Sleeper Cell

by Chris Culver

  I slipped the book back on the shelf and stood up. Omar Nawaz, the imam I had spoken to earlier, knew who these girls were. He knew what they had been through. If I had to guess, he knew who was after them. The two of us needed to have a long conversation.

  “If you guys need someone to translate these, I will later,” I said. “But right now, I’ve got somebody to see.”

  Chapter 31

  It was night by the time Ahmed and Omar Massoud reached the parking lot. Yellow trucks spread in front of them. The tire and auto center to their left had closed two hours earlier. The overhead lights were harsh and bright but sporadically placed so that they left light and dark spots on the asphalt.

  They had watched that lot for an hour. Even though the business was closed, customers still came by periodically to drop off trucks and return paperwork to the store’s mailbox. They didn’t look out of place.

  Ahmed pointed to a white paneled van.

  “That one would be the easiest to drive,” he said. “Probably gets the best gas mileage, too.”

  Omar shook his head. “Too small for what we need.”

  “We’ll get the next size up, then,” said Ahmed, pointing to a truck. “I’ll be driving this thing, so I don’t want something too big.”

  Omar walked toward the truck and looked at the sign on the window before shaking his head.

  “Load capacity’s only three thousand pounds. We need something bigger.”

  Ahmed walked toward his brother and lowered his voice. “How big is this bomb Hamza’s building?”

  Instead of answering, Omar looked toward the twenty-six-foot truck, the biggest truck on the lot. Ahmed felt himself shrink just a little.

  “That’s a big truck.”

  “It’s a big bomb,” said Omar, reaching into his pocket for a safety hammer their mother had given them in case they ever got stuck in a car after an accident. It had an attachment to cut seatbelts and a hardened steel point perfect for breaking through safety glass. He walked to the truck, climbed onto the steps beneath the driver’s door, and broke the driver’s side window. “If we’re fast, we’ll be done before the rental place even knows their truck is gone.”

  Ahmed nodded as his brother opened the door and started sweeping glass outside. Neither of them had ever stolen a car before, but they had watched internet videos on how to do it. They had the truck running within ten minutes of stepping foot onto the lot. Ahmed drove, while his brother navigated and watched for the police.

  Truly, though, God was on their side. They had a clean getaway, a full tank of gas, and a truck with a ten-thousand-pound load capacity.

  Ahmed hoped that was enough.

  Chapter 32

  The sun had been down for a good hour by the time I left the crime scene. Omar Nawaz had been at his mosque the last time I saw him, but there was a good chance he had left after prayer. If he had just talked to me, the people in Kim Peterson’s house might still be alive. That was the problem with this case. Everyone had something to hide, and everyone had someone who wanted them dead.

  The moment I turned my car on, my cell phone started ringing. I answered without looking at the screen.

  “Yeah?”

  “Ashraf, I’m out of jail, but I need your help.”

  The voice belonged to Nassir. I had wanted to talk to him tonight anyway, so I was glad he called.

  “I’m glad you’re out. I’m on my way to visit Omar Nawaz. You know him?”

  “He’s the imam at a masjid on the east side of town,” said Nassir, his voice almost distant. “I’ve only met him a couple of times. He’s competent.”

  Coming from Nassir, that was a high compliment for any clergyman. It meant Nawaz lived those things he taught rather than just paying lip service to ideals.

  “Glad to hear it. You said you need help. What do you need?”

  “We need you to come to the camp.”

  I blinked a few times. “I’m in the middle of a major case, and your camp is an hour away.”

  “I know,” said Nassir. “This is an emergency.”

  “And we can’t solve this over the phone?”

  “No,” said Nassir, his voice low. “We screwed up. It’s important. I need your help.”

  “Eight people are dead. Omar Nawaz might know their murderer. Is your screwup more important than that?”

  Nassir’s voice caught in his throat. He cleared it.

  “I’m sorry, but yes. A lot of people could get hurt because of us.”

