Sleeper Cell

by Chris Culver

  Nassir didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but then he closed his eyes.

  “We’re not stupid.”

  “I didn’t say you are,” I said.

  “Then you implied it,” he said, opening his eyes to glare at me. He threw out his hands. “Of course it’s possible he isn’t who he says he is. It’s also possible he’s exactly the man I think he is. I can only judge him based on what I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a good Muslim who loves his family and community.”

  Neither Nassir nor I said anything for a moment, but we did step out of the road as the state police SUV passed. I didn’t know what the officers had heard, but very likely Bowers and Colonel Holtz would get a report that Nassir and I had been seen arguing. I drew in a deep breath and closed my eyes.

  “Do you at least understand where I’m coming from?” I asked. “I’m not asking these things lightly, Nassir. There are real lives at stake.”

  “I know,” he said, softening his voice. “I also know what it’s like to be accused of something I didn’t do simply because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I get that, and I’m sorry,” I said. “We need to work together, though. I’d like to find out how much fertilizer you had so I can know how big a bomb the terrorists can make, and then I’d like you to start calling your friends. We’ll pick them up.”

  “You still think the men who volunteer at this camp are terrorists?”

  “Call it a precautionary measure,” I said.

  He called me a bastard and started walking again. As long as he did as I asked, he could call me whatever he wanted. We reached the clubhouse within five minutes. By that point, nearly everyone was outside. There had been a lot of people in there earlier, so hopefully we hadn’t damaged the crime scene too badly.

  Bowers crossed his arms and looked out over the grassy field in front of us.

  “Colonel Holtz has every officer under his command calling truck rental places to look for stolen yellow trucks or any yellow truck that was rented to Arab-looking men. I also called the Bureau to let them know what’s going on. They’ve got five hundred agents on the ground near the Motor Speedway. IMPD has another thousand uniformed officers in the same area. We’re ready to act at the first sign of trouble. Nassir tell us anything?”

  “Nothing helpful beyond what I already told you,” I said. “These guys could be anywhere. We don’t even know whether they’re going to hit the 500.”

  He looked at me. “Can you think of a better target?”

  “No, which is why I doubt they’re going to attack it. These guys aren’t dumb. They’ve shown that over and over again. They’re not going to get within five miles of the Motor Speedway. Put yourself in their position. You’ve got a massive bomb in Indianapolis. Nobody knows what you look like, but every law enforcement official within a hundred-mile radius is looking for a bright yellow moving truck at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. What are you going to attack?”

  “I’m still going after the Indy 500,” said Bowers. “That’s where everybody is. These are terrorists. They want to make a statement and get their faces on TV. That’s what terrorism is about.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not how this group operates. They’re playing a different game. They knew they couldn’t kill President Crane, so they didn’t even try. Instead, they attacked his family. They sought a vulnerability and attacked that. Where are we vulnerable with almost every officer in the region focused on the race?”

  “Everywhere but the race.”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “And that’s the problem.”

  Chapter 40

  Nassir came out of the building a few minutes later with two stacks of documents, each of which likely had twenty or so pages. He handed one to me and the other to Bowers. I raised my eyebrows.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “A list of everything we have at this camp, who bought it, how much he paid, when he purchased it, and when it was last used,” he said. “It’s everything we have.”

  “So the fertilizer’s on here?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

  “First page, fourteenth entry,” said Nassir. “I checked. Two months ago, Qadi purchased forty-four hundred pounds of noncoated ammonium nitrate 34-0-0 prill-form fertilizer from a farm supply store online. We have yet to use a single bag.”

  I looked down at the spreadsheet and nodded when I saw the entry.

  “Okay, thank you,” I said, looking to Bowers. “This could be a big bomb.”

  “They steal anything else?” asked Bowers, turning pages.

  “The stuff from the armory,” said Nassir. “That’s on page seven. Ashraf knows about it.”

  “The armory?” asked Bowers, raising an eyebrow and glancing at me.

