Threat Level

by William Christie

  Nimri still felt like ice even inside his clothes. His teeth were still chattering, but he could finally get more words out. “Quickly, brother Muhammad, we must be away.”

  Muhammad al-Sharif snapped to the Arab, “You heard him. Start the engine.” While he pulled up the anchor.

  The engine came up but the boat didn’t move. Nimri sat glumly in the fishing seat at the rear while the cold wind beat his face. Of course the boat would not move.

  The Arab kept goosing the engine, and eventually the boat moved with another grinding of rocks against hull. Then the wheel was turned hard, the boat whipped around in a half circle, and they sped out into the lake.

  They soon broke free from the fog. A carpet of stars blended down into the brighter nuggets of light along the far shoreline. Nimri knew that was the United States.

  His shivering had subsided, but he still felt frozen to the bone. Though the parka hood was wrapped tightly around his head, Nimri could see another set of lights in the distance. Except these were moving. “Bother Muhammad,” he called out, pointing. “What is that?”

  Al-Sharif was quickly beside him. “A cargo ship. Have no fear. The lake is huge. There are only two large Coast Guard cutters, and few smaller craft. If they come near, we will see them on the radar detector first.”

  “Very good,” said Nimri. Then he remembered something. He felt through the plastic bag until he found his satellite phone. Then he threw it into the water.

  “Why did you do that?” al-Sharif asked.

  “A suspicious call,” said Nimri. Al-Sharif was still giving him an inquisitive look. “No matter. Now I am safe with you, I no longer need it.”

  “I am sorry about the blankets. Dawood is young. He becomes excited, and he forgets.”

  “No matter, brother. But we must remember everything from now on.”

  “It will never happen again. I swear it to you.”

  “I believe you,” said Nimri. “We must all speak English from now on, also. No Arabic.”

  “Okay,” said al-Sharif, in English for the first time.

  Even though their trip from Canada was across a narrow part of the lake, the crossing still took time. The small sport fishing boat slapped into every wave, and Nimri was feeling nauseated in addition to frozen. The GPS brought them back to a line of concrete boat ramps that were deserted during weekdays.

  A minivan with a boat trailer attached was backed down onto the ramp. The trailer was in the water. Another Arab was waiting. He caught the thrown line and winched the boat onto the trailer.

  Nimri had been swallowing down his vomit for the past half hour, and was grateful to be on dry land. Al-Sharif now formally introduced him to the two Arabs. Dawood, who had driven the boat. The one at the van was Omar. Taller and more muscular than Dawood. And older. In his late twenties, while Nimri was certain Dawood was barely twenty-one.

  He would ask their ages only when there was a need to put them in their place. They were both in awe of him, and to make it easier he would have to keep it that way. No familiarity.

  As they went to get into the van he heard Omar say to Dawood in Arabic, “You forgot the blankets and towels, fool. God’s mercy that the commander is still alive.”

  “Speak English,” al-Sharif hissed to Omar, with one eye on Nimri. “Only English from now on.”

  “As you wish,” Omar said. Nimri noted that he was less deferential to al-Sharif than was Dawood.

  They took the boat up the ramp, Omar driving and al-Sharif guiding. In the parking area above the ramp, al-Sharif unhooked the trailer from the hitch.

  “Will this be noticed?” Nimri asked him.

  Al-Sharif shook his head. “Tourists leave their boats here all the time while they go off to get food or bait. No one notices a boat parked near a boat ramp.”

  “Very good,” said Nimri.

  Dawood overheard them. “We are leaving the boat?” “What do you think?” asked al-Sharif, continuing what he was doing.

  “But this is my brother-in-law’s boat,” said Dawood, appealing to Nimri.

  Nimri could scarcely believe it. What did he expect them to do, drop the boat off at the brother-in-law’s house on their way? Drag the boat with them on the mission? He didn’t say anything, though, beyond giving Dawood a stare that was as cold as his body felt. This was for al-Sharif to handle. But Nimri did not like the fact that the boat had been borrowed from a family member, not purchased or stolen. Al-Sharif had been given money to buy a boat. It bore watching.