  I leaned back on my seat to think. It felt like I had been working this case for years instead of just forty-eight hours. I rubbed my eyes. I needed to interview Nawaz, but he was still a peripheral figure in this whole thing. Nassir was closer to the hub, the center of the wheel that connected everything. Jacob Ganim, the dead women, the attack at Westbrook Elementary in New Hampshire, the warehouse and fire…Nassir may not have known what was going on, but somehow it all came back to him. If he thought a lot of people could get hurt because of what he did, he was probably right.

  “I’m on my way.”

  Nassir thanked me several times before hanging up. I buckled up for the hour-long drive. Before leaving, I texted my wife to let her know that I was okay and that I loved her. She didn’t know the FBI had arrested me that afternoon, and I didn’t tell her. She worried about me. I loved that about her. I loved everything about her, in fact. She and the kids were my whole world.

  After texting her, I called my dispatcher and asked her to have some uniformed officers pick up Omar Nawaz for safekeeping.

  Once I had the preparations made, I took I-465 to I-65 and headed south toward Nassir’s camp. There were few cars out, allowing me to make good time with little stress. The trees around Nassir’s property were dense and thick, but once I had left their canopy, the sky opened up with a seemingly endless number of stars. It was unfortunate that the federal government would likely seize the property before this was all through because it was certainly a pretty spot.

  I found three cars beside the main building at the camp. I parked beside Nassir’s Cadillac and got out. Crickets and other nighttime insects sang from the woods near the building, while a breeze caused the trees to gently sway. I followed heated voices inside the building. Nassir, Saleem al-Asiri—the guidance counselor from Illinois—and Asim Qureshi argued as they sat at a round table. Saleem held a bag of frozen peas against his face. There was a bloody handkerchief on the table in front of him.

  I cleared my throat. Asim looked at me and nodded.

  “Thank you for coming. We didn’t know who else to call.”

  I nodded to him and then looked to Saleem. “What’s wrong with your face?”

  He lowered the bag of frozen food, revealing a bruise on his cheek and the makings of a black eye.

  “If someone at the FBI did that to you,” I said, “you need to talk to your lawyer. I can’t help with that.”

  Saleem shook his head. “This was the work of one of my students. Butler al-Ghamdi.”

  I crossed my arms and raised my eyebrows. “The kid you caught buying ammunition online and brought here?”

  “Yes,” said Nassir. “When the FBI came and arrested us, he was out buying lumber. He hid from them because he thought they were going to kill him. They undid everything we were trying to accomplish. He was already radicalized. Now he thinks he has to act.”

  I swore under my breath before looking up, my eyebrows raised. “And you guys want me to find him?”

  “We need you to find him,” said Saleem. He licked his lips. “I made a mistake.”

  “Yeah, you did,” I said. “We’re past pointing fingers, though. I need his cell phone number. Since he’s clearly a threat, I’m going to bring the FBI in on this.”

  “There’s more they’re not telling you,” said Asim, his arms crossed as he glared at Saleem and then Nassir. “He and his friends broke into the armory and took some very dangerous things.”

  I let the statement hang for a moment before spe
aking, expecting someone to say something.

  “Excuse me? You have an armory?”

  “Butler wasn’t the first young man we’ve helped,” said Nassir. “He ordered ammunition. Other boys had guns and knives and things like that.”

  I didn’t say anything at first, but my face started to warm as my temper rose. Finally, I couldn’t take the silence.

  “What the hell were you guys thinking?” I asked. No one answered, so I threw up my hands. “That’s a real question. What the hell were you thinking? These weren’t Boy Scouts caught breaking the speed limit. These were young men primed to commit mass murder, and you took them to a summer camp.”

  “We thought we were helping,” said Nassir.

  “Yeah, and because of your help, there’s now a dangerous kid out there with God only knows what.”

  Saleem sat straighter. “To be fair, we have a pretty good idea of what they took. We have an inventory.”