  “It’s what they called the room in which we found Nassir,” I said. “They had some guns there.”

  Bowers flipped pages and read for a few moments. Then he glanced at me.

  “That’s a lot of firepower,” he said, flicking his eyes toward Nassir. “They take anything other than guns and ammunition?”

  I started to say no, but Nassir made a noise in his throat that stopped me. I looked at him and raised my eyebrows.

  “Something you want to tell the group?”

  “They took some tools,” said Nassir. “The list is on page eight.”

  “What kind of tools?” asked Bowers.

  Nassir drew in a breath and raised his eyebrows. “Two soldering irons, some wire cutters, a spool of rosin-core solder, and some thin copper wire. We confiscated them from a young man who, we thought, was making bomb components. He was really trying to make homemade speakers. That’s why I didn’t say anything.”

  Even if the original kid had used the tools to make speakers, they had likely been put to a completely different use now.

  “Anything else?”

  Nassir looked down and ran a hand across his face. I repeated my question.

  “A box of prepaid cell phones,” he said. “I forgot we even had them until I checked the inventory. Saleem bought them because none of our cell phones worked out here. He thought the prepaid carrier would work better, but they didn’t. They’ve been sitting on a shelf in the armory for months. They’ve never even been activated.”

  My extremities started tingling as I flipped through pages. Each phone—nineteen of them—had its own line on the spreadsheet telling us the model number, the date of purchase, the price, and, most importantly, each phone’s serial number. I looked to Bowers.

  “Get on the phone and call the FBI. They have better technical resources than we do. If the bad guys took these phones, either they’re part of a bomb, or they’re being used for communication. Either way, we might be able to track them.”

  Bowers nodded and pulled out his cell phone and put it to his ear. Then he pulled it away and looked at the screen.

  “I’ve got no reception,” he said. “Check your phone. Somebody’s got to have a connection.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “There’s a hill behind the building. Your phone’ll work up there.”

  Bowers nodded and ran. I focused on Nassir. He looked small and forlorn.

  “We need to talk about Saleem,” I said. “He brought Butler al-Ghamdi to this camp, he happened to be here when Butler and his friends came back to rob the place, and he told them about your armory. Now he brought cell phones that are probably being used by terrorists. That might be a coincidence, but are you sure he’s the man you think he is?”

  “I don’t know anymore. Maybe bringing him in was a mistake.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  Nassir blinked and swallowed. “After the FBI released us yesterday, he said he was going home. As far as I know, nobody’s spoken to him since.”

  I pulled out my cell phone. “What’s his cell number?”

  Nassir didn’t have the number memorized, but he read it to me from his own cell phone. I entered it into my phone’s address book.

  “Thank you
.”

  Nassir sat on one of the porch’s rocking chairs while I ran up the hill after Captain Bowers. He was already on the phone when I arrived, so I stood a couple yards away from him and placed my own call to Paul Murphy. He answered after three rings. Wherever he was, it was as quiet as a tomb.

  “Paul, it’s Ash. What are you up to?”

  “Just sitting around the office and waiting for somebody to kill somebody else. What are you up to?”

  “Working a case. I need you to run a cell phone for me. It’s owned by a guy named Saleem al-Asiri. He’s from Dayton, Ohio.”

  “You never just call to talk anymore, Ash,” said Paul. “Remember when we were young, and we could just stay up all night talking? What happened to us? We used to be so good together.”

  “You’re hilarious,” I said, my voice flat. “Now get a paid of paper and a pencil. He’s supposed to be in Dayton, Ohio, right now. If he is, great. If he’s here in Indianapolis, though, he might be involved in a plan to kill a lot of innocent people. Either way, I need to track him down.”

  I read Paul the number, and he said he’d start making some calls to find him. As much as Paul liked to joke around, he knew when to shut up and work. A lot of our younger detectives could have learned from him. I thanked him and looked to Captain Bowers. I didn’t know who he was talking to, but his voice was subdued. I put my hands in my pockets and waited. After about ten minutes, he hung up and slipped his phone back in his pocket.