  “Use your head,” al-Sharif snapped.

  Dawood looked resentful. He seemed about to say something, then glanced over at Nimri and decided to keep his peace.

  Nimri did not like starting off with reservations about his companions. At least Omar had the wit to turn the van heater all the way up. Soon the others were pulling their jackets off, though he could still feel the chill.

  It was also in the van that he got his first good look at al-Sharif. Only six years since their first meeting in Kandahar, though al-Sharif looked older. It made Nimri wonder how much older he looked. Nimri remembered the fire-breathing convert, brimming over with his new faith, who had been carefully watched at the madrasa, the religious school in Quetta, Pakistan. Then passed along until he reached the Afghan camp. Only halting Arabic, and how pleased he had been to hear the English Nimri had honed at the University of North Carolina after leaving Egypt for the first time.

  Each night at the camp they screened the forms that each new arrival had filled in. Looking for special talents. A non–Arab American was like a gift from God. But also could be a trap of Satan. How carefully they had watched al-Sharif, allowing him only the basic weapons training, looking to see if he was familiar with heavy military weapons and grenades the way an American special services operative would be. Every word that issued from his mouth was heard by men alert to falsehood. Finally al-Sharif had been brought to a room where Nimri told him, “We have work for you.”

  Then the advanced clandestine training in earnest. Nimri had tested him repeatedly. Al-Sharif had never failed. A thief brought before him, told it was an American spy. And no hesitation, emptying his Kalashnikov into the man almost before the guards could get out of the way.

  The same man now? A few pounds heavier, but that was to be expected. Nimri remembered that the food in the camp had given al-Sharif diarrhea until he could barely walk. No fat though, still lean on the six-foot frame. The once bushy Afro now cut close, though with streaks of white visible. The lighter black skin of the Africans whose blood had mixed with that of their slave masters. And the same aquiline nose that Nimri had always flattered him for, to al-Sharif’s delight, saying it marked Arab blood.

  But the same man? Nimri knew he would have to watch carefully. But what he said was, “It pleases my eyes to see you, brother. I have missed you since Kandahar. You look well and strong.”

  Al-Sharif was pleased. “I am. And I’ve missed you. Did you have any trouble in Canada?”

  “No. The Canadians are very polite. I traveled on one of their passports.”

  “It’s the best border to cross. Here.” He passed Nimri a pistol in a leather holster. And a leather pouch with two magazines.

  Nimri examined the pistol and checked the chamber. It was loaded. “Heckler and Koch. Excellent.”

  “Snap the loops onto your belt, and wear the holster inside the waistband of your pants,” said al-Sharif. “The magazine pouch the same, on the other side.”

  It took a moment for Nimri to figure out, but when he did, the pistol and magazines were perfectly concealed.

  “There’s work to do,” said al-Sharif.

  “There is,” said Nimri. “Important work.”

  “What work, brother?” Dawood broke in.

  Nimri’s expression turned to ice again. “Work that you will know when it is time for you to know.”

  Behind the wheel, Omar shook his head.

  They stopped at a Burger King for food. Nimri ordered three cups of t
ea to warm his still-frozen belly. The hot liquid was a blessing, even though it tasted like hot urine. He’d almost forgotten the American tea, which came in cloth bags. God willing, he would not be there long enough to have to get used to it again.

  17

  “So it was Whitefish Bay,” said Special Agent Ted Weaver.

  Beth Royale was looking out over the water. “Canada’s what? Twenty miles away?”

  “Twenty, thirty. Depending on where they landed.”

  “And they don’t need their boat anymore?”

  “They don’t need their boat anymore. Ranger drove by it all morning, not thinking anything of it, before he checked it out and ran the number.”

  Paul Moody walked over after conferring with the crime scene technicians on the boat. “It’s definitely been in the water. Gas tank’s just about empty.”