  I squeezed my hands into fists so tight the skin over my knuckles turned white. Then I took deep breaths, trying to calm my temper. It only partially worked, but a slow, simmering anger was probably appropriate given the situation. I looked at Asim.

  “You said Butler and his friends robbed the armory,” I said. “What friends?”

  Asim looked to Saleem. He sighed before speaking.

  “There were three of them,” said the guidance counselor. “Butler and two other boys I didn’t know. They were vicious. As soon as they got here, one of the boys punched me in the stomach. The other kicked me in the face when I fell down.”

  “They wanted his key,” said Nassir.

  “So they beat you up for the key,” I said, nodding. I looked to Nassir and then to Asim. “How many people know about your armory?”

  “Not many,” said Nassir. “It’s a pretty close group.”

  “And yet these kids knew all about it,” I said. “Where is it? Could they have just found it on their own?”

  “It’s connected to the storm shelter beneath the barn,” said Asim, his arms still crossed. “The FBI didn’t even find it.”

  And if the Bureau had found the armory, Nassir and his friends never would have seen the sun against except through bars.

  “If it’s well hidden and no one knows about it, how did these kids find it?”

  Nassir and Asim looked to Saleem. He cleared his throat.

  “I told him,” he said. “They had a gun to my head and were asking where we put Butler’s ammunition. They would have killed me if I hadn’t told them.”

  I crossed my arms. “I’m not buying that. If these kids are willing to commit mass murder, they’d kill you to keep you from talking.”

  Saleem looked down. “Butler told them not to. He said he wanted to do it. So the other boys went to the armory to get the guns, while Butler remained behind. As soon as his friends were gone, Butler started crying. He apologized and begged me to forgive him, but he wouldn’t give me the gun. He said we’d both be dead if that happened. He shot into the wall twice and told me to hide in the office until they were gone.”

  I didn’t know whether I believed the story, but it didn’t matter. There were three dangerous kids with guns on the loose.

  “When did this happen?” I asked.

  Nassir and Asim looked to Saleem.

  “A couple of hours ago.”

  “Does Butler have dark brown skin and shortly cropped hair?”

  “Why?” asked Saleem.

  “Because a young man with dark brown skin and shortly cropped hair just killed eight people in Indianapolis who were connected to this case,” I said. Nassir’s face paled, while Saleem and Asim looked as if someone had just punched them. I took that as a confirmation of my question. “I need Butler’s cell phone number.”

  “What are you going to do?” asked Saleem.

  “What you should have done,” I said, allowing a hint of coldness into my voice. “I’m going to call the police. They’ll track him down and arrest him.”

  “If you do that, a lot of people will die,” said Saleem. “Butler is in over his head. Call him. Talk to him. Maybe there’s another way out. He can help you. Maybe he can even lead you to his friends. If the police try to pick them up, those boys will shoot back. They’re willing to die. They think this is what God wants from them.”

  Everybody I met lately seemed to think that God either wanted them to murder somebody or die for a cause. Frankly, I was getting a little tired of it.

  The worst part was that Saleem was probably right. If these guys really had perpetrated the attack in Kim Peterson’s house, they wouldn’t hesitate to open fire on our police officers. Maybe worse than that, our officers wouldn’t hesitate to fire on them. This would need to be handled delicately.

  “I will do what I believe is right in accordance with my professional judgment,” I said, speaking slowly as I tried to come up with a plan. “I will take him into custody as gently as I can, but I’m not going to put my life or the lives of anyone under my command in danger. Now, I’d like an inventory of your armory.”

  Nassir and Asim went to the office to get the list, while Saleem stayed put. He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t have anything to say to him. Instead, I looked at my phone. I had one bar, and it seemed steady. Maybe the wind was blowing right.

  “How old is Butler?” I asked.

  Saleem sputtered something and then sat straighter. “Fifteen.”

  “The other boys about the same age or older?”