  “It took some arm twisting, but the Bureau’s on it,” he said. “I talked to Special Agent Garret Russel. He’s taking over Kevin Havelock’s position until Washington sends a permanent replacement. You need to watch out for him.”

  I nodded and started walking down the hill. “He let me know that. I think I’m done here. You ready to go?”

  “Yeah.”

  We walked back to Bowers’s SUV and found the state police tactical team already packing up. I had the feeling we’d need them before the day was through. I drove while Bowers stared at his phone, waiting for a signal. He finally got one a few miles from the interstate. Special Agent Russel at the FBI hadn’t gotten information about the phones yet, but he and the US Attorney’s Office were in touch with the wireless carrier’s legal office. Hopefully something would happen soon.

  Once I got on the interstate, I put on the lights hidden in the SUV’s grill and floored it. We hit the outskirts of Indianapolis in less than half an hour and were heading toward the city’s inner core when Bowers’s phone rang. He spoke for a moment and then put the phone on speaker and rested it on the console between our seats.

  “You mind repeating that, Agent Russel?” he asked. “You’re on speaker. I’ve got Lieutenant Rashid with me. He leads our major case squad.”

  Agent Russel grunted. “All nineteen cell phones have been activated and are dispersed throughout the city. Seven are in residential neighborhoods, three are in the zoo, one is in the botanical gardens near the zoo, six are near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and two are in the Circle Center Mall.”

  We had a lot of locations to search, but we had a lot of officers.

  “Nassir Hadad counted twelve people at his camp,” said Bowers. “Assuming those twelve each have a phone to coordinate with the others, what are the other seven phones for?”

  “Remote detonators, decoys, backups…we don’t know,” said Russel.

  I tilted my head toward the phone so it could pick up my voice.

  “Can we just work with the phone company to turn them off?” I asked. “If they’re remote detonators for a bomb, that might be the conservative thing to do.”

  “We could do that if we were morons, Lieutenant,” said Russel. “Since we’re not morons, I’d rather not.”

  I wanted to respond, but Bowers held up a hand and shook his head at me.

  “Agent Russel, this is Mike Bowers. I’m curious why Ash’s suggestion is such a bad one. Wouldn’t we disable the bomb if we disabled the detonator?”

  “Not necessarily,” said Russel. “We don’t know how they’re using these phones. If they’re acting as remote detonators, it’s possible that disconnecting them from the telecom’s network will close or open a circuit and set off the bomb. And if the bad guys are just using them to coordinate, they’ll know we’re on to them if we turn off their phones simultaneously.”

  “What do we do, then?” asked Bowers.

  “We’re still figuring that out,” said Russel. “When my team has a plan, we’ll let you know.”

  “That’s not good enough,” I said. “Here’s a plan that works. We put together nineteen tactical teams. We’ll put at least one member of the bomb squad on each team. Our tactical officers will track the bad guys down via their cell phones and arrest them before they can hurt any civilians. If the threat involves an explosive device, our bomb squad tech will examine the device while the tactical team evacuates the area. It’s not ideal, but it might be the best we can do.”

  Almost immediately, Russel chuckled, but there was little humor in the sound.

  “IMPD doesn’t have enough tactical officers—let alone bomb technicians—for an operation that large,” said Russel. “It’s not going to work.”

  “You’re right,” I said, nodding. “We don’t have enough officers, but you’ve got several hundred special agents from your counterterrorism division in town. I imagine some of them have had weapons training. We can also call the state police. They’ve got their own SWAT team. Like I said, it’s not ideal, but it might be the best we can do.”

  “Half-cocked thinking like that is what got my friend killed, Lieutenant.”

  Bowers immediately reached for the phone, but I started talking before he could cover up the microphone.

  “Bad men with guns killed your friend,” I said. “I’m sorry about Agent Havelock. I truly am. He was a good man. He died, though, because an asshole shot him with a sniper’s rifle. I did everything I could to save his life.”

