Three Days to Forever (A Mac Faraday Mystery Book 9)

by Lauren Carr

“You need to bring us up to speed.” Bogie gestured at the squad room filled with local, county, and state police officers who had come in during the holiday season to help one of their own. “We’re all putting our lives on the line—we deserve to know.”

  Coining a phrase he had heard often in Washington when dealing with cases involving national security, Mac said, “We need to know.”

  “They don’t want what Kochar took,” Murphy said. “They already have it. Kochar stole it off his brother’s computer while visiting family in the Middle East.”

  “What is it?” Bogie asked.

  “I don’t know.” In response to Bogie’s doubtful expression, Murphy repeated his answer, and then added, “I was only ordered to collect it and deliver it to my commanding officer. Dad knows what it is, but I don’t. I didn’t ask. The less I know in this case, the better. But I do know that it is critical information that could assist our country in the war against Islamic terrorist groups.”

  Bogie and Mac exchanged expressions—each wordlessly asking the other whether to believe Murphy or not. On the one hand, he was the son of a trusted friend. But on the other, he was obviously a highly trained agent with the federal government and a military officer, and he was committed to serving his country. It had been Mac’s experience that such agents were not above lying for the sake of successfully completing an assignment.

  “David’s on the phone!” Tonya shouted from her desk.

  Everyone in the room moved en mass to the phone, where she pressed the speaker button so that they could all hear David talking to them in a whisper.

  “David, where are you?” Mac dropped into Tonya’s chair, which she vacated so that he could have access to her notepad. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” David said. “They have a private jet parked at the end of the airstrip at Sander’s Farm. It’s a pretty good sized jet. The identification number on the tail is N666D.”

  “Where are you, David?” Bogie asked.

  “I’m in Sander’s barn.”

  They could hear him moving around.

  “I don’t think they know I escaped,” he explained. “They think I’m drugged in the back of the jet. When I was sneaking off, I heard them on a conference call with a guy named Bauman.”

  Mac saw Murphy stand up straight at this information.

  “He is obviously the main honcho in all this.” They heard a crash and David curse. “Damn, that hurt!”

  “What happened?” Thinking David had been recaptured, Mac’s tone was filled with panic.

  “I ran into a table,” David groaned. “Hit me right in the shin. Ouch! Geez! That’s going to leave a mark.”

  “David, can you get to the road?” Mac asked him.

  “Garrett Highway is a mile away at the end of the lane, and they have a guy guarding it,” David said. “If it wasn’t so dark, I wouldn’t have been able to get past them. I just kept telling them that I’m José.”

  “José?” a female African-American member of David’s team laughed. “Major, you’re the whitest white guy I know, and you’re passing yourself off as José.”

  “It’s really dark out—Bates? What are you doing there?”

  “Saving your lily-white butt, that’s what me and Matilda are doing here. She’s waiting in the van to do some serious butt kicking.”

  “Who else did you call in, Mac? Did you go check Mom out of the nursing home?”

  “I called no one,” Mac said.

  “We’ve all got your back, O’Callaghan,” Colonel Frost said in a business-like tone. “Brief us on the situation.”

  “I counted twelve guards surrounding the jet and various other points around the farm,” David said. “Some of them are trained professionals. Others appear to be hired guns from some drug gangs, I think. The guy I overpowered was obviously a small-time dealer, based on the amount of cocaine he’s got stashed in the coat I stole off him. With all the coke, I’m carrying, I’m in big trouble if I get busted.”

  They heard silence, except for David’s breathing on the other end of the line.

  “This Bauman guy bought this farm through a bunch of shell companies or something, and he was paranoid about anyone finding out what he had in the barn—”

  “So, of course, you had to go investigate,” Bogie said.

  “He said the Easter Bunny was hiber—what’s this?”

  “What is it, David?” Mac asked through braced breath.

  “Maps.”

  “Of what?”

  “Oh my God.” David was breathing hard.