  “Older. They were probably college age.”

  “What were they driving?”

  He thought for a moment and then leaned forward. “A red Ford pickup. It was old and had rust on the wheel wells.”

  “And Butler didn’t want to go with them?”

  Saleem blinked. “He was scared. I think he thought that if he didn’t go with them, they’d kill him.”

  It met the criteria, then. This would work. I called my dispatcher at IMPD and gave her my badge number and name.

  “I’d like to request an Amber Alert be put out for Butler al-Ghamdi. He’s a fifteen-year-old boy last seen near a campsite in Brown County, Indiana. He was abducted with threats of violence by two men in their early twenties. Both men should be considered heavily armed and extremely dangerous. They were last seen driving a late-model Ford pickup truck. I believe Butler is in imminent danger of death or serious injury and request that civilians call the police upon sighting the victim. Law enforcement should be on notice that the abductors will fire upon any perceived threats. The victim will likely fire as well. I’m not sure of his mindset. All due precautions should be taken.”

  I stayed on the line for another few minutes while the dispatcher took my information down. Since I was a lieutenant, my requests were given a little more weight than those from an average officer, and I felt pretty confident we’d have the alert issued within the hour. Once that happened, Butler’s name and description would be on every TV in the state. They’d find him. I just hoped the boys gave themselves up without a fight.

  A moment after I made my call, Nassir returned with a printout on which he had written quite a few notes.

  “This is a complete inventory. I’ve circled those things that were taken.”

  Though they hadn’t taken everything, the inventory took an entire page. There were rifles, pistols, bomb components, and a lot of suspect electronic gear. I looked at it and sighed.

  “How many troubled young men have you guys helped?”

  Nassir hesitated before answering. “Eight, but none of them have ever committed an attack after we worked with them. They learned.”

  “Except Butler,” I said, scanning those items he had circled. Before anyone could say anything, I cleared my throat. “So, according to your inventory, they took four pistols, three AR-15 rifles, and twelve boxes of ammunition, each of which held twenty rounds.”

  “That sounds right,” said Nassir.

  I looked at him and then to Saleem and Asim. “And none of yo
u thought it was a bad idea to store this stuff at a summer camp?”

  They didn’t answer, which wasn’t too unexpected. I looked at Nassir.

  “Do you have his cell number?”

  He pointed to a handwritten number at the bottom of the sheet. I stood and placed a call. I didn’t particularly want Nassir and his enablers to listen to the conversation, so I grabbed the inventory, left the building, and walked down the gravel driveway while Kevin Havelock’s phone rang. When he answered, he sounded groggy.

  “I get you up from a nap?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I haven’t slept for a while. What’s up?”

  “I need a trace on a cell phone. Bowers call you about the murders yet?”

  Havelock paused. “No. What murders?”

  “Jacob Ganim had photographs of women in his basement. Somebody tracked those women down and killed them this afternoon.”

  “Jesus,” said Havelock, his voice clear. “You have any idea who did it?”

  “Possibly the owner of the cell phone I need you to track down.”

  “This connected to Ganim’s murder?”

  I exhaled a slow breath. “Ganim, my brother-in-law, the dead women, the attack on Westbrook Elementary, they’re all connected. I just don’t know how yet.”

  I gave him the number.

  “Okay,” he said. “Give me five minutes. If it’s on, we’ll find it.”

  I thanked him, hung up, and sat down against the base of a tree just off the side gravel roadway. For five minutes, I stared at the stars. It was peaceful. I wished it could have lasted, but time doesn’t stop for men like me. My phone rang just as I was starting to relax.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Phone is in a fixed location near the Indianapolis International Airport. Hasn’t left the general vicinity for almost an hour.”

  I rubbed my eyes and gave myself a minute to think about how to approach this.

  “Get a team together. Search the location and see what you can find. I’m going to head to Indianapolis and talk to an imam who did something really stupid.”

  Chapter 33