  “Thanks, Paul,” said Beth, giving him more than the usual maintenance. He’d been temperamental since she’d gone to meet the informant with Weaver and didn’t bring him along. “At least they didn’t blow anything up with the boat. That gives us time. I was afraid they were already moving into an attack and we didn’t have any.”

  “Even money al-Sharif’s prints are all over the boat,” said Weaver. “When he stole cars he never wore gloves—always went in bare a . . .”

  Beth rolled her eyes. “I’m familiar with the word ass, Ted.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, get over it.”

  Supervisory Special Agent Benjamin Timmins had been off in a far corner of the parking area talking on his cell phone. “Anything new on the boat?” he asked.

  “Other than it’s definitely been in the water, nothing,” said Beth. “No tire tracks, so we have no idea what vehicle towed it.”

  “People in remote places notice things,” said Timmins. “We’ve got agents and state police canvassing every home and business in the area.”

  The Bureau playbook, thought Beth. Just dump a load of people on a problem. “Ben, when they were done with it they just left the boat here. To me that means they were planning on moving so fast they didn’t care about us finding it.”

  “Or they’re just stupid,” said Timmins. “Here comes Karen the Spook. Let’s see what she has to say.”

  In the aftermath of 9/11, CIA intelligence analysts were permanently attached to the FBI in an attempt to smooth the flow of intelligence material. Which had been totally chaotic before. According to the CIA, that was because their FBI liaisons were country-clubbing mediocrities, and the FBI computers and dissemination procedures slower and less reliable than the Pony Express, and because the FBI would then leak to the media blaming the Agency for their own deficiencies. According to the FBI, it was because the CIA withheld everything of value to feather their own nest, then leaked to the media blaming the Bureau for every disaster. Neither viewpoint was necessarily incorrect.

  Spook is a sometimes complimentary, sometimes not, term for a CIA agent. Karen the Spook, as she was called by the agents, was an experienced analyst who, Beth thought, was worth her weight in gold. She had real-time access to the CIA databases and, more importantly, knew how to interpret intelligence reports. Which were never black and white, and usually contradictory.

  Karen was short, with blue-green eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. Very assertive, with an evil laugh. She’d originally been in the operations or spying side of the Company, but an accident she always claimed was a car crash had left her with a replacement hip and rebuilt leg. Aside from having to become an analyst, her only complaint about the accident was that she could no longer wear her favorite spike-heel boots. She’d occasionally look down at her sensible shoes and sigh.

  Beth suspected that Karen had been sent to the FBI because she was a woman. They’d become fast friends. Karen loved sports and loved to bet on them. Not money—just something humiliating to the loser.

  She’d been in the van playing with her secure communications equipment.

  “What’s up?” Timmins demanded as soon as she joined the group.

  Karen consulted her notes. “Day before yesterday the Al Qaeda coordinator for Southeast Asia was taken out in Malaysia. His satellite phone and names to go with the numbers in the phone directory were recovered. The numbers were called, and the NSA ran traces. One of them was Abdallah Karim Nimri. And they traced the call to Parry Sound, Ontario.”

  “Well, we know who al-Sharif and his boys picked up,” said Beth.

  “And every intelligence asset we have is focused on Asia for the president’s trip,” said Timmins.

  Everyone else was digesting the fact that a top Al Qaeda operative was in the United States with a non-Arab supporting him.

  “Royal Canadian Mounted Police is still trying to run down how he got into Canada and what ID he’s traveling on,” said Karen. “The only thing they know is that he didn’t do the usual: get off a plane, apply for political asylum, and then get released into town. He probably flew in on a non–Middle Eastern passport.”

  “Who got the guy in Malaysia?” Weaver asked. No one could resist a war story.

  Karen gave it some thought before answering. “Two Missionaries. They hid in a cane field all day in hundred-degree heat, reconning the house the target was hiding in. It looked like he might fly, so they went in that night and took him out along with two bodyguards.”

  “Two on three,” said Weaver, impressed. “And they got away clean?”

  Karen nodded.