  “Neither of you should have been in that building in the first place,” said Agent Russel. “Modern law enforcement doesn’t have room for cowboys or gunslingers, Lieutenant, which means that as far as I’m concerned, you have no place in this conversation. From now on, I’ll be discussing the FBI’s response to these incidents with Chief Reddington.”

  The line went dead. Bowers sighed and flicked a finger across his phone’s screen to hang up before slipping it into his pocket.

  “Could have gone better,” he said.

  I didn’t answer and instead reached to the console beside me to turn on the siren and clear out some cars ahead of us. They got to the side of the road quickly enough that I didn’t even have to let off the gas. The buildings of downtown Indianapolis loomed just ahead of us, and I drove straight toward them.

  Eventually, I had to slow down as the road narrowed and became more crowded, but I kept our lights and siren on, which kept us moving. When we reached our destination, I parked in the employee garage beneath the City-County Building.

  The building was quiet. On a weekday, thousands of men and women ambled about those hallways, but on a Sunday—race day, no less—the place was relatively empty. There wasn’t even a guard outside the parking garage, just an automatic meter to read your parking pass. Bowers and I took the elevator to his floor. Where most of the building felt calm and tired, IMPD’s executive-level floor buzzed with energy. Men and women ran through the hallways, carrying folders and talking on their phones.

  When he saw us, a uniformed lieutenant with dark skin and a bald head began hustling us down the main hallway.

  “Chief Reddington needs you guys in the conference room. We’ve got a lot going on right now.”

  Bowers and I hurried toward the conference room. There were a dozen men and women inside, and everybody seemed to be talking at once. Chief Dan Reddington sat at the head of the conference room table. The DHS liaison—a civilian whose name I couldn’t remember—sat beside him. Both of them were engaged in what looked like a
heated discussion with an attorney from the Indiana Attorney General’s Office. When Reddington saw us, he excused himself from his conversation, crossed the room, and took both me and Bowers by the arm and led us to the comparative quiet of the hallway.

  “I’m glad you two are here,” he said. “Agent Russel has been keeping me apprised of events around town. He’s in his own command center at the FBI fieldhouse. Have you guys heard about the nineteen cell phones?”

  I crossed my arms and nodded. “Yeah. We know about them.”

  “Agent Russel’s plan is to put together nineteen small tactical units of about fifteen officers each. It’s possible the cell phones we’re tracking are being used as part of a remote detonation system for explosive devices. As such, each tactical team will have at least one member of our bomb squad. The idea is that the tactical team will be able to evacuate the area, while the bomb squad member assesses the device. We’ll either disarm it—or, more likely, put it in a containment vessel for safekeeping.

  “IMPD alone doesn’t have enough officers with the required level of tactical training, so we’re coordinating with Homeland Security, the FBI, and the state police to put together teams. You’ve gone up against these guys, Ash. Given what you know about our opponent, do you have any objections to the plan?”

  Bowers had a tight smile on his face. I put my hands in my pockets and shook my head, pretending as if this were the first time I had heard the idea.

  “The plan’s risky, but it might save some lives. We need to tell our teams that the bad guys—and I think their leader is named Hashim Bashear—recruits from within the US. They’re probably going to be teenagers. They might be black, they might be white, or they might be something else entirely. We can’t know ahead of time. Based on what I’ve seen, though, they’re dangerous. They will not hesitate to kill.”

  Reddington nodded slowly. “I’ll relay the warning to our teams. Hopefully, we won’t have to shoot anyone on national TV.”

  “Yeah, let’s avoid doing that if we can,” I said.

  Reddington thanked me and left to call our SWAT team’s commanding officer. Bowers left as well to make sure the detectives under his command were ready to work. I grabbed a cup of lukewarm coffee from the break room and then found a quiet corner in the conference room while everyone worked. I was exhausted, and the longer I sat, the heavier my eyelids seemed to become. Before I relaxed, though, there was something I needed to do.