  “What is it?”

  “What’s on that flash drive they want?” David asked. “I heard Bauman going ape about paying a lot of money for it. He used the word ‘formula.’ He wants it bad.”

  Ethan turned to Murphy before answering, “A man-made version of Ebola. There’s no antidote.”

  “This barn is a bomb factory,” David said. “I think to build dirty bombs. And these maps are of Vatican City. He was talking about the Easter Bunny hibernating here in the barn.”

  In silence, everyone digested the information.

  David verbalized their thought. “They’re planning to detonate a dirty bomb with Ebola at the Vatican on Easter Day.”

  Mac felt Jessica’s hand grip his shoulder. The beat of his heart quickened.

  “Damn!” David swore. “They’re calling for me.”

  “They know you escaped?” Bogie almost grabbed the phone.

  “No, someone outside is calling for José,” David said. “I have to go. Text me at this cell with your plan. I’ll be guarding the barn.”

  “David, don’t go,” Mac said.

  “If I don’t, they’ll start looking for José and discover that I’ve escaped,” David said. “Don’t worry, Mac. I’ll be careful. This is what I do.”

  Click.

  “José? Estás aquí?” A young African-American man stomped around by the main door of the barn. “It’s me, Raul.” The young man started when he hear a thump in the dark woods followed by a curse in Spanish.

  The hooded figure in the heavy coat limped around the corner of the barn.

  “Está bien, José? Qué hacías ahí?”

  “Hacer pipi.” With a perfect Spanish accent, David said that he had been urinating behind the barn. He mentally thanked God that they weren’t French terrorists. Then he would have had a problem. “Tropecé con una maldita roca.” While rubbing his sore shin, David pointed over his shoulder to the dark shadows behind the barn where Raul could imagine a rock would be waiting for him to trip over.

  Raul nodded his head. “Carlo and I, estamos viendo la ruta de acceso.” He went on to tell David that they were very bored guarding the access road between the farm and the air strip. On the farm that was far removed from the main road, they had nothing to do. Then, they had seen José walk by, which had reminded them that they were planning to attend a major New Year’s Eve party in downtown Washington the next evening. With the thousands of dollars that Ra’ees was paying them, they expected to score big with lovely prostitutes.

  Exhausted by leaning over and keeping his face adverted from Raul’s view, and from listening to him rambling on in Spanish while trying to keep up with his story, David was about ready to take out his gun and shoot him when Raul finally arrived at his point. “Tienes cualquier cocaína para comprar?”

  He wanted cocaine for the New Year’s Eve party.

  Without saying anything, David reached into his inside breast pocket, took out two of the small packets, and offered them to Raul.

  “Es eso todo? Nada más?” Raul sounded disappointed that he did not offer more.

  David asked him how much he wanted, and Raul explained that they wanted to impress their “dates.” Reminding himself that he was playing the role of a drug dealer, David reached back into his pocket. “T
e va a costar.” He told the desperate thug that it would cost him. “Cuánto dinero tienes?”

  For his answer, Raul dug into his pocket and pulled out four hundred-dollar bills.

  Uttering a sigh of disgust to show disappointment with the amount, David slapped a total of four bags into Raul’s hand. “Tell no one,” David said in English with a Spanish accent. “Don’t want no one to know I am easy touch.”

  “Mucho gracias,” Raul said before trotting up the road and leaving the police chief to count out and pocket the four hundred-dollar bills.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “We know where David is,” Bogie told the collection of police officers, sheriff and his deputies, and team of special ops marines.

  Sheriff Turow had torn himself away from the hotel once it was cleared of the bomb and the guests were allowed to return inside. It was time to turn his attention to the international terrorists who had set up shop in his jurisdiction.

  Bogie offered his suggestion. “I say we forget about that thumb drive—don’t even risk it getting into their dirty hands. We’ve got an hour before the drop time. There’s twelve of them, and three times more of us. Let’s just storm in—”

  “Not against these guys,” Murphy said with a shake of his head.

