Sleeper Cell

by Chris Culver

  Bowers returned his attention to his phone call, so I did as he asked. The sun had risen about halfway in the sky, filling the conference room with morning light. I pulled a chair to the window and drank my coffee.

  My shoulders and chest felt heavy, and the muscles in my legs and arms ached. I hadn’t realized until that moment how tired I was. I sipped my coffee. Kevin Havelock had looked tired at the end, too. I closed my eyes and said a prayer for his family. Before I could finish, my phone beeped, signaling an incoming text message.

  I fished it out of my pocket and found a picture of two young girls in the backseat of a squad car. They wore pajamas, and they looked scared. Then I got another text and another picture. The second picture showed a man and a woman sitting side by side in the back of another cruiser. Zip ties secured their hands in front of them. The woman wore hijab and a loose-fitting blouse and dress while the man wore jeans and a sweater. Neither looked at the camera, but both had tears on their cheeks.

  I took my phone to the copy room and used a computer there to print them out. They were a little blurry, but they’d work just fine. I shoved them in a manila envelope. Captain Bowers walked into the conference room just as I was returning to let me know Butler al-Ghamdi had arrived. That meant it was showtime.

  I took my pictures to the homicide unit’s office suite and found the correct interrogation booth. Butler was already seated at the room’s only table. He had his head in his arms and looked as if he were trying to sleep. A lot of suspects did that to try to show me how cool and collected they were. A lot of those same suspects left that room with shackles on their wrists and ankles and tears on their cheeks. It didn’t impress me much.

  I walked in and cleared my throat.

  “Wake up, sleeping beauty,” I said, pulling a metal folding chair out from beneath the table. Butler slowly raised his head. His eyes were red and puffy, and his hair was mussed. He smirked at me. I had only gotten a quick look at him at Kim Peterson’s house, but I recognized him. It would take some work before we had enough evidence for trial, but my eyewitness account alone would have been enough to charge him with multiple homicides.

  “Did you search that cabin?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “We met your friends there. Both are dead. Since you set me up, we’ll be charging you with felony homicide for that. I’m pretty sure we’ll be charging you with the murders of everyone at Kim Peterson’s house as well.”

  His smirk grew. “I’m fifteen. I’ll be out on my twenty-first birthday.”

  “That’s possible,” I said, nodding and sitting down. “It’s also possible you’ll be charged as an adult and sentenced to multiple life sentences. Considering your actions led to the deaths of several law enforcement officers, I wouldn’t make too many long-term plans if I were you.”

  He crossed his arms. “I’m ready for that.”

  “I know,” I said, nodding. “You’re a real badass.”

  He didn’t respond except to look away. I gave him a moment to think. Finally, he looked at me and shrugged.

  “Seems like you’ve got your answer,” he said.

  “I didn’t ask a question.”

  He scoffed and shook his head. Again, I gave him a moment to think. Then I cleared my throat as he looked at me again.

  “How do you like your family?”

  He didn’t say anything, but he did furrow his brow, clearly confused.

  “You’re the big brother, right?” I asked. “You’ve got two younger sisters. One of them has braces. The other likes to wear My Little Pony pajamas. Do you like them?”

  “My family is none of your business,” he said, shifting and leaning back, probably in an attempt to look cool. I merely nodded.

  “You love your mom and dad?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me, but then he laughed and sat a little straighter.

  “That’s clever,” he said. “You gonna tell me I’m not being a good role model to my sisters. Is that it? Are you going to tell me I’m bringing shame on my parents? Because I don’t care.”

  “No,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’m asking whether you love them.”

  He didn’t say anything. Instead, he shook his head and smirked again. I glanced up to a bubble suspended from the ceiling.

  “The surveillance cameras and microphones are off,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about anything you say in this room getting out. Everybody will know you’re still a tough guy. Just tell me: Do you love your family?”

  He didn’t say anything for about a minute. I didn’t push. Finally, he snorted and nodded.

  “Yeah. I love my family. How’s that make you feel?”