  Beth couldn’t hold it in any longer. “We are going to raise the terror threat level and put al-Sharif’s picture in the media, aren’t we?” she said to Timmins.

  “I just got off the phone with Washington about that,” said Timmins. “The answer is no.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Beth. “Why the hell not?”

  “Justice is afraid it’ll end up just like the D.C. sniper case. A total media circus, public going ape-shit, a million worthless tips to run down, local cops leaking everything to the press.”

  “So we only raise the threat level when the administration’s in political trouble,” said Beth. “Not when there actually is a team of terrorists driving somewhere in the United States to attack something.”

  “Beth, that’s the biggest banana skin you’ve ever seen in your life,” said Timmins. “And I advise you not to step on it.”

  Since Beth had already articulated what everyone else was thinking, and gotten in trouble for it, no one else said a word.

  Beth said, “Fine, Ben. Then what are we going to do?”

  “Do we have a photo of any kind on Nimri?” Timmins asked Karen.

  “Nothing,” said Karen. “Neither does any friendly agency. That they’re willing to share with us, at least.”

  “Okay,” said Timmins. “Nationwide law enforcement APB on al-Sharif and his two Arab accomplices. Keep working leads here and in Dearborn. Hope we get something from the Canadians.”

  “And you think that nationwide all-points bulletin isn’t going to leak to the media?” said Beth.

  “If it does, it’s not my responsibility,” Timmins replied.

  Beth just nodded slightly, as if that was the answer she’d expected.

  Weaver and Moody found something else to do just then.

  Karen took Beth’s arm. “Let me ask you a question.”

  When they were out of earshot, Beth said, “What?”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Karen, flashing her killer smile. “I just thought I’d better get you out of there.”

  Beth shook her head, still royally steamed.

  “Shouldn’t tell you this,” said Karen. “The two Missionaries were Ed Storey and Lee Troy.”

  “Ed’s a very good man,” said Beth. “Next time I get pissed off about my job, I need to think about him and Lee out there in a cane field all day long. Thanks for telling me.”

  “There is something else,” said Karen. “Patriots at Redskins on Sunday.”

  “You poor deluded homer,” said Beth. “The Pats are going
to cream them.”

  “Oh?” Karen said demurely. “Name your poison.”

  They did this all the time, and Beth knew Karen’s style. “You have to wear a Dallas jersey to the next available home game. In plain sight. And a cowboy hat. And I get your husband’s ticket, so I can watch.”

  “Bitch,” said Karen. “Okay, the Skins win and you have to go to a country bar and ride the mechanical bull.”

  Beth opened her mouth to say something.

  “While wearing a red cowboy hat and red cowboy boots,” Karen added.

  “Bitch,” said Beth. “There will be no recording of this. None of your frigging spy cameras. And no one from the office will be there.”

  “Agreed,” Karen said reluctantly. “Do we have a bet?”

  “We have a bet,” said Beth. “But I think it’s going to be awhile before either of us gets a chance to collect.”

  18

  They had been driving for almost twelve hours. Nimri let them stop only for gasoline and drive-through food. They made more of those stops than usual, because he only let one man leave the van at each location. Three Arabs traveling together was going to attract attention.

  Soon he thought the whining to go to the bathroom was going to drive him mad. They drank American soft drinks in cups the size of buckets and wondered why they had to urinate every fifteen minutes. And then the bickering over which fast food restaurant to stop at. As if they tasted any different.

  It would begin as soon as the bags came in the window. Al-Sharif always taking it upon himself to distribute the food, and always serving Nimri first.

  Omar ordering 7-Up in restaurants that only had Sprite, and Sprite in restaurants that only offered 7-Up. And complaining bitterly when he did not get what he ordered.

  “This isn’t my chicken sandwich,” said Dawood. “This is a hamburger.”

  Al-Sharif rooting around in the bag. “There’s no chicken sandwich.” Then to Omar, behind the wheel, “Didn’t you order a chicken sandwich for him?”

  “I ordered a chicken sandwich,” Omar replied. “I order a chicken sandwich every time.”