  “Why don’t we assess the situation first?” Mac asked. “What do we know about this Sander’s Farm?”

  Tristan was hooking an HDMI cord to the back of the laptop. After plugging the other end into a portable projector, he directed the computer’s desktop onto the wall. “Here, you can all see what we’re talking about.”

  Everyone turned to the wall. The room fell silent. Jessica dimmed the lights so that they could more clearly see the image.

  “That’s the Sander’s farm,” Bogie said when the bird’s eye view of the darkened farm appeared on the wall.

  The farm consisted of a traditional two-story home, a detached garage, and an old run-down barn. To find it, one had to take a right turn off of Garrett Highway, the winding country road between Deep Creek Lake and Oakland, travel through a patch of woods, go down a small hill, and circle a pond before taking the road back up a steep hill to the farmhouse. From there, the lane passed between the house and the barnyard along a thick strip of woods. At the edge of the backfield, the farmer’s road cut through the woods, where it then opened into what appeared to be a field from a bird’s view. This night, that field was plowed clear of the snow. Facing the woods and the farmhouse on the other side of the trees, a private jet rested at the far end of the field.

  “This image is real time,” Ethan said. “Unfortunately, with this satellite image, we’re unable to get close enough to see how many terrorists there are. David reports a count of twelve.”

  “Is this a defense department satellite image?” Sheriff Turow asked.

  “Google Earth,” Ethan said. “Just as good. It’s easier to access and legal to use. The man we are looking for is an FBI special investigator—”

  “FBI!” Mac yelled. “David said they were terrorists.” He whirled around at Murphy. “You said they were terrorists. Now he claims this guy is a federal agent!”

  “Most likely a sleeper agent for an Islamic terrorist group,” Murphy said in a matter-of-fact tone. “My team is getting together the background on this case to brief us all.” He added, “Point is—this guy is not operating alone. Someone is backing them. The plane. The runway.”

  “David said they were on a conference call with someone they called Bauman,” Mac said. “That could be a first or last name. Whoever he is, he has deep pockets. The death squad that hit my house. Plus the technology to fake a message to Agnes.”

  “They have money and people backing them,” Murphy said. “That’s why we can’t go in there without a plan.”

  “Why would Americans be targeting Americans?” Tristan asked.

  “It’s not about patriotism,” Murphy said. “This is about a twisted religion and a sick worldview that goes back to Genesis in the Bible.”

  “Not the Bible I grew up with,” Mac said.

  “Yes, the Bible you grew up with,” Murphy said. “Remember Ishmael?”

  In regards to Mac’s questioning expression, Bogie said, “Abraham’s first-born son. The older half-brother of Isaac.”

  “The covenant that God made with Abraham and Sarah was to be passed down to his son,” Murphy said. “But Sarah got tired of waiting for them to conceive a child, so she had Abraham sleep with Hagar, her maid. Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. But God’s covenant was not to be passed down through Ishmael. It was to be passed down through the son Abraham had with Sarah, who did conceive later. Ishmael’s followers believe that God’s covenant was passed down through Ishmael, not Isaac, and that they are the blessed people. Somehow, we Christians and Jews, descendants and followers of Isaac, have cheated them. Ishmael is Islam.”

  Murphy waved his hand at the image of the plane on the wall. “Don’t you get it? This is all about a sibling rivalry that has been going on for thousands of years!”

  “Oh, so just because Dad let Tristan go to Florida for spring break in his senior year when I couldn’t go,” Jessica said, “my descendants have a license to go around beheading people who disagree with my worldview?”

  “It’s good to know you’re not still bitter about that,” Tristan said with a chuckle.

  “It wasn’t fair,” Jessica said. “My grades were just as good as yours.”