  I smiled, but I didn’t let it reach my eyes.

  “I’m glad. I’ve got an older sister, and I think the world of her. There’s no relationship in the world like the relationship between siblings.” Before he could respond, I cleared my throat. “The FBI and I aren’t sure what exactly is going on, but we know you and your friends robbed Nassir Hadad’s camp of weapons and ammunition. We know you and your friends were building explosive devices in a warehouse near the airport. We also know you set us up in an ambush in which your friends and numerous agents died. We think you’re planning some kind of attack. You want to tell me about that?”

  “There is no God but God, and Muhammed is the messenger of God.”

  “I’m glad we’ve got that sorted out,” I said. “The FBI has received nonspecific intelligence that an attack is forthcoming. You’re involved. What’s going on?”

  He started repeating the Shahada. I didn’t plan to sit through it a second time, so I opened the envelope in front of him and then showed him the photos. He stopped speaking midsentence.

  “What are you doing with my family?” he asked.

  “Officially, we’re bringing them to town to talk to you,” I said, lying through my teeth. “The station psychologist thinks it might make you more likely to admit what you’ve done if you can talk to people you trust first. Frankly, though, you’re never going to talk. I know it, and you know it.”

  He said nothing, so I leaned forward, bringing our faces to within a few inches of one another.

  “You killed a friend of mine. I’m bringing your family into town because I know your friends are planning an attack. I’m going to make sure it hurts you as much as it hurts everyone else.”

  His face went pale. “What are you talking about?”

  I leaned back and crossed my arms.

  “The Indy 500 starts at a little after eleven. The track and stands will be pretty safe because there are bomb-sniffing dogs and police officers everywhere. What’s more, everyone who goes through the gate and every bag and cooler they carry will be hand-searched by police officers. The gates themselves, though, are a bottleneck. Three hundred thousand people started lining up at six this morning to go through those gates. They’ll wait for hours. Many of them will have purses, coolers, backpacks, handbags, you name it. We won’t have any idea what any of those people are carrying until we search them. For all we know, they could be carrying pipe bombs and assault rifles.”

  He drew in a breath. “So?”

  “Here’s what I think is going to happen: You and your friends are going to attack the 500. You’re smart guys, so you know you won’t get past security with explosives or guns. You don’t need to, though.

  “You’ll attack the people waiting outside. Maybe you’ll have coolers full of explosives, maybe you’ll just drive a truck into a crowd, killing everyone in your way. Either way, you’ll kill a couple thousand people on national TV, you’ll terrify a country that loves major sporting events, and you might even surpass September 11th as the deadliest terror attack perpetrated on American soil. There’s not a lot we can do to stop it, either, short of cancelling the race.”

  He seemed to think for a moment, but then he started smirking.

  “Scared yet?”

  “Honestly?” I asked. He nodded. “I’m terrified, but at least I
won’t be alone. Your mom’s going to be at the north gate. Your dad will be at the south gate. Your sisters will be at the east and west gates. If a cooler goes boom in that crowd, your family’s going to feel the shrapnel.”

  The smirk left his face. Then he shook his head and leaned back.

  “You can’t do that. They’re my family. You’re going to get them killed.”

  “That’s the idea,” I said, hating myself for saying it even as the words left my lips. I smiled and stood up. “Have a good one.”

  He called me a motherfucker as I stood. Time wasn’t on my side, but I needed to break through his anger and force him to come to grips with everything he’d lose if he allowed his friends to carry out an attack. I needed him, in other words, to believe that I was such a cold-hearted bastard that I’d let children die just to make myself feel a little better.

  So I pulled the door shut without another word and let it lock behind me. He screamed even harder, but the walls mostly muffled the sound. Since I didn’t know when he’d come to his senses, I grabbed a cup of coffee in the break room and then sat in front of a computer monitor to watch.

  For the first few minutes, he just screamed. Then he gave the door the finger. After that, he kicked over the folding chair opposite him. It clattered to the wall. He went on like that for about an hour before he put his head down and started crying.

