion, Derrick stepped back over to the car where Carl now stood with eyes wide and the merest hint of a grin. Derrick snapped him back to reality. “Show’s over. What do you have here?”

  Carl was in his element, explaining something he knew about. He showed Derrick the cylinder, then detailed the odd wire and how it looked like an antenna, then the high-strength wire.

  Derrick felt his skin turn to ice, his heart raced to where he thought he was having a heart attack, and he struggled to keep down his breakfast burrito. He’d never had a pan
ic attack and felt like he was going to die.

  No doubt about it, this looked like a bomb. Question was, what kind of bomb? It was too well made: perfectly machined, a brightly finished cylinder with perfectly welded end caps such that the welds weren’t even visible; no way could this be an amateur job or a hoax. Also, the metal looked to be zirconium, a metal used in nuclear reactors. Its low-capture neutron cross-section made it highly effective at shielding radiation. By pure coincidence, Derrick had seen zirconium on a field trip as a kid when they’d toured a nuclear reactor.

  Derrick called his bosses’ boss, Charlene Thornton, the Special Agent In Charge at the San Francisco office. This was no high school pipe bomb prank. This bomb was expensive, of that he was certain. He had a hell of a time reaching Special Agent Thornton, and when he did, he received a lecture about proper channels—but when he was able to brief her on the details of the bomb, the lecture was over.

  Wishing to preempt another dressing down, Derrick then told her he planned to call someone he knew and respected at the CIA. At that point he had to hold the phone away from his ear. At very high decibels Thornton screamed, “You goddamn well better be joking! If you do any such thing, you’ll be lucky to find a job as a security guard at the mall. Am I making myself clear?”

  “With all due respect,” Derrick responded, “I’m not asking for your permission, I’m giving you a heads-up, and will face the consequences as you deem appropriate.”

  Thornton, taking note of his respectful tone and candor, then replied, “You’re making a hell of a gamble.” When Derrick didn’t reply, she added, “I’ll see you ASAP.”

  Derrick taped off the area around the car and asked everyone to leave the building, then nodded to Dick for him to give his consent. Forty-six minutes later, Thornton and two other agents, one with a Geiger counter, were on the scene via helicopter. The sick feeling in Derrick’s stomach had not gone away.