  “I knew Tristan wasn’t going to come back pregnant,” Mac said under his breath. “Listen, I get it. This is a war of good versus evil. It’s not Britain against France or Ireland against Britain. It’s Satan masquerading as Allah in order to con an entire culture into destroying the rest of the world in the name of their god.”

  “And they’re going to kill tens of thousands of Catholics on Easter day at the Pope’s Holy Mass,” Jessica said.

  “We need to call in the FBI—” Sheriff Turow said.

  “They’re already here. We have reason to believe the guy making the ransom demand is a special agent with the FBI.” Snatching his cell phone from his belt, Murphy slipped over to the door where he could hear better.

  “How about Homeland Security?” Sheriff Turow asked.

  “Do we have time for them to get here from Washington?” Bogie asked. “We need to get David out of there, and we need to blow up that barn.”

  “What if the barn already has toxins in it?” Jessica said. “We can’t just blow it up. We could be spreading anthrax, or Lord knows what else, throughout the valley. As windy as it’s been, it would spread all the way to Washington and up the coast in no time.”

  Murphy turned around from where he had been talking on his phone. “May I have your attention, everyone? My commanding officer is on the line. She’s been involved with this investigation since it came to our government’s attention, and she would like to brief everyone.” He laid the phone down on the desk. “You’re up, ma’am.”

  “Good evening, everyone.” A throaty feminine voice oozed from the speaker. Via a remote hookup with Ethan’s laptop, the absent leader of Murphy’s team conducted the presentation for those in attendance. Ethan sat next to the laptop to operate the slide presentation.

  “I’m sorry,” Mac said, “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “That’s because I didn’t throw it.”

  As an image of Special Investigator Neal Black appeared on the bare wall, she continued without missing a beat. “This is your target. It’s because of sleeper agents like Neal Black—and believe me, he’s not the only one—that we have been losing this miserable war against terrorism. He was able to escape detection, which allowed him to abduct Major David O’Callaghan, because he was born here and looks just like us. His mentors have taught him to fly below Homeland Security’s radar.”

  Jessica gazed at the handsome, fair-skinned young man with reddish-blon
d hair. He looked like someone she would have shared a coffee with or taken home to meet her father. “How does someone like that become a home-grown Islamic terrorist?”

  “Surprisingly easy,” the voice answered from the speaker phone.

  “Neal Black was born and raised in New York,” Ethan Bonner reported. “His mother was a corporate lawyer who had no interest in being tied down to a husband—”

  “But she wanted to be tied down to a child?” Bogie asked.

  Nodding, Ethan said, “Neal Black was born via artificial insemination.”

  “Was that found in his background check?” Mac asked as a joke.

  “Yes, it was,” Ethan said. “When he applied and was accepted into the FBI, they did a thorough background check. Not only did he list no name for his father, but he also noted that he was conceived via a donation from a sperm bank. His mother never married and climbed to senior partner of her law firm. He was raised by a nanny.”

  “Neal listed no religious affiliation on his application, by the way,” Murphy’s commanding officer said. “We suspect that was at the direction of his mentor and handler, Jassem al-Bahdadi. Next slide, Ethan.”

  The slide showed Jassem al-Bahdadi as pictured on Homeland Security’s ten most-wanted terrorist list.

  “That’s the slimy snake O’Callaghan killed summer before last,” Colonel Frost said. “The major led the team that took out a terrorist training camp. In came al-Bahdadi with two truckloads of weapons. David called in and got the clearance to terminate al-Bahdadi, and he did.” He puffed out his chest. “We each got the Bronze Star for that. O’Callaghan led the team.”

  “Somehow, word got out that O’Callaghan had fired the kill shot,” she announced.

  “How?” Colonel Frost demanded to know. His face turned red all the way up and across his bald head.

  “Once we intercepted communication that they had Major O’Callaghan,” she said, “we went digging through the records for that mission. The last person to check it out was a junior lieutenant in the records office at the Pentagon.”

  “Don’t tell me that he’s an ISIS spy,” Sheriff Turow said.