  That’s what I had been waiting for.

  I walked back into the room. When he looked up from the table, his eyes were tinged with red, and there were tears on his cheeks.

  “I hate you.”

  “I’m not overly fond of me at the moment, either,” I said. “What’s it going to be? You risk letting your sisters die, or do you want to tell me what’s going on?”

  He held his hands in front of him and closed his eyes. “I don’t know what’s going on.”

  I shook my head and started to leave the room without saying anything, but he stood quickly.

  “Wait. I don’t know what’s going on, but they went to Nassir Hadad’s camp this morning. They had to do something there. You’ve been there. You know where it is. I bet they’re there right now. Once that sheriff picked me up, Nassir was alone.”

  “Is Nassir involved?”

  “No,” he said. “Nassir’s an idiot who thinks he can change the world by being nice to people. We were using him.”

  “Who do you mean by we?” I asked.

  “Hashim Bashear and the men who work for him. That’s all I know. Hashim Bashear. That’s the man you need to look for.”

  I blinked a couple of times and then crossed my arms. “Last time you suggested I go somewhere, I got shot at, and then the house I was in burned to the ground. I’m going to need a guarantee that I won’t die this time. I’m going to take your mom. If I get shot at, at least I’ll have a human shield.”

  “Nobody’s going to shoot at you,” he said, shaking his head. “They won’t know you’re coming. They may not even be there anymore. They didn’t tell me what they were doing. I was supposed to get caught. The less I knew, the less I could say.”

  It made sense, so I nodded. “All right. I’ll check out the camp. Thank you.”

  “So you’re going to keep my mom safe, right? I mean, you’re going to let her go home once you check out the camp?”

  I stopped and looked at him. He had tears in his eyes again as he begged me.

  “Your family was never in any danger. Right after the Mount Vernon police took that picture, everybody went home.”

  For a moment, he just stared at me. Then his serious, worried expression lifted, and anger took its place. He started screaming that I was a motherfucker again. Technically, as a father of two children, I supposed it was true, so I didn’t take offense. I shut the door with him screaming behind me. In the hallway, I called Captain Bowers.

  “Mike, it’s Ash. I need you to call the state police and get their southeastern emergency response team together. I know where the bad guys are.”

  Chapter 38

  Captain Bowers and I left within five minutes of al-Ghamdi’s admission. Though we had the authority to make arrests anywhere within the state of Indiana, as a practical matter, we stayed in Indianapolis. If a suspect left the city, we worked with the Indiana State Police or whatever local law enforcement agency had jurisdiction in our suspect’s location. In this case, with Nassir’s camp a good sixty miles from the city, we called the Brown County Sheriff’s Department, who then called the Indiana State Police for assistance. That left us as bystanders.

  The first call came in while Bowers and I were on the interstate heading south. We had been in the car for almost an hour, but with race traffic already heavy, we had barely left the city. I was driving, while Bowers sat in the passenger seat of his department-issued SUV. Bowers answered and put the phone on speaker and set it on the console between our seats.

  “This is Captain Mike Bowers with IMPD. I’m with Lieutenant Rashid. We got stuck in traffic, so we’re about fifty miles north of you. What’s going on?”

  “Good to hear from you, Captain. This is Colonel Adrian Holtz with ISP. This is a courtesy call to let you know that we’ve got search warrants in hand, and we’re about to hit the camp. We’ve got forty-eight officers and two aircraft incoming. If you were a little closer, I could ask them to postpone until you arrive, but I don’t think we can keep our birds in the air long enough for you to get here.”

  “Go when you’re ready,” I said. “There are buildings all over the property, and you’re going to have to search all of them. You need to be careful of a large garage on the northwest side of the camp. It looks like a pole barn, but the walls are thick concrete covered in aluminum siding. There’s a storm cellar and another secure room in the basement. If you’ve got bad guys on the premises, that’s where I’d look for them. Other buildings have much more standard construction.”

  The colonel paused for a moment. “Is this Lieutenant Rashid?”

  “It is, yeah,” I said, taking my eyes off the road for just a moment to glance down.

  “Any other threats I should be aware of?”

  He couldn’t see me, but I shook my head. “Not that I know of.”

  The colonel paused again. I thought I heard the click of keys for a brief moment.

  “Okay, gentlemen,” he said. “We’ll be assaulting the location shortly and will take anyone we find into custody. We’ll be in touch.”

  Bower wished him good hunting before hanging up. I drove in silence for another few minutes before he looked at me.

  “Still think your brother-in-law is innocent in all this?”

  I started to say yes, but then I hesitated. “I hope so, but I don’t know. Butler al-Ghamdi said he was an idiot and that everyone was using him, but I’ve never known my brother-in-law to be stupid. Aside from that, of all the people in the world, why did they pick him?”

  Bowers shrugged. “You said he was monitoring kids online. Maybe they were monitoring him, too, and found an easy mark.”

  I raised my eyebrows and nodded. “It’s possible, but I can’t help but feel that I’m missing some connection.”

  Bowers grunted. “If there’s a connection, we’ll find it. First, though, we need to focus on shutting this down.”

  I agreed, and we drove for another half hour before taking the exit for Columbus, Indiana and heading west toward Nassir’s camp. Within ten minutes, cell reception was intermittent at best on the narrow, hilly back roads. Within fifteen, we had no reception at all. I had expected that. Eventually, we turned onto the small side road that led to Nassir’s camp. A pair of state police cruisers guarded the gate. I flashed the lights hidden in our SUV’s grill and rolled down my window as a uniformed officer walked toward us.

  “I’m Lieutenant Ash Rashid. Beside me is Captain Mike Bowers of the Indianapolis Metro Police Department. Colonel Holtz inside?”

  “Yeah,” said the officer, taking a step back and pointing further into the compound. “He’s at the big
building. Just follow the drive. You’ll find it.”

  I nodded and started to lift my foot off the brake but then pressed down again before the big car could move.

  “You guys make it out okay?”

  The officer nodded and closed his eyes before drawing in a quick breath.

  “We did, but we found a body.”

  “Oh?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. My heart began to pound against the bones of my chest. “What’d he look like?”

  “I didn’t see him,” said the officer, taking a step back. “Heard he had dark skin and black hair, though.”

  I nodded and pressed my foot on the accelerator. Bowers put a hand on my shoulder as gravel hit the undercarriage of the car and sprayed behind us.

  “Easy there, Ash,” he said. “They found somebody, but it doesn’t mean it’s your brother-in-law.”

  I took my foot off the gas.

  “I’ve seen enough people die lately,” I said. “I’m getting tired of this.”

  “It’s almost over,” said Bowers, taking his hand off my shoulder and pointing ahead of us to a row of marked state police cruisers, SWAT tactical vehicles, and marked state police SUVs on the lawn. “Let’s park and find out what’s going on.”

  I nodded and parked at the end of the row of vehicles and then clipped my badge to the neck of my sweatshirt so everybody could see it. The sweatpants the Bureau forensic technicians had given me when they took my clothes at the cabin didn’t have belt loops, but I wore a belt anyway. Primarily, it kept my firearm at arm’s reach. Combined with the two days of growth on my chin and the fact that I hadn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours, I looked like a hobo with a badge, but I didn’t care. This case had gone on long enough.

  A uniformed patrolman started walking toward us the moment Bowers and I got out of our car. He was taller than me but rail thin. As he started to hold up a hand to stop us, I pointed to my badge and walked past him.

  “There are two officers at the front gate,” I said. “You think they would have let me pass if I wasn’t expected?”

  The patrolman stammered a response but didn’t try to impede me further. Bowers said something to him, but I wasn’t paying attention. My focus was on Nassir. He and his friends had certainly committed crimes—you can’t just stockpile explosive devices and firearms you confiscated from troubled teenagers—but none of those crimes warranted the death penalty. He was trying to do the right thing. Maybe he was an idiot, but he didn’t deserve to die.